Mrs.
Peel, You’re Needed
An
Autobiographical Fantasy
And
Spiritual
Odyssey
In which
Emma has a “field” day
And
Jack gets the girlfriend he wants
Emma Peel reached down for her morning breakfast toast. As she picked it up she saw her name written on the plate beneath it. Knowing this to be one of Steed’s tricks, she immediately began to look for him. It was as if they played a childhood game of hide and seek.
“He’s really outdone himself, the old rascal,” she thought. “I’ve not idea where he is.”
Unexpectedly, the phone rang. As Emma raised the phone to her ear, a very familiar voice said, “We’re needed.”
It was always a chain of bizarre events, usually murders. In most cases, Steed had already been briefed by the Ministry. He would then bounce the clues off Emma, Just to observe her reaction to them. It was a tribute to his sense of her intelligence that he would wait until she had weighed the facts and commented, before he would finally choose his method of operation. And it would be “his” choice. After all, even after all these years, he was the top professional and she still the talented, if not brilliant, amateur.
“Always keep your bowler on in times of strain.”
“I’ll remember.”
“And a watchful eye for diabolical masterminds.”
“Emma, thanks.”
Emma Peel gave Steed a farewell kiss, a last smile, and left to re-join her newly returned husband, Peter. I cried that night. I was 3 months shy of 20 years old on March 20th, 1968. When she left, I felt as if the sun had been extinguished. I cried, realizing in a bittersweet way after she’d gone, that I had not only been watching a spy/adventure show for 3 years. I had been in love.
Time goes on. Martial arts, starting with Karate. Then Aikido and T’ai chi. I reasoned I could never be a Shakespearean actor of note. But perhaps I could become like her in her warrior aspect. Perhaps I could meet her or someone like her on this unlikely path.
Graduate school. Saturday nights with a chance to catch her at 11:30 pm on re-runs. Aikido training in Japan. In the middle of a hot, hot Shingu summer opening a copy of Time magazine International and seeing an article about her. Finding out she’d married some Israeli artist. Also, that Bruce Lee had died. 2 shocks.
Back to California. Teaching. Aikido dojos opening. A marriage. Friends warn her that I can never love her as much as I love Mrs. Peel. A daughter. I model myself as a father after her father in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. And I want her to be strong and beautiful, just like her.
Separation. Other lovers. Divorce. Still more lovers. Still more separation. Won’t I ever meet her? Mrs. Peel, where are you? You’re needed now more than ever!
**********************************
“Jack, we’re needed,” she said, smiling one of her trademark half-smiles.
“For what?” I asked.
“Oh, for an adventure, or more,” she replied. “With me, of course.”
“How can you be here, you’re not real!” I gasped.
“Oh, you’ve always treated me as if I were,” she giggled. “Anyway, let’s figure that out later. For now, it’s onward. Together.”
“Okay,” I answered. “Where’s the body? As you once said, ‘It always starts with a body.’”
“No,” she said. “This time it starts with a bottle of champagne. Chilled, of course. 2 glasses. And a picnic basket.”
Emma Peel stretched out in the sun. Tall. Slim. Auburn haired. And thoroughly gorgeous. Those deep wise brown eyes staring at you as if you were the only other person in the world. In the universe. Just as I’d seen her time and again on television and then on video. Here I was. With her. How??????
She was dressed in a very familiar yet still stylish jump suit. Ready for action. Ready for battle. I could almost hear Laurie Johnsons’s theme music in the background. We could have been anywhere in time and space. In San Jose, California. Or London, England. Or Venus. Wherever Emma Peel was, that was the center of the universe.
We were in a park. Somewhere. Sipping fine champagne. Eating cucumber sandwiches. Waiting for something.
Finally, Emma nodded in the direction of a man. He was finely dressed. Bowler hat. In fact he looked like an older, fatter version of Steed. And as he walked, he was carrying………a picnic basket.
“Don’t tell me,” I said. “His name is Tarquin Ponsonby-Fry. Or Joseph Wellington St. John-Smythe.”
“Or Joe Smith,” she said, moving into the lead. We were “tailing” this “Joe Smith”.
“Onward,” she said, again.
“Onward to what?” I queried.
“Oh, to save the universe as we know it, I suppose.”
Mrs. Peel whirled to meet the attacker. The sword edge of her right palm drove into the rib cage of her assailant. As his posture broke she drove down on the back of his neck, while with the other hand sharply extending his elbow towards the opposite shoulder. This caused his feet to fly up into the air and his body to hit the ground with extreme intensity. He would not get up.
The next assailant decided to rush her high and knock her to the ground. She instantly read his intent, seemed to raise up onto her toes to invite his attack, then suddenly dropped to her knees, cutting him off at the knees just as his momentum forward was past the point of no return. He went head first forward, and he did not have the time or skill to roll safely out of it.
**********************************
“I could have used some help!” Mrs. Peel retorted in my direction.
“I’m sorry, “I answered. “I’m just so used to your taking out the bad guys on TV and my just watching.”
“Well, now you’re my partner”, she said. “Next time don’t just watch.”
Suddenly, whatever upset that might have surfaced just as suddenly passed. Smiling one of her trademark half-smiles, she asked, “Just what is it that you do?”
“I teach and practice Aikido, a Japanese martial art.”
“Yes, I know,” Emma replied. “In fact, I know almost everything about you.”
“How is that possible?” I inquired.
“Well, you created me,” she offered. “In a backhand way the act of creation bonds both creator and creation. Therefore, why shouldn’t I know about you?”
“I didn’t create you,” I answered. “ Some writers and producers thought up the character’s name. An actress gave her form and personality. I can’t have created you.”
“Why did you choose to go into martial arts?”
“Because of watching you in all those fight scenes.”
“Why did you choose to study Russian? You even got a graduate degree in it!”
“Because you spoke some Russian in The Correct Way to Kill. And I found out that you toured Russia with the Royal Shakespeare Company.”
“You’re starting to confuse me with someone else. I am not the actress who played Emma Peel. I am Emma Peel.”
“I can see how strongly you’ve shaped my life,” I offered. “But how could I have created you?”
“Who’s that Chopra you’re into?” Emma asked.
“Deepak?”
“Even though many people have thought about me over the years, it was a thought of yours that went into the field of infinite possibilities, generated an implausible but powerful probability amplitude, creating an energy wave, which collapsed into a space-time event. Me.”
“So you are truly real, Mrs. Peel?”
“All of me” she answered.
**********************************
“Can I call you Emma?” I asked.
“You can, you know,” she answered.
“No, I prefer Mrs. Peel, “ I said. “It’s so cool.”
“And so Mrs. Peel I am,” she said.
“Do you have any memories of your childhood, your marriage? “ I asked.
“Since you created me, I have your memories of me as my memories. I know that my maiden name is Knight. That my father was a wealthy industrialist. That I had a childhood friend named Paul. Things like that. Memory is not something you go around memorizing. Or reciting.”
“So you remember your adventures with Steed. And even adventures that were hinted at in the adventures, like Watson telling about Holmes’ secret files.”
“Yes.”
“Did you love your husband?”
“Well,” she began, “His death made me a widow and brought me into Steed’s escapades. And his return took me out of those same adventures.”
“So which Emma are you: The widowed one or the married one?”
“I am the Mrs. Peel that was created by your soul and spirit. I’ve always been with you. Before The Avengers. I’ve been the silent observer, the seer that’s witnessed all the scenery of your life.”
“But did you love Peter Peel?”
“Yes I did. I grieved his passing and moved on. And maybe another aspect of me is lovingly growing old with him in another reality.”
“Did you, do you love Steed?”
“Again, most of what I did with him was in the moment. We shared adventures, danger………..”
“Were you lovers?”
“Of course. We shared danger. Excitement. That creates quite a bond.”
“And we’re partners now, right?” I asked. “And we’ve already shared some danger.”
“Yes,”
Emma purred. “Shall we find a nice, quiet
corner?”
**********************************
What do you do the day after you’ve saved the universe? What do you do for an encore after you’ve made love to Mrs. Peel? Good Question.
“Look, you’ve got to lighten up,” she said. “This isn’t a religious experience or anything.”
“For me it is,” I replied. “In my mind the symbol for Divine Mother has always worn black leather.”
“Well, I am not your mother,” Mrs. Peel retorted, somewhat playfully.
“Divine mother,” I emphasized. “The feminine aspect of God.”
She giggled. “ So, you’ve made me into a religious symbol of some sort.”
“Not religious, spiritual, “ I corrected.
“Well,” she said with a delicious pause, “I don’t especially feel like a goddess. How does it feel to make love to one?”
“Like I’ve been doing it all my life,” I answered.” Only I haven’t been aware of it. The most natural thing in all creation. Like breathing. Like my heart beating.”
She was beautiful. Long. Smooth. With subtle curves and outer cool galore and with deep, deep inner fire……..
“The actress who played you did a nude scene in a play called Abelard and Heloise,” I said.” Keith Mitchell was Abelard to her Heloise. It played in Los Angeles. I always regretted not going to see her. There was a huge earthquake during the play’s run, with lots of damage caused. I have family down South, but my first concern was for her. Was she safe?”
“I know,” Mrs. Peel said.” After all, one of your thoughts brought me into being. I’m familiar with all your thoughts.”
“All of them?” I asked. “Even now?”
“Even now,” she said. “We haven’t saved the universe yet, so that
query
for another time. But as for the other, how about a re-run:
With no commercials this time…………”
**********************************
The assailant rushed me. I side-stepped, driving a knee into his mid-section. As he doubled up and collapsed, I felt another attacker’s attention from behind me. He was crouched low, shifting his weight from foot to foot. One of his feet came suddenly in a crescent arc to shatter the back of my skull. I entered, trapped his support leg with one of mine. I quickly straightened my leg, uprooting him and driving him convincingly down onto his back. My fist drove down on his groin, causing him to convulse and to let out a shriek. Once again, both attackers became shimmering fields of light and then vanished.
“You did rather well,” Mrs. Peel said.
“I ‘m surprised,” I answered. “Aikido is about blending, harmonizing, even loving, so I don’t do this while I’m teaching.”
“Still, you knew what to do,” she replied.
“Thanks.”
Things seemed to be shifting. It was the same pattern as before. We were tailing Joe Smith again. But this time he was a large, white rabbit-figure in the bowler hat and suit. Shades of Alice.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Mrs. Peel mused.
The attackers, while still wearing the frog T-shirts, had crimson faces with horns. Devilish……….
“Still curiouser and curiouser,” I chimed.
The whole world was under siege. Oceans of green frogs were coming out of nowhere. People were literally drowning in frogs. It was horrific.
“Froggies galore,” Mrs. Peel noted.
It was as if a huge, cosmic joke were being played out. Everything was chaos here. Frogs were even covering the polar ice caps. Humanity and all other life forms were threatened with extinction.
“Look up into the night sky,” Mrs. Peel said.
One by one the lights in the heavens were going out. Did each of them mean the death of a star?
“The sinister intelligence?” I asked. “How?”
“What if,” Mrs. Peel questioned,” When you created me something else
was
brought through?”
**********************************
“There was only one time I thought you might die,” I said. “It was your last episode, The Forget-Me-Knot, your last fight scene in an episode in which your character was to be written out.”
“I gave you the opportunity to care, “ Emma Peel responded.
“Yes, and you gave me the opportunity to love. I felt so isolated, not feeling I could connect with girls at that time. I felt so alone except when I thought about you. ”
She looked at me with very knowing eyes. Of course she knew everything I was going to say before I said it. And, knowing that I should have felt stupid saying it. But such was not the case. Emma Peel listening was also very powerful.
“Are you going to die in this adventure with me?” I asked.
“I might, you know,” she said.” There are several probability lines where I do, somewhere you do, one where we both do, and many where we don’t. Reality is something that is constantly forming itself through the here and now.”
“Kind of like a dream,” I said.
“This is much more serious than a ‘dream’. Dreams come from our sub-conscious mind and can speak to us through symbols. Somehow your sub-conscious mind ‘dreamed’ me all the way into existence. Along with something or someone else.”
“Ah, the sinister intelligence,” I said.
“Yes,” Mrs. Peel answered. “It must be something or someone you subconsciously associate with me. Some hidden part of yourself. Maybe you couldn’t have created me without also creating this ‘it’. “
My mind suddenly quieted, and then it suddenly hit me. Before I could speak his name, Mrs. Peel said, “Prendergast. Max Prendergast.”
It was the only time in any of the episodes Mrs. Peel seemed to lose any of her fabled cool. Lured to an ancient house in the country by an old adversary who had loved her in his own twisted way and desperately wanted to destroy her. One of those episodes I found most compelling. The Joker. I’d probably watched it on TV, in re-runs, in syndication and later on video countless, maybe even a hundred times. Max Prendergast.
“Even though I know almost every thought of yours as you think it,” Emma Peel confessed, “Here I’m clueless.”
“I guess this is something I’m going to have to puzzle out on my own,” I said.” The British actor Peter Jeffries played him. He was scary. Powerful. The only adversary who seemed to scare you.”
“Yes. He was so demented and dark, I couldn’t bring myself to try to stop him physically. So I flirted and charmed him, knowing he had an escape flight to Rio. And I kept his fascination long enough for Steed and the authorities to arrive and cart him off to prison.”
“How did you feel as you seductively kept his attention?”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Emma Peel confessed. “His darkness gave him a strength, which was both compelling and at the same time revolting. His moods could shift so suddenly. He could have gone from being in love with me to killing me, if that dark intelligence of his picked up any fear or doubt from me. Pretending that I loved him was the scariest and hardest thing I have ever done.”
**********************************
”I loved you, you know, Emma.”
“That was your weakness,” Mrs. Peel countered.
“Alas, the melody has lost its sweetness.”
“So how did you feel about Prendergast?” Mrs. Peel asked.
“I felt sorry for him,” I said. “He loved you and felt betrayed by you. Maybe on some level I identify with him. We’re talking about when I was 18 years old. I was one of the few non-Caucasians and non-middle class students in my entire high school. I felt like I was an aberration. I felt no love or connection with any of the girls there. On the other hand I had this almost spiritual love for you. When The Avengers was on, life was alive. When it wasn’t, I guess I was depressed. So I guess maybe I felt your rejecting him was also a rejection of me. Maybe that’s the connecting link. Maybe that’s why when I created you, he was also brought through.”
“And now he’s come out of the field of infinite possibilities with the
power to
destroy the universe,” Mrs. Peel said. And as we talked, more
lights in
the sky were disappearing.
**********************************
There was always a special feel at the end of an episode when Steed and Mrs. Peel walked side by side to face the diabolical masterminds. The Avengers. When I could picture them, together, all seemed right in the world. The universe.
Here I was, marching side by side with her through a dark, seemingly endless tunnel. Ready to face Max Prendergast in whatever form he was threatening creation itself.
She marched forward, empty handed, but quite lethal.
**********************************
“Hello, this is Twiggy (a little lap dog). And she’s quite harmless, really.”
“I’m Mrs. Peel, and I’m quite harmless, too.”
She wore her combat gear. Black leather, of course. Boots. She seemed to glide instead of walk. It was hard for me to keep up with her, to match her long, elegant strides.
I brought a bokken, a wooden sword. Solid, but light. Potentially deadly. I guess it was my counterpart to Steed’s umbrella. I thought about a bowler hat, but I decided against it.
Normally very verbal and witty, she had settled into a focused silence. This was different from a scripted TV show. We didn’t know whether or not we would win.
Echoing my latest thought, Mrs. Peel said, “Whether we win or not will depend on if we can trace things back to the original thought that brought him into existence. We can fight the creatures he creates. But I don’t know if we can fight him.”
“Will he destroy us along with the universe?” I asked.
“If you go back to the episode, he wanted me trapped with him in that remote house. Isolated in thick, thick fog from the rest of the world. The girl Ola called that place ‘The end of the world.’ I think he’ll collapse the entire universe in on us so that it’ll be just you, me, and him in some sort of nothing void quantum physicists cannot yet even conjecture.”
I had forgotten that one of Mrs. Peel’s main interests was science. Physics. I had frequently pictured her in a lab, analyzing “aluminum compounds”.
“Will he kill us there?” I asked.
“No,” Mrs. Peel said. “That would mean he’d be trapped there alone for all eternity. He’ll keep us alive to torment us.”
“I was afraid of that,” I answered.
Abruptly, the dark tunnel ended. The whole space and sense of dimension shifted. We were in a vast underground area where things were lit up by a lavender huish light.
“Be careful,” Mrs. Peel said. “I can sense some things very near us.”
With a shriek something large and very angry came rushing toward us. I side stepped and brought my sword forward in an arc that, if the sword were metal and sharp, would have cleaved it from front to back. The creature doubled up with the force of the blow. From behind it now I brought my weapon down on the top of its head. Mrs. Peel finished it off with an awesome front kick.
Whatever it was, it was truly a “thing”, a creation seemingly of chaos. It reminded me of the last scenes of Michael Moorcock’s Stormbringer.
“So now you’re the Melnibonean prince,” Mrs. Peel noted with a smile.
I looked at my bokken. It was surrounded by an eerie green flame. And it pulsated with a strange, otherworldly power as I held it.
“Let’s make sure we stay together,” I said, not wanting to be alone in this demon void.
“Don’t worry, Jack,” Mrs. Peel said. “We’re inseparable.”
**********************************
As we moved onward, we fought side by side against a virtual army of “things”. Mrs. Peel covered my blind angle many a time and I hers. The further along we went, the more shapeless and formless our enemies became.
The further we went, the greater the power of my sword became. The green energy pulsating and coursing through it seemed make us both much stronger. It was as if the bokken had become a combination of Green Lantern’s power ring and Elric’s Stormbringer, a green energy blade.
Maybe by the time we get to Prendergast,” I said,” We’ll be powerful enough to destroy him.”
“I don’t know if it’s a question of power at all,” Mrs. Peel replied. “I don’t think he can be destroyed by force. In The Avengers Steed and I set everything right at the end with a fight scene. But that was the show’s formula. I don’t know if that will hold here.”
Up in the lavender sky a huge shadow-like creature was flying on gigantic wings toward us. It had the look of a dragon.
The dragon was immense and landed to the front of us, looking very much in the way dragons in their dragon-ness look.
“Dragons have never been my thing,” Mrs. Peel admitted.
“I know,” I said. “You’ve always been much more partial to unicorns.”
“Infinitely more subtle in their magical-ness,” she said.
For all our repartee and bravado, the dragon looked as if it were here to terminate us. My sword began glow with an eerie green light and to pulsate with some unknown power. I had no doubt that I could kill this mythic creature.
“No,” Mrs. Peel said. “It’s all being set up so that we can solve all our problems with force. Something’s amiss here.”
As I ignored the killing lust of the blade, a strange quietness came over me. I saw what Mrs. Peel had been trying to tell me. I looked into the immense eyes of the dragon and saw a familiar soul.
“Tiger,” I said. I recognized the soul of my best friend, my recently dead cat. I knew he had some wolf energy, and now he definitely had dragon energy, too. I longed to scratch the top of his head just as I had done when he was a cat. But even in this very different body, it was the same soul. We were still friends.
“Meet Mrs. Peel,” I said to my old friend. “Now, take us to Prendergast.”
With some difficulty, Mrs. Peel and I climbed onto his back and found a
place
to sit and secure ourselves at the base of his neck. And we felt
great
wings stir and pull us into the sky.
**********************************
The magical flight on dragon-back seemed to last only an instant. We were transported into a huge throne room filled with a strange and very, very dense fog.
Sitting on the throne was an extremely metamorphosed Max Prendergast. He was easily 8 feet tall and green all over, with pretty much a humanoid body in terms of arms and legs. All this with a frog’s face. All this and he still looked like Peter Jeffries.
“Emma,” he said, looking at Mrs. Peel. “My love, my rose, my tender beautiful rose.”
I half expected to hear that song (Mein Leibling, Mein Rose). I had a friend of mine write out the lyrics for me. When I couldn’t read the German, he transposed everything into Cyrillic (Russian) so I could read it. I had memorized the first verse.
“Jack,” Prendergast said, looking in my direction.” Thank you for bringing me into existence. Since the conscious part of you was engaged in creating her, I was able to sneak in. With almost all the power of the field of infinite possibilities, I might add.”
“The field is just possibilities,” I said. “The power to create comes from somewhere else.”
“Come now,” Prendergast said. “I have extinguished your sun, along with almost all other light. Soon all will be darkness. I could cancel out one or the both of you with a mere thought.”
“Then why haven’t you?” Mrs. Peel asked.
“Yes”, I added. “Then it would be just you, alone in all this darkness.”
“Yes, Max,” Mrs. Peel said. “You, alone ……………”
Prendergast was transfixed. It was as if he could neither move nor speak.
Mrs. Peel and I grasped hands, embraced, and kissed. The only reality of this or any other moment was love. It was a light energy that flowed out of us filling the darkness around us and the in sky the lights that were stars began to re-appear. Prendergast’s vision of a collapsed universe was no longer holding.
We turned to face him. Totally confident. Without any fear. Love and compassion were our double-edged sword and we reached out to him, realizing that he was only an aspect of ourselves that we didn’t love.
He seemed to be screaming, only it was a silent scream that seemed to be imploding in on him. The space he occupied slowly became a nothing, which then changed into a doorway of light. Out of which stepped…………..Steed.
“Oh, dear. Do you think we scared him?” Steed asked.
“Where did he go?” Emma asked.
“Oh, back into the field of infinite possibilities,” Steed explained. “As a matter of fact, when he went back, I decided to pop out and see how things were.”
“I’m glad to finally meet you,” I said, offering my hand.
“Good manners,” Steed said. “I heartily approve. Pleased to meet you, Jack.”
“The only thing missing is the champagne,” Mrs. Peel said.
“I think I’m getting the knack of this,” I said. Suddenly a field of light appeared and out of which emerged…….. a bottle of Dom Perignon.
“Excellent,” Steed said. “But as for the vintage……..”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m only just getting the hang of all this.”
“Don’t forget the glasses,” Emma reminded me.
**********************************
Emma Peel and I were on a bicycle built for two. She rode in front, of course. Steed had said his good-byes and returned to the field of infinite possibilities. I was surprised Mrs. Peel hadn’t returned with him.
“He’ll be having all that excitement and fun with Cathy Gale and Tara King, so don’t feel sorry for that old rascal, “ Mrs. Peel said.
“But he won’t have you,” I said.
“Like everyone else, he’ll have the 51 episodes I was in. Now that we’ve saved the universe, I want to find out what life is like. Outside of videotape and film.”
“How will I ever explain you to friends and family,” I asked.
“Oh, they’ll just think you’ve finally found the girl friend you’ve always wanted.”
“But you can’t be Mrs. Peel, except to me.”
“Of course I’ll need a new name. What about…………………Diana?”
Mrs. Peel and I were on a bicycle built for two. Destination…….??????