Come Not When I Am Dead (25 page)

Then I found two people, a nice man
and a horrible woman to get rid of my poison, they gave me some stuff like
bathroom cleaner which I rubbed all over my hands, it was mustard coloured and
then as soon as it started drying, it turned in to thin blue plastic gloves.

I went downstairs to talk to the
nasty man and saw he was snooping around, I knew I had to sit down and talk to
him, but I didn’t want to, it was dangerous.
 
Then Charlie came in to the room and
scowled at the man and went out to get chick crumbs.
 
I was on my own, and knew I shouldn’t
be.
 
Then I looked over to the right
and saw my father sitting there on a wooden bench, I smiled at him and then
went back to my meeting and suddenly remembered that he’d been dead since I was
a child and this was a miracle, and he was there to see me safely through the
meeting.
 
I shouted and shouted to
tell everyone, but the nasty man couldn’t see him and thought I was mad.
 
Charlie came in and couldn’t see him and
then my mother came in and she couldn’t see him and I got her hands and put
them on his face, but she couldn’t feel him.
 
Then Jo came in and suddenly my father
and my mother disappeared, but Jo and Charlie were there to look after me.
 
Then I saw that Charlie had only got
four chick crumbs and one of the chicks had died, it’s head came right off it’s
body for no reason, the other chick was still alive, but very weak, but I
think, saveable.

I woke up far
too early and sat up in my bed, looking straight ahead, there is distress,
physical distress in my face, I feel it.
 
The curtains are heavy, but where they meet in the middle is a little
gap and I can see the lights of a ship out at sea.
 
If grandma were alive, she’d be looking
at it too.
 
My head is heavy and
silent, I got up slowly out of my bed and went downstairs.
 
The sun isn’t up and I sit at the kitchen
table not wanting to go back to sleep just in case I dreamt again. And then I
got up and went down to the orchard “look at the sun up in the sky” I am
singing “let’s go down to the woods say I.”
 
I sit down on a stone with my feet in
cold wet grass, the ground is getting colder now as autumn approaches, and my
toes open slightly to accommodate the blades and the wet tumbles off my nails,
my silk robe is pulled around me and is like a second skin and falls to my
ankles, I watch
 
the wet creeping up
the fabric. I walk to the cliff, it is nearly 7am now.
 
Poppenjoy has trotted down to join me,
tripping over the wet grass, she stops and listens and then trots on again to
me.
 
Everingham and Raffle Buffle
will not be far behind.
 
It is
quiet, in my head, on this cliff, in my house, all around me and then the
frooshing of the waves breaks in upon my head, moving up the shore, creeping up
my skull to my ears and my owl head turns and stares.
 
It is quiet all over the country and I
wish there was no bad and suddenly, in a rush, in a tidal wave barging in to my
head come visions of all the horrible, bad things that have happened to
me.
 
And I am alone again
.

“It’s not me”
“It is.
 
Just wear it.
 
You look lovely.”
 
I am looking past her, at the boats in
the sea, she’s looking at her reflection in my mirror “I look stupid.”
“You look lovely” I am trying to soothe her, but I’m laughing, but I don’t want
her to see my laughter, she’ll think I’m laughing at her, but it’s just because
she’s making such a fuss.
 
I found
an old tea dress in a cupboard that would fit her, I’ve no idea who’s it was,
but she’s not confident in it.
 
“See,
I look bloody stupid” she tugs at the skirt of her dress, old floral lawn “JO!
 
Stop it” I slap her hands down, “you
look lovely, it’s a country show, you ought to wear something like that.”
“Listen to you being all conventional” now I am urgent and she is a slippery
fish sliding away from my grasp.
 
I
pretend to be annoyed so she’ll give in.
 
I was going to say to her ‘what do you think you should wear?’ but then
I thought it would put something else in her head, so I held my tongue.
 
“What are you wearing?” she is watching
me with the eyes of a child who thinks she’s going to be cheated of sweets, I
show her my empty hands and no sugar around my mouth “I’ll wear a pretty dress
too.”
“So, we’ll look like two stupid twats together” and I hug her
“what’s that for?”
“Just because you’re lovely.”
“Well, I hope you know, I’m only doing this for you.
 
I know I look stupid” and I turn to my
bed to hide my dangerous smile “you look lovely.”

We went in my car.
 
She says I’m like Tigger, but when she’s
in a mood like this, she’s far worse than Eeyore could ever be.
 
“I hate going in your car, it’s like
bloody paddling, all this crap, it’s almost up to my knees Gussie, Disgussie
more like.
  
Coke bottles and
chocolate wrappers and who bloody knows what else.
 
What the fuck’s that?” and she has in
her hand an envelope sodden through with something wet and brown.
 
“Shhhh.
 
Put it down” now she is safely in the
car, on our way I want quiet, my mind is somewhere else, with somebody else and
I need space to understand it all.
 
I
feel a dangerous rebellion in my heart.
 
I open the window and stick my fingers out from the top of it, this way
and that, enjoying the freedom.
 
I
find my way through the lanes and think of Grumps “you’re so clever darling,
knowing all the little lanes”
“but that’s what I always thought about you Grumpy”
“yes, but I’m always getting lost”
“and I am too.”
“Is this the wrong bloody way?
 
That’s a no-through road” Jo’s voice squashed flat my dream.
 
I am lost, only temporarily, “we’re not
far wrong though” and I could be anywhere, any lane, by any hedge on any hill and
I pull over into a layby and jump out, because all of a sudden, I am
bursting.
 
I hitch my dress up
around my waist and do a wee.
 
“You’re
not hidden there Gussie, anyone could see you and you’re no fucking lady, you
forgot to put your knickers on.”
 
I
am not listening.
 
I finish my wee,
spread evenly over docks and bare soil, sigh and shiver with relief, that’s
better.
 
And as I am standing up I
see the skeleton of a jackdaw in the grass beside me.
 
His feathers quite intact attached to
his bones and his feet tight and clenched, one eye still remains linked to his
bare skull, like one of those pretend eyes you stick on greetings cards, it
doesn’t look real.
 
I pick it up.
 
“Look Jo” I want her to see how odd it is
“Get it a fucking way” she shrieks and turns her head away.
“Oh God” I say to myself, under my breath.

When we got to the show, we went
through the gates and I saw someone I knew who greeted us, then someone else,
then someone else, then someone I don’t know is kind to us.
 
“You’re like a magnet” Jo says
“the kindness of strangers” I tell her.
 
We saw Frank with the police, standing and holding court, we just saw
his back, he didn’t see us.
 
I am
invisible, we are invisible.
 
We saw
Charlie too, he was bending over some stupid dog’s paw, looking like he was
shaking hands with the Queen, and I asked myself is he mine?
 
Am I his?
 
I don’t want him to see me and he
doesn’t.
 
We saw Jim leading out a
fine, strong bull from the sheds and I wave to him and he smiles a big
confident smile back at me, it spreads right across his face.
 
“He’ll win a prize with that one” and I
nodded over, but Jo is looking somewhere else, her skirt swishing about her hips
and strands of hair in her face, she has forgotten her dress, for the moment at
least.
 
I shouldn’t have said it
suited her, it doesn’t, but I wasn’t thinking properly, she’s not that sort of
person.
 
Sometimes I just have
something in my head and I don’t think about it, it’s just there.
 
Sometimes I know something will happen
before it happens with utmost conviction and without any thought, and then when
it doesn’t happen, I’m astounded, more than that, I am flabbergasted.

We went to the sheep sheds and said
hello to all the farmers I know and looked over the sheep, and then Jo got
bored of baaing and buggered off somewhere else.
 
I found myself in the bee tent, already
bored, but I am in a whirl of graciousness and time passed even and thin and
then “hello” says a voice, just pulling me a little backwards, and just like
you do sometimes when you get a letter, when you stare at the envelope before
you open it, trying to puzzle out who it’s from, I kept my back to the voice
and it’s warmth ran through my veins like a little shallow stream, and when I
turned around I knew I would see Toby.
 
And something like a daze, a daze of outerbodyness came over me, I will
watch myself talk to him, I will see myself talk to him and I will be above me,
not in me, it’s a funny old thing, I want to shake it off, but I can’t.
 
I want to be part of other people
sometimes, but I’m not even part of myself “hello”
“I saw you earlier, giving your Queenly blessing to the farmers”
“I wouldn’t say that”
“you looked very gracious.
 
Are you
enjoying yourself?”
 
He likes me, I
can see it and feel it.
 
I feel his
calm and his interest envelopes me.
 
I feel I am sucking on a sweet to try it out.
 
I don’t move and I don’t say anything
and I am watching his eyes shining at me “do you have bees Augusta?”
 
I like hearing my name, it doesn’t
happen that often and it sounds intimate from his lips.
 
I have rebellion in my heart.
 
“Yes, are you interested in bees?
 
What
are
you doing now you’re back Toby?
 
Are
you staying? Frank hasn’t told me anything.”
“Perhaps you haven’t asked him?” but I’m not going through this again and I am
snapping out of a lull “yes, I’m staying” he brings me back, before I have time
to distance myself from him “I’m back home now, home being Devon, that is.
 
I’m looking for some plots to build on.”
 
I am trying to concentrate on his words,
I am trying to force them to enter my head, but I see Charlie walking towards
us, his long legs swinging along and sunshine all around him, soft focusing him.
 
I look at Toby and concentrate on his
face, on details, I stare at his nose, his nostrils, his upper lip, his very
blue eyes.
 
I try and work out how
his eyebrows are growing.
 
I can’t
concentrate and yet I say “is that what you’re going to do?
 
Is that what you always do?
 
This is the most we have spoken since
we’ve grown up, and Charlie is coming nearer and nearer, but Toby does speak,
he is forthcoming.
 
I will test him,
I will spew forth to him, because it doesn’t matter, Charlie is almost here.

The two men standing together are
very different, they feel different.
 
Charlie has a slightly arrogant casualness, he bursts in on
conversations, on solitude with bluster and a slack smile.
 
Charlie tries too hard.
 
Toby is self contained and quiet, he has
the stronger character, he is more comfortable in himself.
 
But I love Charlie, and yet, sometimes,
I don’t even like him.
 
I don’t want
to talk to him.
 
“Hello” he says, he
is looking with a thousand questions at me, he is sure of me but he doesn’t
know I found the letter.
 
He glances
at Toby and I have to say “hello” back as if he were nothing to me,
 
just the vet and really, I do hate all
this pretence.
 
“Do you remember
Toby?
 
Frank’s son” and Charlie
blustered his hellos and his heavy and sodden cheerfulness, his willowy body
bending this way and that and his big smile all false for someone he doesn’t
really remember but is wondering why he’s standing so close to and spending so
much time with his mistress.
 
Charlie is waiting for Toby to go.
 
Toby is waiting for Charlie to go.
 
I say nothing.
 
Charlie is
the open mouth, Toby is the questioning eyes.
 
I sink down and sit on the kerb of the
track, I close my knees and put my hands together on top of them.
 
I look at my hands.
 
I look at my toes, shining with glittery
nail varnish, I look at my legs and I stare at the gravel by the soles of my
shoes.
 
Down in the water, dead or
alive.
 
And the two men are talking
above me and all around me, yap, yap, yap.
 
Noise and bustle and sharp elbows and smells of sausages and harsh laughs
and a day, three days of made-up nonsense, from nowhere, for nothing.
 
But I have found a silence through all
this noise and all these voices.
 
“Well
then, must go” Charlie says, already going, and he shakes Toby’s hand and gives
me a pretend half-smile, a flicker of a half-smile.
 
I am sickened by the stupidity of it
all, the pretence, the not realness of it all.
 
In my head I spin him around and I whack
at his face with a plank.
 
In my
head I bury a knife in his heart.
 
In my head I hate him so much.
 
I hate him and I want to be sick, I want to fall to the floor and stay
there and let people walk over me.
 
I want to snarl and gnarl and people to be disgusted with me and leave
me alone.
 
“I tried to call you” he
says, his voice springs but he doesn’t know the bed is broken “my phone’s
broken” I say and his eyebrows twitch together because he doesn’t understand,
but he is gone.
 
And then Toby sits
next to me on my kerb “Where’s Jo?”
“I don’t know”
“you sound like you don’t care.”
“I don’t care about much at the moment” and then I add “but I do care about Jo,
but not much else, and my cats of course.”
“You were always the same Gussie, you and your animals, mice in pockets and
puppies in cars and squabs in lunch boxes” I have meant something to him over
these years.
 
I try and remember him
from all that time ago, and all that comes in to my head is a slight smile, a
half turned shoulder and a blue duffle coat hood and the knowledge of
kindness.
 
“Have you finished at the
show? I have.
 
If I call Jo and tell
her I’m going, would you like to come back to the house?
 
I could make you lunch.”
 
I am standing now, up from the kerb,
dusting myself down.
 
I want him to
come.
 
It is a loaded question, but
he doesn’t know that, good and kind Toby, being led into the lion’s den.
 
‘There was a man who had a cat, he fed
it well, it got so fat.
 
He fed it
til it filled the room, he had to stroke it with a broom’.

I took Toby home and gave him lunch
and I was unmistakenly, most definitely me in my kitchen.
 
I have no political agenda, no social
agenda, there is no manipulation here, take me or leave me, this really is
me.
  
There is something going
on.
 
We walked down to the beach,
breezy and blowy, blowing his hair away from his face and his eyes narrowing in
the divine sharpness of it all.
 
Suck it up, suck it up, suck it up, breathe it in, deep and down.
 
“I haven’t been here for such a long
time” he said and he looked straight ahead of him, at the rocks.
 
I looked at the wet sodden sand and the
marks my shoes made in it.
 
There was
a couple on the beach with three dogs, the humans were holding hands and they
threw sticks for their dogs, the dogs hair blowing as much as their legs were
moving, the couple were wrapped up in matching anoraks.
 
And then a woman came down on to the
beach with two mean-faced jack russells, I watched her as she bent down to let
them off the leash “she shouldn’t have done that, they’re trouble” and before
Toby had time to look around the jack russells ran on those short little legs towards
the three dogs, they separated the liver and white spaniel and nip, nip, nipped
at it’s heels.
 
Nip, nip, snarl and bark,
yap, yap, nip and growl.
 
Jumping up
and up.
 
And the spaniel ran to the
anoraks and said ‘please get rid of them for me’ havoc and mayhem around him.
 
“GET YOUR DOGS OFF” shouted Mrs Anorak
to Mrs Jack Russell.
“They’re not being a problem” shouted back Mrs Jack Russell
“GET THEM OFF” shouted anorak again
“they’re not being a problem” and all this time the jack russells, snarl and
bark and bite and jump, hup, hup, rag it, rag it, get the dog, get the dog.
 
“YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT.”
“I wouldn’t mind it”
“YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT.”
 
And Mrs
Anorak marched up to Mrs Jack Russell and shouted in her face “YOU WOULDN’T
LIKE IT.”
And I knew that would happen “I WOULDN’T MIND IT” shouted back Mrs Jack
Russell.
 
And they faced each other,
shouting, head to head, face to face, hands behind their backs held ready for
blows, fury and desperate aggression blowing up from the sand and whisking fast
all around them.
 
‘Fight, fight,
fight’ they would have said in the playground.
 
And neither one backed down, they were
glued to the spot, and they continued shouting until Mrs Jack Russell put her
dogs on their leads.
 
These women were
spitting in the air, fighting with the sea and the waves, shouting above the
sea gulls and the wind whistling over our heads.