“Yes”
“Will you marry me once I’m back again?” Will I marry him? That sounds nice, that sounds exciting, that sounds too too lovely. “I may do” and I laughed, and I really might, but if I did it wouldn’t be because I had to, because I was desperate to, because I couldn’t live without him, but that I could see us always being happy. I think. “We don’t need to think of that now” I say to him “you’ve still got another couple of days here. You may go off me.” But I don’t think he will. He holds me tight and loves me, I don’t know if I’m worthy of love, not really. He takes photos of me and we get Jo to take photos of us together for him when he’s away and I like them because it is my living, natural history. And I don’t mind the ones of me looking awful, because I look happy. There are baby blackbirds lurking deep down in the thick hedges all around us, trying out their songs for the first time, ‘won’t be long, won’t be long’ they sing.
Charlie phones me during the day but I don’t answer. He sends me texts and is looking forward to seeing me, but he’s been busy on another course. I am trying to hold him at a little distance. I am sifting sand. I am well aware though that I am purposefully keeping him at a distance and it’s not happening naturally because I’m not thinking about him. I am thinking about him. You are all-consuming Charlie, and it’s uncomfortable.
“What have you been up to Gussie?” he says and his little eyes are pink and sad and frightened, he is being led to slaughter. We are, as always, by the river “what do you mean?”
“this cousin of Jo’s, you’re talking a lot about him. I’ve heard people remarking that you’re looking the part in some flashy sports car.”
“An Austin Healey 3000” I am authoritive. I am prevaricating.
“So. Tell me. Do you like him? Should I worry?” He is a donkey alone in a field. I should tell him the truth, but I’m scared to, I need someone to talk to and I can’t talk to him, I don’t know what to do. I cannot say I’m having sex with him. He wants to marry me. I may marry him. No I won’t. Yes, I like him. He’s an incredible lover and he’s not married. You are married Charlie. I cannot say that. “He’s Jo’s cousin, that’s all, he’s really nice and very polite. In fact, I think he may be gay, he isn’t at all interested in me, but he’s jolly good fun and I like him very much, as far as I know him, which obviously isn’t much” and the cockerel crowed three times and I move closer to his great big sad face and fluid eyes, I stroke down his hard nose, but he isn’t a donkey and this is all just pretend and I must be real now. I must concentrate. And I look at him, 1,2,3 concentrate. “I love you Charlie. I love you with an animal nature and a philosopher’s head.” I tell him that whether I like it or not, I love him. I feel tied to him, connected to him in a way that feels utterly natural to me, and it’s incredibly strong, that link to him. I tell him that sometimes I try to fight it because it makes me feel vulnerable, but then I think of his beautiful face, his gentle features and soft white skin and love him so very passionately. I tell him that I’m not a fool who loves indiscriminately, but as long as he is worthy of love I will love him. And that is all true, and makes him happy and reassures him. But at the same time I felt like vomiting with my lies of Edward. I wish he talked to me more so that I could understand him exactly, I need to know so I can make the right choices for me, for him if he’d let me. He thinks I’m a child for asking him questions always, but it’s because I have to understand everything. Once, many years ago, when I had been really quite naughty and got arrested by the police, they questioned me and I evaded their questions, but charmingly so, and they said to me “you’re a very clever woman Augusta” and I said
“but I have to be clever” and they didn’t quite understand it, but I knew what I meant. You have to be clever, you have to understand, you have to evolve, you have to look after yourself, and if you love others, you have to look after them too. You have to survive. Let me be wise for you too Charlie I’m thinking. But he can’t accept my wisdom and it makes me sad. He can’t see clearly and it makes me sad. I am calm, I put myself on pause and I rewind and replay slowly, but he can’t do that, his life is spinning away from him in a hurricane, his ground has shifted and all he knows now is instability. I want to look after him, for him and for me, and I could do that, but he won’t let me. And no one would mean anything to me, not if I had him, properly. But I am dust in the wind.
The Major is on a shelf just a few feet away from me, he is playing with old glass bottles and he’ll probably knock one over if I don’t rescue them. He has been bathing in the cats drinking water and eating pasta and beef burgers from my plate, he is a rascal, he is a darling, he is rebellion, he is bloody minded and he is a survivor. I call him to me and he sits on the arm of my chair “I’m tired Major. I need something more Major, something’s not right and I’m trying to find out what it is.” And then Edward comes back in the room and as we sit there together, by the window, with the curtains open and all the light from the room shining on us we see a big, fat, black beetle crawling up the outside of the window pane. It crawls up and then it falls down. It crawls up again and then it falls down. It crawls up again and then suddenly everything changes and there is a great big tawny owl there, shocking us with a different story, she eats the beetle, she looks at us and then she turns away from our gaze and flies off. “Are you OK?” Edward says to me “you seem a little bit different, a little bit distant.”
“I’m fine. I’m just tired. Do you promise to keep loving me Edward?”
“I will always love you. You are beauty and you are truth, there, you even bring out the poet in a hardened soldier.”
‘I’m a fool but I love you dear, until the day I die, now and then, there’s a fool such as I’.
I dreamt that night that I went for a walk to a deserted tennis court on the top of a hill, above a town. It was winter time and everything was sepia and brown in the almost dark. The nets were torn and the wire fencing around the courts was broken, there were holes cut in it, broken bottles on the cracked court and grass growing through the cracks, tree roots coming through and waving the surface with suspended ruination, litter flitting about. And there was a snowy owl flying around above my head, above the court. I watched it for a while in all it’s staggering glory and then I walked home, quiet, my hands in my pockets. For three nights I did the same thing, watching the big white dish-faced owl. On the fourth night I heard a bell on one foot and saw he had jesses and anklets on. I put up my left hand with a chick on it and the owl came right down to me, heavily hitting my fist. He stood still whilst I felt his keel bone and he was very thin, I was annoyed with myself for not realising before that he was an escaped bird. I walked home with him, big and tall on my hand, trying to steady himself as I walked. I got home and it was dark and lonely in my house that wasn’t my real-life house, dust floors and wooden chairs just here and there, a Grandfather clock and antlers on the wall, but it was all forgotten and unloved and soundless, dark and cobwebbed and utterly colourless. My whole world was forgotten and lonely. I fed the owl, then put him in a wooden box against a wall to rest for the night, hoping it would benefit from the food and quiet and stillness. The next day I forgot about the owl and went out to do what ever I had to do. When I returned in the evening, quiet in my silent world, I remembered the owl and went through my dark and lonely and dusty rooms to see him and he was dead in the box. I took him out, I was very sad and his eyes were clouded and covered in white. I got a bolt and poked the left eye to see if he was really dead and then suddenly the eye started to blink and become clear and he was alive and well and flew off. My world was silent. I’m disturbed by the dream when I wake up and I am clinging on tightly to a sleeping soldier.
Chapter 14
Today feels like Christmas. Today feels fluid and that anything could happen. Anything that is wonderful. But it most definitely feels like a good day. When I awoke properly Edward was sitting naked next to me and by my side of the bed were two cadbury’s crème eggs and a glass of ice col
d diet coke with lemon. You see, it’s a perfect day. I slide down the sheets with him and with one huge life-taking gasp I lose myself in him. My love is physical. “Is this real or pretend Edward?”
“You do ask some funny things Gussie. This is real. This is as real as it gets”
“Will you fuck me forever? And love me forever”
“I am yours forever. Will you be mine? Are we going to get married?”
“Yes” I say, muffled by his chest hair and with one sunny smile of happiness I lean forward and stroke down Coningsby’s body. I have said it. I will not think about it. But I have said it. “I’ve said it” I whisper into Coningsby’s neck. And then he said
“Would you mind if I popped down to see Jim Johnson when you’re at the funeral today?”
“I don’t mind at all, I think that’s a lovely idea” and so you see, it seems like real life
“If I don’t go and see him and he finds out I’ve been here, it just might look a bit off”
“go and see him. And I’ll be glad that you’re not bored and at a loose end in my absence.” I put both arms around him “you’re outrageously sexy you know Edward”
“nowhere near as sexy as you are” and he hugs me a hug that means love, and then, just in case I don’t know he tells me “I love you Augusta. I love you. I love you.” And out of the corner of my eye I see a baby rabbit stumble into the garden and then a buzzard sweeps down, picks it up and takes it away.
Too many people are dying. As I stood in front of the mirror, getting dressed and adjusting black and peacock, I told Edward about Mr Simons. “It’s funny, we didn’t exactly love him, but looked forward to seeing him. He was a bookmark rather than a page. He would come to the house on his walk to the village every Wednesday, he would walk in to the hall, chimes rustling a jolly tune and we would all know it would be him, he was as regular as clockwork. And I would run, leap, bounce down the stairs and grandma would always call me Augusta then and demand that I had some decorum.” And I told him how I would say “Mr Simons! Can I have two sweets today?” My head shaking in excitement. I am lost in the past now in a daze of beautiful visions. ‘Do you remember brother, that stainless morning’ but I can never remember the rest of that poem. I can’t remember most of my boyfriends. I can’t remember my parent’s dying. I can’t remember my brother’s wedding, but I remember him falling out with grandma and with me and with everybody else. Maybe I didn’t go to his wedding. And I remember the look on Joseph and Gabriel’s faces when they were really little and they didn’t want to go home and I remember how glad I was that he sent Douglas to boarding school. But I remember the excitement at Mr Simon’s sweets. He would have a tobacco tin in the Napoleon pocket of his beige coat and inside that box would be one of each sweet, a white chocolate drop, a milk chocolate drop, a fisherman’s friend, a jelly tot and another couple of sweets that never interested me, boiled ones I think. I would stare at the sweets for ages but always go for the fisherman’s friend, and always ask for another one too, but he would say “no, only one” funny people are. I would have tipped them all in to my mouth in one go if he’d let me, or let go. And when I was too old, or he thought I was too old, he would still come and chat about the weather but not offer me any sweets and then he became a stand still, stand straight duty. And when the boys would come over, the tin would come out again and I would whisper to them around a quiet corner “ask for two so I can have one” but it was always one. And the cats would curl about his legs and a dog would sniff him and slope off, and he was Wednesday mornings.
I am being slow. I am being methodical. I am determined. And from this window where I saw the buzzard just take the rabbit, I see Gabriel and Douglas playing armies in the garden, two dreamy-eyed, slender warriors, running around, rolling around, their mouths open, laughing and calling to each other but I hear nothing. I see me, head down and stumbling gait, grabbing on to the dog and heading for grandma’s arms. I see daisies close up and palm trees, barbeques and contentment. I see us all. “Wake up” says Edward.
I picked Douglas up from school with Edward and brought him back home, talking armies all the way they were. Then Joseph and Gabriel came too and before we left for the funeral, we all went in to the garden to have lunch together. Ice cold diet coke and fudge brownies “I made these with muscovado sugar, they’re gorgeous aren’t they? Aren’t I just the best cook ever?” I ask in all seriousness and Gabriel laughs and says “you shouldn’t really say things like that Aunty Gussie”
“no, you shouldn’t” says Douglas “we should tell you that you are”
“but I don’t need anyone to tell me, I know I am, I just want you to agree with me because I know it’s true.” There are crows crunking over us and a healthy breeze in our faces and I see the world though a mane of blonde glistening hair, the foreground and the background all merging together in one beautiful picture. I see Edward watching me with shining eyes and unutterable excitement. He wants to be part of all this too. “Shall we go now?” I say.
I much prefer funerals to weddings, maybe it’s because people have to be respectful and have decorum, and they don’t get drunk and tiresome and artificially happy. Mr Simon’s family gave little speeches, but no one mentioned tobacco tins full of sweets. People talked predictable nonsense afterwards, it was dull and tiring. Empty heads chattering away, yap, yap, yap and brown and brown and in between and high pitched laughs, false laughs and air kissing on each others cheeks and “Gussie, aren’t you clever” and “Gussie, how do you do it all” and “Gussie, wow, look at your shoes” and “Have you met Gussie?” and I just smile, a dark and secret smile that drips off this mask and slinks away. I am quiet and reserved, confident and exuberant. I will not be known. I find a beautiful silence through the voices and I can find nothing in those heads and my tongue feels dangerous because I will say what I feel. A line goes on amongst it all, four lines parallel, blue and straight dividing the room and then of all the revolting things, Charlie’s wife came up to me and Joseph put his arm through mine, which I think steadied me but also sealed my fate of guilt. Did he see it too? “What a gorgeous dress you’re wearing. We’re all admiring it”
“thank you” I look at her dress, but it is horrible and so I can’t pretend to like it and wonder whether I should just go. But I stand and look at her mouth trying to find something to say, wondering if I can be bothered to say anything at all to her. “Where is your husband?” she says
“I’m not married, you know that” I say and think of her husband, think what a confounded fool she is. “Oh” and her empty eyes look around the church. She is a knife in my back. She is a smudge on my page. She is a scared dog weeing on the carpet and I am the boots and the legs of the man before her. “Where is your husband?” I say “Off with his stupid animals somewhere” she said. I will not stand on ceremony with this woman, and I turn and walk off and I’m glad I didn’t say goodbye, and I feel Joseph dragging along behind me, Douglas’s hand in mine now, silken soft paw and I see Gabriel waiting for us at the church door, roll-up in his mouth, he is framed in heavy wood and stone and mounted on sunshine. We are strong. We are strong together. “When I die” I say to them later on, “I don’t want a funeral like that. I want you to get someone to carve a huge statue of me. I want it to be about 20ft tall and I want it of my body, but Coningsby’s face and I want to have great big angel’s wings, half out, half tucked behind my back. I want the kittens carved close around me, touching me, all of us earthed and I want to be placed on top of a hill, overlooking the village and in sight of my house. And I want you all to go and visit it, and throw yourself down at the base of it and scream and cry your misery. OK?” and they all laugh, but I am being serious.
I take Douglas back to school. I drop Joseph and Gabriel off at the train station and I go home to my Edward.
I had only been home for about ten minutes when I heard the breeze play the chimes in the hallway. I had been thinking how lovely everything was today, I felt safe and happy. I fe
lt secure. I wanted to see if Edward could fit in to my life apart from me, you know, without me being a hostess and it was working, with him going out paying his own calls. And I bounded along to the front door, eager for happiness. I expected to see Edward’s handsome face smiling at me, sunny and bright, but what I saw was Charlie’s face. I saw Charlie blocking the light, thundersome and dark, his head in my head and somewhere, far off and distant it seemed, Edward bent over just in front of him taking off his boots. And there was no sound, all I was conscious of was my struggling breath. And then Edward stood up and I saw his mouth moving and I did notice the sparkle in his eyes but all I saw was the black of Charlie’s eyes. I thought I was going to vomit. And hours passed. Hours that were seconds. Long, long seconds of silence and eyes locking on to eyes. Will she tell me? What does he know? My heart froze. And my brain suddenly a torrent of possible excuses and lies and down upon me poured my infidelity, pelting me with pain and terror. But much more than that, I was paralysed with pity for myself and guilt and desperation because I had been found out. My breath stuck, in time and space that seemed to have no end. And no words came. What to say? And a stampede in my head, hundreds of heavy hooves kicking up dust and crashing down in rhythmical destruction, the tiniest weakest blades of grass smothered and destroyed and never to be seen again until they grow anew. My head held back with one long thin iron rod, pushing and leaning but not sinking in. And then Edward moves to my left and his mouth still moving and then a crack through the skies. “I hear congratulations are in order” from Charlie
“what do you mean?” my words brutally torn from me by some unseen vicious hand
“you’re getting married Augusta”
“No. No I’m not. What do you mean?”
“Gussie! Gussie, what do you mean? Are you OK? You look tired. Charlie it was lovely to meet you” and he held out his hand to Charlie “but I think I’d better excuse myself now and look after this beautiful lady of mine. I think you must have upset yourself at your funeral.” He is coming near me, his hands out to hold me, And I move away from him. Shut up, shut up you stupid prat I thought and then Charlie said “I only dropped in to congratulate my old friend” and the shaking through my body unsettled everything, my bladder loose and ready to let go. My stupid eyes will not leave his face, I am afraid, and as he turns to go out I shook Edward’s hand off my arm and followed him but he wouldn’t stop “Charlie. Charlie. Please stop. Please listen. Charlie darling. Please listen” but he kept on going. He didn’t look at me. He in turn shook my hand off his arm as if it were something utterly disgusting and then he got into his car, still without looking at me. His unsmiling face in profile, hating me. He was grey and solid and stone. He was fury and disgust. And still I’m thinking can I get out of this? I don’t want it to be horrible. “Charlie. Charlie. I’m sorry” I said to his averted eyes through his closed window, knowing how muffled and dishonest it will sound, banging away with the sides of my fists. “Please Charlie.” Make tears come, make tears come, but they will not. I stood there for some little time watching his car disappear, watching the dust settle, listening to his engine turn into the lapping waves licking the sea wall, licking wounds and begging forgiveness and then I walked back into the house.
Come Not When I Am Dead Page 12