Unseen Academicals d-37

by Terry Pratchett

  ‘What about lunch?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes suspiciously.

  ‘We’ll eat early,’ said Ridcully, ‘and I am told that the pies at the game are just–amazing.’

  Truth, in front of her huge walk-in wardrobe, selected black leather boots with stiletto heels for such a barefaced truth.

  Nutt was already waiting with a proud but worried look on his face when Glenda got in to the Night Kitchen. She didn’t notice him at first, but she turned back from hanging her coat on its peg and there he was, holding a couple of dishes in front of him like shields.

  She almost had to shade her eyes because they gleamed so brightly.

  ‘I hope this is all right,’ said Nutt nervously.

  ‘What have you done?’

  ‘I plated them with silver, miss.’

  ‘How did you do that?’

  ‘Oh, there’s all kinds of old stuff in the cellars and, well, I know how to do things. It won’t cause trouble for anyone, will it?’ Nutt added, looking suddenly anxious.

  Glenda wondered if it would. It shouldn’t, but you could never be sure with Mrs Whitlow. Well, she could solve that problem by hiding them somewhere until they tarnished.

  ‘It’s kind of you to take the trouble. I generally have to chase people to get plates back. You are a real gentleman,’ she said, and his face lit up like a sunrise.

  ‘You are very kind,’ he beamed, ‘and a very handsome lady with your two enormous chests that indicate bountifulness and fecundity—’

  The morning air froze in one enormous block. He could tell he’d said something wrong, but he had no idea what it was.

  Glenda looked around to see if anyone had heard, but the huge gloomy room was otherwise empty. She was always the first one in and the last one out. Then she said, ‘Stay right there. Don’t you dare move an inch! Not an inch! And don’t steal any chickens!’ she commanded as an afterthought.

  She should have trailed steam as she headed out of the room, her boots echoing on the flagstones. What a thing to come out with! Who did he think he was? Come to that, who did she think he was? And what did she think he was?

  The cellars and undercrofts of the university were a small city in themselves, and bakers and butchers turned to look as she clattered past. She didn’t dare stop now; it would be too embarrassing.

  If you knew all the passages and stairs, and if they stayed still for five minutes, it was possible to get to just about anywhere in the university without going above ground. Probably none of the wizards knew the maze. Not many of them cared to know the dull details of domestic management. Hah, they thought the dinners turned up by magic!

  A small set of stone steps led up to the little door. Hardly anyone used it these days. The other girls wouldn’t go in there. But Glenda would. Even after the very first time that she had, in response to the bell, delivered the midnight banana, or rather had failed to deliver it on account of running away screaming, she knew she’d have to face it again. After all, we can’t help how we’re made, her mother had said, and nor can we help what a magical accident might turn us into through no fault of our own, as Mrs Whitlow had explained slightly more recently, when the screaming had stopped. And so Glenda had picked up the banana and had headed right back there.

  Now, of course, she was surprised that anyone might find it odd that the custodian of all the knowledge that could be was a reddish brown and generally hung several feet above his desk, and she was pretty certain that she knew at least fourteen meanings of the word ‘ook’.

  As it was daytime, the huge building beyond the little door was bustling, insofar as the word can be applied to a library. She headed towards the nearest lesser librarian, who failed to look the other way in time, and demanded: ‘I need to see a dictionary of embarrassing words beginning with F!’

  His haughty glance softened somewhat when he realized she was a cook. Wizards always had a place in their hearts for cooks, because it was near their stomach.

  ‘Ah, then I think Birdcatcher’s Discomforting Misusage will be our friend here,’ he said cheerfully, and led her to a lectern, where she spent several enlightening minutes before heading back the way she had come, a little wiser and a great deal more embarrassed.

  Nutt was still standing where she’d told him to stand, and looked terrified.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know what you meant,’ she said, and thought: abundant, productive and fruitful. Well, yes, I can see how he got there, worse luck, but that’s not me, not really me. I think. I hope.

  ‘Um, it was kind of you to say that about me,’ she said, ‘but you should have used more appropriate language.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I’m so sorry,’ said Nutt. ‘Mister Trev told me about this. I should not talk posh. I should have said that you have enormous t—’

  ‘Just stop there, will you? Trevor Likely is teaching you elocution?’

  ‘Don’t tell me, I know this one… You mean talkin’ proper?’ said Nutt. ‘Yes, and he’s promised to take me to the football,’ he added proudly.

  This led to some explanation, which only made Glenda gloomy. Trev was right, of course. People who didn’t know long words tended to be edgy around people who did. That’s why her male neighbours, like Mr Stollop and his mates, distrusted nearly everybody. Their wives, on the other hand, shared a much larger if somewhat specialized vocabulary owing to the cheap romantic novels that passed like contraband from scullery to washhouse, in every street. That’s why Glenda knew ‘elocution’, ‘torrid’, ‘boudoir’ and ‘reticule’, although she wasn’t too certain about ‘reticule’ and ‘boudoir’, and avoided using them, which in the general scheme of things was not hard. She was deeply suspicious about what a lady’s boudoir might be, and certainly wasn’t going to ask anybody, even in the Library, just in case they laughed.

  ‘And he’s going to take you to the football, is he? Mister Nutt, you will stand out like a diamond in a sweep’s earhole!’

  Do not stand out from the crowd. There were so many things to remember!

  ‘He says he will look after me,’ said Nutt, hanging his head. ‘Er, I was wondering who that nice young lady was who was in here last night,’ he added desperately, as transparent as air.

  ‘He asked you to ask me, right?’

  Lie. Stay safe. But Ladyship wasn’t here! And the nice apple-pie lady was right here in front of him! It was too complicated!

  ‘Yes,’ he said meekly.

  And Glenda surprised herself. ‘Her name is Juliet, and she lives bang next door to me so he’d better not come round, okay? Juliet Stollop, see if he likes that.’

  ‘You fear he will press his suit?’

  ‘Her dad will press a lot more than that if he sees he’s a Dimmer supporter!’

  Nutt looked blank, so she went on: ‘Don’t you know anything? Dimwell Old Pals? The football team? The Dollies are Dolly Sisters Football Club. Dollies hate the Dimmers, the Dimmers hate the Dollies! It’s always been like that!’

  ‘What could have caused such a difference between them?’

  ‘What? There is no difference between them, not when you’ve got past the colours! They’re two teams, alike in villainy! Dolly Sisters wears white and black, Dimwell wears pink and green. It’s all about football. Bloody, bloody, clogging, hacking, punching, gouging, silly football!’ The bitterness in Glenda’s voice would have soured cream.

  ‘But you have a Dolly Sisters scarf!’

  ‘When you live there, it’s safer that way. Anyway, you have to support your own.’

  ‘But is it not a game, like spillikins or halma or Thud?’

  ‘No! It’s more like war, but without the kindness and consideration!’

  ‘Oh, dear. But war is not kind, is it?’ said Nutt, bewilderment clouding his face.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, I see. You were being ironic.’

  She gave him a sideways look. ‘I might have been,’ she conceded. ‘You are an odd one, Mister Nutt. Where are you from, really?’

 
The old panic contained again. Be harmless. Be helpful. Make friends. Lie. But how did you lie to friends?

  ‘I must go,’ he said, scurrying down the stone steps. ‘Mister Trev will be waiting!’

  Nice but odd, Glenda thought, watching him leap down the steps. Clever, too. To spot my scarf on a hook ten yards away.

  The sound of a rattling tin can alerted Nutt to his boss’s presence before he had even hurried through the old archway to the vats. The other habitués had paused in their work, which, frankly, given its usual snaillike progress, meant hardly any change at all, and were watching him listlessly. But they were watching, at least. Even Concrete looked vaguely alert, but Nutt saw a little dribble of brown in the corner of his mouth. Someone had been giving him iron filings again.

  The can shot up as Trev caught it with his boot, flew over his head, and then came back obliquely, as if rolling down an invisible slope, and landed in his waiting hand. There was a murmur of appreciation from the watchers and Concrete banged his hand on the table, which generally meant approval.

  ‘What kept you, Gobbo? Chatting up Glenda, were you? You’ve got no chance there, take it from me. Been there, tried that, oh yes. No chance, mate.’ He threw a grubby bag towards Nutt. ‘Get these on quick, else you’ll stand out like a diamond in—’

  ‘A sweep’s earhole?’ Nutt suggested.

  ‘Yeah! You’re gettin’ it. Now don’t hang about or we’ll be late.’

  Nutt looked doubtfully at a long, a very long scarf in pink and green and a large yellow woolly hat with a pink bobble on it.

  ‘Pull it down hard so it covers your ears,’ Trev commanded. ‘Get a move on!’

  ‘Er… pink?’ said Nutt doubtfully, holding up the scarf.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, isn’t football a rough man’s game? Whereas pink, if you will excuse me, is rather a… female colour?’

  Trev grinned. ‘Yeah, that’s right. Think about it. You are the clever one around here. And you can walk and think at the same time, I know that. Makes you stand out from the crowd in these parts.’

  ‘Ah, I think I have it. The pink proclaims an almost belligerent masculinity, saying as it does: I am so masculine I can afford to tempt you to question it, giving me the opportunity to proclaim it anew by doing violence to you in response. I don’t know if you have ever read Ofleberger’s Die Wesentlichen Ungewissheiten Zugehörig der Offenkundigen Männlichkeit?’

  Trev grabbed his shoulder and spun him round. ‘Wot do you fink, Gobbo?’ he said, his red face a couple of inches from Nutt’s. ‘Wot is your problem? Wot are you all about? You come out with ten-dollar words an’ you lay ’em down like a man doin’ a jigsaw! So how come you’re down in the vats, eh, workin’ for someone like me? It don’t make sense! Are you on the run from the Old Sam? No problem, there, unless you did up an old lady or somethin’, but you got to tell me!’

  Too dangerous, thought Nutt desperately. Change the subject! ‘She’s called Juliet!’ he gasped. ‘The girl you asked about! She lives next door to Glenda! Honestly!’

  Trev looked suspicious. ‘Glenda told you that?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘She was windin’ you up. She knew you’d tell me.’

  ‘I don’t think she would lie to me, Mister Trev. She is my friend.’

  ‘I kept thinkin’ about her all last night,’ said Trev.

  ‘Well, she is a wonderful cook,’ Nutt agreed.

  ‘I meant Juliet!’

  ‘Um, and Glenda said to tell you that Juliet’s other name is Stollop,’ said Nutt, hating to be the bearer of worse news.

  ‘What? That girl is a Stollop?’

  ‘Yes. Glenda said I was to see how you liked that, but I know the meaning of irony.’

  ‘But it’s like findin’ a strawberry in a dogmeat stew, yeah? I mean, the Stollops are buggers, the lot of ’em, biters and cloggers to a man, the kind of bastards who’ll kick your family jewels up into your throat.’

  ‘But you don’t play football, do you? You just watch.’

  ‘Damn right! But I’m a Face, right? I’m known in all the boroughs. You can ask anyone. Everyone knows Trev Likely. I’m Dave Likely’s lad. Every supporter in the city knows about him. Four goals! No one else scored that much in a lifetime! And gave as good as he got, did Dad. One game he picked up the Dolly bastard holding the ball and threw ’im over the line. He gave as good as ’e got, my dad, and then some.’

  ‘So, he was a bugger and a clogger and a biter too, was he?’

  ‘What? Are you pulling my tonker?’

  ‘I would not wish to do so initially, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, so solemnly that Trev had to grin, ‘but, you see, if he fought the opposing team with even more force than they used, does that not mean that he—’

  ‘He was my dad,’ said Trev. ‘That means you don’t try any fancy maths, okay?’

  ‘Okay indeed. And you never wanted to follow in his footsteps?’

  ‘What, and get brung home on a stretcher? I got my brains from my ol’ mum, not from Dad. He was a good bloke and loved his football, but he wasn’t flush with brains to start with an’ on that day some of ’em were leakin’ out of his ear. The Dollies got ’im in the melee and sorted ’im out good and proper. That’s not for me, Gobbo. I’m smart.’

  ‘Yes, Mister Trev, I can see that.’

  ‘Get the gear on and let’s go, okay? We don’t want to miss anything.’

  ‘Fing,’ said Nutt automatically, as he started to wind the huge scarf around his neck.

  ‘What?’ said Trev, frowning.

  ‘Wot?’ said Nutt, his voice a little muffled. There was a lot of scarf. It was almost covering his mouth.

  ‘Are you pulling my chuff, Gobbo?’ said Trev, handing him an ancient sweater, faded and saggy with age.

  ‘Please, Mister Trev, I don’t know! There appears to be so much I might inadvertently pull!’ He tugged on the big woolly hat with the pink pompom on it. ‘They are so very pink, Mister Trev. We must be bursting with machismo!’

  ‘I don’t know what you person’ly are bursting with, Gobbo, but here’s somethin’ to learn. “Come on if you think you’re hard enough.” Now you say it.’

  ‘Come on if you think you’re hard enough,’ said Nutt obediently.

  ‘Well, okay,’ said Trev, inspecting him. ‘Just remember, if anyone starts pushing you around during the game, and givin’ you grief, just you say that to ’em and they’ll see you’re wearing the Dimmer colours and they’ll think twice. Got it?’

  Nutt, somewhere in the space between the big bobbly hat and the boa constrictor of a scarf, nodded.

  ‘Wow, there you are, Gobbo, a complete… fan. Your own mother wouldn’t recognize you!’

  There was a pause before a voice emerged from inside the mound of ancient woollens, which looked very much like a nursery layette made by a couple of giants who weren’t sure what to expect.

  ‘I believe you are accurate.’

  ‘Yeah? Well, that’s good, innit? Now let’s go and meet the lads. Move fast, stay close.’

  ‘Now remember, this is a pre-season friendly between the Angels and the Whoppers, right?’ said Trev, as they stepped out into a fine rain which, because of Ankh-Morpork’s standing cloud of pollution, was morphing gently into smog. ‘They’re both pretty crap, they’ll never amount to anythin’, but the Dimmers shout for the Angels, right?’

  It took some explaining, but the core of it, as far as Nutt could understand it, was this: All football teams in the city were rated by Dimwell in proportion to their closeness, physical, psychological or general gut feeling, to the hated Dolly Sisters. It had just evolved that way. If you went to a match between two other teams, you automatically, according to some complex and ever-changing ready-reckoner of love and hate, cheered the team most nearly allied to your native turf or, more accurately, cobbles.

  ‘Do you see what I mean?’ Trev finished.

  ‘I have committed what you said to memory, Mister Trev.’
r />   ‘Oh Brutha, an’ I’ll bet you ’ave, at that. And it’s just Trev when we’re not at work, right? We shout together, right?’ He punched Nutt playfully on the arm.

  ‘Why did you do that, Mister Trev?’ said Nutt. His eyes, almost the only part of him visible, looked hurt. ‘You struck me!’

  ‘That wasn’t me hitting you, Gobbo! That was just a friendly punch! Big difference! Don’t you know that? It’s a little tap on the arm, to show we’re mates. Go on, do it to me. Go on.’ Trev winked.

  … You will be polite and, most of all, you will never raise your hand in anger to anyone…

  But this wasn’t like that, was it? Nutt asked himself. Trev was his friend. This was friendly. A friend thing. He punched the friendly arm.

  ‘That was a punch?’ said Trev. ‘You call that a punch? A girl could punch better’n that! How come you’re still alive with a weedy punch like that? Go on, try a proper punch!’

  Nutt did.

  Be one of the crowd? It went against everything a wizard stood for, and a wizard would not stand for anything if he could sit down for it, but even sitting down, you had to stand out. There were, of course, times when a robe got in the way, especially when a wizard was working in his forge, creating a magic metal or mobiloid glass or any of those other little exercises in practical magic where not setting fire to yourself is a happy bonus, so every wizard had some leather trousers and a stained, rotted-by-acid shirt. It was the shared dirty little secret, not very secret, but ingrained with deep-down dirt.

  Ridcully sighed. His colleagues had aimed for the look of the common man, but had only a hazy grasp of what the common man looked like these days, and now they were sniggering and looking at one another and saying things like ‘Cor blimey, don’t you scrub down well, as it were, my ol’ mate.’ Beside them, and looking extremely embarrassed, were two of the university’s bledlows, not knowing what to do with their feet and wishing that they were having a quiet smoke somewhere in the warm.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Ridcully began, and then with a gleam in his eye added, ‘or should I say, fellow workers by hand and brain, this afternoon we—Yes, Senior Wrangler?’