‘Bogeymen, Susan?’ said Madam Frout.
‘What imaginations children have,’ said Miss Susan, with a straight face.
‘Are you introducing young children to the occult?’ said Madam Frout suspiciously. This sort of thing caused a lot of trouble with parents, she was well aware.
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What? Why?’
‘So that it doesn’t come as a shock,’ said Miss Susan calmly.
‘But Mrs Robertson told me that her Emma was going round the house looking for monsters in the cupboards! And up until now she’s always been afraid of them!’
‘Did she have a stick?’ said Susan.
‘She had her father’s sword!’
‘Good for her.’
‘Look, Susan… I think I see what you’re trying to do,’ said Madam Frout, who didn’t really, ‘but parents do not understand this sort of thing.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Susan. ‘Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they’re allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.’
‘Nevertheless, we must respect their views,’ said Madam Frout, but rather weakly because occasionally she’d thought the same thing. There had been the matter of Parents’ Evening. Madam had been too tense to pay much attention to what her newest teacher was doing. All she’d been aware of was Miss Susan sitting and talking quietly to the couples, right up to the point where Jason’s mother had picked up her chair and chased Jason’s father out of the room. Next day a huge bunch of flowers had arrived for Susan from Jason’s mother, and an even bigger bunch from Jason’s father.
Quite a few other couples had also come away from Miss Susan’s desk looking worried or harassed. Certainly Madam Frout, when the time came for next term’s fees to be paid, had never known people cough up so readily.
And there it was again. Madam Frout the headmistress, who had to worry about reputations and costs and fees, just occasionally heard the distant voice of Miss Frout who had been quite a good if rather shy teacher, and it was whistling and cheering Susan on.
Susan looked concerned. ‘You are not satisfied with my work, madam?’
Madam Frout was stuck. No, she wasn’t satisfied, but for all the wrong reasons. And it was dawning on her as this interview progressed that she didn’t dare sack Miss Susan or, worse, let her leave of her own accord. If she set up a school and news got round, the Learning Through Play School would simply haemorrhage pupils and, importantly, fees.
‘Well, of course… no, not… in many ways…’ she began, and became aware that Miss Susan was staring past her.
There was… Madam Frout groped for her glasses, and found their string had got tangled with the buttons of her blouse. She peered at the mantelpiece and tried to make sense of the blur.
‘Why, it looks like a… a white rat, in a little black robe,’ she said. ‘And walking on its hind legs, too! Can you see it?’
‘I can’t imagine how a rat could wear a robe,’ said Miss Susan. Then she sighed, and snapped her fingers. The finger-snapping wasn’t essential, but time stopped.
At least, it stopped for everyone but Miss Susan.
And for the rat on the mantelpiece.
Which was in fact the skeleton of a rat, although this was not preventing it from trying to steal Madam Frout’s jar of boiled sweets for Good Children.
Susan strode over and grasped the collar of the tiny robe.
SQUEAK? said the Death of Rats.
‘I thought it was you!’ snapped Susan. ‘How dare you come here again! I thought you’d got the message the other day. And don’t think I didn’t see you when you turned up to collect Henry the Hamster last month! Do you know how hard it is to teach geography when you can see someone kicking the poo out of a treadmill?’
The rat sniggered: SNH. SNH. SNH.
‘And you’re eating a sweet! Put it in the bin right now!’
Susan dropped the rat onto the desk in front of the temporally frozen Madam Frout, and paused.
She’d always tried to be good about this sort of thing, but sometimes you just had to acknowledge who you were. So she pulled open the bottom drawer to check the level in the bottle that was Madam’s shield and comforter in the wonderful world that was education, and was pleased to see that the old girl was going a bit easier on the stuff these days. Most people have some means of filling up the gap between perception and reality, and, after all, in those circumstances there are far worse things than gin.
She also spent a little while going through Madam’s private papers, and this has to be said about Susan: it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong about this, although she’d quite understand that it was probably wrong if you weren’t Susan Sto Helit, of course. The papers were in quite a good safe that would have occupied a competent thief for at least twenty minutes. The fact that the door swung open at her touch suggested that special rules applied here.
No door was closed to Miss Susan. It ran in the family. Some genetics are passed on via the soul.
When she’d brought herself up to date on the school’s affairs, mostly to indicate to the rat that she wasn’t just someone who could be summoned at a moments notice, she stood up.
‘All right,’ she said wearily. ‘You’re just going to pester me, aren’t you? For ever and ever and ever.’
The Death of Rats looked at her with its skull on one side.
SQUEAK, it said winsomely.
‘Well, yes, I like him,’ she said. ‘In a way. But, I mean, you know, it’s not right. Why does he need me? He’s Death! He’s not exactly powerless! I’m just human!’
The rat squeaked again, jumped down onto the floor and ran through the closed door. It reappeared for a moment and beckoned to her.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Susan to herself. ‘Make that mostly human.’
Tick
And who is this Lu-Tze?
Sooner or later every novice had to ask this rather complex question. Sometimes it would be years before they found out that the little man who swept their floors and uncomplainingly carted away the contents of the dormitory cesspit and occasionally came out with outlandish foreign sayings was the legendary hero they’d been told they would meet one day. And then, when they’d confronted him, the brightest of them confronted themselves.
Mostly sweepers came from the villages in the valley. They were part of the staff of the monastery but they had no status. They did all the tedious, unregarded jobs. They were… figures in the background, pruning the cherry trees, washing the floors, cleaning out the carp pools and, always, sweeping. They had no names. That is, a thoughtful novice would understand that the sweepers must have names, some form by which they were known to other sweepers, but within the temple grounds at least they had no names, only instructions. No one knew where they went at night. They were just sweepers. But so was Lu-Tze.
One day a group of senior novices, for mischief, kicked over the little shrine that Lu-Tze kept beside his sleeping mat.
Next morning, no sweepers turned up for work. They stayed in their huts, with the doors barred. After making inquiries, the abbot, who at that time was fifty years old again, summoned the three novices to his room. There were three brooms leaning against the wall. He spoke as follows:
‘You know that the dreadful Battle of Five Cities did not happen because the messenger got there in time?’
They did. They learned this early in their studies. And they bowed nervously, because this was the abbot, after all.
‘And you know, then, that when the messenger’s horse threw a shoe he espied a man trudging beside the road carrying a small portable forge and pushing an anvil on a barrow?’
They knew.
‘And you know that man was Lu-Tze?’
They did.
‘You surely know that Janda Trapp, Grand Master of okidoki, toro-fu and chang-fu, has only ever yielded to one man?’
They knew.
‘And you know that man is Lu-Tze?’
They did.
‘You know the little shrine you kicked over last night?’
They knew.
‘You know it had an owner?’
There was silence. Then the brightest of the novices looked up at the abbot in horror, swallowed, picked up one of the three brooms and walked out of the room.
The other two were slower of brain and had to follow the story all the way through to the end.
Then one of them said, ‘But it was only a sweeper’s shrine!’
‘You will take up the brooms and sweep,’ said the abbot, ‘and you will sweep every day, and you will sweep until the day you find Lu-Tze and dare to say “Sweeper, it was I who knocked over and scattered your shrine and now I will in humility accompany you to the dojo of the Tenth Djim, in order to learn the Right Way.” Only then, if you are still able, may you resume your studies here. Understood?'[6]