The Eye of Providence

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The thick envelope slipped quietly through the letterbox and landed on the coir mat just as Paul came out of the kitchen. Post on a Sunday was strange; and as Mama always used to say to him (until the day she jumped off the fifty-foot bridge on Crane Street when he was eight), ‘It’s got to be bad news’.

He picked up the brown envelope after abandoning a warm cup of green jasmine tea on the sideboard, and felt the rich texture of handmade paper between his fingers. It was sealed with old-fashioned wax, the colour of dried blood, depicting an eye enclosed in a triangle. He turned it over, and examined the handwritten words in black velvet ink, which bled off the letters, like caterpillars.

Paul Webster – open with care.

Paul grabbed a wooden paper knife and opened the envelope with one single swipe. Beads of sweat appeared above his upper lip as he pulled out a business card with nothing other than a date inscribed in the centre:

1 January 2030

He stared at the mail trying to make sense of it. Then, a month-old memory came forth. A small, inconspicuous ad on Facebook, in the top right hand corner of his screen, the company logo depicting a crudely drawn eye in the centre of a triangle. Next to it a short message, Your Time of Death for Free. If it hadn’t been for the bottle of Merlot flowing through his veins, he would have ignored it. But inebriated and alone on Christmas Day, he had taken the bait.

Paul scoffed while tossing the mail on the sideboard. He grabbed his tea, sat on the bottom stair, and lost himself in his thoughts. 2030 would be nearly ten years from now. Not great, but it could be worse. He would be just over sixty.

He downed his drink, pulled himself up, then reached for the mail with the intent to bin it. But when he grabbed the card, something had changed. The date was still there, only different.

4 May 2030

Maybe he hadn’t read properly the first time? No, he was sure the date had moved from January to May of the year 2030 – nearly four more months. His hand shaking, he placed the business card inside the envelope and slipped it into his front gown pocket. It was time for something stronger than tea.

In the kitchen, he guzzled a large whisky, paused, and pulled the card out. The date had changed again – minus two months. That afternoon, on his way to the charity shop, he bought a meal for a homeless person – plus four months. This was fun. The electricity bill arrived the next day – minus one week. His estranged daughter, Leila, left a message on the landline announcing her visit for the following week – plus one year.

♦

Paul ended up carrying the card everywhere. Maybe if he did all the ‘right’ things, he could increase his life expectancy further, avoid the accident, illness, or whatever else was due to happen to him? The thought made him smile, brightened by the anticipated visit of his daughter for the first time in years. But it didn’t last.

Leila only stayed a few minutes. She sat on the sofa by the warm cup of oolong leaf tea he’d bought especially for her, but she didn’t touch it.

‘I’m pregnant, Papa, and we’ve decided to move to Australia.’

In the silence that followed, Paul felt himself turn pale. ‘When?’

‘We’re flying out of Heathrow tomorrow,’ she said, tears pooling under her eyes. Moments later she grabbed her handbag on the way out and that was that.

Paul closed the door behind her and collapsed to the floor, clutching his stomach. When tears ran out, whisky flowed. An empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand, he pulled the card out from his gown and read the new date. Then read it again. 1 February 2020. Tomorrow.

That night, he lay in bed, the card crumpled in his clenched fist. His eyes trained on the only photo in the house, on the bedside table, a picture of little Leila. Heavy rain drummed on the window, drawing crooked lines down the glass. He hated rain. It only brought bad news.

Tired of waiting, he jumped off the bed and stumbled barefoot into the wet night. The bridge on Crane Street was only a stone’s throw from his end-of-terrace.

♦

With no one in sight, Paul leaned over the cold and wet guard rail in the shadows between the first two pillars. This was the thing: before the first pillar, the ground sloped up reducing the fall. Beyond the second pillar, you hit water. In between was the sweet spot, fifty feet above the bone-breaking tarmac covering the footpath along the riverbank. You needed to know that, because at night you couldn’t see a thing under the bridge, and the pillars were your only point of reference. Mama hadn’t gotten many things right in her life after Pa left us, but she’d nailed that bit.

Meanwhile, a woman appeared at the far end of the bridge, head down under an umbrella, and he climbed on the slippery bridge hoping she hadn’t seen him. Toes curled over the metal edge, water seeping through his clothes, he stepped into the black emptiness below. The sensation in his stomach was like driving over a bump at speed, but prolonged. The 50-foot fall seemed to last forever. The woman on the bridge screamed, but her cries drowned when he hit water.

The unprecedented rain of the previous few days had caused the river to swell and break its banks, flooding the path – just enough to cushion Paul’s fall, and for the passer-by to pull him out of the water alive.

Still panting, he lay on the edge of the murky waters next to the woman – Lucy, he would later discover, a lover of fine teas. Her hair and face covered in mud, she smiled at him. At that moment he remembered the card. Opened his hand. It was still there. Creased, wet, but the date readable.

1 January 2042. Twenty-two years from now.

♦

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