“I’m afraid I need to be off this afternoon, I’ve got another long lunch with the Vikrams!” Maude tossed over her shoulder as she breezed out the front door of the Poppycock offices, winking saucily at a befuddled Mr. Periwinkle who was on his way in.
“Who on earth are the Vikrams? Some new rock and roll band, no doubt,” he said, placing equal handfuls of mail on both Professors desks, adding to already precariously teetering inboxes.
“Seth and Chandra,” Professor De Busque said, trying to clear a tunnel through the stacks of letters before her. “More Indian novelists desperate to be seen with Maude before her memoir comes out next week.”
A phone was heard ringing in a muffled manner from somewhere on Maude’s desk (an exquisitely spindly desk carved from mangrove, a bequest from the estate of Rabindranath Tagore). “She’s not here!” shouted a harassed-looking Professor P’ohlig, who then swiftly went back to grumbling “What the.....?” under her breath and shuffling papers like someone who has no idea what they are doing.
“My word, she has been quite the social butterfly lately,” said Mr. Periwinkle in a distracted fashion, but perking up as he seemed to remember something, continued hopefully, “Speaking of butterflies, it’s such a chilly day out, mightn’t this be a good moment for a bit of....hot buttered rum?”
The Professors exchanged glances over the stacks of paper separating them, then both jumped up at once. Mr. Periwinkle tipped the Trollope, as all three dashed for the secret door to the house, and he shouted, “I’m bringing my mail bag, so we can pretend like we’re working!”
***
Two goblets of hot buttered rum (apiece) later, and the professors had begun to be a little more charitable about Maude’s new-found popularity.
“She’s a young girl, she should be out enjoying herself instead of always answering our phones and our correspondence,” Molly said, thoughtfully nibbling a fingernail and adjusting the volume on the “Brideshead Revisited” soundtrack. “Although if she’d paid a little more attention to detail we might have another book on the shortlist this year, instead of just the three.”
“Precisely!” Emily shouted in a voice a bit louder than usual, which startled everyone including Emily, so she motioned for Mr. Periwinkle and Molly to come closer so she could continue (it took a minute, but they eventually gathered around). “The thing is....we are not receiving manuscripts in a timely manner anymore, because someone isn’t opening the mail when she should.”
Molly and Mr. Periwinkle gasped. For Emily, this was tantamount to an accusation of murder.
“You could garnish her wages?” Mr. Periwinkle suggested, sloshing the tiniest bit of rum onto the rug (which had belonged to Thomas Hardy’s secretary/wife Florence) and promptly sitting on it so no one would notice. Molly and Emily shook their heads.
“We don’t exactly give her wages, Mr. Periwinkle, so we can’t exactly garnish them,” Molly scolded, hitting him over the head with a brocade pillow that had belonged to a very great Turkish writer who had lived a good many years ago whose name no one could quite remember, not even the Turkish writer’s group that had made a fuss over giving it to Poppycock. It was very good for hitting people over the head with, in any case.
“We must stop all this,” Emily said sternly, if a little slurrily. “She is our Maude and that’s the way it shall stay unless something happens to tell us otherwise.” Molly and Mr. Periwinkle looked duly chastened. “Now, let’s get down to this mail.”
Molly sighed and thunked down next to Mr. Periwinkle, who sighed and handed her the first letter from the top of his stack. He handed one to Emily, kept one for himself, heaved an immense sigh, and they all commenced tackling the mail as, just like in all the best BBC miniseries, the rain outside began to rain with great force and gloominess.
***
Two hours later, the mail had been read through, more buttered rum had been drunk, the rain was still drenching, and Emily and Mr. Periwinkle were sprawled in front of the fire. Emily was trying to work up the enthusiasm to begin reading Volume 1 of a modern retelling of “The Remembrance of Things Past” by Hanif Kureishi, but she thought perhaps the idea of setting it in a laundromat was a little ahead of its time. Mr. Periwinkle was idly wondering whether he should tell the professors that the electric company had sent another letter reminding them that the bill was past due, but decided maybe he’d have a little more rum first. Molly was standing holding an intricate-looking letter in front of her, clearing her throat repeatedly, waiting to be noticed. It took a minute.
“What’s that letter?” Emily said, raising an eyebrow, “I do like the look of it from here.”
“I think you might be quite impressed by the sound of it as well,” Molly said, and began to read. “Dear Esteemed Professors De Busque and P’ohlig, I send you greetings from the blistering summer of far off Carolina of the North. Allow me, kindly, to introduce myself. My name is Kiran, and I am a marvel of a twelve-year-old. I prefer to spend my days wrapped in intellectual and artistic pursuits, although I also play a mean game of Guitar Hero. My dilemma is this: Middle school is not exactly providing me with the stimulation I require. I would very much like to open up a restaurant in which you order not food, but a book, and the book arrives with a meal created by a collaboration between a master chef and a librarian, a meal that will complement and enhance the reader’s experience of the book. However, after making the initial inquiries, it seems that no one will grant a twelve-year-old a restaurant license.
And so I turn to you, Poppycock. I am enquiring whether you might be in need of an intern. I am exceedingly well-read for my age, and can answer phones and correspondence with a professionalism that belies my years, to an almost alarming extent, in fact. No task is too small, neither is any too large. I have followed your dazzling work with great interest and would be honored to join, as an apprentice, the hallowed, venerated offices of Poppycock Enterprises, Ltd.
I await your reply with nearly breathless impatience.
Yours, ever,
Kiran”
There was a stunned silence, after which Molly fairly collapsed to the rug with the others.
“Twelve?” Emily squeaked. “That’s the vocabulary of a twelve-year-old? She sounds....”
“Wonderful,” Molly breathed, patting the letter reverently.
“Do you think she’d find bringing in the drinks cart beneath her?” Mr. Periwinkle said, in a purposefully offhand manner. “She did say no task was too small.”
“But there’s not possibly room for two apprentices,” Emily said, looking around the spacious library, then adding, “At least not in the office. It’s tiny.”
“Oh dear me no, there’s certainly not room for two,” Molly agreed hastily, then wistfully looked at the letter again. “So accomplished.”
A hush fell, during which nothing was heard but the cracks and pops from the fireplace. Everyone was thinking the same thing, but no one wanted to be the one to verbalize it. Maude had been dreadfully inattentive to her duties as of late, and everyone was worn out with picking up the slack. Emily and Molly had daily arguments over who would answer the phone, and who would carry the thesaurus across the room. Mr. Periwinkle was at a complete loss for new places to file incoming mail, and the stacks were threatening to overwhelm the tiny office. Agatha the cat had nearly been lost forever under a stack of manuscripts.
Just then, as everyone was in danger of slipping into a guilty reverie of the wonderful calm which someone like Kiran would no doubt restore to the office, Maude popped her head around the corner of the door. Three fire-warmed faces turned towards her and the smell of cooking which now wafted towards them.
“I canceled my meeting with the Vikrams to make you all lunch instead. I’m sorry I’ve been so scattered lately, my new-found fame has quite gone to my head. I am going to spend the whole week catching up and returning everything to it’s proper order.” And she darted back to the kitchen.
Mr. Periwinkle heaved himself up off the floor and pulled up the professors. As they each leaned down for their glass, Maude’s little voice came from down the hall, “And you just leave all that, I’ll clean it up later!”
***
Everyone was a bit fidgety during lunch for reasons that they preferred to keep to themselves. During the afternoon, the Poppycock office was humming with activity, and everyone worked hard to make things shipshape once more. Maude was grateful for the excessive amount of hugs and squeezes she received, for she really didn’t feel she deserved them. Everything, it seemed, was back to normal.
***
Late that night, Molly, in a billowing nightgown that had belonged to Emily Brontë (it was heavily ink-stained and in need of mending) crept with a candle down to the office. She could of course have just used the desk in her room and the full benefit of electric light, but this was so much more romantic. She took out pen and paper, and, Agatha purring at her bare feet, began to write.
“Dear Miss Kiran,
We were all quite overwhelmed by your wonderful letter. Your accomplishment is so great, and your years so few. While we of course were immediately desirous of snapping your services up at once, before some rival wordsmithery agency poaches you, we admit that your young age gave us pause. It is true that our current apprentice is of tender age, but she is a poor divorced orphan and must work for her keep. While Poppycock would benefit immeasurably from your presence, we fear it would be to your parents’ detriment.
That said, Miss Kiran, we dearly hope that you will keep us in mind for future employment. Someday, inevitably, Maude will move on, and we shall be greatly in need of an assistant once again. We hope that someday, when your parents can spare you, you will once again consider bestowing upon Poppycock your literary wisdom, wit, and marvelous vocabulary.
Until that day, we remain, ever your devoted,
Poppycock Enterprises, Ltd.”
