Come Not When I Am Dead (14 page)

When I opened the door, bouffy pink
shirt looked pleasantly surprised.
 
He beamed at me and held out a hairy hand “Giles”
“Gussie” I said and offered my hand for him to kiss.
 
It disturbs people that does, they don’t
know what to do and people who are strong-charactered and intelligent will ignore
it and people who are stupid will kiss it, and instantly put themselves at a
disadvantage.
 
I only offer my hand
like that to people I don’t like the look of.
 
He kissed my hand of course, I knew he
would and I wiped his kiss off on the back of my dress.
 
“well, hello Gussie, and you’re the
artist?”
“yes”
“how lovely, how lovely” he smarmed and a thousand slugs slimed all over me.
“And what’s your name?” I asked the little girl
“this is Clara” Giles said as the child stared at my shoes and not at my
face.
 
Giles stared at me all over,
he has the sophistication of a 12 year old
boy
, I thought.
 
He would kiss
me like Adders poisoning me if I let him “would you like a drink?
 
Or would you like to go straight to the
studio?”
 
Unfortunately for Giles
he’d arranged a meeting nearby and had to do and dash.
 
We headed for the studio where I
photographed Clara, with the father watching me and looking through my
things.
 
‘He’d be a pushover’ I
thought ‘if I wanted to seduce him’, why do people leave themselves so open?
 
Some people are so revoltingly
transparent, they’re asking, crying out to be manipulated.
 
But I don’t do manipulation. But I like
to understand.
 
After the photo
session Giles held my hand for far too long in his, it was brie flopping,
plopping out of shape on a too hot day, it was disgusting.
 
“I should like you to paint me Gussie, I
should like you to come to the house and put me in whatever position you choose”
he thinks he is being charming “Are you married Gussie?” he asks me, and I know
that it is just so he can tell me
“I’m divorced.”
 
He is a first class
slag.
“S.L.A.G.”
 
I said to Jo when they
were leaving
“who?”
“him, going to his car now, there” and I gesticulated with my left hand whilst
I scrubbed at the memory of his touch on my right hand with a tea towel “bloody
great arse of a man, look.”
“Oh my God, that’s him, the man the vet’s wife was with in the pub, that’s the
one she’s going off with.”
 
I could
have thought many things, but what I first thought was
what sort of man has a wife that would leave him for that sort of man?

I’ve just eaten
some sausages.
 
Every bite I took of
them made me think about sex.
 
I’ll
buy those sausages again.
 
I went
upstairs to the quiet of my bedroom, I closed my door and ran across my carpet
and dived on to my bed, lay on my back and phoned Edward “what are you doing
tomorrow?”
“nothing if it means I can see you”
“would you like to come down and stay for a few days?”
“I would love nothing better.”
 
I
told you I was bad.

Edward is here.
 
I waited at the window for the second
time in two days and saw him arrive in a flurry of goose down and white fluffy
clouds in a very pretty car, all pale blue and cream.
 
It is a work of art, not a car, an
Austin Healey 3000 he tells me, I shall remember that, because, one day, when I
make absolutely heaps of money I would like an Austin Healey 3000 and a big
black and chrome chopper trike.
 
“You
have to have a big fat belly if you ride one of those” Charlie once said to me
“I shall be the exception” I said to him and I
will
have one of those with my legs stretched out far in front of
me and the grumble of the engine rumbling through my crotch, rising up my
throat to my mouth, oh God, how exciting.
 
I’m sitting in the warmth of my sitting room writing this now with man
sounds around me in this little house.
 
Edward is very attentive and careful of me.
 
And for such an incredible looking man,
it is funny to see him behaving as if he can’t believe his luck.
 
He arrived with flowers and chocolates
and a really good bird identification book for me.
 
I like that, I like it that it was a
thoughtful present.
 
He bought
chocolates for Jo too.
 
He is a
flourish on a page.
 
He knows how to
do things well.
 
He is
gracious.
 
He could make a lame dog
chase rabbits.
 
He makes time fast
but so that you still appreciate it. He is slowed pictures from train windows,
and an open mouth, lost for words.
 
Grandma
would have adored him.
 
He filled me
with a big rushing, gushing excitement, all dark and lovely and crisp.
 
He filled the house with smiles and fragrant
loveliness.
 
I look at him and
imagine myself gliding all over him in my nakedness, like a sprite, floating
and drifting all over him.
 
Jo
looked as if she couldn’t believe the gloriousness of the man and I think,
somehow mistrusted it.
 
She followed
me in to the kitchen “make sure you use protection”
“shut up.”
“No Gussie, you make sure you do, it’s serious”
“Fuck off Jo.
 
Now, go and ask him
if he’d like anything to eat with his tea.
 
Go” I kept my back to her so she didn’t see my face
“Gussie.
 
Protection.”
“Fuck off.”
 
I don’t like to have to
answer to anyone, I don’t like advice unless I ask for it, I didn’t like her
insisting on having the last word.
 
But
I laughed under my breath and got two laxatives from my handbag, I crushed them
up under a teaspoon and put them into a raspberry that I put on top of a
meringue for her, then I added tiny bits of meringue pieces inside the
raspberry too, just in case she ate it separately and crunched a bit of
laxative so she wouldn’t be surprised by the texture.
  
And then she bloody well came back
into the kitchen and almost caught me.
 
“If you marry him and he comes to live here with you, will I have to
leave?”
“Yes, right away, with no notice” but then I think she is going to cry so I
tell her the truth “but I think he’s a boyfriend, not a husband.
 
I DON’T KNOW WHY, BEFORE YOU ASK, I
DON’T KNOW WHY.”
 
Maybe he’s not
real because he does seem perfect.
 
Maybe if someone doesn’t see something it’s because I’m invisible and my
head goes off on cotton clouds to far off places and people.
 
And I don’t think I’m used to things
lasting or always being there for me.
 
And Jo wandered lonely as another cloud back to the sitting room to chat
to Edward and bask in his musky warmth.
 
The house is full of beige and cream cape feathers, floating down from
the skies, softening our hearts and making us believe things that aren’t really
true, sending us to sleep and keeping us warm.
 
I haven’t told Charlie that Edward was
coming and I am hoping he won’t find out.
 
But, if he did, if he did find out, I could just say “you’re married, I
want a boyfriend” but what I’d really planned to say was “he’s Jo’s cousin” and
then change the subject really quickly.
 
I was spinning around madly, wildly on a roundabout and Charlie was
watching me from the edge of park.
 
I felt guilty, I wish I didn’t, but I did.
 
And the stupid thing was that seeing
Edward and sleeping with Edward made me love Charlie all the more and miss
Charlie all the more.

 
“There is a sense of loneliness and
isolation around you” someone once said to me.
 
I
know there is
I’m thinking to myself and in my bad head I’m planning on
what to do with Edward in a couple of days when I see Charlie.
 
It is a dangerous game.

When I couldn’t wait any longer I
took Edward to bed “come on” I said, holding out my hand, when he was playing
chess with Jo “you’re being boring, let’s go to bed.”
 
I am a whisper in his ear, a caress to
his neck, syrup down his throat.
 
I
am all that is soft and seductive.
 
All
the way up the stairs, all the way to my bedroom I was shivering and shaking
with excitement.
 
I thought I was
cold and then I knew it was outrageous, physical excitement.
 
But I said to myself
 
“this isn’t purely a physical relationship,
there may be more.”
 
But then, what
does that matter?
 
My bedroom is
large and softly shadowed, it is dirty old blood-coloured, soft and muted and
kept in safe secrecy.
 
It is a room
to make love in, a room to conceive in, a room to become in, a room to sleep a
hundred years in.
 

In the glorious shadows I lay Edward
down, naked in my bed.
 
And I stood
facing him and started to undress, slowly, as he lay there, on his back looking
at me in steady quiet, in serious anticipation.
 
I feel a river of breathlessness flooding
through me.
 
I love my body, I’ve
told you that before, every single bit of it, and I love who I’m having sex
with to love it too, see it all and take it all in.
 
As soon as I see my own flesh I get
turned on.
 
I am the cat who makes
friends with the mouse.
 
I am the
mouse that eats the cat’s food in front of the cat.
 
I am the frog who doesn’t mind being
cornered by four Burmese cats.
 
I
opened up my dress.
 
I am all honey
coloured smooth skin.
 
I am firm and
lean but I have beautiful curves and I am very much a woman.
 
I kept my eyes on his eyes.
 
I made no sound, and I walked towards
him, naked, watching him watch me.
 
I pulled the covers slowly off him, watching more and more of his hard
body being revealed to me.
 
He is so
very beautiful.
 
He is lying there,
quiet and erect and ready, waiting to spring into action.
 
A poem not spoken.
 
I put both his hands on my hips, I love
to see them there and then I lift my left leg and get astride him in beautiful,
deep, smooth silence.
 
And when I am
entered I have no idea what’s going on.
 
I lose myself in my senses.
 
Colours and shapes and harmonies and softness.
 
He is beautiful.
 
I held on to him and he was my raft, he
was my inflatable dolphin, he was waves and calm and lightning struck seas.
 
He was the low, low sky and I looked at
him and wondered what would come next.
 
But there is something in my funny brain that won’t let me see that.

We were quiet in our love making, as
quiet as we could be, and I hope no noise leaked through the walls and floors
to Jo.
 
We ate in the middle of the
night, we were so hungry, tiptoeing down to the kitchen, hand in hand, putting
on the light and shocking our tired eyes at 3am and I hope I’m not playing a
part, I would like all this to be real.
 
He holds my hand without me holding his first.
 
He asks me questions without me asking
first.
 
He looks at me and I know
what he is thinking.
 
His gaze
lingers on me and goes right through me.
 
It doesn’t flitter on me as if by accident and then flit off somewhere
else.
 
I do understand this.
 
We ate warm toast and butter, golden
syrup flowing all over it, falling off it and down our necks, he licks it off
me.
 
Cold beef burger and after
eight mints.
 
Our hands cupped
around warm mugs of Ovaltine and then he shares a cigar with me “In
celebration.
 
I don’t normally
smoke”
“In celebration of what?”
“In celebration of you and me and thank God I found you.”
 
He steals the breath from my lungs and
fills my heart with applause.
 
‘Oh,
bravo, bravo’ imagined crowds shout.
And the kitchen smells the same now as it did when grandma and I would creep
down and have midnight feasts together.
 
And the soundtrack is still the same old buzzing fridge.
 
It smelt the same as when grandma and I
would get our macs, put them on over our night clothes and go for a walk down
the hill to the sea. It is just the same.
 
And I think I see Edward as a bit of an education, educating myself from
potential solitude and distancing myself from abandonment, that’s what I think
will happen with Charlie, that he’ll just abandon me.
 
So, I give myself to Edward, but my
anchor is Charlie, because he is still there.
 
But if he abandons me, my heart will
abandon him.
 
I will not be a
victim.
  
I will tell myself that
I hate and I will believe that.
 
I
am thinking too much of Charlie and not enough of myself.
 
I am not giving Edward a chance.
 

He has been here for two nights and
days of closeness and loveliness.
 
Of picnics and pub lunches, of neatly folded travel rugs, of grandma’s
starched napkins and wild drives on lonely roads.
 
Of ice cold diet coke and lime and
orange and of cheese straws and strawberry’s dipped, rolled, smothered in
castor sugar, of cadbury’s caramels and pick and mix.
 
“Why do you want to marry me?”
 
I am happy, there is no denying this
surging feeling of well-being galloping through my veins and tickling the inside
of my body.
 
It is a beautiful
indulgence.
 
Gussie of last week is,
I don’t know where and this is a person I don’t know.
 
I feel I can just touch him and magic
and shininess will spark off him all over me.
 
“Because you are the most incredible
person I’ve ever met.
 
You are
beautiful.
 
In all ways.”
“What else?” I was sitting on his knee, on the cliff over-looking the sea.
“Because you are like no other woman I’ve ever met, you are lovely and wild and
weird and wonderful.
 
And other
things like you’re intelligent and you can cook and you don’t worry about
things and you don’t get pmt (or so you tell me)” and I laughed, he does make
me laugh a lot, I like that.
 
“Are
you really rather perfect?” I look puzzled at him “are you?
 
I am serious.
 
Or am I being fooled?”
“I don’t think so, but I hope I would be perfect for you anyway.
 
I want to be perfect for you”
“and you’re very good at saying the right thing.
 
Is that because it’s what you feel or
what you think I want to hear?
 
Are
you real?
 
Or are you a great big, tanned
fantasy?” I am feeling his hard strong arms through his shirt
 
“when are you going to Afghanistan Mr
Handsome?”
“Next week, not long now.
 
Will you
keep in contact?”
“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.