A Week without Tuesday

by Angelica Banks

  In the centre of this room, standing on a large blue rug, a man was at work, reaching up with a boathook into the infinite galaxy of worlds above him. He was an old man, with grey hair and a weary face. He wore a primrose suit with a slightly creased white shirt and a mauve tie with purple roses upon it. The boathook he was wielding was impossibly long and he was attempting to reach out into space and swipe at a large globe that had smashed into the surface of another. Again and again he swooped at it, trying to snag the golden loop attached to its underside, and at last he caught it. He heaved and strained to pull the colliding worlds apart, but his arms were shaking. He pulled harder, almost upsetting a table that stood behind him laden with teapots and a large cake under a glass dome.

  ‘Clear the mind, clear the mind,’ he reminded himself. Despite his best efforts, the worlds continued to crumple together. At last he gave up and dropped the boathook to the floor.

  ‘Well, a fine kettle of fish,’ he said. ‘A fine nest of nettles.’

  He slumped into a chair at the workbench and, resting his head on a large pile of books, closed his eyes.

  ‘If a tree falls in a world and nobody hears it, does it make any sound?’ he murmured.

  At that moment Tuesday opened her eyes. She tried to remember what she had been dreaming, but when she took in the sight of the worlds above her, she gasped. She tried to stand and found that she had to sit down again. Her jacket was badly torn and her head was spinning. The man turned and stared at her, bewildered. He searched through the notes in front of him. With great delight he found one and read aloud: ‘Girl. Fell from the sky. Ah, yes. That’s right.’

  He said to Tuesday, ‘You fell from the sky. You’ll be feeling rather strange.’

  ‘Where am I?’ Tuesday asked. ‘Are Vivienne and Baxterr here?’

  Above them, quite close, an orange world and a green world collided. They did it slowly, squeezing together until white lightning forked across the sky.

  ‘I don’t think they should be doing that,’ Tuesday said, her eyes wide in horror.

  ‘No, you’re quite right,’ said the man. ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight.’

  To Tuesday’s amazement, the man picked up a boathook and reached up into the vast sky. Impossibly, the boathook stretched all the way towards the two worlds and the man grabbed onto one of the worlds and tried to pry it away. As he was doing so, a world spun in very close to the room and landed gently on the wider of the two jetties attached to the building. It began rolling ominously towards them. Its exterior was made of glass, and inside it was a sky filled with sunset clouds and a wintry city.

  ‘Excuse me, but something seems to be happening,’ Tuesday said, her heart racing.

  The man glanced across and observed the incoming world.

  ‘Oh, it’s only routine maintenance,’ he said. ‘Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.’

  As it got closer, the world became smaller, so that by the time it reached the end of the jetty, it was only the size of a large fishbowl. An automatic arm then swept up the world and deposited it into the clear glass chute. The world rolled down this chute around the perimeter of the room until it popped out onto a cushioned stand on the workbench. A metal arm whizzed out and unscrewed the top of the world, as if it were made of glass. It set the lid down gently on the bench and returned to its place. A bright beam of light came on and shone directly into the world.

  ‘Ready for inspection?’ the old man called, still grappling with his boathook.

  ‘I’m guessing … yes,’ Tuesday said.

  To Tuesday’s dismay, the man put down the boathook, forgetting all about the colliding worlds. He hurried to his workbench and put on a peculiar pair of spectacles that were like two microscopes. He peered down into the newly arrived world.

  ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Tuesday asked, peering over his shoulder. The city’s buildings appeared old, and the skyline they formed was familiar.

  ‘Is that London?’ Tuesday asked, incredulous.

  ‘Hmph,’ said the man. ‘In one way, yes, absolutely. In another way, no, not remotely. You know how it is between writers and reality. Oh dear. Dear, oh dear, oh my.’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘Crocodiles,’ said the man. He turned away from the miniature London and examined the sky. ‘I can’t imagine where they’ve fallen from. It could be anywhere. Oh, it’s all going so badly.’

  Tuesday thought about Cordwell Jefferson on the Librarian’s couch with his missing foot. Then she noticed a large word written on the back of the man’s hand. It said: POCKET. The man raced over to his desk and again began searching through his pile of notes.

  ‘Crocodiles … crocodiles,’ he said. ‘Nothing. Nothing. Perhaps I didn’t … oh, I’ll have to put them somewhere.’

  The man fossicked around his bench and found a small jar and a pair of tiny tweezers. He reached inside the world and began picking out very tiny things that wriggled and … were they squeaking? Tuesday picked up a magnifying glass from the implements arranged untidily on the table, and squinted to see what these squirming creatures were. She gasped. They were very, very small crocodiles gnashing their long toothy jaws at her.

  ‘Oh, they’re even in the houses,’ the man was saying. ‘It’s very serious. They’ve been causing chaos. And, if I remember rightly, we need to take a peek further north. Ah, yes. Glacier, glacier, glacier. There it is. The blighter. Moving far too fast. Icepick, please!’

  Tuesday rummaged until she found what must surely be the smallest icepick ever made.

  ‘Most helpful,’ he said, shaving off slivers of ice and tossing them over his shoulder onto the floor.

  ‘Pins, please! Glue! Hammer!’

  Tuesday found each of these and passed them to the man, whose hands moved in a flurry of activity over the miniature icefloes, trees and rocks of the world before them.

  ‘Much better,’ said the man, taking off the glasses. His grey eyes sparkled. ‘I think that glacier will be fine for a while yet. Unlikely to budge more than an inch or two for several hundred years.’

  Tuesday observed the tiny implements in his hands. Then it dawned on her.

  ‘You’re the Gardener!’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. The automatic arm swept in, placed the lid back on the world and lifted it up to another glass chute which took it straight back out into the sky above. It shot into the darkness between the other worlds and within seconds it resumed its normal size.

  ‘Age does not grant wisdom, it only makes one go more slowly,’ the man murmured.

  ‘Pardon?’ Tuesday said.

  His eyes clouded. ‘I’m not keeping up.’

  The man lifted several green cloths over stands to reveal more worlds. ‘Bad week, last week. It was last week, wasn’t it? So tired. So terribly, terribly tired. Worries wash away better with soup.’

  He went to the table with its array of afternoon tea. She watched as the man cut himself a huge slice of carrot cake with cream cheese filling. Her mouth watered. She realised she was starving.

  ‘How long have I been asleep?’ Tuesday asked.

  The old man spun about and stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. ‘What are you doing here? Nobody can be here! Get out! Get out!’

  Tuesday ran to the desk and searched through the pile of notes as the man tried to shoo her away with his hands. There it was!

  Girl. Fell from the sky. Asleep on the couch.

  ‘This is me,’ she said, waving his note at him. ‘The girl on the couch. My name is Tuesday. I woke up.’

  The Gardener blinked and shook his head.

  ‘Ah, yes, you’re quite right. You’ve been asleep for days. Or not. Time can be pressed, borrowed, or ripe. You only have to look out there. Some worlds go fast and some slower. Years are days and days are minutes. It’s an impossible calculation,’ he said, forking a piece of cake into his mouth. He ate slowly and thoughtfully before gla
ncing again at Tuesday and saying, ‘You cannot be here. I have no idea how you fell, but fall you did, now that I recall it. This cake is delicious. Would you like some? And tea?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Tuesday.

  ‘You fell right onto my couch. I have never seen anything like it,’ the Gardener continued, extending a laden plate and a steaming cup to Tuesday.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. Gratefully she bit into the cake and found it delicious. The tea had an almost instantly recuperative effect and Tuesday’s thoughts cleared.

  ‘I’m sorry to have arrived in a strange way,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to. At least, I think I didn’t. I was on my way to the City of Clocks, to look for a door. But, in truth, I was searching for you. The Librarian sent me.’

  The Gardener looked stunned.

  ‘Lucille? Lucille sent you?’

  ‘Madame Librarian sent me.’

  ‘She never did like her name,’ the man said with a mischievous smile. ‘Don’t tell her I told you, will you?’

  Tuesday took first the scroll with its purple seal from the pocket of her shorts. It was flattened and tattered. It had, after all, been on a long walk, camped overnight, been completely soaked and survived a flock of vercaka. The man shook his head and refused to take it.

  ‘This can’t be right.’ He appeared suddenly very upset, as if Tuesday had told him to eat peas with his ice-cream. He started wringing his hands and then noticed the word written there: POCKET.

  He patted his various pockets and pulled out a piece of paper from inside his yellow jacket. He read it carefully to himself, and then read it aloud to Tuesday, rather formally.

  ‘Hello. I am the Gardener and this is the Conservatory. I am losing my memory. I am behind in my work. I have sent my dog for help. The worlds are colliding and this may have something to do with the fact that my faculties are fading. I’m waiting for help to arrive. I am certain help will come.’

  Tuesday nodded. ‘I think that’s me,’ she said. ‘I am here to help. Please read this note.’

  The Gardener shoved his own note back into his pocket, took the Librarian’s and broke the seal. When he had finished reading it, he crumpled it up as if he were angry.

  ‘You’re much too young,’ he told Tuesday. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘I have to,’ said Tuesday. ‘I promised Madame Librarian.’

  ‘Yes, yes. We all did at some point,’ he said harshly, and then all the fight went out of him and he slumped into silence.

  ‘Being young is a fault that improves daily,’ he murmured. ‘No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.’

  Another bolt of lightning flashed loudly between the colliding green and orange planets.

  ‘Don’t you think we should get to work?’ said Tuesday. ‘People, animals, creatures of all kind … well, they’re getting hurt up there.’

  ‘I sent for help,’ said the Gardener, as if suddenly remembering. ‘My dog will be back soon.’

  ‘No, she won’t,’ said Tuesday, pulling the dog’s collar from her shorts pocket and holding it out to the Gardener. ‘I’m so sorry … so very sorry to have to tell you this, but she was attacked by vercaka over the Peppermint Forest.’

  The Gardener’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘Vercaka? There are no vercaka in that world. It’s a safe route. She loved that world. It was once her home, of course.’

  ‘I don’t think that anywhere is safe. Not the way things are.’

  ‘My dear old girl,’ he said, perching the cake plate precariously on his cup on the table and taking the collar outstretched in Tuesday’s hand. ‘Is she all right? Is someone with her?’

  ‘She’s dead,’ said Tuesday, almost whispering these terrible words. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘She … we … no …’ the Gardener said, gripping the collar and bringing it to his nose, where he smelled it. ‘Oh no! Then it’s over. All good things must come to an end. All good things …’

  His tears ran down his cheeks.

  Tuesday, her own eyes blurry with tears, said, ‘I’m so sorry. I have a dog too. I understand. I really do. But it’s not over. I truly am here to help.’

  ‘You have a dog …’ whispered the old man. ‘A Winged Dog?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tuesday nodded.

  ‘No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place,’ he said again. Then he began looking about. ‘Where is she? Your dog?’

  ‘It’s a he, and he’s up there, out there, with Vivienne Small I hope.’

  ‘You’ll need him,’ said the Gardener.

  ‘I know,’ said Tuesday. ‘I’ve never been anywhere without him. Only school.’

  ‘Oh dear. You are definitely too young for this. I was too young,’ the Gardener was saying. He had closed his eyes. ‘I should never have left her. I didn’t realise. I didn’t know how long forever would be. Forever is much longer when you’re alone.’

  Great shards of blue fell off the green world. Lightning and fire was flaring and sizzling from the orange one.

  ‘I loved her,’ the Gardener said. ‘I didn’t understand how far we would be from one another.’

  Tuesday didn’t think he was talking about his dog anymore. She thought he might have been talking about the Librarian. My great love …

  ‘I don’t know if this is the time to talk about all that,’ said Tuesday. ‘Please, you need to use your boathook.’

  ‘If you pick up the hook …’ the Gardener murmured.

  Tuesday crossed the room and hesitated a moment, then bent down and grasped the handle of the boathook. ‘Tell me what to do!’

  ‘If you pick up the hook …’ the Gardener repeated, and shook his head. He continued to grasp his dog’s collar close and did not open his eyes.

  ‘I got that bit,’ Tuesday called back.

  ‘I mustn’t let you. It would be a mistake.’

  The worlds above were sparking and crumpling together.

  ‘Tell me what to do,’ Tuesday cried.

  ‘But if you pick up the hook, then …’ said the Gardener, and slumped onto the yellow couch. ‘A clever person turns great troubles into little ones and little ones into none at all.’

  Tuesday levered the hook up into the sky and it shot out towards the green and orange planets that were intent on destroying one another. Even though the worlds were so far away, Tuesday spotted a loop on the outer side of the orange one. She slid the hook through the loop and pulled with all her might. It felt heavy, but not impossible to move. As she held it fast, she watched the green world free itself and spin clear.

  ‘I did it!’ she called.

  The Gardener opened his eyes and turned to her, staring.

  He stood and walked towards her. ‘If you pick up the boathook, then it’s forever.’

  ‘What’s forever?’ asked Tuesday, watching the sky to see if any other worlds were getting dangerously close to each other.

  ‘The journey of forever starts with a single step,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Tuesday.

  ‘You, my dear, have just become the Gardener.’

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Tuesday said. ‘You’re the Gardener.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Not anymore.’ He sighed. ‘You should never have come. Never have picked up the boathook. I might have stopped you, but I …’

  He looked perplexed, confused. Tuesday thought he might once again have forgotten who she was and how she’d arrived.

  ‘I’m Tuesday. I fell from the sky,’ she said.

  ‘You are the Gardener,’ he said, his face breaking suddenly into a radiant smile. ‘Congratulations! My, you’re in for a wonderful time! I’m not sure it should be, but it must be. She sent help after all. It’s a weak man who doubts the strength of a woman.’

  And then, as if he had remembered his age, he said, ‘I’m so terribly tired. I think if you’ll excuse me, I’ll sit down and have a rest.’

  ‘You can’t … I mean, I’m not … I haven’t the least idea what I’m doing!’
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br />   Tuesday stood holding the boathook, her mind a whirl of confusion. Some kind of terrible mistake was being made, but there wasn’t anything she could do to stop it.

  The old man regarded the sky.

  ‘Is it night? Oh, yes, yes. How stupid of me. It’s always night here. You’ll get used to it.’

  He limped a little as he crossed the room, then turned back.

  ‘A new Gardener. Ha! Good, good. What did you say your name was? And did you say you had a dog? Best call him. He’s going to be essential.’ Glancing at his hand, he added, ‘Who the blazes is POCKET?’

  Chapter Twenty

  Even before the old man had fallen asleep in his chair, another world had trundled down the wider walkway, shrinking as it came. It shot through the glass chute and arrived in the inspection area in front of Tuesday and the mechanical arm swung out and opened the world’s glass lid. Bright lights went on.

  ‘What?’ Tuesday said to the world that waited there, open and ready for inspection. ‘I’m not the Gardener, you know. Anyone can see that he’s confused. I’m only here to help. Just to help …’

  Tentatively, Tuesday picked up the glasses the Gardener had been wearing, adjusted them to her eyes and peered down into the world. Inside the world, time stood still. She saw people paused in the midst of mending nets on a sandy shore, and palm trees leaning as though they were stopped in the middle of a brisk breeze. On the beach were several fishing boats and some fisher folk pulling in a net, but Tuesday hadn’t the least idea what she was meant to do. There was a small town behind the beach. Nothing was tall, not the buildings nor the trees.

  She looked deeper into the world and found at the outskirts of the town some very poor houses. Gently she lifted a roof of palm fronds and squinted down into the rooms. There was a chair and a bed. On the bed was a faded blanket and beside it a well-read newspaper. Tuesday noticed that some coals had spilled and the grass mat on the floor was smouldering and smoking. Nobody appeared to be home. She carefully removed the burning coals with the smallest tweezers and replaced the damaged mat with another that was hanging over a fence on the far side of the village. Then she replaced the roof and made it secure with a hammer and the tiniest nails she had ever seen. It wasn’t a great job, but it was an improvement.