Come Not When I Am Dead (31 page)

It is Monday and I am sitting on
chamomile daisies on a bare patch of a field sown too densely with barley, it
is up to my chest.
 
I have waded
through it and each stem is pushed back by my body, hits the one behind, which
hits the one behind that and it sounds like someone creeping up behind me.
 
I feel my knife in my pocket.
 
I was going to bring Coningsby with me,
I’d planned it all day but I picked her up and jellied loose blood came out
from her nose.
 
Blood that would
once have run, just peeped out.
 
I
wiped her clean, I wrapped her up again and put her back on the bed and kissed
her.
 
I left the room, and here I
am.

I remember when Coningsby was about
two years old, she got her foot stuck in sheep fencing and cried and
cried.
 
I heard the noise from the
house, ran out to see what was wrong and saw her hanging upside down, one foot
up.
 
I ran to her, picked her up
gently in my arms and with difficulty I untangled her from the fence and she
spun around, and dug all her claws into my arm, the sudden pain of it made me
scream and drop her from my caress.
 
That’s not the pain I feel now.
 
And then Buxton died in my arms and in her last death throws she sank
her teeth through my thumb nail and pierced the skin beneath it, and the pain
was fantastic and welcome.
 
I wanted
that pain because she was suffering and for years afterwards my bumpy, badly
grown nail would remind me of her.
 
But that’s not the pain I feel now.
 
 
I put my head in my hand and
rub my face, and I won’t see her again.
 
And my lips quiver and my mouth lengthens and my tears come and I can’t
breathe because I won’t have her anymore.
 
And I feel so tired and so sad and so forgotten and so tattered like
these petals here.
 
My head is
hurting and bats fly around it looking for insects and I look for her, but I
won’t find her.
 
And my ears hurt,
they are straining and they hurt and I won’t hear her anymore.
 
I would put my hands on her body when I
spoke to her so she could feel my words through my blood, through my veins, and
we were electricity, but she won’t feel me anymore.
 
She won’t quack at me when I pick her
up, but her blood will show.
 
She is
dead.
 

On the first day of her illness the other three,
Poppenjoy, Raffle Buffle and Everingham all slept around her on the bed, silken
soft, catkin soft, soft as water, soft as glass, my cats.
 
And as those very few days progressed
they didn’t come very much near her, they didn’t take note of her and when she
was dead they stepped over her body when I showed her to them.
 
And now she is dead they are with
me.
 
Everingham wants to play rough
with me again, Poppenjoy wants me to pick her up and carry her around
again.
 
Raffle Buffle is my
companion and wants butter again.
 
 
My tummy hurts, I turn on my side, but I
won’t be holding her as she nestles in to my belly.
 
And the other night, the night of the
day she died, I cried and cried and then vomited and had diarrhoea and I
thought of my dream just a little while ago.
 
My back hurts, my neck hurts and I won’t
be able to nestle her against it, under my chin.
 
I thought, I knew she was immortal, and
then she died and I was so shocked, because that wasn’t meant to happen, but
now I know, that I got it wrong, she is immortal, but not in her silky soft and
warm cat form.
 
She will come back
to me in some other way, as a child maybe or another cat, or something I can’t
think of yet, but she will come back to me again and I will know her as soon as
she does.
 
My belly hurts, but I
have a gut feeling, a certain knowledge that she will come back again.