Come Not When I Am Dead (23 page)

We leave the restaurant, linking arms
and head for the car and when we get back home I suggest we all go for a quiet
dark walk “autumn will be here soon, five geese flew over here earlier.”
“The seasons change Gussie and so do our hearts and our hopes and ideas of what
is good and right for us” says Sylvian with a smile of utter rabble-rousing
cheek
“oh, you wise man” says Joseph.
 
I
like to see him so happy.
 

It is a lovely, still night and we
all go into the house as friends and sleep the sleep of innocence, well, I do,
but I am thinking of what I said, of what they said, of my perfect man and that
maybe I am flogging a dead horse with my vet.

There have been fireworks this evening and mad chanting,
stick-waving crowds in my head, but now I am calm right through and I realise
that a furnace, a fierce, fiery furnace was bubbling up inside me and now it
has gone out.
 
I’m off to
sleep.
 
Poppenjoy is lying on my
pillow, swallowing as if she had a sore throat and lying like a sphinx, she
really is very beautiful.
 
Raffle
Buffle has a sore eye and I know that’s come about from fighting with
Everingham, they are still battling over supremacy, and I pick him up and cradle
him like a baby in my arms and put his ointment in and he just lets me, he is
such a darling boy.
 
Everingham has
been eating salmon all day on and off and is licking his lips at the end of the
bed, cool and Kingly.
 
And the Major
is downstairs in his basket, quiet and happy and dreaming of violence no doubt.
 
And for what feels like a very welcome
change, I am very happy.

I woke up this morning and lay in bed
thinking, lying on my back and staring at the ceiling, far too hot in my duck
feathers and wondering what to do about everything, and then thinking that I
really don’t need to worry about doing anything and I should just ‘go with it’
whatever it is.
 
Then I got out my
book to read for a while and the first thing I read was… ‘As I sat gazing at my
own real self, I could not understand how my imagination could ever have led me
dreaming so far away from likelihood and truth;
 
but as I wondered, I felt I had two
natures within me, and the one discovered the other to be a fool.’

And so I leapt out of bed, making sure
not to disturb my kittens “I’ll be back in a minute” I called behind myself to
them “stay there” and then I ran down to the kitchen, grabbed my mobile phone
from my handbag and ran back up the stairs, two at a time.
 
As I passed the mirror I saw a streak of
streamlined flesh and bounced back to have a better look, that’s the thing
about mirrors, you either like what you see or you don’t, and if you don’t it’s
only because you haven’t reached your potential at that moment.
 
And today I made an almighty effort not
to get distracted by myself, and carried on running up the stairs.
 
I cleared the room in three bounds and
was back in bed with my furry family.
 
“I’m going to telephone Charlie” I said to the kittens “and tell him how
much I love him and how much I’ll always love him.
 
But don’t worry, I’m aware of
everything” and Raffle Buffle could have said
but you always tell him that
but he didn’t.
“I love and adore you” I said to Charlie
“that’s nice”
“and I will always love and adore you”
“I know you will” he said.
 
And
funny how such a tardy response banished love from my heart and sucked the wind
out of my sails and suddenly I wanted to take it all back, but I couldn’t,
because I’d just said it.
 
“And do
you want to say anything to me?”
 
You don’t give presents to receive
presents I thought as I waited in foot tapping silence.
 
I wanted a warm running rivulet of
whispered tenderness from him, but “you’re very lovely” was all I got
“Oh, OK, see you later” and that’s what happened.
 
I choked on his silence.
 
“That was a bit rubbish wasn’t it?” I
lean over and stroke Everingham’s head and whatever sadness I felt was softened
by his fur.
 
I don’t understand,
maybe I’m getting it all confused, it’s not really love.
 
But bugger me if I’m going to be brought
down by it all today or ever anymore.
 
Today will be action and money day. Tra la!
 
I am dependable woman, I am going to
have an exhibition in Hong Kong.
 
I
bound down the stairs, revoltingly high spirits and put my smelly old boiler
suit on, friendly in it’s navy blue safeness.
 
I wear bra and knickers and socks,
skipping around the kitchen as I dress, turn a stumble into a dance move, tuck
the trouser legs into my socks and put my work boots on.
 
I slide my hands up the side of my body,
happy in my workliness, get everything ready and set off.
 

I stop off at the shop on the way, am
polite to the man there who tries to chat me up and find myself talking
nonsense to the women who work there and freaking them out, people are easily
freaked, I forget that.
 
I buy myself
a mini pastie and some Belgian buns, but I eat the buns long before I get to
the river and then eat the pastie without any thought or consciousness at all,
I am a greedy pig.
 
I have the blade
on today and I’m going to crack the brambles, it’s bloody hard work and after
two hours I have double blisters on my hands, I smile because I am value for
money and then I sit on the bench and smoke a cigar.
 
My cigars take me off somewhere else, to
some perfect place that has no name or look or anything at all, except blank
perfection.
 
My head clears and I am
there, suspended in pureness, I am very happy.
 
It’s a funny thing, I think, here am I,
clever and cultured, bright and energetic and all sorts of other things, but I
am strimming for £10 an hour!
 
And I
love it.
 
I love physical work, I
just love physical.

On the drive here there were men
fixing the road and I think I’d like to do that, to work along side them (in
silence) work hard and get paid for it.
 
Or the man holding up the ‘stop/go’ sign, that’s all he has to do, and a
little bit of talking on the walkie talkie, I could do that and be outside and
watch birds fly past and watch the seasons slowly change.
 
I could do all of those things, but
maybe I’d only do them for a day or two, or there must be some reason why I
haven’t or wouldn’t maybe?
 
I don’t
know.
 
I do another hour of
strimming, I’m singing to myself, la la-ing away in a jaunty manner and then
get back in my car, hot and sweaty with sweat-wet hair and wonder if I’ll feel
this uncomfortable all the way home, but after five minutes I’ve forgotten
it.
 
I’m listening to Booker T and
the MGs and my head is spiralling along pschycadelically in time to it.
 
I’m very happy on my own and maybe I
always would be.
 
And I don’t think
I’ve ever craved human companionship, but I like it sometimes.
 
I like Jo living in the house with me
and I wonder if Charlie and I could have a silent relationship, would that be
better?
 
If we were just in each
other’s company, just went to the river to fish, just went in to woods at night
time and walked and held hands, just made love in silence and just looked at
each other and I didn’t know that he couldn’t talk to me properly because he
couldn’t talk at all.
 
But I like
the sound of his soft voice, pretending to be adult and I like his grunts as he
makes love to me.
 
Oh, I don’t know
about all of that either.
 
I don’t
know much today.

Jo isn’t in the house now, it is
evening.
 
I’m having a cigar in the
sitting room and I put it on a coke can whilst I sent a text and in an instant The
Major picked it up by the burning end and then dropped it straight away on the
rug and burnt a hole in it, he’s a bad creature but I adore him.
 
Everingham is following him around, he
will pounce in a minute, oh, he’s just pounced now and the Major has just flown
down the hall in the dark, dangerous thing, he will fly towards the light again
in a minute where it’s safer.
 

I think the cats are missing Jo, they
are circling me like little fluffy sharks.
 
Let me relax, the air in here is muggy and smoke-filled and the books
are in soft focus through it and I am waiting for Charlie to text me back and
come over.
 
And I’m all excited for
his visit.
 
The tingling has risen
and is waiting in my chest, tickling me with anticipation and expectation and in
a minute I’ll stand up and put on some pretty underwear for him to take off
me.
 
I won’t mention his wife, his
children, his divorce, I won’t mention the shooting, I will just love him and
love being with him.

I held Charlie to my bosom, his head
resting there after we made love and even though we’d just made love, I kept
feeding my nipple into his mouth and saying “suck it” and he does.
 
I say ‘even though’ because when we’ve
made love he’s not interested in anything much.
 
We are calm and happy and we fit
together perfectly, we are bones and skin, we are bark and tree and now I feel
like the cream that has just been tipped out of his glass bottle.
 
I stroke his hair and smooth his
temples, he likes to be soothed and touched, it is the gentle in him.
 
I am so happy with him here, in my bed,
his virility lost inside me.
 
“Hunting
soon” I say to his closed eyes “Sergeant looks almost ready, he’s so beautiful,
all mauve and blush” and I will not talk about anything that could be
contentious.
 
I have him in a sling
around my neck, I am protecting him, my hand holding the back of his head and
pushing brambles and nettles away from his skin.
 
“When will you take him out and start
training him then?” he looks at me with dying, silken eyes just opened and he
is leaking quiet and calm and forgetfulness.
 
 
I think he will remember this and put it
in his treasure box, I would.
 
“In
the next few weeks I expect, he’s pretty much finished his moult, he looks
gorgeous, I’m very excited.”
“Did you hear about that dog they found in the river yesterday, on the moor?”
“No!
 
What dog?
 
Was it dead?”
“Yes, I’m afraid it was” he says looking at the clock
 
“some old lady found it and called the
police, who called the RSPCA, who called me” he has his ‘listen to me’ voice
on, ‘I am a man to be respected’ voice.
 
“It was another one used for fighting, it’s a sad old mess you know,
apart from it’s being dead, they threw it into the river when it was alive, but
it was too weak to fight for it’s life.
 
Those men make me sick” he is prickling and his hackles are rising.
 
“That’s so horrible.
 
It’s horrible.
 
Who would do something like that?
 
What sort of people?
 
People are such bastards aren’t
they?
 
I hate them.
 
Do you think it suffered very much?”
 
I raise myself on my elbows and look at
him, and Charlie told me about the dog and the other dogs he’s seen
recently.
 
He was very angry,
huffing and puffing and blowing my house down.
 
He does get very angry now and all is
fierce in here.
 
We are being fierce
together.
 
But still, I know I must
keep him contained, in a little Tupperware box with the lid tightly shut and
the air all pushed out.
 
“You must
keep this to yourself”
“yes of course.
 
I keep everything
to myself”
“I know you do, but the police do know who it is, we all do, but it’s proving
it.
 
It’s Mark Davies.”
“Oh shit”
 
I watch Charlie closely,
with squinted eyes, he has shuffled up the bed and is sitting against the
headboard, the duvet down below his nipples and his few chest hairs shining
dark on his white skin, his little eyes looking scrunched and questioningly at
me, there is such softness to his face and I am lost in it.
 
“Do you remember him at primary school?”
he said as if nothing had happened since, and instead of punching my forehead
and saying “duh????” I said “yes of course, he was horrible even then.
 
He looked like he had a moustache, even
when he was 9, remember?” I am playing Charlie’s game, whatever game that is “he
had an uncle at school too, who was two years younger than him.
 
I remember he used to sell coloured
sugar lumps for 5p each in the playground and he used to try and get me to call
names at the boy with the brace on his back”
“Yes, well, the police know it’s him, his name comes up again and again.
 
Frank was telling me he’s got a lot of
dogs at his house”
“Frank?”
“Yes, Frank, why?” Charlie is working up for annoyance, I am watching milk
coming up to boil.
 
“What was Frank
like with you?”
“As usual, why?” he is huffing again
“What did Frank say about him?”
 
“If you’re quiet for a moment, I’ll tell you.”
 
That was rude, but I swallow my
anger.
 
“
He
brought the dog in.” And then I change the subject slightly, I slide
the milk off the hot plate, I am being diplomatic but in my head I’m screaming
at him
fuck off, fuck off, fuck off you
stupid prat
“didn’t Mark Davies go to London or somewhere?
 
I can’t ever remember seeing him around much
later”
“not London, but he did move somewhere, but he’s been back for about a year or
so and that all ties in.”
 
I only
need to show him a pin and he would pop.
 
“Horrible, horrible bastard he was, and horrible, horrible bastard
whoever it is.”
 
And later Charlie
goes and the beautiful thing we had is wrapped up with nettles, I wish it was
beautiful all the way through.
 
Everingham
is crying now outside Jo’s room.

Charlie saw a peregrine today, just
out of
 
the village, chasing sea
gulls, and a hobby yesterday down the lanes, I saw a musket half-heartedly
chasing the Major, a barn owl in the garden, and a kestrel in the orchard.
 
The skies are alive with young hawks and
hopefulness.
 
A sparrow flew in and
out of Sergeant’s aviary, and he gave chase, then it flew back in again and he
had it.
 
The wild musket caught a
robin just over my car whilst I was sitting in it having a cigar.
 
And the Major brings out a sausage from
nowhere and drops a rusty nail in Jo’s boot “he’s trying to kill me” she says
“he keeps putting really sharp things in my boots, pointing up as well.”
 
I like to think that she loves him, but
I know she doesn’t really.
 
I yawn
and open my arms and all my creatures scurry over to me and nestle up close to
my flesh, feathers and fur caress me, and we turn the light off and close our
eyes in the starless sky.