Chapter 22
I strimmed all along the river bank in the owl field this morning. It was very warm but not hot and it was such lovely work to do. Four ceaseless hours of solid, exhausting and filthy contentment. And afterwards, when I was walking back through the long grass I came across a multitude of damselflies, uniform peacock blue, and as one, they all exploded into space before me like sparks from fireworks, or criminals scattering whilst being chased by the police. And then a crow rose noisily up, hoowip, hoowip, hoowip, muscled and strong, climbing high into the air before me. And this long grass marked out by buttercups and meadow saxifrage, lady’s smock and yarrow. And then another crow, hidden by long grass and distracted by the humming and buzzing and the dead hen pheasant, he didn’t see me. And I found I was striding along, swinging my arms into the air and talking away to myself, to someone or something up in the skies, a conversation full of beauty and reflection and contemplation and utter, utter happiness and then I wonder why I ever need anyone else at all. This is all that’s real.
When I got home, tired and dirty and happy I was greeted with “your Aunty Piggy” was here earlier
“I haven’t got an Aunty Piggy”
“Yes you have.”
“I’ve got an Aunty Peggy”
“well, she called herself Piggy”
“She wouldn’t have done that Jo”
“well, she did”
“you didn’t call her Piggy did you?”
“Yes” and she has her head on one side and her companion efag in her mouth, she’s looking aggressively defensive. “Oh God” I am undoing my boot laces, “that’s just her accent Jo, her name is Peggy. Well, I hope you haven’t offended her”
“I think I have actually”
“Why?” I am sitting on the bottom stair looking up at her looking down at me, trying to pull off my boots now “uuugh” and I offer my foot to Jo like a big useless baby, to pull off my boot, but she ignores it. I am feeling too weary and too dirty, I could fall asleep here and all my muscles feel like they’ve held communion together, “why have you offended her?”
“Because she had her dog in the car and I just saw it’s head and I said ‘Oh, you’ve got a Daschund’ and as I said it, the Daschund started standing up and just didn’t stop, it got bigger and taller and taller until it was absolutely enormously tall and it wasn’t a Daschund at all. I felt such a prat.”
“It’s a Saluki Jo”
“well, I know that now, Piggy said “don’t be so silly, of course it’s not a Daschund” honestly Gussie, you do have some ridiculously posh relations.”
“Don’t call her Piggy. I’m sure she won’t be offended, it’s just her manner. I’ll ring her later.”
And it’s later now and I haven’t phoned Aunty Peggy but I’m sitting here waiting for Joseph. I’ve just been looking at a photo of me holding Coningsby on our birthdays and I’m holding her plumpness close and she’s pushing away from me, but snuggling against me at the same time, her little fat and alive paws. She looks like I could still cuddle her, and I don’t want to cry, I stand up and look right up to the ceiling, tipping my head right back. I wish she hadn’t died, I miss her so much. I am listening to ‘If the weather’s sunny’ now on my laptop and it makes me a bit lyrical and inclined to sadness and I half thought of myself dancing mournfully in a meadow whilst listening, my arms wide open trying to find her, and then I realised what was happening and quickly switched it off and put on ‘Quadrophenia’ instead. I think that has the best beginning of any album I’ve ever heard and then I realised that my face was set and I was almost punching the air. My mood has turned to aggression. I will turn the music off and have silence, I will read. But I can’t concentrate. Oh bloody well hurry up Joseph.
Joseph was ten minutes late. “Come on, you great big she cat” he called out from the porch. I am excited now. I am looking forward to an adventure. I left the house shouting “Jo, I’ve gone, see you later.” I have started shouting my messages across the house now too. But I won’t smoke one of those efag things, even though she keeps trying to make me. “You both sound like fish wives” grandma would have said. I walked out of my front door, through my lovely red and black tiled porch saying ‘pah, pah, pah’ through straight held lips so I can hear the sound it makes and prove to myself that I’m real.
On my drive was a big, silver shiny car that’s not Joseph’s. And Joseph, elegant in blue linen hopping from foot to foot by the open door, waiting for me. His eyebrows raised, and I smiled and slinked in and down into the seat, all hushed and milky cream. “Aunt Augusta, this is Sylvian, Sylvian Lau. Sylvian, this is Aunty Gussie” says Joseph pointing towards the backwards-turned face in the drivers seat. There is a lovely, careful smell in here, it doesn’t smell like my car. And the man in the driver’s seat smiles a pretty lopsided smile and says “I’ve really looked forward to meeting you Aunty Gussie, ever since Joseph first told me about you.” I don’t know where that accent is from. I like meeting new people. No I don’t. Well sometimes I do. I am intrigued by his lopsidedness, and I smile at Joseph “Where are we going?”
“just you wait little chicken” and Joseph holds on to Sylvian’s knee. Joseph is in love. I can tell he’s in love. I can feel he’s in love and the whole car is stuffed full of sweet scents and high spirits and luxury and I am almost choking with the happiness drifting from them. My head falls to one side, owl-like and I inhale it all and don’t breathe out, so that they will stay contained in love for ever. There is no rubbish in this car, there are no crumbs in this car, there’s no ripped paper even, there’s no hawk poohs or rat poohs or mud or blood. It’s strangely perfect as if we’re not really here at all. We chattered and chattered and then pulled up outside ‘Hiccups’, it smelt of wood and churches and burgundy and fresh grass. I felt wrapped up in it, part of it. My head rolls around on my neck taking it all in, I am sensuous and sybaritical and I hold it close to me. I’m in a funny, tender, cherishing mood today. “You’re not schizophrenic” says Charlie “you have at least ten personalities and they’re all totally different. It’s always a surprise as to which one you’ll be.”
Sylvian is Joseph’s height and a similar build, though I think more muscle to him, he has a meadow flower elegance to him and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d jumped out before me on my walk this morning along with the crows and damselflies. His pretty manners are so many pretty delicate flowers. He is from Hong Kong and his skin is the same colour as the sand on the beach below my house, his eyes the shadows in the crevices on the rocks, they are black and fluid, after the tide has washed over them. Joseph is happy and I feel a fine, strong line between them both and balanced on that line is consideration and warmth and love. I am happy in their happiness. “Isn’t he beautiful Aunty Gussie?” Joseph asked me when Sylvian had left the table “he is beautiful Joseph”
“and calm and real”
“he seems calm and real, and he dresses well”
“he does doesn’t he?”
“He moves like a poem, he is like a breeze, I like him” and I want to make Joseph happy and then maybe I will be happy. “Oh, I’m so glad, I really love him Aunty Gussie, I really, really love him, for the first time I am really, properly in love, not just pretending. He makes me feel like one of those jelly alien things you used to get us when we were little, remember, in a plastic egg?”
“He reminds me of Sergeant”
“A sparrowhawk? Aunty Gussie! Why?” I laugh at the shock in Joseph’s face “because of his colouring, Sergeant’s black is almost mauve and Sylvian’s hair is so black it’s almost purple and his skin could be the barring on the wings. Do you really think you love him?”
“Yes, why, what do you mean?”
“I was just wondering if you really did, or you just understand how love really feels and you want to feel it. I think maybe that like me, you just love to be happy, maybe you’re just conjuring up love because it’s a beautiful thing to do”
“be quiet, he�
��s coming back.” And I see Joseph’s face go from thought to unease and then Sylvian sits back in his chair, unaware. Sylvian is very respectful to his boyfriend’s aunt, but he speaks openly and then whilst we are eating he says to me “I have an art gallery in Hong Kong, and English art is very popular at the moment, but the English, the England of days gone by, before lager louts” I wince “and drunken brutality”
“Is that how England is seen? Really? That’s horrible” it is horrible.
“Aunty Gussie, tell Sylvian what you think of when you think of England” and he’s very happy, his eyes are on fire. He wants to syphon my character out so that Sylvian will know him better, know where he’s come from. “My England is green and lyrical, it’s populated by morris dancers and village greens and good leather shoes and little lone country shops and it’s quiet and well mannered and respectful and there is a soundtrack of Kinks songs and Vaughan Williams. It’s clothed in tweeds and woollen hats and held together by hand shakes and covered by pocket handkerchiefs” that makes them laugh. “Gussie, you’re a romantic, but it’s very beautiful, and that’s the English art I want in my gallery. Joseph has shown me some of your paintings.” He is neat and tidy and is methodically unfolding the napkin to put on his lap. “I’ve only seen the portraits and animals, but they are very distinctly English and ‘well mannered’ without being constrained and buttoned up. I want you to do an exhibition for us” and instantly the lights shine brighter and dazzle my eyes, “Ha!” I have my new potato stuck in my throat with excitement and I can’t get past it’s glorious bulk “oh, that’s lovely. I’d love to. In Hong Kong? Me?” and in my mind’s eye I see Jo alone in my house feeding the cats and trying to be nice to the Major, I would have to get Frank to look after the Major, Jo couldn’t manage. I see the fridge door open and chopped chicken on saucers ready for cat bowls with ready meal curries behind them, and my house hoovered and tidy and my cats sleeping on my bed, made, without me “I’d love to” I say again “yes please” and I want to say “don’t forget will you?” but I think maybe that’s a bit childish, but it’s nagging me “don’t forget will you?” I couldn’t help it.
There is fun in the air and I find myself daydreaming and not listening and just rumblings finding their way through layers and layers of pure white cotton wool. Then I see movement and Joseph standing up and a million bread crumbs fall from his lap to the floor, I watch them hurtle through the air, beige and white and crusty and porous, leaving blue trousers and tumbling to the floor, I just noted the colours as they settle in slow motion and I try to count them. I am coming out of my daze.
By the time we are on our last course we are talking about Charlie, it’s not that I wanted to, but Joseph encouraged me and it’s easy to talk after the first loose-bowelled, guilty feeling I had when I began. I am being poured out like hot syrup from a pan. They ask a question every now and then, but mostly they just listen and I get a little heated with emotion and Sylvian says “it seems to me you have a great propensity for love and for happiness and for perfection, but you’re unhappy and that unhappiness isn’t coming from you, but from around you and you don’t need to be suffering. Do you not think that this man, Charlie, do you not think that he’s not the right man for you? That whatever you do and whatever you think, this will always be a bit useless?”
“I don’t know, carry on, I’m struggling to see it all objectively.”
“Well, any time in these last four years he could have come to you and left his wife, you are obviously very lovely, Joseph is certainly always telling me that you are and I only have your word for it, but his wife sounds, sounds well, not very nice”
“and my word for it too” puts in Joseph “she’s a bitch.”
“OK, both of your words for it, which I think proves it, so you would think it would be a welcome thing for him, to leave her for you, but his reasons are that he doesn’t want to leave his wife because of the children, but what’s happening now sounds like it’s upsetting the children a great deal more, two unhappy parents. So, I think, he won’t come to you, but maybe he’d like to, but perhaps, that quality in him which makes him not be able to talk to you properly, that seems to be making him not act properly too, he would always be like that and I think that that would always frustrate you. I don’t think, with great respect, that you’re thinking about all of this properly. I think you are just feeling it. But I see too that you are a perfectionist, don’t forget I heard your description of England earlier, and I think you want this relationship to be perfect too, but I don’t see how it can be.”
“That’s what I keep saying to her too. I think that she should either finish with him now, or keep it as it’s always been but look out for someone else” and Sylvian looks at Joseph with a hesitant, disturbed eye, “no, not that that’s a good thing to do, but for Aunty Gussie, I don’t see another way, not if she won’t dessert him. You feel great loyalty to him don’t you Aunty Gussie?” and Joseph slid out with ease from a potential relationship crisis. “Well, I know it’s getting worse, I know that, but I want to make it better and make us closer. It’s not a question of him living with me, not just that, it’s about him talking to me and sharing things with me and progressing and evolving. That’s the important thing isn’t it? But he’s going feral and it’s not the same feral as me” and I rip a bread roll into a million crumbs and try and pile them up in a little pyramid next to my plate. “Do you know what I mean?” I am pulling faces, I am pushing the crumbs into the table cloth so I can feel the hardness on my fingertips, they really are strangely hard, I am trying to destroy them. “I think you’re too good at loving and you’re too loyal too, but loyalty is a very fine thing.” Then I told Sylvian about Edward, because I didn’t want him to think I was perfect and self sacrificing. “I don’t think the soldier counts” says Sylvian, he is looking down now and he is holding Joseph’s hand on his lap “in England you have a wonderful description ‘flogging a dead horse.’ I think you are flogging a dead horse with your vet” and both Joseph and I laugh at the unintended witticism and the mood is momentarily lightened. “I think you need someone more mentally stimulating too, and kinder, what did he last do for you? What was his last act of kindness to you?” and I am stumped and desperately searching my brain for an un-asked for kind word, or bunch of flowers given to me from the hedgerows or a cigar or some time where he escaped everything, to hell with what anyone said, just to be with me “but he’s not like that”
“yes, but he should be, shouldn’t he? If he were to make you happy?” I can’t tell Sylvian about the vandalism, I suddenly realise that it’s a bit shocking, well, it’s not, but I think he’d find it shocking and Joseph doesn’t mention it either. “We are so similar in so many ways though, we love the same things, the things I am passionate about, he is too.”
“Aunty Gussie, forget about Charlie for a minute and just like you told us about your England, tell us about your perfect man.”
“Are you both making fun of me?” I was beginning to feel harassed, but I liked the idea of creating perfection from my mind and living it for a few minutes “he would be big and strong and manly looking, not that it’s all about looks, but I have to begin somewhere and so that’s what I see first. He will have a good vocabulary and speak well. He will be confident in himself and know that he’s someone to be proud of, because he knows himself. He will be kind and gentle and reliable and I will admire and respect him, and I’ll be able to learn things from him. He would have to absolutely adore me, whatever I did, just love and adore me and I’d have to be the only woman in the world for him. And he’d have to love me as I am, not a distorted view of me that’s not real. And he’d want to look after me and not let me worry about things, but leave me all my freedom too!” And Sylvian and Joseph applaud me with hands raised high and draw all attention to our table. “Oh, and he’d have to love all my animals, even the Major” and we’re all laughing now. I hope I haven’t said too much, I need time to reflect on what I’ve said.
> ‘Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, everything that’s wonderful is what I feel, when we’re together. Brighter than a lucky penny, when you’re near, the rain clouds disappear dear and I feel so fine, just to know that you are mine’.
We leave the restaurant, linking arms and head for the car and when we get back home I suggest we all go for a quiet dark walk “autumn will be here soon, five geese flew over here earlier.”
“The seasons change Gussie and so do our hearts and our hopes and ideas of what is good and right for us” says Sylvian with a smile of utter rabble-rousing cheek
“oh, you wise man” says Joseph. I like to see him so happy.
It is a lovely, still night and we all go into the house as friends and sleep the sleep of innocence, well, I do, but I am thinking of what I said, of what they said, of my perfect man and that maybe I am flogging a dead horse with my vet.
There have been fireworks this evening and mad chanting, stick-waving crowds in my head, but now I am calm right through and I realise that a furnace, a fierce, fiery furnace was bubbling up inside me and now it has gone out. I’m off to sleep. Poppenjoy is lying on my pillow, swallowing as if she had a sore throat and lying like a sphinx, she really is very beautiful. Raffle Buffle has a sore eye and I know that’s come about from fighting with Everingham, they are still battling over supremacy, and I pick him up and cradle him like a baby in my arms and put his ointment in and he just lets me, he is such a darling boy. Everingham has been eating salmon all day on and off and is licking his lips at the end of the bed, cool and Kingly. And the Major is downstairs in his basket, quiet and happy and dreaming of violence no doubt. And for what feels like a very welcome change, I am very happy.
Come Not When I Am Dead Page 18