Come Not When I Am Dead (22 page)

And now I am sitting down at the
kitchen table looking at the bill for my car, it is almost £600, the vet’s bill
for Coningsby is £170, the council tax bill is £180 and there are various other
bills here to pay.
 
I’m too
frightened to look at my credit card bill, and it is a worry.
 
And I can’t tell Charlie about all of
this because he’s got so much money and he just doesn’t understand.

I am outside in the orchard now and
I’ve got a big cigar with me, on my own, to cheer me up a bit.
 
I have pen and paper and am making notes,
crapness in my life and how to solve it.

Subject…Charlie.
   
Problem…Freaking out over
divorce, won’t leave his house, won’t talk to me properly, acting weirdly.
   
How to solve it…Can’t, so
that’s no good.

Subject…Money.
 
Problem…Don’t have any.
 
How
to solve it…Get a job, but that’s just stupid because I wouldn’t last.
 
I’ve been sacked from every job I’ve
ever had.
 
It hasn’t helped much,
but the cigar does.
 
And I’m lying
on the grass, naked under my big padded anorak and I have big heavy work boots
on.
 
The grass is whispering against
my skin, feeding me soft and secret thoughts and making me gently aware of
it.
 
I lie on my back and open up my
legs and the breeze hits me and I welcome it, it is a good shock to the system.
 
I open up my coat and lie there, under
the starlit sky, on my own, content in my solitude.
 
I run my hands over my belly, my
breasts, my inner thighs and hold the cool night air to me.
 
Press it to my flesh.
 
My hair is spread out all around me,
curling quietly in the damp like tired sunflower petals.
 
I hear Raffle Buffle yowl, just once, in
the house.
 
I turn my face towards
the sound and see yellow soft light, but I am outside in luxurious dark and
solitude.
 
My legs wide open, my
thighs wantonly spread and I think about Charlie, always Charlie as my hand
wanders over my body.
 
My cigar held
in my mouth and I smoke it like a fish would smoke a cigar,
 
and it makes me feel as if I rule the
world and no one can hurt me or harm me or tell me what to do.
 
I am a bloody-minded bastard who can’t
be arsed with anyone else, it is so, so, so, so, delicious.
 
I
am so delicious, and I roll over on to my naked belly, I suck up the chill on
my flesh and take bites at the grass, rub my cheeks on to it and feel the soft,
the wet, the prickles, every single point and every single blade and know every
single colour and shade in this black, black night.

I strimmed all along the river bank
in the owl field this morning.
 
It
was very warm but not hot and it was such lovely work to do.
 
Four ceaseless hours of solid,
exhausting and filthy contentment.
 
And afterwards, when I was walking back through the long grass I came
across a multitude of damselflies, uniform peacock blue, and as one, they all
exploded into space before me like sparks from fireworks, or criminals
scattering whilst being chased by the police.
 
And then a crow rose noisily up, hoowip,
hoowip, hoowip, muscled and strong, climbing high into the air before me.
 
And this long grass marked out by
buttercups and meadow saxifrage, lady’s smock and yarrow.
 
And then another crow, hidden by long
grass and distracted by the humming and buzzing and the dead hen pheasant, he
didn’t see me.
 
And I found I was
striding along, swinging my arms into the air and talking away to myself, to
someone or something up in the skies, a conversation full of beauty and
reflection and contemplation and utter, utter happiness and then I wonder why I
ever need anyone else at all.
 
This
is all that’s real.

When I got home, tired and dirty and
happy I was greeted with “your Aunty Piggy” was here earlier
“I haven’t got an Aunty Piggy”
“Yes you have.”
“I’ve got an Aunty Peggy”
“well, she called herself Piggy”
“She wouldn’t have done that Jo”
“well, she did”
“you didn’t call her Piggy did you?”
“Yes” and she has her head on one side and her companion efag in her mouth,
she’s looking aggressively defensive.
 
“Oh God” I am undoing my boot laces, “that’s just her accent Jo, her
name is Peggy.
 
Well, I hope you
haven’t offended her”
“I think I have actually”
“Why?”
 
I am sitting on the bottom
stair looking up at her looking down at me, trying to pull off my boots now
“uuugh” and I offer my foot to Jo like a big useless baby, to pull off my boot,
but she ignores it.
 
I am feeling
too weary and too dirty, I could fall asleep here and all my muscles feel like
they’ve held communion together, “why have you offended her?”
“Because she had her dog in the car and I just saw it’s head and I said ‘Oh,
you’ve got a Daschund’ and as I said it, the Daschund started standing up and
just didn’t stop, it got bigger and taller and taller until it was absolutely
enormously tall and it wasn’t a Daschund at all.
 
I felt such a prat.”
“It’s a Saluki Jo”
“well, I know that now, Piggy said “don’t be so silly, of course it’s not a
Daschund” honestly Gussie, you do have some ridiculously posh relations.”
“Don’t call her Piggy.
 
I’m sure she
won’t be offended, it’s just her manner.
 
I’ll ring her later.”

And it’s later now and I haven’t
phoned Aunty Peggy but I’m sitting here waiting for Joseph.
 
I’ve just been looking at a photo of me
holding Coningsby on our birthdays and I’m holding her plumpness close and
she’s pushing away from me, but snuggling against me at the same time, her
little fat and alive paws.
 
She
looks like I could still cuddle her, and I don’t want to cry, I stand up and look
right up to the ceiling, tipping my head right back.
 
I wish she hadn’t died, I miss her so
much.
 
I am listening to ‘If the
weather’s sunny’ now on my laptop and it makes me a bit lyrical and inclined to
sadness and I half thought of myself dancing mournfully in a meadow whilst
listening, my arms wide open trying to find her, and then I realised what was
happening and quickly switched it off and put on ‘Quadrophenia’ instead.
 
I think that has the best beginning of
any album I’ve ever heard and then I realised that my face was set and I was
almost punching the air.
 
My mood
has turned to aggression.
 
I will
turn the music off and have silence, I will read.
 
But I can’t concentrate.
 
Oh bloody well hurry up Joseph.

Joseph was ten minutes late. “Come
on, you great big she cat” he called out from the porch.
 
I am excited now.
 
I am looking forward to an
adventure.
  
I left the house
shouting
 
“Jo, I’ve gone, see you
later.”
 
I have started shouting my
messages across the house now too.
 
But I won’t smoke one of those efag things, even though she keeps trying
to make me.
 
“You both sound like
fish wives” grandma would have said.
 
I walked out of my front door, through my lovely red and black tiled
porch saying ‘pah, pah, pah’ through straight held lips so I can hear the sound
it makes and prove to myself that I’m real.

On my drive was a big, silver shiny
car that’s not Joseph’s.
 
And
Joseph, elegant in blue linen hopping from foot to foot by the open door,
waiting for me.
 
His eyebrows
raised, and I smiled and slinked in and down into the seat, all hushed and
milky cream.
 
“Aunt Augusta, this is
Sylvian, Sylvian Lau.
 
Sylvian, this
is Aunty Gussie” says Joseph pointing towards the backwards-turned face in the
drivers seat.
 
There is a lovely,
careful smell in here, it doesn’t smell like my car.
 
And the man in the driver’s seat smiles
a pretty lopsided smile and says “I’ve really looked forward to meeting you Aunty
Gussie, ever since Joseph first told me about you.”
 
I don’t know where that accent is from.
 
I like meeting new people.
 
No I don’t.
 
Well sometimes I do.
 
I am intrigued by his lopsidedness, and
I smile at Joseph
 
“Where are we
going?”
“just you wait little chicken” and Joseph holds on to Sylvian’s knee.
 
Joseph is in love.
 
I can tell he’s in love.
 
I can feel he’s in love and the whole
car is stuffed full of sweet scents and high spirits and luxury and I am almost
choking with the happiness drifting from them.
 
My head falls to one side, owl-like and
I inhale it all and don’t breathe out, so that they will stay contained in love
for ever.
 
There is no rubbish in
this car, there are no crumbs in this car, there’s no ripped paper even,
there’s no hawk poohs or rat poohs or mud or blood.
 
It’s strangely perfect as if we’re not
really here at all.
 
We chattered
and chattered and then pulled up outside ‘Hiccups’,
 
it smelt of wood and churches and
burgundy and fresh grass.
 
I felt
wrapped up in it, part of it.
 
My
head rolls around on my neck taking it all in, I am sensuous and sybaritical
and I hold it close to me.
 
I’m in a
funny, tender, cherishing mood today.
 
“You’re not schizophrenic” says Charlie “you have at least ten
personalities and they’re all totally different.
 
It’s always a surprise as to which one
you’ll be.”

Sylvian is Joseph’s height and a
similar build, though I think more muscle to him, he has a meadow flower
elegance to him and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d jumped out before me
on my walk this morning along with the crows and damselflies.
 
His pretty manners are so many pretty delicate
flowers.
 
He is from Hong Kong and
his skin is the same colour as the sand on the beach below my house, his eyes
the shadows in the crevices on the rocks, they are black and fluid, after the
tide has washed over them.
 
Joseph
is happy and I feel a fine, strong line between them both and balanced on that
line is consideration and warmth and love.
 
I am happy in their happiness.
 
“Isn’t he beautiful Aunty Gussie?” Joseph asked me when Sylvian had left
the table “he
is
beautiful Joseph”
“and calm and real”
“he seems calm and real, and he dresses well”
“he does doesn’t he?”
“He moves like a poem, he is like a breeze, I like him” and I want to make
Joseph happy and then maybe I will be happy.
 
“Oh, I’m so glad, I really love him
Aunty Gussie, I really, really love him, for the first time I am really,
properly in love, not just pretending.
 
He makes me feel like one of those jelly alien things you used to get us
when we were little, remember, in a plastic egg?”
“He reminds me of Sergeant”
“A sparrowhawk?
 
Aunty Gussie!
 
Why?” I laugh at the shock in Joseph’s
face “because of his colouring, Sergeant’s black is almost mauve and Sylvian’s
hair is so black it’s almost purple and his skin could be the barring on the
wings.
 
Do you really think you love
him?”
 
“Yes, why, what do you mean?”
“I was just wondering if you really did, or you just understand how love really
feels and you want to feel it.
 
I
think maybe that like me, you just love to be happy, maybe you’re just
conjuring up love because it’s a beautiful thing to do”
“be quiet, he’s coming back.”
 
And I
see Joseph’s face go from thought to unease and then Sylvian sits back in his
chair, unaware.
 
Sylvian is very
respectful to his boyfriend’s aunt, but he speaks openly and then whilst we are
eating he says to me “I have an art gallery in Hong Kong, and English art is
very popular at the moment, but the English, the England of days gone by,
before lager louts” I wince “and drunken brutality”
“Is that how England is seen?
 
Really?
 
That’s horrible” it
is
horrible.
“Aunty Gussie, tell Sylvian what you think of when you think of England” and
he’s very happy, his eyes are on fire.
 
He wants to syphon my character out so that Sylvian will know him
better, know where he’s come from.
 
“My
England is green and lyrical, it’s populated by morris dancers and village
greens and good leather shoes and little lone country shops and it’s quiet and
well mannered and respectful and there is a soundtrack of Kinks songs and
Vaughan Williams.
 
It’s clothed in
tweeds and woollen hats and held together by hand shakes and covered by pocket
handkerchiefs” that makes them laugh.
 
“Gussie, you’re a romantic, but it’s very beautiful, and that’s the
English art I want in my gallery.
 
Joseph has shown me some of your paintings.”
 
He is neat and tidy and is methodically
unfolding the napkin to put on his lap.
 
“I’ve only seen the portraits and animals, but they are very distinctly
English and ‘well mannered’ without being constrained and buttoned up.
 
I want you to do an exhibition for us”
and instantly the lights shine brighter and dazzle my eyes, “Ha!” I have my new
potato stuck in my throat with excitement and I can’t get past it’s glorious
bulk “oh, that’s lovely.
 
I’d love
to.
 
In Hong Kong?
 
Me?” and in my mind’s eye I see Jo alone
in my house feeding the cats and trying to be nice to the Major, I would have
to get Frank to look after the Major, Jo couldn’t manage.
 
I see the fridge door open and chopped
chicken on saucers ready for cat bowls with ready meal curries behind them, and
my house hoovered and tidy and my cats sleeping on my bed, made, without me
“I’d love to” I say again “yes please” and I want to say “don’t forget will
you?” but I think maybe that’s a bit childish, but it’s nagging me “don’t
forget will you?” I couldn’t help it.

There is fun in the air and I find
myself daydreaming and not listening and just rumblings finding their way
through layers and layers of pure white cotton wool.
 
Then I see movement and Joseph standing
up and a million bread crumbs fall from his lap to the floor, I watch them
hurtle through the air, beige and white and crusty and porous, leaving blue
trousers and tumbling to the floor, I just noted the colours as they settle in
slow motion and I try to count them.
 
I am coming out of my daze.

By the time we are on our last course
we are talking about Charlie, it’s not that I wanted to, but Joseph encouraged
me and it’s easy to talk after the first loose-bowelled, guilty feeling I had
when I began.
 
I am being poured out
like hot syrup from a pan.
 
They ask
a question every now and then, but mostly they just listen and I get a little
heated with emotion and Sylvian says “it seems to me you have a great
propensity for love and for happiness and for perfection, but you’re unhappy
and that unhappiness isn’t coming from you, but from around you and you don’t
need to be suffering.
 
Do you not
think that this man, Charlie, do you not think that he’s not the right man for
you?
 
That whatever you do and
whatever you think, this will always be a bit useless?”
“I don’t know, carry on, I’m struggling to see it all objectively.”
“Well, any time in these last four years he could have come to you and left his
wife, you are obviously very lovely, Joseph is certainly always telling me that
you are and I only have your word for it, but his wife sounds, sounds well, not
very nice”
“and my word for it too” puts in Joseph “she’s a bitch.”
“OK, both of your words for it, which I think proves it, so you would think it
would be a welcome thing for him, to leave her for you, but his reasons are
that he doesn’t want to leave his wife because of the children, but what’s
happening now sounds like it’s upsetting the children a great deal more, two
unhappy parents.
 
So, I think, he
won’t come to you, but maybe he’d like to, but perhaps, that quality in him
which makes him not be able to talk to you properly, that seems to be making
him not act properly too, he would always be like that and I think that that
would always frustrate you.
 
I don’t
think, with great respect, that you’re thinking about all of this
properly.
 
I think you are just
feeling it.
 
But I see too that you
are a perfectionist, don’t forget I heard your description of England earlier,
and I think you want this relationship to be perfect too, but I don’t see how
it can be.”
“That’s what I keep saying to her too.
 
I think that she should either finish with him now, or keep it as it’s
always been but look out for someone else” and Sylvian looks at Joseph with a
hesitant, disturbed eye, “no, not that that’s a good thing to do, but for Aunty
Gussie, I don’t see another way, not if she won’t dessert him.
 
You feel great loyalty to him don’t you
Aunty Gussie?” and Joseph slid out with ease from a potential relationship
crisis.
 
“Well, I know it’s getting
worse, I know that, but I want to make it better and make us closer.
 
It’s not a question of him living with
me, not just that, it’s about him talking to me and sharing things with me and
progressing and evolving.
 
That’s
the important thing isn’t it?
 
But
he’s going feral and it’s not the same feral as me” and I rip a bread roll into
a million crumbs and try and pile them up in a little pyramid next to my plate.
 
“Do you know what I mean?” I am
pulling faces, I am pushing the crumbs into the table cloth so I can feel the
hardness on my fingertips, they really are strangely hard, I am trying to
destroy them.
 
“I think you’re too
good at loving and you’re too loyal too, but loyalty is a very fine thing.”
 
Then I told Sylvian about Edward, because
I didn’t want him to think I was perfect and self sacrificing.
 
“I don’t think the soldier counts” says
Sylvian, he is looking down now and he is holding Joseph’s hand on his lap “in
England you have a wonderful description ‘flogging a dead horse.’
 
I think you are flogging a dead horse with
your vet” and both Joseph and I laugh at the unintended witticism and the mood
is momentarily lightened.
 
“I think
you need someone more mentally stimulating too, and kinder, what did he last do
for you?
 
What was his last act of
kindness to you?” and I am stumped and desperately searching my brain for an un-asked
for kind word, or bunch of flowers given to me from the hedgerows or a cigar or
some time where he escaped everything, to hell with what anyone said,
 
just to be with me “but he’s not like
that”
“yes, but he should be, shouldn’t he?
 
If he were to make you happy?”
 
I can’t tell Sylvian about the vandalism,
I suddenly realise that it’s a bit shocking, well, it’s not, but I think he’d
find it shocking and Joseph doesn’t mention it either.
 
“We are so similar in so many ways
though, we love the same things, the things I am passionate about, he is too.”
“Aunty Gussie, forget about Charlie for a minute and just like you told us
about your England, tell us about your perfect man.”
“Are you both making fun of me?”
 
I
was beginning to feel harassed, but I liked the idea of creating perfection
from my mind and living it for a few minutes “he would be big and strong and
manly looking, not that it’s all about looks, but I have to begin somewhere and
so that’s what I see first.
 
He will
have a good vocabulary and speak well.
 
He will be confident in himself and know that he’s someone to be proud
of, because he knows himself.
 
He
will be kind and gentle and reliable and I will admire and respect him, and
I’ll be able to learn things from him.
 
He would have to absolutely adore me, whatever I did, just love and
adore me and I’d have to be the only woman in the world for him.
 
And he’d have to love me as I am, not a
distorted view of me that’s not real.
 
And he’d want to look after me and not let me worry about things, but
leave me all my freedom too!”
 
And
Sylvian and Joseph applaud me with hands raised high and draw all attention to
our table.
 
“Oh, and he’d have to
love all my animals, even the Major” and we’re all laughing now.
 
I hope I haven’t said too much, I need
time to reflect on what I’ve said.
‘Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, everything that’s wonderful is what I feel,
when we’re together.
 
Brighter than
a lucky penny, when you’re near, the rain clouds disappear dear and I feel so
fine, just to know that you are mine’.