Mrs Death Misses Death Read online

  Also by Salena Godden

  POETRY

  Under the Pier

  Fishing in the Aftermath: Poems 1994–2014

  LIVEwire

  Pessimism Is for Lightweights: 13 pieces of courage and resistance

  NON-FICTION

  Springfield Road

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  canongate.co.uk

  This digital edition first published in 2021 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Salena Godden, 2021

  Rabbit illustration © Gill Heeley, 2021

  Family tree © Jo Dingley, 2021

  The right of Salena Godden to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on

  request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 83885 119 4

  eISBN 978 1 83885 120 0

  Contents

  Disclaimer:

  Mrs Death’s Diaries: The First Morning of the First Mourning

  Mrs Death: The First Mourning

  Wolf: The First Time I Met Mrs Death

  Mrs Death: Here Are All Your Fears

  Wolf: Here Are All Your Fears

  The Desk: You Grow Into Your Shape

  Wolf: The Dirty Young London

  Mrs Death: The Tale of Tilly Tuppence

  Mrs Death: I Know A Lot of Dead People Now

  Wolf: Nothing Lasts, Nothing Is Finished and Nothing Is Perfect

  Wolf’s Nightmare: The Red Tower

  Oh to Be a Piano!

  Wolf: Conversations with Mrs Death

  Death Is a Rabbit

  Mrs Death and Her Lover Time

  The Desk: Mrs Death’s Office

  Mrs Death in Holloway Prison

  Mrs Death: Marsha and Martha

  Wolf: The Vanishing

  Wolf: The Vanishing

  Mrs Death: Sun Kill Son

  Mrs Death: Mother’s Milk

  Mrs Death: The Moors

  Mrs Death and The Doctor

  Wolf: First Snow

  Mrs Death: We Could Be Heroes

  Mrs Death: Black Star

  Wolf: Purple Rain

  Wolf: Let the Worms Chew the Fat

  Mrs Death: The Remembrance

  Wolf: My Grandmother Rose Willeford

  Old Man Willeford: The Tiger

  Mrs Death: The Death Card

  Wolf: Now You Are Gone

  Mrs Death: Raven

  Mrs Death Watches TV

  Mrs Death: The German Hitchhiker

  Everything Is Nothing But Nothing Is Worth Something to Someone

  Wolf: The Tower

  Wolf’s Tower Diaries

  April 1st

  April 2nd

  April 3rd

  April 4th

  April 5th

  April 6th

  April 7th

  April 8th

  April 9th

  April 10th

  April 11th

  April 12th

  April 13th

  April 14th

  April 15th

  April 16th

  April 17th

  April 18th

  April 19th

  April 20th

  April 21st

  April 22nd

  April 23rd

  Thank You . . .

  Rabbit: The Last Words

  Mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living

  Disclaimer:

  This book contains dead people.

  This book cannot see the future. This book is dabbling in the past. This book is not about funerals although funerals are mentioned. You do not have to wear black to read this work. You do not have to bring flowers.

  Caution: This work contains traces of eulogy.

  Warning: This work contains violent deaths.

  Spoiler alert: We will all die in the end.

  This book cannot change the ending or your ending or its own ending. This book does not know how to switch on the light at the end of the tunnel. This book cannot contact the other side. This book cannot speak to the dead or for the dead. This book will not confirm if there is an afterlife or an alternative universe. This book will not improve your karma. This book will not nag you to live a healthier life. This book will not help you quit smoking. This book is not going to urge you to age gracefully. This book does not advocate the use of that funereal phrase ‘he had a good innings’. This book does not contain any person or persons clapping their hands and singing kum-by-yah-mi-lord. This book may be used for mild to moderate relief from grief, fear and pain, however if symptoms persist please buy a ticket to see a live reading of this work where you will find the others.

  Caution: Do not exceed death.

  This work has a very high dead and death count. Take with caution. Take your time. Do your lifetime in your own life time. If you are sensitive or allergic to talk of the dead or non-living things use this work in small doses. This is not a self-help brochure. This is not a guide to avoiding dying. If you think you are about to drop dead, please seek medical advice immediately.

  This work has very little to do with God, the Gods, Goddesses, Satan or the Devil. This work is not focused on a battle of good and evil or right and wrong. This is not about morality or heaven and hell or sinners and saints. This book does not judge you or your choices. This book is not connected to or promoting any religion or cult. This is not a map to the way out of here. This is not a compass. This book does not contain directions to heaven or hell – see also Elysium, Valhalla, Gan Eden, The Fields of Aaru, Vaikuntha, Tír na nÓg, Cockaigne, Big Rock Candy Mountain or any other world versions of otherworld.

  This work calls the righteous spirits of all of our mighty ancestors now and in the hour of our need. We take a breath and look back in amazement and wonder at how our ancestors survived so we may also survive. We take another deep breath, we feel our hearts beating inside our bodies, and we celebrate that the same empowerment and spirit runs in our blood now and can be found in our DNA today. We give thanks to our ancestors, thanks for giving us life, for being alive to feel alive and to share this one magnificent connection to life and all living things.

  This book does not mention every person that has ever died – if you wished this book to have mentioned another death, we can only apologise now in advance, for not knowing which death or dead celebrity you wanted mentioned and celebrated in this book at time of writing and printing. At the time of writing this book mourns for Prince, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Toni Morrison and Aretha Franklin. And this book sincerely hopes there aren’t any more inspirational human beings, bold souls, brave hearts and super-heroes to add to that dead list before we go to print. Amen.

  This book contains traces of ghosts. This book may contain bones and other human remains. This book has been haunting me. This book may haunt you. This book is about you and me and all of us. We will use the term ‘human’ or ‘human being’ to mean people who identify as human, that is being ‘alive’ and ‘living’, and furthermore discuss how they are now ‘dead’ and use the word ‘dead’ to mean that the heart stopped beating and the brain ceased functioning and they are not bre
athing any more. This work does not contain zombies but has no prejudices against those that choose to be living dead.

  This book knows loss and feels your pain. This book shares your fears and anxieties. This book will explore the worst-case scenarios. This book is afraid of death, but not afraid to speak about it. This book is in mourning and trying to understand this process of grieving. This book sends you all its love. This book says it’s alright to cry on its shoulder.

  This book is short because life is short. The time it took for us to evolve from Homo sapiens to modern civilisation, from the first cave paintings and words and stories and songs to the first book and the first bookshop, is a wonder and also relatively short. Any book with the word Death in the title must be light enough to carry in your hand luggage. It must be short enough to be read cover to cover on a train up from London to Liverpool. It must be loud enough to read during the length of a good belter of a thunderstorm, then when the storm passes and the clouds clear and the skies open up, the train doors open, and so will your heart.

  These are the collected memoirs of Mrs Death, edited and compiled by me, Wolf Willeford. I’m a poet and I live in the attic rooms of the Forest Tavern in East London. Contained here are some of Mrs Death’s private diary entries, some stories, poems and pieces of conversations I have had with Mrs Death; she who is Death, the woman who is the boss at the end of all of us. I share this hoping that it is the beginning of your own conversation with yourself and with your own precious time here.

  When writing this I found that when people die, we write about them differently; it is as though we can speak freely; it is as though they have left the room. When writing about Death you soon realise it isn’t all about Death and that you write about Life and the living: this is what I have learned whilst creating this work for you. This is a work of both fiction and non-fiction, a work of dreams and nightmares. Some names, dates and details have been changed to protect the living and amuse the dead.

  This book is a matter of Life and Death.

  Mrs Death’s Diaries:

  The First Morning of the First Mourning

  Present day

  When I called for change, did you pass by me? Did you see me today?

  I sit on a bench outside London’s King’s Cross station. I like train stations and airports best. I like to sit in places where people come and go. I sit and watch you come and go, you say, goodbye and hello, come and go, goodbye and hello. It’s as though you are not connected to each other. Goodbye, you say, clinging on to that last glance, you give a funny little wave. You don’t know that you don’t have to touch to touch, to see, to feel each other. Human beings were designed to be in contact without being in contact, to communicate without words, to call each other to each others’ minds. Humans still have so much to learn about connection. But when you are in transition and whilst travelling you are tuned in to this, you are alive and alert. When you travel you wake up. You’re awake and aware of changes, differences and sameness, strangers and each other. In transit you are occupied by Time and Space, by clocks and miles, by separation and reunion, your chance and your fate. Humans were built to travel, humans were made to move, to share and to migrate, just like butterflies and birds.

  The history and the geography of human migration is nothing less than phenomenal.

  The greatest trick man played was making you believe I was a man. They erased me and made you all believe that Death was male in spirit – the Grim Reaper in a black hood with a scythe. Remarkable that nobody questioned it really, don’t you think? For surely only she who bears it, she who gave you life, can be she who has the power to take it. The one is she. And only she who is invisible can do the work of Death. And there is no human more invisible, more readily talked over, ignored, betrayed and easy to walk past than a woman; than a poor old black woman, a homeless black beggar-woman with knotty natty hair, broken back, walking ever so slow, slow, slow, pushing a shopping trolley full of plastic bottles.

  Death is plastic, plastic is death.

  When this all began, or when I began, was when life began, and that was when death began. Death is a bitch, Life is a bitch, but it’s in poor taste to speak ill of the living. My sister cannot help herself but be Life and living and lively. LIFE! Oh she is abundant and demanding of all of our attentions. My sister is an over-achiever, laying eggs and fertilising life, shitting life everywhere, muck-spreading fertile life. Life shits life! Life is life everywhere!

  I remember when this earth world was once a rock and a cold and dark place. I was there, we were there. I can recall the terrible smell of eggs; that’s the main thing I remember, the stench. My sister is stinky. Death may stink of Death and of rot and decay but Life stinks too. Life and birth was always about eggs and shit. Volcanic. Sulphur. Fertiliser. Farts. The vagina awakes, yawns, stretches and burps and there we have blood, and from blood is life and love. And where there was blood there was life, and where there was life there was love, and where there was love there was life, and where there was life there was blood and where there was blood there was death. Around and around it goes, life and blood and love and death and time and space, around and around we go, spinning on this pretty blue rock in space we call planet earth.

  Fish grew legs. Birds grew wings. Monkeys walked upright and tall. And that’s when things got interesting for me. Because then came the first fires and the first stories, the first poets and the first songs, the first paintings on cave walls, daubed in ash and charcoal. Life and Death, we sisters, sat side by side together and warmed ourselves by the very first fires, with the first souls dancing in the first firelight, the first handprints, stickman images of their own selves on the walls of the caves. These were the first mirrors, man capturing man’s own image. The smoke rising, the charcoal pictures telling us stories of life and death, long tall tales of hunts and kills, boasted of around the fire and scratched into the cave walls. And what do they tell us? What does the painter ask us with these cave paintings? Why, surely just variations of the same questions that painters and poets have always asked us over the centuries: Who am I? Why am I? What is life? What is death? Can you see me? Will you hear this? Do you feel me?

  I am she and she is here. I see you. I hear you. I was always here, there and everywhere. Here was I and I am I and I am she. And you might want to ask me this:

  Mrs Death, who was the first person to ever die?

  OK. Let us picture that first morning of the first mourning.

  That first longing, that first grief, the first heavy silence, the first missing shape, the spare fur in the circle in the cave, the first empty seat by the fire. The first time a human being grieved for another human being: the missed voice, the terrible pain, ache and longing, and there we have it, the first morning of the first mourning. And you, you’re only human. Mankind. Womankind. You only have one job:

  Be kind.

  Kin.

  You mark your place in time. You tell your tale. Time is short, a life is fast, but this picture on this cave wall may last longer than you will. You live forever in your words, in hearts and memories, in your creations and connections. The seeds you sow, the child you raise, the song you sing, the story you write with your time here. You are eternal, you are forever present in your oily DNA and your unique thumb print. You know you live now and here are all your fears: all your fears are here. And above all things you all fear, you fear me, you fear the end, you fear dancing with me, you fear Mrs Death.

  Here is your proof, your evidence, the evidence you lived the life you lived, here in this time, in these words, in this story, in this song, in this painting. It is human nature to try to stop time, to try to capture a life, a shooting star, to pin the butterfly wings and snap the lid shut.

  What do you have there in that box? Look, you say, I have captured time, I have trapped a moment. Here I have my lifetime documented, a timeline made palpable, digestible, linear. Here I was born and I did grow teeth. Here I did love, and here were my tribe, my family, my lo
ves and my loves lost. Here was my toil and struggle, my monsters, my Gods, my triumph and failure and passion. And here is my end, here my last thrill, my dance with you, Mrs Death.

  With me?

  Yes, with you.

  Let us dance, dance, dance.

  Mrs Death: The First Mourning

  Mrs Death sings:

  the first fires, the first fires

  the first morning of the first mourning

  the first shape of the first loss

  the first fires, the first fires

  the first birth, the first blood

  the first kill, the first blood spill

  you’re only human

  you’re only womankind

  you’re only human being

  you’re only mankind, be kind

  the first sunrise, the first sunset

  you’re only human, you’re only woman

  you’re only man, human, be kind

  human being kind human being

  the first stars in the first skies

  the first stars in the first skies

  you’re only human, human being

  be kind

  the first cave, the first cave painting

  the first word, the first art, the first heartbreak

  the first morning of the first mourning

  the first loss, the first blood, the first war

  you’re only human, you’re only woman

  you’re only human, you’re only man

  you’re only human, human being

  humankind

  be kind

  Wolf: The First Time I Met Mrs Death

  Can you smell smoke?

  Yes. That was what she said.

  Wake up, Wolf . . . Can you smell smoke?

  I was a child the first time I met Mrs Death. I was a soft, curly-haired kid filled with wonder and milk, busy with daydreams, cartoons and riding my bike. I was preoccupied with stories and comic books and gazing up at the moon. I remember the first time I met Mrs Death was also the day I lost my front tooth. I stared in the mirror and wobbled that loose tooth, wiggled it, jiggled it, pulled and poked at it until it was free and I could taste blood on the tip of my tongue. My tongue flicked in the hole, the flap of skin, the gap where once was tooth was tender. Gum. Salt. Blood. Skin. Hole. I stared at the tooth in my fingers, examined it, the blood at the root, at the root of everything is blood.