Come Not When I Am Dead (20 page)

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 rooms 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.