The Slow Afternoon

Beamy had been keeping a list since about nine in the morning, on the back of an envelope.

It was not a job. Nobody had asked. Beamy simply cannot watch a fluff do something good and let it go past unmentioned, and on a day like today the good things were coming at a rate of about one a minute.

Huffy — rope. Muddle — the box. Wondy — oil. Yetty — the knot (1 hr!!). Mendy — 9 patched. Sharey — the oil sums. Lonny — orchard hooks, asked for it himself.

By four o'clock the envelope was full on both sides and Beamy had started on a second one.

Beamy went round the yard all afternoon saying the entries out loud to whoever was nearest. "Has anybody actually thanked Blushy?" — that was one. Blushy went the colour of a strawberry and Beamy was delighted.

At about six, Sparkly found Beamy sitting on the step reading the envelope over.

"That's everyone," said Sparkly, reading over Beamy's shoulder. "That is genuinely everyone. Fifty-four names."

"Fifty-five things happened."

"Fifty-four names," said Sparkly again, "and you're not on it."

Beamy looked at the envelope. It had not once occurred to Beamy to write Beamy on it, and now that it had been said out loud it was faintly embarrassing, like being caught in a mirror.

"I didn't do a lantern," said Beamy. "I just watched."

"You watched fifty-four fluffs have the best day of the year," said Sparkly, "and wrote down every one of them. Tonight they are all going to find out that somebody was keeping count." Sparkly tapped the envelope. "That is not nothing. That is the only copy."

Beamy looked at the envelope again, differently. Nobody else had a list. If Beamy had spent the day up a ladder like everybody else, there would be no list, and at the party tonight a great many small things would simply have gone by.

So Beamy wrote it at the bottom, in small letters.

Beamy — kept the count.

Blushy had been holding the ladder since about eleven.

It is a good job. Nobody watches the fluff at the bottom. You stand there and you keep the feet steady and you pass things up, and everybody above you gets on with the interesting part, and the whole time you are completely, comfortably invisible.

Blushy had done eleven fluffs' worth of ladder and was perfectly happy.

Then Beamy stopped in the middle of the yard and said, loudly, "Has anybody actually thanked Blushy?"

The yard turned round.

It arrived all at once, the way it always does — up from the feet, through the middle, out across the face. Scarlet. Blushy could feel both ears going, and the horrible bright certainty that everyone could see them going, which makes them go more.

"Six hours," Beamy was saying, delightedly. "Six hours on that ladder. I've been up it three times."

And the thing Blushy wanted, with a whole heart, was to put the ladder down and go home and stay there until next week.

Which was confusing. Because nothing had gone wrong.

That is the bit Blushy had never noticed before. Blushy knows the going-red that comes after a mistake — knows it very well, has a whole trick for it, giggle it off, oops, that's okay. Blushy reached for the trick and it did not fit, because there was no oops. Nobody had tripped. Nobody had laughed.

Somebody had just looked.

"You're allowed to say thank you back," said Peeky, from somewhere near Blushy's elbow.

Blushy, who was still the colour of a strawberry, said, "Thank you," to the yard, and stayed exactly where Blushy was, holding the ladder, being looked at, for the whole of the next eleven seconds.

Then somebody needed the ladder moving, and it was over.

Blushy held it for four more fluffs after that, and went red again at teatime when Beamy mentioned it a second time, and did not go home once.

There are no posts in the hedge tunnel. That was the problem nobody had solved.

It is the worst stretch on the path — hedge on both sides, meeting overhead, black as a pocket — and there is nothing at all to hang a lantern on for thirty feet.

They had talked about it twice. Both times the conversation had ended with somebody saying "we'll think of something", which is what a land says when it has not thought of anything.

Cloudy had been in the barn doorway for some while, looking at the hedge and not exactly thinking about it. Cloudy's head had gone off somewhere pleasant involving boats.

And somewhere in the boats, without being asked, came: you don't hang them. You put them down.

"Where was I," said Cloudy, out loud.

Then Cloudy pressed both feet into the barn floor and noticed them — properly noticed them, the floor and the feet and the fact that it was twenty past four and there was a thing to say.

Cloudy went and found Wobbly, who was worrying, and Humdy, who was colouring.

"You don't hang them in the tunnel," said Cloudy. "There's nothing to hang them on. You stand them on the ground, down each side, like a landing strip. You'd see your feet the whole way."

Wobbly said, "But what if somebody kicks one?"

"Then put them in the roots," said Cloudy, "where the hedge is thick."

They did it in the roots. It was the prettiest thirty feet of the entire path, and Shivvy walked it that night without holding on to anything.

Gladly's first thought, when the word went round that there were only fifty-four, was: one short.

Gladly's second thought, arriving a moment later and rather sheepishly, was: fifty-four.

This is Gladly's whole trouble in one afternoon. The gap is what Gladly sees. Show Gladly a row of fifty-five hooks with fifty-four lanterns on it and the eye goes straight to the empty one and stays there, and the fifty-four might as well be wallpaper.

The yard had gone flat. Four o'clock, everybody worn through, and now a number that was wrong.

So Gladly climbed up on the bucket — Winky's bucket, which had been standing there since morning — and said, "Can I say the other number?"

"What other number?"

"Fifty-four," said Gladly. "This morning there were none. There were none at seven o'clock, and there was a box in a ditch, and nobody had any oil."

Somebody stopped stacking things.

"Nine came out of the nettles. Nineteen hinges got mended, and Yetty got forty feet of rope out of a knot the size of a cat. The orchard's done. The orchard was the worst one and it's done." Gladly ran out of breath. "Thank you, thank you, thank you. That's three and I've got about forty more."

Pouty, who had been having a grim sort of hour, said, "Say the bit about the orchard again."

Gladly said it again.

It did not fix the missing lantern. Somebody else did that, twenty minutes later.

But the yard got up off the floor, and finished, and Jelly cheered at dusk, and a good part of that had been decided on a bucket at four o'clock.

Jitters had to sing the welcome, and had known this since half past seven in the morning, and had not stopped knowing it since.

"My tummy's doing flips," Jitters told Peeky, at about eight.

"Mm," said Peeky, who understood completely.

The thing about Jitters' tummy is that it is not a warning. It is simply what caring feels like from the inside when the caring has nowhere to go yet. So Jitters does the thing Jitters always does, which is practise, far past the point where anybody else would have stopped.

Jitters practised the welcome song behind the barn. Then behind the barn was too near everybody. So Jitters went up the lane, past the bridge, and right out to the far end of the orchard, where there is nobody at all, and sang it there, forty times, until it stopped wobbling on the high bit.

Paw on the tummy. Five slow breaths. Then again.

And it was out there, at about five o'clock, standing at the very far end of the path where nobody had any reason to be, that Jitters turned round and looked back down the way home.

The whole path was lit, all the way to Winky's, in a long strung-out line of little lights.

Except for one stretch, about two thirds of the way down, where there was nothing at all. Thirty feet of black.

Nobody had seen it, because nobody had stood far enough away to see the whole thing at once.

Jitters ran the entire way back and arrived unable to speak, which for Jitters is saying something, and pointed.

It was the hedge tunnel. They were still arguing about it. They had the lanterns and no posts.

"Cloudy said put them on the ground," somebody remembered.

They put them on the ground.

Jitters sang the welcome at nine o'clock that night, perfectly, twice, and was asked for it again.

There was one ladder and there were a great many hooks.

By mid-afternoon the queue for it had become the worst place in Candyfloss Land. Everybody tired, everybody certain their own stretch was the urgent one, and the fluff at the front always taking slightly too long.

Mello simply stood in the queue and made it a better queue.

That is not a job anyone gives you. Mello held things for whoever was next, so they had both paws free when their turn came. Mello said "slow and steady, friend" to Fizzy, twice. When Zippy arrived at a run, vibrating, and asked whether the queue was moving, Mello said, "It is. Breathe in slow. Breathe out slower," and Zippy did, and then hummed most of a song, and stayed.

Nothing happened. That is rather the point. For one hour and forty minutes, in the worst place in Candyfloss Land, nothing at all went wrong.

Sharey came past with the oil dishes and stopped to watch for a moment.

"You've been here ages."

"I have," agreed Mello.

"Doesn't it drive you mad? Everyone going past you doing things?"

Mello thought about it properly, because Mello thinks about things properly.

"It used to," said Mello. "I used to think the waiting bit was where I got left behind." Mello passed a lantern to the next fluff up. "Then I noticed that when I'm not in it, this queue has a row in it by half past three."

There was no row. There had not been one all day.

"Has anybody done this before?" somebody asked, at about two o'clock. "Lit the whole path?"

"Nobody's done it," said Winky. "It's never happened."

"It has," said Memo.

The yard looked round.

Memo remembers things. Not on purpose, particularly — it is simply that a day with something in it stays, whole, with the weather and the smell of it and who was standing where. It is why missing somebody hurts Memo more than most. The same memory that keeps a friend close keeps the ache close too. You do not get one without the other.

"When Rainbow first came," said Memo. "Right at the beginning. Before most of you. They lit the path then."

Memo could see it. The shape of that evening. The light going up the hedge in the wrong places, because they had hung them too high.

"Too high," said Memo out loud. "That's what went wrong. We put them at the top of the posts and all the light went into the hedge and the path stayed dark, and Rainbow walked the last bit by feel."

Tidy went very still. "We've been hanging them at the top of the posts all day."

They moved every lantern on the path down by two feet, which took an hour nobody had, and which was the single most useful hour of the whole day.

"How do you keep all that?" Mopsy asked, afterwards.

"I miss things," said Memo. "It's the same drawer."

Neaty counted the lanterns at half past four, because somebody ought to, and because Neaty cannot walk past a row of anything without counting it.

Fifty-four.

Neaty counted again. Fifty-four.

There should have been fifty-five. Neaty knew there should be fifty-five the way you know your own name: one for every fluff, that was the whole idea, Winky had said it that morning standing on a bucket.

"Tidy. There's fifty-four."

Tidy looked up from the board. "There's fifty-five on the map."

"There's fifty-four on the wall."

"Then you've miscounted," said Tidy, kindly, and went back to the board — and Tidy was not being unkind, Tidy was being busy, and this is how it happens.

Neaty stood there and felt the whole familiar thing arrive: the itch, the wrongness, and underneath it the horrible suspicion that everybody else is relaxed because everybody else is normal, and you are the one who makes a fuss about one lantern out of fifty-five.

Fifty-four is nearly right. Fifty-four is, by any sensible measure, fine.

"Good enough," Neaty said out loud, trying it, the way Neaty has been practising for a year. "Done is better than perfect. Give yourself a star."

It did not take, because this was not that. Neaty knows the difference now, which took a long while to learn: there is the fussing that is only fear wearing a tidy coat, and there is the actual, genuine, unglamorous noticing of a thing that is actually wrong.

This was the second one.

"Oopsy," said Neaty. "Count the wall for me. Don't ask why."

Oopsy counted. "Fifty-four."

"Thank you," said Neaty, and went to find somebody who would listen properly.

The moment the yard heard fifty-four, Oopsy went cold.

Because Oopsy had carried nine lanterns up from the ditch that morning, and had put them down in a hurry to help with something else, and could not now swear on any account that all nine had made it to the wall.

"It was me," said Oopsy. "I think it was me. I had nine and I put them —"

"Oopsy," said Mendy. "Stop."

"But if I've lost one and Rainbow's walking up a dark bit and —"

"Stop."

Oopsy stopped, with difficulty.

"Say sorry, fix what you can, forgive yourself," said Mendy. "You taught me the order of that. And you've gone straight to the last-but-one without doing the first bit of all, which is finding out whether there is anything to be sorry for."

So they went and found out, which took eleven minutes.

Nine had come up from the ditch. Nine were on the wall; Oopsy counted them and there they were, including the crooked-patched one with the flower off a tea towel.

The missing lantern was not lost at all. It had been taken off the wall at six o'clock that morning, before anyone had counted anything, by Snoozy — who had carried it indoors, cleaned it, and set it on the table by Winky's door, where it had been sitting all day being the one lantern nobody could see from the yard.

"So there never was a missing one," said Neaty, slowly.

"There was," said Oopsy. "It was just already where it was going."

Oopsy sat down on the step and let out a breath that had been in there since half past four.

"I nearly apologised for that," said Oopsy, "for about half an hour."

"Um," said Peeky. "There's one missing."

The yard did not stop. The yard was very busy. Somebody said "mm" in Peeky's general direction and carried on with what they were doing, and that was that, and Peeky stood there with both paws up near their face and the whole sentence still in them.

This is the part Peeky knows best. You say the thing. You do say it. And it goes into the noise and comes out the other side as nothing at all, and everybody carries on, and afterwards you are not even sure you said it.

The old rule in Peeky's head is very clear about what happens next. You said it. That was your go. Now be quiet.

Neaty was over by the wall, counting for the fourth time, looking slightly wild.

Peeky thought about the hedge tunnel. About the turn by the bridge, where you cannot see your feet. About Rainbow walking up a path with one dark gap in it.

Then Peeky walked into the middle of the yard, which took approximately everything Peeky had, and said it again. Louder. One more word than last time.

"There's one missing. I counted too. Fifty-four."

Buddy stopped. "Say that again?"

"Fifty-four," said Peeky. "Neaty's counted it three times."

And then the yard did stop, all at once, the way it had entirely failed to do the first time.

Nobody was being unkind, either time. That is the confusing part. It was just noise, and then it was not.

Afterwards, Buddy said, "Good job you spoke up."

"I spoke up twice," said Peeky.

"Yes," said Buddy. "I noticed the second one."

"The first one was the hard one," said Peeky.

At four o'clock the whole land went wrong at once.

It was nobody's fault. It was six hours of work and a sundown that was earlier than anyone had planned for, and by four there were fluffs snapping at each other over whose turn it was with the ladder.

Somebody said something about the orchard that was not fair. Somebody else dropped a lantern — not badly, but the sound of it went through the yard like a slap. Huffy, who had been magnificent all day, puffed up in the corner. Wobbly had gone very quiet, which in Wobbly means the what-ifs have got to the loud stage.

Tipsy could see all of it, from the wall, where Tipsy had been sitting for most of the afternoon.

Now. Here is the thing about being the quiet one in a yard of fifty-five.

Tipsy has a voice that does not carry. Tipsy has never once been able to cut across a room. And the honest truth, the one Tipsy does not say, is that there have been a great many afternoons of sitting on a wall with exactly the right thing to say and no way at all of getting it into the middle.

Tipsy could have stayed on the wall. It would have been easier, and nobody would have blamed Tipsy for it, because nobody would have noticed.

Tipsy got down off the wall and tip-toed into the middle of the yard.

And stood there. Not talking. Just standing, in the middle, being extremely still, in the way Tipsy is still — which is a thing you cannot ignore for long, because it is so entirely unlike everything else that is happening.

One by one, they stopped.

"Breathe in the fluff," said Tipsy, when it was quiet enough not to have to shout. "Breathe out the huff."

Fifty-five fluffs, in a yard, at four o'clock on the longest working day of the year: in through the nose, tummy out like a balloon, and a long slow one out. Then another. Then a third, because the third is the one that works.

Somebody laughed at nothing. Somebody apologised about the ladder. Huffy went and got the dropped lantern and found it was fine.

"Right," said Winky. "Last stretch. Who's where?"

And they did the last stretch properly, and nobody fell out again, and the path was lit by twenty past six.

Afterwards Zenny came and sat on the wall next to Tipsy and said, "That was the loudest thing anybody did all day."

"Nobody could hear me," said Tipsy.

"I know," said Zenny. "So you stopped talking. Very good idea."

Truly had been sitting on the step with a mug since lunchtime, not drinking it.

The problem was this. Truly had done the bridge hooks that morning — the outside ones, over the water — and had done them fast, because a queue had formed behind, and had not gone back to check them. And at about one o'clock, walking past, Truly had noticed that three of them were hooked through the wire and not the loop.

Through the wire is fine. Through the wire holds a lantern beautifully for about four hours and then the wire opens out like a paperclip.

Nobody would ever know. That was the awful part. They would go in the water tonight in the dark, in the middle of the party, and everyone would say what a shame, the wind, and Truly would say nothing, and it would be over.

Chatty had been talking at Truly for some minutes, and then stopped, and made a space, and sat in it.

Truly took a breath.

"I did the bridge hooks wrong," said Truly. "This morning. Three of them. They'll hold till about eight and then they'll open."

Saying it took four seconds. Truly had spent five hours on it.

"Right," said Chatty, and was gone up the lane at speed.

They were redone before five. Oopsy came and helped, and did not once say anything about whose fault it was, having had a similar sort of afternoon.

"Doesn't it get easier?" Oopsy asked.

"No," said Truly. "It gets lighter. Afterwards. Not before."