“This old man is one of them that raised you?”
“To say Humphrey raised me is — well, he did a bit. But a strange sort of upbringing. I never asked him to. I don’t owe him anything.”
“You sound a bit upset about it.”
“Not upset. I had just hoped he would help me. But he can’t, so I should go. I feel sorry for Duncan. But if he wants to be rid of this situation he has to let Humphrey manage on his own,” she concluded. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“Sounds a little harsh, in truth.”
“I know. But I came here to figure stuff out. And I—”
“Who else could help?”
“Who else could explain this? Nobody I’m in touch with anymore.”
“Have you searched online?”
“These aren’t people you find on the Internet. And I’ve tried,” she added. “We never registered for anything, never signed in anywhere. If you saw my phone book from back then, you’d get a sense. Page after page of scratched-out numbers — we never stayed anyplace, nor did anyone we knew.”
“Why not try calling a few of the old numbers?”
“First, I didn’t bring that phone book here. Second, I’m on a borrowed cellphone and can’t do endless long-distance. Third, those numbers are ancient, Fogg. This was long before mobiles — back when there still was such a thing as ‘away.’ Speaking of which, I need to get off this line.”
“Is your phone book at the shop?”
“No, it’s in the attic.”
“I could try a few numbers for you.”
“I’m not having you cold-call random people from my past.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Fogg, it’s pointless. The only person in there who’s relevant is someone I’m not dealing with. If I trusted her to say anything useful, I’d have tried ages ago.”
“Go on — give us a name.”
“Even if you got her, she’s never saying anything by phone. And I’m not taking a pilgrimage to wherever she is now. She’d make me, for sure. Keep in mind that whatever I spend on travel comes straight out of World’s End — you know that, right? Its funds are mine. If I go broke, that’s it for the shop. This isn’t worth it.”
But that was untrue. The mere prospect of meeting someone from that time had already brought her rushing out here. And this visit with Humphrey — even speaking aloud the name Venn again — had stirred up such disquiet, all the puzzles as upsetting as ever. And Sarah had been there for all of it.
“Let’s find the lady,” Fogg proposed. “Then you can decide what’s to be done.”
“You must be enjoying it alone,” Tooly said. “Doing everything you can to keep me away.”
“Not at all,” he said. “Only, it’s a bit of a mystery story now.”
1988
PAUL PARTED HER bedroom curtains, then shook Tooly’s hand to bid her good morning. At 6 A.M., she moved like a confused snail, but there was no time to dawdle. The school microbus arrived soon outside Gupta Mansions, trawling the expat warrens of Sukhumvit for students lacking chauffeured cars. Even at this hour, traffic was thick: sooty vans piled with rice sacks, green-and-orange taxis, motorbikes twisting through the gridlock. She rested against the bus window, contemplating the weird city inching past.
The teachers at King Chulalongkorn International School were much like her previous ones. There were the gentle and the spiteful; those who gazed out classroom windows muttering about years till retirement; those who believed themselves capable of transforming each child — of being the one whom every pupil would remember.
Her fourth-grade homeroom teacher was Mr. Priddles, who’d given Tooly and Paul their school tour and then had snapped her up for his class — at least until a spot opened up in fifth grade. She had completed this level of coursework before, he reasoned, which promised high marks, an elevated class average, and better prospects for his second consecutive Teacher of the Year award.
Mr. Priddles — a thirtyish Englishman with trendy denim shirts and gelled ginger hair — was adored by his pupils, which made Tooly’s a lonely and secret loathing. Part of his popularity came from playing a ghetto blaster during class and having the kids transcribe pop lyrics. “It’s about engaging with the written word,” he said. “Two poems written a hundred years apart, yeah? Both are poetry. One is not better. To say that someone called W. B. Yeats is ‘better’ than someone called Sting is a construct, basically.”
Each day, Tooly arrived praying that a fifth grader had left — that someone’s dad had become president of somewhere, they’d flown home, and she could escape her horrible class. Yet inwardly she doubted her readiness even for fourth grade. Much of each class, she sat awed by the knowledge rattling around in other kids’ heads and absent in hers. To conceal her incompetence, she rarely spoke, which led the other pupils to deem her stuck-up and perhaps smelly.
“Take out a piece of paper, everybody,” Mr. Priddles said. “Time to kick butt, guys!”
The much anticipated writing test was today, producing the first marks of the term — critical to establishing Mr. Priddles’s early lead in the Teacher of the Year race. The subject was “The Old Days,” and the kids could write on any period — the objectives were legible handwriting, orthodox spelling, complete sentences. Tooly could provide none of these, for she had forgotten paper. She whispered to the boy behind her.
“You want to borrow some?” he responded. “Or you want to keep it? If you borrow it, you have to give it back. Or you want to keep it?”
“Can I have a piece?”
“Can you? Or may you?”
Tooly glanced around for someone else to ask.
Mr. Priddles intervened, asking the boy, “May she have a piece of paper, Roger?”
“She may,” the little pedant replied, handing it to the teacher.
“Now, then,” Mr. Priddles said, holding the sheet out of Tooly’s reach. “Say, ‘Pretty please.’ ”
“Please.”
“Not to me. To him. Pretty please.”
Softly, she did so.
Mr. Priddles lay down her reward, one sheet of paper. “Now what do you say?”
She hesitated, looked up. “Thank you?”
“Do you mean that?”
“Yes.”
“Very good, then.” He left her to work.
Tooly stared at the blank page. Each time she raised her pencil over it, her fingers trembled. Why was she even here? And why did everyone love Mr. Priddles when he was so obviously horrible? Was she the only one who noticed this? She looked at the others writing, then back at her sheet. Several times, she tried to imagine the old days, yet the present days kept intruding.
“Time’s nearly up!” Mr. Priddles said eventually. “Finish up, cowboys and cowgirls. One minute, then hand them in.”
She had written nothing. Everyone else was getting up. Panicking, Tooly joined the mob crushing toward the front, slipped her blank page among theirs, and escaped into the hall.
The next day, she stood before the principal, insisting that she had handed in her work. It must’ve gotten lost. They knew she was lying and told her so. Tooly reiterated her predicament: she wasn’t even supposed to be in this grade. Please.
“Maybe that is the problem,” Principal Cutter acknowledged. “Maybe you have been in the wrong grade.”
Tooly’s despondency switched to excitement. Someone was listening! He placed a few calls and, minutes later, she had a new homeroom teacher, the affable Miss Fowler. In third grade.