Come Not When I Am Dead Read online

  “maybe she just doesn’t like sex with you! Would you be upset if she was?”

  “that would be a bit hypocritical of me wouldn’t it? Considering our position”

  “hypocrisy be damned, what’s that got to do with emotion? Would you?”

  “No I wouldn’t be upset, just aware, and probably a bit relieved”

  “why relieved?”

  “because then I wouldn’t need to feel guilty.” That will give me something to think about later, but not now. We talk about how lots of women have sexual affairs because of the reassurance, they want to feel loved or wanted and I don’t know, I’ve no idea how he and his wife really get on.

  We hear Jo upstairs move her chair across the floor and go in to her kitchen and put the kettle on. The sound carries down and I hope it doesn’t carry up. I know Charlie will be going shortly and so I say “shall we do our next job soon? Shall we?”

  “You’re such a child Gussie” he says, all grown-up

  We have a ‘hit list’ now, people who’ve pissed us off in some way or another “shall we? When shall we? Tomorrow?”

  “I can’t tomorrow” and then I think that maybe he’s gone off the idea and I don’t want to push him, but I give it another try “the next day? Wednesday? Wednesday night?” He is funny I think as I look at him with his pretend adultness, there is another aspect to our relationship now. It’s very exciting, we are crusaders together, illegal crusaders and we have to trust each other thoroughly, we do trust each other thoroughly and I think it’s that that I like.

  We almost had another act of vandalism last night, but a more serious one. We met up in the woods at muddy corner for a shag at 10pm. I left my car on the track by an old ruined house and we walked down through the woods, deeper and darker and quieter and wilder. When we had finished our love making and were walking back to my car, we saw someone there, some dusty shape of humanness. We stopped where we were, and both, at the same time, ducked down in the undergrowth, bending our whole bodies into the nettles, we were deer and this was a predator. We knew who he was, a prat who was out shooting foxes with his night vision scope, all got up in totally over the top, brand new, camouflage gear. He was walking around and around my car, too slow, peering in and stepping back, peering in, too close. Up, down, high, low, anyway the wind blows. He will know it is my car, there are cigars on the front seat and cds on the dashboard, there are the complete tail feathers from my blue cockerel that I killed the other day and a little card made from one of my paintings. Anyone would know it was my car. Everyone knows me. We watched him from nettles and trees and heavy dark green “do you think he saw us?”

  Isn’t that the name of a dinosaur? I thought, but whispered back “I don’t know.”

  And the camouflage man stayed there, scratching his head, touching his lip, back bent, back straight, he didn’t walk away. We had to go, but we couldn’t move, we couldn’t risk him seeing us together, and what excuse could we give as to what we were we doing there together? And why should we? I suppose came in to my mind. And Charlie couldn’t go off and leave me on my own there, with the stupid gunman and his trigger happy finger and testosterone-filled air. I felt Charlie worrying that we’d been seen together “what shall we do?”

  “Go on the other side of the hedge, we’ll get him” What else could we do? My breath stops and begins again all too obviously to me. My eyes are set and we are out to kill, not be killed. We are the lions now. We crept out of cover, in control of everything within us and around us. We crept up the other side of the hedge, the slight movements of leaves we passed by were noisier than us. We walked in each others footsteps and our feet, our clothes made no sound. We would outwit the foxhunter we were survivors and he was just playing.

  Our eyes were hard and our wits sharpened. I am lethal, I’ve told you that before. My quiet thoughts dwelt on the man before us, a landless city man who likes to kill foxes, it is blood lust. He likes to kill rabbits too he says because they’re pests, (which of course they are) but if he knew that, he wouldn’t kill the foxes, because foxes love nothing better than a nice rabbit. He has no logic, there is decay running through his veins, he is septic. We will only knock him out I expect. And I imagine us hitting out at him with branches. It would take him by surprise and he wouldn’t know what was happening until he woke hours later. And, if he heard us? Well, he probably wouldn’t. And up we crept nearer and nearer, and picked up heavy fallen branches from over-head trees, we weaved and twisted them as we walked to get used to their motion, their fluidity through the air. Our aims would have to be certain and he had his back to us. He was still by my little red car, we were 12ft away from him, cat and mouse. I would swing at him first. We were 10ft away from him and he didn’t know we were there. It would be easy. We were 8ft away from him, menacing shadows with deathly intent, and then suddenly, without word to himself, he turned to face uphill and walked off. We breathed out, our bellies relaxed and we put down our sticks. Now we were quick, now we were certain, I didn’t have time to kiss him, I jumped in my car and free wheeled it down the track. By the light of the stars I found my way out.

  I love this, I love the night, I love the dark, I love the natural and unexpected risks. I love the 5am encounters with rutting stags. I love being hidden by a cloak, a huge blanket of velvet dark. It fills my whole body with fluid and tingling excitement, the realness of my life. It is full of beauty and dark and sunsets and quiet. “You are feral” says Charlie to me. I am survival I think to myself, as I creep in and out of shadows.

  And now the silence in my house. I’m in my bed and I’m trying to go to sleep. Coningsby’s just been up on the bed having her treats and sniffing away, she’s all blocked up again, poor darling. And now I rub my hands all over my pillow case and scissor my legs on my flannellete sheets, I gather up all the luxury in my limbs and coat myself in it, I am a catkin covered in silken fur. I am so happy. Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight and I fall asleep smiling and my right hand lingering between my thighs.

  I dreamt last night that a man was trying to kill Coningsby and trying to kill Jo. I saw him chasing them. He said that someone had to die. I told him he could have me instead. While he was turned away from me, getting ready to kill me, I picked up a heavy iron bar and hid it behind my back, and when he came towards me, I started bludgeoning him to death. Hitting, bashing, crashing down blows on him. It was lovely, the violent killing, crushing of him and I woke up happy because I was safe and Coningsby and Jo were too.

  Chapter 8

  We were vandals again last night. We burnt ‘Fuck off WilCOCKS’ brown and black in their perfectly manicured lawn, each letter a foot high, blazing flames shooting from a blow torch, keeping us warm and cosy on the chill night, and lighting up our little imp faces and wild white eyes. It may be childish, but I love it.

  And now I’m lying on top of my bed with Jo, on our tummy’s, my legs swinging in the air, we’re listening to ‘The Candymen’ on my cd player, a song called ‘Lonely Eyes’. The Major is standing on my head, his under feet warm and soft between his toes, he’s pulling my hair and Coningsby curls up on my pillow now, her tail pounding gently on the pillowcase, soft and lilac, and the Major looks on, wanting to peck it. Coningsby’s not looking so happy today and I’m keeping a close eye on her. And Percy phoned me today and I’ve said I’d meet him, but it’s easy to say you’ll do something when you don’t have to do it at that moment, and there’s plenty of time to change your mind. I don’t need to think about it for a few days anyway. And off it bobs, in a bottle, on the waves. “Percy would be a perfect husband for you Aunty Gussie” says Joseph “and I wouldn’t need to cast my eye around for potential husbands anymore”

  “but if he was my husband, I might need you to cast your net for lovers instead.”

  And he would be a perfect husband, if you can marry a man because he’s charming and wealthy and good looking and kind, but you don’t love him. And my train draws into the station and passes the platform without stoppi
ng. Charlie is my complication, my twisted gut and haunted mind and it infuriates me that I’m faithful to a man who’s married.

  I’m sad today. I asked Charlie if we could meet in some field later and make love, but he said that he was taking his wife out tonight. But why the hell would he take his wife out if they don’t get on? And I asked him and he said “to keep the peace.” I don’t understand. And I wonder, is it really as he says if they’re going out like that together? It goes round and round my head because I don’t understand. Jo is chatting to me and I’m only half listening, my tummy is in my mouth. And does he get on with her as well as he gets on with me? And will they drive along somewhere with their hands on each others knees like we do? And he won’t need me or think about me? And I just feel I shouldn’t be there, in his life, like a bloody lump in his throat. There is no place for me, here or there or anywhere. And my love is suddenly hate, but I’m so, so sad inside, it all feels broken in there. I hate him, and I don’t need him and what the hell am I doing with a married man, a married man who has no intention of becoming unmarried for me, who has no intention of doing anything for me at all. And I know that relationships are see-saws, I chase him, I call him, I am there and he knows it. But if I stopped calling him, if I played games with him, he would worry and he’d call me, he’d chase me, he would feel a hole beginning to open up in his life. But I can’t play games. I want him to appreciate me without my asking him to. And muddy boots march through rain puddles, and flowers get trampled under foot and no one bends down to examine them and know that they are far more beautiful than anything else they will ever see.

  God I feel so sorry for myself. I think I fell asleep after that, I woke up at about 3am still in my clothes, my eyes weary and wet as if I’d cried myself to sleep. Jo had drawn my curtains, the cd player was off and all the cats were on my bed, two on the pillows and two near my feet so I had to spread eagle around them. I sat up, and through the gap in the curtains saw the lights of some ship in the bay, heard something rustling along in the garden and lay down and went to sleep again.

  I took Charlie fishing again today, he is down stream of me, I am thinking about what he told me about the other night. He said that he suggested that they go out to some restaurant (as she kept going on about it) but in the end she didn’t want to go. There is something else though that he hasn’t told me, I know there is, and I think he’s either not very happy or he’s angry with me. I’ll ask him once we sit down.

  I am fishing from the bank here, I know I shouldn’t but I’m too small for this pool, all I can see now is grass, dense armies of grass, 400 seeds on each blade, brambles wrapped slinkily but threateningly through the grass and beech leaves and branches looking on and over. A Kingfisher flies past, fish in his mouth and another joins it and off they fly together, past me, squealing with delight they were. The sky is huge and one bird at a time flies past above me sideways flying, wings out and is gone. Rabbits shuffle about in the hedge and a trout jumps up high in the river. Push your belly out. There is a breeze fluttering the trees and it’s delicate, golden noise gets nearer and nearer to me and the breeze keeps the horse flies away. A crow flies past me now and shouts down at me and I squint and look up. The cattle are excited that I’m in the field and are slowly making their way over to me and I could swallow all of this, open my mouth and take it all in and take it all down and be content for ever more. I fish with my grandpa’s rods on my grandpa’s beat of the river. I have no phone reception and it’s lovely and more imaginary than I could imagine. This is ‘the owl pool’, last week I could stand in it, chest-high with roach head-butting my calves, my mind on nothing much but the golden glint of the surface. I feel a trout nip my fly. And I catch my first fish of the evening, a little brown trout, and instantly start singing ‘little brown jug’ to myself. I see Charlie coming upstream towards me, he is guiding himself with beech branches, which is very sensible of him, I would too if I could reach them “I’ve got my fly stuck” he calls out to me

  “as the bishop says to the actress” I said, and I went to help him, ‘here comes the cavalry’ I say in my head and once again I’m excited to be useful and reliable. I unhooked his fly from a branch and sorted his line out for him “how much are you enjoying this?” I ask him

  “very much” but his smile is brief and flickers away from me towards the sky, and if his smile had held my eyes, I know this wouldn’t have happened “well, you don’t look like you’re enjoying it. In fact, you look like a miserable turd, what the fuck is wrong with you?” and where did that come from? My super power is instant anger, boof and it’s there, boom and it’s gone. “Let’s sit down and I’ll tell you” he said and his body moving like a big long heavy sack he couldn’t carry, but was dragging behind him.

  And I thought oh bugger, what’s this then? What have I done? Is this the end of our relationship? Doesn’t he love me any more? How do I prepare myself for horribleness? And the river zig zagged away into the trees and the birds came crashing down into the water and the sun was hidden by dense black clouds and my legs were stuck in the ground and I couldn’t move. “She has found someone else, your lodger was right, and she wants a divorce” he said to me once we were sitting down. Fat-bodied in our waders, on the grass, rods behind us, looking out over the river.

  “How come, I mean, who is it? Why? How long has it been going on? Tell me” and of course he was trying to tell me but I am road runner, a million words an hour. His wife had found another man, a very wealthy man, with far more money than Charlie, a vacuous social butterfly who likes socialising and spending his money and obviously Charlie’s wife couldn’t resist him. So, after my instant relief and then shock and “well, blow me” I was tip toeingly excited, because that would mean that Charlie would be free too “doesn’t it! You’d be free too then, and we could be together, properly” and it is simple, it really is, it’s easy, but Charlie doesn’t think it’s easy and as I sat there watching him turn it all over in his mind, I hated him again, why can’t he make up his mind? Does he really love me? What has he ever done to show it? And what a lovely mother I would be to his children, and what a lovely wife I would be to Charlie and if he let me, how happy we could be together, for ever. It is simple. It is! It is! I am gasping for breath because I don’t understand why he’s not happy “well, I know it’s not what you wanted” I say “and I know you wanted to stay together for the children, but it’s not you that’s broken it up, she doesn’t know about us does she?”

  “No” he is snarling, he is cornered and I move away so he can escape if he wants, I let him see there is a way past me “well, that’s good,” why can’t he see that it’s all good?

  “it doesn’t matter who’s fault it is Augusta, the family will still be split up, that never happens in my family.”

  “Oh don’t be stupid, you make your own rules and follow the course of your own evolution, who gives a shit about your family and what they’ve done or never done. You should be the trail blazer for your own life. She wants a divorce, and that will most definitely mean the break up of your family, so, work around that and let’s make plans and try and make it all lovely for the children, and for you” and I get closer to him and stroke his temples with a silken smile on my face. “It could be very lovely you know, we could both be ever so happy” and as if I were poison, he jerks his whole body away from me “you say some very horrible things sometimes Gussie, really nasty things” he said. He flung himself off the bench in his anger, he turned away from my puzzled face and picked up his jacket, he looked like a stupid defenceless creature that’s walking towards gun fire. He looked like a victim, and he turned his furious face from me, scorching and dangerous. He turned and he went. He just left me there.

  And I can’t understand it, I feel desperately sorry for myself, and sorry for him too and sorry for his children, but there is a way to make it better and to make it better isn’t to dwell on what can’t be helped now. Sometimes I think he is the woman and I am the man. He must
love her, he must, or why wouldn’t he be even a little bit happy? Everything feels shitty at the moment. But I am the stoat who bites the stick, who jumps the board. I will not be cowed, I will not. And he’s stupid to say that I said horrible things, I didn’t, I was nice, this is the problem with humans, with relationships, with having to get on. I feel as if I want to roar, like a lion, roar my misery at people, but that I can’t because they don’t know that I’m an animal and I have no way of communicating with them. “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off” I shout after him and “I hope you drown” I say under my breath, and I really, really hope he does.

  When I got home I lay in bed drawing little pictures of Charlie drowning, engulfed in water, his hands reaching up for help. I drew pictures of him in his car crashing in to a tree and I wanted them to come true. I want him to die now. I hate him.

  Chapter 9

  I like an adventure. Sometimes. Joseph and I met on the far platform at Exeter St David’s for our train at 9.58am to London Paddington. It was sunny and the promise of heat, but today I don’t mind. I have on a pretty pale pink 1960’s dress with a belt with two big pearl droplets on the ends of it, it fits me like a glove. I had bought two diet cokes in the on-platform cafe, one for each of us, one said ‘Charlie’ the other said ‘handsome’. I started off the day with a carefree attitude and gave the ‘Charlie’ one to Joseph, who laughed. Joseph knows about Charlie now, but he’s the only one who does, well, the only one I’ve told.