Requiem Read Free Page A

that Stokes was now terrified
that he wouldn't be able to get anyone else to touch it.
    'Tom,
you haven't got over your bereavement, have you?'
    There. He'd
said it when none of the other staff would. Tom couldn't deny Stokes had been
kind, tolerant, even indulgent, in the months after Katie died. 'No. Honestly.
That has nothing to do with it.'
    'And you're
certain it's not the matter of things scribbled on a -'
    'No. As I said before, I'm just ready for
a change.'
    'Really?'
    'Yes. Really.'
    Stokes stood
up, and his chair scraped behind him. He came around his desk and offered a
large hand that wanted shaking, 'If you need a good reference . . .'
    'I'll remember that.'
    And then he was out.
    Thirteen
years of teaching behind him. He was thirty-five and going on sixty-five, and
it felt like retirement. The last twelve months had bequeathed him his first
grey hairs. With the laboured verses of the assembly hymn still echoing in his
ears he climbed into his rusting Ford Escort. A few pupils were still hanging
around as he passed between the school gates. Kelly was one of them. He nodded
at her before steering through the driveway. Then he put his foot down and
accelerated out of the educational system.

 
     
    2
    Tom climbed, shivering, into
bed before falling asleep. When he woke it was after six, and he was relieved
that this time his sleep hadn't been disturbed. He tried to telephone Sharon.
The call hooked up with the single ringing tone of an international line, but
no one answered. He'd not spoken to Sharon in some months.
    He put his hand in his
pocket, feeling for the scrap of paper he'd discovered in his desk at school: This
fleeting life . . . Upstairs in the spare bedroom was an ottoman, a chest
for storing blankets that had become a shrine to his dead wife. It contained
all the things that he didn't want hanging around the house but couldn't bear
to throw away. Photographs, letters, theatre programmes, ornaments with
special resonance, even an answer phone tape with her voice on it. Each object
cold and remote, as useless and beautiful as moon rock.
    He slipped
the note into a wallet full of other papers. Opening this chest was a dangerous
business; when the lid was lifted, the evening could be swallowed up with the
contents spread across the floor as he emptied a bottle of Scotch.
    Here's
one piece of moon rock, one that holds him in a trance-like gaze for some
minutes: a photograph, taken on a bracing east-coast beach. As Tom holds it before
him the slender white border of the photograph extends outwards, dissolves and
the two subjects break their pose. One of the figures is Katie, a pretty woman
but with her mouth set hard against some bitterness. The other person is Tom.
It is a recent photograph. The hulk of a wreck lies in the background of the
shot. They have taken a lg weekend - Tom's idea - at
an east-coast resort to see if they can repair the damage.
    Tom
collects his camera from, and thanks, the passing stranger who agreed to take a
photograph of the pair. They turn away and walk up the beach towards the wreck,
crunching pebbles underfoot as they go. Both the sea and the sky have turned
the colour of cold steel. It is well out of season, and a squall at sea has
churned up the waves, sending a stiff wind at right angles to the beach. They
have to turn their collars up to stop the wind from whipping sand in their
faces.
    'I just hope it's not too late,' she says.
    He rounds on
her, scattering shingle, holding on to the lapels of her coat. 'It was a
mistake. We both know it. It can be put right.'
    'I
hope you're right, Tom,' she says, the wind lashing her blond fringe across her
eyes. 'Because I think the time has gone.' Then she turns and walks up the
beach, saying something about getting her things ready to go, but he doesn't
hear her properly because the wind blows the words from her lips like flecks of
foam from the waves.
    He
walks on up the beach a little further, to where the wreck lies beached and