Known a couple like him in my time.
Bet you have, Mrs. Young, the girl said.
You be careful round him.
I can handle myself, the girl said. Don’t you worry.
May sat in the sweet smell of May. She could feel herself all down herself, cold now, very unpleasant, all round and down her legs. The girl pushed her along the dark pavement, round a corner, and the road turned into a crowd. There was a great noise and a great smell of food, and there were people all over the place, standing and sitting around even in this cold. There were stalls, places you could get things to eat. It was like a circus, or a hanging. The place was mobbed. People standing in a queue parted for them so they could push through; the girl laughed and told May the queue was for the Portaloos.
Well, I don’t need to go, now.
This we know, the girl said.
Where are we?
Greenwich, the girl said behind her.
Oh.
You said. You wanted to come, the girl said.
Did I? It’s the Greenwich Fair, is it?
Could call it that, the girl said.
The girl pushed the chair up a ramp into a big hut with heaters in it. Oh, it was warm! A woman wheeled her through the back and there were sinks, with taps and all. There was hot water and things for cleaning people up in this hut. It was marvellous what was possible in a hut these days, and a kind woman washed her down with a showerhead and towelled her dry and there was baby powder too, in a cupboard in the hut. When the girl came back she’d brought blue pyjamas, with trousers, and a jumper and a coat and things.
Cut this thing off my wrist, will you, girl?
The girl found a pair of scissors and she cut the plastic thing with the date of her birth on it off. That felt better, it did. Then the girl wheeled her back through to the door of the hut where there was a chap sitting waiting. He was an older chap but he was quite a looker. He wasn’t wearing a suit.
This is Mark, Mrs. Young, she said. He’s the one who found you. He’s going to take you to his house for tonight and make sure you’re okay.
Not Harbour House.
She’s scared of boats, the girl said.
I’m not scared of boats.
The man shook her hand.
Careful where you touch. Couldn’t keep it in.
Understandable, the man said.
You’re nice and clean now, the girl said.
The man was going to take her somewhere warm. It would be a pleasure, he said. He said he’d pick her up at the main road, if the girl, he called the girl Joe, would have her ready waiting at the kerbside so he could just duck the car in quick.
The girl wheeled May back out into the great crowd, through all the people. It was a great celebration. It was just like after the war. The girl stopped the chair and came round the front and bent down to fix the scarf round May’s neck, make sure the hat was properly on.
What’s it all for?
God, you smell loads better now, she said. You actually smell positively nice.
If it’s got to come out it’s got to come out. No stopping it.
The girl turned with one arm round May and pointed above the crowd, up at the backs of the houses.
See those windows? See that one in the middle? He’s in there, she said.
The man in the suit?
He’s not in a suit, not as far as I know, the girl said.
Well, I’m not dead yet, then.
You said it, the girl said.
For 29 January
Dear Mrs. Young,
I’m sorry not to be there in person this year, I’m in Canada on secondment and won’t be home in the UK again till the end of February.
But am sending this card to say hello.
With best wishes.
I hope you are well.
Miles
THE
fact is, London might not always be here! There have been times in the history of London that London practically stopped existing! Brooke stands next to the Shepherd Galvano-Magnetic Clock. She holds her sides. It is what you do when you are getting your breath back. Then she feels her jeans pocket to check for the Moleskine book. Moleskine books are notebooks that were famously used by famous authors like Ernest Hemingway and Bruce someone. She can feel the edge of the sticker Anna stuck on its cover. The word HISTORY is in her pocket. That is quite cool! For example there is when Queen Boudicca burned London to the ground which was to do with a tribe called the Iceni tribe and the uprising they were part of. If you were being witty with words that is what you could call what Brooke just did right now when she ran up the slope: up-rising. To be more literal she did it a moment ago and it took under a minute yip yip! Brooke Bayoude Fastest Runner In World Coming In Well Below 60 Second Mark. You can leave the word the out of Fastest Runner In World and in other places because it is a headline kind of thing and people will understand that the word the is there even if it isn’t actually there. It means the word the is implied. But it would obviously have been a lot faster than 54 seconds if she hadn’t had to dodge a lot of people. A lot of people have decided to visit the Observatory today due to it being the Easter holidays. The Shepherd Galvano-Magnetic Clock is a slave clock. A slave clock is a clock driven by a master clock, whose mechanism is elsewhere from the slave clock. The Shepherd Galvano-Magnetic Clock also has 23 hours marked on it instead of just the normal 12, like it is a double-length clock plus an 0 at the top where 12 midnight and noon would be, to make 24. It means that sometimes it is actually nothing o’clock. Nothing o’clock! What time is it? It’s a quarter past nothing. It’s half past nothing. Doctor, Doctor, I think I’m a clock. Well, don’t go getting all wound up about it. Joke from the days before watch batteries and digital. Brooke’s own watch is new. It is a Me To You watch. The picture on it is of a bear holding out a flower so that every time you look at the time it is as if the bear would like to give you the flower. It was from her mother and father on her birthday and it came with an actual bear that has been made to look like it is old though it isn’t, it is new with a pretend patch sewn into its face with big stitches. This is because old-looking things are more lovable. The bear is called Tatty Teddy. 54 seconds is Brooke’s first up-slope score (according to the watch) since she became ten. She has been ten for one day. She became it on Sunday 11 April. Ten on eleven April twenty ten. It will be particularly good next year because she will be 11 on 11.4.2011! Last year at school Brooke told Wendy Slater that there is a whole other range of numbers other than the usual ones that come after twenty-nine, that go twenty ten, twenty eleven, twenty twelve, twenty thirteen. Wendy Slater believed her and altered her homework accordingly is what the letter home said about it THINK YOU’RE SO CLEVER Brooke’s class has had Mr. Warburton as its teacher now for two years. There is no doubting Brooke’s intelligence. Her verbal dexterity is notable and she is wonderfully imaginative and of course we do not have a problem with that or either of these things. But sometimes her infectious imagination can be vertiginous for her peers THINK YOU’RE THE CLEVEREST vertiginous: makes you feel dizzy.
But the fact is, Greenwich, right now, with all the buildings down there that people come here specially to look at, and the towers that are from now, and the old buildings that are historical, was once, way back in time, quite bustling and so on exactly like it is bustling today. But then out of nowhere and in a way no one could have predicted it all just stopped being bustling, not just when Queen Boudicca set fire to London and burned it down, but also when the Roman Empire began to not be an empire. Then, for some reason that is historical, London stopped being a port that was important — ha! the important port stopped being important. Greenwich was very important back then, historians know now, because it had a temple and a shrine and so on.