Come Not When I Am Dead (7 page)

I was sitting on his lap then, close
up, with my hand running over the shape of his penis through his trousers, I
love that feel and shape of his erection beneath.
 
I run my fingers up and down and around,
my touch getting firmer and firmer.
 
We made love, but there was no manipulation in that, it wasn’t a way to
soften him to my will, it’s just what always happens.
 
When we’d finished I got him to lie on
the floor with me.
 
We were naked
and lying on our sides, my breasts hanging fat and heavily towards his face, I
pushed them near his mouth to suck, my body turns me on, his body turns me on,
everything turns me on.
 
I love this
naked vulnerability and closeness.
 
And we lay there on the rug with bits of dried food the Major had
dropped beneath our skin, smoking.
 
And
when Charlie started speaking, I thought it would be about the vegetable
garden, but he said “This lodger of yours, you won’t tell her about us will
you?
 
that would really bugger
things up ‘Local vet caught shagging blonde sex pot’ that wouldn’t go down at
all well at home.”
 
I was smiling at
him and my heart was leaping because he was thinking about me and being
considerate, well, about himself too, but he was trying to protect our
relationship so it made me happy.
 
“I won’t tell her anything and anyway, you can’t get more careful than
you are.”
 
We talk about grandma and
what it’s like having someone else in the house, how her foot tread is totally
different to grandma’s padding little animal sounds “I miss her so much” I lift
my head up and look at the stain again, I don’t want to cry and I don’t want
Charlie to see that I’m trying not to cry “I miss her every flipping day you
know, does this ever stop?
 
The
missing her?”
“No it doesn’t Gussie, it just gets easier as time goes on but you’ll always
miss her, but that’s because she was so wonderful and you’re so lovely” and he
kissed me, a funny little soft birds kiss.
 
“I have a present for you” I said to him and I made him sit down and
then put a big bundle of bulky rubber on his lap, “they’re my grandpa’s waders,
they’re obviously quite old, but they’re still good.
 
You’ll have to patch them up a bit, but,
do you like them?
 
Would you like
them?”

When we were in
bed later on, I couldn’t sleep because it was so exciting having my lover by my
side
I will look after you
I think as
I run my hand over his hair and I watch the life creep out of him into darkness
and his beautiful face is left calm and breathing gently, a boat moored and
bobbing, bobbing secure on the water, hidden by rushes.
 
I
will look after you
.
 
Love me
and look after me.
 
Lie with me and
run your fingers through my hair.
 
Lie with me legitimately and let the intense concentration on your face
excite, interest me.
 
And these
moments are just specks on a path.
 
Just tadpoles in a pond, but look after the pennies and the pounds will
look after themselves.
 
Stroke my
buttocks and stroke my thighs and tell me I’m more beautiful than
anything.
 
That you do not even see
the sky when you see me.
 
And my
morning would be golden as you hold me in your arms.

We went in my car because no one
really knows it and everyone knows the vet’s car.
 
Mine I drive around in muddy incognito,
or so I think, but someone a little while ago did say “there goes Gussie in her
muddy little car’, but I like to think that’s a one off.
 

It was midnight, the witching hour.
 
We parked my car in a field entrance
about a mile and a half away from the scene of the crime, got out quietly,
closed the doors firmly but silently and strode on.
 
This summer night with a fine chill to
the air.
 
The grass was freshly cut
and in the middle of being turned so we were climbing laboursomely over piles of
soon-to-be hay in the dark.
 
There
is a stag peering at us from a close distance, there is a sheep man darting
between the trees, there is all my imagination conjuring shapes and surprises
from every shadow, unleashed in this night world of throttling dark and the
unknown.
 
Otherwise there is an
intrusive quiet and a sharp clarity to the air.
 
I hold his hand extra firmly and I am
very happy.
 
We climbed the fields
behind where we wanted to be, then clambered down a steep bank, tall with
nettles.
 
Night time is like no
other time, it smells different, if you couldn’t see, if you couldn’t hear, if
you couldn’t feel, you’d know it was night because of that still smell, it
creeps around you and holds you in place.
 
The night is a beautiful place to be.
 
It is antisocial, like the rain, and I
have the world to myself.
 
The
lonely darkness lures me and brings me creeping forth from my hole, it leads me
silently to the surface.
 
‘Close
your eyes, rest your head on my pillow and sleep, close your eyes and I will close
mine’ I sing to myself.
 
I sing and
my whole body, like a butterfly gently touching flowers, and I move from place
to place, hardly touching the ground, I am just a little heavier than air and
my whole body full of springs, I flutter and bounce and sing my way through
dark paths made by deer and stumble into dark holes made by badgers and stare
down darker, tinier holes made by shrews.
 
And all of a sudden we were in the vegetable garden “you start cutting and
I’ll take the fence down” and we split up.
 
The fence was electric sheep netting, grown through and through with
docks and nettles and long grasses.
 
I hoiked and yanked, leaning forwards with my back bent, trying to pull
the vegetation from the netting.
 
It
was surprisingly hard work, tugging away, and my fury slowly building up, my
frustration fizzing through, I didn’t imagine it to be this laboursome.
 
I did a little at a time, an annoying
little, pulling the fencing as straight as I could and rolling it up thick with
grasses, live and dead, bind weed and dense columns of sticky willy.
 
Stumbling over mounds of plantain and
docks, the stars providing dim light “it’s too big and bulky” I spat out in
whispered fury and threw it in a heap for him to finish.
 
Oh God, my fury comes from nowhere, put it
back in it’s box.
 
I need a cigar.
“Shhhhh” he says as I fall over.
 
It’s funny though all of this, I’m loving it, my tummy is tight with
constrained laughter and my eyes are brighter, far brighter than the stars, and
my body is on fire with delight and love and lust.
 
The goodness, the badness of it all. The
outsideness and the wildness of it all.
 
I use my hunting knife to cut down woody stems, I use my hands to pull
out and pull off and my feet to trample.
 
Our vandalism lasts maybe half an hour, and behind us is desolation,
behind us is revenge and a job well done.

We are quiet, walking in each others
foot steps clambering back over rough ground towards my car.
 
There is no noisy flapping of pigeons
wings, heavy flipping, batting.
 
The
owls are ghostly and gossamer-clad on their nocturnal journeys, with a sideway
glance at our deformed bodies.
 
We
are trudging now, our feet heavy and our loads cumbersome, but it is still
deliciously funny.
 
We halt as we
hear a badger kill a ground-nesting bird, there is a long tussle and then it is
over and the bird screams no more.
 
We hear the badgers footsteps as it shuffles off home with it’s
prey.
 
I am an animal and I bare my teeth
and straighten my back, I am all powerful, I can take care of myself, I am all
I have to rely on and I find that exhilarating, exciting and beautiful.
 
“Wasn’t that brilliant?” I said as I
drove off “what do you think?
 
Are
you glad you did it?”
“I am actually, she is an awful woman and I think it was a job well done” he
brushes the hair from his face with his right hand and is totally unconscious
of how beautiful he is “It would be funny to set about the baddies of the
neighbourhood wouldn’t it?
 
To go on
a crusade of extinguishing evil”
“shall we do another one soon?”
“I think so.
 
I think we may yes,
but not yet, let me get over this one first.”
 
I dropped Charlie off at hang man cross
and was alone in my car that is warm as a glove.
 
I can hear the gravel on the road beneath
my tyres, I was driving to Jim’s farm, a new energy creeping slowly through
me.
 

The security light was on in the
yard, but that could just be a cat or a badger.
 
I stopped, yanked the netting out of my
car and went to put it in one of the barns in the courtyard.
 
I heard the netting dragging on the
ground, I felt myself get stung by a nettle caught in the wire and then, out of
the dark “Who’s that?” and I am stone.
 
“Is that
you
Gussie?
 
what are you doing here?” and the
shuffle became a shadow that became a whisper and they all belonged to Frank. “Frank,
I didn’t expect to see anyone.
 
You
bloody scared me.
 
What are
you
doing here more like.
 
Where’s Jim?
 
Go on, go home” we are whispering,
getting nearer each other, I can’t see his eyes, but I know they are narrowed
in thought “we’ve been having a bit of a drink together.
 
What are you up to?”
“nothing” and I stood in front of the netting
“you are a rubbish liar dear, move away, what you got that netting for?
 
Are you taking it or bringing it back?”
he wouldn’t talk to anyone else like that.
 
Or maybe he would, he is a policeman after all “Urrrgh, bringing it
back.
 
Don’t say anything
Frank.
 
It
is
Jim’s, I just found it somewhere, but don’t say anything will
you, I mean, you can to Jim, but not to anyone else,
 
I’m killing some ewes for him tomorrow
so I’ll tell him then anyway”
“you been out on your own at this time of night?” we were still whispering to
each other in the courtyard, words on a platter handed to each other, we didn’t
want to wake Jim’s wife.
 
The farm
dogs, knowing us, were quiet on the ends of their rattling chains and wagging
their tails frantically to us, giving tiny little yelps now and then so we’d go
and see them.
 
We walked over to the
dogs, moonlight on our shoes, looking at each other and absent mindedly
stroking their heads, smelly dog head rubbing all over my leg.
 
“What are you up to?” and this time I
definitely saw his eyes narrow
“nothing, really, nothing.
 
You’re
so bloody nosey.
 
Don’t you trust
me?”
“No, I certainly don’t”
“Well, that’s not very nice” but he made me laugh “I’ve got to go now Frankus
Pankus, come and see me soon won’t you,
 
I don’t see so much of you now Grumpy’s died”
“would your grandma have told you off ‘bout what you’ve been up to tonight?” he
quizzed
“No, certainly not, she would have loved it” and I stood on my tiptoes, kissed
him and hugged him, smiled and jumped in my car and quickly drove off before he
had time to properly tell me off.
 
Laughing, laughing, laughing to myself.
 
I need a cigar.
 
As I drove down the lanes I saw a dead
magpie on the road, you don’t see dead magpies very often and it made me want
to vomit, I hadn’t realised that my little Major had entered so fully and so
completely into my heart.

‘
Why
do I do it?
 
What can it be?
 
There’s naughtiness in everyone but
twice as much in me, I’d give the world if only I could, once in a while be
good…’ I woke up singing today.
 
But
I wouldn’t really give the world to be good.
 
Jo was up about an hour before me, she
doesn’t move quietly through the house, she is a weather pattern, part sunny,
part thundery, part lashing rain and part tired and muggy.
 
She knocked at my door and came in,
boof, boof, boof on the creaky floorboards.
  
I sat up in my cosy bed, shook my
hair and sleepy head and said “good morrow good Mother” as if I’d been awake
for hours.
 
She sat down at the foot
of my bed, didn’t look at me, but at the view from my window “why don’t you
have horses?” she says as her eyes alight on them in the field “oh God Jo,
you’re so exciting!
 
I do love
you.
 
Don’t you even want to say
‘Good morning’?” and she ignored me, puff, puff, puffing away “because they’re
dangerous and I had a very nasty fall and thought very seriously, for about a
quarter of a second how much I love my life and how walking is far nicer” and
she laughs, she has a funny laugh, it’s like an exclamation mark and her head
always bobs back, just once.
 
“What
are you doing today Jo?” I speak half in to my duvet so she doesn’t get a whiff
of morning breath,
 
I am warm and
cossetted and the smell of my body in my bed is the loveliest smell I know “are
you in all day?
 
Shall we breakfast
outside this morning?” I am gaining momentum
 
“In the garden? And you can smoke that
filthy efag thing and I can have a cigar.”
 
I am bottom bouncing around in my bed, full of revoltingly good spirits
and she looks at me with feigned disgust.
 
How lovely to be ladies of luxury.
 
How lovely to be free, lifted high up on a thermal.
 
How lovely to be me.

We sit outside together on the patio
leading from the sitting room, listening to the blackbirds “can’t get up in the
morning” eating sweet things and still in our dressing robes.
 
We laugh when we see each other, Jo’s
robe is blue and ‘like a big fleecy tent’ she says, voluminous, with a hood,
ultra warm, towelling on the inside for after a bath and fleecy on the outside
for cosiness, and so long it almost touches the floor.
 
Mine is magenta silk finished with
French lace, it skims my body, lightly touching my nipples and falling like
water off my hips.
 
“What is Jo
short for?
 
It must be short for something.
 
I don’t believe parents would just
christen a child Jo”
“Well, I wasn’t christened”
“What’s it short for?”
“Just fucking Jo.
 
Just shut up
about it”
“Josephine?”
“shut the fuck up”
“you’re such a foul-mouthed hooker Joker.
 
I’m off fishing in a bit” I say, lying back in my chair with my feet up
on the table
“who with?”
“no one” and a multitude of insects buzz furiously past our ears
“could I come with you?”
“no, not today, one day though, I have to do other things on the way”
“Is there something you’re not telling me Gussie?” and a cloud briefly hides
the sun
“something like what?
 
And you’re a
fine one to talk.
 
Jodie” and I
squash breadcrumbs into the table with my finger, and pour coke cola on them to
make a paste
“stop that!
 
Well, why are you, who
is so very popular and love sex, single for a start?
 
Or do you have a secret lover?”
“Of course I don’t” it comes out far too quickly, it trips and falls on the
step and I look at the dandelions by my feet.
 
I would like to tell her, but I
can’t.
 
My nose wrinkles up and I
feel a bit sorry for myself, a bit angry with Charlie, a bit like a skinhead,
I’m making myself tough.
 
And I know
that if you love someone you are vulnerable and I don’t want any more pain.
 
There is something elemental though that
I love about Charlie, I feel that the untamed animal in me is matched to him,
to himself that no one but me sees.
 
It’s as if there’s a thick, thick rope between both our bellies and he
is essential to me, as if he’s part of me.

I am lying on the grass now and Jo is
reading a dreadful looking book at the table, there are stones in my flesh, on
my back, I am watching a buzzard flying over the garden, floating and darting,
it is a juvenile calling, calling out for reassurance, it is unsure of the
world but is being brave.
 
Coningsby
snuffles up to me, she rubs her forehead against my shoulder and quacks to me,
I open my arm and take her to my body, wrap her under my wing with dark muffled
love, I will look after everyone and everything and everything is safe with
me.
 
“I love you Coningsby, I love,
love, love you Coningsby” I say close in to her flank.
“You know the vet, the good looking one?”
 
Jo is looking at me over her book and I feel sick “Yes”
“you went to school with him didn’t you?”
come on, come on, come on, out with it
I think, “primary school”
“do you know his wife?” and I feel a bit easier
“not really, I don’t think she’s very nice though” the buzzard has seen
something and is swooping, scything down to the ground, he jumps the last bit,
and I see him up and down, hopping, then he hups up on to a fence post, eyes peeled
“well, I was in the pub last night and I saw her”
“yes?… go on”
“she was with this bloke, one of those twatty looking posh blokes with a pink
check shirt on and too much of a hairstyle” and I knew exactly what she meant,
I even saw him propped up against the bar, holding his beer in his hand at a
funny angle “so?”
“Well, she looked pretty cosy, and I’ve never seen her even smile before, but
she was all over this bloke” the buzzard has it, he has a mouse or a shrew, he
has caught his breakfast “I’m sure it was all legitimate, she doesn’t look the
sort to slag it up really does she?
 
Did anyone else see them?”
“Nah, they were in a dark corner by the door” and I wonder, I think there
probably is something in it, it is exciting, and I wonder whether I’ll tell
Charlie.
 
There is potential power
and potential pain in that story, but I will not manipulate him, I will always
be open with him.
 
I spread my hands
before him and show him what is there for him to make of it what he will.
 
I feel sick about it too though.