Come Not When I Am Dead (18 page)

When we got to
the car the men weren’t there.
 
We
stood still and silent, we walked to the bridge and looked around but they
weren’t there.
  
Maybe they’d
drunkenly drowned, we could call the unnamed pool after them ‘drunken thug
pool’ or ‘drowned men pool’.
 
But
anyway, they weren’t there, or maybe they were poaching further down river, but
we didn’t see them and I wouldn’t have gone through all of that again, not now.
  
“It was all your fault anyway” I
said to the back of his hair
“how on earth could it have been my fault?” and he took my hand, because he is
good and he was trying to make it better.
 
God, I want to scream “because you’ve been worrying me and upsetting
me.
 
Because you’re not talking to
me, because you’re frightening me, because you’re not yourself at the moment
and I think you don’t love me anymore or even want me anymore.”
 
His little newborn eyes are so, so sad
and his soul is disabled “I just want to know.
 
Why won’t you talk to me?
 
What’s happened?”
 
I am whimpering, I am that dog on the
hillside again, but he looks down and he looks away “TALK TO ME.
 
JUST BLOODY WELL TALK TO ME.
 
PROPERLY.
 
And Charlie, I’m so sorry Charlie, but
please tell me what happened the other day.
 
With the soldier” and I didn’t want to
sully the night further by saying his name “did you hurt him?
 
I don’t mind if you did, but please tell
me what happened?”
“I told him about us.”
“I knew you would, tell me what happened.”
“I do love you Gussie.
 
Even after
everything that’s happened I love you very much and I don’t want to lose you.”
“Yes?
 
Go on…” chattering, banging,
battering in my head waiting for his words
“Leave it for the moment” and I did, I will do anything he says.
 
“I’m scared of what’s happening now” he
said to his boots, to the grass and to me and I am soft skies just a presence
and I will not interrupt him or frighten or question him to silence “I’m scared
of what’s happening to us, to me, to my boys, I didn’t want the divorce to
affect them, but it is, they’re crying at night about totally irrelevant
unconnected things, but they weren’t like that before.
 
I don’t know what to do.
 
I just want to look after them.”
I am quiet, I am the angel of the river, I offer balm and bandages “but you can
look after them darling.
 
You can
give them love and reassurance.
 
I
am sorry Charlie for everything I’ve done.
 
I am sorry.”
 
And as we stand
there, in tortured, agonised silence, Bill flies out of the trees to my right and
lands on a branch just four feet away from me and just looks at me “I am the
silent, dimpsy coloured, cloth-winged owl” he says “I see you when you don’t
see me”
“And I am love” I say “from my feet to my eyes I am love, all through these
skies.
 
I am hope and I am
excitement and I am wonder and I don’t speak your language but I
understand.
 
I am passion, I am
hope.
 
I am wild and I roar my love.
 
I am swift through the air and I smother
you in caresses.
 
I am trepidation”
but I am happy.
 
Bill is here, he
looks at me, he tips his hat and then he is gone.
 
I am glad these things cannot be
harnessed.
‘But you remain in my heart, so tell me darling, is there still a spark? Or
only lonely ashes of a flame, we once knew, should I go on whistling in the
dark?’

Charlie stayed at my house.
 
We travelled home in the dark with a
big, fat, unseen barrier between us that I am trying to pull down.
 
I am frightened.
 
He is upset.
 
I show it by telling him and trying to
make it better, although I’m the one who made it so much worse, he shows it by
his hurt, frightened eyes and his gangrenous silence.
 
We were half way home when I pulled the
car over into a layby and put my hand on his knee, it is a butterfly on a cow’s
leg and I don’t know if it’s felt.
 
I am a doll in a doll’s house, I am sitting on a red velvet chair and
I’m not real.
 
I smile at him,
that’s what he wants.
 
I am soft,
that is what he wants.
 
But what do
I want?
 
I don’t know.
 
“What happened Charlie with the man who
was here, the soldier.
 
Did you hurt
him? I promise he means nothing to me”
“you were going to marry a man who meant nothing to you?”
“I wasn’t going to marry him, I promise, he did ask me but I wasn’t going to, I
promise I wasn’t going to.
 
Tell
me.
 
Please
.”
 
I wasn’t
looking at him but at two badgers trotting down the road, together but
separate, trying to get up the banks and going on down the lane again, making
me smile with their lopsided pig movements.
 
“I saw him at Jim’s when I was there Tb
testing the cattle and I went over to say hello because he’s Jo’s cousin, I
didn’t know then that you’d been lying to me.”
“I am sorry”
“I asked him how Jo was and he looked a bit surprised and then I asked him if I
had got it wrong, and was he Jo’s cousin? and that’s when he told me that he
was your fiancée.”
 
I can say
nothing I am still frightened that he will turn on me with hate and disgust and
rejection.
 
I waited for him to
continue.
 
“So, I congratulated him
and said you were a friend of mine.
 
I knew it wasn’t his bloody fault, I knew it was you, not him.”
 
I am trying not to breathe, not to move,
to be unseen and unheard and then my breathing becomes too laboured and
exhaustive and makes too much noise.
 
“I came back to the house with him and saw you.
 
I wanted to rip your heart out then.”
“I’m sorry.
 
Charlie do you
really
love me?”
“of course I bloody do”
“but you don’t show it and I just felt it was all unequal, that I loved you and
you loved your wife.”
“Don’t be stupid Gussie, you know that is rubbish.
 
There is no love there at all, no
liking, no respect.
 
There is
nothing there at all.
 
You have all
my love, understand that
now
”
“Why did you ask him to go fishing with you?”
 
“because I wanted to spoil things for you.”
 
I wanted to ask him if they’d had a
fight, but I didn’t because then I would have to say that Jo was watching them
and I think that would make matters worse, so instead I said “and did you tell
him?”
“Yes, of course I did.
 
He caught a
fish and I helped him bring it in and I told him then”
“and did
you
kill the fish?”
“What sort of question is that?
 
What on earth does it matter?
 
He killed it”
“what with?”
“With your grandpa’s priest if you must know”
“and then what happened?”
“Are you so worried about him?”
“No, I just want to know so I understand and then it will be OK, but I’m not
worried about him”
“then I drove him down the field to the hut and we sat in there and talked,
then I drove home and I suspect he drove to London or somewhere, but I knew he
wouldn’t want to go back to you.”
 
And then I wanted to ask Charlie if he’d said nasty things about me, and
I don’t like thinking that he might have said that I was a bitch or anything,
but I don’t think he would.
 

When we got home I didn’t want to go
to bed right away, I needed to talk to him some more and I asked Charlie if
he’d like to do a little rabbit shooting before bed.
 
I got my shotgun from the bedroom and we
went out together, Charlie is the torch boy and I am the trigger monkey.
 
I will get a few rabbits for some pies
and the skins I treat and am making a rabbit fur pillowcase for Gabriel.
 
“He’s not a child” says Charlie
“I know he’s not, but it’s a lovely thing to have isn’t it?
 
I’d treasure that if someone made it for
me.
 
It’s like the teddy bear I had
as a child made from poodle skin” but Charlie isn’t interested and I feel his head
turn from me in the dark.
 
He is
trying.
 
I am trying too, I am
trying hard to be nice.
 
I will make
it better.
 
At 11pm we had finished
and were walking back, with the rabbits tied to my waist with binder twine, bumping
against my hip bones with each step I took.
 
It is chill, a clear delicious chill to
the air.
 
Autumn is nearer every
day.
 
The stars whispered a tune to
me and the mud has dried and we were no longer sinking in with every step.
 
Our wellies heavy on the ground and that
is the only noise I hear “Cheese on toast with tomato ketchup? and Ovaltine?”
“Lord yes, I’m starved” and I know I will look after him, always.
“I will always look after you Charlie Farlie” and I reach up my hand and stroke
the back of his soft thick hair as he walked before me to the kitchen.
 
We ate and then we climbed the stairs to
bed.
 
We didn’t wash our faces or
brush our teeth, we were as tired as ten monkeys fighting.
 
We left the gun out of the cabinet
because the Major had taken off the keys and we clambered in to bed together,
aweary, aweary.
 
We faced each other
in bed and I stroked his cheeks and rubbed his temples, he is a funny
creature.
 
And we will make love,
but suddenly we were both asleep.

I dreamt I was brushing my father’s
hunter ‘Thimble’ in his stable, he is a big dark bay horse and I have to get up
on my tip toes to stroke his rump, I smell his distinctive horse body and I see
every little shiny hair on his rump and all the slight grey dirt between and
then he starts to push against me and I am being flattened into the wall, I
start poking his flank, sharp little movements, poking and poking, to get him
off me, but he’s not moving, he’s squashing me more and more and suddenly,
BOOM! I wake up thinking he has broken my bones and I am aware of a draught in
the room and the window is open, there is a space next to me in the bed and the
duvet is turned back, I run my hand over the sheet and it isn’t warm.
 

I was slowly waking up, it is late,
it is 2am.
 
I should be sleeping.
 
I am warm and soft, I am a mouse in
cotton wool, and I am asleep again.
 
I woke up again and it is 2.10am and Charlie still isn’t there.
 
Oh bugger.
 
Then I was properly awake, but keeping
my eyes as closed as I could, just in case I can go straight back to
sleep.
 
“Charlie, Charlie?” I
whispered from the bed “Charlie?
 
Are you there?” but he’s not.
 
I don’t know why, but my first thought was that he’d try to kill
himself.
 
I imagined him hanging, and
I tell myself not to be so stupid.
 
I try to erase the image, he wouldn’t do anything like that and in to my
mind comes the time when I was walking through the village on the way home from
school with my friend and her mother.
 
They got to their house and the mother put the key in the door, she
turned to smile goodbye to me as she pushed the door open, and before she’d
seen it herself, I saw brown leather shoes and green corduroy trousers hanging
in space, I looked further up and saw a burgundy and gold tie twisted around
his neck attached to the beam. Where is Charlie?
 
I got out of bed and went downstairs,
there is a draught “stupid bugger” I said quietly, I don’t let the cats out at
night and he’d left a door open and suddenly my super power, anger, returned,
stupid bloody bugger.
 
It is the
back door and I went to it across the cold tile floor and in the yellow of the
security light, saw Charlie coming towards me from across the yard.
 
He is holding my shotgun.
 
“What are you doing?
 
What are you
doing with my gun?
 
Charlie!
 
Answer me, what are you doing?”
 
And then he was a man without a brain in
his head, powered by electricity, but it will run out soon.
 
I narrowed my eyes and looked at him “what
have you done?”
“It was the men from the river, they were here.”
“No they weren’t.
 
What do you mean?
 
What the hell made you think
that?
 
What’s happened?”
“I was asleep and I heard a noise outside, it woke me up, then I saw the
security light go on, so I went to the window to have a look.
 
I opened the window but they must have
heard and I saw them running to their truck, so I got the gun and ran outside,
but they were already driving up the track, so I shot at the back window”
“WHAT?
 
OH MY GOD, ARE YOU
JOKING?
 
OH NO, OH NO” and suddenly
I’m on my knees and I can’t breathe.
 
I can’t think.
 
I am holding
my belly and my head is nodding on it’s own, my lips set.
 
Oh my God, what the hell am I going to
do?
 
And I look at him, he’s bloody
mad.
 
My life is suddenly red with
the possibility of someone’s blood.
 
“What happened exactly Charlie.
 
Sit down here now.
 
Give me
the gun, sit down and tell me” I am frightened of him, and I took my gun from
his hands and took the one cartridge out of it.
 
I put the cartridge in my dressing robe
pocket and I put the gun on some grass behind me, we were both still on the gravel.
 
And he told me what happened.
 

He heard a noise and opened the
window to see what it was, in the light of the lamp he saw three men in
camouflage gear looking through the barns.
 
He thought it was the yobs from the river and that they’d come to get
us.
 
He thought he had to protect me
because he hadn’t protected me properly earlier.
 
I’d said it was his fault and now he
wanted to be strong.
 
He grabbed my
shotgun and some cartridges from my blouse drawer and ran down the stairs,
loading as he went, his big, heavy, flat feet slamming down on each stair and I
didn’t hear.
 
When he got to the
back door they were in their car and were driving up the track, in the dark and
he levelled the gun and shot.
 
He
shot the back window out.
 
That’s
all he could tell me.
 
“Did you hear
a noise?
 
Did you hear any cries of
pain or anger?
 
Did you hear a crash
or bash?
 
Did the engine stop?”
 
But he’d heard nothing, the truck kept
driving without hesitation.
 
“Three
men Charlie, that meant that one was in the back most probably, and you could
have shot his head right off Charlie.
 
They could have been holiday makers lost, or looking for their dog, or
anything Charlie.
 
Listen, it’s not
at all likely that they were the men from the river, there were three of them,
in a truck, and the yobs at the river couldn’t have found out where we lived,
or who we were even, they couldn’t even see us.
 
They weren’t the river men, they were
other people.
 
Charlie, what the
hell have you done?
 
What the hell
do we do now?” and he was crying.
 
I
think he was crying and I am weary and I have no energy.
 
I hold out my hand to him as I stand up,
it is little compared to the great size of the man before me, Insy Winsy
Spider, “come on, let’s go back to bed.”
 
We went back in to the kitchen.
 
I saw the cabinet keys sticking out from under the kitchen rug, I picked
them up.
 
I dragged this Charlie
creature up the stairs to bed and he climbed in slowly, he is a grasshopper
that children have squeezed too tight, pale green of summer leaves and was that
right?
 
Did I remember that
right?
 
Do they have purple
blood?
 
He had his back to me so I
put the gun back in the cabinet, locked it and hid the key in some toilet paper
under my side of the bed.
 
I put the
cartridges in my bedside cabinet and I got in to bed too.
 
I closed my eyes but I could not sleep,
I was shaking, I was frightened, I was frightened for Charlie.
 
I am not frightened of him though, he is
all broken gentleness.
 
He is a
fallen horse too old and thin to get up, lying on it’s side in over-eaten
grass, trying to just lift his head, but he can’t.
 
An hour later I must have drifted off
because I am woken by his whimpering in his sleep.
 
I turned my back to him and covered my
ears with the duvet.
 
I think I
would shoot him if he were my dog, he is weak and destructive.
 
He is weak and destructive I say again
and again to myself as I try to go back to sleep.