Come Not When I Am Dead

by R. A. England

  Chapter 23

  I woke up this morning and lay in bed thinking, lying on my back and staring at the ceiling, far too hot in my duck feathers and wondering what to do about everything, and then thinking that I really don’t need to worry about doing anything and I should just ‘go with it’ whatever it is. Then I got out my book to read for a while and the first thing I read was… ‘As I sat gazing at my own real self, I could not understand how my imagination could ever have led me dreaming so far away from likelihood and truth; but as I wondered, I felt I had two natures within me, and the one discovered the other to be a fool.’

  And so I leapt out of bed, making sure not to disturb my kittens “I’ll be back in a minute” I called behind myself to them “stay there” and then I ran down to the kitchen, grabbed my mobile phone from my handbag and ran back up the stairs, two at a time. As I passed the mirror I saw a streak of streamlined flesh and bounced back to have a better look, that’s the thing about mirrors, you either like what you see or you don’t, and if you don’t it’s only because you haven’t reached your potential at that moment. And today I made an almighty effort not to get distracted by myself, and carried on running up the stairs. I cleared the room in three bounds and was back in bed with my furry family. “I’m going to telephone Charlie” I said to the kittens “and tell him how much I love him and how much I’ll always love him. But don’t worry, I’m aware of everything” and Raffle Buffle could have said but you always tell him that but he didn’t.

  “I love and adore you” I said to Charlie

  “that’s nice”

  “and I will always love and adore you”

  “I know you will” he said. And funny how such a tardy response banished love from my heart and sucked the wind out of my sails and suddenly I wanted to take it all back, but I couldn’t, because I’d just said it. “And do you want to say anything to me?” You don’t give presents to receive presents I thought as I waited in foot tapping silence. I wanted a warm running rivulet of whispered tenderness from him, but “you’re very lovely” was all I got

  “Oh, OK, see you later” and that’s what happened. I choked on his silence. “That was a bit rubbish wasn’t it?” I lean over and stroke Everingham’s head and whatever sadness I felt was softened by his fur. I don’t understand, maybe I’m getting it all confused, it’s not really love. But bugger me if I’m going to be brought down by it all today or ever anymore. Today will be action and money day. Tra la! I am dependable woman, I am going to have an exhibition in Hong Kong. I bound down the stairs, revoltingly high spirits and put my smelly old boiler suit on, friendly in it’s navy blue safeness. I wear bra and knickers and socks, skipping around the kitchen as I dress, turn a stumble into a dance move, tuck the trouser legs into my socks and put my work boots on. I slide my hands up the side of my body, happy in my workliness, get everything ready and set off.

  I stop off at the shop on the way, am polite to the man there who tries to chat me up and find myself talking nonsense to the women who work there and freaking them out, people are easily freaked, I forget that. I buy myself a mini pastie and some Belgian buns, but I eat the buns long before I get to the river and then eat the pastie without any thought or consciousness at all, I am a greedy pig. I have the blade on today and I’m going to crack the brambles, it’s bloody hard work and after two hours I have double blisters on my hands, I smile because I am value for money and then I sit on the bench and smoke a cigar. My cigars take me off somewhere else, to some perfect place that has no name or look or anything at all, except blank perfection. My head clears and I am there, suspended in pureness, I am very happy. It’s a funny thing, I think, here am I, clever and cultured, bright and energetic and all sorts of other things, but I am strimming for £10 an hour! And I love it. I love physical work, I just love physical.

  On the drive here there were men fixing the road and I think I’d like to do that, to work along side them (in silence) work hard and get paid for it. Or the man holding up the ‘stop/go’ sign, that’s all he has to do, and a little bit of talking on the walkie talkie, I could do that and be outside and watch birds fly past and watch the seasons slowly change. I could do all of those things, but maybe I’d only do them for a day or two, or there must be some reason why I haven’t or wouldn’t maybe? I don’t know. I do another hour of strimming, I’m singing to myself, la la-ing away in a jaunty manner and then get back in my car, hot and sweaty with sweat-wet hair and wonder if I’ll feel this uncomfortable all the way home, but after five minutes I’ve forgotten it. I’m listening to Booker T and the MGs and my head is spiralling along pschycadelically in time to it. I’m very happy on my own and maybe I always would be. And I don’t think I’ve ever craved human companionship, but I like it sometimes. I like Jo living in the house with me and I wonder if Charlie and I could have a silent relationship, would that be better? If we were just in each other’s company, just went to the river to fish, just went in to woods at night time and walked and held hands, just made love in silence and just looked at each other and I didn’t know that he couldn’t talk to me properly because he couldn’t talk at all. But I like the sound of his soft voice, pretending to be adult and I like his grunts as he makes love to me. Oh, I don’t know about all of that either. I don’t know much today.

  Jo isn’t in the house now, it is evening. I’m having a cigar in the sitting room and I put it on a coke can whilst I sent a text and in an instant The Major picked it up by the burning end and then dropped it straight away on the rug and burnt a hole in it, he’s a bad creature but I adore him. Everingham is following him around, he will pounce in a minute, oh, he’s just pounced now and the Major has just flown down the hall in the dark, dangerous thing, he will fly towards the light again in a minute where it’s safer.

  I think the cats are missing Jo, they are circling me like little fluffy sharks. Let me relax, the air in here is muggy and smoke-filled and the books are in soft focus through it and I am waiting for Charlie to text me back and come over. And I’m all excited for his visit. The tingling has risen and is waiting in my chest, tickling me with anticipation and expectation and in a minute I’ll stand up and put on some pretty underwear for him to take off me. I won’t mention his wife, his children, his divorce, I won’t mention the shooting, I will just love him and love being with him.

  I held Charlie to my bosom, his head resting there after we made love and even though we’d just made love, I kept feeding my nipple into his mouth and saying “suck it” and he does. I say ‘even though’ because when we’ve made love he’s not interested in anything much. We are calm and happy and we fit together perfectly, we are bones and skin, we are bark and tree and now I feel like the cream that has just been tipped out of his glass bottle. I stroke his hair and smooth his temples, he likes to be soothed and touched, it is the gentle in him. I am so happy with him here, in my bed, his virility lost inside me. “Hunting soon” I say to his closed eyes “Sergeant looks almost ready, he’s so beautiful, all mauve and blush” and I will not talk about anything that could be contentious. I have him in a sling around my neck, I am protecting him, my hand holding the back of his head and pushing brambles and nettles away from his skin. “When will you take him out and start training him then?” he looks at me with dying, silken eyes just opened and he is leaking quiet and calm and forgetfulness. I think he will remember this and put it in his treasure box, I would. “In the next few weeks I expect, he’s pretty much finished his moult, he looks gorgeous, I’m very excited.”

  “Did you hear about that dog they found in the river yesterday, on the moor?”

  “No! What dog? Was it dead?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid it was” he says looking at the clock “some old lady found it and called the police, who called the RSPCA, who called me” he has his ‘listen to me’ voice on, ‘I am a man to be respected’ voice. “It was another one used for fighting, it’s a sad old mess you know, apart from it’s being dead, they threw it into the river when it was a
live, but it was too weak to fight for it’s life. Those men make me sick” he is prickling and his hackles are rising. “That’s so horrible. It’s horrible. Who would do something like that? What sort of people? People are such bastards aren’t they? I hate them. Do you think it suffered very much?” I raise myself on my elbows and look at him, and Charlie told me about the dog and the other dogs he’s seen recently. He was very angry, huffing and puffing and blowing my house down. He does get very angry now and all is fierce in here. We are being fierce together. But still, I know I must keep him contained, in a little Tupperware box with the lid tightly shut and the air all pushed out. “You must keep this to yourself”

  “yes of course. I keep everything to myself”

  “I know you do, but the police do know who it is, we all do, but it’s proving it. It’s Mark Davies.”

  “Oh shit” I watch Charlie closely, with squinted eyes, he has shuffled up the bed and is sitting against the headboard, the duvet down below his nipples and his few chest hairs shining dark on his white skin, his little eyes looking scrunched and questioningly at me, there is such softness to his face and I am lost in it. “Do you remember him at primary school?” he said as if nothing had happened since, and instead of punching my forehead and saying “duh????” I said “yes of course, he was horrible even then. He looked like he had a moustache, even when he was 9, remember?” I am playing Charlie’s game, whatever game that is “he had an uncle at school too, who was two years younger than him. I remember he used to sell coloured sugar lumps for 5p each in the playground and he used to try and get me to call names at the boy with the brace on his back”

  “Yes, well, the police know it’s him, his name comes up again and again. Frank was telling me he’s got a lot of dogs at his house”

  “Frank?”

  “Yes, Frank, why?” Charlie is working up for annoyance, I am watching milk coming up to boil. “What was Frank like with you?”

  “As usual, why?” he is huffing again

  “What did Frank say about him?”

  “If you’re quiet for a moment, I’ll tell you.” That was rude, but I swallow my anger. “He brought the dog in.” And then I change the subject slightly, I slide the milk off the hot plate, I am being diplomatic but in my head I’m screaming at him fuck off, fuck off, fuck off you stupid prat “didn’t Mark Davies go to London or somewhere? I can’t ever remember seeing him around much later”

  “not London, but he did move somewhere, but he’s been back for about a year or so and that all ties in.” I only need to show him a pin and he would pop. “Horrible, horrible bastard he was, and horrible, horrible bastard whoever it is.” And later Charlie goes and the beautiful thing we had is wrapped up with nettles, I wish it was beautiful all the way through. Everingham is crying now outside Jo’s room.

  Charlie saw a peregrine today, just out of the village, chasing sea gulls, and a hobby yesterday down the lanes, I saw a musket half-heartedly chasing the Major, a barn owl in the garden, and a kestrel in the orchard. The skies are alive with young hawks and hopefulness. A sparrow flew in and out of Sergeant’s aviary, and he gave chase, then it flew back in again and he had it. The wild musket caught a robin just over my car whilst I was sitting in it having a cigar. And the Major brings out a sausage from nowhere and drops a rusty nail in Jo’s boot “he’s trying to kill me” she says “he keeps putting really sharp things in my boots, pointing up as well.” I like to think that she loves him, but I know she doesn’t really. I yawn and open my arms and all my creatures scurry over to me and nestle up close to my flesh, feathers and fur caress me, and we turn the light off and close our eyes in the starless sky.

  I walked down the track earlier to the orchard to have a cigar and do a bit of sketching, and in the shadows, beneath the trees I saw a little leveret, crouching, head tucked in and away and not moving, but breathing fast. I got closer thinking I would take it to the house and look after it, and then saw that it was a stone and what I thought was a breathing body was the light shining through the canopy of the trees, flickering on the surface. Things in my head are much nicer, I think than they really are.

  Chapter 24

  We are having breakfast in the kitchen, it is 10am and Jo is still in her pyjamas “Jo that really is quite disgusting you know, won’t you go and get dressed properly?”

  “Don’t go on” she doesn’t look up from her Cornflakes

  “but it is horrible, but I can’t insist can I?” I am pushing it.

  “Shut up. Do you really mind?” and she looks at me like an arsy teenager

  “yes of course” I want to say it just doesn’t suit the house, but that sounds stupid. It doesn’t suit me. I don’t approve of it. It’s the sort of thing you hear about slobby people doing, but you don’t know them. “But they’re so comfortable” and she looks wearily up at me again from her cornflakes “You don’t do casual do you?” and I think that’s meant to be an insult, or at least defence “we should go shopping for you. Save up your money and we’ll go.”

  “Alright, but shut up now. Look at this in the paper.” I strode over to her side of the table, stretching each leg before me as I walked, to use maximum muscles just to feel what it’s like. “What at?” I am leaning over her, my hair touching her shoulder

  “look at the state of that dog, it’s really sad, just left it to die by the side of the road. Look at it’s poor eyes, just look at the fucking state of it” her efag has come out of her mouth and she’s going to cry, and so I pat her on the back and look again at the paper over her shoulder. The dog was on the front page, mangled and tangled, and an eye that looks like it’s hanging out. The dog was too weak to move when they got to it and they’re looking for whoever is to blame “it really is horrible. I’ll ask Frank about it.” And I remembered lying in bed with Charlie’s soft face and long body, telling me about all this. “Ask Frank about what?” as the kitchen door opened and Frank walked in and both Jo and I screamed in shock and hit the table as we unintentionally stood up. Two big buffoons together, four fists banging the table at the same time. I am slow to see the smile on his face, because at first he was just an unexpected presence, not Frank. It is funny how different people look when you don’t expect to see them. “I didn’t hear the door”

  “it was open. Any tea Jo?” And Frank walks over to her first and puts his hand on her shoulder. Anyone would think he likes Jo better than me, I think, maybe he does, but I know he loves me more, but maybe that’s just because he’s always known me. It doesn’t matter, I’m just observing, but I think it does matter a little bit. “Why don’t you say ‘any tea Gussie?”

  “because I know Jo will look after me” he does love me. “Now, what were you going to ask me? Thank you dear” as Jo hands him a cup of tea and Frank sits at the table and helps himself to some cold chewy toast, and he glances up to the shelf above the table “remember your grandma used to have all those little butter portions, all in gold paper? I always think of her when I see them in hotels now, and that shelf there was full of silver teapots, not dust and odd plates.”

  “Oh God, stop moaning Frank, it’s actually quite tiresome and you’ll start Jo nagging me again. Tell us about the dog stuff” and I pushed the paper over to him “and tell Jo to go and put some proper clothes on.”

  “She’s alright as she is”

  “seeee!”

  “Ah, that’s a nasty business, those dogs”

  “and have you found out who left it there. Maybe some foreigners?”

  “We have some ideas” he says, ignoring or missing my snide remark.

  “Tell us Frank! We won’t say anything to anyone, will we Jo?” we want to be conspiratorial and we want inside information. “Come on, you can trust us” and I think Jo was going to say ‘Uncle Frank’. “Well, I shouldn’t really, but it’s common knowledge that there’s dog fighting going on around here.” I see movement out of the window and “look, the wild musket’s on the aviary again!”

  “Oh. Gussie, I
’m listening to Frank, shut up” but these things are important.

  “There has been dog fighting going on around here and we’re pretty sure it’s linked to this dumping of dogs, we will get them, I’m sure you’ll hear soon enough”

  “which means you know more than you’re saying”

  “I should hope so, I am the filth as you criminal class say”

  “I would never say that.”

  “Well, we’re pretty sure we know who the perpetrators are, but proving it at this stage is another matter. We’re all acting together on this, police, rspca, vets, it’s never a fast process” and we all seem to heavily sigh at the same time and then all gaze out of the window. The sun is yellow white on Frank’s hair and I put my hands in the shafts that pass over the table. “Are you two going to the County show next week? We’ll be there with the sniffer dogs.” He is eating more chewy toast, he’ll have hiccups in a minute. I love the idea of sniffer dogs, I love the power that Police have, those sudden flashing lights and sirens and pulling people over. I’d love to have that power, and I wonder if I’d be a good policewoman and I say to Frank “do you think I would be a good policewoman?”

  “Awful”

  “Why?”

  “Because you never do what you’re told and you’re in a dream half the time. Will you be going to the show?”

  “I expect so, will you come Jo?”

  “Yeah, why not, as long as you don’t embarrass me” and Jo and Frank both laugh as if they shared some secret. “Did I tell you about Joseph’s boyfriend and the gallery in Hong Kong?”

  “You did, bout time you made some money”

  “I keep telling her that” Jo removes her efag “I’ll end up buying this house off her if she doesn’t hurry up and make some money. But don’t worry, you can be my lodger, but the rent will go up, and no magpies!”