Come Not When I Am Dead Read online

  Joseph was wearing his stone coloured linen suit. We looked like we belonged together, with our blonde hair and bone structure. That is important to me. “Your eyes are bluer than mine though” as I stare at them

  “Your eyes are grey Aunty Gussie, I’d never noticed that before, that explains it” he said. We got in to our carriage and found our seats. We sat opposite each other across the table. I could smell India on the train. It was like an Indian morning, early, sun shining strongly through the clouds and we only get the feeling of strength, not heat. That stuffy, suffocated, exciting smell of an adventure, and that unutterable quietness and thoughts of things to come. Going on an adventure. When we got to Bristol someone sat next to me, no one sat next to Joseph although his seat was empty. This man sat next to me even though the seat was full of my bag and jacket. We pulled faces at each other, we would be climbing the walls. The man got out a laptop and started working. I looked furtively at what he was doing from the corner of my left eye and saw he was looking at his holiday snaps full of lots of people sitting at dining tables in restaurants eating and cheering. Joseph was watching me looking and mouthed at me

  “what’s he doing?”

  “holiday snaps” I mouthed back

  “Uh?”

  “holiday snaps”

  “Uh?” and so I got the vanity mirror out of my handbag, I angled the mirror away from me, towards the man’s computer and facing Joseph so he could see for himself. I had to lean right back in my seat, back, back, back, merge into the cushions, and still Joseph couldn’t see, he motioned which way to direct the mirror with a finger slightly and surreptitiously moving in front of his nose and my mirror moved in the direction he desired. But he still couldn’t see. We were laughing the more because we couldn’t laugh and couldn’t draw attention to ourselves. Horses outside, gypsy horses and caravans, thin looking cattle and sheep escaping through hedges for more grass. I got nearer and nearer the laptop, further and further from the window, concentrating on the view for Joseph and forgot about the man, forgot about the green blur beyond me.

  And then, out of my blue, resignedly, the man looked at me, and I looked slowly but extravagantly away, back out of the window, I could see two fallow deer now, shaded beneath a hedge. He looked at Joseph who stared at him in anticipation, not rudeness and then he turned his laptop around for Joseph to see his photos and we all burst out laughing. Stones being thrown in to a pond. “My holiday in China two weeks ago.” He didn’t seem to mind really. We chatted a little and Joseph told the man that he’d travelled extensively around China and that he spoke Cantonese, and the man went from thinking that we were vile grown-up children to something interesting and all the badness was rubbed away with not even a trace of what was there before. Joseph talked to the man and I went in to a daze. I looked out of the window and wondered if the grass smelt the same here, if the birds sounded the same here, if the soil would feel the same under my back and between my fingers. I saw a buzzard grabbing at a dead rabbit, hoop and away, dandelion heads fluffing all around him. And the constant noise of the train on the tracks, soft and then sharp, chorus and then crescendo, so constant it is silent. Everything was smooth now and in slow motion, everything was silent and my head was bursting with Charlie and home and everything here was skimming off past me. Whoop and it’s gone. “What shall we call this summer?” said Joseph “last summer was the summer of love. What shall this one be? Summer of excitement? Adventure? Knowledge?”

  “Summer of sin.”

  We got to London and went exploring, we went to Sloane Street, I’m hopeless in London, I have no idea where anything is, I get taxis everywhere and never look at a map so I have no idea where I’m going. And I won’t learn because it’s London, it’s not home, it’s not important.

  Sloane street is a funny place, everyone looks positively and externally moneyed. All the men have hairstyles and all the women have attitude. It is a fast place, full of fleeting shoulders and fading footsteps, but rather exciting, just for a day. There is so much hardness in London, everywhere is concrete and stone and solid and manmade. Walls and pavements and buildings. I am contained, there is no real way out, it is a labyrinth and nowhere to hide, no escape routes. I plan a murder in my head, I would be found here, I plan a highway robbing here, we would be found. It is not a real place, it is suffocating. We visited my favourite perfumery. I am a sybarite. We visited shoe shops and walked past ‘how to make your house look as if you have style and taste’ shops. Joseph watched men watch me. Men are more blatant in London than in Devon it seems. I feel I am being predated but I’m a weasel in the kitchen. I’ve told you before, I’m lethal.

  We walked up the street, we changed our minds and walked down the street, we strode around and about, colourful in colourless, and then there, on a corner, as if waiting for someone was a very lovely sky blue shirt, my sky, and at the top of the lovely sky blue shirt was a very lovely face that was looking intently at me, smiling at me. I only glanced at him, it was a brief accidental recognition of his looking at me, but that glance seemed to me a long time and all noise was halted and silence marked his eyes. I don’t stare, I’m not interested in other people stuffing my head with unnecessary nonsense, but his look entered me with every breath I took. Push it out, breathe out, but I can’t. He was lightning coming from nowhere, burning me. And maybe I just told you that to make myself feel better about what I did. Maybe I don’t want you to think I’m very bad. Maybe.

  A stag on the corner in the dimpsy light of an empty meadow, a delicious green mist behind him and just him standing alone. I was lost in time, remembering setting a trap for a lost hawk at 5am one October morning and out of the misty wet dark, I was aware of a closeness and I looked to my left and there, just a few feet from me was a magnificent red stag, just looking at me, just wondering what I was doing, not frightened, just wondering. He could have spoken to me and he would have said

  “morning! What are you up to?” and I would have said

  “I’m trying to catch a hawk with my home made stick traps” and then he just walked off. And when I told Charlie he said “you have to be very careful, they’re rutting at the moment, they can be really aggressive”

  “I know they are, but it was fine. It is always fine.” It was more than beautiful. ‘I sit here every day, looking at the sky, ever wondering why, I dream my dreams away and I’m living for today in my mind’s eye’.

  Joseph saw blue shirt man still looking at me as I still saw the stag and he spun around, 1000 miles an hour, “give him your number” his face is in my face, his eyes are wide and wild and his mouth is open, jester-style, his hands on my shoulders “NO!” I have stopped in my tracks, one step, two steps, third step too short and my foot behind kicks the one in front “yes”

  “no” and I try to look away, but he jerks me back

  “yes, summer of sin. Remember?”

  “Oh my God” I laughed, excited by doing something so unlike me, got my biro out of my swiss army knife, rummaged through torches, cigars, paper and baby oil, sex toys and rubbish in my handbag and I wrote my mobile number down on the inside of a cigar box. I walked over to him as he watched me and handed the paper to him and he put out his hand and took it, and then, because I am a human, I spoke “I’m sure this is a really dreadful thing to do, and I’ve never done anything like it before, but here is my number, I think I’d really like it if you called me” and I felt my cheeks go hot and knew I would be blushing. He looked at my face the whole time, he looked at my eyes as if he could see that I was telling the truth and that it mattered if I was telling the truth. He held my paper in his fingers. But he didn’t speak because he is a Stag. It is all slow motion. I’m short sighted, but he still looked handsome close up and his shirt still looked good. It all took a moment and then I was off, with Joseph, struck dumb by doing such a bold thing. But there is no excuse, I did it. I was a magpie scurrying off across the floor after pulling at one of the cat’s tails. I was a musket landing on a cold
cooked sausage. I was a balloon, escaped from a child’s hand and was floating fast to freedom. I was stamping all over Charlie and his useless, passionless dismissal of me.

  “You naughty, naughty thing, that’s just too, too exciting” and we dribbled with laughter, our bodies bent, our legs held together, held on tight to each other and jumped about, everything had changed and we were going to be bad. “So, does Mr handsome call you? Or think you’re a hooker?” Oh God, the thought of him thinking I was a hooker was just too revolting.

  We went to MacDonald’s for something to eat and I was disappointed because they didn’t have onion rings. I told Joseph about the time I went to MacDonald’s in New Delhi and a great big rat ran out from the table in front of us, but we just carried on eating, things are different there. I have seen hundreds of people die in India and it’s not shocking there. Nothing’s shocking, that was Perry Farrell wasn’t it? We eat, we rest, I kick off my shoes, we put down our bags, we try and work out what language the two old ladies sitting next to us are speaking and decide it’s Greek. We breathe out heavily, the weariness and the noise of London streets, we see people, millions of people through the windows, we eat what we have bought and we go out. A policeman is standing on the steps and as he sees us come towards the glass door, he very gallantly opens it for us and we swish out through it. It is as it should be, as it is in my head and I am enjoying myself. I check my phone now and then and then again and again, but Charlie hasn’t phoned. But I do not pollute our atmosphere to say ‘he hasn’t phoned’, I just know he hasn’t, I just know it.

  “What next? Cigars?” and we go looking for my cigars in London, we are two bad mice. We hold on tight, we scurry, we jump, we laugh we stride, we tuck our tails high up on our arms. We head for the hotel. We are sharing a twin room, we always do that on our adventures. We get to the hotel and go up to our room, room 177. And whilst I look out of the window Joseph grabs the shower first and then I go and unpack my clothes from my bag, but first of all check my phone again. Charlie still hasn’t phoned, but maybe he has and I check it again. He hasn’t. He won’t. It is his fault, whatever happens is his fault and he could have stopped me. And my phone rings. I jump, I smile, it is an unknown number. I stare at it, funny how you do that, I wouldn’t normally answer it, but this time, just in case, but I was sure it wouldn’t be, but the whooshing waves in my pelvic region told me that I’d love it if it were blue shirt man “hello” I said with gentle anticipation “hello, who’s this?”

  “It’s the man you so rashly gave your number to” his voice is lovely, it’s smooth and creamy and swishy and alive with ripples and tiny fish and pebbles falling from one plastic bucket to another. I sink down onto the bed. And I laugh, I don’t simper, it is different, even from the beginning “man I so rashly gave my number to, what is your name?”

  “Ed. Edward Harton. And yours?”

  “Gussie”

  “That’s a very….. unusual name” I laugh, or maybe it’s a simper that time

  “It’s short for Augusta” I sigh

  “Well, I like Gussie. Gussie, would you let me take you to dinner this evening or tomorrow evening? Or probably both!” his voice is measured and calm

  “I think I’d love to, but I’m only in London for a night”

  “Oh, where do you live?”

  “Devon”

  “how exotic!” he is teasing me “What part?”

  “Do you know Devon?”

  “I do”

  “South Devon”

  “Do you know a very nice farmer called Jim Johnson?”

  “How on earth do you know Jim of all people?” I am not measured or calm, I hear myself squealing, like a little farm pig running around a muddy paddock. It’s quite revolting. “I do a little rough shooting on his farm now and then” and that, I think, is meant to be. My insides have melted all over the floor. We talked for 14 minutes and 38 seconds of the beauty of Devon, of the alien excitingness of London. He’d seen my little white house from the bay and remembers seeing a bright red towel with a picture of a cat’s bottom on it hanging from the washing line. It is a small world. He suggests a time and a place and I agree with everything he suggests, and we get on so well, that, before he puts down the phone I say “You don’t have anyone for Joseph do you?”

  “Joseph?”

  “my nephew. He’ll be coming too” and at the other end I heard the well-bred faint murmur of disappointment “I look forward to seeing you both at 8pm.”

  “JOSEPH, QUICK, COME OUT, QUICKLY, QUICKLY” I am leaning against the bathroom door, my shoulder firm against it, shouting over the shower noise “why you filthy whore?” And I gabble, gabble, tripping over my words and now he comes out of the bathroom, red and wet and uncomfortable, wrapped in a towel with an angry mark on his left temple where he’s been squeezing a spot “leave your face”

  “stop it! I couldn’t help it.” But his spot has already disappeared from my head. We are sitting on our respective beds talking about blue shirt man, and Joseph asks me 100 questions, but every second one is “will you sleep with him?”

  “No, I haven’t even met him properly yet”

  “bet you do”

  “No”

  “why?”

  “stop it”

  “you’ve seen enough of him to give him your number”

  “you made me give him my number” but Joseph is serious

  “I can’t ever make you do anything freak, you always do exactly as you want. Will you sleep with him? Because I think you should, I would. And don’t tell me you’ve got a boyfriend, because you haven’t, Charlie is someone’s husband and it’s not going anywhere Aunty Gussie, if it was, it would have years ago.” I sit back and my eyes open wider and my mouth is set, I am staring at Joseph, not in anger, just in sad realisation. “Ohh, precious little kitten, I’m sorry, but you know it’s true.” But I wasn’t angry with him, just a bit sad that’s all and I went to have my bath, to do my hair to get ready for my next adventure, far away from Devon and Charlie. I am love, and my love is physical. But I will be me and I won’t get carried away again, just for fun, because this is my life.

  Joseph took me to the restaurant to meet Edward. Both of us in a state of high excitement, pushing each other along and squealing. Trip, trip, tripping along, tap tap of our shoes on the concrete, high skies and no goodbyes. “I feel dizzy with excitement” Joseph says “and it’s nothing to do with me”

  “do you feel that your head has exploded sideways and it’s sort of contained about 20ft all around you?”

  “No”

  “I do”

  “Shall I go in first to see Edward and say, ‘right, if you want to keep her, then just adore her, love her kittens, give her perfume and chocolate and TALK TO HER.’”

  Edward was on his own, standing outside the restaurant in a beautiful black cashmere coat, elegant and statuesque he looked. I wonder if he’s too handsome? He was looking out for me but I was coming the other way. I am a little bit frightened. Joseph held my hand and our world was silent, Joseph looked in my face and our world slid off somewhere else and something dropped me into place. And as in a dance, we slipped by each other and he left me “see you tomorrow whorington” and I breathed out and then there I was, fantastic in my silence, looking in to the face of this beautiful man. And I really am looking, penetratingly in his face, just to see. And he doesn’t speak, he is waiting and he is looking too. Then I smile and this circular, bubble of a world just disappears and the noise of cars and people, shouting and beeping and walking and living assaults my ears and I know I am here.

  I was reserved with Edward, I couldn’t help it it’s just the way I am sometimes. I am the new sheep, too scared to come to the bucket. I am standing in the middle of the field, all ways open to me, and I want to come, but I will not yet. And little by little I will move closer, but if you make one silly and sudden movement, I will turn on my back legs, my front legs momentarily leaving the ground and I will be off and we wi
ll have to start again. I was reserved, but not for long, and then it melted away and bit by bit I became interested and happy and exuberant and then I was fizzing inside. We had been wondering, Joseph and I, sitting on our beds earlier, wondering what Edward did for a living, Joseph said “banker”

  “stockbroker”

  “engineer”

  “architect” but it was only his blue shirt that made us think of any of those things, he could be a wrestler or a dancer, a shop keeper or a salesman. But he was a soldier. I think I like that best.

  He is on leave, visiting his sister in London, he was waiting for her when I pounced on him earlier. “What do you like to do with your time Gussie?” as he shook out his napkin, crisp and white, making shapes in the air and I thought that was far lovelier than ‘so, what do you do for a living?’ because that’s not necessarily what you like to do, and that’s the important thing and I reeled off a list of loves. I was probably too exuberant, I probably laughed too much, I was maybe too friendly, and I didn’t know him, not really, but I suddenly felt happy. And talking about the things I liked to do made me happier and more animated, and I came to life before I knew it. I shot up to the ceiling like a bullet, I opened up and out and then I floated back down. “I like to read, and paint and be outside with my kittens. I like the cold weather and stomping about in the rain smoking cigars. I like lying on a rug, on my back, staring at the ceiling. I like going in to a cold, cold sea with all my clothes and shoes on and lolloping around on my inflatable dolphin. I like exciting hunts in the cold weather with my hawks. I like silent stalking after deer. I like standing in a river, being head butted by roach and pushed around by water swishing all around me and watching rising, silver trout in the dimpsy light. Those are some of the things I like doing” and he laughs

  “and do all those things bring in an income?” and then I was disappointed because he’d ruined it. But then he said that he’d like to do all those things with me too, and for a moment I thought that I might let him. Am I not real? Do I not understand real?