Man of the World by Robert Gibson

21:  Sixth Form

Mistakes that were never made; near-misses which left him with a brief drive-past glimpse of an avenue of misery avoided; occasional puzzlement at his own happiness, and the sense that without the guardian angel of sheer good luck he would have stumbled towards an abyss – such were the sporadic mysteries, the haunted background haze, of his fleeting schooldays.
    Not through any clever moves, but simply through avoiding the mistakes which would have lost her, he became friends with Pjerl. By the brilliant strategy of not worrying too much he picked his way through the daily thickets of “shall I approach? / am I overdoing it? / am I underdoing it?”, and several times he pulled back from the brink of blunder – refraining, just in time, from a disastrous insistence upon some proof that he was as special to her as she was to him. Be satisfied with what you have, and thank your lucky stars, he told himself and thus escaped the spiral trap of expectations and demands.
    In this easy-going way, counting his infinite blessings, he found it possible (with the exception of that first encounter when the lightning of her presence struck) to avoid being dazzled. He could thenceforth respond to her splendour with a steady gaze. His days became golden, almost as mellow as if they combined the freshness of youth with the wisdom of age, and the key to it was the inkling that what he saw in Pjerl must be more than just she. What shone so brightly must be a link with, or sign of, some higher dimension that dwarfed any self-centred concerns which might otherwise obsess him. This view enabled him to keep his head when she invited him to her house…
    He was entering the common room during a free period. She was approaching along the corridor from the opposite direction. “Midax,” she said in that musical North Larmonnian accent that lit up his world, while she and he squashed through the door at the same time, “I meant to ask you, d’you want to come round this evening, my mum’s trying a new recipe…”
    “Thank you ever so much, I should love to,” he replied, with a miraculous ability to keep steering his steps and not trip over a chair or stumble into a desk. And why should he not keep his head? What was Pjerl anyway but a tall slim fine-looking intelligent kindly girl with long brown hair, glowing health, sparkling grey eyes, merry mouth and warm personality? A good being, an enlarger of the scene, but – an over-turner of the scene? – no. He was going to stay sane. Even while she made him feel king of the sky, he would stay sane. Roving the vault of imagination, he would keep his tread on the firm ground. Thus he would eat his cake and have it. Ecstatic sanity. Aloud he added, “You’ve made me feel really important now. Thanks again, Pjerl.”
    “Don’t go getting nervous about it! It’s not like being invited to the Palace.”
    Ah, but I’ve crowned you Queen Pjerl in my mind, he thought privately, as he watched her go to get her briefcase from her locker.
    Midax then picked up a magazine and sat relaxing with the weird sensation, which came to him now and then, of being both young and old.
    Spooky, tingly happiness crept all over him as he reviewed the staggering invitation. He had heard the saying, “If youth knew! If age could!” – and I know and can, the dodging thought whispered. He found himself nearly dropping the magazine. He looked around. Not many pupils were in the common room at this hour. No one had noticed his start. He put the magazine to one side. He breathed deeply. Quiet reigned for a while.
    It was too good to last. Thudding steps and the sound of loutish voices intruded upon his awareness. Remembering, with reluctance, that he wore a prefect’s tie, Midax heaved himself out of his chair. He went to the door and looked out into the corridor.
    Half a dozen second-formers were swinging their satchels and rucksacks at a cringing target. The victim – a frequent victim, Midax knew – was the son of one of the teachers. Jeer, thump, wince, the routine continued as the bewildered-looking lad did nothing effective to ward off the blows.
    “Oy!” shouted Midax, framed in the doorway, and the attacks stopped immediately.
    “Pre-fect!” they grunted, and scattered. (“De-fect!” one of them added at a safer distance.) He took the names of those he was able to catch.
    When that business was over, he was left alone with the victim of the bullying.
    “I want a word with you, Karph,” he said.
    Karph waited, tongue-tied.
    Midax took a deep breath. He spoke out of the corner of his mouth, “Want some insight into the larval stage of humanity?”
    “Uh – yeah.” The boy managed a small twitch of a grin.
    “I saw you weren’t hitting back,” continued Midax, “and I can guess why. Not just that there were too many of them, eh? Not just that. The fact is, you were thinking, deep down, that the game is not worth playing, weren’t you?”
    Amazement and a desperate, wondering relief now showed in Karph’s eyes. “Yes. Yes, that’s it.”
    “I thought so. And you’re right about that.”
    “Oh… thanks,” replied the small dazed voice.
    “But,” and now Midax’s tone became forceful, “guess what: you’re hurting them. Don’t you see, you’re injuring their egos by your ability to spot the fact that they’re twerps? Burdening them, furthermore, with your standards of courtesy which make them painfully aware of their lack of social skills? Why don’t you make more allowances? Those apes need gentle handling! Don’t be so rough with them in future!” he finished with a grin.
    In that shared flash of satirical insight, Karph nearly yelped with sudden humour; and Midax, seeing that his message had got across, gave him a slap on the back and sent him almost skipping away.
    But the disquieting thought remained: And do I, Midax Rale, believe any game to be worth playing? For it was close to the time when he must choose a career, and he suddenly remembered that he had never bothered to have a proper look at the contents of the shelves in the Careers Room. Careers books were just too dreary to be endured. What am I going to do when I leave school? How am I going to play the game of life? The endurable prospects weren’t believable, and the believable ones weren’t endurable…
    Back in his chair, he stretched, looked around and realized, with a shiver of surprise, that his former enemy, Jolld Tontrar, was skulking moodily in a corner. Now there was a change from last year! How that yob had reformed! Having served several terms as bully-in-chief, he had since turned into a harmless, lovelorn mooner! A reminder that all problems must die; to be replaced by other and different problems. In which case, doubtless Midax’s careers problem would sort itself out too…
    Yep, the secret of life might well be: wait for your problems to tire of existence.
    While he thus theorized, the common-room door opened. A tall, attractive, ungainly figure, a girl named Tarlpa, swept in. Midax did not expect to be addressed by her because she had never acknowledged his existence with anything more than a minimum of courtesy.
    “Midax, would you mind if I turned the radio on?”
    Oh no, not the radio. Good-bye peace, groaned Midax inwardly.
    Aloud he said, “Of course, go ahead, Tarlpa.”
    “Thank you,” she said briskly, and extinguished the silence –
    - and he felt spooky again from the fading wail, gone before you knew it, that left you with the hollow-in-the-guts sense of the brush of a passing bullet that had missed by the narrowest of margins.
    Well - he blinked - perhaps – since he seemed to be so good at escaping blunders – now might be the time for a bit of daring?
    Might he, in fact, communicate and share, for instance, the benefit of his escapes; to start with, for practice, share it with a former enemy like Jolld?
    Up until now he had adhered to the principle that in a delicate situation you ought to leave well alone. You should not try to help a person by offering some new viewpoint to get him out of his fix. For, if he were capable of appreciating the viewpoint which you are able to offer, he would most likely have discovered it already without your help.
    Midax now amazed himself. An enlarged sense of the possible made him rise from his chair. He stepped towards Jolld, who in his far corner was shranking miserably from the sight of Tarlpa, while the girl unconcernedly sat cross-legged with foot wagging in time to the thumping “music” from the radio.
    Midax could hardly believe what he was about to do. Yet the thousand usual reasons for not offering unsought advice were being swept away like clouds from a wind-scrubbed sky, leaving him clear-minded in his confidence as he sauntered over to the lovelorn youth.
    “I can tell," murmured Midax, "why you’re dejected, Jolld.”
    “Yeah?” croaked the lad in amazement.
    “Soul-destroying,” continued Midax, “ain’t it?”
    “It - ?” – the word echoed hoarsely.
    “Trying the impossible, I mean. Trying,” Midax elaborated, “to make things happen without making them happen.” That voicing of complete and utter truth was the greatest shock to Jolld Tontrar. Paralyzed in helpless astonishment he gaped while his self-appointed advisor continued to spell it out: “You want her to come and talk to you, you want (somehow) to make her do this, but you also need it to be her idea. Yes?”
    Yes, nodded the spellbound listener with a nervous glance across the room.  Fortunately the girl remained absorbed in the "music".
    “Well,” continued the shocker, the mind-reader, the breaker of rules, “that’s the perfectionist mug’s game – trying to make things happen without making them happen; it doesn’t work, I can tell you.”
    Jolld let out his breath, “Shwooo…”
    “I know,” sympathised Midax, “it’s hard to fathom; I don’t understand it either. Why should today be my day for dispensing advice? But whatever the reason – here’s the nub of it: don’t believe she’s perfect. She can’t be. No one is. The vision you have of her, arises not from perfection but from infinity. That’s what makes it great. Vital difference, that. Not perfection – infinity.”
    Jolld slumped in his chair, in shocked gratitude. Need compelled him to accept the boon of sympathy, though the last person he would have expected to offer it was Midax Rale. “How do you know all this?”
    Midax shrugged and said, in a less certain voice than before, “I told you, I don’t know what’s come over me today.” You’ve intervened, said a stern inner voice, and you’ve got away with it, this once. Now the main thing is to make sure that success doesn’t go to your head. Put it all behind you and remember you’ve got a Civics lesson this afternoon – you’re supposed to have prepared a topic for it, remember? Switch your mind to that.
    Sixth-form Civics classes were small, ten pupils or so, and Midax always enjoyed them the same way as he would enjoy a get-together with friends. The pupils sat around a rectangular arrangement of desks. The teacher sat with them at one end, and treated her class more or less as adults. In return, they politely and sophisticatedly addressed her as “Rummers Hca”, for they had reached the age when custom decreed that they use the courtly “Rummer” and “Rummers” instead of the more common lower-school “Mr” and “Miss”.
    (Miss Hca knew that later, as undergraduates, they’d scoff at “Rmr.” and “Rms.”, denouncing the use of such terms as senselessly medieval, but younger teens more often than not felt big in using them.)
    “Good afternoon, Rms. Hca.”
    “Glad you put it that way,” she replied. “For as a matter of fact I want to start with this question: Why do you suppose that adults so often address each other, in formal circumstances, as Rummer or Rummers? What’s the point? Most of the time we take it for granted; but today let’s think about it. Well?”
    Tarlpa offered, “It’s short for Romancer and Romanceress.”
    Some of the pupils raised their eyes to the ceiling, but Rms. Hca responded with kindness to the girl’s elementary remark. “Yes, it’s just as well to remember the literal meaning of the words. But now I ask – why do we use them?”
    “Officially use them,” amended Davlr Braze.
    “Are you being cynical, Davlr?”
    Tarlpa intervened, “Yes, he’s being cynical, Rms. Hca.” Tarlpa’s “soppy” taste in literature had been mocked a few times by Davlr.
    “Cynical or not,” Davlr retorted, “let’s be literal! I mean, we can still ask – while we’re on the subject – how well the label fits.” He looked round the table and sparked eye-contact with Pjerl Lhared.
    Pjerl smiled (to Midax’s dull consternation; he dimly wished he might have sparked that smile. I’m slow, so slow.)
    Pjerl innocently said, “Like, is Rmr. Karph really all that romantic? Or Rmr. Parle? How goes it in the staff room, Rms. Hca?”
    They all laughed, Midax included.
    “Now, now,” reproved Rms. Hca; “the title is not to be taken literally, we all know. Let’s be sensible. What we need to ask is, would it be used at all – even in the perfunctory way we use it – if it did not refer to something important in the roots of our culture?” She turned to Midax. “If I mistake not, you, Midax, are going to treat of this in your presentation.”
    “I am.”
    “Over to you, then.”
    Just a few hours to go and then it would be the weekend… and this evening, this very evening, he was going to visit Pjerl… and wasn’t life unfolding richly? Even this Civics hour was a pleasant starter. An end-of-week stimulus. A gift from a teacher who was happy to let him argue, and from schoolfellows who might back him up or, alternatively, offer some entertaining opposition.
    Glancing at his notes, Midax began:
    “One remarkable institution still survives from antiquity: the age-old Shapers’ College, in Serorn and Thilpar. It is the means by which Boalo’s philosophy has survived in concentrated form. But this survival is amazing, for it’s nothing but mere assertion…”
    He looked up from his notes to see how the class was following what he said. If he was going too fast, Miss Hca – Rms. Hca – would give him some signal.
    She did, by saying, “You assert it for us, Midax.”
    “Boalo,” he said, obeying, “twenty-five centuries ago, declared that everyone has one and only one Other Half, a soul-mate, chosen and encountered in a previous existence. He said that your only chance of happiness is to find this person, without whom you are forever incomplete.”
    Rms. Hca nodded. “A fair summary.”
    Midax went on, “Amazingly, as I was saying, this doctrine, although it has remained a mere assertion, quite unproven, in fact unprovable, and far too strict for most people to follow in the real world, remains popular. So popular, in fact, that the public continue to demand that the Thilpar branch of the Shapers’ College, which elects our Monarch, should be composed of those who take the Shapers’ Vow. So we have to conclude that this idealism, over-strict though it may be, must fulfil some basic need. Something in us wants to be strict.”
    “And do you have any idea, Midax,” prompted Rms. Hca, “as to why we should want to be strict in this way?”
    “Perhaps on the principle that you must aim high if you want to hit anything.” He shrugged after he had spoken these words, as if to say, it’s just a guess.
    The rest of the class looked thoughtful. Rms. Hca nodded and quietly remarked, “After all, any ideal can be criticised on the grounds that it’s not achievable. If it were achievable it might not be an ideal…” While saying this she wore her expression of approval, a look of grave satisfaction and respect as if she were saying, “Good, keep it up, this is wise stuff…” Aloud, she now nudged the others round the table with the words, “Anyone else like to comment?”
    Pjerl began, “The Year-Troth…”
    “Ah, now there,” interrupted Davlr, “is a numby-fumby idea if ever there was one.”
    Rms. Hca intervened, “Let’s not get too slangy.”
    Davlr amended, “All right, sentimental and impractical.”
    “As I was saying,” said Pjerl, “the Year-Troth is still widely respected as an ideal even though in our permissive age few people actually live up to it – I suppose we haven’t the will-power.”
    Saying this, the girl looked straight at Rms. Hca and for a few heartbeats the class again wondered about their teachers’ private lives. What would happen if someone were to ask one of them point-blank how far Boalo’s lofty standards applied to them?
    But no one was cheeky enough to ask out loud, “Miss, did you separate from your betrothed for a whole year before marrying, in order to earn, really literally earn, the title of Romanceress Hca? Did you thus prove your love to be a matter not of propinquity but of destiny?”
    Midax felt happily untouched by the issue. Though he had presented it impartially enough in class, he was quietly certain which side he was on. It wouldn’t do to say so, but he had always been committed to the loftiest ideals. What was the point of living a substandard life?
    Besides, his own parents had set him a convincing example. Ultrisk and Kmee Rale were impeccable Romancers. After getting engaged they had lived far apart during their Year Troth. Thus they had tested their commitment and had proved that it sprang from pre-determined destiny; proved it by remaining steadfastly true to one another during that lonely year. Friends and relations occasionally remarked on it admiringly, as though it were a rare old-fashioned achievement, which indeed it was, but why be surprised, why should quality go out of date, why should one ever settle for less than the best? Midax thought of himself and Pjerl. If the opportunity presented itself, he’d wait ten years for her… Of course you could argue and get complicated about any issue, but such intellectual points were counters to be shuffled back and forth as in a game, in this pleasant end-of-week class. And afterwards – his heart beat faster at the thought, and his skin tingled – the class would disperse and he’d linger by the door, for the pang of hearing Pjerl’s voice say “See you soon”.
    So it happened. An hour later, Midax was approaching the front door of 18 Downview Close, at the suburb’s edge.
    Tap, tap went the door-knocker. Slanting sunlight glorified the nearby woodland.
    She, herself, opened the door, and radiantly drew him into the lounge. “Mum! Dad! Midax is here.”
    He was introduced to her folks: the mother short and plump, with voice and manner as warm-hearted as he had expected; the father crinkly-dry, lean, impressive and soft-spoken.
    The girl dragged Midax off to the music-room first of all. “You get a free concert now,” she told him; “no escape for you.” For half an hour his consciousness swam in pure happiness and when Pjerl eventually laid her fiddle aside, saying “Supper must be almost ready”, he could thank her sincerely, he could sound really grateful for having listened to her play, though he kept to himself the real reason – namely that the passive half hour gave him time to steady his boiling emotions somewhat.
    They peered into the dining room. “Yep – almost ready it is,” she said.
    Midax looked too, and was smitten with the view of a table set for him as well as for the others. This was happening. Really happening. Something in his expression made Pjerl smile. She said, “Makes you feel at home, dunnit?”
    “Mind-reader,” he smiled back, in near-exhaustion. Then he heaved himself into proper alertness. Once again came one of those near-miss moments: he had just driven himself successfully round an awkward bend, and for the rest of the evening he would be in a less dopey state.
    During and after supper the family and the guest conversed pleasantly. Rmr. Lhared was a furniture-designer, and the chit-chat ranged over various topics, from art to design to architecture to history...
    Rms. Lhared said to her daughter, “Why don’t you show Midax your chart, Pjerl?”
    “Chart?” echoed Midax.
    He detected a quaver in his own voice. No one else seemed to notice, and he shrugged internally. A fugitive twitch of nerves: that was all it was, but he did not entirely dismiss it.
    “Go on, get it while we clear the table,” said the mother.
    Pjerl jumped up. “Right then. Here goes. Once again: time to put up an artistic front to impress Midax!”
    She trotted away and came back with a large roll of card, which together they flattened out on the dining table.
    A definite, peculiar shiver went up Midax’s spine and he felt the muzzle of a monster probing behind his shoulders, but because it was muzzled he knew he could escape this time. (This time? What did that mean, “this” time?)
    The sheet of card showed a genealogical chart. It was Pjerl’s individual school history project from a couple of terms back: a chart covering the descent of the royal house of Larmonn, over the centuries during which the monarchy, though formally elective, had been the preserve of various branches of the Zdil family.
    It was a fine piece of work and they could all admire it without pretence; she had set it out clearly and had written out the names and dates beautifully. The whole composition, with its diagrams, annotations and marginal designs, successfully combined course-work for History and Art – and this gave Midax something to say.
    “Two projects in one.”
    “That’s it,” Pjerl said with satisfaction.
    Her mother pointed out, “See, it shows the direct descent of Chru the Ninth from Waer the First.”
    Midax immediately spotted where there was room for improvement.
    Almost he spoke his thought: But you could have done it like this - He saw his finger all ready to point and in his mind’s ear he could hear his voice offering, “If all you want is to demonstrate lineal descent, you don’t have to have all this complicated tree structure down-branching from Waer the First, you just need a retrospective vertical line running up from Chru the Ninth – it’s much less work that way –”
    “That’s not ‘direct’!” protested Pjerl in this alternative scenario.
    “Yes it is, it’s just not complete because it doesn’t have to be complete. Look, the main point is, Edar the Third was the son of Magelwa…”
    “But it’s not direct!”
    “What do you mean? Yes it is direct, there’s nothing not-direct about it –”
    The amazing folly of two young people who cared for each other, letting themselves get into a quarrel, just because they meant different things by the words “direct descent”! Midax’s head buzzed as he thought of how easily he had imagined the quarrel happening for real. If it had happened, he knew he would have been in the right and she in the wrong, for she would have confused the terms “primogeniture” with “direct descent”, but what did it matter?
    Not the slightest bit did it matter – because this disaster was not happening.
    The mad dialogue had come to him as though the quarrel had happened somewhere else, and its echo had whispered round to him via a gallery of universes. Never in this life, and never again, could he be fool enough to risk Pjerl’s affection by arguing over a paltry chart.
    And yet he felt only too keenly how easily such a ludicrous situation might arise, given a lover’s natural but fatal urge to obtain proofs and reassurances and successful test-results. The deadly trap could spring, merely because he momentarily went mad with an urge to be listened to… It was a trap he must take care to avoid in the difficult times ahead. His schooldays were drawing to a close. He faced a strangely unanswered question, what next? How was he going to see her afterwards? How was he going to stop himself and her from drifting apart in life? And how was he facing the danger so calmly, the unimaginable danger of losing her? The hour was fast approaching for them both to be tipped out into the wide adult world. Why did he not go insane with fear at the loss of his sixth-form security? How was he keeping so calm? He knew the answer to that one. His courage stemmed from those strange inner warnings, those sonar blips of alarm, which pinged at him as though a recycling Fate were reminding him, this is your nth time round… and here is the point where you swerve… that’s it, swerve now, to avoid vast crags of grief.
    Swerve which way?
    The bell rang and another guest turned up.
    “I don’t like him, really,” murmured Pjerl in Midax’s ear when the fellow, a certain Lantti Trewiw, had taken up space in the lounge.
    Lantti was a gangling lad whom Midax had previously noted hanging around Pjerl. And around some of the other girls also. Lantti sampled girls as though they were varieties of soup. Not much chance of a Year Troth there, thought Midax dismissively. He left them talking together, and went to chat to Pjerl’s mother.  Rms. Lhared took him on a tour of the paintings on the walls.
    When, eventually, Midax drifted back in the direction of Pjerl, he overheard Lantti murmuring to her:
    “…come with me to the pictures?”
    Well, thought Midax in a flash: another might-have-been. Jealousy. You’d have to be a dope, to blame someone else for doing what you want to do.
    Perhaps it would be just as well if he, like Lantti, were to view Pjerl Lhared as one girl among many, albeit the best.

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