‘Look what I found,’ said Moorcus and only then did he let go of my plug, dropping it suddenly to the ground as if it were something repellent. I cupped James Henry quickly in my hands, and hid it away back in my pocket.

‘Oh God, Moorcus, must you really bring that thing in here?’ sighed Stunly. It was Stunly’s general condition to sound bored and weary.

‘No doubt he’ll start snivelling and hearing things and we shall have to listen to him spout nonsense,’ said Duvit, taking hold of me by an ear. ‘Admit it, Clod, you’re batty and broken. Why don’t you just get yourself lost in the heaps, do us all a favour and drown yourself out there, why not set off now? Clod, answer me once and for all, what’s the use of you?’

‘I’ve a task for the weird thing,’ said Moorcus, ‘it’s inspection tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow,’ said Stunly, ‘when was that announced?’

‘The Little Uncle just declared it.’ He meant Uncle Timfy. ‘Part of the shake-up about Rosamud’s bloody door handle. So the weird thing here, this odd bit, can polish our objects for us, can’t you?’

‘Oh, no, please, Moorcus. Not that.’

‘Mr Moorcus.’

‘Please, Mr Moorcus. I’d rather do your shoes.’

‘I don’t care what you’d rather anything, Clod, get cleaning, and stop talking. We don’t wish to hear you.’

And so I was given their birth objects to clean for inspection. Touching someone else’s birth object is a very discomforting thing, it never seemed right, it’s all together too personal. I sat at a table and with varnish cleaned Duvit’s wooden doorstop which said to me in a croaked voice Muriel Binton and Stunly’s fine folding pocket rule (Julius John Middleton) and last of all Moorcus’s medal marked FOR VALOUR with its red and yellow striped ribbon which never said a word to me unlike the doorstop and the pocket rule, and despite its shine and swank it always seemed a very poor, characterless thing. It frightened me more than a little, this silent thing, I never wanted to be near it. It made no sound. It seemed to me utterly dead, as if I were touching a corpse. They kept me at it until the train came screaming back, and that, as always, got everyone nervous.

‘What do we think?’ asked Moorcus. ‘Shall we let the foul thing go?’

Duvit retrieved his doorstop and put it back into his inside jacket pocket where it usually lived. Stunly took his rule, and snapped it open and shut a few times,

‘Thank you, Clod,’ he said, ‘good work,’ and went back to his book.

‘Cut along then,’ said Moorcus, ‘before I change my mind. Say “thank you”.’

‘Thank you,’ I mumbled.

‘Thank you, Mr Moorcus,’ said Moorcus.