Requiem (26 page)

'Talk? What about,
darlink

'She thinks
. . . That is, Sharon thinks I'm going through some kind of crisis.'

'Why does she think that?'

'Lots of reasons. Mostly last night. But
-'

'Tell me about last night.'

Tom
sighed. 'Well, I ended up naked in the Garden of Gethsemane, that's the main -'

'And that's normal for you, is it,
darlink
?'

'Normal? Of course it isn't normal! I
don't -'

'I'm only asking,
darlink
.
So you agree there's a crisis?'

'Not a crisis exactly, more of a -'

'Well, if it's
not a crisis, what is it? I mean
nekked
in
the Garden of Gethsemane?’

'Look,'
Tom exploded. 'You ask me to talk, and then every time I start telling you
something you interrupt me!'

Tobie
shifted her buttocks
on her chair and patted her hair straight at the back of her head. Then she
offered Tom a smile of dazzling sweetness. 'Sorry,
darlink
.’

Exasperated,
Tom started again. 'Right. I admit, I went crazy last night up at the Garden of
Gethsemane.'

'Crazy?
What's crazy? Maybe you had a few beers. Why not? Sometimes I want to take off
my clothes and do crazy things. Don't look like that. Yes, even at my age.'

'No, it wasn't a few-beers kind of
craziness.'

'Then what kind of craziness was it?'

'I don't know.
The first thing was . . . well, I tried to rape Sharon.'

'To
rape her! I thought you were lovers! Aren't you fucking her already?'

Tom was
unaccustomed to such candid talk from an elderly lady who looked as though she
should be bottling chutney or jam.

She
saw it. 'What is it? I can't talk to you like a grown-up? Here, let's get one
thing straight,
darlink
.
Your daddy
fucked your mummy, and your mummy fucked your daddy. As did mine and everybody
else's. That's how we all get here. That's one of the two things you can be
sure of. The second thing is that you
gonna
die one
day. Everything else is up for grabs. Now, if we can't talk about sex or death
like grown-ups, without thinking either's a dirty subject, then we don't say no
more, and you'd be better talking to a rabbi or one of your priests. Got me?'

Tom was
suitably chastened. 'Yes, we are lovers. And it wasn't exactly rape, but I
wanted to… She was saying "No," and I was ignoring her, which, I must
point out, I've never done before - not with her, not with any woman. I don't
know why I behaved like that.'

'What were you doing there?'

'Where?'

'Up there in the garden.'

'I don't know. It seemed like a good idea
at the time.'

There
was a long pause, during which
Tobie
guessed he
wouldn't say any more about why he was in that place at that time. 'Let's try a
different question. What were you feeling when you were behaving like this with
Sharon?'

'Bad. Just bad.'

'No.
That's how you feel about it now. Try that question again.'

He thought about it. 'I was feeling
angry.'

'You were angry with Sharon. What had she
done to make you feel angry?'

'Not Sharon.
She'd done nothing. I wasn't angry with Sharon.'

'So who were you angry with?'

Tom felt
hot. He was anxious. Dew formed on his brow. He tugged at his earlobe. 'I . . .
It's not -'

'
Darlink
,''
she
said, studying her watch. 'I know I promised half an hour, but now I realize I
have to dash.' She rose and headed for the door. 'Just as it was getting kind
of interesting, don't you think? Come back tomorrow at the same time. And
rinse those coffee things in the kitchen - be a good boy, huh?'

Tom
stared after her in silent disbelief. After the door closed behind her he
scratched his head and found himself collecting up the coffee cups.

He carried
the cups through to the kitchen, where he found a woman with a curtain of long,
dark hair and a face as white as the moon. She'd been one of those talking to
Sharon earlier. Arms folded, leaning against the draining board of the sink,
she appraised Tom coolly. She didn't offer to move aside as he swilled the cups
under the tap and left them to dry on the draining board.

'I'm
Christina,' she said. 'Are you Sharon's boyfriend?'

'Yes.'

'I
knew. I know a lot of things,' Christina said. 'I can see through you. I can
see
right through
you.'

'Good,' said Tom,

He left the rehabilitation centre quickly.

₄₁

Sharon returned to her apartment
grateful for the space afforded by Tom's session with
Tobie
.
She could depend upon an hour or so of reliable solitude. It wasn't that she'd
tired of Tom; on the contrary, she was alarmed by the strength of her feelings
for him. What she'd considered to be a superior act of charity, almost a
maternal concession, was drawing dangerously near to a lover's attachment. Now
she was grateful for an hour to herself, to measure the situation.

It
was Sharon's paradox that she used sex to keep men at a distance, as if to say:
there, that's the closest you will ever come to me, the rest is not for you,
now where are your resources? Sometimes it drove men crazy. It made strong men
weep. It had earned her a great deal of reproach and many names. Slut. Bitch. Whore.
Because masculine vanity, having recorded the sexual conquest, usually needed
to win devotion too, to bear it away like a trophy. If devotion was not in
train - and with Sharon more often it was not - men sulked or raged. Sharon's
indifference was interpreted as deeply threatening.

'You and Tom were lovers,
weren't you? At college?' Katie had asked quite candidly on one of her visits
to their home. Ostensibly, Sharon had come to town so that they could watch a
feminist play together. Bored out of their skulls by old rhetoric, they'd
abandoned the performance half-way through. Act Two, for them, took place in a
wine bar.

The question
put so bluntly, made Sharon blush. 'Yes. But only once. And it was a mess. We
were drunk.'

Katie
blinked at her. Sharon tried to cool her blush with her hands. 'We were both
plastered. I'm not sure if, or how, we even managed it properly. Then in the
morning we woke up to the sticky smells of curry and garlic and cat's breath.
It wasn't romantic'

'Did it put you off each other?'

'Yes,' she lied. 'Yes, I suppose it did.'

She
regretted that lie. There was Katie wanting to level with her, trying to
surmount a potential obstacle to their relationship, an elephant that lay sleeping
between them, and she'd lied by giving the answer she thought Katie had wanted
to hear. In truth she'd been disappointed by that boozy, lack-lustre night,
but she'd never admitted it. Not to Katie, not to Tom and, for a long time, not
even to herself.

That
wine-bar conversation had faltered when they were joined at their table by two
handsome, moisturized young men sporting identical haircuts. 'Great!' Katie
exclaimed. 'We're being chatted up. Have a seat, boys. Let's hear your opening
lines.'

They teased the boys,
who must have been ten years younger, without mercy. With closing time
approaching, Sharon dug her nails into the thigh of the nearest boy. 'You know
that time when the chicks go to the loo to talk about you?'

'Eh?' he said, wincing. 'What?'

'And
you buy us tequila slammers while we're out, eh? Well, make '
em
doubles.'

Then she marched Katie
off to the toilets. 'What are you up to?' Katie giggled, lowering her knickers
and speaking from the cubicle.

'Are you on?' Sharon called from the other
stall.

Katie only giggled louder.

When Katie came out,
Sharon was pretending to inspect an eyebrow in the mirror. 'I said, "Are
you on?'”

'What do you mean?'

'Back to
their place. You can tell Tom I dragged you off to a nightclub.'

Katie
stopped laughing. She caught Sharon's eyes in the mirror. 'No, Sharon. That's
not how it is.'

Sharon
regretted that even more deeply. She particularly regretted it because Katie
knew Sharon was testing her. She knew Sharon wasn't remotely interested in the
two hairstyles waiting out in the bar. She knew Sharon was trying to get her to
betray Tom.

Katie knew,
and she knew. But that other terrible, complex telepathy which exists so
acutely between women could never be admitted, and Sharon had no choice but to
brazen it. They emerged from the toilets to find large tequila slammers
awaiting them on the table.

'Well,'
Sharon said, tipping back her tequila.' I was all set for a stormy night, but
my friend here says no, and we girls stick together.' Sharon hadn't forgotten
the expression on the face of the boy who'd obviously paid for the expensive
cocktails.

That episode was
possibly the only tiny blemish which lay between Sharon and Katie, and it was overlooked,
if not forgiven. 'You shouldn't make a religion out of sex,' Katie said to her
on the way home.

'Why not?' she snapped
back. 'The Christians have.’

It was three years since
that night. In her Jerusalem apartment, with an hour to kill before Tom's
return, Sharon kicked off her shoes and lit candles around the room. She
darkened the place by drawing the blinds. It was a ritual she'd developed for
unwinding from the stresses of her job. This time what she really wanted to
think about was Tom.

Mozart's
Requiem,
It
was her favourite piece of music for getting rid of stress. Her principal
response to the piece was not religious; rather, she found something within it
which could spool her in until she lost all awareness. Often she would fall
asleep, or drift between sleep and waking in the shadow of consciousness, while
the music played. The remorseless argument of the
Requiem
would marshal
her down a corridor of slippery black vinyl, almost as if she were being
conducted down the spiralling grooves of the disc spinning slowly on the
turntable, grooves deepening and growing more steep-sided as she surrendered.
And as she was ushered along the vertiginous continuum, stroked by the outer
fringes of sleep, fanned by the wings of dreaming, the music was transmuted,
becoming splintered light for a moment before resolving back into sound, but
this time as a single voice, seductive, familiar, insisting:
Help him. You
must help him.

Tic. Tic. Tic.

The sound made Sharon
open her eyes. She was dozing in her chair. The stylus was skating at the end
of the still rotating disc. The dull, amplified click repeated over and over.
She knew she must have dozed, but she was dimly conscious of words whispering
in her head. The candles had burned down slightly. Soft yellow light pulsed
from unwavering flames. The record player continued to click provocatively.

Tic. Tic. Tic.

She
padded over to the hi-fi, lifted the stylus arm and switched off the unit.
Turning, she stiffened suddenly, letting the stylus crash back on to the cherished
black vinyl.

A
woman stood in the doorway between the bedroom and the lounge. She was naked,
looking away from Sharon into the heavy book she held in front of her. Faded
tattoos followed the contours of her tanned skin. Her face was lined like a map
of the city, and her eyes were like chips of polished black stone.

'Katie?' Sharon whispered.

But it wasn't Katie. The
figure continued to read, her lips moving slightly as if mouthing words from
the book. She seemed oblivious to Sharon's presence. Then she turned a page.
The vellum wrinkled and folded in her hand; the page transformed into a soft
white bird, its feathers marked with ancient script. The bird hopped from the
book, wheeling towards Sharon. Another page was turned, changing instantly into
a second bird; then another; then another. The birds winged around the room
before flying, one by one, from the open window.

42

'This evening, before you came
home, I dreamed of the Magdalene.'

'You too? Are you sure it was a dream?'

'No. I'm not
certain. I was dozing in the chair. I got up and she was there. I blinked my
eyes and she was gone.'

'Was it a
djinn
?'

'Maybe.
Perhaps it was something else pretending to be a
djinn
.
I don't know what a
djinn
is.'

'I'm beginning to.'

'Do you think it watches us in the dark?'

'Yes.
^’

'Do you
think it watches us when we make love? Was it watching us just now?'