I Meditate upon my Place in the Universe

'You were out a long time, Peter.' Mistress James looked down at me from the top of the stairs. Her face was hidden in the gloom, unreadable.

'Yes, Mistress.'

'What were you doing?'

I couldn't tell her. Not the whole truth, anyway. What would Lyra do?

'I had to meet someone.' That was true enough, I hoped.

'Oh.' There was a pause while, I suppose, Mistress James decided whether or not to press me for more information as to my comings and goings.

'You should have told us you were going out. Emily made sandwiches for you.'

'I'm terribly sorry, Mistress.'

'You know we can't afford to go swanning off whenever we feel like it, don't you?'

'Yes, Mistress. I'm sorry, Mistress.'

'Let me remind you that you are still only an employee of the firm of James and James. You are not a free agent and you cannot simply come and go as you please.'

'No, Mistress. I haven't forgotten it.'

'Time is important. We must use it wisely.'

'Yes, Mistress.'

'Hmm. Are you hungry, or did you eat in the tavern?' So she'd smelled the beer and leaf-smoke of the Kings Arms on me.

'I am a little hungry, Mistress.'

'Your sandwiches are in the larder. I suggest that you eat them.' Mistress James turned away and closed the office door behind her. I went down the passageway to the kitchen, where Emily was sitting by the range, peeling potatoes. She looked up resentfully as I entered the room.

'Mum's furious with you. You've really upset her.'

'I know. I'm sorry, Miss James.'

'Your sandwiches are in there.' Emily pointed to the larder door. 'You don't deserve them, shooting off like that and not telling us where you were going.'

I opened the door. There was a plate of ox-tongue sandwiches waiting for me on the shelf, and a glass of milk standing next to it.

'Thank you.'

'Anything could have happened to you. Anything at all. You could have been knocked over in the street, or robbed, or murdered, or anything.'

'Look at her eyes, Peter,' Viola said softly. I sat down on a stool next to Emily and handed her my not very clean handkerchief.

'Thank you,' she said.

'Here. You have a sandwich too. There's plenty of them.' I offered her my plate.

'I don't like tongue.'

'I'll make you some chai, then.'

'Oh, would you? The kettle's on.'

I made the brew, and handed Emily a mug. We sat companionably side by side, me munching on my sandwiches and drinking my milk, and Emily scraping the spuds in a large pan full of water. I wanted to put my hand on her arm, maybe, and try to make her feel a little better, only Mistress James' words came back to me – What would you like to do with your property? – and I knew that I could not.

Jim came over later that evening and collected my things; all except for Yodatm and The Book of the Wonders of Urth and Sky. 'Are you sure he's not after this?' said Jim, looking at the little brown volume. There's no daemons in it – it might be just the kind of stuff he likes to read, if you catch my drift.'

'I don't care,' I said. 'I'm not letting go of it. Look, I'll put it in my jacket pocket and carry it with me. He'll have to get it off me the hard way.'

'I wouldn't put that past him,' Jim said with a grim smile.

I had told Jim what I'd overheard in the privy of the Kings Arms. 'Dodgy business,' he'd said. 'That grille you heard them through – it was no accident it being there. When the place was built they probably had it put in specially so that they could listen in on heathen plots and anti-Church devilry.'

'From the privy?'

'Nah! That privy was only built on ten years ago! You had to go round the back before, my Dad says. It must have been the other way round. The room Elias and that other bloke were in must have been the room where the agents sat and listened to what was being said in the little bar that used to be where the privy is now.' He thought for a moment. 'Good idea for a story, that!'

'No you don't! Not until all this is over!'

'Oh.' Jim had looked disappointed. 'All right.'

We arranged that I would go down the Botley Road as usual to see Jim and Carrie the following Sunday afternoon.

'Don't forget the brazing kit!' he said. 'I want to see that engine running! You're not coming back here until it is.'

'I won't forget,' I said. When I had seen Jim out of the front door I returned to my room and went to bed. I took out the little brown book and read the story called The Man and his Gods as my candle wore down, guttered and finally flickered into extinction.

Would we be any happier, I've sometimes asked myself, if we were told – by our daemons or some voice in our inner ear – when we were about to do something for the very last time in our lives? Or, alternatively, for the first? Like, 'See that girl over there? You've never seen her before, have you, but one day you're going to marry her.' Or, 'That's the house you'll live in some day.' Or, 'Pottery. You don't know it yet, but that's how you'll earn your living.' Or, instead, 'This is the last time you'll ever see that tree. Or walk down that road. Or say hello to your friend. Or close your eyes.'

I'd been living a dislocated life – removed in Time, disconnected from reality, not properly belonging in the world. In the end, something had to give – the strains in the fabric of the universe that were caused by my existence were too great for it not to tear along the seams, at a weak point. Me, in other words. There was a flaw in the weave of space-time, and it was me. Apply stress to the universe, and I was the point at which the rip would occur. Or, to put it another way, I was a piece of grit, an irritant. The universe could either englobe me in nacre, making me round and smooth and no longer a source of discomfort, or it could expel me, throw me out.

The world had been telling me as much, all this time, through the ghosts. Eventually I came to understand them – why they were there, why I wasn't one of them, why I was the only so-called living person who left no phantom presences in his time-wake to be detected by the sensitive eye.

It all sorted itself out in the end, more or less, or I wouldn't be telling you this story now, but it brings me back to the question I was asking a moment ago. Would it have made any difference to me if I had known, as I closed the back gate of the yard behind me and walked down the alleyway and turned into New Inn Hall Street, how many last things I was saying goodbye to? Or, what I was about to do, and see, for the very first time?