That the records review at the sluice would turn up anything of pondside interest had been hoped by the optimistic and doubted by the better informed. On Tuesday morning the Clerk produced two items at once. He laid them on the bench so close together that this paper, watching from a discreet remove, could not at first tell whether the second item was an item or a punctuation mark on the first. It was a pebble. The first item was the long-mislaid census filing of Drake Halford of the north bank, his first, dated the fifteenth of April, last seen by any reliable account on the day he submitted it.
Water has had the filing. The Clerk put the damage at “modest, in the upper portion, and of consequence chiefly to the third paragraph, which had not been the most useful paragraph in any case.” It is otherwise legible. It records the household at six occupants, each listed by name and reed of residence. On the reverse is a short note in Halford’s own hand, which the Clerk has declined to reproduce on grounds he called courteous. Notified of the recovery, Drake Halford nodded three times, slowly. He would in due course, he said, prepare a brief comparison of the recovered filing against his third filing of the thirtieth ultimo. “Those of us who file four times in a season may be excused some attention to consistency.” This paper considers the remark a great credit to him.
The pebble is, on the Clerk’s authority, the same pebble. It belongs to the Coot of the Channel Sprint. The Clerk of the Race, when told, asked that it be held at the sluice pending an inspection he is “prepared to undertake at his earliest convenience.” Whether that convenience arrives inside the present season is a thing this paper would be unwise to forecast. The Coot, addressed by note at the south reeds, replied through an intermediary. He had observed the recovery with satisfaction. He expected its return without undue procedural delay. And he had drafted, in advance, a fresh letter on the subject, to be filed at the close of the week if needed.
Why the filing and the pebble were in the same drawer, the Clerk is not at present prepared to be specific. The drawer has long held matters of two distinct sorts which the office had been disinclined to assign to drawers of their own. That two such matters should resolve in one morning is not, the Clerk’s deputy noted, the worst kind of efficiency one might encounter. The Warden, briefed, declined to be surprised. The frog, passing, was understood to raise an eyebrow, though his face does not lend itself to the gesture and the impression may be mistaken.
It is this paper’s view that the records review, begun with such moderate ambition, may yet prove the procedural development of the season. Whether the third drawer holds more of the same is the question. The Clerk resumes at the inkstand on Wednesday morning. The Subcommittee sits Wednesday afternoon, and is expected to take up both items, weather and the Clerk’s other commitments permitting. One drawer. Two grievances older than the storm. The office is keeping a straight face about it, which is the only face the office owns.