Griefwork Read Online Free PDF

are only instants which paint the fluent living with the rigidity of death, even when they are most in motion. Yet this boy would have said how vividly as a five-year-old he remembered his mother’s bicycle spokes, sprrixx, as she pedalled away up the track across the polder to Flinn, the sun sparkling off the twirling wires, merry as mills. So he had stood as he always did when she went shopping in the village, watching her out of sight. It took a long, long time. The pedalling figure shrank to a gliding blob, now disappearing behind a stretch of stiff bushes, now sinking into invisible declivities, reappearing heraldically proud, crossing a bridge over one of the cuts. That creeping dot was his mother. At the same time he thought of anybody else inthe distant village who might happen to be gazing inland rather than seaward: how they would notice movement out there among the kale fields, a creeping dot with a speck of colour to it which slowly grew and resolved itself into Christina in her orange headscarf escaping from that foul-tempered brother of hers and her poor little boy for a quick round of cards, some purchases and a good few glasses of schnapps (which Leon could smell when she returned). And so he watched everyone and everything out of sight: boats putting out, a heron flying, the lorries coming to fetch smoked fish, a white steamer crossing the horizon and leaving its long thinning smudge. They all trailed behind them a hollow never quite filled by their return, carrying away part of him with them so he could look back and watch himself watching, just as he was sure his mother never once glanced over her shoulder to glimpse her melancholy child dwindle behind her. Sprrixx.
    One day in Flinn marketplace there had been a stir of interest as a lorry arrived bearing a huge lump tethered beneath green canvas. The driver asked the way to the lighthouse, possibly out of self-importance since it was clearly visible from all points in Flinn and, indeed, from many a mile outside. It stood on a low sandy cliff not a quarter of a mile away and had been blind in its eye for nearly a year since the heavy steel trolley on which the half-ton lens revolved seized up one night. The year was 1918, and even at the end of the world’s first mechanised war the arrival of a lorry in Flinn was an occasion and a large group followed it along the sandy track. It would be a three-day task to instal a jib on top of the building, haul the new mechanism up, swing it in and seat it in its bed. A crew of trained engineers was sitting in the cab with the driver, and the keeper of the only inn for some miles began cheerfully throwing open windows and airing beds. The weather was propitious: a high blue summer sky with a few mare’s tails languidly unravelling their tresses acrossEurope. Scattered lark song ascended flutteringly on weak thermals from among the dunes. The sea rocked and glittered to the horizon. The work began.
    On the second morning Christina pedalled into town with her string bag, took a couple of glasses of refreshment and asked where everyone had got to. Told, she hopped back on her bicycle and soon joined the crowd of onlookers. It was at one of the more interesting moments. The men were getting ready to haul up the revolving mechanism, a task almost as delicate as remounting the lenses in it since it was as finely engineered as a watch. It lay in a cradle of mattresses on the back of the lorry, steel and brass glistening beneath a film of light oil. Before the order to haul was given the keeper waved everyone back and the spectators drew off to one side, just far enough so that if the rope broke (as many of the adults and all of the children were hoping it would) they were sure of a ringside seat without being in danger. The men hauled, the rope creaked, the pulley high up on the lighthouse squealed, the mechanism rose slowly into the air. As it did so the upturned heads tilted ever further back until they looked to the