Chapter 54: Don't Go Breaking My Heart

I sat down next to the Teacher. The soft grass still held some of the day’s heat, but the brick wall against my back was starting to cool. Only the top of my head was warmed by the sun, and the garden was painted by Seurat. After what seemed like a long while, Miss Smallbone said quietly, ‘Please don’t tell anyone.’

I looked at her in surprise, hurt that she thought I might betray her confidence, and her eyes were pleading. I was struck suddenly by how young she looked, and although I knew her youth was illusory, the illusion gave me a moment of perspective. ‘You don’t have any friends, do you?’

‘I’m…’ she began. Then she said, ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘How long have you loved, er, I don’t know what to call him.’

‘Call him Johnny. And I’ve loved him forever. Or as near as makes no difference.’

‘Does he know?’

‘Of course not,’ the Teacher said fiercely. ‘It wouldn’t, I mean, he’s in love with Vanessa. I’ve always known it.’

‘Always?’

‘Always. There have been… No. No, he has always loved her, and I have always known it.’
She hung her head, hands folded again in her lap. Sometimes, you know somebody doesn’t want to speak to you, but sometimes you know they are desperate to be forced. I said, ‘Really? Over thousands of generation, you’ve never tried, or said anything? Not at all?’ The flush rose up her neck, stronger this time, and I carried on, ‘Now is your chance to talk to a friend you can trust. You might not get another one.’ So she told me her story.
***

‘I have tried,’ said Miss Smallbone, in a voice that in a normal person would not have sounded emotional, but which I knew by now was the highest pitch of drama she would let herself express. ‘And I knew it was madness, I always knew. It’s just, oh!’ Instead of thudding her hands into the grass by her side, she held them still for a moment and then smoothed a non-existent crease from the front of her skirt. ‘It’s been so long! When I was very young, and we were still on our home planet, I fell in love with who you call Johnny Depp. But he loved Vanessa, who is wonderful. I wanted to kill myself then, and many times after, but it was only when got here that I…’

‘What?’

‘No. I didn’t kill myself because there was a war, and it would have been selfish to waste a life that our side could use somehow, and so I entered the military and found, I was surprised, that I possessed certain aptitudes. Perhaps my aptitude was not caring about death. Later, only a very few of us survived the destruction and exile, and fewer still who had been trained as I had been. I watched unseen at the beginning, wary of traitors, thinking it would be the easiest time for the enemy to infiltrate us. When I discovered that Johnny was another I was elated, but then I knew she had survived also, and I realised I could not bear the proximity of being known. The details of how I became the Teacher, and how I have maintained the illusion of continuity through the changing generations, need not concern us here. I thought it would pass, but it never did.’

‘You said you tried?’

‘Sixty million years is a long time, Miss Park. There were periods of less activity from the demons, and there were periods when I was weak. There are episodes of which I am ashamed.’

‘You don’t have to…’

‘I know.’ Miss Smallbone’s voice was small and clear, nothing so fragile or ringing as crystal, and certainly not dull. It was metal, sharp not jagged. ‘As you well know, Johnny is not continent when he and Vanessa are not of an age. For thousands of years I did nothing about this, although it was difficult.’

‘But?’

‘Tens of thousands of years, Miss Park. I am not proud of the things I did, but I understand myself. And I have paid for it, many times.’

‘What did you do?’

‘I, there were times when, more than that was necessary, I put Vanessa in the way of danger.’ She said it so calmly that it barely registered until I realised she was looking for my look of horror, and then I was horrified.

‘You…’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I knew she would regenerate, of course, but more than once, I split her from her one true love for my selfish purposes.’ Now I was close enough to the metal to hear its jagged edges. Nothing is ever smooth close up. Her neck was dark and her eyes shone. ‘I understand what you must think, and it was shameful, but… I can’t apologise to him, and so I’m apologising to you.’

‘What happened?’

‘I pretended to be… I can barely say this Miss Park,’ and now the metal was both jagged and brittle. ‘I know Johnny’s tastes. I waited until I looked like … what he would like, and then I, well. Then I was with him.’

‘What was it like?’

‘You know what it was like. I’d watched him often enough, seen the effect. It is not experience, your husband had as much experience, I don’t know what it is that he has. It made it worse, because I knew he didn’t care.’

‘Really?’

‘I knew he cared something for the person I was pretending to be, but I knew also what he was holding back, and that he would hate me if he knew what I truly was. I would have known if he ever forgot Vanessa, ever stopped waiting for her, and he never did or will.’

I stood up, and looked through the trees towards the house. ‘How often did you kill yourself?’ I asked.

She looked into my face, saw there was no point. ‘Many times. I am weak, Mary Sue, self-indulgent like a teenager, throwing myself off a cliff so it can be a few more years before the ache is strong again. Is that what you want me to say?’

‘No. It’s just…’

‘It’s true.’

‘And Johnny never knew?’ I asked. ‘I know he never knew WHO you were, but did he never even knew WHAT you were?’

‘I am very good at hiding the eternal part of myself, Miss Park. I have to be.’ I reached to hold her hand but she shook me off. A tear was in the corner of her eye. ‘Millions of years, Miss Park. Of course I TRIED. I tried everything. ‘She couldn’t stop herself, but she wouldn’t look at me. ‘There were other times, when Vanessa was waiting for him to be of an age, when I went to her, with her. I tried to learn what she did, what kept him so enthralled, and I tried to remember, and then later I tried the things she did, but of course I was not… And don’t think I didn’t know that this would never work. Of course I knew, but I had to try because it was either try or go mad. Though of course, it was madness anyway, and it harmed our cause. You cannot understand the humiliation that this was, or how humiliating it is to tell you.’

‘Why are you telling me?’

‘Like you said, there may not be another chance. And also, it pertains. I said you and Johnny would be a disaster because I know he likes it more with you than he liked it with me, and I was jealous. It was not because he is the Master.’ She was withdrawing, and her voice was smooth again. ‘I was jealous, that’s all. You see, Mary Sue, there really are very few stories, and mine is one of the most banal.’

‘No, Teacher …’

‘No, Mary Sue. Time does not dignify it, or excuse the things I’ve done. But I have paid. They have been together almost all this time, and the fractions I have stolen have only made things worse. I wish you will not sleep with him again, because he is not the one for you, but I know how hard he can be to resist.’

‘Mary Sue!’ shouted Johnny Depp from near the house. ‘Who are you talking to?’