I was slowly waking up, it is late, it is 2am. I should be sleeping. I am warm and soft, I am a mouse in cotton wool, and I am asleep again. I woke up again and it is 2.10am and Charlie still isn’t there. Oh bugger. Then I was properly awake, but keeping my eyes as closed as I could, just in case I can go straight back to sleep. “Charlie, Charlie?” I whispered from the bed “Charlie? Are you there?” but he’s not. I don’t know why, but my first thought was that he’d try to kill himself. I imagined him hanging, and I tell myself not to be so stupid. I try to erase the image, he wouldn’t do anything like that and in to my mind comes the time when I was walking through the village on the way home from school with my friend and her mother. They got to their house and the mother put the key in the door, she turned to smile goodbye to me as she pushed the door open, and before she’d seen it herself, I saw brown leather shoes and green corduroy trousers hanging in space, I looked further up and saw a burgundy and gold tie twisted around his neck attached to the beam. Where is Charlie? I got out of bed and went downstairs, there is a draught “stupid bugger” I said quietly, I don’t let the cats out at night and he’d left a door open and suddenly my super power, anger, returned, stupid bloody bugger. It is the back door and I went to it across the cold tile floor and in the yellow of the security light, saw Charlie coming towards me from across the yard. He is holding my shotgun.
“What are you doing? What are you doing with my gun? Charlie! Answer me, what are you doing?” And then he was a man without a brain in his head, powered by electricity, but it will run out soon. I narrowed my eyes and looked at him “what have you done?”
“It was the men from the river, they were here.”
“No they weren’t. What do you mean? What the hell made you think that? What’s happened?”
“I was asleep and I heard a noise outside, it woke me up, then I saw the security light go on, so I went to the window to have a look. I opened the window but they must have heard and I saw them running to their truck, so I got the gun and ran outside, but they were already driving up the track, so I shot at the back window”
“WHAT? OH MY GOD, ARE YOU JOKING? OH NO, OH NO” and suddenly I’m on my knees and I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I am holding my belly and my head is nodding on it’s own, my lips set. Oh my God, what the hell am I going to do? And I look at him, he’s bloody mad. My life is suddenly red with the possibility of someone’s blood. “What happened exactly Charlie. Sit down here now. Give me the gun, sit down and tell me” I am frightened of him, and I took my gun from his hands and took the one cartridge out of it. I put the cartridge in my dressing robe pocket and I put the gun on some grass behind me, we were both still on the gravel. And he told me what happened.
He heard a noise and opened the window to see what it was, in the light of the lamp he saw three men in camouflage gear looking through the barns. He thought it was the yobs from the river and that they’d come to get us. He thought he had to protect me because he hadn’t protected me properly earlier. I’d said it was his fault and now he wanted to be strong. He grabbed my shotgun and some cartridges from my blouse drawer and ran down the stairs, loading as he went, his big, heavy, flat feet slamming down on each stair and I didn’t hear. When he got to the back door they were in their car and were driving up the track, in the dark and he levelled the gun and shot. He shot the back window out. That’s all he could tell me. “Did you hear a noise? Did you hear any cries of pain or anger? Did you hear a crash or bash? Did the engine stop?” But he’d heard nothing, the truck kept driving without hesitation. “Three men Charlie, that meant that one was in the back most probably, and you could have shot his head right off Charlie. They could have been holiday makers lost, or looking for their dog, or anything Charlie. Listen, it’s not at all likely that they were the men from the river, there were three of them, in a truck, and the yobs at the river couldn’t have found out where we lived, or who we were even, they couldn’t even see us. They weren’t the river men, they were other people. Charlie, what the hell have you done? What the hell do we do now?” and he was crying. I think he was crying and I am weary and I have no energy. I hold out my hand to him as I stand up, it is little compared to the great size of the man before me, Insy Winsy Spider, “come on, let’s go back to bed.” We went back in to the kitchen. I saw the cabinet keys sticking out from under the kitchen rug, I picked them up. I dragged this Charlie creature up the stairs to bed and he climbed in slowly, he is a grasshopper that children have squeezed too tight, pale green of summer leaves and was that right? Did I remember that right? Do they have purple blood? He had his back to me so I put the gun back in the cabinet, locked it and hid the key in some toilet paper under my side of the bed. I put the cartridges in my bedside cabinet and I got in to bed too. I closed my eyes but I could not sleep, I was shaking, I was frightened, I was frightened for Charlie. I am not frightened of him though, he is all broken gentleness. He is a fallen horse too old and thin to get up, lying on it’s side in over-eaten grass, trying to just lift his head, but he can’t. An hour later I must have drifted off because I am woken by his whimpering in his sleep. I turned my back to him and covered my ears with the duvet. I think I would shoot him if he were my dog, he is weak and destructive. He is weak and destructive I say again and again to myself as I try to go back to sleep.
In the morning he kissed my cheek and stroked my face gently when he woke up. He thought I was fast asleep, but I was half awake and just didn’t want to talk to him, not yet. I don’t know what to say to him, and I cannot reassure him. His hand touched my face, and in my half sleep I reached out and held his hand against my cheek. He treads lightly out of the room and I turn over and go back to sleep, just for a while and then Poppenjoy jumped up on to my pillow and rubbed her furry head all over my face and cleaned my nails with her teeth, she lick, lick, licked the cheek where Charlie’s hand was, her rough little tongue erasing his touch, going, going, gone. A butterflies wing disintegrating, made ragged in the rain. It is time to get up.
I get a cigar and a glass of diet coke and go outside, into the cold yard in my silk robe, hugging it tightly to me, billows of grey smoke leaving my mouth and floating up over the shrubs onto a journey. The sparrows just up and about on the garden wall and a shaft of light cuts across the track where I see a shattered car window and I stand and stare at it, but I don’t move. A rabbit runs out from underneath the paddock gate, and I watch him because he’s running too fast for any fear of me. There will be something chasing him and before my thoughts have settled in my head, I see the stoat, following closely, all four legs off the ground at once, in urgent pursuit. And then once they have passed the tree, once they skirt around that bit of wall, once they tear into the orchard, soft grass hampering victim feet, I hear the screams. And there’s nothing you can do. I bring the glass up to my mouth and take a sip, a gulp of blood from a rabbit’s neck. If someone is dead it will be traced back here. If someone is injured, they’ll go to hospital and if it’s serious they’ll say they’ve been here, even if they were up to no good nobody could prove it if nothing was stolen I suppose. If they weren’t hurt or killed and they all escaped unscathed then would they come back to get us again out of revenge? If Charlie has killed someone I can’t do anything about it and there’s no way I’m going to lie for him to the police, they always find out in the end, and anyway, I think he’d break down under a simple police questioning and then where would I be? I cross the track to the barns and look through them, I can’t see that anything has been moved or taken, I kick things about and a rat comes wobbling out towards me, dying slowly in poisoned agony, I grab a wooden chair leg and smash it down on it’s head. It is dead and I watch it for a moment before I go in to the house. It’s surprisingly easy to kill rats. I remember… It doesn’t matter, it’s not the time for tales.
I sit in my kitchen, still in my dressing robe, worrying. Worrying does no good. Charlie phones me and all I say to him is “just wait and see. It was a bloody awful thing to do,
but you’ve done it now, so let’s hope it’s all OK. But I’ll look after you my handsome soldier.” And then I kick myself for saying soldier when I didn’t mean a real soldier. But the tables have turned. He wants me to call Frank and see if I can find a way to ask him if there’ve been any dead criminals found in ditches or something like that. I go to the bathroom and look at my face to see what it looks like when it’s worrying, there’s a big worry line between my eyes. I smile and pretend it’s all OK, and then worry and then smile. It’s all in your head. And then I slap my cheek because it’s not all in your head, this is real life.
Raffle Buffle sits on a pile of towels up on a shelf watching me, purring loudly and asking for a caress. His perfectly round eyes the most innocent sight I have ever seen. I would marry him if I was a lady cat. I hold my hand on him firmly so he can feel all my love, “Oh Raffle Buffle, chocolate truffle, what are we going to do with Charlie? I know, I’ll clean up that windscreen. Should I clean up the windscreen?” I say into his flank “It could be criminal evidence” I say to the Fuff, the chocolate truff. “Probably I shouldn’t. I don’t know what to do about that.”
I am still worrying. I go to my bedroom and get dressed and then I think I need a bit of a change of scene so I put my boiler suit on over my dress. I check all the cats, I stroke them all and make sure all the windows and doors are shut and then I leave. I lock the front door, get in my car and then go back to the front door to make sure that I really have locked it. I am sucking the side of my fist, I look in the rear view mirror and say “what the fuck are we going to do?” and I gulp down my breath. The day is too sunny, too blisteringly hot for death and disaster.
I had been gone for about three hours, smoking cigars on Dartmoor, sitting by the Taw, dipping my toes into chill water from boulders. Watching roaming ponies and creeping shadows and fast passing clouds. And when I began to think that my worry was exaggerated by myself, when I began to feel that I was nurturing the drama, I got in my car and drove home. I drove down the track to my little house, looking up so I didn’t see broken glass. I parked next to Jo’s car and noted how clean it was. I went into the house, straight to the kitchen and heard Jo chop, chop, chopping something. Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.
The kitchen was innocently sunny as if nothing had happened and radio 3 was playing some simple piano piece. I would have expected strings today. I smell garlic and cucumber in the air. “I don’t like cucumber” I say, but she ignores me. I turn the radio off. “Oi! Put that back on” but I ignore her “where’ve you been? Up a bit early weren’t you? And there’s fuck-all in the fridge. If you finish things you have to replace them Gussie. It’s as simple as that.” And even though she’s nagging, I’m glad she’s there. “I’ll make us curry later, I promise. When did you get back Jo?” I am too, too tiny “about two hours ago, there was a bloody awful mess on the drive, did you do that? I bet you hadn’t even noticed it, loads of smashed glass. What was that I wonder?” and I sucked in my bottom lip and looked stupid “anyway, I cleaned it up and I unblocked that drain too. I brought some more wood in and I cleaned the downstairs bathroom. It’s my new tablets, they’re bloody brilliant.”
“Blimey, you can come again” I said as the ghost of grandma would. Tell me a story, tell me a story and make me believe it. Wrap me up and keep me warm and cossetted, tell me it will all be ok. “When I was little, Jo, I used to say to grandma, ‘will you make me a cake?’ and she’d say ‘what would I want to do that for? You’ll only eat it.’” She was very funny.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes”
“No, you’re not. Sit down” and she flusters around me, and from behind my back she gave me a hug.
Rah, rah, rah I say in my head over and over again, because I can’t think of anything else. But I keep seeing dead men in ditches, I see smashed trucks splattered with blood, or missing limbs and a roadside gangster, stepped out of an El Greco painting, bandaging up and biting down on sticks. “Thank you for looking after me Jo. I do appreciate it you know” and that weary little smile I give her is the last look on that rabbit’s face this morning. Thank you for my life and deliver me safely on my next journey.
Chapter 19
‘Hello, hello, can anybody hear me? Is anybody out there? Is there anybody home?’. And I too am comfortably numb. I feel there is a persistent wasp in my garden, in my space, buzz, buzz, buzzing around my head. I am sitting on the grass in my little garden within my bigger garden, and it is lovely and cool and calm and quiet. I’m wearing grandma’s green and ragged gardening anorak over a red and pink dress, bare legs and green flip flops. I’m smoking a cigar and sitting on my arse. A butterfly flies past me, bouncing along on an invisible elastic and Sgt jingles to me from the bottom of the garden in his aviary. A silly robin flew in to keep him company today and now all that is left of him are a mass of orange tinted feathers and two spindly legs on his eating log. Now you see it, now you don’t. I picked up the legs and put them with my collection of birds legs, broken eggs and old bits of nests in my treasure cabinet “why do you have birds legs in a cabinet Gussie, it’s really disgusting. Why can’t you put silver there or something like any normal person. It’s not right. You are weird you know Gussie” whines Jo. I don’t care. I would rather lie amongst grass than be taken out on a yacht. I would rather be given love than jewels. I would rather see a hare’s form than a big house. I would rather be quiet for ever than waste just one minute talking nonsense. And I am a giant striding off across the landscape, just seen from behind. Tell me a story, tell me a story.
I’ve made the tortoises pen twice the size today and they’re quietly happy about that. There are seagulls in from the sea, over the fields and a sparrow lands, fluuuuur, in the shrub beside me. It is quiet today and in half an hour I think I will go down and check my bees and maybe take some honey. I’m out of sorts. I’m tired. It’s difficult to cope when you’re tired. My right eye is twitching like a bastard. The sparrow is doing acrobatics now and turning himself upside down beside me, he sits on a post, closer to me, all handsome in his dusty brown. He has a big dark bib and raises his head high now, making his neck unfeasibly long, all the greater to watch me by. I want him to come closer and so I keep still as a house. I am vaguely aware of Charlie, of Percy, of Edward, it’s all so complicated, people are so complicated. It is a shame I suppose, in some ways that I need sex so often, but I do, I can’t wank for the rest of my life. I dragged myself up from the lawn and hugged the anorak close to me, I watched Everingham catching flies at the window and then went to bed. I slept for about 40 minutes and felt so much better. Then I went strimming, but my head is somewhere else and not anywhere I want it to be at the moment and I only did two hours, each minute feeling like ten, and then I went home again, sticky and itchy and frustrated with balsam bits all over me, down my bra, in my knickers, all in my hair. I like to wait until they are utterly dry and changed in colour and then let my hair down and shake all the bits out and listen to the noise they make as they hit the tiled floor in the bathroom, tinkling and tickling the surface, tiny, tiny trunks and branches they look like, a miniature felled forest. And then Jo goes in later on and says “pissing hell Gussie, don’t leave such a bloody mess everywhere.” I think it’s funny. She is a part of this house as if she’s always been here, she is a wafting breeze carrying me along on a lyrical journey, I feel as if I’m flying but she keeps hold of my string. But she has to keep hold tight, because that string could just be tugged out of her hand. Nothing is certain. Nothing is for ever. I’m frightened.
There are three cats on my bed waiting for treats. Three cats, where there were once, not too long ago, four cats. I miss Coningsby, it feels all raw again. Maybe there is no magic. I’m frightened because maybe there is no magic. I still pray every night, but my prayers have changed, I now say ‘thank you for letting Coningsby and I be together (because we were for so long) and thank you for letting her come back again very soon’. But it all feels dead up th
ere, where I’m praying to. I don’t feel the universe beating and pulsating with life any more. It feels cardboard and it feels deaf and I don’t feel that anyone’s listening to my prayers any more. I didn’t ever think she’d die. She was me and I was her and she should never have died. And it’s not ‘just a cat’ don’t let any idiot say that. There is a big, round hole in my life where she was, a big visible cricket ball sized hole, too gaping to be filled in by anything. I am idly but aggressively fiddling with my putty rubber. It is dirty and tough and falls to the ground, plomb, and it’s on the floor boards, I look down at it, all fat and dirty and misshapen and I leave it there and leave the room.
Later on, in the evening Jo and I sat together in lazy cosiness and clutter, our feet up, mine on grandma’s stool and Jo with hers on the sofa, tucked up under a cushion and the fire blazing and roaring. We talked about love and relationships and men and boyfriends and lucky escapes and bad things and horrible things with biscuit long pauses between and then Frank walked in, getting his chair slightly stuck in the doorway and too much of a draft chasing in behind him. After we’d lazily greeted him, too warm and stupefied to stand up, Jo said “Tell Frank what you just told me.”
Come Not When I Am Dead Page 15