The Herring Seller's Apprentice

by L. C. Tyler

  What more is there to say?

  Not much, but there is still one thing that I need to explain – there never was a chance of the poor sod having a happy ending. I think Ethelred had some sort of fixation about his Penkwen and Hedhog story. He saw himself as the Penkwen and Geraldine as the Hedhog to whom he would eventually be reconciled – ‘in a faraway land’, as he wrote. But that was never going to happen. If he had caught up with her, she would just have led him the same dance thatshe did before. Do you watch those wildlife programmes, where penguins get dragged off the ice floe and devoured by killer whales? No tender reconciliations there, I think you’ll find. If there’s one thing Geraldine isn’t, it’s a round cuddly Hedhog. If Ethelred wanted the genuine article he should have looked closer to home.

  Sorry – I don’t know quite why I said that. It’s not as though I fancied Ethelred or anything. And vice versa, I assume. And love’s all bollocks, as we have cordially agreed on several occasions in the past. But he needed looking after and I could have done that. Couldn’t I? I could have followed him to his faraway land and been his Hedhog.Too late for that now.

  And then again … I can’t quite get it out of my mind … what if he wasn’t on the plane? It’s possible, isn’t it? What if to throw me off the scent, he booked two flights.The final red herring. What if he’d checked in for that flight, hand luggage only, then slipped away clutching a clever little false passport and caught another one entirely? And the first airline never amended their passenger list? Because they never found a body and (as all good crime writers know) until you’ve found the body, anything might have happened. So maybe there’s a third ending to the story.

  Maybe one day an unsigned card will turn up from Belize or Brisbane with instructions on how to adjust the central-heating system for the winter. Or maybe I’ll be checking his mail and I’ll see that somebody has used his credit card in Bogotá or Bombay.And I’ll get straight on a plane and check it out.

  Of course, that will never happen. But in the meantime, for some reason I can’t quite pin down, I sit here, and I watch, and I wait.

  In the Beginning

  And one day the penkwen and the hedhog met again in a faraway land

  Olrite sed the penkwen I am sory I sed you were too small and spiky

  Olrite sed the hedhog I am sory I sed you were too big and flappy I would like to be your friend all wace Will you all wace be my friend?

  They sed I should not trust you sed the penkwen

  No, you can trust me sed the hedhog

  Truly sed the penkwen?

  Yes sed the hedhog and the hedhog smiled

  Then I will be your friend sed the penkwen All wace

  And that is all I know abut the hedhog and the penkwen

  So that is the end of my story

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful to all those who have given me help during the production of The Herring Seller’s Apprentice. In particular I would like to thank Will and the team at MNW for their advice and support. I should also like to thank my son Tom, who (many years ago) produced the original and best version of ‘The Penkwen and the Hedhog’.