Come Not When I Am Dead Read online

  The rug by the right hand side of my bed is creamy and hairy and comfortably raggedy, it is littered with cat treat wrappers, they’re scratchy beneath my feet and this morning there’s a neat cat pooh there too, quite dry, I pick it up with toilet paper and put it in a pot to take downstairs. Which one did that I wonder? I am considered today, quiet and sad, the dream has upset me. I am weary and tired and I need cheering and loving, I need wrapping up in light and fluffy love. I talk to myself calmly and softly. I go into grandma’s room and sit on her bed, look out of her wonderful white framed windows that take up a whole wall. I look past the horses in the field, down to the sea, I spread out my hands by my side and feel the mattress. My back is upright and my mouth goes straight, in a line and I say “Oh well” turn my back to the windows and leave the room. And then I call Charlie “If the universe is an inch wide” I say to him “how much do you love me?”

  “a mile” he says without hesitation, it is what I needed, sometimes he says just the right thing, sometimes he doesn’t. “Are you simpering Gussie?” he is pleased I think, but I know he has an image of me in his head, small and cute and blonde with a naughty face, and that’s what he likes, but it’s not me today, and I don’t want to be that person today. “I need love and devotion, I’m missing grandma, give me love” I am embarrassed to ask, I feel vulnerable, but if I don’t ask him I won’t get it. I do believe too in being direct and asking for something if you want it. I don’t pussy foot around, I like that about myself. I find a lot of people say what they don’t mean, don’t say what they do mean, that’s not right. I think, if you give yourself to someone on a plate, it’s honest, right from the beginning and they can never say you deceived them or played games with them. I don’t want anyone to ever play games with me. “I will devote myself to you later, but now I must devote myself to my patients, they can’t cure themselves! Remember you are much loved. Goodbye” It is too quick, it was too short. And he put down the phone before he heard me say “goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.” It all sounded a bit trite and once again, I am disappointed “kiss, kiss, kiss” I said to myself, wanting niceness but not feeling it. And I am left with a huge expanse of nothingness before me, I am left with no wind in my sails and a hole in the centre of me. I want to ring him back and say “love me to devotion, be physical, be passionate, shake me with emotions, shock me with the power of you” but I don’t. And I imagined him putting down his phone, not thinking about me again and with his beautiful, new-born face, in his sterile white coat going in to his waiting room and saying “Tiddles Jones” or something like that and walking away with a little dog following him. Fluffy and white, tripping along and asking to be loved, like I am. Pat me on the head, stroke my fur and love me.

  Anyway, it was almost enough, half enough to stir me from my mood, only half though.

  My breath draws in, my mouth is shut. I’m easily hurt and easily pleased. I’m quick to take offence. I’m easily appeased. I make snap decisions. I’m intolerant and I’m impatient. I am honest. I am dangerous. I think I am dangerous.

  I go downstairs happier and happier with each stair because I am on my own and because this is my uninterfered-with day, “I. Need. No. One” I say with each foot fall on each stair and then creak my way along old floor boards to the downstairs kitchen. I touch the walls as I go by, I touch the doors as I go by. I see no faults, nothing that needs replacing in this house. I unbolt the door, there are three bolts, but only one works and suddenly life is in stereo once more, life is in technicolour once more, life is bursting through the great big windows at me and I sigh and stretch, my arms wide and my fingers straining to touch the walls, and I look out at the ships in the bay. I can breathe easily.

  This is my house now, where once I was a child living with my grandma but now it is all mine and I still see her in the empty spaces, on her chair, by the stove in the kitchen, cutting flowers in the hall, her big black-handled flower scissors in her little hands and an oatmeal jumper on, always the same. I miss her. I don’t understand why she had to go. “But why did she have to die?” I said to Frank

  “We all have to die”

  “But why? I don’t understand. I know that there is good in the world and that even the bad things are often good in the end because you learn from them and evolve, but not grandma dying. I don’t see any good that’s come from her dying. I just miss her, I miss her so much”

  “But think of all those years you had with her Gussie, all that you learnt then. We all have to die” and Charlie had said

  “It’s another odd thing about you” because to him it’s just a fact of life, people die, but I think that’s because he’s never really loved. “Do you love me? Really love me?” I say to the sky. The gate squeals open and there are steps coming down the path, and I stop still, standing stone and listen, jaunty steps of soft shoes, and I know it’s the postman. The sash window laboursomely opens with much groaning noise and the outside seeps in “letters my darlin’ and a parcel, anything interesting? Tisn’t your birthday is it?” he looks at his finger nails “nice day” and now he leans on the open window-sill and waits to see if it’s anything exciting in the package. “It’s a new purse” I say “from ebay” and neither of us seem very interested in that as I lay it down on the worktop behind me. “Still miss your gran” he says to his knuckles, and I shrug and look like I might cry “She was a one wasn’t she? Always lively and up to something” he shifts his bag on his shoulder, “well, got work to do, you look after yourself maid” and he closes the window behind him, it closes too easily and every time I think it will slam and break. The noises of this house are never changing and I need them to stay like that, they’re family noises the soundtrack to my life. “Fuck” I say as I open the fridge, “f u ck” and take out the orange the milkman brought, push my thumb in the centre of the foil top and the edges lift up automatically, absent mindedly I throw it on the floor and take a few gulps of juice. I still haven’t decided what to do today, but I must get a move on, I hate wasting my time, I feel frustration growing. The postman will be feeling sorry for me, the milkman feels sorry for me, the log man feels sorry for me, I feel sorry for me, but I won’t cry because I don’t cry and because I don’t like other people crying. They say that crying heals you, it’s part of the healing process, but I can’t cry and I think that maybe I will get over this just as quickly or not as someone who cries, but the difference is that they make themselves a pain by their tears whereas I won’t let myself be vulnerable, and they think I am resilient, maybe I am.

  The juice is cold and sharp and delicious once it’s all gone down, but it disturbs me slightly that I drank it so swiftly, without the juice touching all the walls inside my body, without tasting it as much as I could, but I don’t want any more. I pick up 6 defrosted chicks from the bowl on the side, go outside and rip off two legs for the Major, “aaa” he cratches in thanks, his big black bead eyes turning slightly to brown in the moment they look at me. I give 4 chicks to the sparrowhawk pair, push them down the shoot in to their aviary and hear them swoop and take them away and then I take 2 down to Sergeant in his aviary at the bottom of the garden. He’s fat and silly and I see he’s had some sport of his own with a sparrow that must have flown in somehow, dust-coloured soft little chest-feathers all over his eating log, that’s better than a chick “you are clever” I say and look proudly at his little loved head. Only a few more months and we’ll be hunting again. He’s dropped another primary feather and I pick it up and put it under my bra strap for safe keeping. I leave him and let the hens out. One thing happens after another. One step before the other. I am talking to myself, I always talk to myself, I ask myself question after question. “You were born asking questions” grandma used to say “why?” I’d ask, and she’d laugh

  “there you go, you’re at it again.” The cock comes out first, big and blue and bold, feathers flying like a flag and I talk to him, my back bent towards him, and just as easily as I am gentle with him, I could pull his head off
if he deserves it. He runs out, he turns and he waits. The hens all stand in the doorway, nudging each other “you first, no you, no you” one jumps down and makes a run for it, but she’s not quick enough, he’s got her, he’s on her back, and really his love making is too rough and whilst he’s thrusting on top of her the others take the chance to run out, scatter and hide. I call them to me with mixed corn and old cake. I count and check the tortoises in the pen and then go back inside. It is 9am and I will have a cigar to get me in the mood for my day. Really I know this is a bad thing, it will make me feel like luxuriating all day and what I want is action. Maybe I just don’t feel like action. Oh piss, I just don’t feel right, I don’t feel motivated. I am frustrated, that’s what I am. I stop walking, I lie on my back on the grass where I am, my knees bent and my feet on the ground, my right hand holds the cigar and my left hand is stretched out playing with blades of silky green. “Life is lovely” I said to my nephew Douglas when we were talking about someone we both know who says to his children “life’s tough and it gets tougher”

  “It’s not though really, is it?”

  “yes, my life is lovely”

  “what about grandma” he said and it cut me and I felt all the sap seeping from my wound. I stand up and put one foot before the other purposefully, I am aware of everything. “I am aware of everything” I say out loud as I watch the grass succumb beneath my feet and watch the door handle turn in my hand. I will not take anything for granted, and ten little sparrows follow me closely, flying near my shoulders, up the garden.

  I am supposed to be painting a portrait of a horse, but I need to be concentrating. I need to be ‘in the moment’. I sit down in my studio, pick up my favourite brush to start the sad and doleful eye of the horse, put down my brush, look out of the window and go into a daze staring at the caterpillars on the nettle leaves. Feeling the dust in here. It’s no good, I know what will happen otherwise, I’ll make a mess of it and end up throwing it in the rayburn. There is a wet patch and mould where the roof has been leaking somewhere, probably for a while ignored by me and I must get uncle George to come and have a look at it. “Oh fuck,” I get a box of cigars out of my pocket, put them on the table, tantalising close to my paper and then pick up my brush again, rest my head against my left hand, feel cosy and start painting.

  Someone was recently telling me how stupid he thought hawks were, “if you put a chick on the ground just out of their reach” he said “when they’re on the perch, they’ll bate and bate at it all day. But if you cover the chick up, it suddenly isn’t there and they forget it.” I put a piece of paper over my cigars and I’m not temped any more. I am impressing calm on myself and it makes me laugh. I am very lucky, I know I am. I can do lots of things, and lots of things very well and I can take my choice of all the things that I like to do. And I don’t mean to boast, but I think everyone should be aware of what they’re good or bad at. And for ever I’ve dipped in and out of various things, but I’ve always painted and I suppose that’s what I do most of all, I suppose that I am an artist. And I don’t like labels or titles, I don’t like to say ‘artist’ because to me it conjures up greater than great excellence, but then I am a far better artist than a great many people who go under that label and people do need a tag to understand. And people generally don’t like to think that you can do more than one thing, so I’ll just say one thing to one person and all my other alter egos I hide under, certainly not a bushel, but I keep to myself.

  When I was little grandma had an El Greco painting in the snuggery. I could see shapes in the clouds. I saw a gangster car, with three gangsters in it, with gangster hats, at a tilt, sitting tight, and the rounded bonnet of the heavy black car. I made up a story, they had just done a killing and I knew their faces, their voices, their stories. And one day, when I was standing there for ever, staring at it, grandma’s friend Catherine came in and watched me. “Do you like that painting Gussie?”

  “yes, very much”

  “what do you like about it?”

  “I like the clouds”

  “do you think you could paint like that?” they all loved it that I would paint all day, big pictures of cats on tall thin white paper “well, not really, I don’t have paint brushes that thin” and I was very serious and that story was told again and again, with millions of others, my life with adults. But I can’t remember it myself and I feel just a little bit lost. I paint in watercolours, the paints have a life of their own. I wet the paper, and let it dry just a little so it is like blotting paper and then I touch it gently with a fine brush and that tiny sepia speck becomes something animate and it’s shape interests me and makes me put more down. I don’t like confines, I don’t like sharp lines, I don’t like barriers, I don’t like control. But I love freedom and lack of restraint, I love things that aren’t meant to be. There is no such thing as a mistake and there is no such thing as failure. “Politicians are bad,” says a friend of mine, but not quite so simply

  “they are, but we need them” I say

  “a state of anarchy would be perfect I think” or some such thing he said, but once again not so simply

  “a state of anarchy would be a dreadful thing and we would have misrule and oppression and the nasty, greedy, violent people would take over and it would be feudal and unfair. We need politicians, we need police”

  “do you really think that would happen?”

  “yes, people are horrible”

  “you’re right” he said “people are horrible.” And they are, pretty much, people have objectives and agendas, and are out for themselves. A little bit, or a lot. I don’t really have that much to do with anyone. My world is pretty much quiet and silent. I listen to the silence now and I hear my breathing, it is calm and it calms me. I paint and I sit and stare, I feel in my pockets for any left over sweets and there are none, but plenty of sour sugar which I lick off my finger, there are bits of grass there too. I think that tonight I won’t be tired, I just feel I’m not doing enough today, I feel a bit in a daze, this evening I will make a plan for tomorrow and exhaust myself. I leave my studio and go back to the house, to the kitchen. I make myself a late lunch of German salami, French pate and English pick and mix, I finish it off with some health, some blackcurrants picked from the bushes by the tortoise pen, and my day creeps by, surreptitiously.

  And then at 4pm the front door heaves open bringing with it a furious little breeze that rings the chimes. I know someone is in my house. “Hellooo, Aunty Gussie, hellooo, it’s me” and I run down the stairs as he shouts ‘coooeeee’ like grandma always did. It is my nephew Joseph’s voice breaking the silence of the house, but I see that he’s not on his own and instantly my right hand goes up to puff my hair up and away, and I back-kick my heavy leather clogs up the stairs and slow down into ‘find out’ mode, there is a strange rabbit in the burrow and the air is heavy with him. I am still silent and don’t want to destroy my own serenity by speaking, but words come, and they sound funny, my first words of the day to someone in real life make me realise how tired I am. “Hello kitten” Joseph says, hugging me “this is Martin” and the man is standing there pillar-like. I am all eyes, all scent and no voice. Why has Joseph brought a man that I don’t know to my house? and as I wonder and stare at him and he looks a little around, a little at me, a little down at the ground, I remember. I look at Joseph, all blonde hair and pale skin and sparkling eyes. I look towards the kitchen door and my first words come “Hello Martin” and I am a ship on the ocean and all the seas are calm around me and I ask him if he’d like to make his way to the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  A year ago, maybe more, I can’t remember, when I was lying on the rug in the sitting room and Joseph was dribbling with excitement over my foot because I had a splinter in my toe, we came up with a plan: He’d find me a suitable husband, one that would be kind and love me, one that I could respect but not fall wildly in love with (because that’s uncomfortable), one that would want to look after me and be wealthy enough to do so
and one that would not want to curtail my freedom. It sounded a good plan, it was perfect, but that was just in our heads and this was a real life person. “Joseph, is he the first of the presentable men?” I questioned him in Mrs Haversham’s room, around a quiet corner “he is number one?” And Joseph puts his hands up in an apologetic manner, and whispers “but I don’t actually think he’s going to be any good” Joseph’s face is as animated as mine “unfortunately he doesn’t have that much to say. But it’s OK, I told him we were popping in to see you on our way to Dartmouth so he doesn’t know he’s here to be inspected, I’ll just loose him there somehow” and it is as easy as that. Joseph talks very quickly, I talk very quickly, it is a family trait. Excitedness. The foreign visitors we used to have when I was little would say “I don’t understand you, you talk so quickly” and I would say “this freezer is full of chocolate eclairs” or some other too, too exciting thing. But now we are back to talking about the man. “Have you seen his shoes Joseph? His shoes are square at the end!” It is too awful to contemplate, having anything to do with a man with shoes like that, that would really annoy you about someone, I mean just look what it says about his taste, and I can’t think that I’d ever respect anyone who had appalling taste, although they wouldn’t necessarily need to have good taste. “I know, I know, I know, aren’t they disgusting? But I didn’t see them on the train” and we are both serious, but we are laughing and I need this lightness in my life just now. “Where did you get him anyway? and who is he? What is he?” we are talking at the same time, we are talking over each other, but we don’t miss a thing the other says, and we are looking up at the ceiling, and now we are looking at the big pastel picture I did of my cat Coningsby. She is sitting looking down a little hole and I’d written ‘I can wait all day if I have to’. And then I look at Joseph and he looks at me