Readers who have followed the co-honker vacancy through its advertisement, its auditions, its postbag, and its several procedural snarls will be relieved, or at least brought up to date, to hear that the Cultural Subcommittee has decided. The young goose of the north bank takes the part. Her audition on the fourteenth amounted to one honk of moderate length and a second she declined to produce, and on the strength of that the duet beneath the Old Willow is hers. Rehearsals begin within the week.
The Clerk of the Cultural Subcommittee carried the news to the candidates on Wednesday morning, in three conversations conducted, this critic understands, with the tact the morning called for. The young goose took the appointment “with evident surprise and brief silence,” which the Clerk afterward called “promising.” The drake of the east shore took it with grace, and asked that his letter of interest be returned for his records. The coot of the Channel Sprint took it with a remark this critic sets down whole:
I accept the Subcommittee’s decision with appropriate reservations, and I wish it noted that my candidacy, though unsuccessful, has demonstrated that the question of what constitutes a honk is one this pond has not yet satisfactorily resolved.
The Clerk thanked the coot for taking part. He asked, again, that the pebble the coot had brought to the meeting be returned to the Clerk’s keeping until the classification dispute is settled. The coot handed it over. This critic notes, and leaves at that, that the pebble has now changed hands four times this season.
Hettie’s mother, reached through the reeds on Wednesday afternoon, confirmed the appointment was “satisfactory” and that Hettie had been told. Hettie’s opinion of the co-honker, she added, was “a matter for the rehearsal room and not for the gazette,” a line this critic has accepted. Hettie was not available, being given over that afternoon to practice somewhere near the southern waters, at a volume the long-resident frog had reportedly called audible.
Thursday’s anonymous letter had raised a question of definition. Did the advertisement want a co-honker, whose instrument honks, or a co-performer, whose instrument need only blend? The panel, this critic understands, discussed it as it deliberated. The Clerk’s reading was that the notice asked for “one honker of suitable register,” and that the young goose’s instrument is, by any fair definition, a honk. The coot’s was granted to be “powerful and carrying,” and judged, after what the Clerk called careful consideration, to be of a different character. This critic covered the auditions. He has been careful to keep his remarks to what can be heard, and will allow himself just one. The young goose’s lone honk on the fourteenth landed where Hettie landed at the spring recital. The coot’s did not. That, in the end, is what the panel had to go on, and it was enough.
The duet is now set for two: Hettie, the senior, and the young goose of the north bank, her co-honker. Terms are agreed through Hettie’s mother. The programme will run to four items, the Cultural Subcommittee says, the duet still standing third. A running order is expected in the reeds within the fortnight.
This critic offered a closing honk of his own, at a pitch he trusts was suitable, and was not corrected.
Rehearsals begin Friday. The pond held its long debate over what a honk is, and then answered it the only way it ever could, which was by listening.