Pearl

Pearl

The alarm clock was ringing again. Pearl reached out to silence it. She hated mornings. She hadn’t really liked them when she was young, but now, as she was getting older, they seemed really cruel. It was her birthday today; a thing she had been dreading. Every time she caught a glimpse of herself in some  mirror outside her home she saw more wrinkles, she was convinced, and her hair, well, it had been grey for years but she still coloured it -  a honey blonde.

Today she was sixty; somehow it filled her with paranoid fears, a quiet sense of impending doom, a terrible thing that nothing, not even a man complimenting her, could assuage. Not that there were any men now to compliment her. They had all gone long ago; her nights of wild abandon and passion were spent. If ony I could go back to my youth, she thought, what I wouldn’t give for that. For youth had been everything to Pearl, as it was for any girl selling sex. And now – bunions, arthritis and failing eyesight. This was a nightmare for street-walker Pearl, a terrible wake-up call to get her house in order, to prepare for death. She thought of death often; somehow it seemed benign, a wonderful release from the agony of ageing. Pearl would give anything to be free, free from pain and decay. Her teeth for instance were rotten, stained from too much black coffee and endless cigarettes; her mouth was a gaping hole no man wanted to kiss.

She drifted into the bathroom, fag in mouth she’d just lighted. She’d taken down the mirror a long time ago when she knew how depressed it made her feel. She still applied make-up of course but then she used a small mirror in her  fake gold compact with the enamel rose on it. She could only bear to see her face in small parts; it was all she allowed herself.

She trudged down the stairs in her nightie to see if anybody had remembered her birthday. There was nothing on the mat. At least, she thought to herself, no one knows how old I am. As she approached the kitchen and was just about to put on the kettle, she heard the clatter of the letter-box. Maybe someone had remembered, maybe some man from the past; she’d given up birthdays some time ago and couldn’t imagine anyone thinking of her now, not really. Her heart sank when she picked up the brown envelope. It was marked ‘Department of Work and Pensions’. She opened it with trepidation. It was her new pension book. So, I’m a pensioner now, she thought to herself: what have I got to live for?

She thought of her best customer, Ernie. He’d loved her once but had died in a car accident ten years ago. There had been many others of course but none as loyal as Ernie. What would he think of her now – a pensioner? She dreaded to think. Life had lost its flavour that was for sure. She’d known this day would come but she never thought it would be real somehow, and now it was here. She was lost.

She opened the gas oven door and turned on the gas. When no one wants you anymore, what else can a girl do?