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really taken it in. Now they had unwittingly chosen an unimpressive moment in which to get their first good look at the great London river. The tide was out, reducing the water to a thin, murky ribbon running through a wide, flat channel of gray silt that reminded Anne Kellaway of an unmade bed. Granted, even in its reduced state it was twenty times bigger than the Piddle, the river that ran alongside the Kellaways’ garden in Piddletrenthide. Despite its small size, though, the Piddle still had the qualities Anne Kellaway looked for in a river—purposeful, relentless, cheerful, and cleansing, its sound a constant reminder of the world’s movement.
    The Thames was nothing like that. To Anne Kellaway it seemed not a river, but a long intestine that twisted each way out of sight. It did not have clear banks, either. The bed slid up toward the road, awash with pebbles and sludge, and it was easy enough to step straight from the road down into it. Despite the mud, children had done just that, and were running about in the riverbed, some playing, some picking out objects that had had been left exposed by the low tide: shoes, bottles, tins, bits of waterlogged wood and cloth, the head of a doll, a broken bowl.
    The Kellaways stood and watched. “Look how dirty they’re getting,” Maisie said as if she envied them.
    â€œHideous place,” Anne Kellaway stated.
    â€œIt looks better when the tide’s in, like it were when we first arrived.” Jem felt he had to defend the river, as if it were the embodi-ment of London and his family’s decision to move there.
    â€œFunny it has a tide,” Maisie said. “I know our Piddle runs down to the sea somewhere, but it still always runs the same way. I’d feel topsy-turvy if it changed directions!”
    â€œLet’s go to the bridge,” Jem suggested. They began to step more quickly now, past the warehouses and the workmen’s cottages. Some of the workers and their wives and children were sitting out in front of their houses, talking, smoking, and singing. Most of them fell silent as the Kellaways passed, except for a man playing a pipe, who played faster. Jem wanted to step up their pace even more, but Maisie slowed down. “He’s playing ‘Tom Bowling,’” she said. “Listen!” She smiled at the man; he broke off playing and smiled back.
    Anne Kellaway stiffened, then pulled at her daughter’s arm. “Come along, Maisie!”
    Maisie shook free and stood still in the middle of the road to join in singing the last verse in a high, clear voice:
    Yet shall poor Tom find pleasant weather,
    When He, who all commands,
    Shall give, to call life’s crew together,
    The word to pipe all hands:
    Thus death, who kings and tars dispatches,
    In vain Tom’s life has doffed,
    For though his body’s under hatches,
    His soul has gone aloft,
    His soul has gone aloft.
    She and the pipe player finished together, and there was a small silence. Anne Kellaway stifled a sob. Tommy and Maisie used to sing the song together in beautiful harmony.
    â€œIt be all right, Ma,” Maisie said. “We has to sing it still, for we don’t want to forget Tommy, do we?” She bobbed at the man and said, “Thank’ee, sir. Ar’ernoon.”

3
    On the approach to the bridge, the road curved briefly away from the river and passed the amphitheatre, with its grand pillared entrance where they had first met Philip Astley, and posters plastered on the wall in front announcing SHOW TONIGHT ! It was only early afternoon and yet people were already milling about. Jem felt in his pocket and curled his hand around the tickets Philip Astley had sent them.
    Anne Kellaway had a handbill thrust at her by a man running past calling, “Only a shilling and a pence to stand, two shillings tuppence a seat!” She stared at the crumpled paper, unsure what she was meant to do with it. Smoothing it against her