Chatty's Day

I had it round the whole land in under four minutes, which is the thing I am actually rather brilliant at and which nobody has ever once described as a skill.

Hushy stopped me in the lane at eight o'clock. Hushy had listened to me first — a good long stretch of me, the rope and the bunting and a passage about a bucket — and then, in a gap, said:

"Chatty. Somebody needs swapping off the bank job. They won't ask."

"Who?"

Hushy told me.

And I was gone. Down the lane, into the yard, to Pinky, and then to two other fluffs who could do something about it, and by mid-morning Bravo had taken the bank off them and stood at the top of it and said out loud that it was frightening, which I did not see and have now heard about from four separate fluffs.

Hushy heard one syllable. One. Under all that morning, oh — from a fluff who had said yes because everybody was watching.

I could not have heard that. I genuinely could not. I have never in my life heard something that quiet, because I am usually in the middle of a sentence.

And then at lunchtime I did the thing I do.

Truly was sitting on the step with both paws round a mug, not drinking it, and I talked at him. Properly at him. The rope, and what I had said straight away about the bank, and Huffy, and four more sentences after I should have stopped.

Then I noticed.

There is a lurch that happens in my chest at that moment and I have got quite good at recognising it: you have been talking at somebody who needed a turn.

"Sorry," I said. "Sorry. Your go."

"It's fine."

"It's not, though." And then, because it was true and because Truly of all fluffs deserved it said straight: "Can I tell you how I feel? I feel like I've been talking since seven this morning because if I stop I'll have to notice that I'm a bit worried about tonight too. There. Now it's your go, and I've made the space, and I'm going to sit here and not fill it."

I sat, with great difficulty, for a whole minute.

And in that minute Truly told me that the three bridge hooks had been done through the wire instead of the loop that morning, and would hold until about eight o'clock tonight, and then open like a paperclip — over the water, in the dark, in the middle of the party.

Truly had been sitting on that since one o'clock. Five hours.

I was up that lane before the sentence was finished. They were redone before five, with Oopsy helping and never once mentioning whose fault they were.

I talked a great deal at Winky's and I enjoyed all of it.

But the bit I keep coming back to is standing in the kitchen at about ten with Hushy, who had lasted until half past nine and then gone to the corner by the dresser where the noise only comes off one wall.

"You did the hard half this morning," I said.

"So did you," said Hushy. "Yours just looks easy."

I have been turning that over ever since. Mine does look easy. I have watched fluffs decide, right in front of me, that a thing which costs me nothing is therefore worth nothing.

Beamy read the envelope out and I was on it twice — the bank swap and the bridge hooks — and both of those were somebody else's quiet thing that I moved.