Come Not When I Am Dead (21 page)

I hear the phone ring in the sitting room and, light as a
feather, I run in to see who it is, I’m so happy, I’m just so happy, I am
leaping gazelle-like through the garden, it’s all OK, it’s all OK.
 
I will tell Charlie, I will cry with
delight.
 
I will smoke too many
cigars by the sea tonight.
 
I miss
the phone and then it rings again and it’s Gabriel “Aunty Gussie”
“Oh Gobber I’m so happy Gobber, just so happy”
“Oh, that’s nice.
 
Did you get the
package?”
“Yes.”
 
“Have you opened it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you set it up?”
“No” my feet are dancing through the pile of the carpet as I sit down, my hands
flutter through the air.
 
“Why not?”
“I haven’t had time yet, I’ll do it tomorrow”
“but it’s important” nothing’s that important now
“I’ll do it tomorrow, I promise”
“Really?
 
Can I really rely on
you?
 
There’s a curry in it for you
if you do, well, one day”
“what’s this one for anyway?”
“Same thing, memory.
 
“I don’t know
how many experiments Gabriel has sent me through the post to test the Major’s
memory, but I don’t mind.
 
We talk
about his new job, about the biography of Hitler that I’m reading, about the
weather and the birds I’ve
seen
and the dead pole cat I found and then he said “Aunty Gussie, I have to go now,
ring me when you’ve got the Major doing the puzzle, video it, OK?
 
Don’t forget. Love, love.”
 
When I put down the phone to Gabriel I
sent a text to Charlie ‘you’re off the hook, it’s all ok, you know what I mean
xxx’.
 
When he was leaving, and the
others were chatting and walking down the path, Frank shuffled me into the
porch “I want you to answer me honestly now love.
 
Don’t look so worried.
 
You’re not seeing that vet are you?”
“What vet?”
“You know who I mean, you’re not seeing him are you?” and I was going to say
Why do you want to know?
 
But I didn’t think that would be a good
idea, so I said “No.
 
He’s married”
and Frank said
“that’s OK then.
 
That is the truth
isn’t it Guss?
 
You’re not lying to
me?
 
I know you wouldn’t lie to me.”
 
I can’t tell him because I don’t know
why he wants to know.
 
I can’t tell
him because it’s not just my secret.
 
I can’t tell him because what if he got angry and beat Charlie up
too?
 
He may do.
 
I don’t know.
 
And sometimes I think I have everybody,
and sometimes I know I have no one.
 
“Why do you ask anyway?”
“because I’d have a few things to say if you were.
 
But if you’re not, then that’s OK.”
“Frank, why are you being so weird?
 
And what if I was?”
“You’re not so that’s OK” he said and then he turned his back and went to
go.
 
“Frankus?” I called at his back
“what?”
“what happened about Mark Davies?
 
Did you see him?”
“I did see him, and you can forget all about it if you can” but he was walking
away from me and I was having to hop, skip and jump to keep up with him and try
and hear him “Frank, just stay for a bit and tell me what happened”
“got to go now dear, we’ve got lunch waiting for us.”
“Will it be OK though?
 
Does he know
it’s got anything to do with me?”
“You’ll be fine love, he’ll keep away from you.
 
Any trouble, you call me right away,
won’t you?” he said as he got into the passenger seat of Toby’s truck.
 
Honestly, if he thinks that’s put my
mind at rest, he’s absolutely bloody wrong.

The wind is howling outside, a wolf
engulfing the landscape, and his saliva drips from his mouth and is scattered
over the fields.
 
I’m lying on my
bed and feeling shit.
 
I feel sad
and miserable and unloved and crap and horrible, just unloved really and
everything feels rotten.
 
 
I don’t know what I want really, apart
from happiness, apart from perfection and perfection is always changing, with
my mood.
 
It is always slightly
different and always trotting just a little way ahead of me out of reach.
 

I was lying on my belly on the bed,
reading a book about Churchill, I’d had too much of Hitler.
 
Then, out of charm and privilege and
cigars and cocktails I heard a car pull up outside and I just didn’t feel like
seeing anyone so I turned the light off and peeped through the curtains and I
saw Mark Davies on the drive, battling against the wind, his hands moving out
in front of him, trying to make it change direction.
 
And in the warmth of my room, my whole
body shivered.
 
A huge, dark velvet
curtain fell before my eyes.
 
He
shouldn’t come here, he should never come here.
 
I watched him walk towards my front
door, take a cigarette out of his mouth and throw it in the flower bed.
 
I hate that swagger that he has.
 
I hate him, unclean and distasteful he
is.
 
He began to bang and bang at
the door with his fist, I will scrub that door now.
 
I felt every element of my home sullied.
 
And when I didn’t answer the door he
began to shout, loud and uncouth, vulgar and skin-creepingly revolting.
 
I don’t want to hear his voice
here.
 
I don’t want to be
scared.
 
He should never have come.
 

I slid across the room to get my
mobile phone and call Frank.
 
And
all I would need to do was to wait in my room until Davies left, knowing that
Frank would take care of it for me.
 
I wish Frank lived here.
 
And
then, whilst I was crouching down by the corner of my bed; when I was getting
carried away in a little vision of loveliness, of my dear old Frank always
being here, marmalade on the breakfast table every morning; I began to hear
some words, flung by the wind up to my windows.
 
Assortments of words, bits of words,
words I would never put together, tapping at the windows and trying to get in,
words that I did understand.
 
I knew
to put the phone down and listen.
 
Quiet as a mouse in my house.
 
Not even breathing lest he should hear.
 
And Frank with his instant suspicion of
foreigners, it would make me laugh if I wasn’t almost crying.
 
And dawning on me like an elephant
dropping down from a tree and crushing my body was that it was Mark Davies in
the truck that Charlie shot
.

You
cannot lie down and be scared of anyone or anything
I thought as I crept across the room and put my boiler suit on.
 
You
cannot allow other people to scare or scar you
I thought as I put my socks
and boots on.
 
You have to erase badness if you can, destroy it when you can
I
thought as I crept down the stairs, toes first and put my old anorak on over my
boiler suit.
 
And even though he’s
scary, I know, that if it comes to it, I can be more scary, that’s what I kept
in my thoughts.
 
And ignoring the
whimpering in my head, I set out to talk to him, propelled by fear, tripping
over my gibbering guts, dragged back by quaking limbs.
 
I hate him.
 
The image of him had firmly entered my
head and I spat it out on the floor.
 
Creeping in fear in my own house.
 
I have no one to look after me but
myself
 
I thought as I doubled
back and I rummaged around in the chest of drawers in the hall and my shaking
fingers found my knuckle duster knife, pushed to the back by Jo, sheets of
paper over it, trying to hide it from my view.
 
And I silently opened the front door as
only I know how to do and crept out to confront him.
 
He is nasty.
 
He is a big, muscled dog straining at
the lead to get me, pulling himself back but propelling himself forward.
 
He had two black eyes that when he heard
me, he turned around to stare at me with.
 
And I found myself staring back at the purple on his face, he’s really
ever so ugly.
 
“You stupid fucking
cow” he said to me, quieter now and I could feel his spit on my face “you
fucking shot me.”
 
And then, like a
prat, I found myself backing away from him, and I watched him coming towards
me, but it shouldn’t be like that, this stupid dance of a foregone conclusion.
 
“I didn’t”
“Yeah?
 
Well who the fuck else did?”
his pupils as black as his soul.
“What were you doing here?”
“Never fucking mind that, you fucking shot me.
 
I’ve got fucking lead in my fucking
shoulder” this will get better or it will get worse, but it won’t stay the
same, and water splashes off rocks as it tumbles from high to the ground.
 
“What were you doing here?”
“we got fucking lost.”
“You didn’t get lost, you were trying to rob me.”
“So it was you” the coward in me would like this to be nice, but it can’t be,
of course it can’t.
 
“It wasn’t
me.
 
SHUT the fuck up” a shower of
his spittle touched the top of my cheek near my left eye it was disgusting,
shouting, shouting in my face again.
 
Yap, yap, yap, his mouth open and continually moving.
 
And then more of his spittle, from his
disgusting body landed on my top lip and, shaking with the repulsiveness of it
I pulled out my knife.
 
I only
wanted him to be gone.
 
I have never
used this knife as a weapon before, it is lovely to have it in a hand of aggression
and strength.
 
Go!
 
Go!
 
I jab, jab, jabbed it at his face, not too close, by the outside corner
of his left eye, tick, tick, tick, what will happen now?
 
And he started moving away from me and I
found I could breathe easier, and like a mass exodus of rats I said to him “if
you come here again I’ll kill you.
 
I didn’t shoot at you, I wasn’t here, someone else was looking after the
house for me, but if you come here again I really will fucking kill you.”
“Suck my fucking cock” he didn’t mean to say that, not to me, his fast dawning
uncertainty was blatant and really quite funny.
 
It’s nice to laugh.
 
You
are stupid Mark Davies, really thick and you shouldn’t wind me up.
 
I
have no control over my temper
I thought as I held the knife at his face
again, imagining the tip sliding off his teeth, cutting in to his lip.
 
Trying to get rid of his jeering
smile.
 
I should like to see his
blood flow, slow in patterns across his face.
 
And with his eyes white as a bull’s with
fright he said “you’re a rough bitch for a posh girl you are”.
 
I know I am but he was moving backwards
and I seemed to be in the most fascinatingly transparent dream.
 
I will use this on you
I was thinking
and I could see he knew that I would.
 
I don’t care.
 
I was fencing,
drifting, dancing almost.
 
And yet I
felt I was in complete control and I am
so
little, he is far bigger than me in every way, but I was in control.
 
And then I was suddenly conscious of my
tiredness and the horrible, hateful calm spread evenly through my body,
diluting my blood with a dawning realisation of my physical self.
 
“If I’d pulled that trigger I’d tell
you, you know that.”
“You gonna get the filth to bash me up again are you?” and then I knew I’d won
and for the tiniest moment, I felt sorry for him.
 
“Just go Mark” I am tired of this
 
“I’m going to call them now if you don’t
leave within three seconds. 1, 2..” and on 3 he turned and went to his car,
still swaggering.
 
I looked at his
stupid back and thought
 
I could run at him now and bury this knife
in the back of his head
, just where his head meets his neck.
 
But I just watched him, tired, very
tired.
 
When he was in his car, he
opened the window to talk to me, and he put his seat belt on before he turned
the engine on, that was funny, and he said, conspiratorially “it was a stupid
thing to do you know, we could have been anyone, you shouldn’t go shooting in
the fucking dark” and I said
“I know, he shouldn’t have a gun, it’s awful, I’m sorry” that was funny
too.
 
Strip away formalities, strip
away conventions and strip away politeness and snobbery and pasts and what do
you have?
 
And everyone wants the
bully at school to like them so they won’t bully them, but it’s not so black
and white but I can’t be bothered to think about that now.
 
And then he went and I know he won’t
come back again.
  
I did that,
all on my own.
 
I can look after
myself.
 
And I will have to tell
Charlie, but I don’t think I should tell Charlie what I told Frank, and I can’t
tell Frank about this because of Charlie.
 

I’m going to take a sleeping tablet
in a minute just to make sure that I do sleep.
 
I said before that maybe the natural,
the beautiful, the creature side of my life is too important to me, means too
much to me, it just struck me because this hasn’t really.
 
It doesn’t penetrate me, or move me as
much as the other does.
 
I have to
make myself understand that this is real, but it is just people and
stupidity.
 
It is not real, it is a
play, the hate and the aggression, for a moment they were real, but then it
disappeared.

I dreamt then that I was disloyal, to
myself and to everybody that I came across.
 
There were three giant robins in the
garden, but I pretended to Charlie that they were three jays.
 
And then Charlie had gone and my brother
was there, by a children’s play area and I made sure no one could see me and
then I talked to him and he was good fun, like he could be sometimes and I
enjoyed his company, but I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been talking to
him.
 
Then I went in to my house to
have a drink and there was a cocktail glass, half full with dirty, murky water
and a thin dead rat in it, it’s head in the bottom of the glass.
 
I picked the rat up by the tail, threw
it in the log basket and then drank the water.
 
I knew that no amount of dirt and filth
could hurt me.
 
When I woke up, I
lay in bed for ages just staring up at the ceiling wondering what to do and the
mask on the back of my head was Mark Davies.
 
And then I had to think about how to tell
Charlie later on, or what exactly to tell him.
 

We were talking about the shooting as
we put our rods together.
 
We were
talking about his wife as we selected our flies and we weren’t looking at each
other’s faces.
 
My head felt heavy
and stuffed full of knotted grass and lined with dock leaves.
 
My eyes looked straight out and saw
nothing.
 
And I hate arguments,
everything spat out into the open and floating around poisoning the atmosphere,
and those things can never be unsaid, but are waiting, like jacks in boxes,
ready to spring up again.
 
So, I
have to be careful how I speak to Charlie.
 
And when I am low I tell him so he can be kind to me, but he still
doesn’t understand and he meets my vulnerability with hostile disgust.
 
And when I have to put him right, he
isn’t used to people standing up to him and he shrinks within himself and
labels me as a bully.
 
And he has
gone through his life emotionless, brought up by emotionless parents, he chose
an emotionless wife and I am a terrifying shock of electricity and that is
dangerous.
 
I don’t know why he
loves me.
 
I don’t know if he can
love me really.
 
I have to be
careful how I talk to him and that always makes things worse.
 
I raise my eyebrows and look around,
stupid bloody thing all this is.
 
Bloody nonsense of people.

And then, when I did tell him, that
Mark Davies had come to my house and it was him that Charlie had shot, he was
silent, just held his lips together and looked down at the wooden balcony of
the fishing hut and I couldn’t tell him anymore, if he can’t cope with this he
wouldn’t be able to cope with that.
 
“But it’s OK Charlie.
 
He’s
OK, you don’t need to worry and he’s not going to do anything about it because
he was up to no good.”
 
But he still
didn’t say anything.
 
And then I
started to feel sorry for myself, he is so selfish, or so stupid.
 
What is it?
 
Why isn’t he worried for me?
 
Why isn’t he sorry for me?
 
I really frightened myself last night,
and it’s not just that.
 
I have a lover
I cannot talk to.
 
My Coningsby is
dead.
 
I have no money and lots of
bills and I am utterly miserable and alone.
 
And all he’s got is some stupid awful
wife who’s going to leave him and he doesn’t like her anyway.
 
But I stood there, seemingly strong and
contained and I didn’t say to him
don’t
be always thinking about yourself, ask me about me, how do I feel?
 
How am I?
 
Douglas said “you wouldn’t really
want people wailing and crying at your funeral because you’re not like that”
“what am I like?”
“You’re stiff upper lip” and he’s right, I’m stiff upper lip, but I want
everyone to love me with that same passion that I feel.
 
“I’m sorry you had to go through that” he
said to the wooden planks under his feet “when it was my fault” and his left
arm went out to give me a half hug.
 
A half hug, not a proper hug or even a cuddle.
 
I am being fed on scraps.
 
And I can’t imagine what life would be
like without him, but at the same time I don’t know how far I can survive
before I starve.
 
And I look at his
long and sad face and want to hate him, or even dislike him, but he is wire
running through me, he is a green leaf on a forest floor and a shaft of light
coming through the trees, but I suppose the light is falling somewhere close to
me, where I can see it, but it’s not falling on me.
 
We spent the night in the hut and held
each other tight and in the morning I looked at him, anxiously, he thought, and
I said “it is alright isn’t it?” and he told me it was and I believe him.
 
“Look after me Charlie” I whisper to
him, but I don’t think he heard and I don’t think he can anyway.