Latest / Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep / The Thimble Thief of Bramble Lane

Transcript

The Thimble Thief of Bramble Lane · Muggle Snuggle: A Boring Harry Potter Podcast to make you Sleep

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello neighbor, come in, come in, mind the umbrella stand.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: It leans a little to the left and it has
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: opinions about being hurried. I am your neighbor from down
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Bramble Lane, the one with the kettle that never quite
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: cools and the curtains that twitch at the most interesting hours,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: and I am glad you found your way here tonight.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: If you are new to our little corner of the evening,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: welcome to the fence. We lean here together most nights,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: you and I, and whoever else wanders by with a
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: blanket and nowhere else to be.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: And if you have.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Been leaning here a while, if you remember the button
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: jar and the firefly parade and all our small commotions,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: then you know.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: The way of it. Kettle on. Lights low.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Nothing expected of you except lying still. Before we begin,
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: if these tales keep you company through the small hours,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: do share them with someone who sleeps badly. Pass the
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: blanket along. That is how Bramble Lane works. And this
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: one tonight, like all the best ones, is perfect for.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Putting on while you do nothing at all.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: Let it run under your chores, under your settling, under
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: the slow business of falling asleep.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: It will hold the room warm for you.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Tonight, I want to tell you about the week the
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: thimbles started disappearing every thimble on the lane. Silver ones,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: brass ones, the porcelain one with the painted robin that Mrs.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Pettifer only brought out when the vicar visited. Gone, one
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: by one in the middle of the night, with no
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: broken latches and no footprints and no explanation anyone could
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: agree on over the fence. It cost, I do not
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: mind telling you, a tremendous amount of curtain twitching, so
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: tuck in. The kettle is singing its low song. And
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: it all began, as these things so often do, on
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: an ordinary Tuesday morning.
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: That had no idea what was coming. Mrs.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Pettifer notice first. Because Mrs. Pettifer notices everything first, including
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: on one memorable occasion, a spelling mistake in a sky-reddened
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: birthday message three streets over, she keeps her sewing things
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: in a rosewood box on the sideboard, and every item
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: in that box has a appointed place, and she can
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: tell by the weight of the lid, she says, whether
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: anything has been disturbed in the night. That Tuesday the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: lid felt wrong, half an ounce wrong, she told me later,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: standing at my gate in her housecoat with the box
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: under one arm.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: She opened it, and.
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: There it was, or rather, there it was not. The
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: porcelain robin thimble, gone. The silver one her mother had
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: carried through the war years, gone. The brass workwash she
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: used for denim, gaunt, three thimbles, vanished from a closed
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: box in a locked house, and the pincushion undisturbed, and
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: the spools of thread standing in their rack like soldiers
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: who had seen nothing and would say less. Now, I
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: know what you are thinking, because I thought it too.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Standing there in my slippers with the morning still cold
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: on the step, someone is playing a prank. pink lad
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: with a ladder, and too much evening on his hands.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: But Mrs.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Pettifer does not keep ladders where lads can find them.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Her windows were latched from the inside, every one of them,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and besides, as she pointed out with some force, no
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: lad in the history of lads has ever been.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Interested in thimbles.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: By midday the news had travelled the length of Bramble
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Lane the way news travels here, which is to say
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: faster than the post, and with more garnish.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: Alder came out to sweep a step that did not
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: need sweeping.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Old Mr.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Fenwick walked his dog past our gates four times, which
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: for Mr. Fenwick constitutes a public statement, and by tea-time
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: we had the full accounting, gathered fence by fence, and
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: it was stranger than any of us had bargained for.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: It was not only Mrs.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Pettifer.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: The Gable sisters were missing two thimbles between them. The
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: widower Mr. Sykes, who darns his own socks and wants
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: no discussion of it, was missing his only one. Young Priya,
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: who embroiders birds onto everything she owns, had lost four,
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: including the tiny gold one no bigger than a pea
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: that she wore on a chain when she was not
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: using it, which meant, and this was the part that
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: quieted the whole lane for a full minute, that whatever
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: had taken them had lifted a thimble off a sleeping
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: girl's neck without waking her. Mrs.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Alder said it was mice.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Mrs. Alder says everything is mice. There was the famous
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: autumn she attributed the church clock striking thirteen to mice,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: and the spring she blamed mice for the vicar's new
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: hat which was unkind, but the fence agreed not entirely unreasonable.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: But even Mrs.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: Alder went quiet when Priya's mother described the chain. Unclasped,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: she said. Not broken, unclasped, and laid in a neat
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: coil on the pillow beside her daughter's head. As careful
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: as you please, mice. Do not unclasp chains. Mice do
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: not coil. This was the work, we all agreed without
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: quite saying it, of fingers. That night Bramble Lane did
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: what Bramble Lane does when it is puzzled and slightly thrilled.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: It organized.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Mr. Fenwick produced from a shed that I am convinced
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: exists in more dimensions than the rest of us can see,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: a pair of ancient field glasses and a camping stool.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: The Gable sisters took up positions at their front window
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: with cocoa and a notebook, taking it in turns to
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: watch and to write down everything the other one saw,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: which meant everything got written down twice, which meant, as
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Miss Gable the elder observed, that nothing could possibly escape.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Prius Felder sat up in the front room with the
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: lamp turned low and a bell tied to the sewing basket,
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: a plan he had clearly been waiting his whole life
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: to deploy. I did my own watch from my own window,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: curtain drawn back just so, kettle within reach, because a
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: watcher without tea is just a person being cold in
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: the dark. The lane lay quiet under a thin moon.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: The street lamps burned their steady orange. A cat crossed
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: from the Sykes Gate to the Alder Hedge with the
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: unhurried dignity of a creature that has never once been
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: suspected of anything and intends to keep it that way.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Nothing happened.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: Nothing happened for a very long time, which in my
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: experience is exactly how the interesting nights begin. It was
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: past one in the morning when I heard it, a
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: sound so small I nearly folded it into the ticking
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: of my own clock and thought no more of it.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: A tap.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: A light, bright, metallic tap, like a coin dropped on
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: glass from a very small height. It came from the
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: direction of the pedifer house, and then, a breath later,
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: a second sound, a sort of contented chirrup. I cannot
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: bird unless birds have learned to sound pleased with themselves
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: about small metal objects, and not a mouse unless mice
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: have learned to unclasp chains, which, as established, they have not.
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: I leaned so far into the window frame that my
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: nose left a mark on the glass that stayed there
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: for a week. The pedifer house sat dark and ordinary.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: The gate was shut, the curtains were drawn, but on
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the doorstep, catching the edge of the streetlamp light, sat
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: something small and silver that had not been there at midnight.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I want to be careful here because this is the
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: part of the story where if I am not careful,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: you will stop believing me, and I need you to
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: believe me for the rest of it.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I know what I saw.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I stood at that window in my dressing gown with
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: my tea gone cold in my hand, and I watched
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: that doorstep for the better part of an hour, and
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: that thimble sat there gleaming, and nothing in this world
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: or the next came to fetch it. At dawn, I
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: went out in my slippers.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Before Mrs. Pettifer was even up, and I looked at
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: it where it lay. It was Mrs.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Alder's thimble i knew it at once because mrs Alder's
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: thimble has a dent in one side from the year
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: she dropped it down the well, and her husband fished
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it out with a magnet on a string, a story
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: she tells at every opportunity, and at several inopportunities. There
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: it sat on Mrs. Pettifer's step, and Mrs. Pettifer's own thimbles,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: all three of them were still gone.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: Do you see?
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: It had not been stolen. It had been moved, left deliberately,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: where it would be found like a calling card, like
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: the beginning of a conversation. I wrapped it in my handkerchief,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: and I took it home, and I sat at my
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: kitchen table, and I looked at it for a long time,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: and slowly, the way the kettle comes to the boil,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: an idea began to form. Whoever was taking the thimbles
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: was not keeping them, whoever it was had a use
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: for them somewhere else, and was borrowing them and had
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: left one behind by accident or as a promise or
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: as an invitation, and if that was so, then the
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: thing to do was not to guard our thimbles more fiercely,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: the thing to do was to offer one up freely,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: and see who came to collect I put the idea
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: to the fence that evening, and I will not pretend
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: it was received with universal enthusiasm.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: Alder said it was encouraging them. Mr. Fenwick said it
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: was the thin end of the wedge, and when I
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: asked him what he thought the thick end of the
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: wedge might be, he said.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Darkly, buttons.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: But Priya's eyes went round and bright, and Miss Gable
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: the Younger clapped her hands, and Mrs., Petitfer, after a
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: long silence during which you could practically hear her good
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: sense wrestling with her curiosity, said that her curiosity had won,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: and would I like her spare tomato pincushion for the purpose,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: so that night we set out the offering saucer, a
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: chipped blue saucer on my own doorstep in the lamplight,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: with three thimbles arranged on it in a row, one brass,
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: one silver plate, one tin, a note beside them in
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: my best handwriting, which reads, For whoeth needs them? Please
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: bring them back when you are done. No questions asked.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Priya added a biscuit. I did not ask her to,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: and I did not ask her not to. There are
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: moments in an investigation when a biscuit is exactly right.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: and this was one of them. We all went to
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: our windows. The lane held its breath. The moon, which
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: had been thin all week, chose that night to come
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: out properly, round and white as a button, and lay
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: a long, bright path straight down the middle of Bramble Lane,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: right up to my gate, as if the night itself
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: were leaning in to watch. And then, just as the
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: church clock finished striking one, something small stepped out of
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the shadow of the hedge and walked up my garden
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: path on two legs and picked up a thimble and
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: held it up to the moonlight as if to check
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: its size. It stood about as tall as a milk
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: bottle and it wore a waistcoat. I tell you this
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: plainly because there is no good way to use a
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: person into a waistcoat at one in the morning.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: A waistcoat of.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Moss green cloth with buttons like poppy seeds and a
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: pair of spectacles pushed up on its forehead and ears
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: that stood up tall and turned toward every sound the
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: way yours do when their owner is listening professionally. It was...
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: unless I am very much mistaken, and I have had
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the whole of the time since to consider the matter
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: a hair. King ordinary brown hetero hair except for the
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: waistcoat and the spectacles and the small leather satchel slung
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: over one shoulder and the arid hat of a tradesman
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: arriving punctually for an appointment, it examined each symbol in turn,
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: holding them to the moon, tapping them with one long
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: claw and listening to the ring, nodding or shaking its
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: head the way you or I might test melons at
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: a market stall. It chose the brass one and set
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: the other two back on the saucer with great care,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: exactly where they had been.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: It picked up Priya's biscuit.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Broke off precisely half, ate it with every appearance of
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: deep satisfaction, and tucked the other half into its satchel.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: And then it looked up, directly up, at my window,
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: where I stood frozen with my nose against the glass,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: and it inclined its head to me, a small, grave,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: courteous bow, as if to say, thank you for your custom.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: As if to say, no questions asked goes both ways.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: Then it turned and hopped down the path and vanished
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: into the hedge with the brass thimble tucked under one
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: arm like a rolled umbrella. Behind three separate curtains on
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: three separate gates, three separate sharp intakes of breath were heard.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: The Gable Sisters' notebook, I learned later, contains for that
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: night only the words, A, do I bowed, underlined four times. Well,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: you cannot see a thing like that and then simply
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: go to bed, though I will tell you honestly that
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: several of us tried, and none of us succeeded. and
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: by breakfast the fence was crowded with people who had
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: not slept and did not care. The question before the
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: lane was this, what does a hair in a waistcoat
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: want with eleven thimbles?
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: Because eleven was.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: The count by then, the brass one for my saucer
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: being the latest, and Mrs. Alders having been returned to
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: her stack in exchange, which made the arithmetic of the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: thing feel less like theft with every passing hour and
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: more like something else. something organized, something with a purpose
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: at the end of it.
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: Priya, who is.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Nine and therefore the cleverest person on Bramble Lane, said
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: what none of the rest of us had dared to say.
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: He is building something, she said. You do not collect
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: eleven thimbles because you like thimbles. You collect eleven thimbles
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: because you need eleven thimbles and whatever you need eleven
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: thimbles for, it is going to be worth seeing. Mr.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Fenwick.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: To everyone's surprise including, I suspect, his own, said he
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: thought he knew where. There is a place at the
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: bottom of the old orchard, past the last apple tree,
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: where the hedge grows thick over a hollow in the bank.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: He had noticed on his evening walks with the dog
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: a faint golden light thereafter dark. He had assumed, he said,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: that someone was having a bonfire, but there had never
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: been any smoke, and the dog, he added, refused to
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: go near it, which the dog also refuses to do
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: with the vet, the rain, and Mr. Fenwick's singing, so
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the fence took this testimony for exactly what it was worth.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: I yearning, as the light went amber and long across
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the gardens, A small expedition set out.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Pettifer, armed with a torch and her spare spectacles. Priya,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: armed with three more biscuits and strict instructions to stay
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: behind Mrs. Pettifer at all times. Instructions Priya fully intended
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: to obey right up until the moment she didn't.
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: Fenwick, armed with the field glasses, which were of no
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: use whatsoever at that range, but made him feel official.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: can me, armed with the kettle because someone had to
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: think practically and with my notebook because someone had to
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: write it all down for you. We found the holo,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: we found the golden light, and what we found glowing
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: inside it, neighbor, was the reason I have been saving
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: this story for a night when you had nowhere to
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: be and all the time in the world to hear it.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: The hollow was bigger than it looked from the lane,
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: the way all the best hiding places are, the hedge
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: arched over it like the roof of a tiny chapel,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and the bank fell away beneath in a curve of
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: dry earth and root and old thief mold, and there,
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: set back into the curve where the frost never quite reached,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: stood a door, a round door, green painted, with a
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: brass knob polished bright as a coin, and a knocker
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: in the shape of an acorn, and a welcome mat
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: no bigger than a playing card with the word welcome
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: on it in letters so small misses. But Trefer had
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: to put on her spare spectacles to read it and
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: then read it aloud twice, because some things deserve to
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: be read aloud twice.
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: None of us knocked.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: It did not seem to be that kind of door. Instead,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: we stood in a row at the mouth of the
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: hollow with our torches pointed politely at the ground and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: we waited. The way you wait when you know perfectly
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: well that somebody knows you are there and is deciding
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: what to do about it from inside came a sound,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: a slall, regular, metallic tapping, tap, tap, tap, tap, like
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: someone doing delicate work with great patience. Cat, and underneath
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: it very faint a humming, I cannot tell you the tune,
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: because I have never heard it before or since, but
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: it resolved as we stood there, into something I almost recognized.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: The way a half-remembered song sits just behind your teeth.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Priya leaned forward. The Gable sisters leaned forward.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: Mr. Fenwick raised the field glasses, remembered the range, and
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: lowered them again with enormous dignity. And then the round
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: door opened, and golden light poured out across the leaf mold,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: and the hair stood in the doorway, in his moss-green waistcoat,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: with his spectacles on his nose instead of his forehead,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: and a thimble in one paw, and shavings of silver
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: curling off it like apple peel. Told neighbor, if I
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: live to be a hundred, and the kettle shows no
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: signs of letting me stop, I will never forget that workshop.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: You have seen the inside of a jewelry box. You
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: have seen the inside of a clock. Imagine the two
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: of them had a child and raised it in a
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole and taught it to be tidy. The room
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: was round and low and lined floor to ceiling with shelves,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: and every shelf was full of small bright things in
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: the middle of becoming other things. Buttons becoming wheels, pins
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: becoming railings, a teaspoon becoming, unless I was mistaken a
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: slide for someone very small and brave. Thimmel stood everywhere
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: in rows, each with a tiny whole board in its
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: crown and a thread of spider silk through the hole,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: and they chimed, all of them, faintly in the draft,
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: from the open door like the smallest handbells in the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: world being rung by the weather. The hair thistledown, Mr. Thistledown,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: late of the high hedgerow, and, as he told us
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: with a small stiff bow, a tinker by trade, watched
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: us take it in, with the quiet pride of a
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: craftsman whose shop has finally, after years of working alone,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: received its first proper visitors, he offered us stools. The
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: stools were thimbles turned upside down, the big brass ones,
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and I will have you know, they were surprisingly comfortable,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: though Mrs. Pettifer perched on hers. the way a hen
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: perches on a fence post, ready for anything.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: Tea, he said.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: It was the first word he spoke. Just that, tea
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: in a voice like dry leaves turning over. And from
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: a kettle no bigger than an egg-cuck he poured us
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: each a thimbleful of something amber and steaming that smelled
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: of blackberries and wood-smoke and late summer. And I tell you, truly,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that I have had tea in grand houses and tea
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: in railway stations and tea at weddings, and I have
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: never had tea that tasted the way that tea tasted,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: sitting on an upturned dimble in a bank in the
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: orchard with the moon coming up outside. Hiver the second dimbleful. Mr.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Thistledown told us his story, and I will tell it
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: to you the way he told it to us slowly
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: with pauses, because it is a story that cannot be hurried.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: He is a tinker, not of pots, though he can
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: do pots, but of small, lost things, all his life,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: which is longer than you would guess from looking at him.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: He has walked the hedgerows after dark, gathering what the
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: day has dropped, single buttons, bent pins. The backs of earrings,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: marbles with one friend gone. And he mends what can
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: be mended and finds new purposes for what cannot and
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: leaves the mended things where their owners will stumble over
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: them in the morning and wonder the thimbles were different.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: The thimbles were commissioned. Though commission is a grand word
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: for what happened, which is that the orchard asked him
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: for help the way orchards ask, which is to say,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: by failing to say anything at all for three springs running,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: while the late frost took the blossom on the lower branches,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: a frost chime, he said.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: That is what he was building.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Eleven thimbles, each bored and threaded and tuned to its
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: own note, hung in the branches of the oldest apple
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: tree where the night breeze moves first. When the temperature
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: drops toward freezing, the air goes still in a particular way,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: and the chime goes silent in a particular way, and
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: that silence wakes him, and he wakes the orchard keeper.
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: Who is Mr. Fenwick, though Mr.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: Fenwick did not know it until that moment, and quite
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: a lot of his expression at that moment I wish
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: you could have seen. Eleven thimbles for eleven branches. Each
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: one borrowed, every one of them to.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Be returned the moment the spring was safe. He had
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: left Mrs.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Alders on Mrs. Pettifer's step by mistake in the dark,
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: being in a hurry, being, as he put it, behind
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: with the tuning and the chain unclasped and coiled on
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Priya's pillow that had taken him the better part of
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: an hour. Working by the light of a glowworm he
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: kept in a jar for the purpose, because he would
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: not break a child's chain for all the frost in England.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Pettifer cried. She will deny it. She had something in
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: her eye. We all had something in our eyes. There
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: was a great deal of eye-having in that small round room.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: There was, however, a difficulty, and Mr. Thistledown laid it
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: before us with the gravity of a craftsman who has
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: measured twice and found himself short all the same. Eleven
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: thimbles made eleven notes, but the oldest tree had twelve
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: branches that mattered, the twelfth being the high one that
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: caught the first cold air off the field. Without the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: twelfth bell, the chime had a hole in it, a
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: gap in.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: The music where the warning should be.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: He had searched three parishes for a twelfth thimble going spare,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: and there was not one to be borrowed anywhere that
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: would not be missed, and he would not take one
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: that would be missed because that is the whole of
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: his code, the entire of it, written nowhere and kept everywhere. Well,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: you know this, Lane. You know what happened next is
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: surely as if you had been perched on your own
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: upturned thimble beside me.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Mrs. Pettifer spoke first. She said she had.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: A tin thimble at home, dented, of no value to anyone,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: kept only from habit, and if Mr. Fistledown could see
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: his way to accepting a permanent gift as opposed to
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: a loan, she would be honored. Mr. Fenwick said he
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: would walk the orchard every frost night for the rest
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: of his life if someone would just tell him which
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: nights they were. which drew from Mr. Thistledown the information
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: that that was exactly what the chime was for, which
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: drew from Mr. Fenwick a nod of such profound satisfaction
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that the field glasses nearly fell of his shoulder. Priya
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: offered the pea-sized gold one on the chain and was
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: gently refused on the grounds that some thimbles are too
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: small to ring and too precious to risk and accepted
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: the refusal with the grace of a diplomat twice her
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: age and then asked if she could watch the tuning
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: and was told she could watch all of it every
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: evening for as long as she liked. And me, I
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: offered what I had, which was the note. I took
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: out my notebook there in the golden light with the
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: thimble bells chiming softly in overhead, and I wrote down
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: every word of it. Because a lane that has lent
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: its thimbles to a hare deserves to have the story
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: told properly, with all the names spelled right, on a
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: night when everyone has nowhere to be, which is tonight.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Which is you? Kettle still warm?
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Good.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: Because the tuning took.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Three evenings, and each one of them deserves its telling,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and we are in no hurry at all. The tuning
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: took three evenings, and I am going to tell you
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: about all three, because each one was different, and because
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the trying is the story quite as much as the succeeding.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: On the first evening, Mr. Thistledown hung the eleven borrowed
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: thimbles in the branches of the oldest tree and stood
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: back with his head on one side. The way a
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: piano tuner stands back from a piano and listened to
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: the night breeze move through them and the breeze obliged,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: coming soft off the field with the smell of cut
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: grass and distant rain, and the thimbles rang, O neighbor,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: they rang. 11 small silver voices in the dark, each
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: one true on its own, and all of them together
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: a perfect, shimmering, unarguable mess.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Too much? said Mr. Thistledown.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: That was all he said, too much. He stood there
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: a long time with his arms folded and his ears
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: turning like weather vanes. And then he began taking them
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: down again, one by one muttering numbers under his breath,
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: not digit numbers.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Tinker numbers.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: The kind of numbers that live in the fingers.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Priya.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Who had talked her parents into letting her stay up
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: by promising to go to bed immediately afterward, a promise
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: everyone involved understood to be ceremonial, sat on the orchard
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: wall with her chin in her hands and watched every move.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: What is wrong with it? she asked, in the direct
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: way of nine. Nothing is wrong with it, said Mr.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Thistledown.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: That is what is wrong with it. Eleven bells that
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: all rang at once tell you nothing except that the
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: wind is blowing, and I already employ a weather vane
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: for that intelligence, and he pays better. On the second evening,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: he tried hanging them at different heights. the low branches
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: for the deep notes and the high twigs for the
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: bright ones, reasoning that the cold air comes down the
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: slope in layers, like water finding its level and each
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: layer should wake its own bell.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: This worked.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: After a fashion, the chime no longer rang all at once,
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: it rang in a kind of slow scale, low to
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: high as the evening settled, which was undeniably musical and.
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Which drew Mrs.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Alder to her window in her nightcap to ask whether
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: someone was playing a glockenspiel in the orchard, and whether
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: they would kindly do it more quietly, but it was
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: not a warning a scale as a song, and a
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: song as company, and company was not what the orchard needed.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: What the orchard needed was a silence with a shape
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: to it a particular. Quiet that meant frost, distinct from
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: all the other quiets of the night, and a chime
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: that sings all evening cannot fall silent in a way
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: that means anything, because it has spent all its silence beforehand.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: Thistledown sat on the orchard wall beside Priya, which I
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: mention because the wall is considerably higher than a hair
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: in a waistcoat, and he had to be helped up.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: and accepted the help with the dignity of a general
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: accepting a legach, onto a horse. They sat there together
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: for a long time the tinker and the child, listening
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: to the almost right music, saying nothing, and then Priya said,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: Suppose they only rang when it mattered and Mr. Thistledown
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: turned his whole head to look at her, slowly, the
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: way hares do, and said, Go on. Well, I will
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: not keep you in suspense, because you have been patient,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: and because the kettle has gone quiet, which means it
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: is listening to, what they built, on the third evening,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: with the whole lane pressed into service, carrying stools and
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: holding torches, and winding silk was not a chime at all.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: Or rather, it was a chime that spent most of
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: its time being a sculpture.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Thistledown strung the eleven.
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: Thimbles, twelve, with Mrs.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: pitifer's tin one, which rang to everyone's delight, the truest
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: note of all on a frame of bent willow in
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the shape of a wheel, and hung the wheel in
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the high branches where the cold air comes first, and
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: weighted it with a single river pebble on a thread,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: so that it only turned and only rang when the
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: air went still and heavy in the particular way that
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: means frost by morning, a chime that rings when the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: I have thought about it often since, lying awake in
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the small hours when the lane is quiet, and it
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: still seems to me one of the finest ideas anyone has.
• 36:18
  Speaker 2: Ever had, an alarm made of quiet.
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: A warning that sounds like music and means, wake up,
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: the blossom needs you. Mr. Fenwick, who by this time
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: had been formally appointed orchard keeper with a ceremony involving
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the field blossoms, and a certificate Priam made out of
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: a cornflake packet, took the first watch. He sat under
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: the oldest tree in his big coat with a flask
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: and a blanket and the dog, who had decided, now
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: that there was a hair in a waistcoat involved, that
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: the orchard was after all acceptable, and the wheel turned
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: to bottom in the dark, slow as a minute hand,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and the thimbles chimed one by one as the night settled,
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: low to high, and then, toward three in the morning,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: the air went still in that particular way, and the
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: wheel stopped, and the silence woke Mr. Fenwick exactly as designed,
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: and he lit the smudge pots, and the blossom on
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: the lower branches was saved. All of it.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: Every flower.
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: Hello again, neighbor. Pull your chair a little closer to
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: the fire and let me tell you about the night
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: Bramble Lane went.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: Soft and pink.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: And glowing all at once, because that is the only
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: honest way to describe the blossom festival, and I have
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: tried the other ways, and they all come up short.
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: It happened in spring, as these things do, when the
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: oldest orchid tree suddenly remembered it was supposed to be beautiful.
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Miss Fenwick, who is the orchard keeper and takes that
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: job about as seriously as a man can take anything,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: came knocking on doors one morning with his hat in
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: his hands and a look on his face like he
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: had seen something holy and wanted permission to share it.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: The blossoms, he said, all at once, every tree on
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: the old lane and the orchard tree in the middle
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: of it, and the little crabapple by the gable sisters'
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: gate that has never once bloomed out of spite, all
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: of them pink and white overnight, so we did what
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: any sensible lane does when the trees decide to put
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: on a show. We strong lanterns. Paper ones, mostly. The
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: kind Mrs. Pettifer folds from old sheet music because... She
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: says plain paper is a waste of a good waltz. Priya,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: who is nine now, and takes her duties as assistant
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: lantern hanger very seriously, climbed the lower branches of the
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: orchard tree, with a loop of twine around her wrist,
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: and hung six lanterns before anyone could tell her not to. Mr.
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Sykes brought out his little gramophone and set it on
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: a crate, and it played one record all evening, something
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: with a violin on it, and nobody once asked him
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: to change it because nobody wanted to, and the wheel. Camber,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: I have to pause here, because the wheel deserves its
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: own paragraph. Mr. Thistledown's frost chime, the one he built
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: from eleven borrowed thimbles and one gifted tin, hung in
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the oldest orchard tree where it has hung since that
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: first cold week when it saved the whole crop and,
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: in a way none of us can quite explain, saved
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: the lane's long-held habit of being kind to strange visitors.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: On festival night someone had woven fresh blossoms through every
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: spoke of it.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Alder did that, I think. she will not admit it.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: But the thread she used was the same robin's egg
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: blue as the yarn she has been knitting into scarves
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: since October. The thimbles caught the lantern light and threw
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: it back in soft flakes across the grass, and the
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: tin at the bottom, the gifted one, rang every so
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: often when the breeze found it. Not a loud ring,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: more of a low and patient hum, like a bell
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: remembering his song. The Gable sisters brought out a long
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: table and covered it with every pie they knew how
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: to make, which is 11 pies, and one more that
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: nobody could identify and nobody was brave enough to ask about,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: and it was the first one gone.
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Fenwick stood by the trunk of the orchard tree most
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: of the night with a cup of tea and a
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: face like a man who had finished a very long sentence.
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: I leaned on the fence with him for a while
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: and neither of us sat then. That is the thing
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: about a good spring evening, neighbor, that does the talking
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: for you. Priya fell asleep on a blanket under the
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: tree around nine o'clock and Mr. Sykes covered her with
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: his coat. and the lanterns burned down slow and gold,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: and somewhere in the branches the thimbles hummed their quiet hum,
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: and if you had walked past Bramble Lane that night,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: which you did not because you were here with me
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: and the kettle, you would have seen a whole street
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: of people doing nothing at all but sitting under blossoms
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: with their neighbors and their pies and their one violin record,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: being exactly as happy as they knew how to be.
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: I keep that night in my pocket, so to speak.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: When a Tuesday feels too long, I take it out
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: and look at it. Now, neighbor, you remember Mr.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Fenwick.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: Orchard keeper tall quiet, hands like bark, the kind of
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: man who will tell you the weather three days before
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the weather knows it itself well. What you may not
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: know is that Mr. Fenwick keeps a log, not a
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: farm log, not a ledger, though he keeps one of
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: those too, for the apples and the cider presses and
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: the count of the crates, no. Mr. Fenwick keeps a
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: night log, a little green notebook. He fills in every
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: evening at his kitchen table with a stub of pencil
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: and whatever tea is left in the pot. He writes
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: down what he saw, what he heard, what the orchard
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: told him, and I have been lucky enough over the
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: years to hear some of it read aloud over the fence.
• 43:23
  Speaker 2: He reads it.
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: The way other men read the paper, flat, unhurried, one
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: line at a time, with long pauses where the good
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: parts are. Let me give you a taste first frost
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: of the season tied the young saplings in straw hair
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: in waistcoat observed. On the stone wall at dusk, carrying
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: what appeared to be a teaspoon, did not interfere, not
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: my spoon. Wind from the north all day, two branches
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: down both old wood, neither worth crying over. The frost
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: chime in the big tree rang twice around midnight. Wook
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: checked the thermometer, found nothing to worry about, went back
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: to bed. Hair observed again at dawn.
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: Polite. Tidy.
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: Left a small button on the wall which I have
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: put in the jam jar with the others.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: Long evening. No wind. Chimes silent.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: Sat outside anyway with the dog.
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: Dog. Has opinions about the moon. Wrote them down. They
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: were not helpful, but they were hers.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: When I pruned the orchard, I leave one branch for
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the birds and one.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: For the hare.
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: This is not sentiment. This is arithmetic of a kind
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I do not fully understand but trust. Tabor, I have
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: heard Mr. Fenwick read that last line twice, and both
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: times he stopped afterward and looked at the orchard for
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: a long minute. and said nothing at all. There is
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: a whole life in that sentence. If you sit with it,
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: the man has spent thirty years learning that you do
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: not own a tree. You keep it company, you prune it,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: you pick from it, you tie it in straw when
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: the cold comes, and you leave one branch for the hair,
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: because the hair is here first and will be here after,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: and the tree does not belong to either of you.
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: Some nights his log is funny on purpose, though he
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: would never admit it. Once he wrote, hair has begun
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: borrowing the good twine. Have decided not to mention it,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: twine is cheaper than friendship, and friendship knots tighter. Once
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: he wrote, counted the thimbles on the chime tonight, twelve
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: counted again twelve. Counted a third time out of pure stubbornness,
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: twelve satisfied, and one line from this past winter, which
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: I think about more than I should, chime rang at
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: two in the morning, went out, frost on the grass,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: thick as sugar, the wheel works, the blossoms will come,
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: went back to bed warm, that is the whole man, neighbor,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: in five short lines, A little frost, a little trust,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: and a warm bed at the end of it. If
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: you take nothing else from Bramble Lane tonight, take that
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: line and tuck it under your pillow.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: The wheel works. The blossoms will come. You did not
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: think the wheel would stay a secret, did you, neighbor?
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: A thing like that, a chime of stolen thimbles humming
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: under an orchard tree, in a lane where everyone knows
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: everyone and.
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: The pies are famous. Word travels.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: It traveled to Willow Street first because Willow Street is
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: only two blocks over and has always been a little
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: jealous of our pies and one Saturday in late springy
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: delegation arrived. I say delegation because that is what it was.
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: Six of them. A Mrs.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: Corliss, who I believe runs the bakery over there and
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: has strong views on crust, and her husband, who has
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: no views on anything and is happier for it, a
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: young couple with a baby in a sling, a boy
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: about Priya's age named Thomas who had heard the wheel
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: was magic and had come to settle the matter himself,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: and an older gentleman with a walking stick who said
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: very little and and looked at everything twice, which I
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: respect now Bramble Lane does not show off. That is
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: the rule and always has been. But Bramble Lane does
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: answer questions, and if a visitor happens to be standing somewhere,
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: the light falls nicely.
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: Well, that is nobody's fault.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: Mrs. Pettifer met them at the gate with a plate
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: of shortbread, because of course she did. Mr. Sykes gave
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: the whole history of the chime in about four minutes,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: which is a record for him, and got most of
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: it right. Mr. Fenwick walked them down the lane to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: the orchard, slowly, so the older gentleman could keep up,
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: and when they reached the tree he stood back and
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: let them look. That is the thing about Mr. Fenwick,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: he will not sell you a tree. he will not
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: even hand it to you. He will just step aside
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: and let you decide for yourself whether you are the
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: kind of person who sees it. The boy, Thomas, walked
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: right up to the trunk and stood under the thimbles
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: with his hands in his pockets, and you could see
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: him doing the arithmetic in his head, checking for strings,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: checking for tricks. There were no strings. He stood there
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: a while, then he said, quite seriously, to nobody in particular,
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: that the ten at the bottom was ringing on its own,
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: and he did not know how, and he was fine
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: with not knowing. I think that was the moment Willow
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: Street stopped being visitors and started being neighbors. It happens
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: like that sometimes. One boy deciding he is fine with
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: not knowing. The young couple let the baby touch one blossom,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: just one, and the baby grabbed it and held on
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: and would not let go and the mother laughed and said, Well,
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: I suppose that one is yours now. The Gable sisters
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: appeared with more pie than anyone had asked for and
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: stayed to talk about the bakery on Willow Street and
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: miss it Corliss said something about our crust that I
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: will not repeat because it was kinder than I expected
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: and Priya has sworn me to secrecy about how pleased
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: she looked. They left at dusk with shortbread wrapped in
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: napkins and a small jar of Mr. Fenwick cider and,
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: I think, an idea. Because a month later Willow Street
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: strung its own lanterns for the first time along their
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: whole block and nobody on Bramble Lane said a word
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: about where they got the idea. You do not point
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: at a neighbor's new hat and say, that was ours,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: you just wave when you pass. The wheel works, neighbor.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: And it works two streets over now. Two, which is
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: more than any of us playing for and exactly what
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: we should have expected. And now, Lieber, the part I
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: have been saving, the part I have been turning over
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: in my hands all evening like a smooth stone. You
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: know about the thimbles and the wheel and the frost
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: and the blossoms, but here is what I have not
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: told you yet. Mr. Thistledown never only borrowed thimbles. A
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: tinker borrows what needs mending. That is the whole of
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: his trade. And Bramble Lane, being a lane, has spent
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: a great many years losing a great many small things.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and a great many of those small things, it turns out,
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: made their way into the waistcoat pockets of a certain
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: hare who could not bear to see a good object
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: go rusty or bent or forgotten in a hedge. So
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: one evening in early summer, without a word and without
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: a knock, it began. A small paper parcel on Mrs.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: Pettifer's step, tied with garden twine, and inside it a
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: brass button shaped like a rose, her mother's button, the
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: one from the coat that was given away when Mrs.
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: Pettifer was a girl, macing from forty years. She stood
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: on her stack and held it and did not say
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: a word to anyone, and the next morning she baked
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: a seed cake and left it on the stone wall,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: and it was gone by noon. A parcel for Mrs. Alder,
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: a silver hair comb, broken at one tooth, mended now
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: and polished, the one she lost at her sister's wedding
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: when she was twenty-two. She wore it to the festival
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: that same week and did not explain, and none of
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: us asked. A parcel for the Gable sisters. a small
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: brass key to a music box that has been silenced
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: since their mother passed and when they willed it that night,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: the whole lane heard it through their open window, a
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: thin little tune, and the sisters sat on their porch
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: and cried a bit and laughed a bit and did
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: not go inside until the moon was high.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: For Mr.
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: Sykes, a pocket watch he lost in the old meadow
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: when he was a boy, mended, wound, ticking. He has
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: carried it every day since and checks it constantly and
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: is always, always late anyway, which he says is the
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: watch's fault and the watch says.
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: Nothing being a watch.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: For Priya, a red hair ribbon she lost in the
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: orchard two summers ago, found, washed and ironed flat as
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: a leaf she has worn it every day since and
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: has begun to suspect, she told me that the hair
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: is her friend. I told her that she is right
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: and for Mr. Fenwick, at the end, when the parcels
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: had all been delivered and the lane had gone quiet
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: and soft, a small tin, the twin of the gifted
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: one at the bottom of the chime, with a note
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: that said only, in small, tidy letters, one for the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: branch I keep, he put it in the jam jar
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: with the buttons and did not read the note aloud
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: to anyone, and I only know what it said because
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: he told me once, at dusk, with his hat in
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: his hands.
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: That is the whole of it.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: Neighbor years of lost things, returned, mended, no questions asked.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: No one on Bramble Lane ever found out how long
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: he had been keeping them or where he had kept
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: them or how a hair with a waistcoat and a
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: pencil manages to mend a music box key. We are
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: fine with not knowing we learned that from a boy
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: from Willow Street standing under a tree full of thimbles.
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: So here is what I want you to take to
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: bed with you tonight. If you have lost something small
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: and dear, it is not gone. It is being kept.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: It is being mended.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: By someone patient, somewhere quiet. In a workshop the rest
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: of us cannot see. And one evening, when you least
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: expect it, and most need it, it will show up
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: on your step tied with twine the kettle is cool now. Neighbor,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: the fire is down to its last soft cool. Go
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: on up, and if you hear a low hum in
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: the branches outside your window, do not worry about what
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: it means. Just close your eyes and let it ring.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: The village green had that warm, coshed clover smell that
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: only comes in High Summer Neighbor, the sort that gets
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: into your socks and stays there until bedtime. You know
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: the kind. Gog, afternoon, I am. The bunting had been
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: ironed by Miss Clara Gable, who irons everything including her
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: string bags, and strung between the lime trees on lengths
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: of washed ribbon that fluttered like laundry in a light breeze.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: Everyone was there, of course. Mrs.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Cantre had claimed the T. Mullis doll under the canvas marquee,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: her spectacles pushed up into her gray hair like a
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: spare pair of eyes. daring any soul to suggest that
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: the jar of pickled onions was not worth five tickets.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: Beside her, Mrs. Alder was ladling gooseberry cordial into mismatched
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: jelly jars, keeping half a watchful eye on Mr. Sykes,
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: who had volunteered to judge the three-legged race despite being
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: entirely unable to agree with himself on a starting whistle. Now,
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: If you took three paces past the lemonade bench, right
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: where the elderberry bushes throw a cool pool of shade
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: over the grass, you would have found the smallest trestle
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: table in the history of the Bramble Lane Fet. It
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: was made from a wooden cigar box balanced upon four
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: upended croquet mallets, covered in a spotless scrap of calico
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: hemmed with yellow thread. and behind it sat Mr. Thistledown himself,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: wearing a spruce little waistcoat of olive-green moleskin with mother-of-pearl
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: buttons no larger than dried lentils. On the table rested
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: a sign written in blackberry ink toy mendings and sundry adjustments,
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: a bent hairpin, a broken clockwork key, a hazelnut shell
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: for payment if you have one, or a pleasant good
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: day if you do not. Priya, who was nine that
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: very week and quite proud of having all her adult teeth,
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: except the stubborn left canine, had set up a stool
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: right next to him. She acted as his clerk, you see,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: translating his rapid whisker twitches for the public, though by
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: that hour of the afternoon, half the lane understood his
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: gestures perfectly well. Whenever a cracked tin locomotive or a
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: one-armed wooden soldier arrived in a sticky little palm, Priya
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: would write down the owner's name in a ruled notebook,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: and Mr. Thiesel then would set to work with a
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: brass watchmaker's screwdriver ground down to the thickness of a
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: grass stem. He had a pair of magnifying spectacles held
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: to his fuzzy brow with a ribbon, and when he
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: tapped a loose wheel into place with a polished river pebble,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: the sound was as crisp and satisfying as a dry
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: leaf snapping under an autumn boot. Old Mr., Thinwick, leaning
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: on his hazel walking stick with a handkerchief draped over
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: his sunburnt neck, stood watching for a full quarter of
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: an hour. He murmured that a tinker who could true
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: a bent axle on a painted tin horse without chipping
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: the enamel was worth more than three village blacksmiths, and Mrs. Pettifer,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: passing by with a basket of raffle lemons, did not
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: even contradict him. Over on the cricket pitch the three-legged
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: race caused its usual amount of neighborly commotion. The Gable sisters,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: tied together at the ankle with a lavender scarf, hopped
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: with terrifying syncopation, and nearly won, had not Mrs. Alder's
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: terrier decided that their knotted ankles resembled an escaped rabbit
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: and chased them straight into the hydrangeas. We laughed until
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: our sides ached. Neighbor, the sort of easy, chest-loosening laughter
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: that makes you forget your joints are rusty. and your
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: tea is growing lukewarm. As the sun began to slip
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: down behind the church steeple, casting long, honey-colored shadows across
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: the clipped turf, mister. Teasel Down packed his screwdrivers into
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: a hollowed-out piece of elder branch. He had mended seven
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: wide-up tin ducts, four wooden wagons, and a porcelain doll
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: whose painted slippers needed touch-ups with lamp black. His hazelnut
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: payment sat in a neat pyramid beside his paws. Bramble
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: Lane was full of bellies lined with sponge cake and
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: pockets weighted with small, shiny repairs.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: And for a.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: Few golden hours, nobody thought about winter, nor frost, nor
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: anything more pressing than where they had left their cardigan.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Summer storms do not sneak into Bramble Lane, neighbor. They
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: announce themselves hours ahead like a noisy second cousin. Coming
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: up the gravel drive, it began just after eight, when
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: the air turned the color of bruised plums and the
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: swallows dropped so loam over Mr. Sykes' vegetable plot that
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: you could hear the hiss of their wings through the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: parsley I was at my front window. twitching the lace
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: curtain back an inch or two to see how Mrs.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: Alder was getting on with her wash-in line when the
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: first heavy drop hit the zinc water butt with a
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: crack like a pistol shot. Within ten minutes the lane
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: was dark as October, save for the sudden sheet flashes
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: that turned the chimney pot's bone white against the sky.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: The wind came tearing down through the orchard gaps, flattening
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the hollyhocks and rattling the corrugated roof of Mr. Fenwick's
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: apple store until it sounded like a drumroll. And then
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: we all remembered the great tree. The orchard frost wheel,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: you see, hung thirty feet up in the heart of
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: the Olds de Blenheim orange apple tree, fastened by copper
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: wires and horsehair cords that Mr. Thistledown had tied with
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: a sailor's patient knots.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: Whole thimbles, eleven gathered from.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: Our sewing baskets and one gifted ting, hung from its
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: ashwood spokes. In a spring draft it made a chime
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: as gentle as sheep bells across a valley, but this
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: wind was not a draft. It was a howling spiteful
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: gale that wanted to strip the unripe fruit and snap
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: the boughs like kindling. I pulled on my macintosh and
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: my heavy mud boots and I was not the only one.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: By the time I reached the orchard gate, holding an
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: oil lantern low so the rain would not drench the glass,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: I found half the lane already assembled beneath the dripping canopy.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: Finwink had his canvas tarpaulin thrown over his shoulders like
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: an ancient shepherd. The Gable sisters had brought an immense
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: gulf umbrella with alternate panels of green and white, under
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: which they had sheltered not only themselves, but Mrs. Pettifer
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: and her emergency thermos of mint tea, and there, perched
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: on a low bock of splin oak under the driest
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: crook of the trunk, was Mr.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Thistledown.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: His ears were pinned flat against the neck to keep
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: the water out, his olive-green waistcoat damp around the shoulders.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: his nose twitching once every three seconds with rhythmic anxiety.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: Above our heads, the ashwood wheel was swinging violently, tumbling
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: in the gusts like an acrobatic spider. The thimbles were ringing,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: not their soft, sweet frost song, but a wild, erratic clatter,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: silver against brass, tin clinking on porcelain, a frantic metallic
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: music that cuts straight through the thunder. The south guy
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: wire is slackening, shouted Mr. Sykes, shining a heavy black
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: torch into the upper branches. The beam cut through the
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: driving rain, showing the wheel pitching at an alarming tilt.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: If the main pivot gave way, the whole mechanism would
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: crash down into the thorn hedge below. splintering the aged
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: spokes and scattering twelve little pieces of lane history into
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: the mud. We could not climb up there in that tempest.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: The bark was slick as wet lard, and the boughs
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: were thrashing like whipcord, so we did what Bramble Lane
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: always does when the weather gets about itself. We made
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: a windbreak of ourselves. Mr.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: Fenwick and Mr.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: Sykes unrolled the gray canvas sheet, holding the upper hem
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: against their chests, while Mrs. Alder and I waited the
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: corners with heavy orchard stones. Priya, wrapped in her father's
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: yellow oilskin coat that swallowed her down to her ankles,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: held Mr. Thistildown inside the shelter of her warm pockets
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: so he would not take a chill. We stood there
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: for two hours while the gale blew its heart out. Mrs.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: Pettifer dispensed mint tea in the dark, pouring it into
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: the screw-top lid with surprising accuracy despite the wind trying
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: to snatch the cup from her fingers. Every time a
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: fierce gust slammed into the orchard, the canvas groaned and
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: we leaned our shoulders hard against the gale, watching that
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: brave little wheel spin and recover, spin and recover. There's
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: something very calming, you know, about standing shoulder to shoulder
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: with your neighbors in the pouring dark, cold water trickling
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: down your collar, all caring about the very same small,
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: delicate thing. By midnight the thunder had rolled away over
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: the ridge, the rain softened into a steady gray mizzle,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: and the chimes settled down to an occasional weary take.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: We walked back down the lane in the squelching mud,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: tired to our marrow, convinced that the worst was past.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: Dawn came up looking thoroughly washed, the way morning does
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: after a summer squall. The sky was the pale, scrubbed
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: blue of a clean kitchen bowl, and the air smelled
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: of torn leaves. bruised elderberries, and soaked earth. I stepped
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: out onto the gravel in my slippers before the kettle
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: had even come to a whistle, just to see what
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: the wind had left behind. The lane was carpeted with
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: little green twigs and torn light-like blossoms.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: Alder was already out with her bism broom sweeping a
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: neat channel through the puddle by her garden gate, her
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: expression determined and practical, but down by the old blenheim
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: tree a silent worried congregation was already gathering on the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: sodden grass mr thistledown was sitting on the lowest mossy
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: root his magnifying spectacles perched crookedly on his nose holding
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: a clean sheet of ledger paper upon which Priya had
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: drawn twelve neat squares with a purple crayon. Eleven of
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: the squares contained a tick. The twelfth square was empty.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: The frost wheel was stilled up there, hanging by three
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: sturdy lines, looking battered and festooned with torn moss, but
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: largely intact. Yet when the morning breeze stirred the boughs,
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: The chime had a hollow, lopsided voice. It was missing
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: its brightest, clearest note.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: It is Mrs. Pettifer's robin, Mr.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: Fennec declared. His thumb hooked into his waistcoat pocket. His
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: head tilted back until his chin whiskers pointed at the clouds.
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: The porcelain one. I would know its ring anywhere. It
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: has a high, singing snap to it like a fingernail-flicking
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: crystal tumbler.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: Pinnifer said nothing, but her lips pressed together into a
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: straight pale line that meant she was feeling things more
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: deeply than she intended to admit to the lane. That
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: little thimble had belonged.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: To her great-aunt Maude.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: It had a miniature robin painted on the side with
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: a breast no bigger than a ladybug. finished with a
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: fine gold rim. It had survived two shifts of house,
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: forty years of mending school socks and three thimble-hunting magpies,
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: and now it was gone. Right, said Mr. Sykes, rolling
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: up his shirt sleeves to the elbows. Search formation.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: Three paces apart.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: Time where you put your boots. If it fell from
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: that height into the nettles, we do not want to
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: go treading it into the loam. We began at the
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: trunk and worked outward in expanding circles, like people looking
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: for a dropped wedding ring on a pebble beach.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: It was slow, muddy work, neighbor.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: You would be surprised how many things in an overgrown
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: orchard look like a porcelain thimble until you bend down
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: and get a nettle sting across your wrist. Mr. Sykes
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: found a broken clay pipe stump from the previous century.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Mix Clara Gable found a rusted latch key that she
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: swore belonged to the old pump house down by the brook.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: Alder found three green windfall apples, which she wiped on
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: her apron and put in her pocket for a pie,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: because Mrs. Alder cannot bear waste even in an emergency. Mr.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: Thistledown hopped ahead on his hind legs, darting beneath the
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: blackberry briars where none of our clumsy boots could follow.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: He parted the goosegrass with his forepaws, his nose quivering
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: as he examined every mossy tussock, every hollow walnut shell
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: left by the squirrels, every cup of wet dock leaf.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: Fria followed him on her knees, her trousers entirely soaked
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: through at the joints, checking the drainage ditches where the
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: rainwater had carved little, muddy deltas during the night. We
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: searched until the morning church bells rang eight o'clock, and
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: then until they rang nine. Our backs were aching, our
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: knuckles were stained green from hemlock and clover, and the
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: sun was beginning to bake the mud to a stiff crust.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: Yet there was no white blunt in the grass, not
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: a fragment of painted china, not a chip of gold rim.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: Pettifer, finally— took off her garden gloves with a sharp
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: snap of canvas. Well, she said, her voice sounding a
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: little thinner than usual, though she kept her chin high.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: It was only a piece of clay after all.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: Things vanish. It is the nature of the world, I suppose.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: We all knew she did not believe that for a
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: single second.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: And Mr.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: Thizzledown knew it too, because he sat down upon a
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: dock leaf, folded his long ears down over his eyes
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: and refused to touch the hazelnut that Priya gemly rolled
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: toward his paws. It was Priya who solved it, neighbor,
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: as children so often do. Simply by lying down when
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: the grown-ups were too stiff and stubborn to stop pacing,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: she had stretched herself flat on her back under the
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: canopy of the Blenheim Orange, resting her muddy chin on
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: her hands and staring straight up through the leaf at
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: the patchwork.
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: Of sunlight and shadow.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: Mr.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: Thistledown, she whispered suddenly.
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: Her voice was not loud, but it had that tight,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: bubbling sound of someone trying very hard not to frighten
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: a butterfly.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 2: Look straight up.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: Past the fourth fork, right where the bark splits into three.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: The little hare hopped onto her shoulder, using her collar
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 1: as a vantage point, and adjusted his spectacles with both paws.
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: Mr. Fenwick, Mrs.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Pettifer, and I crept closer. stepping as softly as our
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: creaking knees would allow. There, nestled firmly in a fork
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: of the apple, balsam twenty feet above the ground, was
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: a mossy ball of a nest, woven so tightly from lichen,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: spider silk, and horsehair that it looked like an outgrowth
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: of the tree itself. It belonged to a jenny wren,
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: the smallest, busiest bird in the parish. and wedged right
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: into the talked rim of the nest, tilted backward like
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: a gleaming white chimney-pot, was Mrs. Pettifer's robin thimble. The
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: wind must have thrown it from the chime wire during
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: the worst gust of the midnight gale, spinning it through
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: the leaves until it landed cleanly in the fork and
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: the wren. An industrious creature who had evidently suffered some
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: storm damage to her own thatched roof had seized upon
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: it at first light. Through my pocket spyglass, I could
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: see the bird's tiny brown tail flicking as she tucked
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: a feather around the porcelain rim. The thimble was not broken,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: not even cracked. It was acting as a little domed
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: porch over her entrance. keeping the morning drizzle completely off
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: her three tiny, speckled eggs. Well, upon my word, whispered Mrs. Alder,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: her hands clasped under her apron, did you ever see
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: such a cheeky little tenant? We could borrow the long
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: fruit-picking pole from the barn, Mr. Sykes suggested quietly, scratch
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: in his whiskers, a dab of carpenter's pitch on the
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 1: end of the cane, and we could lift it down
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: as clean as a plum. We all looked at Mrs.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: Pettifer.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: Her porcelain robin was right there, within arm's reach of
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: a ladder undamaged and shining in the dappled leaf light.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: She looked up at the.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: Tiny bird who had popped her head out of the nest,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: beak wide and a furious, silent scolding at the crowd
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: of faces below.
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: Then Mrs.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: Pettifer looked down at Mr. Thistledown, who was watching her
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: with his dark, liquid eyes, his whiskers perfectly still. Mrs.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Pettifer gave a small, quiet cough, the kind she usually
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: uses when she finds a drop to sixpence on the
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: church carpet and decides to put it into the poor
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: box without making a fuss. The Robin on the China
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: She murmured, adjusting her cardigan cuffs. Always did look a
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: little cramped on that shelf in my sideboard. It seems
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: entirely unreasonable to disturb a mother who has taken such
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: trouble with her architectural choices.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: Thistledown gave three very swift, very formal nods of his head.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: He hopped down from Priya's shoulder, scurried over to his
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: miniature tool kit resting in the elder bough, and rummaged
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: deep into the velvet-lined pocket where he kept his oddments.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: When he returned, he was rolling an object between his
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: forepaws with great ceremony. It was an acorn cup. Not
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: an ordinary acorn cup, mind you, but an ancient, thick-walled
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: oak cap that had dried to the color of dark tea,
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: polished with beeswax until it gleamed like walnut veneer, with
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: a copper loop driven cleanly through the stem. He offered
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: it up to Mr. Fenwick with both paws. Ten minutes later,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: with the aid of the orchard ladder and a pair
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: of long pruning shears, Mr. Fenwick had hooked the acorn
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: cup onto the empty spoke of the frost wheel. When
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: the summer breeze came wandering through the Blenheim leaves again,
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: the chime spoke once more. It was not the high.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 2: Clear ring of porcelain.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: No, it was a deep, mellow, wooden note, soft as
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: a thumb brushing a guitar string. settling right into the
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: middle of the eleven other chimes like a warm blanket
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: over a cold bed.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 2: High above, the.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: Wren settled back down into her porcelain-roofed porch. Her brown
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: feathers fluffed against the breeze. Mrs. Pettifer smiled. Just the corner.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: of her mouth, mind you, but it was there, and
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: announced that the kettle at her cottage had been cold
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: for far too long, and that anyone with dry slippers
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: was welcome to a slice of caraway seed cake. So
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: that is how the wheel found its thirteenth voice, neighbor,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: and how the lane learned to leave well enough alone.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: The sun is down now, the orchard is asleep, and
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: the only sound out there in the dark is the
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: soft clink of the chimes and the wren dreaming under
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: her painted china sky. Put your head down, close your eyes.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: I will be right here at the fetts, keeping watch
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: until the morning.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: Good night, neighbor. Sleep warm.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: Hello again, neighbor. Pull your chair a little closer to
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: the fire, and mind the dog. She has decided the
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: rug belongs to her, and she has the paperwork to
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: prove it. The kettle is on its second singing, and
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: the jars of dance and jam are cooling on the windowsill,
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: and Bramble Lane has moved from the gold of early
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: autumn into the deep amber of late, when the chestnut
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: tree behind the Gable Sisters' fence starts dropping its treasures.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: like a generous uncle amping his pockets. That is where
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: our story goes tonight, to the conker season. Now you
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: may not know conkers. If you grew up somewhere flat
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: and tidy, a conker is the smooth brown nut of
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: the horse chestnut, glossy as a polished shoe. and it
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: sits inside a spiky green shell that looks like a
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: small sea urchin and feels like a lesson in patience.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Every autumn, the children.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: Of Bramble Lane gather them by the bucket, and every autumn,
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: the lane holds a championship under the old chestnut itself.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: The rules are simple, and the arguments are complex. You
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: thread a conquer on a shoelace. You take turns striking,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: and the first shell to crack loses, and the winner
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: keeps the glory, and the loser keeps the pieces. This
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: year the Gable sisters let the grass grow a little
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: long under the tree the way they do when they're
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: expecting company, and by the second Saturday of October the
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: ground was thick with fallen shells. and the lane smelled
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: of leaf mold and wood smoke, and the faint sweet
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: rot of things turning over for the season. Mr. Fenwick
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: brought out two folding chairs and a thermos and a
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: scoreboard he had made from an old cupboard door. Mrs.
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: Pettifer brought a tin of ginger biscuits and a folding umbrella,
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: which she opened only once. purely to shake it at
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: a disputed point and then closed again with great dignity.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: But the true surprise of the afternoon, the part you
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: will want to hear, was the umpire. We had heard rumors,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: of course. Priya had seen a hare in a waistcoat
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: near the orchard three dawns running, and Mr. Sykes swore
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: he had been out walking his terrier and found a
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: saucer of tea sitting on a tree stump, still warm.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: And so when the first pair of children took their
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: places on the mat, and a tall hair in a
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: gray waistcoat with Bryce buttons stepped out from behind the
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: chestnut and raised one paw for silence, most of the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: lane only nodded. The way you nod when the postman
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: turns up in a raincoat you did not know he owned.
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: On Bramble Lane, we have learned to say, ah, rather,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: than what on earth. The hair stood very straight. he
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: wore a small brass whistle on a ribbon around his
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: neck and a flat cap and spectacles with gold rims,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: and he conducted that championship like a man conducting an
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: orchestra he did not entirely trust. When a conqueror was threaded,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: he inspected the knot. When a strike was made, he
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: leaned in close enough that his whiskers trembled when there
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: was an argument and there was always an argument. He
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: would take the offending conqueror in both paws, turn it over,
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: and render a verdict with a single tap of his
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: foot on the turf. The children, to their eternal credit,
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: accepted the verdicts without once appealing to a parent, which
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: may be the single most remarkable thing that has ever
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: happened on our lane. The matches went long into the afternoon.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Priya lost in the semi-final to a boy with a
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: conker he had soaked in vinegar, which the hair declared legal.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: To Mrs.
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: Alder's visible distress, the final came down to the eldest
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: gable girl and Mr. Sykes, who was well past seventy
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: and who entered, he said, purely for the biscuits. His
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: conker was the small hard one he keeps in his
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: coat pocket for luck.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: Hers was a monster the size of a plum.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: The hare settled them on the mat, whistled them ready,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: and the whole lane went quiet, even the dog, even
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: the wind.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: They struck nine times. Nine, I counted.
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: On the tenth strike, Mr. Sykes's little lucky conqueror caught
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: the monster square and split it clean in two, and
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: the lane made a sound like a cattle finally boiling over.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: and the hare raised one paw and blew one long
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: flat note on his whistle and declared Mr. Sykes the
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: autumn champion. Then he did a thing no one expected.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: He took the flat cap from his head, and he bowed,
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: low and slow, to the whole lane, and then he
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: gathered every cracked conker from the mat, every broken shell
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: and bit, and carried them off toward the orchard in
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: the flat cap like a man carrying home the groceries.
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: We watched him go. Mrs. Pettifer said nothing at all,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: which is how you know she was moved. The lane
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: held its little trophy up for the photograph, and everyone
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: shook Mr. Sax's hand, and the ginger biscuits were finished,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 1: and the sun let go of the afternoon the way
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: it does in autumn, quickly.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: And without apology.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: And that was the Conquer Season Neighbor. Spiky shells and
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: split nuts and a hair in spectacles keeping the peace.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: Some seasons you remember for what grew and some for
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: what fell. That one we remember for both. Now settle
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: in and tuck the blanket under your chin because the
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: next one.
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 2: Belongs to November.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: And November on Bramble Lane is a month that smells
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: of wet leaves and burnt sugar and the edge of
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: something cold arriving politely at the gate and waiting.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: To be invited in.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: It started with the wheel, you remember the wheel, neighbor,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: the old water wheel at the bottom of the orchard,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: the one Mr. Fenwick keeps turning with little more than
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: stubbornness and a grease can. That wheel has a sound
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: we all know the way we know. A friend's cough.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: In spring it ticks. In summer it hums. In winter
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: get groans like a door in a haunted house, which
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: I only mention in passing because nothing here is haunted
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: and the door in question is not a door at all.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: But in autumn, and this is the wonder of it,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: the wheel begins to sing, not a tune, exactly, more
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: a bell, a low, round, gentle bell that rolls up
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: the lane around dusk and on the night of the
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: 5th of November, when the whole lane gathers in the
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: Fenwick Meadow with their coats and their mittens and their
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: flasks of cocoa, the wheel outdid itself. He rang a
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: note so clear and steady that the fires seemed to
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: burn a little brighter and the sparks went up a
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: little higher and every child on the lane stopped waving
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: their sparkler and turned their head to listen. Mrs. Pettifer
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: explained it the way she explains everything, which is to
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: say confidently and with a slight air of having known
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: all along. Cold air, she said. Carrie's sound better than warm.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: Frost on the rim, the wheel moving slower in the
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: thick water nothing to be frightened of, all of that
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: is true, and you may believe every word of it,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: and I will not argue with Mrs. to put a
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: fur on any subject before breakfast. But here is what the.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: Rest of us saw.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: Standing in the meadow with our faces warm and our
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: backs cold. When the bell rang, the hare appeared at
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: the edge of the orchard, waistcoat buttoned to the chin,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: and stood watching the fires the way one watches a
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: tide come in, the wren that had nested in the
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: spare thimble fluttered down onto a fence post beside him.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: And every time the wheel rang its low note, the
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: flames bent, just slightly, in the direction of the orchard.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: the way a field of wheat bends when you walk
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: through it, mister. Fenwick said the wheel was older than
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: the fence. He said it was older than the orchard
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: and probably older than the lane, and that things that
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: old pick-up habits, and that a wheel which has turned
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: through every autumn for a hundred years has surely learned
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: to ring for the turning. He said it like a
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: man reading a weather report and then he passed around
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: the cocoa and nobody said anything.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 2: More about it. The children, of course, had their own theory.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: Priya said the wheel was ringing to thank the hare
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: for the thimbles since the frost chime was made of
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: 12 of them and it had never once gone missing again.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: It is a fine theory. I have no better one.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: I have stood in that meadow many Novembers, and I
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: have heard the wheel in every kind of weather, and
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: I will tell you the same thing I tell anyone
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: who asks. When the air turns cold and the fires
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: are lit, the wheel rings, and the lane listens, and
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: the listening.
• 1:30:10
  Speaker 2: Is the point.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: We let the fires burn down to embers. We watched
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: the sparks drift up past the orchard and go out
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: one by one like small polite stars leaving a party.
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: The hare stayed until the last flame folded over and
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: then he walked into the trees without a sound and
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: the wren went back to its thimble and the bell
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: in the wheel faded to a hum and the hum
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: faded to a tick and by the time we carried
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: the sleepy children home the lane was quiet enough to
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: hear the frost landing. That is the wonder of it, neighbor,
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: not that the wheel rings. That we all stop to
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: hear it. Come in, come in, and shut the door quick.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: There is a wind tonight that has a pinyon sit
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: by the lamp, and I will pour you something warm.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: And while the tea steeps, I will tell you about
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: the Sunday the vicar preached on borrowed things. Now our
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: vicar is a gentle soul with a soft voice and
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: a habit of losing his place in the hymn book,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: and the little stone church at the end of the
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: lane holds maybe forty souls on a good Sunday and
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 1: thirty on a wet one. Autumn Sundays are the best
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: because the windows are frosted and the candles are lit
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: and everyone smells faintly of wood smoke. and everyone is
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: a little more willing to sit still. On this particular Sunday,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: the reading was about stewardship, which is a church word
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: meaning taking care of what you have been given, and
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: the vicar stood in his pulpit and looked out over
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: the pews for a long moment before he began. Then
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: he said something that made the whole lane exchange looks.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: He said, Most of what you are holding did not
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: begin with you, and it will not end with you,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: He said, You are not owners, you are borrowers, every
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: one of you, and borrowed things deserve gentle hands. He said,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: The coat on your back was wool from a sheep
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: you never met. The bread on your table was wheat
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: from a field you never walked. The name on your
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: door was carried by someone before you. He said, Elaine
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: is not a row of houses. It is a row
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: of hands passing things along. Now I want you to
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: picture the pews at that moment. Mrs. Pettifer was sitting
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: in her usual spot with her gloves folded on her lap,
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: and she looked straight ahead with her chin up, and
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: beside her Mrs. Alder turned her head just slightly, the
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: way you do when you hear your own name in
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: another room. Mr.
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 2: Fenwick.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: Who had come in late and stood at the back
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: with his cap in his hands, looked at the ceiling
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: as if studying the beams. The Gable sisters looked at
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: each other, and then at their laps, and then at
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: each other again. Priya, sitting between her parents, looked straight
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: at the hare, who was not there, and then looked
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: away quickly, because here is the thing, neighbor. Every soul
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: in that church knew exactly what the vicar was describing,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: and he knew it too, and he never once said
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 1: the word thimble. He never said hair or wheel or
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: frost chime or waistcoat. He simply described a lane where
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: things pass from hand to hand, and everybody in the
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: pew sat there doing arithmetic with their memories. After the
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 1: last hymn and the last amen, the lane spilled out
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 1: onto the wet churchyard path and stood around in clusters,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: not quite leaving. Mr. Sykes was the first to say
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: it out loud. He said, well, he is not wrong,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: and Mrs. Penither, who never concedes a point before breakfast, said, no,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: he is not, and that was the whole conversation, and
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: it was enough. Two things came of that sermon, and
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: I will tell you both, The first is that the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 1: following week a small shelf appeared inside the church porch,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: a plain wooden shelf with a little sign above it
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: and on the shelf sat a tin of biscuits, a
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: spare umbrella, a pair of mittens, and a note that said,
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: Take what you need. Leave what you can. The second
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: is that on the first cold morning after, Mr. Timur
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: went down to the orchard with his grease can and
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: found that someone had already oiled the wheel's bearings neatly
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: without spilling a drop and left the can sitting on
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: a stump beside a saucer that had by all accounts
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: recently held tea. The vicar never mentioned it from the pulpit.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 2: He did not have to.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Some sermons end at the amen, neighbor, and some go
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: on for weeks, quietly, in a lane full of borrowed
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: things and gentle hands. And now, last one before the
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: lamp oil runs low, let me tell you about the
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: Tuesday the school came to see the wheel.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: Priya's class, you understand?
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: Twenty small scholars in matching coats are arriving at the
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: top of Bramble Lane in a line like a stripe
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: of paint with two teachers and a permission slip for.
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: Every one of them.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: They came to learn about water power and old machinery,
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: or so the letter said. And I'm sure they learned
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: some of that, but you know children, neighbor. Children do
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: not study the thing you plan. They study the thing
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: that is looking back.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: At them, mister.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: Thingwick met them at the meadow gate in his good
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: boots and walked them down the path, and the whole
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: lane came out to lean on the fence and watch.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 1: because 20 children is a festival in a place like this.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: The children gathered around the wheel and asked the questions
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: that adults have forgotten how to ask, and I wrote
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: down as many as I could remember, because I did
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: not want to lose them.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: The first was, how old is the wheel?
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: Mr. Fenwick said older than anyone could remember, and a
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: small boy in glasses said, that is not a number.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: And Mr., Fenwick laughed and said, no, it is not,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: and I do not have one. The second was, does
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 1: the wheel get tired? Mr. Fenwick said no, but it
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: does get thirsty, and he showed them the grease can,
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: and they all nodded as if that made perfect sense.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 2: And it does. The third was, who owns it?
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: Now that one landed differently, coming so soon after the
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 1: vicar's sermon, and I saw several grown-ups on the fence
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: shift their weight. Mr. Fenwick thought about it a long while,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: he said, I suppose the lane does. And the same
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 1: boy in glasses said, Then who is the lane? Films
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: And nobody answered, and the wheel kept turning, and the
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: children watched it turn, and I think that was the answer.
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: The fourth was, what is that sound? Because the wheel
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: was ticking its autumn tick, and one of the girls
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: had her ear turned toward it like a tuning fork. Mr.
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: Fenwick said, that is the wheel doing its job. And
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: the girl said, no, the.
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: Other sound, the little one.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: And everyone went quiet and sure enough, there was a
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: faint metal note from the orchard behind the fence. Twelve
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: small buzz of silver and brass and porcelain stirring in
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: the wind.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: Priya.
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: Who is nine and has never once in her life
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: missed a detail, said, that is the frost chime, and
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: it is made of twelve thimbles, and it belongs to
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: a hare. She said it plainly, the way you would
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: say the sky is blue, and twenty children accepted it
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: entirely and asked no further questions on the subject, which
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: is the highest form of belief there is. They asked
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: the hare questions, too, once he appeared. He came out
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: of the orchard in his waistcoat and stood at the
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: fence and let them look at him. They wanted to
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: know if he was cold. He shook his head. They
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: wanted to know what he ate. He pantomimed a carrot,
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: and they roared. One boy asked if the hare had
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: ever lost at Conkers, and the hare drew himself up
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: very tall and looked offended for exactly three seconds. and
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: then bowed, and the children clapped, and I do believe
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: that was the finest moment of his autumn. When the
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: class lined up to leave, the teacher asked if anyone
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: had learned something they wanted to share, and the boy
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: in glasses raised his hand and said, I learned that
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: the lane owns the wheel, and the wheel owns the time,
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: and the time owns us.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: And the teacher blinked.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: And wrote something in her notebook, and the whole line
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: trooped back up the hill. The lane went quiet again
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: after they left. Mr. Fenwick stood at the meadow gate
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: a while, cap in hand, watching the wheel, and I
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: went inside and put the kettle on, and I thought
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: about that boy and his answer, and I still do,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: most nights, as the lane settles and the chime rings
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: soft in the orchard. You borrow tonight from tomorrow, neighbors.
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: Bend it easy. Sleep well.
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: There is a quiet that only happens in an orchard
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: when the fruit has grown so heavy it stops swinging.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: If you listen closely, neighbor. Right around the fourth hour
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: of the afternoon, the boughs don't sway so much as
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: sighing to the grass. That was the hour young Priya
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: stood beneath the grand old russet tree, with her boots
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: buried deep in dry clover and her knuckles white around
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: a wooden tuning fork now. She was nine years old,
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: and as any sensible person will tell you, nine is
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: an enormous age. It is old enough to be trusted
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: with the pantry key on bread-baking mornings. and old enough
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: to reach the lower latch on the carriage gate without
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: standing on a brick, but tuning the frost wheel.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: Well, that hat.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: Always been a two-pair-of-hands affair.
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: Usually, Mr.
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: Fenwick held the stepladder, steady, with his shoulder, while Mr.
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: Thistledown himself, perched up on a croak of bark in
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: that bottle-green velvet waistcoat of his, would tilt his long
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: ears toward the breeze and tap the rims with his
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: copper rod. Only on this particular Thursday, Mr. Thistledown was
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: nowhere to be found. Or rather, he was found, but
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: he had tucked himself firmly into the hollow of the
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: stern wellhead with half a dried pear and an expression
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: that suggested he had retired from public life until sundown.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: The hare had looked at Priya. twitched his whiskers precisely
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: three times, and pushed the little pine box holding the
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 1: pitch peg straight across the moss with his front paw.
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 2: Go on then, lass, Mr.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 1: Fenric had said, leaning against his rake and trying very
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: hard to pretend he was looking at the cabbage patch.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: The seventh cup is sharp. Think to him the three
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: gardens off if you have a mind to hear it.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: Sounds like an aunt clearing her throat before.
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: She complains about the tea. Priya had swallowed twice. I
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: could see her throat bob from my kitchen window, where
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: I happened to be polishing the blast kettle for the
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: third time that afternoon.
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: You know how it is, neighbor.
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: You do not wish to intrude, but you also do
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: not wish to miss the moment a child discovers whether
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: she has ears for iron or ears for music. She
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: climbed the three rungs of the orchard ladder with great solemnity.
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: Her fingers were small, but she had wrapped two layers
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: of flannel around her thumbs the way she had seen
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: the tinker do, so as not to warm the metal
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: with her skin. Metal, you see, remembers the sun. and
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: a warm thimble never tells the truth about its note.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: The seventh thimble was a little fluted silver affair that
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: had once belonged to Mrs. Alder's grandmother. It had tiny
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: dimples pressed into its dome, worn smooth in the center
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: where forty years of linen aprons had pressed against it.
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: Priya held her breath. Mm-hmm.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 2: You could hear the sheep.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: Over on the lower common, half a mile away.
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: Chewing their evening mouthful.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: She brought the little boxwood striker up, paused until a
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: stray yellow leaf fluttered past her nose and touched the
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: silver rim. A note came off the branch. It was thin,
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: like water poured into a deep bucket, and it wobbled
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: at the end with a sour little pinch. Down by
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: the hedge, Mrs. Pettifer paused mid-snip with her rose shears.
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 2: She didn't look up.
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: Of course, that would have been bad manners, but her
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: shears stayed open in the air like a pair of
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: silver jaws. Plea did not cry, which I considered a
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: tremendous triumph for nine years of age. Instead, she sat
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: down on the second rung, set the tuning fork against
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: the heel of her boot to still its hum, and
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: closed her eyes. She sat so still for four long
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: minutes that a ladybug crawled right over her shoelace without
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: the slightest hurry. Then she reached into her penny-four pocket,
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: brought out the tiny bone wedge Mr. Thistledown had carved
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: from an old butter paddle, and slid it beneath the
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: linen twine that held the thimble to its apple bow.
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: just a fraction of a barley corn, no more than
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: the thickness of an autumn cobweb. She struck it again. Oh, neighbor,
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: the sound that came through the leaves was not loud,
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: but it was round. It was as round and smooth
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: as a brown egg fresh from the hay. It went
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 1: out across the orchard grass, under the nettles, straight through
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: my open pantry window. and set three clean jelly jars
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: humming in sympathy upon the shelf.
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: Fenwick did not cheer. He merely spat into the dark leaves,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: nodded once, and said, I....
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: That will keep the frost polite.
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: But up on the branch, a pair of long, velvet-tipped ears,
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: poked out from behind a cluster of red apples, twitched
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: once toward the north, and vanished back into the shadows.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: And Priya came down the ladder without touching the handrail,
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 1: her chin so high she nearly tripped over the water butt.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: When the sun sits exactly level with the weathercock on
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: the parish hall, Bramble Lane does not stay indoors. It
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: is an unwritten rule, older than the pump and far
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: more reliable than the bus timetable, that on the night
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: when dark and light share the clock equally, we together,
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: or we do not eat at all. Mr. Sykes had
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: brought out the two trestle tables from the hayloft. They
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 1: were scrubbed with pumice and vinegar until the white pines
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: shone like lard, and we set them end to end
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: right down the center of the lane, where the tarmac
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: gives way to the cart ruts. If an automobile had
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: come along, it would simply have had to turn around
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: and contemplate its choices. But no automobile comes down Bramble
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: Lane after six in the evening anyway. The cows have
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: the right of way, and the cows are never in
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: a rush. Every house brought its own lamb.
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: There were storm lanterns with.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 1: Green glass, three brass carriage lights that Mrs. Pettifer had
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: polished until they smelled of lavender wax, and sixteen small
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 1: tin saucers with mutton tallow that smoked just enough to
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 1: keep the evening gnats down in the ditch. The table
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: looked like a long, glowing centipede resting between the privet hedges.
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: Mind the salt cellar, Mr. Sykes, called the elder Miss Gable,
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: setting down a yellow earthenware bowl filled with damson stew.
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: It has the correct bottom. If you slide it, you
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: will salt the tablecloth and we shall all have five
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: years of quarrels. I have had sixty years of quarrels
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: with your runner beans, Clara, Mr. Sykes muttered into his beard,
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: but he lifted the salt with both hands as gently
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: as if it were a sleeping finch.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: Can I?
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: Down at the far end, right between the jug of
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: elderberry cordial and the crusty loaf Mrs. Elder had scored
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: with a wheat-sheaf pattern sat the tiny place setting. Nobody
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: spoke of it directly. To talk about it too loudly
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 1: would be to make an errand of it, and Bramble
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: Lane hates an errand when there is supper to be had,
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: but there it was, a butterplate no wider than a
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: crown piece, a napkin torn from a scrap of clean
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: calicum no bigger than a postage stamp, and an egg-cup
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 1: turned upside down to serve as a stool. In the
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: center of the plate lay a single blackberry, polished with
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: a tea-towel until it shone like jet, and three toasted
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: pumpkin seeds arranged in a modest fan. We stood behind
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: our chairs while Mr. Fenwick cleared his throat. He does
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 1: not hold with long graces, which is why we permit
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: him to say them. The wheat is in the bin,
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: he said, looking down the row of steaming dishes. The
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: apples are in the loft, the thimbles are in the tree,
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: and the lane.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 2: Is still here.
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: For what we are about to eat and for the
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: neighbors who brought it, let us be thankful.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 2: Amen, said Mrs.
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: Pettifer, though she was already eyeing the crust on Mrs.
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 1: Alder's rabbit pie to see if the lard had been
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: worked cold enough. We sat, and the clatter of spoons began.
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: It is the best sound in the world, neighbor, the
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: dry clack of horn and silver against pottery in the
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: open air, with the smell of wood smoke drifting over
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: from the cottage chimneys and the stars coming out one
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: by one like sparks caught in wool. We drank cider
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: that had just begun to bite the back of the tongue,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: and we toasted the harvest and we toasted the wren
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: who had raised four speckled eggs in the spare brass
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: thimble behind the woodpile. And then, just as the younger
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: Miss Stable was cutting the hazelnut.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: Tart, Mr.
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: Fenwick raised his pewter mug toward the dark hedgerow. To
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: the tinker, he said softly. We did not make a
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 1: shot of it. We just lifted our glasses. every one
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: of us, toward the shadows under the hazel trees, and
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: when I glanced back down at the far end of
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: the white pine board, the blackberry was gone. In its place,
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: sitting straight up on the little calicum square, was a single,
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: perfect acorn cap, filled to the brim with clear.
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 2: Cold, well water.
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: The trouble with the frost chime, you see, is that
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: sound does not know about parish boundaries. A note that
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: leaves Bramble Lane on a clear, cold evening does not
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: ask permission from the church wardens before it drifts across
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 1: the water meadows into Great Oakington. It arrived on a Tuesday,
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: carried by young Tommy who rides the butcher's bicycle with
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: a heavy iron basket on the front. He leaned the
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: machine against Mrs. Pettifer's gatepost, pulled a blue envelope from
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: beneath his greasy apron, and wiped his nose with his sleeve.
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: From their vestry, he said, breathing hard. The parson's clerk
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: gave me tuppence to bring it direct, on account.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: Of the road being mended with flint.
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: Mrs. Pettifer accepted the envelope with the tip of her apron,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: as though it might contain weevils. By eleven that morning,
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: seven of us were sitting in my parlor, where the
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: kettle was boiling itself into a state of nervous exhaustion,
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: and the curtains were pinned wide so we could see
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: the road. They want to know the mechanism, Mrs. Pettifer announced,
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: peering over her spectacles, she had already slit the glue
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: paper with her silver-plated fruit knife.
• 1:53:32
  Speaker 2: Listen to this.
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: The Paris Council of Great Oakington presents its compliments to
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: the inhabitants of Bramble Lane and Beggs to inquire as
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: to the nature of the musical apparatus presently suspended in
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: the orchard. Having noted the preservation of your late plums
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: during the recent unseasonable dip, We should be obliged for
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: the measurements of the veins and the gauge of the wire. Mr.
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 2: Sykes flew through his teeth. Measurements? They wanted.
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: The only measurement they understand over in Oakington is the
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: price of barley by the hundredweight.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: They have sixty.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: Acres of Victoria plums, said Mr. Fenwick mildly, scraping the
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: mud from his boot heel with a notched match deck.
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: A black frost would ruin three tenant families before Martin Mass.
• 1:54:28
  Speaker 1: It is no sin to ask after a coat when
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: you see your neighbor staying warm. It isn't a coat,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: said the younger Miss Gable. It's twelve thimbles and an
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 1: apple tray that likes having company. You can't write that
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: down on blue paper with an Oakington seal. We argued
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: about that letter until the coal burned down to red
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: lace in the grate. Mrs. Alder thought we should send
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 1: them a drawing of the paddle wheel, but since none
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: of us had ever climbed up high enough to see
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 1: how the hare had lashed the elderberry sprockets to the axle,
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: the drawing would have consisted mostly of leaves and guesses. Mr.
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: Sykes suggested telling them it was a peculiar species of
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: cricket that only lived on Bramble Lane and died if
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: carried across a turnpike. In the end, Priya brought out
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: a sheet of lined paper from her school exercise book,
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: the sort with the pale blue rules that smell of
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: cedar pencil shavings. Write what he did, she said, setting
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: her small, groovy ink pot in the middle of my
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: round table. Just tell them what was lost and what
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: it was made into.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: So we did.
• 1:55:46
  Speaker 1: We took turns with my turkey quill pen, which has
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: a split nib and requires a great deal of patience. Mrs.
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: Pettifer wrote the first three lines, Star, you must begin
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: with what has already been used. New brass is too
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: proud to ring. It wants thirty years of mending sheets
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: to take the sting out of its voice.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: Then Mr.
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: Sykes took the pen, leaving a smudge of tobacco on
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: the margin. Star, the wheel does not turn for coal
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: smoke or steam. It turns on the coal draft that
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: rolls down from the high sheep pastures twenty minutes before
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 1: the ice sets. If your valley has no draft, you
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: had better light wood fires and stop bothering your betters. Mr.
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: Fenwick added his piece in large. Square letters that looked
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: like split fence rails. Star, hang them where the fruit
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 1: can hear. Kettle does not warm a bough, but a
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: true note keeps the sap from curdling. Do not grease
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: the spindles. The frost hates grease.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: And finally, at.
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 1: The very bottom, where the red margin line ended. Young
• 1:57:06
  Speaker 1: Priya drew twelve little circles with her yellow crayon, and
• 1:57:10
  Speaker 1: under them she wrote, Star leave the gate unlatched after
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: nine at night, and do not look behind the water but.
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: We folded it three times, sealed it with beeswax from Mrs.
• 1:57:23
  Speaker 1: Alder's hives, and sent Tommy peddling back toward Great Oakington
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: with half a pork pie in his pocket to keep
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: his knees going against the wind. Whether they ever hummed
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: their own thimbles, we never did find out. But three
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: days later, a crate of damson jam was left on
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: our parish milestone with no name on the timber, only
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: the word thanks written in blue chalk across the slots.
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: The change came on the 20th of October.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 1: Not with a roar or a gale, but with that strange,
• 1:58:09
  Speaker 1: brittle stillness that makes every dog in the lane lie.
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 2: With his nose between his paws. By five that afternoon,
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: the smoke from Mrs.
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: Pettifer's chimney was rising straight up like a gray chalk
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: line drawn against a sky.
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 2: The color of cold dishwater.
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 1: The rooks had come down out of the high elms
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: an hour early, Walking about the pasture with their shoulders
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: hunched like old men looking for lost sixpences, I was
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: out by my woodpile, splitting a bit of dry ash
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: for the night, when the chime stopped. It did not
• 1:58:48
  Speaker 1: wind down slowly, neighbor. It did not limp through three
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 1: slow notes and fade into the grass. The breeze simply
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: ceased to exist. One second the fifth thimble was ringing
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: its sweet hollow ping against the twigs, and the next
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: second the orchard was so dead quiet you could hear
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: the willow leaves detaching themselves from the high branches and
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: slipping into the mud.
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 2: There it is, said Mr.
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: Fenwick, appearing at my hedge with a burlap sack thrown
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: over his.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: Coat like a cape.
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: His breath was already showing in faint, white puffs. The
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: air has dropped out of the sky. Kiwil won't help
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 1: us tonight. When the wind dies, the iron goes to sleep.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: It was the black frost coming down from the hills.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: The frost that does not sparkle on the grass like
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: sugar but creeps along the ditches like an invisible sheepdog,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: freezing the marrow and the twigs before morning. Within twenty minutes,
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: every back door on Bramble Lane had banged open. There
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 1: was no shouting. We know better than to shout when
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: the cold is listening, but there was the steady rhythmic
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: trundle of iron wheels. Mr. Sykes brought out the smudge pots.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: They are old five-gallon oil drums rusted into lace around
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: the rims, stuffed full of damp turf, dry bracken, and
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: yesterday's potato peelings. We dragged them between the rows of the.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 2: Late russet apples.
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 1: Six paces apart, until the orchard looked like an ironworks
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: waiting for the morning shift. Priya came down between the trees,
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: carrying a tin lantern with a candle stub guttering behind
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: the horn window. She had her father's woolen scarf wound
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 1: four times around her neck, so thick she had to
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: turn her.
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 2: Whole body to look at the boughs. Will it break
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 2: the cups, mister? Thingwick?
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: She asked, her voice small in the great, gray hush.
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: If the ice gets inside them? The orchard keeper struck
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: a sulfur.
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 2: Match against his trouser leg. It flared blue.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: Then yellow, smelling fiercely of rotten eggs and kitchen stoves,
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 1: before he touched it to the greasy shavings at.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: The top of the first drum.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: They're silver and brass, lass, he said, blowing gently until
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: a thick yellow coil of smoke began to crawl out
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: of the drum and lie along.
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 2: The clover like sheep's wool.
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: They've survived the boils of forty thumbs and the washing
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 1: soda of sixty washdays. They won't crack for three degrees
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: of rhyme. We worked until the darkness was as thick
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: as lard. We lit nine pots down the western alley
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: where the cold pool always gathers first by the drainage
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: ditch until the air smelled of sweet peat, burnt heather,
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: and old iron. The smoke did not rise. It was
• 2:02:09
  Speaker 1: too cold for rising. It lay in long, white bolsters
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 1: four feet deep, wrapping the trunks of the oldest trees
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: in woolly gray socks. keeping the ground's little bit of
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: remembered summer from slipping away into the stars. And up
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 1: in the center of the old russet, completely hidden by
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 1: the cloud of turf smoke, the frost wheel hung motionless.
• 2:02:39
  Speaker 1: The twelve thimbles were dark against the twigs, silver and
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: brass and pewter, waiting for the air to stir again.
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: Around ten, when the frost had begun to turn the
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: grass blades into tiny needles of glass, Mr. Thistledown appeared
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: on the top rung of the ladder. He did not
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: have his tools. He had a great bundle of dry
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: moss tucked under one foreleg and an old wool stocking
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: under the other. Bria and I stood together by the
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: well our boots wrapped in sacking to keep the soles
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: from freezing to the stone.
• 2:03:16
  Speaker 2: We watched him work by the red glow of the
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 2: turf fires. He wasn't tooting now. He was tucking.
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: Each little metal bell into its own nest of dry sphagnum,
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: packing the hollows so the dew could not climb in
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: and freeze the strikers to the dones. He finished with
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: the porcelain robin, the one that had belonged to Mrs.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 2: Pettifer's mother.
• 2:03:43
  Speaker 1: He patted the moss down with the flat of his paw.
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: took one long slow look at the yellow smoke curling
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: around the roots below, and then slipped into the hollow
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: crotch of the tree where the woodpeckers had nested two
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: summers back. He's staying, Priya whispered, her teeth chattering like
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: buttons in a tin.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 2: Aye, said Mr. Fennec, leaning on his shovel and watching.
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: The white crust creep across the road toward our slippers.
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: He knows where the smoke is warmest. Go on in
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: to the fire. Child, the watch has begun. So the
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: curtains are drawn now, neighbor. My kettle has gone off
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: the boil and is sitting on the trivet, just humming
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: to itself like an old bee in a lavender bush.
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 2: Outside.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: The smoke is holding the lane safe under its gray blanket,
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: and the stars are as sharp as salt, and twelve
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: little thimbles are sleeping in the moss until the morning thaw.
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: Blow out your candle now. The fence will still be
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: here when the sun comes round. Close your eyes, let
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: your shoulders drop, and listen for the first puff of dawn.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 2: Good night.
• 2:05:10
  Speaker 1: Hello again, neighbor. Pull your chair a little closer to
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: the fire, why don't you? And let me top up
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: that cup. The wind out there has been sawing at
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: the eaves all evening, and the windows have gone that
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: particular silver. That means the frost has settled in for
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: a proper stay. This is the longest night of the year,
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 1: the one they all manac marks in small careful letters,
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 1: and on Bramble Lane we have a habit of not
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: letting it pass unremarked. Mind you, we do not do
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: anything grand.
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 2: That is not our way, Mrs.
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: Petrufer lit a single candle in her front window just
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: after supper, and by the time the church clock struck,
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: every house on the lane had answered her, one small
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: flame at a time, until the whole street looked like
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: a string of low.
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 2: Warm beads against the dark.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 1: Mr. Fenwick brought out the good apple cider, the kind
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: he saves for the orchard keeper's own cup.
• 2:06:08
  Speaker 2: And Mrs.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: Alder arrived with a tin of spice biscuits that she
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: pretended were leftover and that we all pretended to believe
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: were leftover. And we sat together in the parlor, neighbor,
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: all of us, with the candles doing their slow, patient
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: dance and the frost painting its careful ferns on the glass,
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: and we told stories. That is what the longest night
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 1: is for, Mrs. Pettifer says, and she is rarely wrong
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: about such things. Priya told the one about the cat
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: who swallowed the mood and got the part with the
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 1: burp wrong on purpose so that everyone would laugh, and
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: we did laugh, all of us, even Mr. Sykes, who
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: has a laugh like a rusty gate and does not
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: use it often. The Gable sisters each told a story.
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 1: The elder Gable told one about a fisherman who traded
• 2:07:08
  Speaker 1: his shadow for a lamp, and the younger Gable, who
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: is the quieter of the two, told one about a
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: mouse who kept a button for every friend she had
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: ever made, and when she finished nobody said anything for
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: a moment because it had landed soft and true. the
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 1: way the best ones do. And I told the old one,
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: the one about the woodcutter whose axe would only cut
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: wood that had already fallen and how he grumbled about
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: it for years and only understood near the end that
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 1: the axe had been keeping him honest. Mr.
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: Fenwick nodded. Along, because Mr.
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: Fenwick has an axe like that in the shed.
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: Or so he claims.
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: Then the candles got low and the fire got quiet,
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: and the talk turned to the small things, the way
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: it always does on the longest night, Mrs. Alder's new kettle,
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: the robin that has been wintering in Mr. Sykes's hedge,
• 2:08:07
  Speaker 1: the way Priya's boots have suddenly gotten too small, which
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: she announced with great dignity as a fact of nature,
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: and nobody hurried, neighbor, nobody chapped a clock. The long
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: night stretched out warm and slow, and.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 2: We let it.
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: Somewhere near the middle of it, when the candles were
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: down to their last honest inch, we all got still,
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: not the uncomfortable kind of still, the other kind. the
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: kind that settles in when a room has said everything
• 2:08:41
  Speaker 1: it needed to say and is happy to let the
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: fire do the talking. Mrs. Pettifer's candle burned down first,
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: and she let it, and we watched the little light
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: do its small brave thing until it went out on
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: its own terms, the way a good candle always should. Then,
• 2:09:03
  Speaker 1: one by one, the flames in the windows across the
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: lane blinked out, and the houses went dark and gentle,
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: and the longest night began its slow turn back toward morning.
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 2: You could almost hear it turning.
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: If you listened, the right way a creak of frost,
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: a whisper of chimney smoke, and somewhere out past the orchard,
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: past the last fence post, a sound so faint you'd
• 2:09:29
  Speaker 1: swear it was the wind. except it wasn't, it was
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: smaller and cleverer than the wind. It was a chime
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: of twelve thimbles, and it rang once, and then it
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: went quiet, as if it too had decided the night
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 1: was over, and it was time, at last, to sleep. Now, neighbor,
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: you already know that the Gable sisters do not do
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: things by halves.
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 2: When they decided the.
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: Lane ought to have carolers, they did not mean two
• 2:10:09
  Speaker 1: neighbors humming on a corner. They meant a proper outing,
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: with a route and a schedule and a rehearsal and
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: a list of which houses got which song the elder
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: Gable drew up the list herself. in her cramped, careful hand,
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: and when she read it aloud at the kitchen table,
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: you could hear the capitals. First the vicarage, then Mrs. Piverfer,
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: then the Sykes house, then the long walk out to
• 2:10:38
  Speaker 1: Fenwick's orchard, and finally, and this is important, a stop
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: at the old tree at the far end, because the
• 2:10:45
  Speaker 1: Gable sisters do not believe in leaving anyone out even
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 1: the ones they have never quite managed to meet. Rehearsal
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: was two evenings before. It was held in the Gable
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 1: sisters' front parlor, which smells of cedar and lemon and
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: faintly of all the winters it has ever seen.
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 2: Mrs. Alder brought a pitch pipe. Mr.
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: Higgs brought himself, which surprised everyone, and stood in the
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: corner with his hands behind his back and his eyebrows
• 2:11:19
  Speaker 1: doing all the singing for him. Priya brought her boots,
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: which fit now because her mother had taken them to
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: the cobbler, and she wanted us all to know it,
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 1: and I brought the tea, because that is what I
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: am for.
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: It did not go well right away.
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 1: The elder Gable wanted slower, the younger Gable wanted softer. Mrs.
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: Alder wanted everyone to breathe where she breathed, and Priya
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: wanted very much to sing the part that bellows and
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 1: no amount of gentle reasoning would move her. And then
• 2:11:55
  Speaker 1: there was the question of the harmony, which the elder
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: Gable insisted the lane had always sung and which nobody
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: else could quite remember. We practiced that harmony for a
• 2:12:07
  Speaker 1: full half hour, neighbor, and by the end of it,
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: I would not say we had found it, but I
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: would say we had agreed to be near it. Then,
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: all at once there was a sound from outside. A
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: small sound, silver and clean like a spoon. tacked on
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: the rim of a very tiny teacup. And then again,
• 2:12:30
  Speaker 1: and then a whole run of them, low to high,
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: a chime going up the scale and back down, gentle,
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: as a wind chime on a very still night.
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 2: We all got quiet.
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 1: Mrs. Alder put down the pitch pipe, and Mr. Sykes,
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: who we thought had been standing there saying nothing, finally
• 2:12:54
  Speaker 1: said something. He said, That is in the right key. Well,
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: what can you do with a thing like that? The
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: Gable sisters looked at each other. Priya looked at me,
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: and we opened the window, and there in the dark,
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 1: in the oldest tree past the orchard fence, the frost
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 1: chime the hair had built out of thimbles, was still
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: swaying gently, ringing out the exact note we had been
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: hunting for the better part of an hour, over and over,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: patient as a teacher and just as sure of itself.
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: Think we sang neighbor, all of us with the pitch
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: pipe put away and the schedule forgotten and the chime
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: came along the hallway, sometimes soft, sometimes quick, sometimes trailing
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: behind us a half step, as if it were thinking
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 1: about something else, and somehow always coming back to the
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: note we needed just as we needed it. We made
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: it to the vicarage. We made it to Mrs. Pettifer,
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: who pretended not to cry and did not pretend very well.
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: We made it to the Sykes house which we had
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: just left, and Mr... Sykes opened his own door for
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: us with great ceremony, as if he had not been
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: standing in that very room ten minutes earlier, and we
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: sang to him, and he listened, and then he shut
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: the door, and we all heard him laugh, which he
• 2:14:24
  Speaker 1: did honestly and out loud, like a rusty gate finally
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: given a drop of oil, and on the way home,
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: past the last frostbitten fence post, we stopped at the
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: old orchard tree, and we sang one more, just for
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: the chime, and the chime rang back at us. Twelve
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 1: small study notes, one for each thimble, and we did
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 1: not say anything and we did not need to. We
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: just walked home with the cold on our cheeks and
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: the songs still humming in our chests and the lane
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: went dark behind.
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 2: Us, one window at a time. Well, neighbor, you should
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: have seen it.
• 2:15:16
  Speaker 1: I woke up and the light coming through the curtains
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: was the wrong kind of bright. The flat white kind
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: that means only one thing, and I knew before I
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: even looked.
• 2:15:27
  Speaker 2: Snow.
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: And not the polite dusting we get most winters.
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 2: Real snow.
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: Snow like the sky had finally made up its mind.
• 2:15:41
  Speaker 1: I went to the window, and there it was, the
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: whole lane buried, and every roof on Bramble Lane wearing
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 1: a thick soft cap, and every fence post turned into
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: a tiny old man in a tall hat, and the
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: orchard trees all curled under white like they were sleeping
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: under a quilt that had been a long time coming
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: and the quiet neighbor. You could hear the quiet. You
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: could hear it so well that when Mrs. Pettifer's back
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: door creaked open a hundred yards off, I heard it
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: plain as a bell. Everyone came out at once, the
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 1: way neighbors do after a big snow. each of us
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: pretending not to be checking on the others and doing
• 2:16:24
  Speaker 1: it anyway.
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 2: Mrs.
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: Alder swept her walk, which was an act of pure optimism,
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 1: because more was still coming down. Mr. Sykes shoveled his
• 2:16:34
  Speaker 1: step with a shovel that has clearly seen better decades.
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: Fenwick tramped down the lane with his collar turned up
• 2:16:41
  Speaker 1: and his eyes on the orchard, and when he passed
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: me he said, only, the smudge pots are holding. and
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: I knew the trees would be all right. Plea came
• 2:16:56
  Speaker 1: sprinting out in her boots, which fit beautifully, and stood
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the lane and announced that this
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: was the best day of her entire life, and I
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: believe her, and then we saw the tracks, small ones,
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: neat as a row of buttons, coming up out of
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: the orchard and crossing the lane and stopping at Mrs.
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 2: Pettifer's gate and.
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 1: And then turning and going along the fence, and then
• 2:17:21
  Speaker 1: up to the Sykes doorstep, and then across to the
• 2:17:24
  Speaker 1: Gable Sisters, and then off across.
• 2:17:26
  Speaker 2: The fields toward the wood.
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 1: Little tracks, close together, the tracks of a creature walking
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 1: on its hind feet and stopping often. You could see
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: where it had stopped, neighbor, because the snow gated away.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: Each pause was a small, sunken pair of prints. like
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: the snow itself had been waiting for something. We did
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: not follow them right away. It felt rude somehow. But
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: after breakfast, we did go out, a few of us,
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: along the fence line, just to look. The tracks went
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: along the edge of the orchard and stopped under the
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: oldest tree, and there, dusted but clear, were the marks
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: of a chair being pulled out and pushed back in,
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: a small wooden chair by the look of it. And
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: above it on the branch, the frost chime hung with
• 2:18:27
  Speaker 1: a little hat of snow on every thimble, and the
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: snow on them had been brushed off, all twelve of them.
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: in careful little arcs, as if someone had sat there
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 1: in the cold and gone around and cleared every single
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 1: one by hand, and in the middle of all that smooth,
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: unbroken snow, under the tree was one small pair of
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: footprints and then, right beside them, the long soft drag
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: of a tail, just the one set, coming in from
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: the woods and going back out again. He had been
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: there in the night, neighbor, and the hush and the
• 2:19:07
  Speaker 1: dark and the deep fresh snow while the whole lane
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: slept under its white quilt he had come up to
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: check on his chime and he had dusted it off
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: and then he had gone home and we stood there
• 2:19:20
  Speaker 1: in the cold a while and nobody said much and
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 1: the snow kept coming down and quietly covering up the
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: tracks the way it covers everything if you give it
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: enough time and I found I did not.
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 2: Mind that even a little And then neighbor.
• 2:19:44
  Speaker 1: It turned it always does, and it always comes as
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: a surprise, which is one of the nicer jokes the
• 2:19:51
  Speaker 1: season plays on us. The wind swung around to the
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: west and the temperature went up, and the snow went
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: from white to gray to something honestly not fit to
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: talk about in polite company. The eve started to tick
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 1: and then to drip and then to run, and by
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: might afternoon the whole lane sounded like a symphony of
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: teacups being poured. The gutters gurgled, the ditch along the
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: lane filled, and started to hurry. Small streams cut their
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 1: way through the snowdrifts like silver thread, and the lane,
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: which had been sleeping under a quilt, woke up and
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: started talking. Mrs. Pettifer hung her washout, which was an
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: act of pure spite against the weather, and it worked,
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: because the weather perked right up and gave her sun.
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: Sykes stood on his step and watched the water run
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: past with deep suspicion, as if it were up to something. Priya,
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 1: who had been building an ambitious snowman on the corner,
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: watched the bottom of it turn to slush, and accepted
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: the whole thing with remarkable grace, which I think is
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: a lesson for all of us. And out past the
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 1: orchard fence, if you had been standing at the right
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 1: window at the right hour, you would have seen a
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: small figure come out of the woods and cross the
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: wet field with his feet, making a soft sound in
• 2:21:27
  Speaker 1: the slush. He had a bag over his shoulder and
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: a little cloth in his hand, and he went straight
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: up to the oldest tree and set the bag down
• 2:21:41
  Speaker 1: in the snow and stood there on his hind legs
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: and got to work because the chime has been out
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: in the frost and the snow and the dripping, dripping
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: thawed for many weeks now, and every thimble on it
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 1: had been banged and dusted and banged again, and he
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 1: was not the kind of creature to let that go
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: unexamined I watched him from the orchard edge, and I
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: did not hide, and he did not mind, because we
• 2:22:12
  Speaker 1: have an understanding now, he and I, the kind of
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: understanding that does not need a name. He lifted the
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: first thimble off its hook and held it up to
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: the light and he turned it this way and that
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: with his long clever fingers and he tapped it once
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: with his thumbnail and he listened and then he set
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: it down satisfied and put the cloth to it and
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: buffed it until it gleamed and hung it back on
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: the hook. He did that with the second and the third.
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: And every one of the twelve, he checked for cracks
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: and held up to the light and tapped and listened.
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: Twice he frowned, once he took a thimble down and
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: squinted into it for a long time and gave it
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 1: a flick with his thumb, and the note it made
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: was a little dull, a little flat, and he shook
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: his head and set it in the bag to take
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 1: home to the workshop. The rest he cleaned and hung
• 2:23:11
  Speaker 1: back up, one by one, and when he was done
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 1: he stepped back and looked at the chime in the
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: afternoon sun, twelve thimbles bright in a row, one gap
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: where the thirteenth would go when he had mended it,
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: and then he noticed me. Properly, he turned and looked
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 1: at me, across the wet field with his whiskers twitching,
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 1: and he went very, still.
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 2: The way a creature.
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 1: Does when it is deciding something, and I went very
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: still too, because it seemed only fair. And then he
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: did a thing I will not forget. He reached up
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: and gave the time a single soft stroke with his hand,
• 2:23:55
  Speaker 1: so that all twelve thimbles rang together, low to high
• 2:23:59
  Speaker 1: to low. The same note that had saved dark caroling,
• 2:24:03
  Speaker 1: the same note that had run on the longest night
• 2:24:06
  Speaker 1: as small, clean, silver sound across the melting snow. And
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 1: then he picked up his bag and went off through
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 1: the slush toward the wood without hurrying, without looking back,
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: and the dripping of the eaves went on and on,
• 2:24:26
  Speaker 1: and I stood there in the wet and did not
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 1: move until the last of the sound had gone. The
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: thaw kept right on, neighbor, as thaws do.
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 2: But that afternoon... I walked.
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 1: Home with the chime still in my ear, and I
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: thought about how a whole winter's worth of small, careful
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: work had just been gone over, thimble by thimble, by
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 1: someone who wanted it right. And that, I think, is
• 2:24:51
  Speaker 1: as good a thing to fall asleep to as any.
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 2: So go on.
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: Now, let the drips do their slow counting outside your window.
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: Let the streams run and the gutter's girl and the
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 1: old tree keep its quiet.
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 2: Watch over the lane. And when you drift off.
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: If you listen very near the edge of sleep, you
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 1: may hear it. Twelve small notes, one for each thimble,
• 2:25:21
  Speaker 1: low to high to low.
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 2: Good night, neighbor. Sleep well.
• 2:25:34
  Speaker 1: Well now, neighbor, pull that quilt up right under your
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: chin and let your shoulders drop down away from your ears,
• 2:25:41
  Speaker 1: because the year has gone and turned its wheel all
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: the way around again. There is no hurry tonight, none whatsoever.
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: The kettle has settled into that sweet, sleepy purret gets
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: when the water has finished boiling and is only keeping
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: warm on the back ring, and outside our window the
• 2:26:00
  Speaker 1: winter has finally let go of its long, stubborn grip
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: on the eaves. You remember how the frost warning went
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 1: with the smudge pots glowing down between the orchard rows
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 1: like a little constellation of grounded stars, and how Mr.
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: Fenwick walked the tree lines until his whiskers were dusted white.
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: We thought that cold would linger till midsummer.
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 2: Truly, we did.
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: Mrs. Pettifer had already brought out three additional knitted shawls
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 1: and laid them across her sofa cushions in anticipation of
• 2:26:38
  Speaker 1: a grim April. But yesterday morning, the wind shifted clean
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 1: around to the south, blowing sweet and damp over the
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: crest of the hill. smelling of thawed moss and wet flagstones,
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: and just like that, Bramble Lane woke up green. It
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 1: is our second spring together since the thimbles took to
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: the trees, and there is something remarkably gentle about a
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: lane that has learned what to expect from the dark.
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: This morning, young Priya came skipping past my kitchen hedge
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 1: before the sun had.
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 2: Even cleared the roof of the Gable Sisters' barn.
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: She was wearing those bright yellow boots of hers, the
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: ones that make a cheerful, rubbery squelch in the lame mud,
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: carrying a small slate board tied to a string around
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: her neck. She had a piece of chalk held tight
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 1: in her mitten, though by noon those mittens were tucked
• 2:27:39
  Speaker 1: deep into her pocket because the sun was doing honest
• 2:27:42
  Speaker 1: work for the first.
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 2: Time in months. She stopped at my gate and leaned.
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: Over with all the importance of a girl who has
• 2:27:49
  Speaker 1: very serious arithmetic to attend to.
• 2:27:52
  Speaker 2: She told me, Mr.
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 1: Henwick had officially appointed her chief blossom inspector, an office
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 1: that carries no wages but permits the holder to eat
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: as many candied ginger drops as Mr. Fenwick can find
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: in his waistcoat pockets. And so, neighbor, I put down
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 1: my dishcloth and fetched my walking stick, because when a
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: child asks you to help count the spring, you do
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: not tell her.
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 2: You have letters to write or toast to scrape.
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: We walked down into the orchard together, through that old
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: wooden gate that always sticks on the bottom rail. The
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: moss was so thick underfoot, it felt like walking across Mrs. U.
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: Alder's parlor rug, completely silent. every footstep cushioned, and oh,
• 2:28:49
  Speaker 1: the buds. You would have smiled to see them. After
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: that biting winter, you might have worried the old pear
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: tree would be tired, but it had put out clusters
• 2:28:59
  Speaker 1: of pale, velvety knuckles at the tip of every twig,
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: swollen tight with green and just a brush of pink
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: at the seam. Priya stood under the crook of the
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 1: lowest branch, tipped her head back until her woolen cap
• 2:29:14
  Speaker 1: tumbled off into the grass. and pointed up with her chalk,
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 1: one cluster, two clusters, three clusters on the south bough alone.
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: She marked each one on her slate with a tidy
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: little white stroke.
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 2: We found seventeen on.
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 1: The first bough, twenty-two on the second, and when we
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: reached the third branch, right where the great wooden wheel
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: hangs suspended on its braided hemp, she stopped her tally completely. There,
• 2:29:49
  Speaker 1: right beside the brass thimble that used to belong to Mr.
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: Sykes's mother, was a tiny rosette of five green sepals
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: peeled back like the corners of an envelope, and inside
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 1: sat a single white petal, so clean and new it
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 1: looked as though it had been ironed by hand that
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 1: very morning. Look, Priya whispered, and you know how children
• 2:30:17
  Speaker 1: whisper when they are trying to be reverent it is somehow,
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: t'was as loud as talking, but so sweet it makes
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: your ribs ache. The chime woke the blossoms up before
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: the bees even got their slippers on. I did not
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 1: correct her. Why on earth would anyone correct a thing
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: like that? I just reached down, picked her cap out
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: of the clover, shook the dried leaves from the tassel,
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: and set it back on her dark curls. We stood
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: there together under the boughs, listening to the drip of
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 1: melted snow falling from the bark into the soft loam below.
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 1: The orchard did not smell of smoke anymore. The smudge
• 2:31:04
  Speaker 1: pots were cold and stowed away behind the cider press.
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: It smelled of earth that had rested for four long
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 1: months and was now stretching its arms, perfectly satisfied with
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: the morning. By tea-time the word had gone up and
• 2:31:29
  Speaker 1: down the lane that today was, by all reasonable reckoning,
• 2:31:33
  Speaker 1: the exact anniversary of the night the chime first found
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 1: its true voice. One full year, Mrs. Alder remembered because
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: it coincided precisely with the day she dropped her best
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 1: brown teapot on the flagstones, an event she uses as
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: the anchor for all modern history, while the Gable sisters
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: swore it was the night their black cab Barnaby refused
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: to sleep on the coal scuttle and slept on the
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: bread box instead.
• 2:32:07
  Speaker 2: Whatever the ledger says.
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: It was a birthday, and on Bramble Lane a birthday
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: requires at least a saucer of something sweet and an excuse.
• 2:32:16
  Speaker 2: To stand on your toes.
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: Around four in the afternoon, when the shadows were beginning
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: to stretch out across the grass like long blue ribbons,
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: a small company assembled under the ancient tree. It was
• 2:32:31
  Speaker 1: not a loud party. You cannot have a noisy gathering
• 2:32:35
  Speaker 1: under a mechanism that answers to a breath of air.
• 2:32:38
  Speaker 1: It would simply be bad manners.
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: Thingwick came carrying a small brass oil can with a
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: spout no thicker than a darning needle. Stepping with that careful,
• 2:32:54
  Speaker 1: roll-legged gait of a man who has spent fifty years
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 1: trying not to startle nesting birds, Mrs. Pettifer arrived with
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: her tent of seed biscuits, the ones with the caraway
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 1: seeds that get behind your teeth, though she had frosted
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: them today with a little pale pink icing that made
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: them look uncommonly festive. We stood in a loose circle
• 2:33:15
  Speaker 1: around the trunk, our boots sinking gently into the sod.
• 2:33:23
  Speaker 1: High up in the fork, sitting quite casually on the
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: mossy bark with one long leg swinging over the edge.
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 2: Was Mr. Thistledown.
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: He had brushed his gray whiskers for the occasion, and
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 1: his green velvet waistcoat had all three horn buttons fastened,
• 2:33:41
  Speaker 1: though the bottom buttonhole was fraying just a bit around
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: the margin. In his paws he held a dry pine twig,
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: stripped clean of its bark until it was as smooth
• 2:33:52
  Speaker 1: and white as bone.
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 2: Good afternoon, Mr. Fenwick.
• 2:33:56
  Speaker 1: The hair called down, his voice like the crackle of
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: dry hay being turned with a fork. The dampness has
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: gotten into the fourth pig. It is sitting slightly flat.
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: I brought the Neats foot oil, sir, Mr. Fenwick replied,
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: tipping his tweed cap as gravely as if he were
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: addressing the mayor, and a strip of new sheepskin if
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: the buffer requires a pad. We watched in absolute silence
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: while the tinker.
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 2: Went to work.
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 1: It was extraordinary, neighbor, to see pause that small handle
• 2:34:35
  Speaker 1: would and wire with such steady patience. He dipped the
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: tip of his pine twig into the drop of oil Mr.
• 2:34:43
  Speaker 1: Fenwick held up on the end of a long reed,
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: and he touched it to the central spindle. Just one drop,
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: a drop no larger than a grain of mustard seed.
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 1: Then he ran his paw over the rim of the
• 2:35:01
  Speaker 1: twelve thimbles, touching each one in turn. The porcelain robin thimble.
• 2:35:07
  Speaker 1: the silver one from the war years, the heavy brass
• 2:35:11
  Speaker 1: tailor's cap, the little copper one Priya had donated from
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: her grandmother's biscuit tin. They hung there, bright as newly
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 1: minted pennies against the weathered oak bark, each suspended by
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: a strand of waxed linen that had survived every gale
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: the winter could throw at it.
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:35:30
  Speaker 1: Thistledown took his tiny silver key from his waistcoat pocket
• 2:35:34
  Speaker 1: and tapped the edge of the silver cup, and waited.
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: A little gust of afternoon air wandered through the orchard,
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: carrying the scent of damp bark and Mrs. Pettifer's caraway biscuits.
• 2:35:52
  Speaker 1: It caught the wooden veins of the paddle wheel. The
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: wheel turned, one half inch, then another, smooth as cream,
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 1: the oiled wooden teeth engaging with a soft, companionable clack,
• 2:36:06
  Speaker 1: and then the striker rose, hung for an instant against
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 1: the gray sky, and dropped.
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 2: Ting. It was not a church bell.
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 1: Neighbor. It did not shake the rooks from the elms
• 2:36:19
  Speaker 1: or summon the parish. It was just a clear silver
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: droplet of sound that dropped straight into the pool of
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 1: the afternoon and sent ripples running through the grass. A
• 2:36:34
  Speaker 1: moment later, the copper thimble answered, a third lower, warm
• 2:36:38
  Speaker 1: and rounded like an acorn striking a fence rail. And
• 2:36:43
  Speaker 1: then the porcelain robin chimed, high and thin and sweet,
• 2:36:47
  Speaker 1: like a tea glass touched with a silver spoon.
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 2: Priya let out a breath she seemed to have been
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 2: holding since three o'clock. Mrs.
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: Pettifer dabbed at the corner of her eye with a
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: hemstitched handkerchief. though if you asked her she would swear
• 2:37:05
  Speaker 1: it was only the pollen from the alder catkins. We
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: each took a biscuit, ate it in three small bites,
• 2:37:13
  Speaker 1: and did not speak for five whole minutes, letting the
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: three notes drift away down the hedge toward the lane
• 2:37:20
  Speaker 1: until even the starlings stopped their chatter to listen. You
• 2:37:32
  Speaker 1: would not think a few bits of bent metal and
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 1: an old wooden wheel could change the habit of 16 households,
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: but that is the funny thing about quiet things, neighbor.
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: Loud things make people shout back at them. But quiet
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 1: things make everyone lean in. Before the tinker built his
• 2:37:50
  Speaker 1: chime in the old pear tree, Bramble Lane was as
• 2:37:53
  Speaker 1: noisy as any other strip of gravel where people keep
• 2:37:57
  Speaker 1: chickens and mend gates.
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 1: Sykes used to slam his coal-shed doors so hard every
• 2:38:04
  Speaker 1: evening at six that it set Mrs. Older's parlor clock
• 2:38:08
  Speaker 1: to losing three minutes by the strike. The Gable sisters
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 1: were forever hollering across the cabbage patch to ask who
• 2:38:20
  Speaker 1: had borrowed the long rake and the delivery cart from
• 2:38:23
  Speaker 1: the high street would come rattling over the cobbles with
• 2:38:26
  Speaker 1: its iron rims singing like an iron foundry on wash day.
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 2: None of that happens now. It did not stop because
• 2:38:34
  Speaker 2: of a meeting or a committee or.
• 2:38:36
  Speaker 1: A notice tacked to the lich gate. Mind you, people
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 1: on Bramble Lane do not take kindly to notices.
• 2:38:43
  Speaker 2: It just.
• 2:38:44
  Speaker 1: Faded. The way hard frost fades when the sun hits
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: the top branch. Nowadays, when the sun dips behind the
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: ridge and the sky turns that deep, bruised violet that
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 1: promises tea and slippers, a sort of hush rolls down
• 2:39:05
  Speaker 1: from the top of the lane like an invisible fog.
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:39:09
  Speaker 1: Sykes still goes to his coal shed at six. but
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 1: I watched him from my scullery window just last night.
• 2:39:17
  Speaker 1: He took hold of the latch with both hands, eased
• 2:39:20
  Speaker 1: the timber into the frame, and held the iron bars
• 2:39:24
  Speaker 1: until it dropped into the catch with no more sound
• 2:39:27
  Speaker 1: than a mouse stepping on a dried leaf. Then he
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 1: stood there for a moment with his coat collar turned up,
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 1: his ear cocked toward the orchard, waiting. And when the
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: wind blew through the lane, bringing that faint musical ripple
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: from the boughs, he gave a tiny, satisfied nod to
• 2:39:51
  Speaker 1: the dark, wiped his boots on the scraper, and went
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 1: inside to his stew. Even the fences seemed closer together
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 1: this spring.
• 2:40:00
  Speaker 2: Not literally, of course.
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 1: The road surveyor has not been down with his chains,
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 1: and the boundary stones are right where the parish placed
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 1: them ninety years ago. but people lean over them differently.
• 2:40:13
  Speaker 1: Last summer, if Mrs. Pettifer wanted to tell Mrs. Alder
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 1: that the butcher's liver was slightly tougher than usual, she
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 1: would lean out her pantry window and project her voice
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 1: with the strength of a foghorn. Now, She walks down
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 1: the path in her soft velvet slippers, rests her elbows
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 1: on the top rail of the palings, and waits until Mrs.
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 1: Alder comes out to shake her duster. They talk in
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 1: that low, murmurous register that sounds from a distance like
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 1: pigeons in the hay-aft. They speak of simple, gentle matters,
• 2:40:59
  Speaker 1: whose tulips are showing red first. whether the rain will
• 2:41:03
  Speaker 1: hold off until the sheets are dry, and how many
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 1: times the frost chimes sounded between midnight and three. It
• 2:41:12
  Speaker 1: rang four times while the moon.
• 2:41:13
  Speaker 2: Was over the chimney, Mrs.
• 2:41:15
  Speaker 1: Alder said over the fence yesterday, leaning so close her
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 1: knitting basket bumped against Mrs.
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 2: Pettifer's apron.
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 1: A very sharp note on the silver bimble, I got
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: up and put a saucer of warm milk on the
• 2:41:30
  Speaker 1: back step. just in case the tinker had a thirst.
• 2:41:34
  Speaker 2: And was the saucer empty by dawn? Mrs.
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 1: Pitifer asked, her voice hardly louder than the rustle of
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 1: the dry privet leaves. Dry as an old bone, Mrs.
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: Alder replied, smiling into her wall. Not a drop left,
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: and the saucer pushed neatly against the boot scraper so
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 1: no one would trip on it. That is how we
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 1: live now. We walk lightly. We listen before we speak.
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 1: When the boy brings the evening papers on his bicycle,
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: he coasts down the hill without pedaling, his trousers clipped
• 2:42:15
  Speaker 1: tight with wooden pegs, letting the bicycle chain take, take,
• 2:42:20
  Speaker 1: take through the evening air like a little clockwork cricket.
• 2:42:27
  Speaker 1: The lane has become a room with the doors shut
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 1: and the lamps turned down low, where everyone knows everyone
• 2:42:35
  Speaker 1: else is trying to hear something beautiful, and nobody wants
• 2:42:39
  Speaker 1: to be the one to break the spell.
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 2: Canal.
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 1: Neighbor. The stars are coming through the high branches. looking
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: like small salt grains spilled across dark blue velvet, and
• 2:42:59
  Speaker 1: the orchard has settled into that deep, slow breathing that
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 1: only comes when the world is entirely at rest.
• 2:43:07
  Speaker 2: Look out there through the glass.
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 1: You cannot see the wooden wheel from here. Not in
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 1: the dark, but you know right where it is. It
• 2:43:15
  Speaker 1: hangs in the crook of the black boughs, cradled like
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: a bird.
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 2: In a nest, patient and unhurried.
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: The wood has soaked up the damp of the winter
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 1: and the warmth of the afternoon sun, and it smells
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 1: of linseed, sheep tallow, and green sap. There is an
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 1: old saying Mr. Fenwick likes to repeat when he has
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 1: his boots.
• 2:43:40
  Speaker 2: Off by the hearth.
• 2:43:42
  Speaker 1: The day belongs to the people who work it, but
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: the night belongs to the things that grow. and standing
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 1: here by the sill, looking out over the dark hedges
• 2:43:51
  Speaker 1: of Bramble Lane, you can almost feel the truth of
• 2:43:55
  Speaker 1: it working in the loam. The badui counted this morning
• 2:43:58
  Speaker 1: with Priya are not waiting for us to watch them.
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: In the blackness between now and breakfast, they're pushing their
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: soft green tips out against the night air, drinking the
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 1: mist that rises from the brook, expanding by fractions of
• 2:44:18
  Speaker 1: an inch that no ruler could ever measure. The roots
• 2:44:22
  Speaker 1: beneath the sod are feeling their way through the dark stones,
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: reaching out for the sweet spring water that has sunk
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: deep into the chalk. Everything is doing its work without
• 2:44:33
  Speaker 1: making a sound. It is such a comfort, isn't it,
• 2:44:37
  Speaker 1: to remember that the world does not require our shiding
• 2:44:40
  Speaker 1: to keep turning, the lane does not need us to
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 1: manage the blossoms. The orchard does not need our permission
• 2:44:52
  Speaker 1: to unfold its petals. All that is required of us,
• 2:44:56
  Speaker 1: at the end of a long day of walking and
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 1: counting and worrying over small fences, is to step back,
• 2:45:03
  Speaker 1: blow out the tall tallow candle, and let the darkness
• 2:45:06
  Speaker 1: take care of the rest. Listen.
• 2:45:09
  Speaker 2: There it goes again.
• 2:45:10
  Speaker 1: The night breeze has come down from the down's cool
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: and clean smelling of wild thyme, and wet flint it
• 2:45:17
  Speaker 1: has crept under the apple boughs, rustled the dry leaves
• 2:45:21
  Speaker 1: from last October that still cling to the hollows of
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 1: the trunk, and given the paddles their gentle push.
• 2:45:29
  Speaker 2: Ting. Just that one note tonight. The silver one.
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 1: It hangs in the cool air, round and sweet and clear,
• 2:45:42
  Speaker 1: floating over the slate roofs, over Mrs. Pettifer's dormant vegetable patch,
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 1: over the Gable Sisters' chicken croup where the hens are
• 2:45:51
  Speaker 1: all tucked head under wing, right up to our windowsill.
• 2:45:55
  Speaker 2: It is not an alarm. It is not a summons.
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: It is only the lane's way of saying that everything
• 2:46:02
  Speaker 1: is where it ought to be, that the frost has passed,
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 1: and that the night is holding us perfectly safe. So
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: let your eyelids grow heavy, neighbor. Let your hands go
• 2:46:13
  Speaker 1: soft and flat against the counterpane. There are no chores
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 1: left on the slate, no blossoms left to count, and
• 2:46:26
  Speaker 1: no latches that need another turn. The kettle is cold now.
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 1: The lane is asleep, and Mr. Thistledown has tucked his
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: pine twig into his pocket and curled his long ears
• 2:46:38
  Speaker 1: down against the moss. Breathe in with the orchard, deep
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 1: and slow. Breathe out with the breeze. The chime has
• 2:46:47
  Speaker 1: the watch tonight. Sleep well. Neighbor, sleep sound. Plea keeps
• 2:47:01
  Speaker 1: a map. I should have told you sooner, but some
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 1: details only surface when the story is nearly done. The
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 1: way the last biscuit surfaces at the bottom of the tin.
• 2:47:13
  Speaker 1: It began as a sketch on the back of a
• 2:47:15
  Speaker 1: spelling list.
• 2:47:17
  Speaker 2: The lane, the orchard, the hollow.
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: Each marked with a small, careful cross. But over the months,
• 2:47:25
  Speaker 1: it grew. Every place Mr. Thistledown mended something got a
• 2:47:29
  Speaker 1: gold star. Every place somebody left something out for him
• 2:47:33
  Speaker 1: got a silver one. The clock, the gate, the music box,
• 2:47:39
  Speaker 1: the windowsill where the buttons appear. It's the step where
• 2:47:46
  Speaker 1: the shortbread goes missing on Tuesdays, which is not the
• 2:47:50
  Speaker 1: hair at all but Mr. Sykes, who thinks no one
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 1: has noticed and everyone has and no one will ever say.
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 1: There are 41 stars on that map now, gold and
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 1: silver mixed together like a constellation that fell down and
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: landed on Brambling. Priya brings it out whenever anyone new
• 2:48:09
  Speaker 1: asks about the wheel, which happens more often than you
• 2:48:12
  Speaker 1: would think, because word has traveled past Willow Street by now,
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 1: past the next parish, further than any of us can track.
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 1: Sion rolls it on whatever table is nearest. waits the
• 2:48:28
  Speaker 1: corners with thimbles, real ones, borrowed for the purpose, and
• 2:48:33
  Speaker 1: return the same evening, and she walks the visitor through
• 2:48:37
  Speaker 1: every star. Here is where the time hangs. Here is
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 1: where the hair bowed. Here is where Mrs. Alder cried
• 2:48:45
  Speaker 1: and pretended it was the wind. It is, I believe,
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 1: the most acculate map ever made of anything. Not because
• 2:48:54
  Speaker 1: the distances are right, though Priya paced them all twice,
• 2:48:59
  Speaker 1: but because it shows the lane as it truly is.
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 1: Not a row of houses, a net of kindnesses, strung
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 1: between small bright points holding, On the last night, before
• 2:49:20
  Speaker 1: the second spring properly arrived, when the buds were still
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 1: shut tight and the air still had an edge after dark,
• 2:49:28
  Speaker 1: I walked down to the orchard alone, no expedition, no torches,
• 2:49:34
  Speaker 1: just me and my coat and the last of the evening.
• 2:49:37
  Speaker 1: The wheel was turning slow above the oldest tree, the
• 2:49:42
  Speaker 1: twelve thimbles catching what little moon there was and giving
• 2:49:46
  Speaker 1: it back changed. I stood under it for a long time, listening,
• 2:49:52
  Speaker 1: and I thought about everything it had heard in its
• 2:49:54
  Speaker 1: year of turning. The tuning arguments, the festival laughter, the storm,
• 2:50:01
  Speaker 1: the carols, more or less in tune. The school children's questions,
• 2:50:11
  Speaker 1: Priya's solo, steady as a heartbeat, the vicar clearing, his
• 2:50:16
  Speaker 1: throat before the sermon about borrowed things. all of it
• 2:50:21
  Speaker 1: wrung out on borrowed silver and one gifted tin. night
• 2:50:26
  Speaker 1: after night, season after season, and I thought this is
• 2:50:31
  Speaker 1: what we made. Not just the lane, not just the hair,
• 2:50:36
  Speaker 1: all of us together, the borrowers and the lenders, the
• 2:50:41
  Speaker 1: watchers and the tuned. We made a thing that listens,
• 2:50:46
  Speaker 1: a whole year of listening, hung in a tree, turning
• 2:50:50
  Speaker 1: in the dark. The wheel chimed once while I stood there,
• 2:50:55
  Speaker 1: A single low note from the tin at the bottom, Mrs.
• 2:51:03
  Speaker 1: Pettifer's gift, the truest note of all, it hummed in
• 2:51:07
  Speaker 1: the cold air a moment and faded, the way good
• 2:51:10
  Speaker 1: things do, slowly, leaving the night warmer than it found it.
• 2:51:15
  Speaker 1: I touched the trunk of the oldest tree with one
• 2:51:18
  Speaker 1: hand the way you touch the shoulder of an old friend,
• 2:51:22
  Speaker 1: and I walked home under the stars. and I slept
• 2:51:25
  Speaker 1: better that night than I had slept in years. The
• 2:51:28
  Speaker 1: second spring after the wheel first turned, the orchard bore
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 1: more fruit than anyone could remember. Crab apples the size
• 2:51:37
  Speaker 1: of tennis balls, plums like purple lanterns, and Mr. Fenwick
• 2:51:46
  Speaker 1: walked the rows every evening with his chest out, nodding
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 1: at the trees as if they were colleagues, which by then,
• 2:51:54
  Speaker 1: I suppose, they were. One promise remained, and Mr. Thizzledown
• 2:52:07
  Speaker 1: kept it the way he kept everything, precisely, personally, and
• 2:52:13
  Speaker 1: after dark.
• 2:52:14
  Speaker 2: On the first warm night of June, every borrowed thimble
• 2:52:18
  Speaker 2: came home. Not all at once, and not anyhow.
• 2:52:23
  Speaker 1: Each one was returned to its own house, to its
• 2:52:26
  Speaker 1: own box or basket or shelf, cleaned and polished until
• 2:52:31
  Speaker 1: it shone, with a note in tiny careful hard writing
• 2:52:35
  Speaker 1: that read, With thanks for the loan, M.T., Mrs. Pettifer,
• 2:52:40
  Speaker 1: found her three laid out on the sideboard in order
• 2:52:44
  Speaker 1: of size. the porcelain robin in the middle, like the
• 2:52:47
  Speaker 1: guest of honor. The Gable sisters found theirs on the
• 2:52:54
  Speaker 1: mantle with a pressed violet beside each one.
• 2:52:58
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 2:52:58
  Speaker 1: Sykes found his on top of the sock he had
• 2:53:01
  Speaker 1: been darning and was heard to say, to no one
• 2:53:04
  Speaker 1: in particular, well, well, then. Priya's four came back in
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: a row on her windowsill. the gold pea-sized one on
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 1: its chain, the chain clasped, the clast closed with such
• 2:53:17
  Speaker 1: delicacy that her mother needed the magnifying glass to confirm
• 2:53:21
  Speaker 1: it had ever been opened, and under the row folded small,
• 2:53:26
  Speaker 1: a drawing, a hair in a waistcoat waving, Priya has
• 2:53:30
  Speaker 1: it framed. It hangs above her bed and she shows
• 2:53:38
  Speaker 1: it to absolutely everyone. And she's right too, Mrs. Pettifer's
• 2:53:43
  Speaker 1: tin thimble, the twelfth, the gift, stayed in the wheel.
• 2:53:48
  Speaker 1: It hangs there still, in the high branches of the
• 2:53:51
  Speaker 1: oldest tree, ringing the truest note of all whenever the
• 2:53:55
  Speaker 1: still air comes down off the field. If you walk
• 2:53:58
  Speaker 1: the orchard path on a frost night and you stand
• 2:54:01
  Speaker 1: very quiet under that tree, You can hear the moment
• 2:54:05
  Speaker 1: the wheel stops, the shape of the silence, the warning,
• 2:54:10
  Speaker 1: the blossom, sleeping safe below.
• 2:54:12
  Speaker 2: At autumn, the lane held.
• 2:54:22
  Speaker 1: Her harvest supper in the orchard. the first in living memory,
• 2:54:27
  Speaker 1: and I will tell you about it because it belongs
• 2:54:29
  Speaker 1: in this story the way the last page belongs in
• 2:54:33
  Speaker 1: a book, long tables under the trees, lanterns in jars,
• 2:54:37
  Speaker 1: everybody brought something, and everybody brought too much, which is
• 2:54:42
  Speaker 1: the correct amount, Mrs. Alder's apple pie, which silenced the
• 2:54:47
  Speaker 1: table for a full minute, a record that stands to
• 2:54:50
  Speaker 1: this day, the Gable sisters' elderflower cordial, Mr. Sykes's sock
• 2:54:56
  Speaker 1: drawer was not discussed. By prior agreement, Crea sat at
• 2:55:05
  Speaker 1: the head of the children's end with the framed drawing
• 2:55:08
  Speaker 1: propped against the water jug, accepting congratulations with the composure
• 2:55:13
  Speaker 1: of a veteran, and at the foot of the oldest tree,
• 2:55:16
  Speaker 1: on a stool made of an upturned bucket, sat a
• 2:55:19
  Speaker 1: place setting no bigger than a saucer, a thimble of cordial,
• 2:55:23
  Speaker 1: Half a biscuit, a napkin folded into a fan.
• 2:55:27
  Speaker 2: Nobody touched it.
• 2:55:29
  Speaker 1: Nobody needed to be told not to. And late in
• 2:55:37
  Speaker 1: the evening, when the lanterns were burning low and the
• 2:55:40
  Speaker 1: talk had gone soft and slow, Every head at every
• 2:55:44
  Speaker 1: table turned at once the way a field of sunflowers turns,
• 2:55:49
  Speaker 1: because from the high branches above us came a sound
• 2:55:52
  Speaker 1: like eleven small silver voices laughing, or twelve. It was
• 2:55:58
  Speaker 1: hard to count. It did not seem important to count.
• 2:56:10
  Speaker 1: And that is the story of the thimble thief of
• 2:56:13
  Speaker 1: Bramble Lane, who is never a thief at all, but
• 2:56:16
  Speaker 1: a tinker, and an artist, and if the orchard's opinion
• 2:56:20
  Speaker 1: counts for anything, and I believe it counts for a
• 2:56:24
  Speaker 1: great deal, a friend of the lane, Mr. Thistledown still
• 2:56:28
  Speaker 1: walks the hedgerows after dark. If you lose a button,
• 2:56:32
  Speaker 1: check the windowsill in the morning. If you drop a pin,
• 2:56:36
  Speaker 1: look twice before you bend. because it may already be on.
• 2:56:40
  Speaker 2: Its way home.
• 2:56:41
  Speaker 1: And if you wake in the small hours and hear
• 2:56:44
  Speaker 1: very faint through the glass, a tapping like a coin
• 2:56:48
  Speaker 1: on glass from a very small height, do not be afraid.
• 2:56:56
  Speaker 1: It is only the night shift, mending, tuning. Keeping the small,
• 2:57:01
  Speaker 1: bright world in working order while the rest of us sleep,
• 2:57:05
  Speaker 1: if this tale kept you company tonight, share it onward.
• 2:57:09
  Speaker 2: Tell someone. who sows.
• 2:57:11
  Speaker 1: Tell someone who lies awake. Tell them the kettle is
• 2:57:14
  Speaker 1: always on here, and the curtains are always twitching, and
• 2:57:18
  Speaker 1: there is always room at the fence for one more,
• 2:57:22
  Speaker 1: and if you drifted off somewhere in the middle. If
• 2:57:24
  Speaker 1: you miss the tuning or the separer, or the hare's
• 2:57:28
  Speaker 1: small grave bow. Do not trouble yourself. The tail will
• 2:57:32
  Speaker 1: be here when you come back. Tails are patient. They
• 2:57:40
  Speaker 1: wait in the dark like thimbles on a saucer for
• 2:57:43
  Speaker 1: whoever needs them.
• 2:57:45
  Speaker 2: So snuggle down now. Blanket up. Pillow cool.
• 2:57:50
  Speaker 1: The lamps are lit on Bramble Lane, and the wheel
• 2:57:53
  Speaker 1: is turning slow above the orchard. and eleven silver voices,
• 2:57:58
  Speaker 1: or twelve, are singing the lane to sleep. Breathe in
• 2:58:02
  Speaker 1: with the night breeze, breathe out with the stillness, and
• 2:58:06
  Speaker 1: I will see you at the fence tomorrow, neighbor.
• 2:58:09
  Speaker 2: Sleep well.