And so I decided to do something stupid that would get me away from arrogant men like him and I became a governess in a big house on the Isle of Wight, looking after three girls. I had a good grasp of languages and could exert a bit of discipline and so I rather enjoyed my time there, the weather made a lovely change to London smogs, and the accent was of course delightfully quaint to my ears, and the girls were charming, but in time I got bored. It was just too much of the same, day after day.’
‘But, so much of life is like that.’
‘Ah, but you can do something about it, Mr Crepuscular. You know that. And so I went back to London and put an advert in the paper advertising my services as a sort of governess ‘with field trips’. You give me your girls, I take them away for six months, improve them and then give them back, in exchange for your money. That was the idea and it has worked all these years. Thirty years! Oh, I really don’t feel that old … do you?’
‘No. Not tonight anyway.’
‘Well, yes. I’m never quite sure whether the parents believe we actually visit half of the places their girls must tell them that we’ve been to, but that’s not my concern – just so long as I get to travel and get paid I’m happy.’
‘Do you know, I haven’t left London, not more than a dozen times in more than that number of years?’
‘Really?’
‘Really. And I don’t miss it. Travelling, I mean. I did so much of it. I saw so much back then, that I’m happy now to have my four walls and my unchanging view. Maybe it’ll come to you too, in time, Miss Penultimate.’
‘If it does, Simone, you have permission to shoot me.’
‘I’m afraid you shall have to find another assassin on that day, Miss P., I couldn’t pull the trigger.’
‘I killed my father.’
‘I’m sorry?’
The fat, but waning, moon slid behind some thin cloud, dimmed the lane, splintered its light into faint narrow shafts and then she was herself once more, proud and unique and immemorial, shining white like a sliver of heliographic mirror hung 300,000 miles away and holding steady. They idled in silence for a few moments.
‘Well, not actually. But I might as well have done. I was away when he had his last heart attack. He’d grown fat and prosperous. A new waistcoat every time I saw him.’ She paused. ‘I hated it. Hated what he’d become. That one idea had worked and he’d stopped trying anything else. He’d relaxed into success and just let other people build the machines to churn out the wretched things, commissioned other people to design the packets … ten years earlier he would have done it all himself, late at night on his drawing board, knocking tea over his drawings, setting fire to his dressing gown … all that business. But now he had become a name at the top of a bit of cardboard and he’d stopped reaching out. And that was his brother’s fault. He was a bad influence. He liked money, you see. That’s always a bad sign, once that becomes more important than high ideals and ideas.’
‘I couldn’t agree more. Sometimes Rodney complains … well maybe ‘complains’ is the wrong word, because he doesn’t do that, but he certainly mentions it sometimes … he says we ought to charge more, we ought to investigate what it is the public wants … I ought to focus my writing on certain criteria that he’s identified. But he has a wife, you see, Miss P., and they have a baby on the way, and the pamphlets were never built to support more than just me and the boys, so maybe he’s right.’
‘Ideas are important, Mr Crepuscular, as is money … but a balance must be found.’
‘A balance, yes …’
‘I sent him a letter while I was away (I was only in France, this was, what? 1890?) saying that I thought his brother was a pompous, unhelpful, arrogant, idiotic, greedy, pigheaded businessman. Oh, I’d had a glass or two of this fine Chablis, and I hadn’t learnt the perils (or if I had, I’d forgotten them) of writing letters late at night and a little tight … So the next thing I know I had a telegram calling me back, saying my father was ill. Well, he was only young, he was fifty I think, and I thought another week won’t make any difference … he hadn’t been ill when I went away. And so I finished the trip as planned, left my girls at Victoria Station as normal to be collected by their parents, and went to the house and I found that I’d missed not only his dying, but the funeral too. My Uncle hadn’t thought to send a second telegram. And when I saw him, well, I noticed my letter was in his in tray. He saw me in his office. I had to make an appointment. He didn’t mention it, but I knew he’d read it, and well … that was the moment I could’ve taken over the company, I mean at least become a partner … but my Uncle didn’t think it was woman’s work, wouldn’t hear of it.’
‘You wouldn’t have liked it … business, I mean.’
‘No, of course not, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I was told by that wretched man what to do. By my own Uncle? As if he knew best for me. God, I hated him for a while there Mr Crepuscular. But …’
‘What?’
‘Oh …? Nothing. No, I don’t know what I was talking about all that for. It’s very ancient history. He died shortly after that anyway. A tragic accident, it said in the newspaper. I …’
‘There are many tragic accidents in this world. Some are more tragic than others, perhaps.’
‘Yes, I suppose that must be true.’
‘And there are some small miracles. Moments and events that balance out the tragedy.’
‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
Simone Crepuscular sensed that Penelope had said all she was likely too. He thought for a little before speaking again.
‘When I left the army I found one of those miracles. I walked into the Himalayas, not having any idea what I was doing. Have you ever been there?’
‘No. It’s not somewhere I’ve been. I don’t quite know why. Maybe because there’s so much elsewhere, that it’s hard to see it all.’
‘Maybe.’
‘It’s not by the coast is it, Mr Crepuscular?’
‘No, not really.’
‘Well, there’s another reason. I tend to travel by ship.’
Simone felt a little queasy at the word.
‘In the Himalayas I met these people. Well, I met this one man, who made all the difference.’
‘A man?’
‘Yes. There was this valley, you see. It was high up in the mountains, but it was green. I learnt about agriculture there. It was like being in the cradle of the Tigris and Euphrates thousands of years ago, I mean for me that is. We planted and we grew and we irrigated, and I was taught all this by such quiet monks, such humble, beautiful people, that they seemed to have come from somewhere else. Or somewhen else. I don’t know if any of this makes sense, but they seemed to be not quite of this earth. When I look back now, and it’s been such a long time, it all seems a bit like a dream, do you see?’
‘Yes, I can understand that.’
‘When I look back they seem as if they weren’t quite connected to the world, as if they walked just a little beyond it, a little above it … just an inch or so … and yet, at the same time, they were utterly rooted in the soil. They knew every potato we planted, almost by name as it were. It was most peculiar. I was reminded of it earlier, actually, when I was looking at your garden, at your vegetable patch and the herb bed.’
‘Oh, that’s not me …’
‘I don’t have a garden in London, I haven’t ever had a garden of my own. Not since I was in the army, and then I wasn’t thinking about things like that.’ He paused and they walked on in silence for a way. ‘Do you want to know something?’ He stopped walking and looked at her, lit as she was by the moon, pale and so near to being unreal that he sighed. ‘Do you want to know something that I’ve thought about for years and have never quite come to terms with?’
‘Only if you want to tell me, but yes, Mr Crepuscular, I would like to know.’
‘Miss Penultimate, I haven’t written this down because I’ve never been quite sure, but tonight, walking with you here, listenin
g to you, well, I feel a calmness that gives me an idea that I may have been right … I might’ve been taught the right things all along.’
‘Go on.’
They were both silent for a moment more and then Simone started walking again, although slowly.
‘When I was studying with the Little Master … he was the man I met there in the Himalayas who taught me everything, taught me all about being still and about moving and about listening and … oh, about everything …’
‘Like a guru?’
‘I suppose so, yes. Though that word comes from the Sanskrit, it means ‘weighty’, and he was just the lightest man I’ve ever known. But if you mean ‘Was I his student?’, then yes, and he was my Master. When we were studying with him we would meditate. Do you understand meditation, Miss Penultimate?’
‘Enough to follow you, I’m sure.’
‘Well, he told us that we had never, and in all likelihood would never (he was a blunt teacher, but good) that we would never truly meditate. Someone asked what he meant, asked him to explain. I expect they still have the bruises from his stick. Ha! Sometimes he was very blunt. It’s funny, Miss Penultimate, but in all these years that have passed since then, I’ve never wondered what became of those other students. We weren’t friends as such, we didn’t speak much, but we all shared the same vision. I expect most of them are dead now. Many of them were older than me, even back then, and I’m quite old enough now. I wonder whether they stayed there, or whether they left, like me, and took their little memories of that place out into the world … scattered seeds of it around the globe. I wonder if that valley exists now, not just in the space between two mountains, but in widely spaced minds around the world. It’s a thought. Oh, it’s a curious thing, time, isn’t it? I mean what it does to us, how it changes us?’
Penelope nodded affirmatively, not wanting to speak, but watching the thoughts move across this man’s face in the moonlight.
‘He said that we didn’t meditate, and we could tell this because if we ever really did meditate we would become (that is the person doing the meditating) would become invisible. He said that we only see one another because each soul creates vibrations, sort of mental vibrations in the world. Every thought that passes through our brains, every ripple of soul, as it were, creates disturbances in the stuff, in the substance, in the matter that makes up the world. When we puzzle about something, again there’s a disturbance made. When we think something, or think about something … there’s a disturbance. When we fear or worry or smile or laugh, it disturbs the world. When we love,’ at this word he pointedly didn’t turn to look at Miss Penultimate, ‘it sets up a disturbance in the world.’
He was quiet for a moment and again stopped walking.
A fox paused in the road before them and Penelopetouched Simone’s arm with her hand to point it out. It vanished into the hedgerow on the left hand side, although for a moment she wondered if it had, perhaps, just vanished, just turned invisible as it ignored them. It was very dark here, under the shade of the overhanging trees, and as the fox slid out of the streak of moonlight it had been caught in, she felt it really could have, in that moment, done anything, even disappeared.
‘These disturbances,’ Crepuscular continued after a moment, ‘are what we sense of each other. It is these disturbances, these ripples through whatever the substance of the world, of reality, really is that allow us to see each other, to know each other. When a man, or a woman of course, meditates they still these disturbances. Calm then. When they truly unfocus, which is what meditation is, then their disturbances diminish and, eventually, at some point they would vanish from our world.’
‘Is that true?’
‘I don’t know … I think I believe it is,’ replied Simone.
‘At that point, when a sort of spiritual entropy, to use a negative sounding but perhaps accurately descriptive phrase, sets in, the person who is meditating is absorbed into the universe, not as themselves, but as nothing. That is the goal, I think, of life.’
They started walking again, this time back down the lane towards the cottage.
‘I was in the Little Master’s temple-room one day. We were all sitting in silence, you know cross-legged, just gazing off into the distance or with our eyes closed, pretending to meditate, as he would have said, when something happened. And this is what I haven’t spoken about before, so don’t laugh. Please. I was sitting there, I had my eyes open and was watching a snowflake that was drifting down from the open ceiling. I often did that, I found it aided my concentration, and, although I was focussing on something, it helped me to eliminate a lot of other things from my mind while I practised the non-meditation. But this day I noticed a sudden light, and I saw the snowflake melt, in the air, in front of my eyes. Time seemed to slow and my eyesight seemed to become acute. I watched as each of the six prongs of this tiny delicate and perfect artefact turned to water. It happened one at a time, first the one at the top and then the one sticking up on the left and then the one on the right. It was miraculous to watch, as if time had slowed or was slowing. I turned my head and turning it seemed to take such an effort, and an age, but I turned just as the last point of the ice-star vaporised into the air, into the light and I saw the source of the light. It came from where the Little Master had been sitting, right before us. In fact he was still there, but as I watched he faded away. I could see through him! I could see through him to the floor he sat on, I could see the far wall, and it was becoming clearer, and at the same time this light was pouring out of his skin. It was a glutinous light, it moved slowly and as it reached me I felt warmed with a vast and deep sense of compassion, there was so much love in that light, I knew I could never turn away from it. And then it was gone.’
Penelope put her arm around his broad shoulders and rested his cheek upon hers. He wasn’t crying, but he was filled with something that tensed his body, that made it awkward for him to continue. Once again they had stopped walking.
He lifted his head and looked into her eyes. It was dark but the slim crescent moon was behind him and her face was lit palely by the light from that distant reflecting globe. She showed some concern, she showed some love, she showed some curiosity. He continued, because, he felt, this was what was important, everything that had gone before had been to set the scene, had been merely necessary educative information.
‘He smiled.’
She looked at him for a moment before asking, ‘Your Little Master?’
‘Yes,’ he said, seemingly happy to have said it.
A few more moments went by. This seemed to be a time of moments and of pauses, he thought to himself reflecting on this part of the evening later on.
‘As that light reached out to fill the room, to calm the room, as he disappeared from sight, as the room became utterly visible through him, I saw him smile. It was like the Cheshire Cat, you remember in that Alice book?’
She didn’t. He didn’t attempt to explain. ‘I just saw the faintest hint of that smile in the air, it hung there for a moment. I had watched his mouth move from the straight line he usually wore to one where the corners pointed upwards. It was a smile, I can’t say it any other way. And then the light vanished and he … his body slumped forward on the dais. He just crumpled up and collapsed forwards.’
Penelope raised her hand to her mouth. ‘I thought he vanished? I thought he slipped away into Nirvana or whatever it is?’
‘He failed, Miss Penultimate, that is the secret I have carried for so long. Or one secret at any rate. My Master failed.’
‘How …?’
‘I never got to speak to him after that, he was dead when he hit the floor. It became apparent I was the only one who had seen what had happened, I don’t know, maybe everyone else had had their eyes closed. But they heard the crash, and it was as if time restarted with the thud of his body on the stone, a blur of activity burst out. Someone rushed over and checked for a pulse, opened his eyes, put a mirror by his mouth. He was very dead. They put it down to a heart
attack or something, you know, something non-mysterious and I never mentioned what I’d seen, not even there, not even then.’
‘What was it you saw, what does it mean? I think I understand it, but … just to be sure …’
‘Miss Penultimate, he achieved what I can only dream of achieving, in fact what I am somewhat afraid of achieving. He became, just for a moment, invisible. Really. He unfocussed himself so much he faded away, he found that perfect equilibrium and was ready to be freed from this wheel of living. But he realised this, in that ultimate moment, he understood what was happening and it seemed good to him, that’s why he smiled. But that realisation, that final understanding, that feeling of satisfaction, of self-satisfaction was a disturbance, you see, was an imperfection. And so he became visible again, he came back to us, his meditation was flawed, as are all of ours. As for the heart attack, maybe it was … maybe he was just disappointed … maybe what he had experienced overpowered him. Maybe he had seen enough, lived enough, done enough. Maybe it was his time. Some Masters have that ability, just with a thought, you know.’ Here a tear trickled out of Simone’s eye and traced a line down his cheek into his beard. ‘When they turned his body over, the smile was gone.’
They had reached the cottage once again and Penelope opened the gate.
Simone lay his hand on top of hers as it rested on the latch. They stood for a minute like that, just listening to the night around them.
‘You know,’ he said, finally, looking at her hand under his, feeling her fingers, cold under his warm palm, ‘I am an old man. But inside my breast beats a young man’s heart still. And I grow foolish …’
‘Shush,’ she said quietly, laying a finger over his lips, ‘I think I know what you want to say, but I am not the person to whom you should say it.’
Simone stood in silence. He looked at her lips and then up at her eyes.
‘I don’t know where she is, I’m afraid, the woman you should be saying this to. I don’t know where to find her for you; I get the feeling, though, she is lost somewhere …’
The Education Of Epitome Quirkstandard Page 23