Chapter 27:
THE ENDLESSNESS BEYOND TIME
Monday was another Inset Day. Mrs Faighly had tried to arrange it later in the term but for various complicated reasons it had not been possible. Vicky was wondering if it was too early to go round to see Andrew, when the doorbell rang – probably the post lady with a parcel for her dad. She ran to the front door and there was Andrew himself with Akkri and Vonn. Andrew was beaming. “They want us to come to the spaceship,” he said.
“I’ll ask, Mum.”
She scurried back into the kitchen and, yes, it was all right. “Just getting my anorak,” she shouted.
Andrew was in a glow of happiness. Yesterday afternoon, when he had got back from school, his mum had met him at the front door. “Your Dad’s come home,” she said. There was something about the way she said it that made him look up at her attentively. She was smiling. She looked happy and relaxed, not tense and anxious as she usually did when Dad came home. “He’s in the other room,” she said. Andrew went through and there was his dad, sitting on the worn-out sofa.
“Hallo, Andrew,” he said. He was wearing a jacket and tie and had polished his shoes. He had had a shave. He looked healthy and confident. Andrew’s heart leapt. “I’ve come home, Andrew. I’m sorry I’ve been away so long, but this time I’m here to stay. If your mum can put up with me, that is,” he said, as Mrs Canadine came into the room. She smiled at him fondly. “I’ll try,” she said, but Andrew knew from the way she said it that it meant that she was quite sure that this time, at last, it would be all right. They would be a family again. Andrew could hardly believe it.
“I’ve got a job at the factory. It’s only stacking boxes and doing deliveries, but it’s a start and they say that if I do all right, there may be a better job on the production line in a few months’ time.”
Everyone knew ‘the factory’. It was the furniture-making business about a mile down the main road. Some years ago it had been Ernst Warbloff’s place of work, too.
“I’ve got something for you, Andrew,” he went on. It was a book of experiments that could be done at home.
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I thought we could try them together.”
“Thanks, Dad,” said Andrew again. He knew it was true but it seemed too good to be true: his dad had come home and he really was going to stay. Andrew stayed up till long after his bedtime, sitting on the sofa with his mum on one side of him and his dad on the other. It was like a happy dream.
There was only one worrying episode. His dad said, “I’m just going out for a moment.” Andrew had heard him say that so many times before. He would go out and perhaps not come back at all, or return hours later, smelling of the pub and quarrelling with Mum or even hitting her. “Oh, don’t go out!” said Andrew.
“It’s all right, son,” said Mr Canadine. “I won’t be long.”
Andrew and his mum had sat in anxious silence, but fifteen minutes later they heard the scratch of a key in the lock and Dad came back into the room carrying a blue plastic bag. Inside were a box of almond slices – one of Andrew’s favourite treats – and a carton of tropical fruit juice, and a bunch of flowers which he handed to Andrew’s mum with a hug and a kiss. “I thought we’d celebrate us all being together again,” he said.
Mr Canadine had already gone off to work when Andrew woke up the next morning. Soon after breakfast there was a knock on the front door and there were Vonn and Akkri. “We need your help,” said Akkri, “and Vicky’s. Could you come with us to The Golden Palace?”
“I expect so.” He felt proud to be asked to help these people who seemed to be able to do anything they wanted to. “Mum, can I go out with Vonn and Akkri?” he called out.
“Yes, of course. See you later,” came Mrs Canadine’s voice from the kitchen.
They had walked round to Vicky’s flat. As they all came down the concrete steps together, with Vicky clutching his hand excitedly, Andrew saw that a skimmer was waiting for them on the pavement below. This was going to be great! They got into the skimmer but it did not lift off straight away. “There’s something we need to tell you,” said Vonn gently. “We won’t be here much longer. We’ll be going home, back to Vika, very soon. I don’t think we understand the real purpose of our visit to Earth even now, except that for all of us it has been the most wonderful and amazing experience of our lives, and getting to know you has been one of the very best parts of it.”
Andrew and Vicky felt shocked and hurt, as if something precious had been suddenly snatched away from them. Neither of them knew what to say.
“We had to tell you,” said Akkri. “We’re going to miss you, you know, but we couldn’t stay here for ever.”
“What is it you want us to do?” asked Andrew glumly.
“We’ll try and explain when we get there,” said Vonn. She wished she could take away the sadness of their two friends. It made her feel sad, too. “Let’s go, shall we?”
As the skimmer lifted off and their corner of London became a street map below them, the children’s spirits lightened. They seemed to step straight from the skimmer into the large, sparkling hall they had been in before. Akkri and Vonn introduced them to the people they had not met on their previous visit – three grown-ups and five children, one of them a boy called Toln who appeared to be about their own age. “I’m not going back to Vika with the others,” he said. “I’m staying here on Earth. Perhaps I’ll come and visit you some time.”
“Oh, yes please,” said Vicky.
“Yes, please come and see us,” said Andrew.
“I expect you’d like something to eat,” said the man called Tamor.
Although they had both had breakfast not long before, they found that Tamor was right, and helped themselves eagerly from the table of fruit, pastries and drinks that seemed to be waiting just for them at one side of the room. Vonn and Akkri came to join them and nibbled a few pastries themselves.
Afterwards, “Let’s get started shall we?” said Akkri. Everyone moved over to a circle of chairs that Vicky felt sure had not been there when they entered the room. There was just the right number for all of them, she noticed. The chairs were so comfortable she could easily have gone off to sleep if the whole experience had not been so exciting. Akkri sat down next to her. Andrew was on the other side, with Vonn next to him.
The lady called Korriott was looking over towards them. She was the only one who was dressed differently from the others, in a long green robe that reached down to her ankles. Was she the leader, perhaps? “We need to tell you what this is all about,” she said, “but first of all, we are very grateful to you both for coming to help us. Thank you.
“While we have been here we have learnt how you Earth people find out all sorts of things from books and computers and radio and television. We find things out in a different way and now it seems that we need you with us so that we can move on further.”
Neither Andrew nor Vicky understood what this meant but they were pleased that she thought they could be useful in some way. They felt peaceful and relaxed even though they had only just met most of the people in the circle with them. The girl called Viney gave them a friendly smile.
“I won’t explain how we do this. In any case, we don’t really understand it ourselves,” Korriott went on. “It is something that has come about in the lives of the people of Vika, something that life itself has brought us, a gift that we treasure.
“Some time ago Akkri told us about your first visit here, to The Golden Palace, but he also mentioned that Andrew had wanted to go somewhere else, a place called St James’ Park. Let’s all go and have a look at that park now, so that you and Vicky will have already experienced our way of finding out about things. And then, I think, we’ll be ready for you to help us. We do it like this: we close our eyes and we sit back in our chairs and we wait to see what happens. It’s as simple as that.”
There were pelicans in
St James’ Park, just as Andrew had heard. Two of them were trying to balance on the same rock in the lake and several others were strutting about on the lawn, and there were pigeons and sparrows and ducks and geese. It was just as if they were actually there, but they could still feel the chairs they were sitting on even while they appeared to be standing on the path by the lake. “Look, there’s the London Eye!” said Vicky. It seemed easy and natural and impossible, all at the same time.
“Vicky, I’ve found a frog!” The two friends squatted down to admire the little creature that had hopped onto the path by Andrew’s feet. They could see its sides going in and out as it breathed. It seemed to be looking at them with its beautiful copper-coloured eyes. Vicky was just wondering if she had the courage to pick it up when the vision faded away and they were simply there in their chairs in the central hall of The Golden Palace.
“That was wonderful!” said Andrew. “And we saw a frog and the pelicans! Thank you!”
“And we thank you,” said Eedo. “It will be one more lovely memory to take back with us to share with everyone back home on Vika.”
“Will they be able to see it just like we did?” Vicky asked. She felt she was beginning to understand a bit more about the way the Vikans lived their lives.
“Yes, they will be able to see it, too,” said Eedo. “We’ll be bringing all our experiences back with us. Everyone will be a part of it, in fact they already are. They already know what life on Earth is like because we are here.”
“I wish we could be a part of your Vikan life,” said Andrew.
“You are and you always will be,” said Korriott. “I don’t think it’s just chance that Vonn and Akkri met you on Chichester Greenway.”
“We want to go to a place we’ve heard of,” said Ky. “We are not even sure if it’s a real place but it feels as if it is something important, part of the reason we came here. When we tried to go there, we found we were blocked in some way, as if we needed something extra, and we felt that if you were with us as representatives of your planet, we might be able to manage it.”
Representatives of the planet! Vicky could hardly believe she had heard it right. She had always felt as though she hardly counted, and certainly not in anything as important as this. Andrew felt very much the same. Surely it ought to be somebody like Mrs Faighly or somebody from the government?
“Yes, we’re quite sure it’s you,” said Annilex with a smile. “Let’s just try, shall we? Akkri found some words in a book that seemed very special and very mysterious: ‘the land of everlasting life’. We don’t understand what it means and we feel a bit nervous about it, but we also feel that this is what we have really come for, the real purpose of our expedition to Earth. We’ve talked about it a lot and we’ve decided we want to try again. Will you come with us?”
Andrew suddenly knew that actually there was no choice. This was what they were going to do and it had been waiting for them all their lives, but it was Vicky who answered: “Yes, we’ll come with you.”
“Let’s close our eyes again then,” said Korriott.
It was different from anything the Vikans had ever experienced before. With Andrew and Vicky there, there was a power and a certainty that was entirely new, as if the clarity and trust of the Vikans were united with the suffering and longing of the people of Earth, and that when they were combined they were complete. For Andrew and Vicky themselves, what followed was so intensely real that, for days afterwards, their ordinary everyday lives seemed dreamlike in comparison.
For a brief moment they were all standing at the centre of the great cross that was St Paul’s Cathedral and then, with a rushing feeling like being plucked up by a great wind, they found they were looking out over the land the Vikans had glimpsed once before, where the waterfall thundered down in a welter of foam, and dawn was just about to break.
They were on an open balcony with broad marble steps leading down to the grassland below. In the distance was the outline of a great city. The sky was filling with light now, but such light as they had never imagined possible. As they walked down the steps they seemed to be filled with the light or made of light themselves, as if they and the sky and the landscape were one great shout of joy.
The colours were amazing. All the colours they knew were there but each colour was made up of layer after layer of other colours that they had never seen before in their lives but which were strangely familiar. Each blade of grass was a wonder. Whatever they looked at was beautiful beyond anything they had ever longed for and the air they breathed and every cell of their bodies throbbed with life.
Birds chirruped and warbled all around them. Somewhere over to their right the waterfall thundered into the gorge, its deep notes harmonising with the song of the birds and the sound of the grasses rustling in the breeze. And with each breath they took there were new and ever more delicious scents and perfumes.
Although it had seemed so far away, the city was now looming up ahead of them, gleaming in the sunshine. They seemed to be able to see in it and round it and through it, all at the same time. For Vicky and Andrew it was like a London such as they had always longed for it to be, though they had never been aware of the longing, and for the Vikans it was as if their City of Silver and Gold had been a wish that had now come true.
People had come out of the city to meet them; they were very close now. Vonn’s heart was almost bursting with happiness. Could it really be true? She ran forward and fell sobbing into the arms of her grandmother.
“Come with me, darling.” Hand in hand, Vonn and her grandmother walked up the well-known path between the silver birches, and there was the little white cottage. A young man was sitting on a wooden bench in the garden. He stood up as Vonn and her grandmother came in through the gate, which gave the protesting squeak that Vonn knew so well. And then she knew who the young man was, for he was an old man, too, the grandfather she barely remembered, who had died when she was only two years old, and her dear old grandmother was now a beautiful woman in the prime of life. “We are neither old nor young,” she said with a radiant smile. “We left all that behind long ago. And you, too, Vonn, are neither old nor young, just eternally you.”
Everything seemed possible here. Vonn could see herself standing beside her grandmother, equally old, equally young, two women in the prime of life, and it was not strange, but something she had always known. “Will I be able to stay here?” she asked.
“This is the real world. You are always here. You always have been here,” her grandmother replied. “You have chosen to experience life in a realm ruled by time, a world where things seem to be. The experience is less than the blink of an eyelid here, but it gives you, and any one of us who chooses to brave its apparent perils, an even greater love of this world, the world where things really are, the world of perfection. You are having the experience of living on Vika. Part of it you shared with us, your grandparents, just as we shared part of it with our parents and grandparents, and when we come back here we realise we have never been away.”
Vonn sat for a while in silence, then became aware of a small furry creature rubbing itself against her legs. She reached down and stroked Dooshi, who had died when Vonn was six years old. She had been sad about it for months and had felt she would be sad for ever. The first feeling of amazement when she saw her grandmother had faded. Everything here was just as it should be and so of course Dooshi was here, warm and comforting as she always had been.
When the Vikans discussed their experiences afterwards, one of the things they and Andrew and Vicky found most difficult to put into words was how they could be aware of everything, all at the same time. While Vonn was sitting in the cottage garden with her grandmother and grandfather, she was also skiing on the snow slopes with Tamor and Akkri, plunging down and down, on their way to meet Tamor’s family and friends. She was exploring the city, too, the city she knew so well, and chatting with her father and mother in the final, perfect
version of their garden back home. No, this was home, she reminded herself.
She was aware of everything the others were doing. She was part of it. It was as if they were all part of one another and of everyone else, too, as if there was simply one humanity and this was its true home. She could see Ky and she was Ky as he walked through the city, marvelling at the beauty of the buildings – shapes and structures he had never dreamed of. And there he met a beautiful woman sitting beside a fountain. They knew one another, they had always known one another, in the endlessness that is beyond time. “We shall soon be meeting one another for the first time on Vika,” she said.
Toln was there with his parents and with Birgit and Anders and Mogens and Greta. Vonn could see Andrew and Vicky, too. She saw them as she knew them on Earth, but she also saw them in the prime of life, beautiful and wise and strong, companions for ever. They were walking with Vill and Eedo beside a wide, slow-moving river. Tall trees lined its banks, providing shade from the glorious sunshine. Akkri was with her, too, her own dear friend in everlasting life.
Andrew was with his mother in the village she had left as a child, a village of delight beyond imagination, whose joys would never fade. His father, too, was there, and in an infinity of joyous locations Andrew knew everyone he had ever encountered and everyone he had never encountered. He was part of their lives; he was each one of them and each one of them was him.
Vicky was with friends and relations she had always known but had never met, on a beautiful green island in a peaceful tropical sea. She and Andrew and Akkri and Vonn were on other islands, too, with Mr Vanu and his family and with Hirri Tatembi and his wife and his son, Tekto – a healthy young boy, a full-grown man, a wise old grandfather and great grandfather, and Vonn was with Harambi and her little baby Mimo, playing with his rattle. He was a fine young man, too, and a fine old man, and he greeted her as a trusted friend. And everything was good and right and as it had always been and as it would be for ever.
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Chichester Greenway Page 27