Sanctifying Grace (Resurrection) (22 page)

‘You got it, grandma,’ I muttered.

‘Huh?’

‘Never mind.’

He waved me quiet and I obediently shut my mouth.

‘I will go and check on the child,’ he said.

I had a horrible suspicion. ‘How will you find out if they are still planning to emigrate? How long ago was Andrew’s accident?’

‘Four, maybe five days.’

‘Okay, but that’s not much time for them to change their mind. And if they have, how would you know?’

‘I have my ways,’ he said and disappeared into the shadow of the house.

I hardly had time to find a tree stump to sit on when he was back. And he didn’t look happy.

‘He’s dead,’ he said.

‘What? Who’s dead?’

‘The boy.’

‘What boy? Do you mean Andrew?’

‘Yes.’

‘How? What did you do to him?’ I demanded. Roman must have taken it into his own hands to solve the problem and had killed Andrew. There couldn’t be any other explanation – young, fit people didn’t die of a broken leg. They just didn’t!

‘Nothing. I have done nothing.’

I didn’t believe him. How many times had he told me that he would put me before any other human, and this particular problem was a major threat to my continued existence?

I slapped him. Hard. He had seen it coming (how could he not have?)
, but chose to stand and let me hit him.

‘How could you?’ I screeched. ‘He was just a child!’

Roman stood, unyielding and impassive, god-like in his indifference to the fate of one small human, and unmoved by my anger. I wanted to batter him, to hurt him so badly the blank expression he wore would crack, to make him feel what I was feeling now.

‘Go ahead,’ he said, and my anger dissipated, leaving behind a despondency and hopelessness: he probably never would realise just what he had done. I turned from him, tears glistening on my cheeks.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘As far away from you as I can,’ I replied, and did exactly that.

The next few days were gruelling. My pain was only controllable by large doses of morphine and I was mostly semi-lucid, at best. I dreamt relentlessly of a young boy’s white corpse and Roman towering over it, blood on his lips.

When the pressure in my head eventually eased enough to allow me to re-join the world
, there was only one thing on my mind.

‘Andrew,’ I muttered.

‘Who?’ It was Ianto who was at my bedside when I re-surfaced and he had no idea what I was talking about.

‘Andrew.’ I could barely speak, my voice a whisper, the word tortured by my unresponsive lips and mouth into an unrecognisable mess.

‘Mum! She’s awake, but I can’t work out what she’s saying.’

Our mother bustled into the room, and I was shocked at the sight of her. Exhaustion had sallowed her face and deepened the bags under her eyes, stooped her shoulders and quavered her voice.

‘Grace,’ she said, not asking how I was – there was no point, she probably knew my physical condition better than I did myself.

She took my hand in hers and held it as tightly as she dared. ‘What is it? What do you want?’

‘Andrew,’ I said again.

‘Andrew who?’ She turned to Ianto. ‘She’s been mentioning this Andrew ever since she collapsed. And someone called Roman.’

I heard Ianto’s sharp intake of breath. My sense of hearing was about the only one of my senses that hadn’t been affected by my illness.

‘Do you know anyone called Andrew?’ she asked him. ‘I’ve never heard her mention him before. Nor this Roman person.’

I begged him with my eyes not to say anything. He lifted a shoulder in response to her question.

‘We don’t know who you mean, love. Is it someone you used to work with, or an old boyfriend?’ she asked me.

I moved my eyes from side to side, using them instead of words.

‘No? Well I can’t think who –’

‘Brother,’ I slurred.

‘Brother? Whose brother?’

‘Yours.’

‘Mine?’ She was incredulous. ‘You mean my brother, Andrew?’

I blinked slowly at her.

‘But he’s been dead for years.’

I blinked again.

‘What about him?’

‘Tell… die.’

‘You want to know how he
died
? Why? It’s not got anything to do with you – it wasn’t hereditary or anything.’

I kept staring at her.

‘Alright,’ she conceded, ‘but it was a long time ago and I didn’t really understand what was going on.’ She sat on the edge of the bed and took a deep breath. ‘We were playing in one of those deserted sheep huts you see dotted about the place. There was one about a mile from our house and it wasn’t as dilapidated as most of the others, because three of the walls were all still standing, although the roof had gone, so it was great for pretending it was a forte or a castle or a mansion. We played there all the time.

But one day, one of the walls collapsed. I don’t know why – perhaps the rain had weakened it, or the cold weather in the winter, but it fell, and some of those stones weighed more than I did. I was lucky, I was a bit further away than Andrew and I managed to leap backwards as the wall came down. Andrew must have been caught by at least one of those blocks. It broke his leg. I remember running all the way home to get Da, thinking that Andrew was dead underneath the pile of rubble.

Da ran back with me and dug him out with his bare hands. I still don’t know to this day how he managed to lift some of them, but he said it was as if a bubble was over Andrew, keeping most of them off him. He was lucky to only have a broken leg.’ She paused, her face full of long-ago sorrow. ‘Only he wasn’t so lucky,’ she continued. ‘The break was a bad one, and he had to have an operation to put a pin in it. He stayed in hospital for a couple of days and then they let him home. I remember he was in a lot of pain, and was crying all night and mam gave him medicine. I was so relieved when he went to sleep because he had kept us awake all night. We didn’t know he had a blood clot in his leg and that’s what was causing the pain. It travelled to his heart and killed him. We were all sleeping when he died. My mam never forgave herself.’

I squeezed her hand: even after all this time
, it still affected her. She swiped at a stray tear and gave me a rueful smile.

‘I don’t know why on earth you wanted to know all that. He died long before you were born.’

She stood up and pulled her t-shirt down, fussing for something to do to take her mind off her memories.

‘Would you like some water?’

I nodded with my eyes and she poured some into a beaker, lifted my head and guided the straw to my mouth.

When I had finished
, she plumped up my pillows, avoiding my gaze as she said, ‘We thought we had lost you.’ And underneath those words was the unspoken knowledge that she soon would.

Finally
, he came, when I had only hours of this sweet-bitter life left. I was beyond glad to see him, yet dismayed he was witnessing what I had been reduced to. My lucid, conscious moments were rare and it was night when I opened my eyes and saw him standing next to my bed. The last time I had been awake, it had been afternoon, but which afternoon I couldn’t say. A few hours might have passed, or a few days; I had no way of knowing. I also had no way of knowing how long he had been keeping watch over me, but I sensed he had been at my side for some time.

I understood, without being told,
that he would stay with me as long as he could, and if I survived this night and the coming day, then he would return the following night. I also understood he couldn’t remain with me indefinitely throughout the daylight hours, and for that I was grateful, for I knew how fierce his need for blood would grow during sun-up, and the temptation to drink from my family would be an indescribable torment to him.

M
y eyes, the only part of me which could move freely and of their own accord, even though my vision was often blurred and tended to fade in and out, searched for my mother. She was asleep, draped in a duvet, a small and uncomfortable figure in the recliner. It was rare for her to leave my room now.

I glanced weakly at Roman and he read the question on my face.

‘She is enthralled. If she wakes it will not matter, for she will not know I am even here.’

I thought it might be a sign of his emotional state that his speech sounded so formal and old-fashioned. He was reverting to an age gone by in his distress. His marble immobility was no more as he let his sadness show: it was described in every line of his body and face. And I loved him for it.

‘I brought flowers earlier today.’ He pointed to a cream and green creation in a vase on top of the chest of drawers. I could just make out the writing on the card: ‘Joe’.

He read the question in my eyes.

‘I could hardly walk up to her in her own kitchen and hope she was one of those humans who could be enthralled, so I needed an excuse to visit,’ he explained.

I glanced back at the card.

‘They truly are from Joe,’ Roman said.

I knew
Joe had phoned most days for the past week. My mother had told me.  I thought he might be grieving too, in his own way, for what we had, and what we had lost, and I knew we had loved each other once. But he had not loved me enough to stay with me when I so desperately needed him. I bore him no ill will, and understood why he felt he couldn’t stay, and some part of me loved him still, but more like a dear friend, for nothing could compare to what I felt for Roman.

‘And no, I did not deem it necessary to harm the man from Interflora,’ he was saying. ‘I merely intercepted his delivery.’

I stared up at the ceiling, trying to find the words and to persuade my mouth to work.

‘I love you,’ I said, garbled and slurred, the words more hinted at than said.

‘I love you, too, Grace. I always have.’

My heart skipped a beat and his head jerked at the stutter. I knew he meant what he said. He loved me: that was the only thing that mattered now. He loved me.  He held my hand as tightly as he dared.

‘I will stay with you until the end,’ he promised.

Let’s hope it
happens soon, I thought, otherwise daylight and hunger will eventually force him to leave.

He read my thoughts, as he so often did. ‘It will be soon, but not just yet.’ His voice was hollow and bereft.

My look said ‘You know that?’

‘I can sense your life-force: it will be hours yet before you –’ He didn’t finish. He had no need to.

Then he was on the bed beside me, cradling me in his arms, careful of the canula and tubes. I had refused all treatment, except morphine. What was the point in hydrating me, or feeding me? I didn’t want to prolong the inevitable. Not fair on me or my family. This thing had gone on long enough.

‘I have known you nearly all my life.’ Roman’s voice was so low I had to strain to hear. ‘How am I to live without you?’

My head rolled back onto his arm and I breathed a sigh. You will, I thought: you are vampire, and I would have died eventually anyway. At least I had known him, had felt that extraordinary love I believed was only to be found in fairy tales and the movies, and in my short life I had experienced much, much more than most people who had reached their three-score-years and ten. And I knew he loved me, in his vampire way, as much as any of the long-lived was able to love something whose life was as fleeting as a human’s.

I melted into him, felt the
rightness
of being held in his arms. This is where I belonged and I hoped I would die with him holding me.

He kissed my hair and the woman in
me was grateful my mother was so attentive. Bless her – she had washed it for me the day before yesterday. I could still smell the apple shampoo I liked.

She stirred in her chair, almost as if she knew I was thinking of her, and Roman stiffened then relaxed as she muttered in her sleep.

‘She should not wake until morning,’ he assured me. ‘It is as much for her sake as for mine. She desperately needs to rest and I wish us to be undisturbed.’

He was staring into my eyes
, stroking my cheek, and even though my pain was fast returning, I almost purred like a cat at his touch.  I vowed to withstand the agony for as long as possible, knowing the drug would send me back into the depths of unconsciousness, mercifully pain free, but Roman-free, too. I wanted to savour as many moments with him as I could bear. Who knows what lay ahead: perhaps these memories will travel with me and I could relive them beyond the grave, take them out and polish them like so many beautiful gems, letting them live and sparkle again. But even if there was nothing after death, I was alive enough to want to keep living, for just another second, another minute, another hour, as long as Roman was with me. It would be my flesh that succumbed to the inevitable, not my spirit. For all my acceptance, for all that I wanted the pain to stop, I was still not ready to go. Not just yet.