It was Gasket who noticed it, from behind the bar, and said, not loudly, “Graphic hasn’t drawn anything since the contracts came.”
Everyone looked, and then everyone stopped looking, because looking at Graphic was known to be counterproductive. She was in her place by the window with her coat still on. The pen roll sat on the sill, tied shut. The contract lay flat where her inks usually stood, and the inks were nowhere on the table at all.
“Well, of course she hasn’t,” said Griffin. “Fenella Burnish saw Graphic’s ivy border. On a letter asking for an appointment. Nobody asked for a border. We were writing to ask whether she would meet Gosie, and Graphic drew a border because she wanted to make the letter pretty, because that’s what she does, and Fenella Burnish wrote back about the border, not about the appointment.”
Griffin had both paws on the table now and barely paused for breath. “She saw the ivy stroke had been corrected, and she liked it better for it, even though anyone else would call that a mistake. That’s her whole trade. Fenella Burnish looks at a thing and tells you whether it was made by a hand or a machine. And every time she wants what’s made by hand. Graphic’s hand.”
“That’s true,” said Gimbal.
“She held my map up in front of me and said she’d had architects hand her worse and charge for it,” Griffin had hit her stride. “She counted the rooms twice. And she looked at Gimbal and saw the gift of making things special that we all see and no-one can name, and gave her a job without a title, because the gift was what she wanted.”
Gimbal interrupted, “Fenella said she’d work out a job title later,” she said. “I’ve been doing it since before anyone knew me and nobody ever asked me to. I just knew that the pressed flower on the envelope would matter.”
Griffin continued, “Fenella has only ever seen Graphic put colour on paper, yet she’s trusting her with the colour in the windows.”
Nobody had told Graphic to create and decorate a border. No set hour had been required, and no seeds had been counted out. The map had been drawn when Griffin wanted to draw it, in whatever time there was, which was as much time as was needed. Gimbal had found a rare and perfect pressed marsh pea flower and added it to the envelope. That was the work Fenella Burnish had noticed and had proposed to buy from nine until five, six days, breaks not at the bench, twenty seeds on a Friday, ten days’ holiday and a rest day to be agreed in advance.
Angle looked up from the atlas. “Fenella Burnish recognised what you do and made an offer,” she said. “That is something. And that recognising can’t be taken back.”
“We recognise you, too,” said ChristmasStars. “We recognise all of you. Glockenspiel, Gasket and Gimbal built a ballista in a longboat in the dark and allowed for a crosswind that never came, to send a boarding line over to the yacht. Then DauntlessDamson ignored it and used her bow to send the line across and none of you ever mentioned it again.”
"It was available, that's all," said Gasket. "A longboat without a ballista is just a boat."
“Geometry made a Dutch windmill complete with drainage canals, out of packing card in the middle of a search,” Christmas Stars went on. "Nobody asked for that either."
“What else would I do with the packing card?” said Geometry, perplexed, “Leave it flat?”
“You did it because you were helping.” said Christmas Stars.
“MyrtleLion gave us luxury seeds for helping,” said Girdle.
“And for coming back safely,” said Gantry.
All the gerbils nodded.
Griffin, Gimbal and Graphic looked at their contracts. Then Griffin folded hers along its existing creases, ran her thumb along the fold, and set it down slowly in the middle of the table. “I’m sending this back,” she said.
Almost under her breath, Gimbal said, “Twenty seeds a week,” then folded her contract carefully and rested it on top of Griffin’s. “Me, too, but we must write back. Properly.”
“Then it has to be drafted,” said Governance, opening the notebook again.
By the window, Graphic took off her coat at last and hung it on its hook. She picked up her contract, looked at it for a long moment, and placed it on top of Gimbal’s, then she sat down, untied the pen roll, and uncapped a pen, and the only sound for a while was the nib.
“Dear Fenella Burnish,” said Governance, writing it.
Nobody objected to that, which was the last time nobody objected to anything.
“What do we say?” asked Ganges.
“We explain our reasons for turning down her job offer,” replied Gasket.
“What are our reasons?”
Nobody had one immediately, so several were supplied at once.
“The seeds go in,” said Gantry. “I won’t have it said we sniffed at them.”
“And say what about them?” said Girdle.
Gantry thought about it. “That there were twenty.”
“There were twenty,” said Girdle. “That’s all any of us can put.”
“Then put the hours,” said Ganges.
Nobody put the hours.
“The bench goes in,” said Gasket. “She was quite correct about the bench and I’d like it put in that she was correct.”
Governance wrote the bench down.
“And the birthday,” she said.
“Do they know they only get one?” said Gantry.
“Only one?” said Ganges.
“One a year each,” said Girdle. “Separately.”
“Won’t it be lonely, having a birthday on your own?”
Nobody had an answer to that.
“Put the birthday in,” said Gasket eventually.
“Put in what about the birthday?”
“Just put it in.”
Governance wrote for some time. Then she read the whole thing back, and by the end of it there were four numbered paragraphs and a subsection, and the phrase notwithstanding the foregoing had got into it from somewhere, and everybody had become slightly dazed.
Boiledbeetle, who had been on the same stool since two and had been watching the exchanges, said, “It only has to say no.”
Nobody argued with that. Governance turned to a clean page.
Dear Fenella Burnish.
Thank you for your offer of employment. We regret we must decline but we wish you well.
“That’s it?” said Girdle.
“That’s it,” said Governance.
“We can’t just leave it at that,” said Girdle.
“You’re right. Add Best wishes,” said Griffin.
“We’ve already wished her well,” said Gimbal. “You can’t wish her well and then wish her best. It’s the same wish twice.”
“Then Warm regards.”
“Warm regards is what you put when you’ve met somebody twice at a thing,” said Gimbal.
“We have met her twice,” replied Griffin.
“We were in her workshop for an afternoon. That is not twice at a thing.”
“Kind regards,” suggested Girdle.
“Kind is what the bank puts,” said Gimbal.
Griffin said that she had never had anything from a bank, and Gimbal said that was not the point, and Girdle offered sincerely, which was rejected by everybody immediately and without discussion.
Graphic, who had not looked up, said, “Yours.”
Governance wrote Yours.
“It wants decent paper,” said Gasket. “You can’t send that on anything ordinary. Not to her.”
Graphic came over from the window and put a sheet of paper down on the table. It had a worked border along all four edges, ivy running one way and stained glass panes the other, and in the middle of it a clear space, the exact size of three lines.
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