CHAPTER 31

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They went out on to the beach, which was where he started talking about angels with golden beards and green wings and Dr Scholl sandals.

“About the dolphins. . . ” said Fenchurch gently, hopefully.

“I can show you the sandals,” said Wonko the Sane.

“I wonder, do you know. . . ”

“Would you like me to show you,” said Wonko the Sane, “the sandals?

I have them. I’ll get them. They are made by the Dr Scholl company, and the angels say that they particularly suit the terrain they have to work in. They say they run a concession stand by the message. When I say I don’t know what that means they say no, you don’t, and laugh. Well, I’ll get them anyway.”

As he walked back towards the inside, or the outside depending on how you looked at it, Arthur and Fenchurch looked at each other in a wondering and slightly desperate sort of way, then each shrugged and idly drew figures in the sand.

“How are the feet today?” said Arthur quietly.

“OK. It doesn’t feel so odd in the sand. Or in the water. The water touches them perfectly. I just think this isn’t our world.”

She shrugged.

“What do you think he meant,” she said, “by the message?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur, though the memory of a man called Prak who laughed at him continuously kept nagging at him. When Wonko returned he was carrying something that stunned Arthur. Not the sandals, they were perfectly ordinary wooden-bottomed sandals.

“I just thought you’d like to see,” he said, “what angels wear on their feet. Just out of curiousity. I’m not trying to prove anything, by the way. I’m a scientist and I know what constitutes proof. But the reason I call myself by my childhood name is to remind myself that a scientist must also be absolutely like a child. If he sees a thing, he must say that he sees it, whether it was what he thought he was going to see or not. See first, think later, then test. But always see first. Otherwise you will only see what you were expecting. Most scientists forget that. I’ll show you something to demonstrate that later. So, the other reason I call myself Wonko the Sane is so that people will think I am a fool. That allows me to say what I see when I see it. You can’t possibly be a scientist if you mind people thinking that you’re a fool. Anyway, I also thought you might like to see this.”

This was the thing that Arthur had been stunned to see him carrying, for it was a wonderful silver-grey glass fish bowl, seemingly identical to the one in Arthur’s bedroom.

Arthur had been trying for some thirty seconds now, without success, to say, “Where did you get that?” sharply, and with a gasp in his voice. Finally his time had come, but he missed it by a millisecond.

“Where did you get that?” said Fenchurch, sharply and with a gasp in her voice.

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