Of course, Mary and Angus now see more of each other, both working for RAFET and living an hour's drive from one another. We are forbidden from revealing any more details about Angus, Mary and Sam because of two separate book deals.
We can tell you that Mr and Mrs Fordyce, of Dunfermline, died within a month of each other and friends mourn their passing and miss their wise company. Mary, after a traumatic grieving period, now feels closer to them than ever before, somehow.
Lucky Pintado, owner of Lucky Café, struck it lucky. After the unexpected and well publicised press conference at Lucky Café, it quickly became the favoured haunt of journalists. Because journalists only look 'out there' for bleeding hearts and bleeding bodies and never look within (or anywhere nearby), Lucky Café has also become the favoured haunt for business negotiators and those hatching dastardly plots - right there, they go undetected by the nation's greatest sleuths. The money really started to roll in for Lucky. Unfortunately, Lucky had misheard conversations and then had a small plaque inscribed with the words, "Site of the birth of the world's first time machine," and planted it in a corner of the courtyard. Despite it being a free-energy machine and that it wasn't really born on that spot, the joke of the error spread and added to the quirky aura of Lucky Café. With Sam's business contacts and techniques, Lucky Pintado started a Lucky Café franchise and now new cafés are springing up around London and further afield at a rate of about one a month. For all we know, there could be a Lucky Café in Dunfermline by now. Sam and Lucky have installed plaques in each Lucky Café, commemorating the birthplace of yet another as-yet uninvented invention. By careful design, they have created a pilgrimage that has thousands of people following the cafés to collect their own photo of each of these quirky, nonsensical plaques. Sam also smiles broadly at Mary each time his monthly cheque for business consultancy fees arrives. Everybody lucky at Lucky Café.
After the impromptu press conference at Lucky Café, Sam received a call which he passed on to Hone, regarding his family's stolen artefacts. Hone was subsequently entertained at the Gloucester mansion of Sir Magnus Davenport - a man with the slicked-back, black hair, greying around the edges. Hone was then presented with said artefacts, along with the narrative that they had recently been unearthed and presented to Sir Magnus. It seems unlikely that Sir Magnus divulged to Hone that the artefacts were presented to him by his butler, just after taking them from the glass display cabinet in which they had resided for the past three generations of Davenports. Had Hone known the second, omitted part of the narrative, he might not have cared a damn - he had what he came for and all he wanted to do was return to his mates, the green hills and the blue skies or Aotearoa ... and some cold beers and waihine wera - hot women. Before the beers and women, on his return to New Zealand, he had to visit his Aunty Whina, a woman of massive girth and fearsome love. She sat on her throne - a worn and squeaky lazy-boy - in her state house in Rotorua, with assembled whanau (grandchildren, children, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles and anyone else passing through) and grilled Hone on why it took so long to get three bloody bits of pounamu back from those whingeing poms. Hone spun his yarn with much laughter and lyricism and, after a bear hug from aunty and everyone else they all had a big party and got totally inebriated.
Hone woke two days later and went as white as a brown man can: "Shit, where did I leave that pounamu?" he asked himself. He walked around the party-ravaged house and found his hooded jacket discarded under a chair. Luckily, the pounamu were still rattling around in the left pocket and so he had two beers and a smoke to help with the hangover and then borrowed someone's car to take them to the kaumatua, the elders, for blessing and safe storage. His grateful grandfather took them and a meeting was planned for the next week to honour Hone and the return of the mana, the honour, to their tribe. Then Hone went round to a mate's - several mates, actually - and they got out the beers, smokes and guitars and had a damned good time. After total immersion in his old life pattern for a week, something strange happened to Hone and he went bush, sitting under the stars, talking to God and demanding to know the purpose of his life. The answer came on the seventh morning and he came down the mountain and started his new life. A ghost writer is writing the rest so we mustn't say any more on that.
Meanwhile, back in London, Martin has decided that Emily is the woman for him now and Emily has decided that Martin is the man for her, later. She is insisting that he get counselling, tie up loose ends and get closure on his nine-year marriage to Ruth. Martin thinks he's fine, that counsellors and shrinks are all idiots anyway and that his alternating bouts of anger and depression are normal for anyone having to live near London. However, Emily is insistent, Martin is hungry for her and so he has agreed to attend weekly (very weakly, he says) sessions of Divorcees Anonymous, a group, he explains, of scruffy, poor gits who sit about moaning about their lot because they're too scared and/or unattractive to find another partner. It's an uneasy truce between Martin and Emily but the three children get on famously, which helps them to feel that they should be together. It's a wait and see, that one.
John and Belinda continue to study A Course In Miracles, a course that changed their lives and their relationship. Realising that free-energy machines do not make a better world but that the intent of those working together does, John turned down an offer of managing RAFET in preference to writing, publishing and speaking, alongside Belinda, in ways and places that help people realise their true calling, their true greatness. Discovering that Joan was A Course In Miracles student (as is Arthur, of late) they meet regularly, when not in New Zealand, having a jolly good laugh and a deeper connection every time.
John and Belinda continue their connection with RAFET on a consultancy basis and they're often called in to mediate disputes when someone (usually a large corporation) feels threatened by free-energy machines arriving in their patch. Knowing we are never upset for the reasons we think, John and Belinda (they're an interchangeable pair in this work) are able to quickly get to the heart of the matter, to everyone's surprise and joy.
And the tall, blonde, clumsy, mysterious Australian? Well, he might just pop up again very soon, in his very own novel. Who knows?
Arthur Writes His Story
16th April, 2012
Just as their lives changed, so did their address and his occupation - now by the sea in Cornwall from where Arthur is able to conduct his part-time occupation of Insurance Director for RAFET, online mainly.
Arthur might have wished for a fairy tale ending but the quiet gnawing at his bones, in those quiet, early-morning moments, reminded him he was in no fairy tale.
He had, he realised, become accustomed to his uncomfortable, restricting life. He had to admit to himself, finally and begrudgingly, that he'd rather wallowed in his own mud. For all those years he'd sordidly revelled in the pity he'd had for himself ... in the pity others showered in his wake.
Beneath the glittering lights of his recent adventure, he imagined his life as a little car, purring along contentedly for a time and then sliding into a ditch, to move no more. The weeds and rust had grown through it and no one had done anything to rescue it. No one could. It was his rusting life - no one else's - and whatever glitter his outer experiences threw over it, there was still a rusting, immobile carcase beneath the glister of others' envy and admiration.
Despite the freedom of working from home and the expanse of the sea before him, every single day, he still felt trapped. It annoyed and shook him for nothing was logical any more. This resistant though had him asking the illogical - did his attachment to restrictive thoughts keep limitation in his life? Or, more alarmingly, would he attract it back somehow.
He'd tried to explain this in his halting, hesitant way to Joan. She smiled indulgently and he realised he should have thought it through some more, explained it to himself better before trying out his new thoughts on someone else. He couldn't quite get to grips with it so why should he expect others to?
"So, this rusting carcase, Arth
ur," she said. "What is it?"
"Oh, aah, it's my life," he said, really wishing he hadn't opened this uncooked can of beans, right now.
"Your life is your life, don't you see?" she asked patting his knee. "Your life, I think you mean, is the events you're plodding through."
"Yes, I suppose so," he said, slightly irritated that she was about to turn his thoughts upside down ... take his precious new realisation and rip it into unrecognisable pieces.
"The evidence doesn't lie, does it?" she said with as much care and concern that it was difficult to argue back with the irritation he felt.
"But ... but events have happened, yes," he said, desperately trying to formulate his thoughts again, to restitch the ragged pieces together again. "They've happened and things are different ..."
"We have more money, new freedom, interesting friends, yes?"
"Well, yes, exactly," he said, smiling weakly as he saw his realisation coming together again. "It's all different but something is still the same. I thought would all change."
"Are your feelings of being trapped still the same?"
"Well, yes, I suppose ..." he muttered as a faint light began to glow through the fabric of his realisation.
"Does your mind still imagine itself as bored?"
"Not during the day when I'm busy."
"No, but when you're left with nothing but your thoughts," she suggested. "In your labelless state."
"Labelless state?"
"When we're asleep and dreaming, we're who we want to be," she explained. "Then, in the half-light of dawn, we're empty. Simply open vessels our deeper selves."
"Yes?" he said, his curiosity piqued.
"But we must awaken and, as we do, we must remember who we want the world to have us be. We put our masks back on. During the week you're a business man, you're Arthur, you have these tasks to do, you have these attitudes to shrug on, these people to pretend to and so on. In the weekend you're a husband, a father, a gardener and so on.
"Right?"
"But, before we don the heavy layers of all these masks, we're naked to our deeper thoughts and they arise in their purity," she said, looking at the ceiling as if for inspiration. Or the right words. "We're all the same, Arthur, believe me. We desperately rush around to avoid the persistence of our innermost thoughts, untainted by the pretence that we're coping. They're purely boring, purely bitter, purely sad, purely vengeful; whatever it is that's our prevalent though form. We can't escape from it by running."
"We can't? We are?" he asked, as words tumbled out over ill-formed thoughts. "We're all thinking dreadful, thoughts, depressing thoughts?"
"We are till we fall into them, embrace them, name them and let them go."
"We embrace them and then let them go?" he asked, wondering at the stupid contradiction. He's spent his sleep-less time trying to shove the thoughts away.
"If we don't let them go, we'll bring witnesses to them."
"Witnesses?"
"If I keep thinking I'm bored, my life will soon become boring, proving my thinking right."
"Aha, witnesses - witnesses to our thoughts."
"So your prevalent thought is boring and mine is regret," she said.
"Regret for what?"
"For nothing. Just regret," she said, quietly. "I just have this undercurrent of regret and the witnesses turn up. I regret I didn't have more time with the children. I regret we didn't travel. I regret we didn't have more money, more fun. Just regret."
"Do you still have it?" he asked, dreading her answer.
"Less than I used to. I've been working on letting it go," she said. "I realised that if I let it hold me captive, my life would become a witness to it. As I let it go, I find I have less to regret. More to appreciate. More gratitude."
"So, if I keep having this boredom thought, perhaps my former life will return, somehow," he mused out loud, "despite recent events."
"Exactly, my love. Exactly," she said brightly, her hand moving up his leg. "And I don't want to regret missing out on you." She stood up uncertainly. As if she had something to say and couldn't form the words.
"Or not being bored with our juice-less lives," he said. He stood awkwardly, trying to hide the growing bulge in his trousers.
"Darling, aah, this is very embarrassing but I'd like to ask for something," said Joan, looking round their new home with boxes scattered everywhere, some opened and some not. She held him tightly so he couldn't look her in the eyes.
"Yes, what is it?" asked Arthur.
"Well, since we're being more honest nowadays, about feelings, I'd really like to ..." said Joan, looking flushed and lost for words. "Oh, to hell with it - I'd really like you to make love to me. There. There, I've said it!"
"Gosh, yes, that sounds like a ... huh, what are we waiting for?" said Arthur, relieved that she felt as he did. "Come upstairs with me, my Lady, and let's make passionate music together." He wondered where such phrases came from but he now felt quite abandoned, fearless ... and a flow of love that he hadn't experienced for so long.
As they were skipping up the stairs the phone rang. In a reflex action, Joan stopped to go down and answer it.
"Leave it, dear, it can wait," said Arthur touching her arm.
"Of course. Of course, Arthur. Yes, it can wait," said Joan smiling childishly. "I'll race you into bed!
The phone rang several times more but they were otherwise engaged in other things more interesting.
Later, in the afterglow of their love-making, there was little to say. Lying in each other's arms - two middle-aged people who had previously grown apart - they felt the years, the recriminations, the judgements and disappointments drift away. They were together, close, warm. Any sense of difference and separation seemed like an illusion, a gossamer sheet blown aside to reveal the truth of connection that had never really left them. Neither wanted to move from the warm cocoon of love, with the fragrance of their love-making wafting around them.
"I suppose we must be going soon," said Arthur wistfully.
"Going where?" asked Joan.
"Going to ... oh, golly, there's nowhere to go, is there!" said Arthur, chuckling. "It's so ingrained that I need to go to work, I just can't shake it off. Would you like a cup of tea?"
"Mmm, I suppose so ... not just yet," said Joan, putting her head into his chest as tears began again. "Just be still and hold me, love."
15th July 2014
Two years after their move to Cornwall, Arthur was sitting beside Joan in a van with eight other people, enjoying the passing vista of the Australian desert - bush, they called it - and he pondered about how easy it had been to get Joan to agree to a trip to this strange, parched land. He wondered what had drawn him to this place, so very different from the grey wetness of England. He gave up wondering, knowing he wouldn't find an answer and just knew he had to be here for some reason - a reason that may or may not reveal itself. He also pondered how easily the whole trip had fallen into place and how at home he felt, right now.
They'd arrived in Alice Springs in the morning, off the train - the Ghan, they called it - and were taken to a hostel. There, they had immediately agreed to a five-day guided tour of Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Mt Connor and other sights in The Centre, as they called it. As they approached Uluru, the second-largest monolith in the world, he smiled at the rising feeling of sweet joy. He had the strange feeling of returning home, somehow, and saw - superimposed over the sand, tough spinafex grass and gnarled mulga trees - groups of people hunting, as if he was one of the hunters, many eons ago. He knew this land, somehow - intimately, lovingly and respectfully.
Then, with a quiet smile, he realised it was the same scene that had played itself through his imagination the day his world turned over, the day he was asked to leave AIL and work at home. He remembered the day - the fifth of March, 2012.
They were helped with setting up their tent, in a circle of six tents, and were then taken for a short walk to watch the orange sun slide down behind Uluru as an apricot moon ca
me up behind them. He sighed with relief to know it had not changed and then wondered how he could remember something he'd never known. He put his arm around Joan and she leaned into him, silently. They returned to a meal cooked over the camp fire and listened to stories of stars, aborigines and white people. They went to bed, remembering to take in their boots lest the dingos take them.
Arthur woke at five o'clock, bright eyed and his head full of words. He sneaked out of the tent with pen and pad and stood to take in the dark, limitless expanse about him and that uncomfortable, familiar stab went through him again. That lightning shock of a feeling of being trapped and bored and it sat there taunting him.
How COULD it, he thought with anger. Right here? Right now? As he fought the feeling, it grew and threatened to suffocate him. Then, just in time, he remembered the process. He relaxed, accepted the irksome feeling, sat with it, rode it. For why, he asked for the millionth time, can I fight what is?
As he relaxed into it, it softened. It's fire burned lower and dissipated and he watch the blood-red sun rise over the blood-red earth, as if his fire was the one rising before him to warm the world.
He sat on a log next to last night's burnt out fire. Between the rising sun and the massive shape of Uluru, he breathed in the early morning desert air, warm and still, and closed his eyes in dreaming. He looked through the bars, into the prison of his old life and wondered, with a small shudder, how he'd been able to put up with such unrelenting drudgery and sameness for so long. There were no regrets for he now knew he was free, had always been free, to create the story of his life in any way he wished to write it. He opened his eyes in gratitude and succumbed to the voice of the story that had been calling him to write since sitting on a park bench in Croydon on the fifth of March, 2012. He started writing ...
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