Come Not When I Am Dead (4 page)

After Charlie had gone I still felt I
hadn’t done enough today, and so, in the dark, in the quiet of the night with
just the waves frooshing about down below, I ran up and down from the gate to
the edge of the cliff about 600 times until I was breathless, the kittens all
watching me from the back door, bats dancing around above my head.
 
Stars highlighting the tips of the grass
beneath my feet and a fine cool damp in the air.
 
And that did the trick.
 
It has been an unsatisfactory day.
 
Tomorrow will be more exciting.

I go to bed and
think about Charlie, I think of how he has my devotion and my utter cherished
love and I would love to feel that back from him, I would take it, precious
thing, upstairs now and put it safe in my treasure box, and maybe just peek at
it a couple of times in the night, just to make sure.
 
And I think that if I hope for it, it
will happen.
 
I fall asleep and one
after another, all my nightmares follow each other, it is always the same.

Uncle George came today to see the
studio roof.
 
I call him uncle
George because I’ve known him all my life, but he’s no relation.
 
I took him down the track to the studio,
the ground is bumpy, I can feel every bump and lump and stick and stone beneath
my sandals and I’m striding and swinging my arms in time to the tune in my head
‘up down, high low, anywhere the wind blows…’ the trees shaded us and we were a
little cooler, and a lot quieter, but flies everywhere buzzing their bastard
way through the silence.
 

The way down is quite steep and I
love walking up and down it and feeling my body work for me, feeling all my
muscles connect with each other, I am fit and a mean machine, but that can’t be
said for uncle George “slow down maid, my knees aren’t as young as they were”
and I know I should slow down for him, but I carry on walking, I will wait for
him at the bottom.
 
“I can’t keep up
with you Gussie” he calls from behind me and I linger for an instant, a heavy
old sailor’s rope around my shoulders.
 
But I hate walking slowly, even for him and so I stride on again,
thinking of all the jobs he’d done for grandma as I lift my arms and touch the
leaves in passing.
 
I am thinking
about how handsome and gypsyish he’d looked when I was a little girl, with his
dark hair and his earring.
  
Remembering how, by accident, he’d used my vest and pants set as cleaning
rags because they were so revolting.
 
I was remembering that awful wall he built in his own garden with
bottles in it and his horrible daughter who smeared marmite on my bed sheets to
pretend it was pooh.
 
And wondering
what he was going to say about my studio roof and knowing that it wasn’t going
to be good and thinking that the whole experience will be demoralising and I
just shouldn’t have asked him.
 
I
stride along and then wait for him, he catches up and I stride on again.
 
I must be a pain I suppose, but that’s
what I think of other people when they can’t keep up with me in any way at all,
and really it shouldn’t matter, I’m not important to anyone and no one’s
important to me anymore, apart from my nephews, apart from Charlie and
Coningsby and a few others I suppose.
 
I
suppose
.
 
I watch him come down the track, he has
two legs, two legs longer than mine, why don’t they move quicker?

The quiet here is beautiful.
 
I stand still and stare at the black
shade and yellow-white sunlight on the rough and sepia ground, it makes me
smile, it puts me in a daze and my eyes drift off lightly into space and my
mind disintegrates.
 
Choo, choo,
choo, it falls to the ground.
 
I’m
distracted, I’m intrigued by hums of insects and hard twigs and rainbow colours
in heavy warm air.
 
I am in love
with all this that is mine. And I would like to have a child and be walking
down here now with him or her, holding my hand, toddling along by my side.
 
I would hold their little fat hand in
mine, wrapping it closely like the most precious present in the universe, a
freshly caught trout in giant dock leaves, tied with grass.
 
I would tell them that one day this
would all be theirs and that our family has lived in this little house for over
300 years now and in this village since 1423, that’s a long time.
 
I would tell them that whoever they are
and whatever they are they should always be proud of themselves because you
only have yourself and you should be strong.
 
And I am still chattering away to my
little imaginary child when uncle George catches up with me.
 
I’m standing by the studio, I’m holding
the nettles down with my left foot and kicking at the roots of them with my
right and I’m staring at the gate.
 
“You
talking to yourself?
 
Good
conversation was it?
 
That’s the way
to madness they say!” but I ignore him, I always ignore people when they say
stupid things they feel they should say and mean nothing.
 
Uncle George goes in to the studio,
through the door I hold open for him
 
“now then, you let me have a look here” and suddenly he is golden and
mine and lovely again.

I left him to look and measure and
stomp around and I walked down a little way more and got out a cigar, I am in
love with them, I love the feel of the soft leaf
 
and the weight of them on my lips, I let
it hang there, guess the weight, the taste and the smell and the heavy smoke in
my mouth like a fat man in a washing machine, I swish him around, hold him
there and spit him out.
 
Pah!
 
And it is instant satisfaction, instant
luxury, instant calm without befuddlement.
 
My head goes up to look at the sky and
“Be about £800 more or less” and my head goes down.
It is far too much,
 
“£800?
 
Can’t it be done any cheaper than that?”
I’m thinking about the electric bill, food, cigars, cats insurance, cat food,
petrol, new tyres….. I’ve made £40 so far this week strimming and that’s
it.
 
“You know I would if I could
dear, but it can’t be done” and he told me why it couldn’t be done, he is sorry
for me and looking concerned, his eyebrows meet in the middle when he looks like
that.
 
“I know, thank you, thank you
Uncle George.”
 
I am gentle now as I
look up at his dear old face, “it’s just a lot of money, which I haven’t
got.
 
It’s just all a bit of a worry
really and I don’t want to worry” but I also don’t want him to feel sorry for
me, so I try and pretend it doesn’t matter so much.
 
“It’s OK” I say, fooling no one.
“Can’t be perfect, much as we’d all like it to be you know”
“I know.”
 
I am dismissive now,
because it’s a stupid thing to say and turn around so we change conversation,
and it works, we talk about his new girlfriend, about his grandchildren, about
grandma, but then he comes back to it again.
 
“You know what you should do, you should
take a lodger, that would help out, you’d get someone quick as a wink in your
little house”
“I don’t think so” I am dismissive.
“Your gran had guests”
“Yes but they were guests”
“they still paid though didn’t they? just a different name.
 
You should think about it”
“I’ll think about it” I said and thought that I wouldn’t.

All afternoon I thought about it when
I was killing pigs for the Rogers, he pays me £50 a pig so that’s good going
today.
 
“I’ve been thinking” I said
to Charlie later on “what do you think, I mean, would it be a good idea, say
if, well, what do you think about me, maybe, getting a lodger?
 
Do you think that’s a good idea?
 
Or would I hate it?
 
Is it stupid?
 
It’s probably stupid.”
 
Charlie has been watching me talk, eyes
narrowed, wondering what I was going to say, he is worried it will be something
that will demand an intelligent response, something that will put him out,
something that he won’t like, and I see relief in his eyes “sounds like an
idea” he is glad it is about the house, about me, but not about us, he is so
transparent “how long have you been thinking about this?” he can relax, and I
told him about uncle George today “it would have to be a woman” he said
“why?” I am looking up at him and I know that he is thinking how little and
sweet I am, but if he thinks that, he’ll forget all those other bits about me and
I don’t want him to do that, “because if it was a man, he’d be bound to fall in
love with you”
“do all men fall in love with me?”
“well, most of them do don’t they?
 
So it would be a distinct possibility that someone living in the house
with you, spending all that time with you and seeing you every day would.
 
It would be cruel, like watching a car
crash in slow motion” he is pleased with himself “what about if I fell in love
with him?”
“You wouldn’t” he said looking levelly at me, from his thoughtful, fresh little
eyes.
 
Don’t be so sure of me
I thought, but instead I said “you’re very
sure of me aren’t you?” and he took that to be confirmation that he could be
sure of me.
You’ve had the snip
I was
thinking, looking at him while he sat back in grandma’s chair oblivious to my
thoughts, lapping up my love.
 
You can’t give me children and I want them,
you shouldn’t feel confident.
 
You
are married, I am not, you can’t feel confident.
 
My love won’t dissolve our problems
and I thought about how scary people are and how you never know what someone’s
thinking, and then my finger started to bleed again where Raffle Buffle had
caught it earlier.
 
“Shall I put a
stitch in that with my horse needle?” and he smiles his long and slow and
utterly beautiful smile.
 
I do love
him, I do, and I know he loves me, his love wraps me in golden paper, loosely
as not to hurt me, my love starts at my groin and rises to my throat where I get
a little stuck for words.
 
“So, do
you think it’s a good idea?” I am sitting on his lap now, stroking the back of
his hair, rubbing his neck for him
 
“should I get a lodger?
 
What
do you think?”
 
I am fidgeting with
a book now which is on the table by my side, stamping my dominance on it.
 
I am looking at his tweed sports jacket
on the floor by his chair ‘I chose him that’ I think, and it makes me happy
that I cherish him and look after him in all the ways I can, even just making
sure he looks nice “I think you should most definitely think about it” he said,
and that was that.

My time with
Charlie is strange and fairy taleish.
 
We spend hours together talking and making love, being close and I am so
ecstatically happy, but only when he can make a good excuse as to why he’s away
from home.
 
Four years is a long
time to spend with someone who’s already married and who has no intention of
getting a divorce.
 
I want his utter
devotion and I want to marry him and I want to have children with him, but if
he won’t, he won’t.
 
“I know, I
know” I say “you can’t risk ruining your children’s lives” and then I drop it
because I can’t make him do something he doesn’t want to, and I couldn’t live
with myself if I bullied him
 
“I
don’t care, it doesn’t matter to me” I say to him
“but it does though doesn’t it Gussie?” and it does, but then it doesn’t.
 
It does because I can’t have him and I
want him, I can’t have him, all of him.
 
But it doesn’t matter because I cut off my nose to spite my face
sometimes and then I’m so fucking bloody-minded that nothing bothers me, I don’t
let anything bother me and I’d rather be on my own, miserable maybe, than half
someone else’s.
 
I want him only if
he really, really wants me.
 
And
when I say something I do mean it.
 
I am lethally unpredictable, I won’t play games, I am serious about
pretty much everything (except messing around) and I think that makes me a
little scary.
 
And I am tough, but
in ways that no one suspects and I have a feeling that my love could easily
turn to hate.
 
I question him, I
have to understand him, but he doesn’t question me in the same way, I throw him
crumbs and sometimes he takes them up, but he doesn’t want to know where they
come from.
 
And I look at him again,
naked, getting ready for me, still sitting on grandma’s chair, with his long,
thin hairy legs open and his bollocks hanging heavily down on to the sage green
velvet seat “that’s a very lovely sight” I say and shuffle over to him on my
knees.
 
I am the hunter, I am the
predator, I will have him and I lick, one long lick, up the length of his
penis.
 
My hair falls down all
around my face and he wraps me up in a puff of steamy deliciousness.
 
“I could eat you” I just manage to say
without taking my eyes off his erection and his eyes go dreamy and my head goes
all steamy and our sex is very good and far too exciting.
 
I’d miss that.