The Tor - 31. Chapter 31

chapter

### Chapter Thirty one

Snow fell rarely and never stayed long in Penmere .

It arrived one Friday evening on a wind from the north, settled briefly upon the rooftops and the higher slopes beyond the harbour, then disappeared before midday beneath rain drifting in from the sea.

Christopher watched the last patches melting outside the kitchen window while the kettle boiled.

Marco was attempting to understand the coffee machine. "It should not require this many buttons."

Christopher looked over his shoulder. "It doesn't."

"It appears to."

"You've managed to make espresso, cappuccino and steam."

Marco regarded the display with suspicion. "I wished only to make coffee."

Christopher laughed. "Here."

He pressed a single button. The machine hummed obligingly. Marco watched it with an expression Christopher had previously seen reserved for archaeological discoveries.

"It cannot truly have been that simple."

"I'm afraid so."

"I preferred the monastery."

"I don't believe you."

"No." A smile touched Marco's face. "I don't either."

Christopher handed him a mug. The kitchen still required decorating. A strip of wallpaper had begun peeling near the back door, and the boiler gave its familiar rattle before finally settling into steady warmth.

"It still makes that noise."

"It does."

"We really ought to call someone."

"We've been saying that for weeks."

"We have."

Neither moved. The boiler continued its complaints exactly as it had every morning since October.

Christopher found himself smiling into his coffee. Somehow he loved it.

Monday would bring Year Eleven. They had reached Roman Britain in the syllabus at last, and he suspected somebody would ask whether the roads really had been as straight as the textbooks claimed.

Several essays still waited in his satchel. Hannah would almost certainly announce before first break that the staffroom kettle had finally given up altogether, despite making the same prediction every Monday for the past three years.

Christopher found himself absurdly pleased that all these things still mattered. They belonged to the life he had almost overlooked while searching for another.

*

Saturday brought the winter market.

Canvas awnings snapped gently in the breeze while traders arranged baskets of apples, local cheeses and jars of honey across wooden stalls. Children crowded around a brass band wrapped in scarves and thick coats, and someone had persuaded the choir from St Michael's to sing despite the cold.

Christopher carried a paper bag of still warm bread beneath one arm.

Marco stopped before a stall selling hand carved wooden birds.

He picked up a small gull. "The wings are wrong."

The elderly craftsman looked mildly offended. "You've carved gulls before, have you?"

Marco considered the question. "Only once."

Christopher recognised the look immediately.

"When?"

Marco smiled. "The fifteenth century."

Christopher sighed. "You're doing it again."

"What?"

"Answering perfectly ordinary questions with two thousand years of history."

Marco looked genuinely thoughtful. "I shall have to practise."

The craftsman blinked once. "I'll take your word for it."

They walked on together.

Christopher realised that Marco had begun making mistakes of an entirely ordinary sort. He occasionally forgot where they had put the mugs. He still struggled with supermarket self service checkouts. He had once attempted to pay for groceries with a museum identity card.

Christopher found these failures unexpectedly comforting. For so long Marco had seemed older than history itself.

Now he was simply learning how to belong to a life that expected him to buy washing up liquid and remember bin collection days.

*

Rain returned on Sunday afternoon. Christopher spread examination essays across the kitchen table.

Marco sat opposite cataloguing photographs from the excavation.

Every so often one of them read a sentence aloud.

"This pupil appears convinced that Emperor Hadrian invaded Britain."

Marco looked up. "Be kind."

"I intend to be."

"He also believes York is south of London."

Marco considered this. "That may require a longer comment."

Christopher laughed.

Outside, rain tapped steadily against the windows. The boiler groaned once. Neither paid it much attention.

Hours passed in companionable silence. Christopher realised that silence no longer frightened him.

It no longer waited to become memory.

It simply belonged to two people sharing the same room.

*

Late that afternoon he climbed the familiar path towards the Tor alone. The grass remained wet from the morning rain. The sea below had settled into winter grey, moving with its slow and endless patience beneath the cliffs.

He reached the summit just as the sun slipped beneath the clouds.

The wind carried the smell of salt and distant wood smoke.

Christopher stood for a long while without moving.

The ancient circle lay hidden once more beneath earth and careful protection.

Nothing marked the place where so much had happened.

He rested one hand upon the weathered limestone.

He waited.

The wind moved across the summit.

He remembered another hand resting upon the same stone nearly two thousand years before.

The memory arrived quietly. It neither demanded nor explained. It simply belonged.

Christopher smiled.

The moment passed.

He left his hand upon the stone for another moment before turning towards the path home.

Ahead, lights were beginning to appear in the windows of the town.

Marco would already have the kettle on.

Tomorrow he would teach Year Eleven about Roman roads. Someone would ask whether the Romans had really marched in straight lines across Britain. Someone else would forget their homework. Hannah would complain about the staffroom kettle before first break. There were essays to return, bills to pay, shopping to collect and a boiler that still sounded as though it intended to explode at any moment.

There would also be mornings they had never lived before.

Christopher walked down towards the lights.

Halfway along the path he glanced back.

The Tor stood above the harbour exactly as it always had, keeping its ancient watch over sea and town alike.

Once he would have searched its silence for answers.

Now he accepted it as silence.

He smiled and continued home.

The future remained unwritten.

He no longer wished it to be anything else.