“It’s your decision, Miss Next,” said the guard, “but someone has to take that boat or I’m out of a job—and I’ve got a bony wife and two small skeletons to put through college.”

I turned back to Cindy, put out my hand and she shook it, then pulled me forward and hugged me tightly while whispering in my ear, “Thank you, Thursday. Keep an eye on Spike for me.”

She hopped quickly into the boat before I had a chance to change my mind. She gave a wan smile and sat in the bows as the ferryman leaned on his pole, sending the small boat noiselessly across the river. Against the burden of her sins, saving me was only small recompense, but she felt better for it, and so did I. As the boat containing Cindy faded into the mists of the river, I turned and walked back towards the pedestrian footbridge, the Southside of the Dauntsey services—and life.

42.

Explanations

State Funeral Attracts World’s Leaders

Millions of heartbroken citizens of England and the most important world leaders arrived in Wigan yesterday to pay tribute to President George Formby, who died two weeks ago. The funeral cortege was driven on a circuitous route of the Midlands, the streets lined with mourners, eager to bid a final good-bye to England’s President of the past thirty-nine years. At the memorial service in Wigan Cathedral, the new Chancellor, Mr. Redmond van de Poste, spoke warmly of the great man’s contribution to world peace. After the Lancashire Male Voice Choir sang “With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock,” accompanied by two hundred ukuleles, the Chancellor invited the Queen of Denmark to sing with him a duet of “Your Way Is My Way,” something that “might well serve to patch the rift between our respective nations.”

Article in The Toad, August 4, 1988

It was touch and go for a moment,” said Landen, who was sitting by my hospital bed holding my hand. “There was a moment when we really didn’t think you’d make it.”

I gave a wan smile. I had regained consciousness only the day before, and every movement felt like daggers in my head. I looked around. Joffy and Miles and Hamlet were there, too. “Hi, guys.”

They smiled and welcomed me back.

“How long?” I asked in a whisper.

“Two weeks,” said Landen. “We really thought . . . thought—”

I gently squeezed his hand and looked around.

Land divined my thoughts perfectly. “He’s with his grand-mother.”

I raised a hand to touch the side of my head but could feel only a heavy bandage. Landen took my hand and returned it to the sheet.

“What . . . ?”