Come Not When I Am Dead (5 page)

I remember once telling grandma about
a plan I had to do something important and she said “I should think about it
for a couple of weeks first” and I said
“OK” but I didn’t, and then two weeks later I told her “I’ve thought about it
and I’m going to do it.”
 
I am impulse
and I will do what I like.
 
And the
next day, without any thought whatsoever I walked down to the post office and
put an ad on their notice board ‘Perfect lodger wanted for perfect
house/cottage.
 
Must be female.
 
Own room, kitchen and bathroom. Rural
position, sea views. Must like animals as plenty in the house. £600 per month’.
  
Charlie said he’d ask more,
but after all, it’s only a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen, not the whole house.
 
And then, this afternoon I
 
got a call.
 

She has been and gone.
 
Her name is Jo.
 
I don’t like calling people by short
names, but she said that was it, ‘short and sweet’.
 
Not Joanna, not Joanne, not Josephine or
Joker or Johanna, just ‘Jo’ but she looked away from me when she said it, I
think there’s a mystery there.
 

The bell rang, in my house, in my
head and I pushed my dress down smooth over my hips, stood from the little soft
nursery chair by the window and glided, as if on two sheets of cardboard on a
polished wooden floor to the front door, that means, I know that means that I’m
not quite with it
why does it have to be
like this?
I say to myself.
 
I
open the door, the mauve coloured dim light of the hall and the encroaching
light from outside as the door opens wider and wider, let it in, shut it
out.
 
Don’t play games Gussie.
 
“Hello” and my voice bursts from me into
the hills and barns and skyline behind her, I see it leave my mouth and spread
wider and wider and I cannot claw it back, my fingers are so many empty
sacks.
 
And in my head I am saying
why do I have to let this woman into my
house?
 

Jo is altogether taller and
altogether larger than me, but then I am small, I am only 5’4.”
 
Her posture is bad, mine is good.
 
I am comparing her to me.
 
I mustn’t do that, she is not me.
 
Her back is broad and she has on loose
clothes.
 
There is one of those e
cigarette things hanging from her mouth which looks unmannerly but urgent.
 
Her eyes are bright and alert, and her hair
is dyed blonde and wavy, it doesn’t suit the dark of her eyes.
 
I am looking at her and adjusting her,
seeing how she could dress better, stand better, give a different
impression.
 
I shouldn’t do that.
 
“Hello Jo, I’m Gussie” and I give her my
hand.
 
I am too formal.
 
I know I am too formal, too stiff.
 
A china dog against the wall.
 
“Gussie?
 
Gussie like gusset?”
“No, Gussie, like Augusta”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude” but that was rude and instead of
feeling insulted, I felt sorry for her, that’s odd.
 
And as I walk to the sitting room I know
she is summing me up and probably thinking that I’m not so nice.
 
I sit down with my back to the window and
motion to a chair for her, this is my house,
 
my dear little house caressing itself
about my body.
 
I’m in charge and I
don’t actually want anyone here, this is probably just a waste of time I think
and Coningsby steps over the threshold, takes a meaningful look at Jo and then
leaps onto my lap and stares and stares as the clock tick, tick, ticks.
 
There is a fine drizzle of fuzziness in the
room as we stare in to space and then bounce back to her face.
 
What
do you think Coningsby?
 
I am
thinking as Jo flops, plops down and the chair isn’t to her taste and so she
stands up and walks to the sofa, where with sideways swishing air she seats
herself, her bag by her side, her arms more open than they could be in a
chair.
 
And Coningsby looks at me
and then settles herself down elegantly with her back to Jo and her paws on my
tummy.
 
Her manners are not mine.
 
I think
she is a woman of luxurious habits rather than energetic ones. And I’m slightly
startled that she moved anyway, this is an interview.
 
I wouldn’t have done that.
 
There is a bough of the holly tree
bouncing around outside the window and every time it does I see the odd lack of
leaves on one spot and wonder what it is.
 
It is a monkey astride a see-saw.
 
It is not.
 
“Is this your
house?” and my head starts buzzing from side to side trying to find the pivotal
point “yes”
“did you buy it?”
“No, I inherited it”
“who did you inherit it from?”
 
I
look at her shoes, they’re boots, they’re quite sensible, but I think she
doesn’t have her own physical identity yet.
 
“My grandma, you’re very nosey” and it
just came out, but then she is, and then I realise that I don’t mind, and it’s
stupid to be like this, silent and judging and building a huge wall between
us.
 
I see congress tart crumbs on
the floor and wonder about the rat in my car, I know it’s a rat now because I
saw fresh droppings this morning.
 
It’s funny, no it’s not, it’s disgusting.
 
I mustn’t tell her, she’ll be horrified
and I don’t want to horrify her, I want it all just and equal “oh sorry, I
didn’t mean to be rude” and I am aware of her again, she is here in my room and
this is real life it is not a daydream.
 
Her voice is Midlands, Birmingham I think “I was just interested, I’m
sorry” and she does look sorry, she looks like she’s trying too hard now.
 
Don’t
try, just be you
, I am thinking but instead I say “I don’t mind, what else
do you want to know?” and I laugh, a silly laugh really because it means nothing
and Coningsby purrs through the golden cream of her head.
 
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” and she
carries on before I have time to answer “well, so your grandma died?
 
When was that?”
“over a year ago”
“I’m sorry” she said and she did look sorry, “did you live here with her then”
“I grew up with her, my parents died in a car crash when I was a baby”
“fucking hell” she said puffing frantically on her efag, phoo, phoo, phoo “that
must have been awful.
 
You really
don’t mind me asking?” but before I had time to answer, almost before she had
finished the last word, she began the next.
 
“How did you all cope with that?
 
Your grandma must have been really nice”
“that doesn’t follow, but yes, she was adorable” and then, because I couldn’t
help it, I told her about grandma, I told her how after she died, I found a
letter in her bedroom addressed to me, it was on her chest of drawers, as I
picked it up in my right hand I caught sight of myself in the mirror and the
bed behind me.
 
“It was a shocking,
exciting thing to find, I didn’t want to open it at first.”
 
I told her how I held it really tight,
so I wouldn’t drop it or lose it and took it down in to the kitchen and rang
Frank.
 
I told her about Frank, a policeman,
and a sort of honoury grandpa to me and grandma’s best friend.
 
“Frank said he’d come over and be with
me whilst I opened it, but then I just couldn’t wait any longer and I ripped it
open.
 
I told Jo that I was
expecting a big long letter, maybe buried treasure or an old vendetta or
something, but all it said was ‘don’t have any wild parties when I’m gone.
 
Love Grumps xxx’
“That’s all it said” I told her.
 
And I told her that when I was a little girl I always thought that proof
of her madness or excitingness was that it took her 6 times to pass her driving
test, I mean other adults passed it first time.
 
But after I’d failed my 6
^th
test, she sent me a text and it said ‘ha ha! beaten you’.
 
I am talking too much, I am talking too
quickly, and I can’t help it “she was very funny.”
 
I had got carried away and was speaking
with too much excitement to someone I didn’t even know.
 
I have to try to remember to curb that,
but Jo looks interested “she sounds brilliant, I would have liked to have known
her.
 
Did she used to drive a pale
blue old Daf around by any chance?
I was driving around here one time and this old lady was coming towards me
driving the wrong way down a one way street, and all I did was wind down my
window and say ‘this is a one way street’ and she called out to me, all posh,
“I know, I live here” she must have thought I was a tourist I suppose with my
accent.”
 
“She hated tourists making the roads busy in the summer time, she couldn’t do
what she liked then!” but my potential lodger has finished with that subject
and is looking at me “I like your hair”
“Thank you.
 
What is Jo short for?”
“Just Jo.
 
And was all the furniture
hers?
 
It’s really nice and old
fashioned, it feels like a time warp in here, I feel we could be in an Agatha
Christie novel, know what I mean?”
 
It doesn’t need an answer, I look around at the room and see it with a
short-sighted, fresh eye, all sorts of things cobbled together by any one of us
over the years.
 
It’s an assortment
of practical, make do and inheritance pieces, nothing matches and nothing looks
spectacular.
 
There are piles of my
papers everywhere, there are a few ‘illustrated war’ magazines from WW2 that
I’m collecting for Douglas my nephew, and there are lots of very dead flowers
in vases.
 
Grandma always had
flowers in the house, beautiful, fresh and perfectly arranged.
 
“Would you like a drink?
 
Sorry, I always forget to ask”
“tea would be nice” and I get up, I hold Coningsby to me and then put her back
down, soft and warm on the seat with no lap, kiss her back and she stays there,
looking up at me with one quizzical eye.
 
And then, without asking, Jo follows me through to the kitchen.
 
My eyebrows rise and my eyes widen.
 
She tries to help and pick up the kettle
from the stove “what’s wrong with your kettle?” she says “I can’t seem to pick
it up” her head is bent forward, she still has that funny fag thing in and out
of her mouth and a little leather Barbour handbag on her arm.
 
“It’s stuck there, you won’t move it,
I’ll use this one” and she looks at the stuck kettle as if it will tell her
what’s wrong with it, but it doesn’t and so she turns her back on it and faces
me “I don’t have any milk” I say “would you like cordial instead?”
“Cordial?
 
I say ‘pop’”
“yes, but it is cordial, or diet coke?” and she looks around the kitchen and
laughs again
“coke would be nice, I’ll do it”
“No, I’ll do it” I say, I am still standing, she is still standing and I wonder
how long it will be until we are more comfortable together, or if we do sit
down whether there’ll still be this little barrier which I expect I’m
creating.
 
And why do I always think
everything’s my fault?
 
It’s as if
she’s in another bubble, another bubble to mine, and we’re rolling around the
kitchen, sometimes touching, often passing each other by, sharing the same
physical
 
space but in totally
different worlds.
 
I think she would
be nice to live with “do you work Jo?
 
What do you do” and I’m trying to be sensible and business-like, but I’m
distracted and in my head I’m saying ‘fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.’
  
There’s an egg in the fruit bowl
and a bolt on the floor, it doesn’t matter, but it’s not the way I would like
it to be.
 
She won’t like the cat
food on the work top, and the cat tongue marks in the butter.
 
There’s an over-flowing bin and the
calendar on the wrong month.
 
I feel
like jumping up now or squealing to the ceiling, I’m relieved of my decorum, it
doesn’t matter, I don’t care.
 
“Well,
I used to be a nurse, but I didn’t really like that that much.
 
I’m a trader, you know, money.
 
On the internet” her eyes are looking
all around her as she speaks and sometimes at me.
 
“I’ve been doing that for a few years, it
does really well” she stops talking and puffs long and noisily “and I can do it
wherever I am, it suits me” she puffs again and pulls up a chair “you should do
it” she says without knowing anything about me or my character.
 
I think we’re different enough to get
on.

We chatter away
for an hour or so, I offer her some lunch which she wolfs down with gusto and
appreciation and then I ask her if she’d like to come and live here.
 
It just sort of came out.
 
She makes me feel that I’m lovely and
gracious, she makes me feel appreciated.
 
And as she talks to me and is so unguarded I know she speaks her mind
and that she is a woman of truth, and she reacts to things too, she doesn’t
clam up like Charlie does, she doesn’t make me feel like a bully if I say
something that she doesn’t agree with.
 
And then, in my unguarded exuberance I heard myself say “well, if you’d
like to come and live here, I’d love it” and suddenly I knew that I’d be upset
if she didn’t want to.