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Chapter 27
This is all very wonderful, said Fenchurch a few days later. But I do need to know what has happened to me. You see, there’s this difference between us. That you lost something and found it again, and I found something and lost it. I need to find it again.
She had to go out for the day, so Arthur settled down for a day of telephoning.
Murray Bost Henson was a journalist on one of the papers with small pages and big print. It would be pleasant to be able to say that he was none the worse for it, but sadly, this was not the case. He happened to be the only journalist that Arthur knew, so Arthur phoned him anyway.
Arthur my old soup spoon, my old silver turreen, how particularly stunning to hear from you. Someone told me you’d gone off into space or something.
Murray had his own special kind of conversation language which he had invented for his own use, and which no one else was able to speak or even to follow. Hardly any of it meant anything at all. The bits which did mean anything were often so wonderfully buried that no one could ever spot them slipping past in the avalanche of nonsense. The time when you did find out, later, which bits he did mean, was often a bad time for all concerned.
What? said Arthur.
Just a rumour my old elephant tusk, my little green baize card table, just a rumour. Probably means nothing at all, but I may need a quote from you.
Nothing to say, just pub talk.
We thrive on it, my old prosthetic limb, we thrive on it. Plus it would fit like a whatsit in one of those other things with the other stories of the week, so it could be just to have you denying it. Excuse me, something has just fallen out of my ear.
There was a slight pause, at the end of which Murray Bost Henson came back on the line sounding genuinely shaken.
Just remembered, he said, what an odd evening I had last night. Anyway my old, I won’t say what, how do you feel about having ridden on Halley’s Comet?
I haven’t, said Arthur with a suppressed sigh, ridden on Halley’s Comet.
OK, How do you feel about not having ridden on Halley’s Comet?
Pretty relaxed, Murray.
There was a pause while Murray wrote this down.
Good enough for me, Arthur, good enough for Ethel and me and the chickens. Fits in with the general weirdness of the week. Week of the Weirdos, we’re thinking of calling it. Good, eh?
Very good.
Got a ring to it. First we have this man it always rains on.
What?
It’s the absolute stocking top truth. All documented in his little black book, it all checks out at every single funloving level. The Met Office is going ice cold thick banana whips, and funny little men in white coats are flying in from all over the world with their little rulers and boxes and drip feeds. This man is the bee’s knees, Arthur, he is the wasp’s nipples. He is, I would go so far as to say, the entire set of erogenous zones of every major flying insect of the Western world. We’re calling him the Rain God. Nice, eh?
I think I’ve met him.
n. 慧星
