Pinky's Day

By the middle of the morning I had the whole land organised, and it happened the way it always happens, which is that nobody decided it.

Somebody said "who's doing the wicks?" and looked at me. Somebody else said "who knows where the spare glass is?" and looked at me. And I said yes, and yes, and of course, and made a list — and the list got longer, and my own name was written on it four separate times.

Wicks. Glass. Oil. The hooks past the orchard, because nobody had claimed those.

"You matter, and so do I," I said, quietly, to a bucket. It is a good line. It is a great deal easier to say than to do.

Here is the part of my day that nobody saw, and it is the part I was actually good at.

Handing out work is not admin. It is the most delicate thing that happened in that yard all morning, and I only understood it properly afterwards.

Because a job is not a job. A job is a thing you are handing to a particular fluff, who will then be standing in a particular place for four hours, with particular company or none.

I put Mello on the oil with Sharey, because Sharey needed an hour without being hurried and Mello is the only fluff in this land who can give somebody an hour.

I did not put Nopsy on the bridge. Somebody else did that later, and Nopsy handed it straight back — kindly, out loud, with the reason attached — and I was glad, because I had left the bridge off Nopsy's list on purpose and had not said why to anybody.

And I got one badly wrong at half past seven in the morning, though it was not mine to get wrong: the bank job went to a fluff who is frightened of the bank, in front of about fifteen of us, and every one of us watched them say yes and not one of us looked at their face. Hushy heard them say oh afterwards. Chatty ran it round the land. Bravo took it off them by mid-morning and stood at the top of that bank and said out loud that it was frightening.

I told Bravo he did not have to.

"I know," said Bravo.

And then there was Lonny, who had been at the edge of my yard since eight o'clock being available.

I went over, the way I always go over, already talking, already carrying something, already halfway into asking Lonny to help me with the glass.

"No," said Lonny.

I stopped.

"I mean —" Lonny had gone a colour. "I don't mean no. I mean I've been standing here all morning trying to say a thing and you keep getting there first." A breath. "Can I do the orchard hooks? For you. Not with you. For you."

And I heard myself say: "That's kind, but honestly it's quicker if I —"

It's quicker if I.

I have said that sentence approximately nine thousand times in my life and I had never once heard it from the outside until that morning, standing in a yard with a fluff in front of me who had spent two hours working up to eleven words.

Handy went past with an armful of rope and did not even stop. "Pinky. Let them."

So I crossed both arms over my chest and tapped, slowly. Left. Right. Left. Right. And underneath the tapping was a thing I do not say out loud very often: that being the one who helps is also an extremely good way of never being the one who needs anything.

"Yes," I said. "Yes please. The orchard hooks. Thank you, Lonny."

Lonny went off up that lane at a sort of skip, carrying a job, about four inches taller.

And I sat down on an upturned bucket in the middle of the busiest morning of the year and did absolutely nothing for a count of ten, and the land did not fall over.

I did not do very much at Winky's, and that is the achievement.

I sat down at about nine o'clock and I stayed sat down. Twice I got up to fetch something for somebody and both times somebody else said "sit down, Pinky" and meant it, and both times I did.

Snuggs came in at about six with empty arms, and I saw it from clear across the gate and knew exactly what it was, because I have stood like that myself about four hundred times.

I did not get there. Lovey did, and I only heard what was said much later, from Lovey, at the party: that thirty fluffs had been hugged today and nobody had hugged Snuggs, and that it took Snuggs three goes to ask for one back, and that Mopsy came over and made it three without being asked at all.

Three goes. To ask for a hug. From the fluff who hands them out for a living.

There we are, I thought. That is what I look like. That is exactly what I look like, from outside, on an ordinary Tuesday.

Then Beamy read the whole day off an envelope, and my line was Pinky — the jobs list, and let Lonny do the orchard — which I thought was a strange pair of things to put together until I thought about it for a minute.

And then Rainbow, who had been away a whole season carrying a cloud on his own and had told nobody he was tired, sat on a wall and said it was grey, and let fifty-five fluffs wait for him.

I cried a bit at that. I am not going to pretend I did not.