Come Not When I Am Dead

by R. A. England

  “That’s not at all funny Joan” and it did hurt, that did hurt, it felt inappropriate and I left the room, chink, chink went my keys in my pocket and £6.50 in coins. I’m not quite happy with all of that.

  I can see a deer, a red deer, it’s just come out of the trees at the bottom of this field, I have my binoculars ready, she is head down, grazing as she walks, with flowing, yet stemmed walk. And today the wild juvenile musket was on Sergeant’s aviary roof again, they just hung out together and I stood at the garden gate watching them. They didn’t hear me because of the wind. The house martins are doing a strange and wild dance today, they are more boisterous, more noisomely active than they have been this season and maybe this is the last waltz before they head off for the winter. The wild musket is back again and there goes Major, swooping in to attack him and the musket is off like a shot. I don’t know if a musket would seriously go for a magpie, I hope not, that’s not a sight I’d like to see, and a month or so ago two wild magpies attacked him and he screamed like a baby not knowing what to do as they went for him on both sides, but I saved him. Gabriel sent another puzzle in the post today for the Major and a note asking me to get a Jay. He sent a bracelet too that he found in his house, it’s very pretty and I put it on, all shiny and jangling and the Major comes straight over and tries to pull it off my wrist. On the news a few weeks ago was a report that Magpies didn’t like shiny things and were frightened of new things. But that’s rubbish, the Major loves anything shiny and bright, loves pink things and is intrigued by anything, everything new and often snatches without thought. And before you say that he’s a tame magpie, when I shimmy up trees to look in wild magpie nests I see little collections of rings from the tops of cans and other shiny bits and bobs. So, they can bugger off with their stupid out-of-the-window research.

  Autumn is coming, a change in the weather, a change in everything, and as I drove off today the leaves tumbled in abundance from the trees, dancing down to the ground, a congregation of leaves leaving the church. And Sergeant comes quicker to the food I put in his aviary, I’ll take him out very soon. I ring Charlie “how’s my handsome dragoon?”

  “Handsome.”

  “Shall I see you later on? Can we?”

  “I will try, but I’m not sure”

  “why?”

  “if I can I will” and I hear the beginning of exasperation in his voice

  “but you’re a man, you can do anything, you’re a man and an adult, just come.”

  “And you’re a child. It’s not as easy as that Gussie.”

  “Yes it is” and I hear another sigh from him. This will end in tears if I don’t change the subject and play by his rules again. Maybe, maybe I would be happier without a boyfriend, maybe I’d be happier without expectation, or maybe just another boyfriend, one that loves me so much he’d do anything for me, drop anything for me. He came around later, but not for long and I felt that it was a bit of a duty. He was distracted and clock watching and I didn’t want him there then. I was getting kindling ready for the rayburn and Charlie emptied his pockets of paper into the log basket “here you are, there’s enough paper there to start a fire.”

  “Charlie, do you think maybe I can see you later?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m taking my children out”

  “where?”

  “I don’t know yet, maybe for a meal” and he had that stupid, floaty tone of voice again that he has when he does know, but he’s just pretending he doesn’t. “Why don’t you ever take me out for a meal?”

  “Because we’d be seen. Gussie, why are you being so exasperating? What day of your cycle is it?”

  “Don’t be so bloody rude and stupid, it’s got bugger all to do with my cycle. If you’re trying to piss me off you’re going about it the right way. We could go to North Devon, or Somerset or I don’t know, but it doesn’t have to be around here”

  “well, we’ll see”

  “which means ‘no’”

  “no it doesn’t.”

  “I think maybe I should have a boyfriend that I can be with in public if I like, or do normal things with and not hide and be shifty with”

  “that sounds like a threat”

  “it’s not” but I am ungracious.

  When he’d gone I stayed on my knees in a fury and lit the rayburn I took all his papers out of the log basket and threw them onto the already burning tortoise paper, and as they left my hand I saw his writing ‘sorry’ and it’s not because I’m snooping, I wouldn’t snoop, but I pulled it quickly out. Over and over again on the paper he’d been trying to write a letter. Just bits of letter, then crossed out and little bits added, but each one said he was sorry, words galloping one after the other, barging in to my head, that he couldn’t go on like this anymore, that he wasn’t happy and he didn’t want to hurt me. My heart slipped slowly down my body, through my feet to the floor and I was shaking so much that it couldn’t get back in. And why couldn’t he have said it to me? Why? When did he write it and why hasn’t he said anything? I turned the paper over and saw it was written on a bank letter, over and around and above and below and on the other side. And the date of the letter was July last year. Is that when he was planning to ditch me but didn’t? And then sometimes he tells me things about his wife “she’s always in one mood or another” he said “so I need to pick my time carefully when I want to say something”

  “do you do that to me? Because that’s disgustingly dishonest, to be thinking of something, to have it in your head but not to tell her, but to know that you will when the time is right. Do you do that to me? Am I sometimes unaware of something potentially important to us because you’re waiting for the right moment?”

  “No, it’s not like that with us is it?”

  “why?”

  “Because we’re straight forward with each other.”

  And then still on the floor, puzzled and stunned, he rang me and when I answered the phone, with fury and hate building high, high, high, he had no reception and all I heard were broken sounds and then nothing and I grabbed the phone by the case and smashed it down on the tiles on the floor and smashed and smashed it until it was in pieces, scattered around the room.

  And that night I dreamt…. There was a grass snake in the house, it was weak and another grass snake had brought it in through the cat flap from the garden, as prey. The strong snake made a bubble on the weak one’s belly and injected poison in to it with it’s fangs. I watched it, getting closer and closer and then the strong grass snake went to attack me and I scurried back. Then I heard a noise and I looked outside to see what it was and saw a nasty man sneaking around. He looked like someone from one of the Monkees episodes, with his hair too long and he was wearing a big turtle neck jumper. I called out to him and he turned and came back, it would be a confrontation. He said to me “I want to talk to you, go and put something more suitable on,” he was arrogant and nasty and I let him in to the house and strangely submissive, ran upstairs to change. I thought I would record our conversation and looked frantically around my bedroom for a Dictaphone, but when I found one, a big screen showed up on my bedroom wall saying that it was full. I changed my dress and then thought I’d have a quick look at the grass snake, I picked it up and it still had the poison fluid on it’s belly and some of it got in to a cut I had on my finger, I knew I wouldn’t be able to talk to the nasty man if I was weak with poison, I had to sort it out and find someone to help. I picked up my navy blue Barbour jacket and put it on and put my hands in the pockets and I heard tiny squeaks, I looked in the pockets and there were two, dead, day old chicks in there that I’d forgotten since last season, they should smell, but instead they were alive and had grown and needed food desperately. Charlie was there and I called him and asked him to get chick crumbs and he said he would.

  Then I found two people, a nice man and a horrible woman to get rid of my poison, they gave me some stuff like bathroom cleaner which I rubbed all over my hands, it
was mustard coloured and then as soon as it started drying, it turned in to thin blue plastic gloves.

  I went downstairs to talk to the nasty man and saw he was snooping around, I knew I had to sit down and talk to him, but I didn’t want to, it was dangerous. Then Charlie came in to the room and scowled at the man and went out to get chick crumbs. I was on my own, and knew I shouldn’t be. Then I looked over to the right and saw my father sitting there on a wooden bench, I smiled at him and then went back to my meeting and suddenly remembered that he’d been dead since I was a child and this was a miracle, and he was there to see me safely through the meeting. I shouted and shouted to tell everyone, but the nasty man couldn’t see him and thought I was mad. Charlie came in and couldn’t see him and then my mother came in and she couldn’t see him and I got her hands and put them on his face, but she couldn’t feel him. Then Jo came in and suddenly my father and my mother disappeared, but Jo and Charlie were there to look after me. Then I saw that Charlie had only got four chick crumbs and one of the chicks had died, it’s head came right off it’s body for no reason, the other chick was still alive, but very weak, but I think, saveable.

  I woke up far too early and sat up in my bed, looking straight ahead, there is distress, physical distress in my face, I feel it. The curtains are heavy, but where they meet in the middle is a little gap and I can see the lights of a ship out at sea. If grandma were alive, she’d be looking at it too. My head is heavy and silent, I got up slowly out of my bed and went downstairs. The sun isn’t up and I sit at the kitchen table not wanting to go back to sleep just in case I dreamt again. And then I got up and went down to the orchard “look at the sun up in the sky” I am singing “let’s go down to the woods say I.” I sit down on a stone with my feet in cold wet grass, the ground is getting colder now as autumn approaches, and my toes open slightly to accommodate the blades and the wet tumbles off my nails, my silk robe is pulled around me and is like a second skin and falls to my ankles, I watch the wet creeping up the fabric. I walk to the cliff, it is nearly 7am now. Poppenjoy has trotted down to join me, tripping over the wet grass, she stops and listens and then trots on again to me. Everingham and Raffle Buffle will not be far behind. It is quiet, in my head, on this cliff, in my house, all around me and then the frooshing of the waves breaks in upon my head, moving up the shore, creeping up my skull to my ears and my owl head turns and stares. It is quiet all over the country and I wish there was no bad and suddenly, in a rush, in a tidal wave barging in to my head come visions of all the horrible, bad things that have happened to me. And I am alone again.

  Chapter 25

  “It’s not me”

  “It is. Just wear it. You look lovely.” I am looking past her, at the boats in the sea, she’s looking at her reflection in my mirror “I look stupid.”

  “You look lovely” I am trying to soothe her, but I’m laughing, but I don’t want her to see my laughter, she’ll think I’m laughing at her, but it’s just because she’s making such a fuss. I found an old tea dress in a cupboard that would fit her, I’ve no idea who’s it was, but she’s not confident in it. “See, I look bloody stupid” she tugs at the skirt of her dress, old floral lawn “JO! Stop it” I slap her hands down, “you look lovely, it’s a country show, you ought to wear something like that.”

  “Listen to you being all conventional” now I am urgent and she is a slippery fish sliding away from my grasp. I pretend to be annoyed so she’ll give in. I was going to say to her ‘what do you think you should wear?’ but then I thought it would put something else in her head, so I held my tongue. “What are you wearing?” she is watching me with the eyes of a child who thinks she’s going to be cheated of sweets, I show her my empty hands and no sugar around my mouth “I’ll wear a pretty dress too.”

  “So, we’ll look like two stupid twats together” and I hug her

  “what’s that for?”

  “Just because you’re lovely.”

  “Well, I hope you know, I’m only doing this for you. I know I look stupid” and I turn to my bed to hide my dangerous smile “you look lovely.”

  We went in my car. She says I’m like Tigger, but when she’s in a mood like this, she’s far worse than Eeyore could ever be. “I hate going in your car, it’s like bloody paddling, all this crap, it’s almost up to my knees Gussie, Disgussie more like. Coke bottles and chocolate wrappers and who bloody knows what else. What the fuck’s that?” and she has in her hand an envelope sodden through with something wet and brown. “Shhhh. Put it down” now she is safely in the car, on our way I want quiet, my mind is somewhere else, with somebody else and I need space to understand it all. I feel a dangerous rebellion in my heart. I open the window and stick my fingers out from the top of it, this way and that, enjoying the freedom. I find my way through the lanes and think of Grumps “you’re so clever darling, knowing all the little lanes”

  “but that’s what I always thought about you Grumpy”

  “yes, but I’m always getting lost”

  “and I am too.”

  “Is this the wrong bloody way? That’s a no-through road” Jo’s voice squashed flat my dream. I am lost, only temporarily, “we’re not far wrong though” and I could be anywhere, any lane, by any hedge on any hill and I pull over into a layby and jump out, because all of a sudden, I am bursting. I hitch my dress up around my waist and do a wee. “You’re not hidden there Gussie, anyone could see you and you’re no fucking lady, you forgot to put your knickers on.” I am not listening. I finish my wee, spread evenly over docks and bare soil, sigh and shiver with relief, that’s better. And as I am standing up I see the skeleton of a jackdaw in the grass beside me. His feathers quite intact attached to his bones and his feet tight and clenched, one eye still remains linked to his bare skull, like one of those pretend eyes you stick on greetings cards, it doesn’t look real. I pick it up. “Look Jo” I want her to see how odd it is

  “Get it a fucking way” she shrieks and turns her head away.

  “Oh God” I say to myself, under my breath.

  When we got to the show, we went through the gates and I saw someone I knew who greeted us, then someone else, then someone else, then someone I don’t know is kind to us. “You’re like a magnet” Jo says

  “the kindness of strangers” I tell her. We saw Frank with the police, standing and holding court, we just saw his back, he didn’t see us. I am invisible, we are invisible. We saw Charlie too, he was bending over some stupid dog’s paw, looking like he was shaking hands with the Queen, and I asked myself is he mine? Am I his? I don’t want him to see me and he doesn’t. We saw Jim leading out a fine, strong bull from the sheds and I wave to him and he smiles a big confident smile back at me, it spreads right across his face. “He’ll win a prize with that one” and I nodded over, but Jo is looking somewhere else, her skirt swishing about her hips and strands of hair in her face, she has forgotten her dress, for the moment at least. I shouldn’t have said it suited her, it doesn’t, but I wasn’t thinking properly, she’s not that sort of person. Sometimes I just have something in my head and I don’t think about it, it’s just there. Sometimes I know something will happen before it happens with utmost conviction and without any thought, and then when it doesn’t happen, I’m astounded, more than that, I am flabbergasted.

  We went to the sheep sheds and said hello to all the farmers I know and looked over the sheep, and then Jo got bored of baaing and buggered off somewhere else. I found myself in the bee tent, already bored, but I am in a whirl of graciousness and time passed even and thin and then “hello” says a voice, just pulling me a little backwards, and just like you do sometimes when you get a letter, when you stare at the envelope before you open it, trying to puzzle out who it’s from, I kept my back to the voice and it’s warmth ran through my veins like a little shallow stream, and when I turned around I knew I would see Toby. And something like a daze, a daze of outerbodyness came over me, I will watch myself talk to him, I will see myself talk to him and I will be above me
, not in me, it’s a funny old thing, I want to shake it off, but I can’t. I want to be part of other people sometimes, but I’m not even part of myself “hello”

  “I saw you earlier, giving your Queenly blessing to the farmers”

  “I wouldn’t say that”

  “you looked very gracious. Are you enjoying yourself?” He likes me, I can see it and feel it. I feel his calm and his interest envelopes me. I feel I am sucking on a sweet to try it out. I don’t move and I don’t say anything and I am watching his eyes shining at me “do you have bees Augusta?” I like hearing my name, it doesn’t happen that often and it sounds intimate from his lips. I have rebellion in my heart. “Yes, are you interested in bees? What are you doing now you’re back Toby? Are you staying? Frank hasn’t told me anything.”

  “Perhaps you haven’t asked him?” but I’m not going through this again and I am snapping out of a lull “yes, I’m staying” he brings me back, before I have time to distance myself from him “I’m back home now, home being Devon, that is. I’m looking for some plots to build on.” I am trying to concentrate on his words, I am trying to force them to enter my head, but I see Charlie walking towards us, his long legs swinging along and sunshine all around him, soft focusing him. I look at Toby and concentrate on his face, on details, I stare at his nose, his nostrils, his upper lip, his very blue eyes. I try and work out how his eyebrows are growing. I can’t concentrate and yet I say “is that what you’re going to do? Is that what you always do? This is the most we have spoken since we’ve grown up, and Charlie is coming nearer and nearer, but Toby does speak, he is forthcoming. I will test him, I will spew forth to him, because it doesn’t matter, Charlie is almost here.

  The two men standing together are very different, they feel different. Charlie has a slightly arrogant casualness, he bursts in on conversations, on solitude with bluster and a slack smile. Charlie tries too hard. Toby is self contained and quiet, he has the stronger character, he is more comfortable in himself. But I love Charlie, and yet, sometimes, I don’t even like him. I don’t want to talk to him. “Hello” he says, he is looking with a thousand questions at me, he is sure of me but he doesn’t know I found the letter. He glances at Toby and I have to say “hello” back as if he were nothing to me, just the vet and really, I do hate all this pretence. “Do you remember Toby? Frank’s son” and Charlie blustered his hellos and his heavy and sodden cheerfulness, his willowy body bending this way and that and his big smile all false for someone he doesn’t really remember but is wondering why he’s standing so close to and spending so much time with his mistress. Charlie is waiting for Toby to go. Toby is waiting for Charlie to go. I say nothing. Charlie is the open mouth, Toby is the questioning eyes. I sink down and sit on the kerb of the track, I close my knees and put my hands together on top of them. I look at my hands. I look at my toes, shining with glittery nail varnish, I look at my legs and I stare at the gravel by the soles of my shoes. Down in the water, dead or alive. And the two men are talking above me and all around me, yap, yap, yap. Noise and bustle and sharp elbows and smells of sausages and harsh laughs and a day, three days of made-up nonsense, from nowhere, for nothing. But I have found a silence through all this noise and all these voices. “Well then, must go” Charlie says, already going, and he shakes Toby’s hand and gives me a pretend half-smile, a flicker of a half-smile. I am sickened by the stupidity of it all, the pretence, the not realness of it all. In my head I spin him around and I whack at his face with a plank. In my head I bury a knife in his heart. In my head I hate him so much. I hate him and I want to be sick, I want to fall to the floor and stay there and let people walk over me. I want to snarl and gnarl and people to be disgusted with me and leave me alone. “I tried to call you” he says, his voice springs but he doesn’t know the bed is broken “my phone’s broken” I say and his eyebrows twitch together because he doesn’t understand, but he is gone. And then Toby sits next to me on my kerb “Where’s Jo?”