Momenticon: a unique new adventure by the bestselling author of ROTHERWEIRD by Caldecott Andrew

Author:Caldecott, Andrew [Caldecott, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2022-05-12T00:00:00+00:00

‘I’d grin at yours if you had any,’ replied the cat.

‘What should I do now?’ Fogg asked his hosts.

‘Move, unless you want a mouth full of moss,’ said the cat.

‘I shall ferry you to the Confluence, where you must choose your own way.’

‘I do grin when he’s wise,’ added the cat, grinning.

Mander, declining all offers of assistance, proved as skilful with a punt pole as with ladders. His tails flapped as he stooped and rose like an aged dancer who, for all his stiffness, had not lost rhythm. Fogg sat in the stern, while Cheshire alternated between the prow, the path, until it ran out, an occasional rocky outcrop and nowhere at all. The postcards disappeared with the path. Mander’s light-ball, set in a recess in the prow, lit their ghostly way.

Fogg sat up with a start. The punt was not only green, but that particular oily man-made green. It had five protruding inward-facing slats on each side, with a ribbed white-painted floor. It mirrored exactly the punt in painting 1012 on level 25, a boat occupied by a loner in a scene otherwise fraught with summertime social bustle: Boulter’s Lock, Sunday Afternoon .

He could not resist the urge to share his hard-earned knowledge and facts tumbled out. ‘I say, Mr Mander, how’s this for a coincidence! Your punt is the very twin of the punt in a famous painting which graced boxes of chocolates and biscuits and jigsaws for a generation. It took the artist, one Edward John Gregory, born in— ’

‘— 1850, died in 1909,’ interjected Mander. ‘It’s all on the postcard.’

Fogg cursed silently. Morag interrupted. Tweedledum and Tweedledee interrupted. Even Mander interrupted. Would nobody ever hear him out?

He tried not to sound testy. ‘What you won’t know is that it took him more than ten years to complete, and it’s a social record as much as a . . .’

Stoop and rise; stoop and rise.

Mander was showing not a smidgen of interest, and Cheshire had disappeared. Ahead, the sound of threshing water had risen to a roar, drowning out what remained of Fogg’s potted history of Mr Gregory, Boulter’s Lock and the Victorian weekend excursion.

Mander bent down and shouted in Fogg’s left ear, ‘Grab your bag, sir, and that boat hook. The wheel of Fortune spins once more.’

The punt accelerated into turbulence; the scene was enhanced by a bloom of phosphorescence. Five streams joined theirs in a large cavern with a bare mound of rock in the centre. ‘Avoid the island,’ Mander commanded, ‘for once on it, you’ll never get off. And too near it, you’ll just go around and around like a stopwatch. Keep to the side and take any tunnel you can get.’

An unpleasant truth dawned as the punt heaved and spun into the race. He could see neither jetty nor towpath, and if the island was off-limits too . . .

It was deftly done. As Fogg lurched forward and the prow spun round, Mander flicked him overboard with a gentle but well directed shove.

Handicapped

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