Requiem (2 page)

Graham Joyce February 2013

To Sue, who said 'Let’s see
what's up there!' The   
Akrotiri
at
Corinth,
11
October 1988. About 4
a.m.

l

They were helping a
party get out of hand, an end-of-term
hooley
thrown
by a teaching colleague during Tom's probationary year. Noticing the dwindling
supply of booze in the kitchen, Tom stowed his beer under a hard chair before
stumbling out to the back-yard toilet. Fighting his way in again, he found the
room crowded with energetic dancers and had to resort to crawling on the floor
to grope for his hidden beer. Instead of glass, his outstretched hand fastened
on a fated and shapely ankle.

The
ankle was joined to an astonishing calf muscle. Meshed in sheer nylon, it
discharged static to his fingers and climbed remorselessly to the .most
stunning thigh he'd ever seen in his life. Ten minutes later he was still
holding on to that ankle, trying to speak coherently to its owner, who was
meanwhile coolly intent on ignoring him.

'If you're
not going to let go of my foot,' Katie had said at last, 'I'd better introduce
myself.'

Even
though he was drunk - and he was not drunk often - Tom knew from the moment his
eyes swept from ankle to thigh, and then to the plaited, honey-blond head of
hair beyond,
this is It.
Tom in those days was a great believer in this
is It.

Katie did not think
this
is It.
All she thought at the time was that a drunk was holding her leg.
For the first few minutes, she tried to ignore the scuffling at her feet in the
hope it might pass. It didn't. With one eyebrow cocked high she listened as Tom
gamely struggled to make conversation. Mysteriously he seemed to sober up.

At some point in the
evening he persuaded her to part with her phone number, and over the course of
the next few months Katie began to think,
Yes, well, this may be It.
Within
a year of meeting, they'd married.

Thirteen years ago.

For the
first two years at least, Tom never - metaphorically - let go of her foot. He
couldn't believe that this elegant, incandescent female had tumbled into his
life; he would occasionally glance upwards for the hole in the ceiling through
which she might have fallen. Around this time he also behaved extremely
possessively, suspecting every other male in the vicinity of secretly plotting
to take her away from him.

To Tom's
possessiveness Katie responded with her own needs. She had an endless capacity
to absorb his devotions, and where some people might tire of obsessive
attention, Katie's thirst was infinite. She thrived on the kind of intimacy
which excludes all other things and all other people. She grew more beautiful,
more confident and more radiant on the ambrosia of his love.

Katie
was a marketing consultant for a small business company. Compared with Tom's
world, hers seemed grown-up and hard-edged. Of course, she was no more
tough-minded than he was. He soon began to realize there were things in her
life which determined her condition: dark things, slippery things, things
growing in the deep, damp wells of her childhood which fed hungrily but
noiselessly and which demanded greater and greater portions of the love he was
able to bestow.

His
greatest mistake in their relationship was that he did not help her to explore these
secrets. He tried once, but her resistance was so strong he never tried to pull
her that way again; but whatever those secrets were, they caused her to attach
herself to him with such fervour he was afraid of what he might lose should
they be disturbed. Anyway, he decided, the pair had settled into an acceptable
equilibrium which demanded and reciprocated love in comparable measure, so why
question it?

He neither
foresaw nor suspected that those very demands would one day outstrip his own
ability to meet them. But it didn't matter now because she was dead.

'If it's the matter,' Stokes
was saying, 'if it's the mere matter of a few words being chalked on a
blackboard -'

So he'd
rumbled that, had he? 'No, it's not about that,' said Tom.

'Because;
let me assure you, I've seen a lot of that in my time. And I'd root it out.
Mark my words, I'd root it out.'

Tom
marked the Head's words by gazing out of the window. 'No. I'm just ready for a
change.'

Flaming June was washed out.
It was the last day of summer term at
Dovelands
School. The fifth-years had left weeks ago, and rain lashed the playground,
dampening any holiday jinks planned by the rest of the kids. Tom Webster had
crossed the yard to the Head's study after clearing out his desk. A solitary
flour-bomb had burst on the wet playground, and he could see it as he gazed
from the window of the study. It lay in a white puddle, an unexploded little
sack of spoiled fun, bubbling slightly in the driving rain.

After the final assembly, with
the school groaning through 'Jerusalem' before the benediction, Tom had said
his goodbyes and left the staff room quickly. He couldn't face the post-term
exhaustion; the way colleagues became tender to each other in the face of the
summer recess; the way they let the completed term slide from their backs like
a heavy pack and took on a forgiving air. Parting was tinged with a surprising
sadness for the forthcoming absence of colleagues who, day to day, were
normally a source more of boredom than of comfort. Tom couldn't stand it.

'But
what will you do?' they asked, the missionary look in their eyes revealing they
all thought it had something to do with Katie's death, about which they
couldn't bring themselves to speak. So he met the question with a shrug and a
levitation of the eyebrows which did nothing to address their concern.

Before crossing over to
Stokes's
spartan
study he'd
unlocked his form room to collect a few personal possessions. He'd inspected
the stock cupboard at the back of the classroom. There were some tapes and
slides, and several books and magazines, all of which he'd bequeathed to his
successor. His desk drawers contained little besides scrap paper and a wallet
of photographs taken on school trips, but it all had to be cleared. He'd found
a paperback science-fiction omnibus, one of the pages marked by a leaf of
paper. He'd taken out the marker, on which was written:
This
fleetling
life. Get bread and milk and I will love
thee.xxx

Katie's handwriting. The
book had been lying untouched for almost a year, with its shopping-list
page-marker. Nearly a year now, and these tiny, inert phantoms kept turning up
in drawers and cupboards and closets and boxes. When people die they leave
behind tiny deposits, like dust or ash, littering the lives of those who have
to carry on. Impossible to wipe a house clean. Memories dwelled in cobweb
places behind wardrobes and between cupboards; they hid behind radiators; they
lurked on shelves; like slivers of shattered glass, they waited for their
moment to lodge deep in any vulnerable expanse of passing skin.

At first
these were the only kinds of ghost he had to contend with, and with them, as
always, came the thickening in the throat and the fluid gathering behind the
retina. He'd been standing in his classroom, clutching the ghost-note, when he
became aware of someone standing in the doorway.

It
was Kelly McGovern from his English class. Mothers from the estate gave their kids
American celebrity names; the boys were all Deans and
Waynes
,
designated delinquents with gold-studded ears; the girls were cutesy
Kellys
and
Jodies
, hard as nails.
Kelly McGovern was fifteen. Just.

Go away, Tom
thought viciously. Get out of here, you beautiful, diamond-bright little tart.
'Hi, Kelly,' he said with a smile.

Hesitating at the door,
something gift-wrapped in her hand, she wore the regulation black school
blazer, short black skirt and black tights.' The school insignia stitched on to
the blazer pocket over her immature breast was a bright red rose, the petals so
embroidered that for Tom the rose would eternally spill a single drop of
crimson blood. A classical scroll beneath the rose bore the motto
Nisi
Dominus
Frustra
.
His
inability to interpret that slogan meaningfully for the kids had hastened,
though not caused, his resignation.

'It's Latin.
It comes from one of the Psalms. "Except the Lord keep the city, the
Watchman
waketh
in vain." It means; without God,
all is in vain.'

'What city?'

What city, indeed? They
asked the questions, didn't they? The city of the human fucking heart, boy. You
don't need to know what city. It's just your school motto. You don't need to
know what it means.

'What can I do for you, Kelly?' he asked.

'I brought you a leaving present. Here.'

She
ventured inside the door, offering the package, unable to meet his eyes.
Instead her gaze strayed to the open store-cupboard door. He closed it, turning
the key in the lock. Then he took the package and unwrapped it.

It was a
brand-new copy of a book of poems by the Liverpool poets,
McGough
,
Henri, Patten. His own copy had been stolen by someone in the class. He'd kept
the class behind after school, telling them he was delighted. He invited them
to steal more poetry. Then he'd let them go.

'This is kind of you. I don't know what to
say.'

But she
still wouldn't meet his eyes. She flicked her copper-coloured hair and stood
with her ankles crossed. He felt her tension. It was catching. She seemed
reluctant to go.

'I've got to lock up here, Kelly.'

'OK.'

'I have to go and see the Head. Before I
leave.'

She
looked up at him at last, light rinsing her pale eyes of chromium and blue.
Then she turned and went out of the classroom, closing the door behind her.
With an audible sigh of relief he collected up the few items he wanted to take
away with him. Then he made his way over to
Stokes's
study.

'It's not too late for you to
reconsider your resignation,' Stokes was saying. 'Even at this stage. I mean,
you're a fine teacher. I'll be sorry to lose you. We all will.'

Tom had never liked the
Head, who was now leaning across his desk, large hands clasped almost in prayer
before him, eyes bulging as if this was the most important conversation the two
men would ever have together -which indeed it was.
Stokes's
bunker mentality rarely allowed him to stray from his office, and Tom despised
his educational policies. The
Dovelands
Head was an
ABC man: Assembly, Blazers and Curriculum, all designed to echo the ethos of
the old grammar schools.

He'd revived a
Christian-based assembly even though a third of the kids were Hindus, Sikhs or
Muslims; compulsory school uniform was rigorously enforced even under
sweltering conditions; and a curriculum calculated to strait-jacket even the
most creative teachers was guarded jealously.

Tom
had committed himself to small acts of sabotage against this regime, though he
wasn't above ingratiating himself with the Head by agreeing to teach Religious Education
when no one else would. His cynical thought was 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.