26. Saturday
In which nobody eats a terrible sandwich...
The Bluestocking kitchen had been closed to non-essential personnel since seven am.
This was Gourmet’s phrase, delivered through the hatch to anyone who approached, and its enforcement had so far turned away four gerbils, a patron looking for the milk, and Gasket, who had only wanted her own teapot back and had been told it was being used to hold the stock.
Inside, Gourmet, Grub and Gastronome worked at three stations with the calm of a field hospital. There were rolls in baskets and fillings in labelled bowls, and a list pinned to the cupboard door in Gourmet’s hand which nobody outside the kitchen had been permitted to read.
“Nobody,” said Gourmet, not for the first time, “is eating a terrible sandwich today. Not on my watch. Gosie spent three months eating egg that wasn’t even interesting egg. Priced,” she added, with feeling, “as though spiritual elevation were a filling.”
“Goats’ cheese,” said Grub, reading from the list. “Rocket. The good chutney.”
“Which good chutney?” said Gastronome. “There are three good chutneys.”
“The apricot one for the goats’ cheese. The dark one for the cheddar. The one in the unlabelled jar goes to @ErrolTheDragon, because Errol is the only one who can eat it without sitting down afterwards.”
The flasks were filled with hot chocolate in relays and stood in ranks on the side like a small silver choir. Grub counted them twice and got the same number both times, which she reported as a triumph, and nobody in the kitchen disagreed with her.
The bar, meanwhile, had become a marshalling yard.
“Scotland,” said @AngleofRepose, from behind the atlas, which was open at the map inside the front cover. “@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius. Glasgow first.”
“And the island one,” said Wolef, winding a scarf. “The little cathedral. I’m doing the island one.”
“Take @Swashbuckled for Cumbrae,” said Marie de Gournay. “It’s not called the Cathedral of the Isles for nothing.”
“I’m already taking the galleon,” said Swashbuckled, who was by the door with a sea chest packed to a standard the room had learned not to comment on. “I have been ready to sail for forty minutes.”
“WHO’S GOT LIVERPOOL?” said Gantry, from the fireplace.
“Errol,” said several voices at once.
“Errol has got the whole northwest,” said Angle.
“Errol is the whole northwest,” said @Boiledbeetle, from her stool, and went back to her teacake.
Errol, filling the doorway and a certain amount of the yard beyond it, rumbled something agreeable that made the glasses ring, and three gerbils climbed aboard with a picnic basket between them as though boarding a bus they had used all their lives.
@FuzzyPuffling was not present, which surprised nobody, and had been assigned Cornwall. @ChristmasStars simply said, “Truro and Exeter are covered,” and everyone took it as settled.
The rest went in a rush that no minutes could have survived.
@Chickadeeinme and @RandomHypatia took the southwest from Devon to Bristol, on the grounds that Hypatia wanted to see a wall there anyway. @EdithStourton took East Anglia’s remainder with Brains and Batshit and a boot of provisions. @DauntlessDamson and @Thehorticulturalhussie took Yorkshire between them, exchanging the entire plan in about nine syllables.
@ifIwerenotanandroid took the south coast, @EmpressaurusKitty took Kitty and the Thames Valley, @Magpiecomplex took Kent because she was going there regardless, @NotAtMyAge took the East Midlands with a comment about longboat country that nobody pursued, while @RumNotRun took the West Midlands and @PastaAllaNorma took the Welsh borders.
@AnonyMumAuDHD agreed to the northeast. @MarieDeGournay took a list of the awkward ones, the locked ones, the ones with telephone numbers that rang without answer, and MyrtleLion stood at the bar handing out sunflower seeds for the journeys, ordinary ones, and saying nothing about the box with the hinged lid behind the bar.
Every group had gerbils. Nobody assigned them. They simply appeared beside the patrons in twos and threes, carrying string, spare pencils and in one case a folding stool, and it was understood that this was how it would be.
Glossy came out of the darkroom with a crate.
“Cameras,” she said. “One each. They come back to me and to nobody else. You do not open the back. You do not let anyone helpful open the back. If a verger offers to have the film developed locally, you thank the verger and you leave.” She issued them one at a time, checking each one against a list, and made every recipient repeat the part about the back before she would let go of the strap.
By eleven the bar was nearly empty, and the noise of it went out of the door, down the lane, and was gone. Gasket collected the cups. Angle turned the atlas to face the room, sat down in front of it, and stayed. Boiledbeetle emerged from somewhere with a stash of Tunnock’s teacakes and looked surprised to find the Bluestocking deserted
Gosie went to London.
Westminster Abbey on a Saturday was a queue, and then a slower queue, and then a density of people moving at the speed of the slowest audio guide. Gosie went with it rather than against it, the way she had learned to in three months of cathedrals and let everyone carry her down the nave, round the choir and out into the south transept, where the crowd thickened and slowed and tipped its head back, because the south transept was Poets’ Corner and everybody had come to look at the floor and the walls at once.
Gosie looked at the windows.
The glass above Poets’ Corner was a field of fragments. Deep purples and blues, greens shading to gold, small hot pieces of red and amber set among them, making a colourful display. And set into the field, on the diagonal, was a diamond of pale glass with a painted border, so the lozenge sat in its dark surround like a stone in a stream. Lettering in black across the pale ground. A name. Two dates.
Elizabeth Gaskell. 1810 above the name. 1865 below it.
Gosie stood in front of it for some time. She knew the name. Gaskell had written about the industrial towns, the mills and the people who worked in them, and had explained the working conditions in palatable novel-form, when it was not usual to write down such things.
She found the mark below the lozenge and to the left, at the height where nobody looks.
Not the Mark of the Margrave, but the older symbol, the curve with the trailing tail and the three diagonal lines higher on its arc than on the circle. Whole and bare, on a window only installed in 2010.
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/26-saturday