Requiem

Requiem by Graham Joyce Page B

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Authors: Graham Joyce
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the board clean before he reached the classroom. Then
the culprit was finally revealed, not through any detective work on his part.
Two boy pupils spoke to him after class one day and gave him the name of a
third, whom Tom had suspected.
    The
boy was a reasonable student, a slightly surly but bright fourteen-year-old who
had mysteriously hardened his attitude towards Tom some time ago. Tom detained
the boy and confronted him. Initially the boy denied everything, but eventually
he broke down and admitted some responsibility, though he remained oddly
defiant that he'd chalked the vile messages on only one occasion, even though
Tom had himself wiped the board six or seven times. It was only when Tom promised
not to take the matter to his parents that the boy was prepared to offer any
kind of explanation. He had a violent attachment to Kelly McGovern, one of
Tom's fourth-form English groups, and Kelly in turn, Tom was surprised to
learn, had a passionate crush on Tom. The youth was pathologically jealous of
Kelly's feelings for her teacher.
    Tom had done
the kind thing and had let the youth go away with a warning, under sanction for
what would happen if there was any repetition of the events. He'd also reassured
the boy that crushes for teachers were not uncommon and, even if they weren't,
he was a happily married man with no interest in schoolgirls.
    No,
it was not the matter of 'mere words' which had caused Tom to abandon teaching.
    When
he opened his eyes to the garden, he saw the veiled woman.
    She
stood under another olive tree, shaded from the dazzling light. She was poised
only a few feet away, the same Arab woman who'd dogged his movements through
Jerusalem. But she was transfigured. Her rough brown robes had gone. In their
place was a robe of bleached white. She wore a new veil, of fine grey material,
semi-opaque. The sun striking from her white robe almost blinded him. The
familiar spiced scent trailed like a ribbon in the still air. Tom blinked. She waited
under the tree, not a phantom but flesh and blood, and beckoned to Tom to
follow her.
    She stepped
from under the tree, walking deeper into the garden. Tom went after her.
    He followed her
through the ancient olives, the air tingling with the scent of opal balsam.
There was a sudden quickening in the leaves, a shimmering as she stepped
between the trees. Balsam streamed across the garden, rising from cracks in the
arid soil. The woman unexpectedly turned and waited for him, and he experienced
a folding sensation; the universe creased and spilled itself. The woman moved
towards him, hands outstretched, and her perfume, her balsam, was overwhelming.
She lifted her veil, but her face was in shadow as she kissed Tom fully on the
mouth. Her felt her tongue probe his lips, and in an instant there was no
woman, only the brief awareness of a large bee as it entered his open mouth and
the pain of the sting as it penetrated the soft tissue inside his lower lip.
    A
moment of panic followed in which he felt himself falling and he knew he'd
swallowed the insect. Hacking, coughing, he stumbled blindly back through the
olive trees, towards the cave and the Franciscan monk.

22
    'Ice is what we need now. Ice
for you to suck.' Sharon, in charge, conjuring the Jewish mother from deep
within herself. She'd applied a weak solution of soda to the inside of Tom's
hugely swollen lip and was now clattering a tray of ice-cubes into a glass. She
became worried when Tom complained that his throat was swelling. 'Suck the ice
on the other side of your mouth so's not to wash away
the soda.'
    'The shoda ish awful,' Tom said. He
was finding it difficult to pronounce certain words. His face, still inflating,
was beginning to take the shape of a Halloween pumpkin.
    'Just leave
it there!' Sharon threw up her hands. 'A bee sting in the mouth, imagine!' Any
minute, Tom thought, and she's going to say oy vey .
    The moment Tom had
returned from the Garden of Gethsemane Sharon had swung into action.

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