Read The Shift Key for Free Online

you mean, “today’s”?’
    Tim – he was a slightly vague young man, but a hard worker, who had been hired to help out with the summer rush and agreed to stay on for the winter for lack of any better prospects – Tim spread his hands.
    ‘Yesterday’s was Spanish prawns and rice. Today’s is hot game pie.’
    ‘So what does it say over there?’ growled Mr Mender, pointing to the list he himself had chalked on the blackboard that each day at opening time was hung in the porch, and brought in overnight. ‘It says Wednesday, doesn’t it? And hot game pie? Today is Thursday, which means ham in cider, peas and chips! Prawns is tomorrow! Lord, I’d have thought you knew the drill by heart by now!’
    Not staying for an answer, he swept past into the bar, as yet not open, to serve himself the Bloody Mary that would have to do in lieu of breakfast.
    Tim stood there agape, whispering, ‘But I remember! I do remember! Prawns was yesterday!’
    Miles to the east of Weyharrow, tour guide Ella Kailet sighed with relief as the coach drew in sight of Stonehenge barely half an hour later than the schedule called for.
    Last night had been purgatory. It was never much fun conducting forty or more Americans on a whirlwind trip around the history-beset West Country. But when the coach broke down, so that they had to put up with a snack in a transport café instead of a square meal at their overnight hotel as they’d been promised, and then it broke down
again
barely ten miles from that hotel, and took another two hours to fix …!
    At least, however, the mechanic who had turned out from Weyharrow Goodsir seemed to have cured the trouble. She had been none too happy about his competence when he showed up, nor about the state of mind of her tourists; thenight was chilly and they had stayed huddled and grumbling inside the coach – as had the weary driver, who claimed he had no help to offer; that was going to earn him a bad report when they returned to London! – while she stood shivering in mist and badgering the mechanic to get a move on.
    Still, here they were at last, and she knew this part of the drill by heart. She rose to stand beside the driver.
    ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ she told the microphone, forcing an air-hostess’s smile to her weary face. ‘We are now approaching Stonehenge, perhaps the most famous of all prehistoric monuments. It was here that visitors from outer space landed in flying saucers to bring to the primitive inhabitants of Earth the arts and skills that came to be reflected in the pyramids of Egypt and South America.’
    The driver was tugging at her skirt. She slapped his hand away and ploughed on doggedly.
    ‘Later, of course, other similar landing sites, with their great dolmens that served as interstellar beacons, were constructed –
keep your paws off me, you oaf!
– were constructed as far away as Brittany and Scotland …’
    Her mouth grew dry. The tourists were staring at her. Some of them had begun to mutter.
    Oh, no! There wasn’t going to be another crisis, was there? What on earth could have gone wrong now?
    ‘Sarge?’
    Constable Joseph Book was in Weyharrow’s only public phone box. He lived in Weyharrow, in a police house, but there was no actual police station here; the nearest was at Chapminster, and he spent most of his time patrolling the area by car or on foot. He preferred the latter.
    ‘Oh, it’s you,’ said the phone. ‘I thought you must have got lost in last night’s fog … Sorry, only kidding. Someone said you had a spot of bother. Ken Pecklow and Harry Vikesagain. Wasn’t Joyce threatening to have Harry put away?’
    ‘She gave up on that one, thank goodness … But don’t poke fun, Sarge – please! This time it’s serious. Ken bust a tooth and the doctor sent Harry to hospital with a broken nose. It’s all in my notes and I’ll be in as soon as I can to make out the incident report. But …’
    He hesitated. Impatient, the sergeant prompted