15. The Paperwork
In which the contracts arrive...
Griffin, Graphic and Gimbal came through the door together, and it took less than the time it took Gossamer to look up from the bar for the room to understand that something had happened.
“WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” said Gantry, with the enthusiasm of someone who suspected the answer would be good value.
“Wicken Fen,” said Griffin. “Fenella Burnish’s workshop.”
This produced the kind of silence that meant several conversations stopped at once.
“The Fenella Burnish?” said Girdle.
“There’s only the one,” said Griffin.
“She’s offered us jobs,” said Gimbal, before Griffin could arrange the story into whatever order she’d intended for it. “All three of us. Starting in a week.”
Girdle sat down rather suddenly on the nearest stool, as though the news required a lower centre of gravity to be properly absorbed. @AngleofRepose looked up from her journals with the particular stillness of someone recalculating whether the room was worth returning her attention to.
“Jobs,” said Girdle. “What sort of jobs?”
“Glasswork,” said Griffin. “Records. And whatever it is Gimbal does that makes things special.”
“WHAT DOES GIMBAL DO?” said Gantry.
“I don’t know yet,” said Gimbal. “Fenella Burnish didn’t either. She said she’d work out what to call it.”
Graphic said nothing at all. She had gone to her usual place by the window and stood there, still wearing her coat, which everyone present understood to mean considerably more than if she’d spoken.
“So you’re leaving?” said Girdle.
“We’re not leaving,” said Griffin. “We’d still live here. We’d just be paid somewhere else.”
“Paid,” said Girdle, and stopped, in the manner of someone who had walked into a low doorway she’d known was there.
Before this could go any further, Gasket came through from the back with an envelope held flat on both paws, the way she might have carried something warm from the oven.
“This came for you three,” she said. “By hand. There wasn’t anybody at the door when I answered it.”
The envelope itself drew a small crowd before it had even been opened, the same upright, evenly spaced hand as before, but the paper beneath it was heavier, cream rather than white, and the flap had been sealed with a disc of violet wax pressed with what looked, on close inspection, like the mark of a glazier’s pliers.
“Well,” said @ChristmasStars, taking the envelope and turning it over once, “that’s definitely Fenella Burnish’s mark.”
She broke the seal carefully, drew out three sheets, and held them up to the window before she read a word, the way she’d held Fenella’s letters up before. Each sheet carried a small, worked border along one edge, a repeating pattern of leaded panes in three shades of ink, and beneath it, in the same careful hand, Terms of Employment.
“She’s decorated a contract,” said Girdle, faintly.
“She decorates everything,” said Griffin. “She probably can’t help it.”
Christmas Stars sat down properly and began to read aloud.
“Remuneration. Sunflower seeds, twenty per week, payable every Friday.”
“Twenty,” said Girdle.
“Twenty,” confirmed Christmas Stars.
“Is that twenty total? For all of them?” asked Girdle.
Christmas Stars checked. “It says per employee.”
“TWENTY SEEDS EACH!” said Gantry, from the direction of the fireplace, with the tone of someone who had just heard extremely good news about somebody else’s life. “THAT’S NEARLY A SMALL JAR.”
“It’s not nearly a small jar,” said Girdle, and something in the way she said it made Gantry go quiet.
“Hours,” Christmas Stars went on. “Nine until five, six days, one day designated rest, to be agreed in advance and not substituted without notice.”
“Which day?” said Girdle.
“It doesn’t say.”
“Somebody has to say.”
“It says to be agreed. I expect that means by Fenella Burnish,” said Christmas Stars.
Gasket asked, “Are there breaks?”
“There are breaks,” Christmas Stars confirmed. “Fifteen minutes in the morning and afternoon and thirty minutes at one o’clock for food.” She paused over the next line. “Not to be taken at the bench.”
“WHY NOT AT THE BENCH?” asked Gantry.
“Because she works with glass,” said Gasket, “and old glass and buttered toast have never mixed well.”
“Holiday,” Christmas Stars read. “Ten days a year, outside restoration season, of which none is currently stated, and one further day for a birthday, provided seven days’ notice of when the birthday falls.”
“Restoration season is the winter,” said Grisaille. “November to February. Christmas and Easter mostly.”
“Wouldn’t that be inconvenient?” asked Geometry. “For the services.”
"They manage," said Grisaille.
Christmas Stars folded the contracts along their existing creases and passed one to each of them, Griffin, then Gimbal, then Graphic last, who took hers without moving from the window.
“When is Graphic’s birthday?” said Girdle, looking round.
Nobody knew. Nobody had ever known. This settled over the room for a moment the way a fact does when nobody had previously thought to mind it and everybody suddenly did.
“IS IT TODAY?” asked Gantry.
“It is almost certainly not today,” said Angle.
“HOW DO YOU KNOW IT’S NOT TODAY?”
“Because nobody’s ever needed to know,” said Angle, not looking up. “Any gerbil who wants a birthday only has to mention it, and we celebrate it. Immediately.”
Graphic, still by the window, still in her coat, gave no indication either way.
Griffin looked down at the sheet still in her own hand, read the birthday clause again, and did not fold it away this time.
Gasket had got as far as reaching for the good teapot, the one kept for occasions and stopped with her paw an inch from the handle. She stood there a moment, looking at it as though it had changed while her back was turned, then took the ordinary one instead and said nothing about why.
Girdle, who had been about to start counting the days until Friday out loud, the way she counted most things she was pleased about, found she had stopped wanting to say the number and put her paw back in her lap.
Gantry, who had not gone quiet twice running in living memory, went quiet a second time, and stayed that way rather longer than the previous time.
Further down the bar, two gerbils who had been restocking the shelves put down what they were carrying and did not immediately pick anything else up. Nobody had told them to stop.
Angle turned a page of the atlas, though nobody had seen her read anything on it for some minutes, and said, without particular emphasis, to nobody in particular, “The bar’s gone quiet.”
“You’re right,” said Christmas Stars, looking around. “And there don’t seem to be as many gerbils on duty as usual.”
“And they’re sad, I think,” Angle said, and she had stopped turning pages altogether now and looked around the room instead. “It’s very peculiar.”
@EdithStourton said simply, “It seems Griffin, Graphic, and Gimbal’s job offers have deeply unsettled the gerbils.”
https://myrtlelion.substack.com/p/15-the-paperwork