Read Online On the Edge A Novel by Edward St. Aubyn - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Edward St. Aubyn
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need a chit from Matron here, just a chat with an angel.
Gawain, whose name sounded so like Gavin’s but whose tone was so different, asked the Angel of Findhorn to help them work as a team, to open their hearts and to clear their minds. He invited everyone to be conscious of the noises in the kitchen and of the spirit helpers, as if this enjambement of whirring blenders and fluttering wings were the most natural thing in the world.
The strange thing was that they did work as a team, the atmosphere was wonderfully collaborative and charming, people glided round the kitchen, anticipating their fellow workers’ needs, sliding saucepans and knives to each other, handle first, with a silent smile, moving out of the way without stopping work, preparing food for hundreds without apparent effort, and enjoying themselves as well. What had happened? Again, there seemed to be something precious hidden among the rustling tissue of ritual and rhetoric. Gawain’s prayers had been answered, and even if prayers were just the setting up of a fervent expectation, they had worked.
Elated over lunch, Peter and Xana discussed what had happened while eating the food they had helped to prepare, which tasted to them supremely good. Perhaps the attunements were not just an amiable waste of time. Peter had always assumed it was best to bully his way through his feelings. When he set off for the bank feeling sad, or hung-over, or bored, or desperate, or in some other way unfit for work, he found that these moods usually evaporated as they hit the hot plate of action. There was of course a price to pay, a vague general depression, the lost habit of reflection, sudden bursts of frustration that seemed inexplicable because the trail that led to them had been obscured by a thousand urgencies, and by the trick of calling unhappiness ‘a lousy day’, and by the agreement of everyone around him that nothing surpassed the thrill of selling expensive loans and securing cheap ones, in order to enter a nirvana of ownership and hobbies.
At that evening’s group attunement, Peter shared that he liked the group much better than he’d expected.
‘Are we supposed to be flattered?’ asked Xana, breaking the rule of respectful silence.
Stung by this mild mockery, Peter felt that sense of intense betrayal that sends children running from rooms. This raw sensitivity had of course to be ‘processed’, and led to further opportunities for bonding and trust. Xana and Peter climbed on to the roof and Peter, who had always been the one who said ‘Oh, I missed it’ when someone pointed out a shooting star, saw four that evening.
‘You know they’re no bigger than a swimming pool,’ said Xana, ‘burning up as they hit our atmosphere.’
That night Peter, who never remembered his dreams, dreamt vividly. Gawain and Gavin were engaged in an elaborate medieval jousting match. From behind the stockade where he stood among the rude serfs, Peter could see Sabine seated next to the King. Peter was crushed when he found that the jousting match was a computer game he was playing at work, and that with this shift in perspective Sabine was reduced to a few dots of light on a liquid-crystal screen. Caught playing games instead of investing, Peter was furiously berated by his boss, but he couldn’t concentrate on his chastisement because he was too preoccupied with the pair of dirty pigeon’s wings which grew out of his boss’s shoulder blades. In the next scene he was swimming with Sabine among the stars, in mildly electrified water that made them both unbearably excited. Their swimming pool suddenly tilted out of orbit, hurtled through space, and flared on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.
‘Awesome,’ said Terry, a black American woman who had given up her job in order to do past-life regression work, dream work and body work. ‘You were definitely on the astral plane.’
‘Was I?’ said Peter, looking up from his
Gawain, whose name sounded so like Gavin’s but whose tone was so different, asked the Angel of Findhorn to help them work as a team, to open their hearts and to clear their minds. He invited everyone to be conscious of the noises in the kitchen and of the spirit helpers, as if this enjambement of whirring blenders and fluttering wings were the most natural thing in the world.
The strange thing was that they did work as a team, the atmosphere was wonderfully collaborative and charming, people glided round the kitchen, anticipating their fellow workers’ needs, sliding saucepans and knives to each other, handle first, with a silent smile, moving out of the way without stopping work, preparing food for hundreds without apparent effort, and enjoying themselves as well. What had happened? Again, there seemed to be something precious hidden among the rustling tissue of ritual and rhetoric. Gawain’s prayers had been answered, and even if prayers were just the setting up of a fervent expectation, they had worked.
Elated over lunch, Peter and Xana discussed what had happened while eating the food they had helped to prepare, which tasted to them supremely good. Perhaps the attunements were not just an amiable waste of time. Peter had always assumed it was best to bully his way through his feelings. When he set off for the bank feeling sad, or hung-over, or bored, or desperate, or in some other way unfit for work, he found that these moods usually evaporated as they hit the hot plate of action. There was of course a price to pay, a vague general depression, the lost habit of reflection, sudden bursts of frustration that seemed inexplicable because the trail that led to them had been obscured by a thousand urgencies, and by the trick of calling unhappiness ‘a lousy day’, and by the agreement of everyone around him that nothing surpassed the thrill of selling expensive loans and securing cheap ones, in order to enter a nirvana of ownership and hobbies.
At that evening’s group attunement, Peter shared that he liked the group much better than he’d expected.
‘Are we supposed to be flattered?’ asked Xana, breaking the rule of respectful silence.
Stung by this mild mockery, Peter felt that sense of intense betrayal that sends children running from rooms. This raw sensitivity had of course to be ‘processed’, and led to further opportunities for bonding and trust. Xana and Peter climbed on to the roof and Peter, who had always been the one who said ‘Oh, I missed it’ when someone pointed out a shooting star, saw four that evening.
‘You know they’re no bigger than a swimming pool,’ said Xana, ‘burning up as they hit our atmosphere.’
That night Peter, who never remembered his dreams, dreamt vividly. Gawain and Gavin were engaged in an elaborate medieval jousting match. From behind the stockade where he stood among the rude serfs, Peter could see Sabine seated next to the King. Peter was crushed when he found that the jousting match was a computer game he was playing at work, and that with this shift in perspective Sabine was reduced to a few dots of light on a liquid-crystal screen. Caught playing games instead of investing, Peter was furiously berated by his boss, but he couldn’t concentrate on his chastisement because he was too preoccupied with the pair of dirty pigeon’s wings which grew out of his boss’s shoulder blades. In the next scene he was swimming with Sabine among the stars, in mildly electrified water that made them both unbearably excited. Their swimming pool suddenly tilted out of orbit, hurtled through space, and flared on the edge of the Earth’s atmosphere.
‘Awesome,’ said Terry, a black American woman who had given up her job in order to do past-life regression work, dream work and body work. ‘You were definitely on the astral plane.’
‘Was I?’ said Peter, looking up from his
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