A Life Eternal

by Richard Ayre

  But he had already started down the path he mistakenly thought was for the best.

  He shook his head and made his move; he had obviously run out of words. As Pearl had indicated, he was a violent man and he was accustomed to using brute force to get what he wanted in life.

  He swung a sledgehammer of a punch that would have laid me out had it landed. But it didn’t get anywhere near. I had a hundred years of experience on him, and that old anger suddenly burst from me.

  I ducked the initial blow and, while I was down there, I gave him a quick, hard punch to the balls. He hissed and bent forward, clutching at the sudden pain as I knew he would, and I instantly straightened, the top of my head smacking into his face.

  He staggered backwards and I stepped towards him, belting my left fist into his already-bleeding nose. I distinctly heard it crack as I did so.

  He howled at this second wounding and brought his hands up to his injured face, again as I knew he would, and my next punch went straight into his unprotected solar plexus.

  The wind went out of him with a great whoosh of air and he staggered back again. My final blow crunched into his throat and he gurgled and sank to the ground amongst the broken glass and broken bricks. He lay on his side, concentrating on simply trying to breathe.

  His downfall had taken only seconds, but I was livid now, the anger and hatred pouring from me in a cold, dark stream.

  This piece of shit deserved everything I was going to give him. He would remember this encounter for the rest of his days. I drew a foot back, ready to smash it into his split and bleeding face.

  But a hand grabbed my arm and I whirled round, seeing Pearl shrink away from the expression on my face.

  I don’t know what I looked like, but I saw the terror in her eyes, the sudden realisation that the man she thought she knew was perhaps very different to what she had previously believed.

  The look in her eyes stopped me. The red mist of battle cleared.

  ‘Don’t hit him anymore, Rob,’ she whispered in a frightened voice. ‘He’s had enough.’

  I took in a deep breath, closing my eyes for a second, willing the darkness away. By the time I had opened them, Pearl had bent down beside her father.

  ‘You need to leave,’ she said to him. ‘You need to leave and not come back. You’re not welcome here.’

  He looked like he was going to hiss some sort of retort at her, but I took a menacing step towards him and he flinched, dragging himself to his feet.

  He looked at me, his nose swollen and bleeding, his face battered. Then he turned to Pearl.

  ‘You ain’t worth the fucking bother,’ he muttered, then turned and stumbled away, wiping his broken nose roughly on his t-shirt.

  I leaned against the car and took out a cigarette. My hands were rock steady as I lit it.

  Pearl turned to me. There was a strange look in her eye now, as if something had happened that she had never expected. As if a trusted family dog had suddenly turned and savaged someone.

  We stared at each other for a long time then, without another word, she turned and walked towards the flats. She disappeared inside.

  I finished the cigarette and climbed into the car. I waited for hours, watching, making sure her deadbeat father didn’t reappear. I watched as Precious came home, holding hands with a stocky woman in her forties whom I presumed was her mother. They went inside. I waited another hour before driving back to the shop, where I poured myself a proper drink.

  It hadn’t gone. Whatever the anger was, it was still there. My hatred of them was still there, I knew it. Because when I’d beaten Pearl’s wayward father into the ground, it hadn’t just been because of necessity.

  I had enjoyed it.

  *

  Pearl kept away for a few weeks, but eventually she came back. She seemed even thinner than when I’d seen her last. She thanked me for my help with her father and confirmed he hadn’t been back. She seemed listless, however. Quieter. She looked like she had a lot to think about.

  We sat at the table and picked up our respective pieces of work, but she just stared out of the window at the passers-by. Her eyes seemed sunken, her face a greyish hue. She looked unwell.

  And so, on that July day in 2019, I asked her again what was wrong with her, because by then, I knew something was. And I knew it was serious. I just stared at her, at a loss for words, as she told me.

  ‘Leukaemia,’ she said, staring down at her cup of tea. ‘It’s like a blood cancer.’

  I nodded. I knew what it was. I just didn’t understand why a person as dynamic, as wonderful, as Pearl should get it. She, amongst all the people on the planet, did not deserve it.

  ‘Apparently, it’s pretty bad,’ she continued. ‘It’s called chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.’ She stumbled over the words. ‘They don’t think it’ll go away.’

  I couldn’t speak; I was utterly shocked. The news was even worse than I had imagined, and I had imagined quite a few different scenarios. She had obviously known about it for a while. It was eating her up.

  ‘Can I do anything?’ I asked uselessly, and she laughed without humour.

  ‘No. I don’t want to talk about it, Rob.’ She took a sip of her tea. ‘Let’s not talk about it,’ she repeated.

  When she was gone and I had locked up, I went up to the apartment and stood in front of my reflection in the bathroom.

  That damnable face stared back out at me.

  *

  Over the next couple of months, Pearl began her chemotherapy. She lost her wonderful hair. She became stick-like.

  Her visits to the shop became less and less frequent. The final time she came, she fell asleep over the figurine she now found so difficult to work on. I picked her up and lay her on the sofa in the corner of the room, covering her with a blanket. I stood over her, watching her as she slept, just as I had stood over Madeleine when her illness had first become apparent.

  My mind was in turmoil. I could see this young girl literally dying in front of me and the feelings I had for her seemed to twist at my heart. Why the worry? Why the anguish? Humans were designed to live and die and disappear. Why did this one girl make any difference to me? Millions of people had died during my long life, either through war or famine or disease, and my darkening soul had dismissed them all without a second thought. Why was she so special?

  I tried to put it down to the changes that had occurred within me since I’d left the croft four years before. Maybe that was the way it went. Maybe the beginning of the end was foretold somehow in a change of attitude within those who had caught the infection of life. Perhaps a rising humanity meant that the idea to live on became more and more abhorrent. Perhaps my feelings towards Pearl were simply a symptom of the power inside me getting ready to leave.

  Perhaps.

  But I remembered Valin and his eternal hatred of humanity, still smothering him in darkness long after the infection had left him, the abhorrence he felt towards them still so strong, and I knew that this was different. This was personal.

  Pearl’s eyes opened and she stared at me. I smiled and knelt beside her, pulling the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

  ‘Hey,’ I whispered, softly. ‘You can’t be sleeping on the job, you know. I’ll have to dock your wages.’

  She didn’t smile back, but instead, she reached out a thin arm and touched my face. I felt tears pricking in my eyes at the look on her face and forced myself to swallow them down. Her features were serene, but they were also resigned. Resigned to the inevitable. She seemed to understand the raging emotions twisting inside me.

  ‘It’s okay, Rob,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all okay. You’ve been a good friend, and I know you’re sad, but it’s all okay. It’s just the way it is.’

  My lip was trembling slightly as I grasped her hand on my cheek and rubbed it gently with my thumb. I had not felt anything like this since Madeleine had left me, all those years ago.

  ‘I’ll be going soon, I think,’ she continued, and I shook my head in
denial, but she just smiled softly at me for the first time.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she repeated. ‘I think I’m ready now. Had enough.’

  Her hand fell away, and she just stared at me.

  ‘I’m pleased I met you, Rob Deakin,’ she murmured as sleep once again overtook her. I tucked her in again and went and stared out of the window, my head in turmoil, my emotions whirling.

  I cursed life. Why had I found this wonderful girl now, when she was going to die? What was the point in making me feel like this towards her when she was being snatched away?

  I roughly wiped a hand across my eyes, my reflection in the window showing a steely hardness spread across my features. I shook my head.

  I would not succumb to this. Whatever it was, I would not succumb to it.

  I woke Pearl roughly and drove her home.

  *

  She didn’t return to the shop and I tried to get on with my life. I told myself to forget about Pearl Tulip. The weeks dragged on. I couldn’t forget her.

  I hated myself again. I wanted to go and see her, to sit with her and talk of things that had nothing to do with her illness. I wanted her to open the door of the shop with a tinkle of the bell and smile at me and sit opposite me and for us to drink our tea and quietly carve our toys and figurines together. I wanted things to be the way they had been. I missed her immensely, but I couldn’t bring myself to visit her, because then I would be giving in to the sensation which the thought of her brought about. Giving in to the one thing that could destroy me.

  And then, one day, Precious came into the shop.

  I frowned and went over to her, looking around for whoever should have been with her.

  ‘How did you get here?’ I asked her.

  ‘On the bus,’ she replied, matter-of-factly. ‘Pearl wants to see you.’

  I stared down at her, shaking my head.

  ‘No. I don’t want to.’

  Precious’s eyes were full of unshed tears as she stared at me, and that feeling I had for her sister, whatever the hell it was, attacked me again.

  ‘She says you’ve got to. She says she wants to see you. She says you have to go to the hospital. Before it’s too late.’

  ‘Don’t say things like that,’ I snapped at her, making her jump and causing a tear to finally break free and trickle down her cheek.

  I hunched down in front of her and gently wiped the tear from her face. ‘I’m sorry, Precious. But I can’t. I’m not built for that.’

  I could see she didn’t understand.

  ‘I just can’t,’ I repeated. ‘Come on, I’ll take you home.’

  She looked at me despondently but said nothing. I closed the shop and drove her to her flat. I watched as she walked into the tower block entrance.

  I once again sat in the car as the evening drew on and darkness fell. I saw Precious and her mother come out and stand at the bus stop. I watched the bus collect them and take them to the hospital. To Pearl.

  I went home.

  *

  I tried once again to forget about them all. But that feeling—I was finally beginning to recognise it as some sort of new emotion—wouldn’t leave me alone. I sat for hours in the shop window, staring into nothing, blind to the people walking past outside.

  The window was like an analogy of my life. I was separated from every other person in the world by an invisible screen, and had been for over a hundred years. I once again thought about how different I was to them.

  I shook my head. What difference did it make to me that another of their kind died? I shouldn’t go to the hospital. It was a stupid idea. It was nothing to do with me.

  But then another feeling came upon me, a feeling of the utmost urgency. It was the same as when I’d woken that day in the croft in Scotland and cut off my hair, beginning my journey back to life again. That same feeling washed through me now. I could do nothing about it even though I cursed myself for what it told me to do.

  I went to the hospital.

  It was the first of September 2019. It had been a hot summer and the day was sweltering. I drove into the car park and switched off the engine, staring through the windscreen at the trees around the hospital and the clear blue sky.

  I shouldn’t go in. I should turn the engine back on and drive home, forget about Pearl and Precious and their mother. They were nothing to me.

  But as I sat in the car, telling myself lies, I suddenly realised what the emotion was that Pearl had dredged up in me. I suddenly knew what I felt about her, and the revelation was shocking.

  The feeling was love. Not the fierce, passionate love I’d had for Madeleine, but rather a different, warmer feeling. The feeling I believed a father, a good father, would have for his daughter. I wanted to protect Pearl. I wanted to stop the disease in her body. I wanted her to get better and live a life of joy and happiness.

  That was it. My feelings had been jaded for so long that I didn’t even recognise them anymore for what they were.

  I just wanted Pearl to be happy.

  I climbed out of the car and went inside the building.

  I was directed to the ward she was on. I wandered down the corridor, glancing in on awful tableaus of children lying in beds, dying. Some had their relatives surrounding them, some were alone.

  This is what it always comes down to, I thought. This is how life always finishes. At the end, no matter who you are, or what you’ve had in life, in the last moments you are truly alone.

  Death. The only true meaning of life.

  I found the room where Pearl lay. Precious and her mother were by her bedside. They turned when I came in and Precious whispered something to her mother, probably explaining who I was. I ignored them and looked down at Pearl.

  Once again, the sight of her caused a pricking behind my eyes as I stared down at the figure on the bed.

  She was thin and grey and bald. She was sleeping, or had been induced into sleep by drugs, I didn’t know which. She had a tube up her nose and another stuck in her arm, attached to a plastic bag filled with some sort of clear solution. She looked awful.

  Something caught in my throat as I looked at her, and I wondered why this young girl, whom I had known for only a few short months in my long, long life, had stirred up such feelings within me. Of all the people I had known, all the lives I had lived, it all came down to this urchin-like girl, dying in a hospital bed because of some damnable disease.

  I asked, with a glance at her mother, if I could sit, and she nodded. Her face was as drawn and grey as her daughter’s.

  We all sat in silence, just gazing at Pearl’s sleeping face. Her mother said nothing to me, and I said nothing to her. After an hour or so, Precious fell asleep in her mother’s arms.

  I had stood to leave before the girls’ mother spoke. She didn’t look up from her daughter, and her voice was desultory. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  That feeling, that God-damned feeling, choked in my throat.

  There was such a helplessness in the woman’s voice, such a maudlin hopelessness. Her daughter was slipping away from her and there was not a thing she could do about it. She didn’t even want to glance up at the face of the man her daughter had known. She didn’t want to waste even a second of not looking at Pearl, the girl she had brought forth into the world and who was now slipping out of it alone.

  As I stood there, not knowing how to handle the newly discovered emotions within me, I saw a tear well in one eye and trickle down her face. She didn’t even blink. She just continued to stare at Pearl.

  ‘I’ll come back tomorrow,’ I said, finally.

  She nodded, her eyes still on her daughter.

  I left them: the woman with one safe, sleeping daughter in her arms and another on the verge of being taken away from her forever.

  I drove back to the apartment, sitting staring out of the window at the night outside. I smoked cigarettes endlessly.

  I felt the same about Pearl’s situation as I had all those years ago when comrades had not returned to the tr
enches, their bodies decorating No Man’s Land like grotesque Christmas baubles. Then, as now, I wondered what the point was in it all. Why should a girl like Pearl, dragged up in the harshest of conditions she had no say in, suffer what she was suffering? No chance of getting better? No chance of recovery? Why should a mother have to watch her child die?

  For the first time in years I opened a bottle of whiskey, but the first swallow reminded me of my dark time in the croft and swamped me with countless faces, countless memories. I poured it down the sink.

  The unfairness for Pearl and her family weighed upon me. I couldn’t understand why it had to happen to her. Why it had to happen to anyone, but especially not that spirited, wilful, wonderful young woman with barely sixteen years completed on the planet.

  She wasn’t even yet an adult, she was just a child. Not even eighteen: the age I had been when I so casually joined up for what I’d thought would be an adventure. And what had turned out to be a nightmare.

  My long life screamed in my mind. Faces I had almost forgotten, things I had done, places I had seen.

  It wasn’t fair. How could life be so immense for one person and so brief for another? Especially when that other had seen only its dark side and deserved so much more.

  And a thought came to me then.

  I shook my head. No. I had vowed not.

  But it came again. And, once born, it stayed.

  I stood up and stared into the mirror above the fireplace. My face—my same damned face—stared back at me, white with the insidious idea crawling inside my head.

  ‘No,’ I said aloud. But the thought persisted.

  I could save her. I had something no one else had. I had eternity flowing through my veins.

  I was infected with life.

  I could pass the infection on. I could make Pearl whole again.

  I frowned at my reflection.

  ‘No,’ I said again. ‘I promised. No.’

  But the life within me would not be quiet. It had told me what it wanted. The thought had been born and it grew inside me. I wanted to. I wanted to pass it along so much!