Free Come Not When I Am Dead by R.A. England

near the window, a window scratchy with years old
dirt, the paint has come off the frame and there’s a damp smell in here, a sort
of pale brown smell.   I don’t
know.   I don’t know.   I don’t quite know what I’m doing
really.   I’m painting, but I don’t
have passion today, yesterday.   I
want to kick down walls and make things crash and bash.   I’m spikey and squiggly and going round
and round in eccentric wheels of copper wire.   I want to lie about on the ground and
smoke cigars.   I want to dance
furiously.   I want to suck my thumb
and curl up at the base of a big tree.    I want yellow honey to flow and
get rid of the rubbish.   I want to
rest my head on Coningsby’s soft and warm fur.   I want to be loved and held and
cherished by everybody.    I
want to be adored by everybody and no words spoken.   But birds still sing.   I say “oh bugger” to myself and go
outside in this filthy and disgusting heat with my head down and my body
slipping through the stiflingness.
    I am sitting on my bedroom floor now having
a cigar and in the sitting room I hear Joseph and his newest boyfriend
chattering and I know the boyfriend is stroking Coningsby because I hear Joseph
say “Aunty Gussie absolutely adores her, I hate to think what she’ll be like
when she dies.”   But I can’t think
about it, best not to think about it as marbles scurry across the floor and as
the fly lands in the river and finds no fish.   As I go under and you go over.   But nothing could replace her, nothing
could replace my silken-eyed wonder with her silken-soft footsteps.   I tiptoe across the room now and rest in
the feathers on my bed and rest my chin on my hand and I am silent.
And now, as they talk, as they gabble, my time stops and I rewind and my space
is quieter than theirs.   It is the
only thing worth understanding and what you say, whoever you are, means nothing
as I sit in silence by your side.   In my very beautiful silence, to be treasured and kept as a
treasure.   And I have a box of
treasures, a box of felted cat fur and cast off cat claw sheaths, of sunsets
and passing owls or a pheasants cry far off and getting further and further.
    Later on, whilst
Jo is tidying the sitting room and I’m standing there watching her so I’m sort
of partaking in it too and looking as if I’m doing something,   Jo asks me what Joseph does for a
living.   “This and that” I say and
pretend to look under a chair
“but what is this and that? And will you stop just walking from spot to spot, I
know you’re just busy doing nothing”
“Well, he sort of looks after Japanese businessmen” I say and look away from
her, to hide my smile “looks after them?   What does that mean? That sounds a bit dodgy.”
And I throw over my shoulder “It’s not though” and I race out of the sitting
room, in to the kitchen so she doesn’t hear me laugh and hope she gets
distracted with cobwebs and dusty surfaces.

Chapter 7

 
    “Hello?” It is a woman’s voice, his
wife’s.    She has a ‘phone’
voice
“Is that Linda Snell?” I feel like saying, but instead I clear my throat and
say
“Oh, hi, ummm, Farquhar Stevens here, is, umm, is the vet there?” I don’t know
why I always do this voice.
“Can I ask what the problem is?”
“Oh yah, it’s umm, my donkey”
“and what’s the problem with your donkey?”
“Umm, just doesn’t look right, I know when he looks right and he just looks
wrong, very wrong, really need the vet out now” and I think that sounds pretty
good and I can hear that she’s impressed with me, she thinks I’m the ‘right
type’.   She is gracious to me and if
I’d ‘oo ah’ed’ like a farmer she would have been curt.   She should be ashamed of herself, and
Farquhar sounds such a twat.
“You’re one of us” people will say to me, or “she’s not one of us” they’ll say
about Jo and it disgusts me, it is excrement hurling from their mouths.   “Just hold the