Come Not When I Am Dead Page 9

  We ate a meal which was probably lovely but I ate it without really tasting it. It is strange being with another man, being alone with another man. It’s not a thrill as in something new for the sake of newness, but it is a thrill to meet someone new who seems so nice who you think could potentially interest you or add something to your life. I don’t want to waste my time with anyone. And I sit there and watch him talk to me, his mouth moving, lips a bloody penis pink, his teeth ridiculously perfect and strong-looking and I imagine him chewing grass. His shirt, one little clear pearl-like button open, the way he pushes his hair back with his hand, but it must be the memory of a ghostly, previous hair style he had, because his hair is too short to fall inconveniently in to his eyes and needs no pushing back. I listen to his words and know that they’re chosen carefully and I wonder what he would say if we had known each other for 1 year or 15 years. I note that he turns his mobile off when we sit down at the table, that he stands if I stand, that his shoes are good, his legs are straight, his back is broad and I do like him. He is definitely far better company than Percy. He is far more communicative than Charlie. This isn’t the way it was all meant to be though, but that’s not my fault. I think of Charlie, and for the first time I know that I’ve been let down by him. He is part of my nature, Charlie is, he has grown in to me like a deer’s hoof grown around wire, or a tree around binder twine, like something that is so different, but has become the same, like love and hate and socialism and capitalism, like black and white and hot and cold, he’s part of me, he’s my same atmosphere and I don’t know if I’m burning or I’m freezing. But this man is not Charlie. And all the flowers fall from my basket.

  We leave the restaurant and, as he closes his wallet and puts it back in his pocket, he asks me what else I’d like to do. I say I’d like to go back to my hotel. I am not suggestive and he is respectful. We will just see. And if he makes a silly move I will turn tail and run, with a mouthful of meadow grass between my teeth. He calls a taxi and we talk quietly with a little more reserve and I’m thinking, what will happen? What will happen? I don’t know, not yet. It is all slow motion and there’s a stream of muggy, polluted consciousness following me around, a song in my head ‘Sometimes I’m thinking, whatever did I do? Nights are always chilly in these days of you’. And Joseph won’t be back later and I know that whatever I want to happen, will happen, but I haven’t decided yet, I am up in the sky and he is down below. I see the top of his head and I see his feet falling on the pavement. I am not here again. And I am still thinking outside my bedroom door, I am still thinking inside my bedroom door.

  I let him kiss me and I melt into him, I let myself flood in to him and it makes me dizzy and he has to steady me. This is what I want. And something is whizzing and whizzing around me and I can’t see it or catch it and I don’t know what it is.

  He is a stag, he is a dog with a rag, he is most definitely a man and I am something naked on a lonely horizon, turned on beyond measure, running backwards and forward with nothing in sight, frantically looking for satisfaction. This is knowledge. I am water surrounding him, I am the sun ripening him, I am a cool breeze fanning him, I am a buzzard on a post too tantalisingly near him. But I don’t know if I am me. I don’t know if I can be me. I am someone to take home. I am someone to cherish and cosset, but it’s not all of me. I have left all of me at home. But he is warmth and he is fleeting and he is nature and I lose myself in him.

  Chapter 10

  I am back in Devon in my own dear little house but I feel like an intruder. I creep through quiet rooms like a thief as if they don’t belong to me and if I spoke, my voice would shock and shatter the silence. It smells sweet and musky, but I feel bad and dirty, it is too tidy I think as I move furtively around and then the spell is broken as Coningsby trips up to me with a gentle little quack. I love you back “I’m bad Coningsby” I say to her.

  I look at my phone and get Charlie’s number up but don’t ring it. He should call me. I am grimy after my train journey and have a shower, hot and brief, I pour baby oil all over my skin and smooth it in, I look at my body in the mirror opposite as I wash but I don’t feel quite as excited by it as I normally do. I will call him. I dab myself dry and run into the sitting room, naked and sit down on my towel. Poppenjoy jumps up to my lap, her claws slightly digging in to my thighs, her purr is instant, she has missed me. I stroke her head, her back and she blends in to me. Her fur soft and silken against my skin, she brushes me, she is all delicacy, a rabbit’s scut collecting pollen. I am glad to be home. When I am dry and dressed I go through to the kitchen and see Jo’s left a note for me and some home-baked scones on a plate on the kitchen table, some butter and raspberry jam. I am glad I am home where I am loved. My thoughts are still of London and there’s a train rushing through my head, keeping me on a fast journey. I sit down without thinking, and eat 4 scones thick with butter and a smear of red jam. I am a wolf. Then I run up the stairs to my bedroom, draw my curtains, give the wee catties some tuna treats, get in to bed and fall asleep as they all settle all around me and lick their messages of how much they’ve missed me and how glad they are that I’m home, and I fall into a beautiful, heavy, solid steel sleep.

  I wake up an hour later hearing the front door bang close and the chime chiming in the hall. My eyes heave open and then fall closed. I am thirsty and my mouth feels that it doesn’t quite belong to me. I am listening carefully and hear Jo taking off her shoes and creeping noisily upstairs. I imagine her, back bent, head down, toes first, floral wallpaper behind her shoulder and efag in her mouth. It is good to be home. She pushes my door open. It is good to be home. She comes in to my room, it is good to see her, and suddenly this strange spell is broken and I really am back home. She plonks herself on my bed, her hair is frizzing out all over her head and she’s got a brown tweed Italian jacket on that I haven’t seen before “how was London then?” all sunny smiles and bright eyes, puff, puff, puff. “It was rather gorgeous really” and I stretch my arms up towards the ceiling and smile a weary but happy smile “I’m glad to be home though” and then I tell her about Edward. It is good to tell someone something, and even though she’s shocked that I had sex on the first date, she’s glad that I’ve got someone, or potentially got someone. “And what about you Jo? Don’t you want someone?”

  “Nah. I don’t like sex, I’d rather put the bins out. I’ve got you, that’s far better than any man.”

  I stretch up out of my bed, feeling oddly refreshed and ridiculously happy. We go and play squash. I put on my little blue squash dress and Jo puts on a big skull t shirt and leggings and we go out together in her car which is far cleaner and tidier than mine. And in someone else’s car I always feel that I’m being looked after. My hands held together, on my knees and I am all of a sudden polite. “It’s a bloody brilliant game” she says to me on the court, wiping her snotty nose on her t shirt, which then hangs limp and wet and I smile at her, a big, open, encompassing warm smile that means ‘thank God I am myself here’. “Do you remember brother, that stainless morning? No, do you remember Jo when you did a smell in the courts and it really stank and then you blocked the door so that I couldn’t get out past you? And I grabbed you hard around the throat and you couldn’t breathe? I must say, that street-fighteryness really surprised and delighted me about myself”

  “You’re too skinhead” she says “it’s not right.”

  Later on, if you can imagine the cosy scene we were sitting by the fire in the sitting room. Jo was sitting on grandma’s chair, pushed a little back away from the heat. Raffle Buffle, Poppenjoy and Everingham were all curled up together in a soft bundle in their basket by the fire, I was sitting on the rug just behind them, Coningsby was spread out on the sofa behind me, a little to my left fast asleep and the Major was on one leg on the curtain rail. The only light we had was from the fire and our tones were just as hushed and as sleepy as the lazy flickers coming from the logs. When we reached a pleasant lull in our conversation we were jolted by “police her
e” called out from down the hall and after he’d been to get his hard backed chair from the dining room, Frank came in bringing breezes and brightness, waking us up. “Hello my dears” he said “I’ve come for a glass of sherry and an invigorating chat to get rid of the rubbish in my head”

  “we’re too sleepy for vigour” I said to him “but you can have some sherry and tell us about your horrible day” we are made almost horizontal by the heat. It is lovely to see Frank, it’s like the old days when Grumpy was still alive and whilst he sipped his sherry and settled himself down I said “tell us then.”

  “Oh just some nasty people to deal with today. Do you know it was so much easier in the old days, policing was. You could be a bit more physical that you can now” and he rubbed his hands together towards the fire. “Physical? What, like riding bicycles around the village?” I said and whilst Frank was saying “don’t be daft” Jo said

  “a bit of the rough stuff?”

  “you’ve got it” Frank said “not that that’s generally a good thing, but I was thinking about it today, some of these types only respond to a bit of what they know best. It’s all too bloody easy for them now.”

  “Frank, are you talking about police brutality?” I said, sitting up and suddenly a bit shocked or excited, or just awake. “It’s the only lesson they seem to understand. We’d give them a bit of a rough time in the cells and we’d soon get to the bottom of things. You can’t touch them now without them knowing their rights and reporting you”

  “Are you serious Frank?” because he does often make jokes that I tend to take literally, I am aware of that, so, you have to make sure. “I am my dear, we’d make short work of them in the old days, it’s a different matter now. I don’t think I’ll be that sorry when it comes to retiring”

  “well, you’re a sly devil I didn’t know you liked a bit of that. Do you really wish you could still ‘rough them up’? Did you really like that?”

  “Don’t be silly Gus, I didn’t like it, but it was effective, that’s all, there’s still a place for that sort of thing” he said and then Jo, who had been looking rather horrified all this time, yawned extravagantly and stood up and said “I’m off upstairs now. Goodnight. You’re too skinhead too” she says to Frank as she left the room.

  “Oof, she didn’t like you saying that”

  “What was that about?”

  “Nothing. Now Frank, tell me, were you grandma’s lover?”

  “what makes you say that out of the blue?”

  “you never answer my questions”

  “shouldn’t ask them then”

  “you are frustrating”

  “you want to know everything, you always thought too much” and as if in punishment for the rudeness to his mistress, The Major flew over and sat on Frank’s shoulder, then pulled at his ear and made it bleed, he fills my heart with fluttering sighs and loveliness does my little magpie. I have asked Frank again and again over this last year or two but he never tells me, but one day he may. He’s a funny man. Sometimes I question him for hours, shifting, always fidgeting, but always listening. He looks at me, puffs on his pipe and lets out a little laugh “funny you having this house” he says to me “I remember you in your nappies, but that’s not it. Your grandma managed this house, she was in control of it, but you, you are controlled by it. I’ve never thought about it like that before, but it’s true.”

  “Freak” I say “funny you say that though, I know what you mean, but it feels like part of me, like part of my soul or one of my bones. There’s a magic to this house isn’t there, like it breathes”

  “there you go, off on one again. You know, you should get yourself a husband”

  “don’t go on about that again, and what’s that got to do with this house and why does everyone go on?”

  “I know you” and he bangs his pipe on the chair arm “I look out for you and I keep an eye on you”

  “what on earth is that supposed to mean? You are weird Frankus”

  “just what I say, you need a nice, single man”

  Frank is odd sometimes, and he gave me a suspicion that he does know, well, obviously more than a suspicion, that he doesn’t approve, but if he does know, he doesn’t tell me and that makes it feel as if I want to tell him even more, because not to say feels like a lie. Feels like I’m a lie. I stretch my toes out towards the fire which I light every single day of the year. My toes wiggle the warmth around, my back is straight and my hands on the rug behind my back. “I would like a nice man” I say to the flames

  “what about my son?”

  “I don’t know your son, not anymore, what’s he up to nowadays?”

  “he’s coming here soon, you can ask him for yourself”

  “you’re a freak Frank, you never tell me anything.” I used to look at Frank’s son when we were younger and see if I could trace grandma’s features in his. I would see if I could find out if grandma had a bit of a sketchy past when he was born, but I came up with nothing. I don’t know how they would have palmed her child off on Frank’s wife anyway, but people do all sorts of things. Major is on his haunches by Frank’s feet now and there are three pussy cats entwined on the sofa. We talked of Jim, he teased me about the electric netting, he ate my chocolates and drank more sherry, and then he said “you know the vet, ‘Charles’!” and he said ‘Charles’ with an overtly ‘posh’ accent and I knew, just by that that he didn’t like him and that this was going to be horrible. “Yes?” and I keep looking at the flames and out of the corner of my right eye, I see two very observant brown eyes watching me “what do you think of this new business then?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, what new business?”

  “Come on, you must have heard about it! His wife and that bloody awful prat. Hey?” but he looks at me and I look at him and he can see that I know nothing about it “his wife doesn’t mind everyone knowing what she’s up to, so I’m not gossiping, and if you ask me, she’s been advertising it. Shame for the children though. What do you think of her?”

  “don’t know her really”

  “and him?” you are tricky Frank, I think

  “I like him, he’s a decent chap I think” but he looks darkly at me,

  “not so decent as can’t keep his temper, not so nice as is good to those around him, not so strong as goes off at the merest hint of trouble.”

  “Uh? What are you talking about?” I hate this sort of thing, I hate having to control my emotions, my facial expressions, my verbal outbursts, my shouting, screaming mind and my shaking body. And he told me that Charles and his awful wife had had a dreadful row, spitting and snarling at each other in the garden and pretty much everyone heard. Then later on he got in his car and just drove off, cancelled his appointments the next day, and apparently was rude to uncle George who’s decorating his surgery at the moment. And Frank looks at me and I look at Frank, and Frank’s eyes say you can tell me and my eyes say I will, but not yet. “You know that bloody great house they live in is in her name don’t you?” but I didn’t “I don’t think he’ll be in a very good position, financially speaking. But that woman’s a bitch, and that’s never a word I like saying about women, she’ll make things difficult for him and he knows it. I don’t think there’s much love lost there.”

  Don’t you? I wanted to say, but I just watched him talking and kept my mouth shut. “People rush in to these marriages, they reach a point in their lives where they think ‘about time I got married’ and they marry whoever they happen to be courting at the time. Can’t do it like that, needs a lot of thought marriage does” he says between puffs of his pipe. “Did you marry your wife before you met Grumps?”

  “what about Percy?” and he ignored me “he’s a good man, local, he’d suit you wouldn’t he? His Father was a rare one, makes me smile even now just thinking of him. So, what about him?”

  “He would be utterly perfect if I could love him. He has asked me.” I feel as if Frank has me by my tail and I’m trying to make my escape. I fee
l I’m running away when I should be asking for help. I feel I should be saying ‘what is it Frank? Why can’t I love him?’

  “I would like to, you know, I’d love to have children, I’d love to fill this house with children, and maybe one could control it!” and I smile

  “Percy wouldn’t suit, I know that. Now” and he changes the subject, he has tested me and he can be himself “how you getting on with Jo? I think that was a good move. She seems a very nice sort of person. She looking after you?”

  “She’s my lodger, not my nanny!” and we smile, then laugh and my heart fills with gladness because he’s here, he is reassurance, he is warmth and he is safety, but he makes me want to cry and hold on to him. He makes me feel that I need him, that I need someone to look after me. I don’t though. And he gets up to go “I do love you you know Frank” and he smiles. He stands up slowly, but straight, he is careful and he is considered and considerate. He pulls his body straight, limbs up and out, picks up his coat that he wears all weathers and goes out “dark as a bag out here” he says before he disappears into the night.

  He takes the calm with him, and the assurance I felt briefly in the room, it disappears under the door after him. I sit for a while long and think about all he said and I wonder about that tough side to him, it’s not something I’d ever thought about before, he’s always so gentle and I imagine two policemen holding a man up that Frank is pummelling in the belly, rather too vividly.

  I was heat tired then from the fire and decided to go to bed, I climb the stairs one at a time. And then I turn and sit on the sixth step up and face downstairs. My hand holding my mobile and I will ring Charlie. And the silence wraps itself around me and chills me, prodding me with accusations, throwing unease in my face, pushing me this way and that. And then, through the noise of my head I hear footsteps coming down the path and I think ‘those are Charlie’s footsteps’ and then I think they can’t be because he wouldn’t just turn up, and then I think how exciting it would be if he did, and what would I say? And why would he just turn up after leaving me like that? And I hold my breath and turn my head towards the door, waiting. It opens and it is him. He is standing big and beautiful in my doorway, slightly sheepish and I think that once I would have thought he doesn’t deserve me, but now maybe I don’t deserve him. I am sitting on this step, like a doll, boneless, with beans for a brain, looking lost and forgotten and he sees me right away and as he comes towards me, his step making no sound, he whispers “I’m sorry” to me, looking at me. It should be me who says that. And I am a tree, cut all around my trunk by a strimmer, and suddenly all my leaves fall from all my branches in one moment and I make an ‘uh’ sound, but no words, and I give him a diluted smile, and it’s not like in the films where we run in to each other’s arms and kiss passionately, that’s always so stupid. He is a deep pool in the still, dimpsy night and I am wandering past and what I need is water and I walk in, I don’t jump in. He takes a little while, he is all emotion, he is all senses, he is all everything that is careful and delicate and hesitant, he doesn’t want to break something that I feel I may have already broken. He comes towards me and puts his hands out for mine. I put my hands in his, and he raises me up and draws me near and kisses my hair with one love kiss as he holds me close. My nose squishes flat on his jacket as he hugs me, there is silence and then “where have you been?” just a question, not a fishwife rant.