I Jaja

Spring, 1920

I lay inside a bright white light, sloshing back and forth in rhythm with the universe. That sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know how else to describe it. That moment in which I was neither living nor dead. I lay there. I sloshed. Above me I saw all the things I’d been hiding from all this time: the memories. Second Lieutenant Holly and his chin.

The shrapnel jumped up and swiped him across the face. Before I understood what I was seeing, his chin was hanging down by his chest. He was still alive. Still conscious. Just standing there with blood pouring out of his face hole. I relived the moment with all the startling clarity of the first time. The same smell in my nostrils: dirt and blood and shelling.

Then came the clouds. A different day. A different memory. Those odd, loaf-shaped clouds that sat wedged between the sky and the earth. How they stayed there, stock still, even with the flirting winds that blew that day. I crouched on my perch on the mountainside, watching everything happen: The clouds came down on 6th Battalion, covering them. When the clouds lifted, the men were gone. All of them. Lifted up by some power I could not name, could not describe. A power I could no longer call God.

I wanted to see my mother. If time was winding backwards, if I was having my chance to live it all again, I wanted to see my mother picking rosemary in the kitchen garden. I wanted to see her rosy face, her wiry russet hair. I waited, willing the memory to come alive, when I heard a voice.

‘Shh-shh, it’ll be all right.’

A thumb wiped at my tears. I hadn’t known I’d been crying. How could I cry with water slapping over my face like this? I tried to go back to the white space. The hall of memories. I tried to claw my way back there, but my arms remained still. My body floated in the water, arms and legs spread out in a star shape.

‘You’ll be all right,’ the voice said again. A feminine voice to match the woman’s hands on either side of my face. Yes, I truly was back in my body now. Locked inside it. I opened my eyes only to feel another slap of water ride over my face. Squinting, I tried desperately to see.

Darkness. Gloom. Directly above me I could make out something glinting like wet rock. There was a faint glow in the atmosphere. Candles? Lamps? Nothing I could see from my spread-eagled position. I tried to move a hand: it cut through the water. I moved a leg, trying to ground it.

‘He’s back,’ the woman said.

‘Get him under control.’ A lower, growling voice.

I thrashed and kicked until my feet hit the ground. On unsteady legs, I stood in waist deep water. The woman came into view. In her thirties. Pale and round. She wore her curly blonde hair scraped up into a bun on the top of her head.

‘I’ll stop him’ the growling voice said.

I turned to see a man two or three inches taller than myself. His arm was above his head, in his hand a cosh. He looked younger than the woman. Younger than me. Muscular. I wouldn’t stand much chance if I tried to fight fair.

‘Don’t hit him, Richard. He’s not dangerous, are you, Mr…?’

‘Stillwater. Thomas Stillwater.’

‘My name is Anne Stokes. You’re not dangerous, are you?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Then we ought to get you into the house.’

#

Richard brought me a change of clothes. They were his, and so I sat swamped in them. I wore a soft, tartan blanket around my shoulders and sat in front of the fire. I felt like a child, especially when Miss Stokes brought me a cup of hot cocoa.

‘It will make you feel better.’

‘You do this often then?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Bringing people back from the dead. Do you do it often?’

Miss Stokes stilled. Her fingers toyed with the edge of an ornamental table. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then her voice came out as quiet as a mouse:

‘It happens.’

‘So I was dead?’

‘Or near enough. Richard found you in the woods near the church. He’s sentimental, he doesn’t like to see people go that way, and so he brought you back here.’

The woods. The cold spring air. The black fungi that grew up among the fallen leaves. I remembered now.

‘I tried to hang myself.’

‘You did hang yourself. As I said, Richard didn’t want you to die that way and so we revived you.’

I set my cup down with a hard clank. Miss Stokes jumped back, firelight illuminating the fear in her eyes.

Slowly, I unpeeled my fingers from the handle of the cup. If I held it for much longer, I would hurl it across the room. I was getting ready to say something, getting ready to bark, when Miss Stokes spoke.

‘I will not apologise for saving your life.’

‘You don’t mind interfering with fate.’

‘Interfering with what you want, you mean? You are just a man, no matter how highly you think of yourself.’

I raised a hand. I was going to backhand the cup of cocoa to the other side of the room. A small voice stopped me: Would that not prove her point?

‘I understand you’re feeling a lot right now, Mr Stillwater. I’ve been through what you are going through: the confusion, the resentment. Acceptance will come soon enough. What’s happened has happened, and there’s nothing you can do to change it.’

#

I had to promise not to reveal the location of the magical waters. It was an easy promise to make. Who would believe me? I had tried, once, to tell my brother about the clouds I’d seen. The battalion that disappeared. He didn’t say he didn’t believe me, but there was a look in his eyes, a pitying look.

I went back to my flat without saying a thing to anyone. I whistled as I made my way up the stairs. The new idea had sneaked into my head. It lifted my spirits just thinking about it.

I filled the wash basin with warm water. From the mirrored cabinet I took my razor and opened it. Yes, this would be it. This would be it.

I submerged my hands and arms in the water. With a quick, solid slice, I cut into the flesh of my left wrist. Blood bloomed out. I drew another line with the razor. I wiggled the blade inside the cut. This time the blood spurted out in a long, fine thread.

#

I rang the doorbell. Impatient with that, I slammed my hand against the front door. She was going to answer me. She was going to tell me everything I wanted to know about her devil water.

‘Miss Stokes, I know you’re in there.’

I guessed she was in there. It was night, where else would she be? It was not she who answered the door. It was Richard.

‘Yes?’

‘Let me in.’

I pushed past him. I didn’t know if I wanted to race up the stairs or find the tiny parlour I had been in before. All I knew was my own anger, roiling under the surface of my skin.

‘Come this way,’ Richard said.

I followed him into a sitting room. Miss Stokes was not there.

‘What the devil?’

Richard stepped closer, drawing himself up to his true size. ‘If you want to shout at someone, Mr Stillwater, you can shout at me.’

I don’t know what it was. Maybe the glint in his eye that told me he really would punch me. Something told me there was no point shouting.

‘What have you done to me?’

‘Saved your life.’

‘But look!’ I exposed my wrist, showing him the scales of dried blood and the blank space where my wounds should have been.

‘You tried it again then?’

‘Of course.’ I wanted to scream the words. ‘What has your blasted water done to me? How long will it last?’

Richard shook his head. ‘It’ll last indefinitely. Never known a case of the waters wearing off. That’s why we’ve got to protect them. Use them wisely.’

I scowled. I had an answer ready but I wasn’t trying to bait the man. Instead, I turned from him and distracted myself with the photographs set up on the mantelpiece. There was a picture of a little girl with bright white hair pulled into pigtails. Standing behind her was her mother, a rather serious Victorian wearing a shirtwaist and cameo. She too had fuzzy, light-coloured hair.

‘Is this Miss Stokes and her mother?’

‘Miss Stokes,’ Richard said. He tapped the picture just at the mother’s cameo brooch.

‘Yes, the likeness is startling. Is that her mother?’

‘Miss Stokes,’ Richard said again.

Something cold dropped in my stomach as I took the man’s meaning. Miss Stokes. The stern-faced Victorian in this twenty-year-old picture was Miss Stokes.

‘The waters do more than keep you alive, they keep you young.’

‘That’s right.’

‘How long has Miss Stokes been young?’

‘I don’t think that’s my place to say.’

I turned on him. ‘How long have you been alive?’

Richard smiled. No matter how hard I stared at him, he still looked young. Twenty-two or twenty-three at the most. His skin was milk fresh. There were no lines, no hint he was anything other than he appeared.

‘How long?’ I demanded.

‘I first came upon the caves quite by accident. Exploring, I suppose. Long before this house was built. 1704, the year was.’

‘You don’t age and you don’t die.’

Nausea swirled through me as the reality came home: I wouldn’t age. I wouldn’t die.

#

I was up early the next morning. Even with the blood cleaned up, I could not bear being in the flat. Perhaps the smart thing would have been to go to Miss Stokes’ house. Something told me I would end up there eventually, with others who were like me.

For now I walked along the cliff’s edge breathing in the early morning air. The weather was crisp, the sky blank and white.

‘What did you want me to see?’ My brother’s voice called out to me. He tramped up the slope towards me. I still couldn’t believe how small and frail he looked. He had not recovered from his time in prison.

I pulled him into my arms and slapped his back. ‘Billy.’

‘What’s got into you?’

I wanted to tell him, wanted to tell him everything. Instead, I stood staring into his pale blue eyes. Our mother’s eyes.

‘What’s wrong, Tom?’

‘Do you ever regret being alive?’

‘That’s what this is about? You’ve tried again?’

‘When you were arrested, when they were giving you hell for being a conscientious objector, did you ever wish it could just be over?’

Billy shook his head. ‘I think life is a gift from God.’

I coughed.

‘You still don’t believe?’

‘You still do, after everything you’ve been through?’

‘I didn’t come here to argue about faith, Tom. What’s going on? Why did you want to see me?’

I could not say the words. I looked out from the edge of the cliff. The sea lay flat and iron grey. I tried to breathe in the sea scent, but I ended up choking, coughing. Tears welled in the corners of my eyes.

Billy slung an arm around my shoulders.

‘I think I might…’ I started. ‘I think I might have to try living.’

‘Living?’

‘Being alive – staying here – with no escape plan.’

‘That’s good to hear.’

‘Is it?’


#