Come Not When I Am Dead Read online

  “I don’t know Gussie” he looks hurt and troubled “I don’t want to ruin your life, I want you to be happy. If you’re not happy then you should tell me and, get someone else”

  “It’s not as easy as that though is it? Don’t worry, it will be OK, I’ll be OK, don’t think about it now, it’s fine, it’s just sometimes it’s worse than others” but in my head I’m screaming and throwing a plastic bottle full of water up against a wall until it smashes and bursts. I cuddle him and kiss his temples, then I lean forward and rest my bottom lip in the nook of his nose, above his nostril, it fits perfectly and I stay there for a moment. And in this position I think that I’m not tied to him, I am single really and if I want more, I should get more. I think about how many times we go through this and nothing ever changes. I think about how many times I have to remind him to appreciate me, appreciate what he has, and he does, but then he forgets. I don’t want to keep reminding him. I don’t want to beg for crumbs like a useless little dog under the table.

  I let him settle me between his knees and I have something to tell him, I change the subject and the clouds part and the sky above them is blue. “I have our next vandalism crusade. You know the ugly woman with the things on her face who’s been so nasty about Jim Johnson even though he let her have a vegetable patch on his land?”

  “I do”

  “let’s destroy her vegetable garden”

  “Oh Gussie” he says and his eyes look tired but expectant now. He really is very beautiful I think, I love the long and slender shape of his face and the way his hair highlights the depth of his eyes, I love the tufty bits of hair by his ears, dark brown and grey, and the soft check shirts that I choose for him. He looks soft and warm and silken as if a gentle heat’s rising from all over him. “She deserves to be taught a lesson. What do you think?”

  “when?”

  “tomorrow night”

  “OK” he says through lips of soft butter. Sometimes, when I’m very angry with someone for doing something horrible or unjust, I will take revenge. It’s not the sort of thing that you can tell people about. “They should be punished” I said to Charlie some short time ago “that sounds rather alarming, what do you mean ‘punished’?” and his little eyes looked frightened, no, not frightened, but wary as if he had just met a mad person and he was half turned, on the point of escape. “Taught a lesson” I said “they can’t go around doing such horrible things” and so, testing the waters first, I told Charlie, that sometimes, just sometimes I would creep out at night and let cattle into an anally manicured garden, or take specimen plants out of pots and bring them home. Or tip rotting fish over someone’s drive. “What would you do if you got caught?”

  “I wouldn’t, I make sure I can’t and I go in disguise”

  “like what?”

  “like wellies too big for me and lots of clothes under a too large boiler suit to make me look fat, and I always hide my hair” and his little eyes shot about in what for him was quick thinking. “You live in the moment” says Jo to me, says Charlie to me, says Frank to me. And Charlie saying ‘what if you got caught?’ is nothing to me, because I don’t think I can imagine horrible consequences, I am trying now, but I can’t because it’s not real.

  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.

  Chapter 6

  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 mul
titude 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.