Come Not When I Am Dead Read online

  Chapter 11

  I have been wrapped, strapped, swaddled in beauty, in magnificence. I am so much more than just alive. I am exuding exuberance, beaming from me like a lighthouse. I am bursting with love and sweetness and just everything that is flamboyantly perfect. Have I told you before that I am easily pleased?

  We sneaked off, Charlie and I, like two thieves in the night and went to a different river, a river where everything was excitingly new to both of us. Where shallow looking pools were so deep they could swallow houses. Where the water looked as if it were flowing fast, but it stayed still, just moving gently on the surface touched by the breeze and we fished for Salmon from late afternoon until late at night. It felt like the best holiday imaginable. And we were timeless and unhurried, with no demands upon us, no hurrying home to supper, no nervous checking of phones, no ticking of the clock, clock, clock. So many busy birds above us, schqueaking to each other, secretively watching us from tangling branches, the burl of a distant tractor rumbling across fields, the constant hum of creatures too tiny to care about us. The sun kissing our bodies, reflections of our own tender love. And high, white, passing clouds, cooling us, and time just whispered away.

  We separated when we first got there, by-passing each other on the banks so as not to disturb each other’s fishing. I stood in the river and watched him walk past me, with his concentrating, serious face, his tongue held between his teeth, merging into the shadows behind him, falling into silence and melting into sun-filled air and my heart almost burst through my bones with love for him. And it was all so utterly beautiful, so fantastically perfect. I was lifted on a cloud, high above us, floating free and untethered, a buzzard watching for life, for death. And every moment, every passing breeze, every jumping fish, each bowing blade of grass was something to be treasured. And after an hour or two of humming songs and changing skies, choosing flies, I heard Charlie’s soft and deep, fluid voice calling out to me. I am still as that round rock there with the water draping itself around it, touch me, love me, feel me, keep me with you it says as it loses it’s grip and flows off and on, lost in time and motion. I am all senses.

  I am listening for the direction of his voice, but a bull bellows a duotone from the trees, a lamb cries insecurely from the other bank. And then I have it. I run as fast as my rod and my waders and wading boots will let me, I am a muddle, a puddle, a rolling, rambling, inelegant bundle of rubber. Brambles straying across my path, I push through and they don’t cut me. Fallen branches trip me up but I don’t fall. My rod tip caught in trees and magically easing out, a knife cutting a cake. Uneven ground all conspiring to keep me back, slow me down. And there, in a silvery haze of sunshine he stood. Like a hero from a story book, bringing in his first Salmon. I can’t really tell you how exciting that is. You catch your breath, there is no breath, there is no life other than at the end of your line. You are all seeing, all hearing, all feeling, every bit of your body working together. And you may not be aware, but your concentration is immense, intense. And the fish leaps and jumps, it pulls and tosses itself furiously around and you ease it in, let it out, ease it in, keeping that connection, your lives tied together by this thin, invisible nylon. And don’t let it tire, but bring it in through butter, through rolls and rolls of oil and silken soft water, through deep sighs and closed eyes and fond goodbyes. And I just stood there surrounded by burly thistles muscling, bombarding their way up to the skies and watched him. I am intoxicated by the sweet smell of clover. Silent I am. Dear he is. Big and strong and beautiful. His darling face spread with an unutterably happy smile and his little black eyes, deep, deep, deep as the river, soul of love, pulling in that fish. And then, there it lay, in all it’s finery, in his net. Flop, plop, slop, curled up and motionless, sated it looked “It’s this big”

  “No, it’s bigger”

  “It’s magnificent”

  “It’s fantastic.” And we are both excited and admiring together, with each other in this utterly beautiful moment. Side by side, with my arm around his middle. I wish it could always be like this. And his fish, strong and silver and shining in his net and then he let it go and off it twirled, off it curled, a streak of silver and treasure, untold-of wealth. And then it is gone. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5 once I caught a fish alive. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 then I let it go again. Why did you let it go?”

  “Because it’s not the 15th of June.” And I hug him again and hold him, my fingers sinking through his jersey to his body and all the goodness from me goes to him, I am electricity. All my excitement goes into him. There is no thin, invisible nylon going from him to me, there is a thick, thick cord which nothing can break. We are gasps and triumph, we are exuberance and perfect, unknown, amazing happiness. We are together. I would that this would last for ever.

  And then later on when all is dark around us, dirty grey, blackberry light around us and we are stone. We do not move. We make no sound. We are not seen, or heard or smelt or felt. And yet we are alert, vital, our whole bodies filled with jumping senses and nerve endings, silver and electric. We breathe out our busyness, we breathe in animal trepidation and inhuman quiet. We are hidden by trees and down wind of the otters that we’re watching, Charlie and I, lying on the grass which makes no sound under our bodies. We are as unseen as sodden moss and wet rocks. And like a flicker of light from the moon behind trees, my finger strokes down his cheek a silent message of love.

  Our clothes, like our skin, are soft and silken, colours of the grass, of shadows and moonlit reflections on the water, and quiet as a fox’s breath. We are caressed by lichen. And all we hear above the gushing, frooshing, rushing of the river is a deer coming down the wood behind us, tripping lightly, delicately, hesitantly on crisp leaves, layer upon layer of brown and gold and moistureless leaf litter, twigs and branches. She steps into my head, but I don’t turn to look at her. And now the otter turning over a stone, clack, crack, turn back, to see what he can find beneath and then he is gone, a sinuous, curving, shadow-black, athletic being, sliding through the shallow waters and diving, fwoosh, in to the deeper, and all at once, he is treasured memories.

  There are two tawny owls hooting their way through the silent skies now, calling to each other for reassurance. A barn owl screams now from behind us, her voice sharp wire and a trout jumps high, exuberant and flamboyant up from the river and skims himself, like a stone across the surface, and touches the water three times in his journey to the other side. It is a foolhardy thing to do when there are otters out hunting, but he is blissfully, foolishly unaware. We watch them and then are filled throughout our whole bodies with rich, and unsullied delight.

  We went into the hut when we were cold, to a bed we’d made up of duvets and blankets and we made love. I sat astride him, and looked down at his beautiful face. I can not believe how beautiful he is. How utterly, utterly perfect he is and he filled me with such desire and such love and such excitement and, himself. And then we slept, all night, him by my side, breathing into my face, feeling him alive and warm and mine. I love him. I do love him. I love him.

  It was a fine thing to wake up on the floor, in the hut, in our blankets, together, the door not closed and the splashes of little fish in the river below. And then we made love again. And then by 7am we were back in the river. You know how some people feel when they walk into a beautiful church? The solemnity and the sanctity of it? That’s how I felt then. The day was so still, so beautiful, so perfect. I was filled with awe through every little bit of me. I was filled with silent and respectful adoration. I’ve never felt like that before. Beyond anything else I was utterly swept up by the magnificence of the scene. I felt my insides leave me, go up and up and up and embrace it all, swirl around until everything was mixed up together and just the same and then come hastily back down to me and fit into place once more and leave me feeling more whole than ever before. The river was so clear and I could see every stone around me. The sun shone on me in respectful kindness, and just the slightest breeze to cool my brow. I moved so quietly, so caref
ully, so stealthily. I didn’t want to upset the balance of this perfection. I didn’t want to muddy the water, or cast waves with clumsy feet or splashes and my line landed with quiet and silken tenderness, part of me. Part of something greater than me. I really have never felt like this before, and all of this I shared with Charlie. It was more than perfect. “We are very similar in lots of ways aren’t we?”

  “yes, we are”

  “essentially, we are very similar. We love the same things, the important things. I’ve never met anyone else who is like me, in any way at all, but you are, I love that Charlie.”

  “We are very similar” he says as he takes my hand “and it’s very lovely, and so are you” and his smile is a thousand kisses.

  ‘As I went a walking, one morning in May, I spied a young couple a making of hay. Oh one was a fair maid her beauty shone clear. The other, a soldier, a bold grenadier. “Good morning, good morning, good morning” said he “Oh, where are you going my pretty lady?”

  “I am going a walking by the clear crystal stream, to see cool water glide and hear nightingales sing. Oh soldier, oh soldier will you marry me?”

  “Oh no my sweet lady, that never can be. For I’ve got a wife at home in my own country, two wives and the army’s too many for me.”

  Chapter 12

  ‘Summer, you old Indian Summer, you’re the tear that comes after June-time laughter. You’ve seen so many dreams that won’t come true, dreams we fashioned when summer time was new’.

  There is an animal look to Charlie’s new-born eyes now. Not the looking for reassurance like a juvenile buzzard, not the playful questioning of a fox cub, but the potential brutishness of the badger. I am learning all over again. Sometimes he makes me a little bit wary, maybe that’s how he’s always felt with me. But he never tells me. When we were at school, the first day I met him he pulled me out of the stream running through our playground. Mark Davies the school bully had pushed me in and he pulled me out. When it was his 10th birthday I bought him a big box of malteesers and he said it was his best birthday present. When he left school I used to see him with the other big boys walking through the village, and although he didn’t talk to me, he was still Charlie. We went to different secondary schools and then I didn’t see him for years and years until he came back, with a wife and children. He bought the vet practice and one day, when he was giving Coningsby her vaccination, I said “I love you Charlie” I didn’t mean to say it, but I’d been thinking about it and it just popped out. I didn’t expect anything back from that, I didn’t expect him to look up from Coningsby’s neck and say “I love you too Gussie,” but he did. Whatever happens between us, whenever it happens, I will look out for him for ever and defend him for ever and protect him for ever and love him for ever, but that love will change.

  “What’s happening with the divorce?” I say, head down so as not to see his face. My tone is low and is not a threat “It’s all going ahead, not much to say, I’d rather not talk about it”

  “but would you like to come and live with me? I’d love that. Wouldn’t it be easier than staying in your house still?” I am pussy footing around him

  “No Gussie, that’s very kind of you, but it would make things worse, but thank you, I think I’ll just stay where I am” but he didn’t really think I was very kind, he wasn’t thinking about it, he was programmed for brush offs. When Charlie says ‘I think’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘probably’ they are not variables, they are definites and he does know. I know too . He changes the subject “how many rats have you caught then? It must be enough by now?” and in my head I swear at him. I have caught ten rats over the last few days, ten rats that I can hardly bear to look at, in cages in my workshop. Jim gave me 8 rats that he’s caught for me too, and Frank gave me 3 and didn’t ask any questions. “We have 21 rats” I tell Charlie. And he says to me

  “Shall we do it tonight? I can do tonight” our roles have reversed. My badger of a man has a drive that he didn’t have before. When he makes love to me, it is more charged, it is a little wild and not quite so lovely. He wants to fill me with himself as if he would die if he doesn’t. Sometimes it’s a little bit frightening, sometimes it’s a little bit sad. There is a little bit of him I think would not just pull me out of the stream now, but would throw me across the playground in the same movement. There is a little bit of him, which increases very gradually that is on the edge. “Shall we do it tonight?” and we do. We are night-time crusaders, we are crashers through meanness, we are bashers and lashers and everything is a little bit turned upside down. We are full stops.

  We drove with our dishevelled, riotous army of rats in his car, it is larger than mine, and every noise from them made my face twist in disgust with a too strong sense of imagery. We took the rats five miles off where there is a woman who keeps chickens in the dark and filth, in a tumbled down revolting little barn, where they can’t all get to water, and before she knows if any of them need it or not, she cuts all their beaks right, right back, they don’t need that. It makes me angry. She is the filth the rats back-flick on their back-turned escape.

  We get there at 4am, there is chicken pooh pouring out of the side vents, the chickens are on tables, raised up and they don’t have enough room to stretch up to their ceiling, they are cramped and unhappy and unnatural and it’s horrible. They cannot speak, they cannot complain in a language that someone like her would understand. “You poor old things” I whisper to them “but it will all be OK. Everything will always be OK.” We have poultry crates, I am little and lithe, I slither in and scoop hens in to the crates, on my belly in wet and hard filth. It is difficult to breathe in there and I feel the smell will pollute me, will seep right through my skin and stain me within. I fill the crates up with sad, confused, featherless hens and pass them out. They go from dark to dark, they are oblivious to what is happening and they don’t make much noise. I get every hen out of there and once I have wormed my way backwards out again, we start putting the rats in. Quiet, quiet, quietly. We are a stream of silent movements, we are pistons and cogs on the same machine. We have arm guards, we have armoured gloves. We cut a hole in the door, just a little hole, push the rats through it (which is no easy matter) and screw a sheet of wood over the top of it, with my swiss army knife. But what you wouldn’t be able to do is to open the door and shoo them all in. I think of herding cats, I would love to herd cats. We got the hens out one by one, we put the rats in, one by one, we smiled and laughed silently through our balaclavas and fattened bodies. I am filled with tingling excitement and lust, I could suck him up now and keep him within me for ever. We slink through shadows and creep along walls. We dart out of sight of headlights and walk, quiet as mice through fallen leaves and crisp grass, through sodden grass and long dead dry grass, season after season, day after day, night after night.

  I would love to see the woman’s face as she realised there were no hens in her house, open the door and rats come flying out at her from all directions, fat from corn all night. Brown and grey with dirty yellow razor teeth and glimpses of scaled tails swishing through the air, conducting a symphony of fear and filth, of terror, of dirt and shock and horror. I would really, really love to see the expression on her face as she fell to the ground and rats running over her in their panic for escape, darting off into the dark. I have just remembered something an old lover said to me, we were lying in bed together and he said we were both ‘dog souls’. Well, my dog soul is at peace with this.

  Charlie and I got back to my house and went straight to bed, the hens safe and sound in crates in the back of his car. He stayed a couple of hours before he scurried off back to his unhappy home and his confused children and his hostile wife. I wonder, I just wonder if he is hoping that she will change her mind and they can all pretend to be happy again. I wonder if they were happy before. I snuggled down deeper in my duck down duvet, I smelt his earthy skin scent on my pillow, I rubbed my cheek in it like a dog rolling and rolling in badger pooh. I have his scent all over me. I sme
lt the pure smell of the patchwork bedspread that had been dried on the washing line, frooshing around in the wind, clapping and wrapping itself together and now holding me tight. I snuggled deep down and fell asleep thinking about Charlie.