Clones
by Chris Ward
The
news often fills air time with talk of cloning. It is possible, they
say, to replicate a human body, a human mind. To make two of one,
four of one, fifty million of one.
In
the schoolyard I was nothing. Pushed into a corner, backed up against
a wall, shoved down against the ground. Metaphorically speaking, of
course. Bombarded by a battering ram of words.
I
didn’t know it then, but I wished I was a clone. I liked me. No one
else did. I wanted to be me, but somewhere else. Somewhere kinder.
I
remember that summer, in that field along the coast a little ways
from Fowey. The caravan, the endless games of UNO in the rain, the
swimming pool on the warm August days. The little “play” area
where the kids hung out, with the jukebox and the pinball machines,
the table tennis table. The beach, across the road from the summer
camp, where I saw her for the first time.
This
is all about a girl, you see.
I
had stupid hair. Pulled through one of those hair nets and bleached,
we left the peroxide on too long, my buddy and me. His hair, darker,
could take it. Mine, fairer, went as bright as the summer sun.
Straw-bright, the kids at school said. Wursel Gummage, they called
me, after the John Pertwee character. I’m sure none of them had
ever seen the old TV show, but kids have a way of knowing. Ways of
hurting seem to float through the air like balloons, drifting from
one generation to the next, waiting to be plucked and popped.
They
put gum in it. Gave me dead arms, just because. Laughed. Joked. And I
wished I could be someone else, still me but not me. A clone.
Amy
was a year younger than me, she said. Fifteen. Scrawny but cute, her
hair pulled back into a neat ponytail, held tight with a little green
scrunchie.
‘I
like your hair,’ she told me. She actually used those words. It’s
been years, and many of the details have faded, but I remember those
words exactly. She may or may not have said, ‘You’re cool’, but
that first line was enough.
I
met her in that room at the holiday park, the play room. Next to the
pinball table. She saw me standing there, as they say. We talked
awhile about nothing, about the songs on the jukebox neither of us
liked. The sun went down, and we took a walk down to the beach.
I
was cloned.
Nothing
much happened, just a bit of fooling around. We were young, she was
cute, I was a deadbeat in another world a million miles away. But we
kissed, we held hands, we lay down on the warm sand for a while.
Behind
us, on the road, local chav kids revved their souped-up cars and tore
along the seafront, but in our little bubble we were safe.
‘Next
year?’ she begged me. ‘Ask them.’ Meaning my parents. ‘The
same week of August. We’ll see each other again.’ And she placed
a hand over mine.
Cloned,
I returned to school. Got a basketball thrown in my face which
flattened my nose. Shaved my head, watched it grow back, light brown,
like before. The seasons turned, and the holiday park - and Amy -
rode back around.
We
were a week late. Dad’s work, Mum’s appointments. Our holidays
overlapped by a day. That day, our first, Amy’s last, I dashed down
to the beach. There I found sirens, an ambulance, someone sewn up
inside a bag. A souped-up car on its side, a dark stain I couldn’t
look at a couple of feet out from the pavement, as if someone had
dropped a bag of copper-coloured ink on the road.
A
woman was screaming, over by the ambulance. I guess they could have
been related, Amy and her. I didn’t see, I couldn’t ask.
Perhaps
she had hoped to find me down there on the beach beyond that
hazardous road, in amongst the sand dunes. Perhaps her parents had
stopped the car for her to take one last look.
Maybe
it wasn’t her, but I’ll never know.
I
didn’t read about it in the newspapers or see it on the television.
I didn’t want to look. I returned to school a week later, cloned.
The
years drove slowly past like a commuter train overtaking a car,
stretching me up towards the sky and stacking meat on my bones. I
grew bigger, stronger, the line of my jaw grew tighter and no one any
longer bothered this clone. I sailed through university with a gentle
following breeze, tore down the rapids of my twenties and drifted out
into the lake of my thirties, peaceful and placid.
I
married, divorced, had a kid, lost a kid, got a kid back. I cloned
myself through so many jobs I lost count of them.
Around
my fortieth birthday I wanted Amy back. I joined that social
networking site – you know the one, I’m sure – and I trawled
through Amys for hours. Blonde hair, black hair, brown hair, red
hair, blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, snake eyes (!), and there
she was filled out, thicker round the neck but still the Amy I
remembered, cloned.
I
emailed her: I’d like to see you again.
She
had never heard of me before. Never set foot in Cornwall, let alone
that holiday camp in Fowey. She was seven years older than me.
I
searched, and there she was again. A little thinner than I
remembered, her hair prematurely grey, but those same eyes.
She
agreed to meet me.
Over
coffee we talked. She agreed with everything I said. ‘Oh, we had
great times, didn’t we? On that quiet little beach? Listen, are you
free this weekend? How about we go away?’
‘Do
you remember how many times you beat me at pool in that play room?’
I asked her. ‘Dozens,’ she said, and I told her goodbye. She had
won at pinball, I remember, but never on a pool table that didn’t
exist. Amy’s clone, so lonely, so lost, so desperate for a
companion, cried off into the night.
I
continued to meet Amy’s clones. Some of them were pleasant,
friendly, and as attractive in their mid-forties as she had been at a
tender fifteen. I dated a few, even, one for as much as six months. The spectre of Amy waited at the shoulder of every one of her clones
though, and that always drew me away.
Eventually
I had to shed my clones and return, have them bend before me to form
a tunnel back to my youth and that day on the treacherous stretch of
road that separated the beach from the holiday camp.
I
found the holiday camp gone, replaced by a shopping mall. The beach,
now developed with a wooden promenade where the dunes had rolled, was
emptier than ever. I walked there for a while, calling her name
softly under my breath, humming it like the forgotten lyrics to a
song.
I
wondered where I was going. I walked down to the shoreline, let my
toes make trails in the wet sand. Then, back to the edge of the
promenade, to that place where our clones had once sat, kissed, held
hands and talked about stupid things. I sat down, wondering if I was
still a clone or whether this was the real me.
I
lay back, looking up at the sky. For a moment part of the fluffy
cloud above me seemed to shift, and briefly it formed Amy’s face.
Another
clone. Nature made them too.
I
closed my eyes, and again I was back there on the beach as the sun
went down, the hands of a girl I would never see again held gently in
mine. Silently I wept, for what had been, what was, what might have
been, and what would never be.
I
was sure I could hear clones everywhere crying.
End.
Clones is available along with several other similarly themed short stories in my collection, Five Tales of Loss.
