then it’s a Bible Ball I shall carry.”
I spotted Tiddy Rex warding the Alehouse against the Old Ones. The barkeep often asked him to perform the odd job, now that he’d achieved the great age of nine.
“Then you must learn our customs,” I said, waving at Tiddy Rex. “Here’s a boy who’ll teach you everything.”
Tiddy Rex came bouncing over. “Doesn’t you look beautiful, Miss Briony!”
“Thank you, Tiddy Rex!” I said. “And here I’d been thinking this frock makes me look slightly dead.” Black is not a happy color for me, but then, funeral clothes do not specialize in happiness.
“Not a bit o’ it, Miss Briony,” said Tiddy Rex. “You doesn’t look a bit dead!”
Tiddy Rex is the one person who can make me smile. He’s a very decent specimen of nine-year-old boyhood.
“You’ve heard of Mister Eldric, I daresay,” I said. “But I’ll tell you something about him you must never tell anyone else. Promise?”
“Promise!”
“Mister Eldric doesn’t come from our planet at all. He comes from a faraway place out in the sky called Earth.”
When Tiddy Rex smiled, each of his several million freckles lit up.
“But now that he’s here, in the Dragon Constellation, he has to learn our ways, so he can protect himself against the Old Ones. You were warding the Alehouse, just now. Explain it to Mister Eldric, will you?”
“Us mixes wine an’ bread, Mister Eldric, an’ puts it round by the door an’ the windows so them Old Ones doesn’t come creeping in.”
Tiddy Rex paused, then added, “Wine an’ bread be church things, you knows, Mister Eldric, an’ them Old Ones, they doesn’t care for church.”
Wine and bread. This has always seemed rather ghoulish to me, as though one were smearing the threshold with Puree of Christ.
“Thank you, Tiddy Rex. Such things are undoubtedly puzzling to a person from Earth.”
“You’re a fine lad.” Cecil made a great show of opening his fingers to reveal a coin. “Such a deal of money. I wonder how many toffees that will buy you?”
“Sixpence a bag,” said Tiddy Rex. “But licorice be the thing for me, begging your pardon, Mister Cecil.”
“I like licorice,” said Rose.
“Tiddy Rex,” I said, “how do you like pork?”
“I likes it fine, Miss Briony.”
“Please help me with this,” I said. “They’ve given me such a lot—the whole pig, minus the squeak.”
Tiddy Rex laughed and snickled in between me and Eldric, and once we got to eating, the idea of happiness returned to me. Not the feeling, the idea. Would a regular girl be happy simply eating a hot meal with a great deal of chew to it? Maybe happiness is a simple thing. Maybe it’s as simple as the salty taste of pork, and the vast deal of chewing in it, and how, even when the chew is gone, you can still scrape at the bone with your bottom teeth and suck at the marrow.
“Robert’s birthday is June twenty-seventh,” said Rose, apropos of absolutely nothing.
Robert is the fireman Rose most admires.
“When’s your birthday?”
She meant Eldric, which I found interesting. She’s never asked about Cecil’s birthday.
“It’s a very special birthday,” said Eldric. “It’s the only birthday you can make into a sentence. Can you guess what it is?”
I thought about it. “Yes, oh August One,” I said, which set Eldric to laughing and Tiddy Rex asking me to explain.
“I was joking,” I said. “My real guess is that it’s March fourth, as in,
“You be ever so clever, Miss Briony,” said Tiddy Rex.
It’s lovely to be clever and have little boys remark on it and have big boys smile curling lion’s smiles.
Hurrah for the smell of gravy, all blood and butter and yum!
Hurrah for the smell of pork, all sizzle and dark and chomp!
Hurrah for a snickly boy, all round and grubby and snug!
“Briony hasn’t any birthday,” said Rose.
“I feel certain she does,” said Cecil, whose birthday I happen to know is April Fools’ Day.
“No birthday?” said Eldric.
“It’s one of our strange customs, here in the Dragon Constellation,” I said. “I’ll tell you about it later.” But I had nothing to tell. Rose has such very peculiar theories on the passing of time. I mustn’t listen to the chiming of midday or midnight, I have no birthday. When I ask why, she says it’s a secret.
“The Chime Child,” said Rose, “was born at the Mirk and Midnight Hour.”
“Hush!” I said. “She might hear. It’s rude to talk about a person behind her back.”
There came a sudden rush to the bar. The music was about to begin. Quick, Tiddy Rex—cough!
Tiddy Rex didn’t cough.
“I like the fiddle.” Rose turned her chair to face the musicians.
“I like it too.” Father stood up, holding his old fiddle.
A murmur arose from the people standing about. “You astonish me, Larkin!” said Dr. Rannigan. “I thought you’d given up the fiddle for good.”
Dr. Rannigan couldn’t possibly be as astonished as I: I’d seen Father lock away his fiddle. He locked it up, literally, in the silver cupboard. He didn’t throw away the key—he’s not showy enough for that—but he did the next best thing: He dropped it into his pocket and vanished from the Parsonage. He did come back every evening—one does have to keep up appearances—but he came home only to sleep, and then, never with Stepmother.
“Good lad!” cried Mr. Sly. “Us been missing them fingers o’ yours.”
“I’ll be rusty,” said Father.
How ill he’d been then, falling into ever-longer stretches of confusion, his eyes unnaturally bright, as though he were burning up from the inside. And after Stepmother had nursed him with utter devotion, what does he do but lock away his fiddle and absent himself from our lives. He did make a full recovery, though, which is too bad.
But I mustn’t think about it, for it makes me angry, and anger and I do not get along.
“Will you sing with us, Briony?” said Father. “Just as we did in the old days?”
How dare he ask! He, Father, who’d been well for three whole years but not brought out the fiddle until today. How dare he!
“I like Briony singing,” said Rose.
“I should like to hear you,” said Eldric.
I shook my head. I wouldn’t sing, not with Father. He’d broken off our ritual of singing every evening, and never a word of explanation. He sang wonderful songs, or so I’d thought. I must have been fond of him then.
Anyway, I can’t sing anymore.
Father had grown rusty, but only a little. I don’t like to admire Father, but it’s true that the old tunes sounded complete with the fiddle added back in. The fiddle stitched all the other sounds together—the whistle, the accordion, and the drum, which Davy Wallace played remarkably well despite his missing hand.
Eldric’s fidgety fingers reached for the salt and pepper shakers. Pepper bowed to Salt; Salt bowed to Pepper; and away they went, gliding through the cutlery and plates and splashes of gravy.
Eldric leaned toward me. He smelled of pine and thunder and soap. London soap must be the cleanest soap in all the world. “I always forget,” he said. “It’s Pepper who’s the man, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is,” I said. “At least here in the Dragon Constellation.” Eldric was not unlike Tiddy Rex. He could make me smile too.
Father played the opening bars of “True Thomas.” I couldn’t imagine Father was actually going to sing. Then he’d have to open those scratches he pretended were his lips.
But Father looked my way. “Do you still know every verse?” No, of course he wasn’t going to sing, not Father.
I declined to answer. He wasn’t going to flatter me into singing with him. He couldn’t disappear for three
