Jacob Matthews walks with a limp, he should be dead but he’s very much alive, that old heart pumps away and his good leg strides out almost athletically, even though the bullet is still lodged but millimetres from his spinal cord. The surgeons could have removed it, so they said, but there was a written caveat that included the possibility of permanent paralysis and death in extreme circumstances, but Jacob said ‘no, it was fine where it was, ain’t doing no harm.’ He’s a simple man, with basis needs and he knew death would walk his path someday, but why give it opportunities, that made no sense – not to Jacob Matthews anyway?

He once wrote a will, used the inside of a cigarette packet as it was all he had at the time, left everything he owned to the women in flat 54 as there was no-one else he was close to. You see family loneliness never bother him one bit. And anyway, everything was only some scruffy moth eaten furniture and three pounds in premium bonds, not much to show for a man of thirty four, but he didn’t care then and not much has changed since, he just hoped one day she might win the jackpot as she seemed a nice lady. Unfortunately for her he survived the holocaust, all the shelling and the crossfire in bullets, the bayonet charges and the endless years in a desperate trench, the only outlook in his line of sight was mud and endless stinking pools of water, ghost animals eating the rotting carcass’s of the dead and the enemy peering back down the barrels’ of their guns – and the flesh eating foot rot of course! Life couldn’t get much worse; it was a constant that was there both day and night, like living the same day/life over and over again, the only change being the light and dark of the hours.

The pain was indescribable, he’d made the climb over the trench wall after the first whistle was blown with the thousands of other innocents and was twenty yards into no-man’s land, maybe I can make it, help win the war, were the thoughts bouncing around his head, then Jacob stumbled and fell head over heels, caught his foot on barbed wire, a jutting stone in the mud or the stiffened frame of a corpse, yet when the second bullet bit into his shoulder the truth was all too obvious to his crippled mind. He was hit, floored by an unknown assailant, a person he would never meet, that had no beef or objection to his being alive. Jacob was just another pointless victim of war, a pawn in a game he had no control or direction over. His ultimate destiny, following death, would be hell of course, perfect retribution he guessed for the destruction of life he had caused to countless members of the opposition – those faceless phantom warriors every one called the enemy. Ha – Jacob laughed as he sat there in the silent curdling waters of a black pool. He looked down, his pants were soaked, damn he thought, more washing – the dark blood spread like a river over his shirt, down his arm and across his belly. That was when he first realised the icy chill drifting over his dirty skin; he tried to stem the blood loss by sticking his finger in the hole. God it hurt, the pain – the cold laid around him like a slowly constricting cape. He couldn’t catch his breath; it came in short bursts like a gasp punctuating the air, then it stopped and his lungs let out a sigh of release. Jacob would have sworn there was a man on a ridge waving at him, moving closer through the air with every second, but his eyes were suddenly filled with darkness.

Death came and went, it decided not to linger and Jacob got himself a free passage home with several months of convalescence in a nice warm clean bed – he grew to like it a few weeks after the clouds of confusion and pain ebbed away. The nurses were kind and considerate, the food was palatable, the army told him to go away, he was no further use to them or the service and suddenly he was alone and on the streets with a panic and fear he could not quantify or control punching at the inside of his head. He hid in darkened rooms, walked where there were no crowds and lived like he was the only man left alive on this ruined earth. The months slowly trickled away and he did not recover, would never recover from the terror and loathing of a past that clung to his skin like the stench of a gangrene limb.

A chance meeting in a dark corner of the London Underground with a past acquaintance opened up a dialogue with Jacob that both intrigued and excited him in equal measure. It was the solution he needed – his escape – the perfect calling to the master of his solitude. He prayed all night as he sat alone and cold in that tiny black room he called home. Help me Lord, see me through this bitterness and hatred for the world, he said like a mantra over and over again till his knees creaked on the bare boards of the floor and his voice ached from use like a phonographic speaker powered to destruction. Three days later he received a letter confirming a new position, was it his constant lobbying of God or the chance meeting – only time would tell – but Jacob didn’t care, had no opinion either way, only vague joy somewhere in the bowels of his mental instability that this was good, a rare sign that maybe life had its bright side after all? With the contract signed and returned, he was instructed to make his way the following Monday to Euston Station where a train ticket would be purchased to take him to Dungeness, upon which a short boat trip into the channel would deliver him to a lighthouse, a sentinel tower built on an emerging shelf of rock a mile from the coast. Solitude, self imposed isolation, Jacob felt a comforting arm around him like a blanket of the purest merino wool when he walked the ninety three steps up that silent structure for the first time.

A year passed, then two and all was well in Jacob’s world, nothing bothered him, he had no contact with reality, once a month a boat appeared with provisions that were left on a small jetty when the tide was at its lowest. In his task to safeguard the passage of ships through the channel he made sure the light was bright and constant, oiled the machinery regularly and greased the cogs that turned the beacon every second, every hour of the day. The management never questioned his ability, they paid regular money into an account he never touched. The radio laid forever dormant as communication across the airwaves with the outside world, either by letter or in person didn’t exist. Jacobs’s exile was total, all consuming and permanent and he loved every moment it. All he ever asked of the people in the world beyond the water was for paper, pencils, art materials and a cat. The kitten became known as Gratitude, it was the only thing in his simple existence he truly loved, as to all society he simply didn’t exist, all records and status apparently vanished the day he walked into that giant concrete tower. There was no one in a secret black book whose identity he safe guarded and everyone that knew Jacob assumed he had perished in the war, there were no distant family members that he could recall, they were all indeed nonexistent, all he had was himself and a cat named Gratitude.

One day, sometime in the summer of the fourth year of this new life he called Hope and Tranquillity, disaster came calling at his weather beaten door. Not a freak storm where the crazy waters of the English Channel and ferocious lightening threatened to smash the lighthouse to rubble and splinters and not a rudderless steel vessel of His Majesty’s fleet crashing through the temple of his solitude, but a fall, a stumble on that limpy leg that cast him down eighteen stone steps into the doorway that registered his grand entrance some four years earlier. The pain was intense, but not insufferable, after all he had endured at the hands of the German soldiers it was but an annoying toothache, a stub of the toe, a slight bump to the head, but when he looked down at his leg he gasped as the awkward truth as it wormed its way into his fragile psyche – legs don’t bend like that – it was fractured beyond self help. Three hours spent slipping and slithering up those cold damp steps, dragging and working those arms, pulling and scraping, digging fingers into holes that didn’t quite exist for support and strength, and yet, one tiny fear nagged in the back of his mind, it clattered and banged in that small space like pans hanging on a windy washing line. The radio, a metal contraption he didn’t trust could choose not to work and bring his world crashing to a close because the battery was dead or the fuses blown or corroded in the damp of a lighthouse man’s dream.

The following day a boat came, plunging out of the early morning mist like a dragon catching its breath in the rain. On board was a woman in blue, Jacob could make out her slim figure and her hair pulled back and half hidden under her nurse’s hat. She looked attractive, about his age and he hollered down those long and winding steps for her to climb up and make herself known. But he was terrified, this was an intruded into his most secret place and he had unwittingly broken the seal to the door of his own privacy. He was found out, no longer alone, his inner sanctum a sacred place no more. Now he was a peep show, a circus freak with his unkempt hair and beard to be viewed and ogled over for pleasure by strangers and the disinterested. God forbid, but how long was it since he’d washed he thought or looked at himself in the mirror or taken pride in his appearance and this person coming slowly up the steps a nurse, a saviour for the ill and unclean. The terror turned suddenly to unimaginable fear and he found himself saying those awkward selfish comments he’d never heard escape from his mouth before and then came the shame, the distaste of failure as he looked about him at the residue of four years alone and without remorse he flooded with tears and cried his heart out as he writhed and lurched about the dirty bed sheets like a derelict craving drugs he couldn’t afford.

She bathed him, cut his hair and trimmed his beard, she caressed him with gentle delicate words of encouragement and warmth and Jacob felt alive. His skin glowed, his scalp felt cool and new like fresh fallen snow. She’d brought new fragrant clothes and he felt like a prince, like a valued subject of the Crown for the first time in years. Was this a friend he ask himself or just a nurse fulfilling her duty to an invalid, was she a person he could begin to trust. He asked her name, his voice sounded awkward, distant and brittle like it could crack and disappear into the turbulent ebbing and flowing waters outside, his views and opinion lost forever as a lonely ship sinks to the ocean bed and is never seen by mankind again. Florence she said with a whisper and he liked it, because the vowels rolled over the tongue like warm liquid and as her eyes disappeared briefly under the fringe of her hair, Jacob felt happy and content, if that was indeed the nature of the sensation that pricked at his soul. It had been so long, so God damn long he couldn’t be sure what he felt? Was it love, the way she moved, breathed, spoke those words of determination and faith. The cat rubbed himself against her legs like it had known her for years, Gratitude was its name. Fool cat he thought, but what the hell does that animal know, no more than me that’s for sure he sighed as the nurse packed up her case to go. Her hand lingered in his as she made to leave and then placed a brief kiss on his cheek. Keep in touch, write me, she said. There’s more to life than solitude had been her final words. Then Florence was gone and as she clattered down the steps with her valise, Jacob prised himself onto his one good leg careful not to damage the newly plastered coating of the other and looked through the dirty salt smeared glass as the small boat bobbed its way across the black water and was lost from view in the space of a reticent heartbeat. The sound of tears and sobbing echoed around the lonely room at the top of the lighthouse and was lost to the endlessly pounded of the sea upon the foundations of the structure and even the cat on hearing the tiresome wailing slinked away in embarrassment and hide in a quiet corner.

They wrote many times, Florence even called on a number of occasions taking that small motor boat over the cruel sea, not just to remove the plaster on his broken leg but to engage with his resurrection, her guardianship changed him into a man who had something to live for and something worth dying for. It was a miraculous change and as he looked in the mirror at his immaculately groomed hair and elegant clothing he thanked the Lord for his intervention and praised the love he had shown and bestowed upon a hopeless man stifled and lost in rancid history and sentiment. Jacob took to drawing and painting, using the art materials he had gathered over the years, recreating Florence however he remembered her, seated in thoughtful repose, walking up the steps of that grim lighthouse or smiling with the face of a gilded angel. There were hundreds of works, some beautiful and inspired and others unfinished and cast to the furthest corners of the room like abandoned garbage.

During the fifth year of his isolation at the top of that tower in the waters of the English Channel, it dawned on Jacob early one morning as he watched the seagulls glide and fly upon the gusting breeze that he was in love. The cat purred and twisted in and around his legs, it almost seemed to smile as it looked up at him in admiration. I know Gratitude he said in his intimate voice – I know? Maybe we need to leave? And without due warning Jacob suddenly felt a longing, a need to be apart from the sea, to distance himself from seclusion and separation. Love choked his senses, coated his mind with a blindness that blocked out all reality. Black was white, the sea was purple and the sun shone with the radiance of golden fire where cherubs surfed on the back of the flames and teased Jacob to join them for special lessons in the afterglow. Florence was all he could think of, he waited for letters, longed for the crackling radio to burst into life, but there was nothing and the weeks passed and still there was nothing and moment by moment Jacob thought he was losing his mind and the beard returned like an overcoat of doom on his face. Abandoned – cast adrift from the warm comfort of love, he felt he was drowning in sorrow and heartache again and then one day, close to mid afternoon came the torrential rain. Gratitude sat amongst the remnants of daily debris and watched through the salt stained glass as the heavens opened and the gulls disappeared to escape the pain of the heavy falling drops that looked like pebbles crashing to earth. Briefly the radio glowed like a sparking match and then spluttered quickly into silence. Florence he said calmly – where are you?

After the incessant rain came the howling wind that whipped the dark waters of the sea to a frothy topped dessert, for a moment Jacob thought it looked divine, picturesque like a discarded chocolate box top then all he saw was the face of a demon in its churning horse tails. Was that a boat in the corner of his peripheral vision, Gratitude picked up his ears and looked eager to escape and was suddenly gone to his place of worship in a breath of impending sorrow. Jacob cupped his hands to the streaming glass to adjust his strained vision, it was a boat, a familiar one and struggling within its wooden frame was a woman in blue raising a hand in desperation and fearfulness. Florence, he cried in anguish, the sound of those vocal notes were lost to the lashing rain and wind that filled his ears like the never-ending shellfire on the Somme during a dirty Sunday morning in February 1916.

Jacob screamed and fell to his knees beating the thick glass of the windows with his fists – No, no, not Florence – please Lord no. He ran and stumbled as best his weak and disenchanted legs would allow him to descend those old stone steps, he flung the door open in panic and she was just a hundred yards away from the jetty and stuck on a small raised outcrop of rock. The boat was falling apart as he watched, the wood crumbling away as each wave crashed over its shattered bow, Florence lay on the floor her back again the driving rain trying to shelter as best she could from the lashing water as it rose and fell across her with the generosity of a metronome. She’s dead he thought, his mind ablaze with dread, his true love smashed like rotting driftwood against the rocks. Jacob pulled apart the life jacket box on the jetty, wrapped it around his soaking frame and leaped without a care for his safety into the churning waters and swum like a dolphin to the stricken boat where his darling lay immobile across the rupturing planks of that small raft. Florence, he cried through the deafening wind, over and over till he was hoarse from the effort. The churning sea rocked him slowly caressing every aching muscle, then it threw him high into the air like a flimsy child’s toy and then sucked him back into the darkness beneath the waterline where there was not a spark of light just the constant sound of his bursting heart. Yet Jacob fought on, arms and legs thrashing through the freezing tide and when he was able to look above the waves he seemed no nearer to the stricken vessel and then, as if by a miracle, he was within its grasp only to find the next flow knocked him beyond any reasonable distance. Beyond the dread of failure and the impending death of his beloved Florence, Jacob fought the resolution that once again he would be left alone, fending for himself in a world he’d come to realise had jettisoned him like all the useless objects that get washed up on the seashore every single day, as the tide ebbs and flows in its daily routine.

And then as seal flops ungainly upon the early morning shore Jacob fell into the small boat exhausted and destroyed. He was too late, Florence lay slumped in the bottom of the boat the hammering waves forever edging the craft from the safety of the small rock towards the blackness of the bottomless sea. Then she moved, breathing harshly, shivering like a frightened child, the cold of the water freezing her conscious reality. Florence, cried Jacob as tears streaming across his ruined face. Are you okay? There was no reply and he stumbled forward and placed his arms around her cold stiff body. Florence, he screamed in the half light of the deserting day. Wake up please, don’t leave me – I love you. She stirred under his weight. Thank the Lord, he said in a dreamy breath. In his arms she turned to face him. Jacob froze and began to shake in terror, there was no escape, he could not move away and be free from the sudden horror that face him. It was not Florence, but a pure abomination of demon kind, a servant of the devil complete with fiery breath and rancid flesh and it crept from under his loving caress like some hideous sloth and slithered across the sodden boards of the wrecked boat with him still attached. What do you want – spluttered Jacob as he slipped towards the water’s edge. Its mouth opening and deep inside among its rotted teeth Jacob saw the horrors of war and destruction from shell and mortar fire. He saw himself pulling the trigger of his rifle and soldiers being felled and blown apart by machine and blistering explosions. He witnessed the fear and desolation he had shaped as each bullet left his gun and ripped the life from innocent men changing the course of history and the future for ever. What do you want? cried Jacob choking on the words as they formed in his mouth. You – said the repugnant creature, I crave only you. But why, tell me why screamed the hunted man. It looked at Jacob with sympathy in its hollow eyes. You owe an obligation to many and I am the collector of that debt. Future credit cannot be loaned out, your time is due. Why now, did Florence my love deserve to die like this when the world is full of evil suffering? Said Jacob pitifully. He thought under the howling wind and the beating rain that he heard the monster cackle with glee. We all have to suffer, in life there are no favours, no routes of easy passage – to be fair – you know the truth Jacob. You are late!

As the light of the beacon swept around the tower every few seconds illuminating the way ahead and rain continued to hammer into the entrance of the open door flooding the well worn stone work, Gratitude peered through the smudged glass of the living room high above the base of the lighthouse and watched with intent fascination as the lonely body of Jacob Matthew slipped of the small outcrop of rock and was lost to the grimy waters of the sea, lost like he had never existed and would never be missed by a living soul. The cat turned away and settled himself down upon a worn cushion, mewled with the longing of an empty heart and slipped slowly into an endless sleep.