Read Online Come Not When I Am Dead by R.A. England - Free Book Online Page A

frantically to us, giving tiny little yelps now and then so we’d go
and see them.   We walked over to the
dogs, moonlight on our shoes, looking at each other and absent mindedly
stroking their heads, smelly dog head rubbing all over my leg.   “What are you up to?” and this time I
definitely saw his eyes narrow
“nothing, really, nothing.   You’re
so bloody nosey.   Don’t you trust
me?”
“No, I certainly don’t”
“Well, that’s not very nice” but he made me laugh “I’ve got to go now Frankus
Pankus, come and see me soon won’t you,   I don’t see so much of you now Grumpy’s died”
“would your grandma have told you off ‘bout what you’ve been up to tonight?” he
quizzed
“No, certainly not, she would have loved it” and I stood on my tiptoes, kissed
him and hugged him, smiled and jumped in my car and quickly drove off before he
had time to properly tell me off.   Laughing, laughing, laughing to myself.   I need a cigar.   As I drove down the lanes I saw a dead
magpie on the road, you don’t see dead magpies very often and it made me want
to vomit, I hadn’t realised that my little Major had entered so fully and so
completely into my heart.
    ‘ Why
do I do it?   What can it be?   There’s naughtiness in everyone but
twice as much in me, I’d give the world if only I could, once in a while be
good…’ I woke up singing today.   But
I wouldn’t really give the world to be good.   Jo was up about an hour before me, she
doesn’t move quietly through the house, she is a weather pattern, part sunny,
part thundery, part lashing rain and part tired and muggy.   She knocked at my door and came in,
boof, boof, boof on the creaky floorboards.    I sat up in my cosy bed, shook my
hair and sleepy head and said “good morrow good Mother” as if I’d been awake
for hours.   She sat down at the foot
of my bed, didn’t look at me, but at the view from my window “why don’t you
have horses?” she says as her eyes alight on them in the field “oh God Jo,
you’re so exciting!   I do love
you.   Don’t you even want to say
‘Good morning’?” and she ignored me, puff, puff, puffing away “because they’re
dangerous and I had a very nasty fall and thought very seriously, for about a
quarter of a second how much I love my life and how walking is far nicer” and
she laughs, she has a funny laugh, it’s like an exclamation mark and her head
always bobs back, just once.   “What
are you doing today Jo?” I speak half in to my duvet so she doesn’t get a whiff
of morning breath,   I am warm and
cossetted and the smell of my body in my bed is the loveliest smell I know “are
you in all day?   Shall we breakfast
outside this morning?” I am gaining momentum   “In the garden? And you can smoke that
filthy efag thing and I can have a cigar.”   I am bottom bouncing around in my bed, full of revoltingly good spirits
and she looks at me with feigned disgust.   How lovely to be ladies of luxury.   How lovely to be free, lifted high up on a thermal.   How lovely to be me.
    We sit outside together on the patio
leading from the sitting room, listening to the blackbirds “can’t get up in the
morning” eating sweet things and still in our dressing robes.   We laugh when we see each other, Jo’s
robe is blue and ‘like a big fleecy tent’ she says, voluminous, with a hood,
ultra warm, towelling on the inside for after a bath and fleecy on the outside
for cosiness, and so long it almost touches the floor.   Mine is magenta silk finished with
French lace, it skims my body, lightly touching my nipples and falling like
water off my hips.   “What is Jo
short for?   It must be short for something.   I don’t believe parents would just
christen a child Jo”
“Well, I wasn’t christened”
“What’s it short for?”
“Just fucking Jo.   Just shut up
about it”
“Josephine?”
“shut the fuck up”
“you’re such a foul-mouthed hooker Joker.   I’m off