Truly's Day

I did the bridge hooks first thing, and I did them fast, because a queue had formed behind me.

That is the whole of it, really. There was a queue. Four fluffs waiting with armfuls of lanterns, and the outside hooks are over the water and awkward, and I could feel every one of them waiting.

So I went quickly, and I did not go back to check.

At about one o'clock I walked past the bridge on my way to somewhere else and saw it.

Three of them were hooked through the wire instead of through the loop.

Through the wire is fine. That is what makes it so bad. Through the wire holds a lantern beautifully for about four hours and then the wire opens out slowly, like a paperclip, under the weight.

Four hours from eight in the morning is noon. Four hours of evening weight, in the cold, with a candle in it, is about eight o'clock tonight — over the water, in the dark, in the middle of the party.

And nobody would ever have known.

That is the part I want written down, because it is the part that kept me on that step. Not the mistake. Everybody makes mistakes and I have made plenty and I own up to them, that is practically the thing I am for.

It was that this one had a perfect exit. They would have gone in the water at eight o'clock in the dark with everybody inside at Winky's, and somebody would have said what a shame, the wind the next morning, and I would have said nothing, and it would have been over. Not a lie. Just — a shape I could have stepped out of.

I sat on the step with a mug and did not drink it, from about one o'clock.

Chatty came and talked at me. Properly at me — the rope, and the bank swap, and Huffy, and four more sentences after most fluffs would have noticed.

And then Chatty noticed.

"Sorry. Sorry. Your go."

"It's fine."

"It's not, though." And then Chatty said the thing that undid me, which was not encouragement and was not a question. Chatty said: 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.

And then sat there. Visibly finding it difficult. For a whole minute.

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

Four seconds. I had spent five hours on it and the saying of it took four seconds.

"Right," said Chatty, and was gone up the lane before I had finished breathing out.

They were redone before five. Oopsy came and helped and did not once say anything about whose fault it was, which I understood better later when I heard what sort of afternoon Oopsy had been having.

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

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

The three hooks held. Obviously they held; they were done properly the second time. Nothing happened at eight o'clock, and the not-happening is invisible, and that is fine.

What I did not expect was Beamy's envelope.

Truly — said the bridge hooks were wrong while there was still time.

While there was still time. Beamy had got the point exactly, which surprised me, because the point is not the owning up. Anybody can own up at nine the next morning. The point was the four o'clock deadline sitting behind it.

Sparkly shouted it off the gatepost too, earlier, when the bridge came alight — that's Truly's, done twice, and the second time was better — and I stood in the lane and let that happen and did not correct it.

I sat with Hushy for a bit at Winky's, in the quiet corner by the dresser, and we did not say very much, and it was restful. Two fluffs who both found out today that the difficult part is not the knowing.