Come Not When I Am Dead (9 page)

Later on that evening we are in the
fire corner of my large and low ceilinged sitting room in shadowed warmth.
 
The firelight darts off the glass
fronted picture frames and just to see the light is to know the heat.
 
My cheeks are warm and I’m so quietly,
perfectly happy, it is all smooth.
 
I’m with Charlie, and I’m thinking of grandma, always with the fire too
roaring and a glass of sherry in her hand, glowing amber in the firelight.
 
Charlie’s clothes are in the tumble
drier in the outhouse but I can’t go out and see if they’re dry because Frank’s
car is there and he’s walking around to see if he can find me, no doubt for a
glass of something and a chat.
 
I
feel guilty hiding from him, but it would do no good if he saw us together, I
know it’s for the best, although, there’s a sneaky little bit of me that wants
to shout out
look Frank.
 
Look what I’ve got in here, my adorable
lover, did you know he’s my boyfriend?
  
“What would you do if your wife
was having an affair?” I know her name, of course I do, but I can’t bring
myself to say it.
 
We are eating
left over cous cous, grapes and cold sausages with sweet chilli sauce off side
plates.
 
We have chocolate brownies
too, it’s a bit like camping, only cleaner and you can wash your hands properly
 
“it’s hardly likely is it?
 
She doesn’t like sex”
“maybe she just doesn’t like sex with you!
 
Would you be upset if she was?”
“that would be a bit hypocritical of me wouldn’t it? Considering our position”
“hypocrisy be damned, what’s that got to do with emotion?
 
Would you?”
“No I wouldn’t be upset, just aware, and probably a bit relieved”
“why relieved?”
“because then I wouldn’t need to feel guilty.”
 
That will give me something to think
about later, but not now.
 
We talk
about how lots of women have sexual affairs because of the reassurance, they
want to feel loved or wanted and I don’t know, I’ve no idea how he and his wife
really get on.

We hear Jo upstairs move her chair
across the floor and go in to her kitchen and put the kettle on.
 
The sound carries down and I hope it
doesn’t carry up.
 
I know Charlie
will be going shortly and so I say “shall we do our next job soon?
 
Shall we?”
“You’re such a child Gussie” he says, all grown-up
We have a ‘hit list’ now, people who’ve pissed us off in some way or another “shall
we?
 
When shall we? Tomorrow?”
“I can’t tomorrow” and then I think that maybe he’s gone off the idea and I
don’t want to push him, but I give it another try “the next day?
 
Wednesday?
 
Wednesday night?”
 
He
is funny
I think as I look at him with his pretend adultness, there is
another aspect to our relationship now.
 
It’s very exciting, we are crusaders together, illegal crusaders and we
have to trust each other thoroughly, we do trust each other thoroughly and I think
it’s that that I like.

We almost had another act of
vandalism last night, but a more serious one.
 
We met up in the woods at muddy corner
for a shag at 10pm.
 
I left my car
on the track by an old ruined house and we walked down through the woods, deeper
and darker and quieter and wilder.
 
When
we had finished our love making and were walking back to my car, we saw someone
there, some dusty shape of humanness.
 
We stopped where we were, and both, at the same time, ducked down in the
undergrowth, bending our whole bodies into the nettles, we were deer and this
was a predator.
 
We knew who he was,
a prat who was out shooting foxes with his night vision scope, all got up in
totally over the top, brand new, camouflage gear.
 
He was walking around and around my car,
too slow, peering in and stepping back, peering in, too close.
 
Up, down, high, low, anyway the wind
blows.
 
He will know it is my car,
there are cigars on the front seat and cds on the dashboard, there are the
complete tail feathers from my blue cockerel that I killed the other day and a
little card made from one of my paintings.
 
Anyone would know it was my car.
 
Everyone knows me.
 
We
watched him from nettles and trees and heavy dark green “do you think he saw
us?”
Isn’t that the name of a dinosaur?
I
thought, but whispered back “I don’t know.”
And the camouflage man stayed there, scratching his head, touching his lip,
back bent, back straight, he didn’t walk away.
 
We had to go, but we couldn’t move, we
couldn’t risk him seeing us together, and what excuse could we give as to what
we were we doing there together?
 
And why should we?
I suppose came in to
my mind.
 
And Charlie couldn’t go
off and leave me on my own there, with the stupid gunman and his trigger happy
finger and testosterone-filled air.
 
I felt Charlie worrying that we’d been seen together “what shall we do?”
“Go on the other side of the hedge, we’ll get him”
 
What else could we do?
 
My breath stops and begins again all too
obviously to me.
  
My eyes are
set and we are out to kill, not be killed.
 
We are the lions now.
 
We
crept out of cover, in control of everything within us and around us.
 
We crept up the other side of the hedge,
the slight movements of leaves we passed by were noisier than us.
 
We walked in each others footsteps and
our feet, our clothes made no sound.
 
We would outwit the foxhunter we were survivors and he was just
playing.
 

Our eyes were hard and our wits
sharpened.
 
I am lethal, I’ve told
you that before.
 
My quiet thoughts
dwelt on the man before us, a landless city man who likes to kill foxes, it is
blood lust.
 
He likes to kill
rabbits too he says because they’re pests, (which of course they are) but if he
knew that, he wouldn’t kill the foxes, because foxes love nothing better than a
nice rabbit.
 
He has no logic, there
is decay running through his veins, he is septic.
 
We will only knock him out I
expect.
 
And I imagine us hitting
out at him with branches.
 
It would
take him by surprise and he wouldn’t know what was happening until he woke
hours later.
 
And, if he heard
us?
 
Well, he probably
wouldn’t.
 
And up we crept nearer
and nearer, and picked up heavy fallen branches from over-head trees, we weaved
and twisted them as we walked to get used to their motion, their fluidity
through the air.
 
Our aims would
have to be certain and he had his back to us.
 
He was still by my little red car, we
were 12ft away from him, cat and mouse.
 
I would swing at him first.
 
We were 10ft away from him and he didn’t know we were there.
 
It would be easy.
 
We were 8ft away from him, menacing
shadows with deathly intent, and then suddenly, without word to himself, he
turned to face uphill and walked off.
 
We breathed out, our bellies relaxed and we put down our sticks.
 
Now we were quick, now we were certain,
I didn’t have time to kiss him, I jumped in my car and free wheeled it down the
track.
 
By the light of
 
the stars I found my way out.
 

I love this, I love the night, I love
the dark, I love the natural and unexpected risks.
 
I love the 5am encounters with rutting
stags.
 
I love being hidden by a
cloak, a huge blanket of velvet dark.
 
It fills my whole body with fluid and tingling excitement, the realness
of my life.
 
It is full of beauty
and dark and sunsets and quiet.
 
“You are feral” says Charlie to me.
 
I
am survival
I think to myself, as I creep in and out of shadows.

And now the silence in my house.
 
I’m in my bed and I’m trying to go to
sleep.
 
Coningsby’s just been up on
the bed having her treats and sniffing away, she’s all blocked up again, poor
darling.
 
And now I rub my hands all
over my pillow case and scissor my legs on my flannellete sheets, I gather up
all the luxury in my limbs and coat myself in it, I am a catkin covered in
silken fur.
 
I am so happy.
 
Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight and I
fall asleep smiling and my right hand lingering between my thighs.

I dreamt last
night that a man was trying to kill Coningsby and trying to kill Jo.
 
I saw him chasing them.
 
He said that someone had to die.
 
I told him he could have me
instead.
 
While he was turned away from
me, getting ready to kill me, I picked up a heavy iron bar and hid it behind my
back, and when he came towards me, I started bludgeoning him to death.
 
Hitting, bashing, crashing down blows on
him.
 
It was lovely, the violent
killing, crushing of him and I woke up happy because I was safe and Coningsby
and Jo were too.

We were vandals again last night.
 
We burnt ‘Fuck off WilCOCKS’ brown and
black in their perfectly manicured lawn, each letter a foot high, blazing
flames shooting from a blow torch, keeping us warm and cosy on the chill night,
and lighting up our little imp faces and wild white eyes.
 
It may be childish, but I love it.

And now I’m lying on top of my bed
with Jo, on our tummy’s, my legs swinging in the air, we’re listening to ‘The
Candymen’ on my cd player, a song called ‘Lonely Eyes’.
 
The Major is standing on my head, his
under feet warm and soft between his toes, he’s pulling my hair and Coningsby
curls up on my pillow now, her tail pounding gently on the pillowcase, soft and
lilac, and the Major looks on, wanting to peck it.
 
Coningsby’s not looking so happy today
and I’m keeping a close eye on her.
 
And Percy phoned me today and I’ve said I’d meet him, but it’s easy to
say you’ll do something when you don’t have to do it at that moment, and
there’s plenty of time to change your mind. I don’t need to think about it for
a few days anyway.
 
And off it bobs,
in a bottle, on the waves.
 
“Percy
would be a perfect husband for you Aunty Gussie” says Joseph “and I wouldn’t
need to cast my eye around for potential husbands anymore”
“but if he was my husband, I might need you to cast your net for lovers instead.”
And he would be a perfect husband, if you can marry a man because he’s charming
and wealthy and good looking and kind, but you don’t love him.
 
And my train draws into the station and
passes the platform without stopping.
 
Charlie is my complication, my twisted gut and haunted mind and it
infuriates me that I’m faithful to a man who’s married.

I’m sad today.
 
I asked Charlie if we could meet in some
field later and make love, but he said that he was taking his wife out
tonight.
 
But why the hell would he
take his wife out if they don’t get on?
 
And I asked him and he said “to keep the peace.”
 
I don’t understand.
 
And I wonder, is it really as he says if
they’re going out like that together?
 
It goes round and round my head because I don’t understand.
  
Jo is chatting to me and I’m only
half listening, my tummy is in my mouth.
 
And does he get on with her as well as he
gets on with me?
 
And will they
drive along somewhere with their hands on each others knees like we do?
 
And he won’t need me or think about me?
 
And I just feel I shouldn’t be there, in
his life, like a bloody lump in his throat.
 
There is no place for me, here or there
or anywhere.
 
And my love is
suddenly hate, but I’m so, so sad inside, it all feels broken in there.
 
I hate him, and I don’t need him and
what the hell am I doing with a married man, a married man who has no intention
of becoming unmarried for me, who has no intention of doing anything for me at
all.
 
And I know that relationships
are see-saws, I chase him, I call him, I am there and he knows it.
 
But if I stopped calling him, if I
played games with him, he would worry and he’d call me, he’d chase me, he would
feel a hole beginning to open up in his life.
 
But I can’t play games.
 
I want him to appreciate me without my
asking him to.
 
And muddy boots march
through rain puddles, and flowers get trampled under foot and no one bends down
to examine them and know that they are far more beautiful than anything else
they will ever see.

God I feel so sorry for myself.
 
I think I fell asleep after that, I woke
up at about 3am still in my clothes, my eyes weary and wet as if I’d cried
myself to sleep. Jo had drawn my curtains, the cd player was off and all the
cats were on my bed, two on the pillows and two near my feet so I had to spread
eagle around them.
 
I sat up, and
through the gap in the curtains saw the lights of some ship in the bay, heard
something rustling along in the garden and lay down and went to sleep again.

I took Charlie fishing again today,
he is down stream of me, I am thinking about what he told me about the other
night.
 
He said that he suggested
that they go out to some restaurant (as she kept going on about it) but in the
end she didn’t want to go.
  
There is something else though that he hasn’t told me, I know there is,
and I think he’s either not very happy or he’s angry with me.
 
I’ll ask him once we sit down.

I am fishing from the bank here, I
know I shouldn’t but I’m too small for this pool, all I can see now is grass,
dense armies of grass, 400 seeds on each blade, brambles wrapped slinkily but
threateningly through the grass and beech leaves and branches looking on and
over.
 
A Kingfisher flies past, fish
in his mouth and another joins it and off they fly together, past me, squealing
with delight they were.
 
The sky is
huge and one bird at a time flies past above me sideways flying, wings out and
is gone.
 
Rabbits shuffle about in
the hedge and a trout jumps up high in the river.
 
Push your belly out.
 
There is a breeze fluttering the trees
and it’s delicate, golden noise gets nearer and nearer to me and the breeze
keeps the horse flies away.
 
A crow
flies past me now and shouts down at me and I squint and look up.
 
The cattle are excited that I’m in the
field and are slowly making their way over to me and I could swallow all of
this, open my mouth and take it all in and take it all down and be content for
ever more.
  
I fish with my grandpa’s
rods on my grandpa’s beat of the river.
 
I have no phone reception and it’s lovely and more imaginary than I
could imagine.
 
This is ‘the owl
pool’, last week I could stand in it, chest-high with roach head-butting my calves,
my mind on nothing much but the golden glint of the surface.
 
I feel a trout nip my fly.
 
And I catch my first fish of the
evening,
 
a little brown trout, and
instantly start singing ‘little brown jug’ to myself.
  
I see Charlie coming upstream
towards me, he is guiding himself with beech branches, which is very sensible
of him, I would too if I could reach them “I’ve got my fly stuck” he calls out
to me
“as the bishop says to the actress” I said, and I went to help him, ‘here comes
the cavalry’ I say in my head and once again I’m excited to be useful and
reliable.
 
I unhooked his fly from a
branch and sorted his line out for him “how much are you enjoying this?” I ask
him
“very much” but his smile is brief and flickers away from me towards the sky,
and if his smile had held my eyes, I know this wouldn’t have happened “well,
you don’t look like you’re enjoying it.
 
In fact, you look like a miserable turd, what the fuck is wrong with
you?” and where did that come from?
 
My super power is instant anger, boof and it’s there, boom and it’s
gone.
 
“Let’s sit down and I’ll tell
you” he said and his body moving like a big long heavy sack he couldn’t carry,
but was dragging behind him.
 
And I thought
oh bugger, what’s this
then?
 
What have I done?
 
Is this the end of our
relationship?
 
Doesn’t he love me
any more?
 
How do I prepare myself
for horribleness
?
 
And the river
zig zagged away into the trees and the birds came crashing down into the water
and the sun was hidden by dense black clouds and my legs were stuck in the
ground and I couldn’t move.
 
“She
has found someone else, your lodger was right, and she wants a divorce” he said
to me once we were sitting down.
 
Fat-bodied in our waders, on the grass, rods behind us, looking out over
the river.
“How come, I mean, who is it?
 
Why?
 
How long has it been
going on?
 
Tell me” and of course he
was trying to tell me but I am road runner, a million words an hour.
 
His wife had found another man, a very
wealthy man, with far more money than Charlie, a vacuous social butterfly who
likes socialising and spending his money and obviously Charlie’s wife couldn’t
resist him.
 
So, after my instant
relief and then shock and “well, blow me” I was tip toeingly excited, because
that would mean that Charlie would be free too “doesn’t it!
 
You’d be free too then, and we could be
together, properly” and it is simple, it really is, it’s easy, but Charlie
doesn’t think it’s easy and as I sat there watching him turn it all over in his
mind, I hated him again, why can’t he make up his mind?
 
Does he really love me?
 
What has he ever done to show it?
 
And what a lovely mother I would be to
his children, and what a lovely wife I would be to Charlie and if he let me,
how happy we could be together, for ever.
 
It is simple.
 
It is!
 
It is!
 
I am gasping for breath because I don’t
understand why he’s not happy “well, I know it’s not what you wanted” I say
“and I know you wanted to stay together for the children, but it’s not you
that’s broken it up, she doesn’t know about us does she?”
“No” he is snarling, he is cornered and I move away so he can escape if he
wants, I let him see there is a way past me “well, that’s good,” why can’t he
see that it’s all good?
“it doesn’t matter who’s fault it is Augusta, the family will still be split
up, that never happens in my family.”
“Oh don’t be stupid, you make your own rules and follow the course of your own
evolution, who gives a shit about your family and what they’ve done or never
done.
 
You should be the trail
blazer for your own life.
 
She wants
a divorce, and that will most definitely mean the break up of your family, so,
work around that and let’s make plans and try and make it all lovely for the
children, and for you” and I get closer to him and stroke his temples with a
silken smile on my face.
 
“It could
be very lovely you know, we could both be ever so happy” and as if I were
poison, he jerks his whole body away from me “you say some very horrible things
sometimes Gussie, really nasty things” he said.
 
He flung himself off the bench in his
anger, he turned away from my puzzled face and picked up his jacket, he looked
like a stupid defenceless creature that’s walking towards gun fire.
 
He looked like a victim, and he turned
his furious face from me, scorching and dangerous.
 
He turned and he went.
 
He just left me there.

And I can’t understand it, I feel
desperately sorry for myself, and sorry for him too and sorry for his children,
but there is a way to make it better and to make it better isn’t to dwell on
what can’t be helped now.
 
 
Sometimes I think he is the woman and I am
the man.
 
He must love her, he must,
or why wouldn’t he be even a little bit happy?
 
Everything feels shitty at the
moment.
 
But I am the stoat who
bites the stick, who jumps the board.
 
I will not be cowed, I
will
not.
 
And he’s stupid to say that I
said horrible things, I didn’t, I was nice, this is the problem with humans,
with relationships, with having to get on.
 
I feel as if I want to roar, like a lion, roar my misery at people, but
that I can’t because they don’t know that I’m an animal and I have no way of
communicating with them.
 
“Fuck off,
fuck off, fuck off” I shout after him and “I hope you drown” I say under my
breath, and I really, really hope he does.

When I got home I lay in bed drawing little pictures of
Charlie drowning, engulfed in water, his hands reaching up for help.
 
I drew pictures of him in his car
crashing in to a tree and I wanted them to come true.
 
I want him to die now.
 
I hate him.