Come Not When I Am Dead Read online

“No, Gussie, like Augusta”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude” but that was rude and instead of feeling insulted, I felt sorry for her, that’s odd. And as I walk to the sitting room I know she is summing me up and probably thinking that I’m not so nice. I sit down with my back to the window and motion to a chair for her, this is my house, my dear little house caressing itself about my body. I’m in charge and I don’t actually want anyone here, this is probably just a waste of time I think and Coningsby steps over the threshold, takes a meaningful look at Jo and then leaps onto my lap and stares and stares as the clock tick, tick, ticks. There is a fine drizzle of fuzziness in the room as we stare in to space and then bounce back to her face. What do you think Coningsby? I am thinking as Jo flops, plops down and the chair isn’t to her taste and so she stands up and walks to the sofa, where with sideways swishing air she seats herself, her bag by her side, her arms more open than they could be in a chair. And Coningsby looks at me and then settles herself down elegantly with her back to Jo and her paws on my tummy.

  Her manners are not mine. I think she is a woman of luxurious habits rather than energetic ones. And I’m slightly startled that she moved anyway, this is an interview. I wouldn’t have done that. There is a bough of the holly tree bouncing around outside the window and every time it does I see the odd lack of leaves on one spot and wonder what it is. It is a monkey astride a see-saw. It is not. “Is this your house?” and my head starts buzzing from side to side trying to find the pivotal point “yes”

  “did you buy it?”

  “No, I inherited it”

  “who did you inherit it from?” I look at her shoes, they’re boots, they’re quite sensible, but I think she doesn’t have her own physical identity yet. “My grandma, you’re very nosey” and it just came out, but then she is, and then I realise that I don’t mind, and it’s stupid to be like this, silent and judging and building a huge wall between us. I see congress tart crumbs on the floor and wonder about the rat in my car, I know it’s a rat now because I saw fresh droppings this morning. It’s funny, no it’s not, it’s disgusting. I mustn’t tell her, she’ll be horrified and I don’t want to horrify her, I want it all just and equal “oh sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude” and I am aware of her again, she is here in my room and this is real life it is not a daydream. Her voice is Midlands, Birmingham I think “I was just interested, I’m sorry” and she does look sorry, she looks like she’s trying too hard now. Don’t try, just be you, I am thinking but instead I say “I don’t mind, what else do you want to know?” and I laugh, a silly laugh really because it means nothing and Coningsby purrs through the golden cream of her head. “You’re sure you don’t mind?” and she carries on before I have time to answer “well, so your grandma died? When was that?”

  “over a year ago”

  “I’m sorry” she said and she did look sorry, “did you live here with her then”

  “I grew up with her, my parents died in a car crash when I was a baby”

  “fucking hell” she said puffing frantically on her efag, phoo, phoo, phoo “that must have been awful. You really don’t mind me asking?” but before I had time to answer, almost before she had finished the last word, she began the next. “How did you all cope with that? Your grandma must have been really nice”

  “that doesn’t follow, but yes, she was adorable” and then, because I couldn’t help it, I told her about grandma, I told her how after she died, I found a letter in her bedroom addressed to me, it was on her chest of drawers, as I picked it up in my right hand I caught sight of myself in the mirror and the bed behind me. “It was a shocking, exciting thing to find, I didn’t want to open it at first.” I told her how I held it really tight, so I wouldn’t drop it or lose it and took it down in to the kitchen and rang Frank. I told her about Frank, a policeman, and a sort of honoury grandpa to me and grandma’s best friend. “Frank said he’d come over and be with me whilst I opened it, but then I just couldn’t wait any longer and I ripped it open. I told Jo that I was expecting a big long letter, maybe buried treasure or an old vendetta or something, but all it said was ‘don’t have any wild parties when I’m gone. Love Grumps xxx’

  “That’s all it said” I told her. And I told her that when I was a little girl I always thought that proof of her madness or excitingness was that it took her 6 times to pass her driving test, I mean other adults passed it first time. But after I’d failed my 6th test, she sent me a text and it said ‘ha ha! beaten you’. I am talking too much, I am talking too quickly, and I can’t help it “she was very funny.” I had got carried away and was speaking with too much excitement to someone I didn’t even know. I have to try to remember to curb that, but Jo looks interested “she sounds brilliant, I would have liked to have known her. Did she used to drive a pale blue old Daf around by any chance?

  I was driving around here one time and this old lady was coming towards me driving the wrong way down a one way street, and all I did was wind down my window and say ‘this is a one way street’ and she called out to me, all posh, “I know, I live here” she must have thought I was a tourist I suppose with my accent.”

  “She hated tourists making the roads busy in the summer time, she couldn’t do what she liked then!” but my potential lodger has finished with that subject and is looking at me “I like your hair”

  “Thank you. What is Jo short for?”

  “Just Jo. And was all the furniture hers? It’s really nice and old fashioned, it feels like a time warp in here, I feel we could be in an Agatha Christie novel, know what I mean?” It doesn’t need an answer, I look around at the room and see it with a short-sighted, fresh eye, all sorts of things cobbled together by any one of us over the years. It’s an assortment of practical, make do and inheritance pieces, nothing matches and nothing looks spectacular. There are piles of my papers everywhere, there are a few ‘illustrated war’ magazines from WW2 that I’m collecting for Douglas my nephew, and there are lots of very dead flowers in vases. Grandma always had flowers in the house, beautiful, fresh and perfectly arranged. “Would you like a drink? Sorry, I always forget to ask”

  “tea would be nice” and I get up, I hold Coningsby to me and then put her back down, soft and warm on the seat with no lap, kiss her back and she stays there, looking up at me with one quizzical eye. And then, without asking, Jo follows me through to the kitchen. My eyebrows rise and my eyes widen. She tries to help and pick up the kettle from the stove “what’s wrong with your kettle?” she says “I can’t seem to pick it up” her head is bent forward, she still has that funny fag thing in and out of her mouth and a little leather Barbour handbag on her arm. “It’s stuck there, you won’t move it, I’ll use this one” and she looks at the stuck kettle as if it will tell her what’s wrong with it, but it doesn’t and so she turns her back on it and faces me “I don’t have any milk” I say “would you like cordial instead?”

  “Cordial? I say ‘pop’”

  “yes, but it is cordial, or diet coke?” and she looks around the kitchen and laughs again

  “coke would be nice, I’ll do it”

  “No, I’ll do it” I say, I am still standing, she is still standing and I wonder how long it will be until we are more comfortable together, or if we do sit down whether there’ll still be this little barrier which I expect I’m creating. And why do I always think everything’s my fault? It’s as if she’s in another bubble, another bubble to mine, and we’re rolling around the kitchen, sometimes touching, often passing each other by, sharing the same physical space but in totally different worlds. I think she would be nice to live with “do you work Jo? What do you do” and I’m trying to be sensible and business-like, but I’m distracted and in my head I’m saying ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’ There’s an egg in the fruit bowl and a bolt on the floor, it doesn’t matter, but it’s not the way I would like it to be. She won’t like the cat food on the work top, and the cat tongue marks in the butter. There’s an over-flowing bin and the calendar o
n the wrong month. I feel like jumping up now or squealing to the ceiling, I’m relieved of my decorum, it doesn’t matter, I don’t care. “Well, I used to be a nurse, but I didn’t really like that that much. I’m a trader, you know, money. On the internet” her eyes are looking all around her as she speaks and sometimes at me. “I’ve been doing that for a few years, it does really well” she stops talking and puffs long and noisily “and I can do it wherever I am, it suits me” she puffs again and pulls up a chair “you should do it” she says without knowing anything about me or my character. I think we’re different enough to get on.

  We chatter away for an hour or so, I offer her some lunch which she wolfs down with gusto and appreciation and then I ask her if she’d like to come and live here. It just sort of came out. She makes me feel that I’m lovely and gracious, she makes me feel appreciated. And as she talks to me and is so unguarded I know she speaks her mind and that she is a woman of truth, and she reacts to things too, she doesn’t clam up like Charlie does, she doesn’t make me feel like a bully if I say something that she doesn’t agree with. And then, in my unguarded exuberance I heard myself say “well, if you’d like to come and live here, I’d love it” and suddenly I knew that I’d be upset if she didn’t want to.

  Chapter 5

  Coningsby and I are sitting on the back door step and I’m smoking a cigar. We just saw a sad old, hunched-up rabbit with myxomatosis over by the compost heap, I stamped on it’s poor old pus-ridden head to put it out of it’s misery, nasty that is, horrible to see it back again. And tomorrow will delight the shepherd so the sky says, but it’s also heavy with piled dark grey clouds, layers and layers of them. The birds are singing tra, la, la-ing away, the bedtime serenade. And the sheep in the fields around me baaing reassurance to each other through mouths full of grass. It’s rude to talk with your mouth full. And here comes the Major to see what I’m up to, and all I’m up to is this. He shouts “Oi” at me

  “Oi yourself” I call back to him. I am here on my own, listening to the late evening noises and watching the light fade through a musty palate of dusty colours, dimmed by dirty water. I wish that grandma was in the sitting room waiting for me by the fire, with her sherry glass in her hand and her feet up on her stool, her cheeks soft as blotting paper. But Coningsby and I are cosy and warm and soft and she is wise and my friend and companion and comfort. I finish my cigar and we go back in to the house, sit back in grandma’s chair and I stretch my legs out and look at the ceiling, the spread-out beige-coloured stained patch near the door, reaching further out of it’s corner every time I look. I make the room a little tidier, pushing stools under tables with my foot. I rub briefly at the jam stain on the wall with my sleeve. The house has become gradually messier, but it’s a comfortable mess that I like, it is my lair I think as I lie down and feel tiny crumbs of cat litter beneath my head.

  There is no Jo noise upstairs, she’s gone off somewhere for a couple of days. She has only been here a week or so and already I would say that I’m quite ridiculously fond of her. It’s nice to have the house to myself again though I think as I listen to the silence, and tonight Charlie is coming for the whole night, and an electric current runs through my body, wiggling it’s way dramatically all over the place at the thought of it.

  I am thinking, without any specific thoughts, how it will be perfect tonight, there is nothing in my head but the warm expectation of perfection.

  Poppenjoy is resting behind my head now and Raffle Buffle is yowling at something outside in the garden from the safety of the sitting room. I love the oddly shaped darlingness of this house, I love the feel of it and it is more home than anything I could ever imagine in it’s whispered comfort. I slide off my chair and lie on the floor on my back, I open my legs and my arms and I move about a bit like a maggot, my fingers in the rug, just feeling it all, I feel everything. Then I realise that I’m not wearing the dress that I meant to wear and that I should re-tie my hair up, there’s Himalayan balsam sap in it from strimming. I run upstairs shaking my head as I go, enjoying the excitement and watching the sap fall on to the stairs as I race up, two stairs at a time. I did my hair, changed my dress, looked in the mirror and thought you have reached your potential this evening, you look very beautiful and very you. I went and chose a cigar and got back down on the floor. I like being able to smoke in the house now, grandma never liked that, ‘Fag Ash Lil’ she would call me. The Major has been nesting on the arm of a chair, but he suddenly flies across the room, picks up the Zippo and flies off to the kitchen with it. I jump up and chase him and get it back. I am ready too early and now, with a little empty time on my hands, I start thinking about Charlie, and when something begins to annoy me about him I say ‘cheese’ because then I start thinking about cheese and why people like it so much and why I don’t that much and what cheese I prefer and why and before I know it I am distracted. And you can only sweep things under the carpet for so long, and then they start to show.

  “She’s away for the night” he said to the room, over at the corner, at the light shade, but not at me, and he sat down in grandma’s chair he always takes the best chair I think “and taken the children with her. Come over here” he says and pats his knees as if I were a dog. I feel I am being bossed, he’s just trying to be nice I suppose, but he is thoughtless, I feel as if he’s ordering me around. I don’t like it. Sometimes, and even though I’d been looking forward to seeing him all day, I am churlish. I didn’t sit between his knees, I knelt on the floor near him, facing him, my hands on my knees and said “I hate hiding about and you being paranoid and secretive. Sometimes I’d just rather not see you at all I think. It’s horrible you having a wife and family and me just having a bit of you! Sometimes! It’s bloody crap.” And my upset turned to aggression, I don’t want to be aggressive, I just feel I have to protect myself. But I had no idea I was this angry and I feel my fury build and I can’t contain it, I can’t even try. “Come on Gussie, don’t waste the time we do have together with arguing, I know it’s not perfect, but we do very well don’t we? We have been like this for how many years now? 4? 5? Come and give me a kiss” he wants it all his way. I want to love him, I want to cover him in kisses, I want him to fall at my feet and tell me how much he loves me, cuddle me and tickle me and make me laugh and hold me tight like a squirrel in a jacket to stop it escaping. I want it all to be lovely and perfect, but instead I say “why on earth did you marry your wife? She’s really boring, she’s not at all good looking, she’s not interesting or sparky, she’s not the sort of person any man would marry for love” and his face is darkening “she’s the sort of person someone would marry for duty maybe, or because it fitted with someone’s plan. So, why did you marry her?.” I pause, pretending I am giving him a chance and look at him, I am waiting for a reply, I am spoiling for a fight, but he is quiet. I can’t stop this “why?” I am staring at his face, I am snarling. He is shuffling and looking thundersome and I thought he’ll go now, well, good, I want him to go, this is a stupid relationship, loving someone you can’t have. But instead, he stood up and he pulled me close to him, he pulled my head to his shoulder, his hands covering my ears, I cannot hear and he breathed in to my hair, he pressed his arms about my shoulders and he laughed “come on, let’s not waste any more time, come and be lovely now.” I could say that the wind is taken out of my sails, but I know that this is my chance to be nice and I must take it. I do want to be happy. There is so much to be said, but I feel I’m shouting in a hurricane. I am a dandelion head in the wind. I am magazine pages being burnt in the open air, fluttering gently off the fire, and nothing much changes. I go through this every now and then, utter, utter frustration because I want more, and then I think, ‘do I really?’ and then it doesn’t matter so much because he is lovely and beautiful and sweet and kind, and because he looks new-born and because we are elementally the same. “I do try you know” he says “I want to see you as much as I can, and we do pretty well don’t we?” My anger is quick and then it is gone, my
body is weak for love or lust of him. “I’m sorry” I say, and I really am “I’m sorry for losing my temper and being horrible, it’s only because I love you so much and it’s only because I want to see you more. And it is stupid you know, you being married to her, it’s just, stupid”

  “let’s not go on about that again now.” And that is how we never talk about it properly

  “well, I won’t, but it is stupid. Charlie, can’t we ever be together? I know about the children, but worse things happen, look, my parents both died for heavens sake. If you and your wife don’t even get on it would surely be better for the children if you had another wife that you loved? Wouldn’t it?” I feel I am whining, I am a dog in the dark standing over it’s dead master, I am lost and without direction and all ways are open to me because I am alone. Love me, love me, tell me how important I am to you, tell me you’d do anything for me, love me so much you explode I’m thinking. “My children are more important to me than anything” bang! first punch in the face, I am a boxer losing a match “I can’t do anything to hurt them or make their lives miserable, and getting a divorce would hurt them more than either of us would know, you know that.” But I don’t know that. He is being calm and quiet and trying to be gentle, but I think he is being stupid. I mutter something about not doing me much harm, my parents both dying “but you’re different Gussie, you’re strong and you’re not like anybody else. I don’t know how it would affect my children and I’m not going to experiment.” It’s an easy excuse to say someone’s ‘different’, it all seems too inexplicable and remote, it’s a conversation I know that’s not worth having, I know how it will end, but I do carry on all the same, I can try. “It’s not just that” I am holding my breath and willing myself not to cry, I hear a tremor in my voice “I would love a baby you know. I know it’s all a bit predictable I suppose, but I do, I want us to have just a couple of little Charlies and Gussies running around us. I want my own children now, I keep thinking about it, it takes my breath away this wanting. And you can’t give me children because you’ve, well, you can’t have children any more. So, what do I do?”