Come Not When I Am Dead

by R. A. England

“No” and I turned a look on her which said ‘shut up’ but she didn’t see it, or ignored it.

  “Tell me what? What have you got to tell me?” and Frank sank down on his chair, rubbing his hands towards the flames “tell Grandpa Frank.”

  “Tell him Gussie, it’s fucking disgusting. Sorry Frank. Gussie tell him” and a story told in intimate dark shadows and contained air is different when the door opens bringing a fresh atmosphere and new ears. “You wouldn’t want to hear it, it’s not very nice. Oh Frank, don’t be weird. It’s just a horrible story, in the past, it can’t do any good telling you”

  “you let me be the judge of that.”

  “Go on, tell him Gussie, or I will. Why should you keep something like that a secret? That’s how men get away with that sort of thing, women are just too embarrassed to tell. It’s fucking disgusting. Sorry Frank”

  “Jo, sometimes I think you over-step the mark. It’s my story and you have no right to tell it at all.”

  “I’m not going to beg darling, but if it’s horrible and it’s upset you I think you should tell your old Frank.”

  I told Frank how I used to have a boyfriend called Richard and he lived in a shared house with three or four other chaps. One day I went round to see him and he wasn’t there, none of them were there except Mark. “Come up and listen to music” Mark said “Richard won’t be long.” So, I went up to his room on the top floor to listen to music with him. When I walked through the door he locked it and as I turned around to see what that sound was, he took the key out of the lock and put it in his pocket and he said to me “you’re not leaving this room until you give me a blow job.” Frank was looking down at the floor all this time, between his knees and then he looked up at me, I cannot measure him. “I remember that stupid boyfriend of yours, Richard, always stoned, you wasted your time with him, but I think you used to smoke that stuff too didn’t you? And this Mark must have been Mark Davies then?”

  “Yes, it was Mark Davies, shall I carry on?” I told Frank that I thought Mark was joking. I hoped he was joking. “Don’t be horrible” I said to Mark, pretending to laugh and trying not to show that I was frightened but he didn’t smile or laugh or put the key back and unlock the door, but he moved towards me. “I’m not joking Gussie. You’re not leaving this room until you suck me off.” And I mumbled that phrase, crude in front of gentleness. I told Frank how you sum the situation up, you measure his strength and bulk against yours, you can see in his eye that he’s serious, and you know you’re going to get hurt, you try to get out and he pushes you back. He was ugly but his ugliness never bothered me until that moment and suddenly he was very ugly. I tried again to get past him, but he pushed me firmly into the corner of the room. “You’re not leaving” he said and I knew I wasn’t. And I heard myself pleading, but not in vulnerability, in forced bravery and from the window to my left I saw how high up I was from the pavement. He pushed me tight against the wall, all quiet in that room and people walking about outside happy and I knew that if I tried to get past him he would hit me. You can see all that, you can feel all that and you can feel your own smallness and feebleness. And I tried to get past him again, but he pushed me so hard that it hurt, and he got his penis out. “Suck it” he said, I was crying, but that didn’t stop him. “Shut up and suck it” he said and he forced it into my mouth. I can feel it now, scraping past my teeth. And when I had done it, he smiled, he put himself back in his trousers and he opened the door “get lost then” he said and I ran from the room and the house. Spitting, spitting, spitting, rub, rub, rubbing my mouth. “You know that’s rape don’t you love?” said Frank

  “I know it’s violation, I didn’t know it was rape, no”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake Gussie, of course it’s rape, isn’t it disgusting Frank? That shouldn’t go unpunished should it?” there is no stopping Jo, she is a dog barking at squirrels, but Frank is a cat, silent and unseen. “I’ve just seen him”

  “have you? Where?” I know what’s coming

  “Just passed him down by the bridge, he had his rod with him. Excuse me my dears I have to go.”

  “Where are you going?” I said but I knew

  “I’m just going to have a word with him” Frank said as he got up off his chair, and Jo and I clambering out of our seats to stop him, falling over our tired legs “don’t Frank” Jo said, or I said. “Don’t Frank, it happened years ago, It’s OK now. It doesn’t matter now.” But I knew it was inevitable, I knew that whatever happened to Mark Davies, he would deserve it. And as he left the house, Frank pushed my hand gently off his arm and patted it as it fell “it always matters” and he went to his car, Jo following him and me feeling strangely ashamed, not of what happened but because of what Frank said, it does always matter. When she came back Jo said “he’s going to beat that bloke up”

  “I know.”

  “He got on the radio straight away to get someone to meet him at the bridge. Shall we go too? Just to stop it?”

  “No. That’s your fault Jo, whatever happens now is your fault.” But I knew it was mine. “Well, he’s had it coming a long time” said Jo.

  “When I was in New York years ago I saw these posters everywhere, they were horrible, it was a pile of dead cats and it said ‘what makes a serial killer? Practice, practice, practice’”

  “What did you say that for?”

  “I don’t know. Well, I do know, because if he did that to me, he’s probably done much worse things to other people”.

  Edward texted me this evening at long last, just an address and asking me to forward his things there, no explanation, no love, no hate, no kisses but I could feel his repulsion in every word, and it was funny because when I saw his name on the text I was so happy that he was OK, then I read it and was so angry with him, for not speaking to me and being so fucking uncommunicative and not giving me a chance to explain myself, or to lie to him I suppose I mean and then I wished that Charlie had killed him. I sat on the lavatory wondering what to write to him, and in the end just said I would send the stuff and I did put kisses because I couldn’t do anything else really, but they probably revolted him.

  Chapter 20

  I am striding across the fields on an illegal. The wind is hurling the landscape at me now. The clouds above me are racing across the sky, overlapping and furiously nudging each other out of the way in their eagerness to form time, their frustration to keep up with the sun. And the sun is coming up, up, up, too fast and putting everything to shame, winning the game.

  I remember when I was little, that feeling of frustration, wanting to do things I wouldn’t be allowed to do. Having to be neat and tidy sometimes when I was a tomboy, but always, at the same time, that deep respect and love for my grandma. Even as a child I was good at enjoying myself but keeping in mind respect for her, or her friends, but then they didn’t make it difficult for me. But sometimes, she couldn’t keep up with me, not quite. She was open minded, but I think I shocked her on occasions. Her head would go on to one side like an owl and she would smile a very sweet smile which meant do as you think fit and I did. And she wouldn’t let me have boyfriends in the bedroom when I was younger, but I would sneak them into the chalet and she knew, but we didn’t say.

  I remember photos of my mother and father and them not really meaning much to me, I don’t suppose it would have been possible to love them as much as I loved Grumps. But still, I would trace my likeness through theirs and linger at the dressing room looking glass with the wonky silver hand mirror in my right hand to see my profile. Who did I look like? “She has her mother’s eyelids” Bunty said when I was reading quietly by the fire “Well, as long as she doesn’t have her temper, she’ll be alright” said Herbert “or her lack of virtue” said Bunty and I didn’t know what that meant then and when I did know, and I remembered it, it was too late to ask because grandma was dead. There would be swiftly spoken words, silent as a dragging wing as I came into a room and then sad and tender looks focused on me. There were rooms and rooms and ro
oms of old people looking out for me, wrapping me too heavily, too tightly in love. I can’t breathe. Tins and tins of travel sweets glooping down my throat, assaulting my ears with their tinniness. Cars and cars of travel rugs, itchy and suffocating. Pubs and pubs of sherry, dark and sticky, where I would have to hide behind an old velvet curtain.

  I would be paraded in front of love and consideration. I would be admired and tested. I would be treated and I would have to have patience. And I never grew up spoilt, well, I don’t think I’m spoilt. Grandma’s friends became my aunts and my uncles and everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew me as I ran barefoot through the village and the shopkeepers would know what she wanted before I opened my mouth. Someone would catch the dog before he killed another seagull and no one minded that she drove the wrong way down a one way street. And grandma died and I didn’t think that would ever happen and we all sat in the hospital room with her, watching her for days before she went. And they all looked after me, as much as I would let them. They worried because there was no money in the will and they all told me that I was in their wills. But it didn’t make sense and I am lost in the past, I am cosseted by ghosts and memories. I am frozen in time. Oh fuck, is this grief? I don’t know. Will this all be alien to me in two years? I don’t know.

  I think I need some lightness in my life, some zingy lemon freshness in my life. Some squiggly lines of excitement. I think too much about Charlie and that’s no good, I keep remembering this because I am not Charlie, I need myself to be the first person in my head. I will make a conscious effort to think about me and only me and not about dead men in a ditch killed with my gun from my property. Love affairs should be happy, shouldn’t they? “Love affairs should be happy shouldn’t they?” I say to Jo

  “What?” and I said it again

  “why? Are you going to have a love affair?”

  “They just should, shouldn’t they?”

  “yes”

  “I knew they should and I want a happy love affair, one that suits me and is right and is balanced and soft and bubbly and light and fluffy, and well, just perfect. I want to be intrigued by someone. I want to be impressed by someone. I want to be inspired by someone. And I want this someone to come bearing gifts of utter loveliness. But I don’t think he exists Jo.”

  “So, what are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m going to go down to the garden in my bikini and lie soaking up the sun by the palm tree, and then I’m going to will myself a happy relationship.” Jo removed her efag “why you want one at all beats me” she said as I kicked off my clogs and stepped into gravel and dust “I thought you would have given up on all that malarkey.”

  I went through the patio doors in my white bikini with my hair loose so the sun would touch it, it becomes almost white in the summer, and it’s rubbish what they say about collars and cuffs, because my pubes are mid brown colour, and Charlie’s hair is black, but his pubes are quite gingery. I had an old straw mat under my arm that had been hanging around in the shed for years and when I opened it up, a congregation of earwigs all tumbled out. I tip toe, foot light, hold tight, down the garden to the palm tree. Step on a crack, break your back, step on a line, break your spine, step on a thorn, bend down and pull it out. I put my mat down and lie on my back facing the sun. Come to me. I am going to try to be lazy. I close my eyes knowing that if I sat up and opened them I would see a hazy golden shine and through that, the whole of the bay, I could grab it all in my arms and hold it tight to myself, keep it close, keep it smooth, keep it safe. My kittens come one by one and lie by my side, under my arms, between my legs and then, I fell asleep. I dreamt that Charlie was a stranger to me, although we still had our past together. In my dream I was standing on the top of a riverside cliff of great big boulders and I was watching Charlie climb around the stones lower down, but he didn’t have much of a ledge to climb on and I was waiting for him to slip and fall in the river. I knew that if he did fall in, there would be no way to save him. And then in slow motion, he fell, his body spiralling like a cartwheel, deep down, round and round to rough waters, caught in a pool and he was shouting to me to help him, but I knew that if I tried to help him out he might pull me in and so I decided the best thing to do was to kill him. I got a big rock and threw it at his head, to put him out of his misery, to stop him suffering and to drown him. And then I woke up shaking and guilty.

  A plane passed furiously over my head and then an angry sparrow flew out of the palm tree and I looked around for beauty and reassurance and there is a clump of daisies near my right hand, they are the most beautiful flowers I think. There are sixteen blades of broken grass five inches from my eyes, wide and thin, bent and bruised. And I let my hand drift up into the air and pretend that it’s a butterfly and pretend that I’m nice. But I’m still shaken by the dream and I feel like crying and then as I sit up to steady myself I hear the rustle of the dusty old ivy against the back black gate and Frank’s dark old coat coming through it and somebody else behind him. And then from the house comes Jo, efag in her mouth and her hair frizzing around her head like an uncharacteristic halo, carrying a tray of drinks. She puts the tray down on the patio table with determination whilst I silently watch from my position of guilt and building fury. She is ‘playing mother’ and says “up you get Gusset.” I really don’t like it when she calls me that and she throws a tunic at me which hits me in the face and a little white pearl button in the eye. I am too dangerous today to treat with such scant regard. I am still in my dream, I am feeling calculating and worried about myself. And I watch the figures by the table softly speaking, picking up glasses and the man next to Frank is vaguely familiar through my short-sighted eyes. Their words are mumbled and soft and a little breeze lifts the palm and shakes the leaves gently against the trunk and a spider falls to my shoulder. The younger man picks up a glass and in my dull sleepy mind, he really is somehow familiar as the same warm breeze moves the hair from my face and my tunic falls into place around my body. I look just to see what his shoes are like and they’re not square toed, so that’s good. But I know I know him and they were all chatting together and it felt too cosy a scene for me to interrupt. And I felt that stupid fury building up again, bubbling up my body to my clenched lips. I am here I wanted to say. It is my house and my garden and I am here and if it wasn’t my garden you would none of you be here, so include me, because I hadn’t seen any of them even look towards me and then in my bloody mindedness I sneaked over to the table and picked up a glass of lemonade then sloped off . “Where are you slinking off to?” said the rogue policeman, spinning around a little too quickly for a man of his age. “It’s too noisy. Would you care if I slinked off Frank?” it is disgusting, this need for love that I have. “Come off it darling, ‘course I would”

  “I’m not feeling social”

  “I can see that. Now come and say hello to Toby though won’t you darling?” and he put his dear arm, soft and warm around my shoulders. Of course he is Frank’s son, of course I know him, of course I remember him, I am shedding my prickles and they are moulting all over the path.

  After I’d been charmingly polite to Toby and we were all sitting down together at the table Frank said “did you hear anything suspicious m’dear, the other night? Monday?” and he holds out his right hand for me to take, to bring me near, to take care of me, that is love. “No. Why? What do you mean, suspicious?”

  “Well, there’s been a spate of robberies, Monday night it was, seems they followed the farms along this way, they went to….”

  “What do you mean ‘they’? who are ‘they’?”

  “well, seems there was a gang of them, foreign boys we think, Eastern European. So, they went to Stoneman’s and took a truck, then the Tucker’s and took a trailer then you would have thought they’d come here as it was on their route, so if you had nothing going missing you’re very lucky. Then after here they went down to old Barker and took a quad bike” and he smacks his forehead with the palm of his hand “very bloody clever
that is. They found Stoneman’s truck burnt out over that way, and the trailer just left there in a ditch and they must have ridden the quad onto another trailer I’m thinking and then hot footed it back to wherever they came from. We’ll be looking out for them next time though” and he banged his empty glass down on the hard table.

  “So, they went on stealing stuff after mine? I mean, if they came to mine and couldn’t find anything they carried on and got other stuff?”

  “Yes dear, that’s what I said. What you looking so happy about?”

  “Just glad I wasn’t burgled” He looks at me, he knows me those brown eyes tell me

  “they wouldn’t want to take anything from your barns anyway would they? What have you got in there?” he is on the wrong track

  “cheeky, they could have taken my car”

  “no one would want to take your car, it’s fucking disgusting” but I ignore Jo and say “there’s just logs in the barn and a broken ride-on and not much else” I am laughing, tears long gone and the sun is shining right in my eyes but it’s beautiful, I am sweaty but I love it and a delicious surge of great murky depth swishes up like a rocket from my crotch to my mouth and almost chokes me with sexual excitement “and the bodies of her murdered lovers” And why did she say that?

  “JO! Why did you say that? What are you talking about?” I am talking too fast but they are all laughing. “Have you murdered many lovers?” Toby leans across the table to ask me, he has very blue eyes, not at all like his father’s, not at all like grandma’s forget-me-not eyes, and big, quite hairy hands, I like big hands I decide and watch them, combined together, leave the table, fall to the table, shifted to perfect connectivity with the table, no gap, no barrier. Toby is interested in me, I can tell, he’s looking into me, not at me, he is measured, I am still a specimen apparently. He would be a good father if I want children came out of nowhere into my head. I wonder if that’s sex or sense talking.