Requiem Read Free Page B

on
its side, doomed a century ago on a spit of sand. Tom sits down on the rotting
hulk. A solitary grey-backed gull bobbing on the grey ocean under the grey sky
cries, 'Hark!' before flying off. A wave pounds at the shingle beach.
    The
scene dissolves, reconstituting itself in its original deception, a holidaying
twosome, fixed for ever by celluloid and photo chemicals, the picture in Tom's
hand.
    Moon rock.
    The ottoman was full of it.
    If
the circumstances of Katie's death had been different, he might have been able
to bury her properly. But the freak nature of the accident had left him nursing
a terrible sense of injustice. A storm had uprooted a tree, which had collapsed
on, and crushed, her car. Katie was killed instantly. If she'd died in an
ordinary road accident, Tom would at least have been able to attribute the
tragedy to human or mechanical error - similarly if she'd died in a plane crash
or a fire. The rage and the blame would still have been there, of course, but
what he couldn't tolerate was the utter randomness of the incident. No
mistake. No error. Just one parcel of nature destroying another through the
accident of proximity. Tom could have understood a disease in terms of its
predatory function, or an environmental disaster like an earthquake or flood in
terms of its scale. But one tree falling on one car?
    No: it felt
personal. It felt directed, against him. A finger of judgement.
    He lowered
the lid of the ottoman. Then he tried Sharon's number again. Still no answer.
He wondered what the time difference was. Perhaps no more than an hour or two.
    Katie
had not at first approved of his enduring friendship with Sharon, whom he had
known since college days. 'Old flames should be snuffed out,' she'd said.
'Would you like it if I dredged up one of my old boyfriends every other month?'
    'We
shouldn't have to lose touch with someone we once loved just because we now
love someone else.'
    'It just seems odd.'
    'Nothing odd about it.'
    'It still seems odd to me.'
    But Tom
could be a difficult person to argue with, and even though he was sensitive to
Katie's suspicions, he persisted in maintaining innocent, irregular contact
with Sharon, and she with him. And when Katie grew more secure in the
relationship, and had met Sharon a couple of times, she began to trust and
accept this friendship and also discovered in Sharon a friend for herself. The
two women had developed a closeness of their own, and although it was never
something from which Tom was excluded, it was a distinct evolution of his
former relations with Sharon.
    Since
Katie's death Sharon had telephoned twice, and had written two letters, but Tom
hadn't felt able to reciprocate. Now he felt ready to see her. She was one of
the very few people he could contemplate speaking to.
    He dug out a
Sunday-newspaper supplement with advertisements for bucket-shop air flights.
He'd already ringed one with a pen. They operated a round-the-clock service, so
he gave them a call.
    Five minutes
later he'd booked a flight, paid for y credit card. The flight was leaving the
following afternoon. His hands trembled slightly as he began to throw things
into a bag. A photograph of Katie smiled approvingly from the mantelpiece. He
turned it face-down. He didn't want her to watch him packing.
    Travel
fever had him tossing and turning in his bed that night. Then at 3 a.m. he was
awoken by the usual tapping on the door. He didn't answer it. He lay awake,
listening, knowing that it would be repeated at regular intervals. He knew who
it was. He had answered the door before, and there was never anyone there. He
knew the hand would continue to knock on the door until exactly 4.15. Then it
would go away.
    Tonight
it seemed to him a little more urgent. But he wouldn't answer it. He knew who
it was.

3
    The plane landed out of
the astonishing blue heavens at Tel Aviv airport, seeding passengers on to the
hot tarmac. Still unable to contact Sharon, he took a bus to Jerusalem. He
disembarked