“I don’t know”
“you sound like you don’t care.”
“I don’t care about much at the moment” and then I add “but I do care about Jo, but not much else, and my cats of course.”
“You were always the same Gussie, you and your animals, mice in pockets and puppies in cars and squabs in lunch boxes” I have meant something to him over these years. I try and remember him from all that time ago, and all that comes in to my head is a slight smile, a half turned shoulder and a blue duffle coat hood and the knowledge of kindness. “Have you finished at the show? I have. If I call Jo and tell her I’m going, would you like to come back to the house? I could make you lunch.” I am standing now, up from the kerb, dusting myself down. I want him to come. It is a loaded question, but he doesn’t know that, good and kind Toby, being led into the lion’s den. ‘There was a man who had a cat, he fed it well, it got so fat. He fed it til it filled the room, he had to stroke it with a broom’.
I took Toby home and gave him lunch and I was unmistakenly, most definitely me in my kitchen. I have no political agenda, no social agenda, there is no manipulation here, take me or leave me, this really is me. There is something going on. We walked down to the beach, breezy and blowy, blowing his hair away from his face and his eyes narrowing in the divine sharpness of it all. Suck it up, suck it up, suck it up, breathe it in, deep and down. “I haven’t been here for such a long time” he said and he looked straight ahead of him, at the rocks. I looked at the wet sodden sand and the marks my shoes made in it. There was a couple on the beach with three dogs, the humans were holding hands and they threw sticks for their dogs, the dogs hair blowing as much as their legs were moving, the couple were wrapped up in matching anoraks. And then a woman came down on to the beach with two mean-faced jack russells, I watched her as she bent down to let them off the leash “she shouldn’t have done that, they’re trouble” and before Toby had time to look around the jack russells ran on those short little legs towards the three dogs, they separated the liver and white spaniel and nip, nip, nipped at it’s heels. Nip, nip, snarl and bark, yap, yap, nip and growl. Jumping up and up. And the spaniel ran to the anoraks and said ‘please get rid of them for me’ havoc and mayhem around him. “GET YOUR DOGS OFF” shouted Mrs Anorak to Mrs Jack Russell.
“They’re not being a problem” shouted back Mrs Jack Russell
“GET THEM OFF” shouted anorak again
“they’re not being a problem” and all this time the jack russells, snarl and bark and bite and jump, hup, hup, rag it, rag it, get the dog, get the dog. “YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT.”
“I wouldn’t mind it”
“YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT.” And Mrs Anorak marched up to Mrs Jack Russell and shouted in her face “YOU WOULDN’T LIKE IT.”
And I knew that would happen “I WOULDN’T MIND IT” shouted back Mrs Jack Russell. And they faced each other, shouting, head to head, face to face, hands behind their backs held ready for blows, fury and desperate aggression blowing up from the sand and whisking fast all around them. ‘Fight, fight, fight’ they would have said in the playground. And neither one backed down, they were glued to the spot, and they continued shouting until Mrs Jack Russell put her dogs on their leads. These women were spitting in the air, fighting with the sea and the waves, shouting above the sea gulls and the wind whistling over our heads.
“I wish they would all piss off” I said to Toby “piss off my beach and go home and take their pissing dogs with them.” And I was striding along and Toby strode next to me, trying to keep up with me, arm swings close to arm, steps in step, and then I felt his hand catch mine, and although we said no words just then, I settled my hand in his and I curled my fingers up a little to show him that I liked it. I felt small and that I was being looked after. I felt I could climb up that hand to a safe place. I felt tears rise to my eyes and I shouted at them ‘back, back, back in those eyes’. I gently held his hand there as the wind settled down and we walked past noise and dogs and fury. I looked up in to his face and smiled, a smile from a small person who wants to be loved and is gentle and he smiled down at me, a smile from a tall person who wants to love, who wants to love me. And I remember smiling like that at Charlie once, right at the very beginning. It was after the first time we’d had sex. He was standing in the doorway, half light on him and I looked up at him and smiled and he looked quite stunned, moved backwards and ran. Pah! He was gone.
“I have a lover” I said to him, to the beach and the sand stopped rolling away and I’m pretty sure that the waves ceased crashing, just for a second. “And are you happy with your lover?” he didn’t look at me, but at his feet, or my feet, or the sand and his words fell like a bomb in to the sea. I think that that’s a very singular thing to ask. “No I’m not happy” and his hand pressed mine a little more firmly. No, I’m not happy, I don’t think I’d really realised it, not quite, not so definitely, not so disloyally, not so starkly. And all at once I felt relief as if my strings had collapsed and I’m sinking to the ground.
I did think that Toby would be a little too gentlemanly to make love to me that night, I didn’t think it would all be so easy, but it was. I thought he would kiss my cheek, a lingering soft kiss and want to see me again soon. But he let me seduce him. “You are not Charlie” I was thinking as I undressed him, but it wasn’t guilt talking and I was glad he wasn’t Charlie. And that night, as we made love, as I sat astride him and ground down on to him, he pulled the duvet up around my shoulders to keep me warm and protected and I pushed it off and away and I roared out my lion’s roar, mighty and free and shook my huge golden mane.
“Tell me about yourself” someone once said to me “tell me about this space, this thick air, this detatchment, this calm. Just tell me. Why are you different?”
“I don’t know. Sometimes I know, sometimes I don’t.”
“Is the air thick like soup?”
“No, it’s like particles in the air”
“And what does it feel like to be floating free? Untethered.”
“I don’t know, but I like it.” Don’t let me change, I am me. But I am waiting an adventure. I am waiting for birth, not loss. There is so much space around me. I’m waiting for someone to enter it.
Chapter 26
It has been quiet but I have been busy. I have been seeing Toby, just a little, gently and hesitantly. I have been seeing Charlie. I am colder with Charlie and he doesn’t notice. I don’t ring him as much, and he doesn’t notice. I slink and slide out of his life like a fox between trees and he doesn’t notice. I haven’t told him I love him for a week or maybe two and he hasn’t noticed. I put my fingers up in the V sign when he turns his back and mouth ‘fuck off’ and he doesn’t notice. And something is crumbling away.
Charlie, like a tiny spider walking across a pond asked me about Toby. He doesn’t come out with what he really thinks, he doesn’t say “are you seeing him?” or “do you love me Gussie,?” he doesn’t question me as I would question him and he doesn’t deserve a proper answer or any more than a cursory lie, because I don’t think he really cares. But I would care. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but for me it makes me much more self sufficient and I think I can do without him my life is so much easier without him. My super power may be instant anger and my super ability is aggressive independence.
And so I told Charlie I liked Toby and Charlie narrowed his little eyes and stared, and that stare singed my paper, but didn’t burn it. He looks haggard and his eyes are lined with pink. He should talk to me. How many times do I need to say that to him? For ever? But he doesn’t listen and I’m fading away, getting lighter and lighter and paler and paler and soon you won’t see me at all.
I saw him today. I tried to pretend, just to myself, just for him, just to see, that it was as it was before, when I was fooled and my basket was full of splendour for him. But the far side of his moon is black. He ate a sandwich with me in greedy silence, too much noise coming from his mouth. He brought some
chocolate over, we ate it together, me at a physical and emotional distance across the kitchen, sitting on the broken hardback chair not knowing what to do with my toes. And he still didn’t notice.
Then when we stood up, with bread stuck in my throat, feeling like it would never go down, when he was about to go, he gave me a stupid peck on my lips “let your lips linger there” I tell him, I am trying to make it better, he tries but he doesn’t linger enough. He is facing me, close to me, he grabs at my bosom and squeezes it, then he turns me around by my shoulders, so I am resting against the sink, he lifts the skirt of my dress, pulls my knickers down, stuffs himself inside of me and fucks me. When he is done he doesn’t see the look on my face because he’s in a rush. He thinks it’s all OK. He is mad. I am mad. And sometimes, would I still let him have me if I didn’t like him at all anymore? I don’t know. I don’t think so. I suppose I am at the moment, because I certainly don’t like him now, but maybe I will again soon. Maybe, because I’m a bit of a drama Queen it all seems so awful but it will be OK. “When did you write that letter to me? It was in the pile of papers you put in the log basket. You were trying to finish with me. Why didn’t you send it?”
“What letter?” And for a moment I doubted myself, he surely would have remembered writing a letter like that, I was glad to see the puzzlement on his face “it was on the back of a bank letter, you were trying to write a letter to me, finishing with me. But you didn’t send it. Were you going to finish with me Charlie?” I hate this vulnerability and dependency and I saw the light go on in his head. “That wasn’t a letter for you”
“it must have been for me”
“well it wasn’t” and still I have to squeeze and squeeze and milk him for communication, and even then, just drips come, drip, drip, drip, why can’t he see? “then are you seeing someone else?”
“don’t be stupid Gussie, of course I’m not”
“then who was it to? If not me, then who?” and my hand was on his arm, pushing him away from the door towards the wall. He will not go until he tells me “it was to my wife” and then all my walls tumbled down and crumbled as they hit the ground. He does love me. I know he loves me and then, ashamed of myself, I cuddled him with both my arms tight around his tummy, my head down, loving him and hating myself and this repulsive insecurity, hiding my face while he explained it to me and wishing I were as good, wishing I wasn’t so bad. I am bad. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” he asked me to make things better
“seeing you?”
“I think it’s time to get those dogs from Mark Davies” he is buttoning his jacket, head down, he is concentrating, he can’t do two things at one time “OK” I say. “I love you Charlie”
“I Know you do.”
‘Hello, hello, is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me, is there anyone home?’
Chapter 27
Last night I had a dream in three parts.
I first dreamt that I was in a small, empty room, a square concrete room like a garage, with Charlie, we were just standing there in the dark, when the door opened a little and light poured gently through the opening, and in the light I saw specks and pillows, billows of dust falling slowly down from the ceiling to the floor. And then a cat was there looking around, she was pale coloured like Coningsby, but I didn’t think it was Coningsby. She was walking through the door into the room, her tail held high, then she turned around to go out again. I said to Charlie that I’d go out and stroke her. I left Charlie alone in the little room and went outside. Suddenly it was almost a Mediterranean landscape and the little pale coloured cat was walking towards the horizon and there was another cat there, and then another and another and another, and suddenly hundreds and hundreds of cats all walking the same way, all sorts of different cats in a huge, straggling line. It was so lovely and exciting and I just walked along with them for a little and then I suddenly thought that I should be taking photos of them, so I got my camera out and started taking these beautiful photographs of all these splendid cats and I forgot all about Charlie in the room.
The next bit of the dream I was in another small room and I was standing up with a wall close to my right shoulder. Toby was standing a little behind me and to my left and uncle George was standing in front of me and a little to my left too, facing me. Uncle George was asking me to paint the wall, but I didn’t know how he wanted me to do it and so I asked him how far down the wall I should begin, and he leant forward and said to me, as if he were talking about measurements “5 pussy cats in the skies.”
In the last part of the dream I was in another small room and there were two single beds in the room, I was standing up. In one of the beds I could see the too-blonde head of someone who I thought was my grandma’s friend Peggy. I went over to the bed to see if it was her and peeked a little at her head and then suddenly it was Coningsby and she was lying in the middle of the bed, deliciously, warmly, contentedly fast asleep, all curled up with her book still open by her side, she’d fallen asleep reading. I woke up and felt so happy with all my cat dreams. I’m sure they mean something, but I don’t know what. I need to work out how to get myself out of this bloody mess I’ve got myself into.
I went fishing. I stood, knee high in the river and I heard and felt a whishhhh, so close to my right ear. And it must have been a fraction of a second, although it felt like a minute before I turned my head in the direction the noise went to see what it was. I thought I must have been so slow that I would have missed it, but there, so close to me a musket chasing a blackbird over the water, out they went from the cover of trees, out over the water and back again towards the land, furiously, frantically fast, a ball on a rope swung round and round, a car on a fairground ride, wildly, only just in control. A blackbird is rather ambitious for a musket, but it was a musket and not a spar.
Sometimes I’m a little bit frightened that all this means too much to me and that nothing else really does. I fished badly though today, my hand was wild and my head not there, my line was getting tangled and I lost a fly. But I caught a lovely trout, and it was so full of life, so energetically wild and oh, I don’t know, such a fighter that I put it back again. I cradled it in my hands and when it was ready to go and swam from me I said “thank you” like I always do when I finish a cigar and throw it away from me, and when I throw them into the sea I say “thank you cigar, go and see Grandma, go and see Coningsby now.”
Charlie and I are going to do the dogs later on today. I don’t want to go, and my body hunches over, I puff out a deep sigh of discontent and my tummy feels just a little bit sick. I don’t want to go, but I don’t want to leave him on his own. There is a bad feeling in my stomach about this.
I started getting ready at 8pm to go and meet him, putting on my boiler suit I kept thinking I don’t need to go. Putting on my hat I thought I can just call him and tell him I don’t want to go, but I know that if I did, he’d go on his own. And it’s not the same tonight, not the same as the other nights. I’m not laughing, I’m not happy, I’m not full of mischief. But I will look after him. I take no delight in my padded out boiler suit or my balaclava. I think it will be the last one tonight. I disgust myself. I am a fraud.
Mark Davies’s house is a horrible looking house, at the end of a really horrible looking road of horrible houses. Mark Davies’s fence around his garden has great big gaps in it that we slipped through in the dark of the night, in the quiet of our stealth. Mark Davies’s garden backs on to fields which is the only nice thing about that place, but even the fields are bare and flat. The night was still. His house was dark and quiet and once we were in the garden, Charlie pushed me gently towards a shed and said “you wait here.” I feel magic at his touch
“no, I’ll go with you.”
“No Gussie, you wait here” and his hands are firm on my shoulders.
Come Not When I Am Dead Page 21
