Unseen Academicals (14 page)

‘But, funny thing,’ Ottomy went on, as Glenda metaphorically let out a breath, ‘while we was in the Shove, I could’ve sworn I saw your lovely assistant here chatting to a lad in the Dimmer strip…’

‘No law against that!’ Glenda said. ‘Anyway, she was here, cleaning the ovens.’ It was clumsy, but she hated people like him, who lived for the exercise of third-hand authority and loved every little bit of power they could grab. He’d seen more than he’d told her, that was
certain, and wanted her to wriggle. And out of the corner of her mind, she could feel him looking at their coats. Their wet coats.

‘I thought you didn’t go to the football, Mister Ottomy?’

‘Ah, well, there you have it. The pointies wanted to go and watch a game, and me and Mister Nobbs had to go with them in case they got breathed on by ordinary people. Blimey, you wouldn’t believe it! Tutting and complaining and taking notes, like they owned the street. They’re up to something, you mark my words.’

Glenda didn’t like the word ‘pointies’, although it was a good description. Coming from Ottomy, though, it was an invitation to greasy conspiracy. But however you baked it, wizards were nobs, people who mattered, the movers and the shakers: and when people like that got interested in the doings of people who by definition did not matter, little people were about to be shaken, and shook.

‘Vetinari doesn’t like football,’ she said.

‘Well, o’course, they’re all in it together,’ said Ottomy, tapping his nose. This caused a small lump of dried matter to shoot from his other nostril into his tea. Glenda had a brief struggle with her conscience over whether to point this out, but won.

‘I thought you should know this, on account of how people up in the Sisters look up to you,’ said Ottomy. ‘I remember your mum. She was a saint, that woman. Always had a helping hand for everyone.’ Yes, and didn’t they grab, said Glenda to herself. She was lucky to die with all her fingers.

Ottomy drained his mug and plonked it on the table with a sigh. ‘Can’t stand around here all day, eh?’

‘Yes, I’m sure you’ve got lots of other places to stand.’

Ottomy paused at the entrance arch, and turned to grin at Juliet.

‘A girl the spit and image of you, I’d swear it. With a Dimmer boy. Amazing. You must have one of those double gangers. Well, it’ll have to remain a mystery, as the man said when he found something that would have to remain a mystery. Toodle-oo—’

He stopped dead rather than walk into the silvery knife that Glenda was holding in a not totally threatening way quite close to his throat.
She had the satisfaction of seeing his Adam’s apple pop back up and down again like a sick yoyo.

‘Sorry about that,’ she said, lowering it. ‘I’ve always got a knife in my hand these days. We’ve been doing the pork. Very much like human flesh, pork, or so they say.’ She put her spare hand across his shoulders and said, ‘Probably not a good idea, spreading silly rumours, Mister Ottomy. You know how people can be so funny about that sort of thing. Nice of you to drop by and if you happen to be going past tomorrow I’ll see that you get a pie. Do excuse us. I have a lot of chopping up to do.’

He left at speed. Glenda, her heart pounding, looked at Juliet; her mouth made a perfect O.

‘What? What?’

‘I fort you was goin’ to stab ’im!’

‘I just happened to be holding a knife. You are holding a knife. We hold knives. This is a kitchen.’

‘D’you fink he’s goin’ to tell?’

‘He doesn’t really know anything.’ Eight inches, she thought. That’s as big as you can make a pie without a dish. How many pies could I make out of a weasel like Ottomy? The big mincer would make it easy. Ribcages and skulls must be a problem, though. Probably better, on the whole, to stick to pork.

But the thought blazed away at the back of her mind, never to become action but unfamiliar, exciting and oddly liberating.

What were the wizards doing at the game? Making notes about what? A puzzle to think about.

In the meantime, they were in a world of pies. Juliet could work quite well at repetitive jobs when she put her mind to it, and she had a meticulousness often found in people who were not very clever. Occasionally she sniffed, not a good thing when you are making pie filling. She was probably thinking about Trev, and pasting him, in her beautiful and not very overcrowded head, into one of those glittery dreams sold by
Bu-bubble
and other junk, where all you had to do to be famous was just ‘be yourself’. Ha! While Glenda had always known
what she wanted. She worked long, poorly paid hours to get it, and here it was: her own kitchen, and power, more or less…over pies!
A moment ago you were daydreaming of turning a man into pies!

Why are you so angry all the time? What went wrong? I’ll tell you what went wrong! When you got there, there was no there there. You wanted to see Quirm from an open carriage while a nice young man drank champagne out of your slipper, but you never did, because they were a funny lot in Quirm, and you couldn’t trust the water, and how did that champagne thing work, anyway? Didn’t it drip out? What would happen if your toe trouble played up again…? So you never did. Never will.

‘I never said Trev’s a bad lad,’ she said aloud. ‘Not a gentleman, needs a slap to teach him manners and he takes life a good deal too easily, but he could make something of himself if he had reason to put his mind to it.’

Juliet did not seem to be listening, but you never could tell.

‘It’s just the football. You’re on different sides. It won’t work,’ Glenda finished.

‘S’posing I went and supported the Dimmers?’

A day ago that would have sounded like some kind of sacrilege; now it just presented a huge problem.

‘For a start, your dad wouldn’t speak to you ever again. Or your brothers.’

‘They don’t now, much, anyway, except to ask when their grub is goin’ to be ready. D’you know, today was the first time I ever saw the ball up close? And you know what? It weren’t worth it. Hey, and they’re goin’ to have a fashion show on at Shatta tomorrow. Why don’t we go?’

‘Never heard of it,’ Glenda snorted.

‘It’s a dwarf store.’

‘That sounds right. I can’t imagine humans naming anything like that. You’d be hostage to the first misprint.’

‘We could go. Might be fun.’ Juliet waved a tattered copy of
Bu-bubble
. ‘And the new micromails are going to be really good and soft, and don’t chafe, it says here, plus, horned helmets are making a
return after too long in obs…curi…tea. Where’s that? And there’s this mat…in…a tomorrow.’

‘Yes, but we’re not the kind of women who go to fashion shows, Jules.’

‘You’re not. Why am I not?’

‘Well, because…Well, I wouldn’t know what to wear.’ Glenda was getting desperate now.

‘That’s why you should go to fashion shows,’ said Juliet smugly.

Glenda opened her mouth to snap a reply, and thought: it’s not about boys and it’s not about football. It’s safe.

‘All right. I suppose it might be fun. Look, we’ve done a woman’s job this evening. I’ll take you home now and do my chores and come back. Your dad might be worrying.’

‘He’ll be in the pub,’ said Juliet accurately.

‘Well, he would be worrying if he wasn’t,’ said Glenda.

She wanted some time to herself with her feet up. It hadn’t just been a long day, it had been a long and deep one as well. She needed some time for things to settle.

‘And we’ll take a chair, how about that?’

‘They’re very expensive!’

‘Well, you’re only young once, that’s what I say.’

‘I never heard you say that before.’

Several troll chairs were waiting outside the university. They were expensive at fivepence for the ride, but the seats in panniers round the carrier’s neck were much more comfy than the slats on the buses. Of course, it was posh, and curtains twitched and lips pursed. That was the strange thing about the street: if you were born there, people didn’t like it if you started not to fit in. Granny had called it ‘getting ideas above your station’. It was letting the side up.

She opened Juliet’s door for her because the girl always fumbled with the lock, and watched it shut.

Only then did she open her own front door, which was as patched and peeling as the other one. She’d hardly taken her coat off when there was a hammering on the weatherbeaten woodwork. She flung it open
to find Mr Stollop, Juliet’s father, one fist still raised and a little cloud of powdered paint flecks settling around him.

‘Heard you come in, Glendy,’ he said. ‘What’s this all about?’

His other huge hand rose, holding a crisp off-white envelope. You didn’t see many of these in Dolly Sisters.

‘It’s called a letter,’ said Glenda.

The man held it out imploringly and now she noticed the large letter V on the dreaded government stamp, guaranteed to spread fear and despondency among those with taxes yet to pay.

‘It’s his lordship writing to me!’ said Mr Stollop in distress. ‘Why’d he want to go and write to me? I haven’t done nothing!’

‘Have you thought about opening it?’ said Glenda. ‘That’s generally how we find out what’s in letters.’

There was another of those imploring looks. In Dolly Sisters reading and writing was soft indoor work that was best left to the women. Real work required broad backs, strong arms and calloused hands. Mr Stollop absolutely fitted the bill. He was captain of the Dollies and in one match had bitten an ear off three men. She sighed and took the letter from a hand which she noticed was slightly trembling and slit it open with her thumbnail.

‘It says here, Mister Stollop,’ she said, and the man winced. ‘Yes. That would be you,’ Glenda added.

‘Is there anything about taxes or anything?’ he said.

‘Not that I can see. He writes that “I would greatly appreciate your company at a dinner I am proposing to hold at Unseen University at eight o’clock Wednesday evening to discuss the future of the famous game foot-the-ball. I will be pleased to welcome you as the captain of the Dolly Sisters team.”’

‘Why has he picked on me?’ Stollop demanded.

‘He says,’ said Glenda, ‘because you’re the captain.’

‘Yes, but why me?’

‘Maybe he’s invited all the team captains,’ Glenda volunteered. ‘You could send a lad round with a white scarf and check, couldn’t you?’

‘Yeah, but supposing it’s just me,’ said Stollop again, determined to plumb the horror to its depths.

Glenda had a bright idea. ‘Well then, Mister Stollop, it would look like the captain of the Dolly Sisters is the only one important enough to discuss the future of football with the ruler himself.’

Stollop didn’t square his shoulders because he wore them permanently squared, but with a muscular nudge he managed to achieve the effect of cubed. ‘Hah, he’s got that one right!’ he roared.

Glenda sighed inwardly. The man was strong, but his muscles were melting into fat. She knew his knees hurt. She knew he got out of breath rather quickly these days and in the presence of something he couldn’t bully, punch or kick, Mr Stollop was entirely at a loss. Down by his sides his hands flexed and unflexed themselves as they tried to do his thinking for him.

‘What’s this all about?’

‘I don’t know, Mister Stollop.’

He shifted his weight. ‘Er, would it be about that Dimmer boy that got himself hurt today, d’you think?’

Could be anyone, thought Glenda as cold dread blossomed. It’s not as though it doesn’t happen every week. It doesn’t have to be either of them. It will be, of course, I know it, but I don’t know it, can’t possibly know it, and if I repeat that long enough it might all never have happened.

Got himself hurt, thought Glenda in the roar of panic. That quite likely means he happened to be standing in the wrong place in the wrong strip, which is tantamount to a self-inflicted wound. He got himself killed.

‘My lads came in and said it was out in the street. That’s what they just heard. He got killed, that’s what they heard.’

‘They didn’t see anything?’

‘That’s right, they didn’t see a thing.’

‘But they were doing a lot of listening?’

That one went over Stollop’s head without even bothering to climb.

‘And it was a Dimmer boy?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They heard he died, but you know how those Dimwell buggers lie.’

‘Where are your boys now?’

For a moment the old man’s eyes blazed. ‘They’re stoppin’ indoors or I’ll thrash ’em. You get some nasty gangs out when something like that’s been happening.’

‘One less now, then,’ said Glenda.

Stollop’s face was painted in pigments of misery and dread. ‘They’re not bad boys, you know. Not at heart. People pick on them.’

Yes, down at the Watch House, she said to herself, where people say, ‘That’s them! The big ones! I’d know them anywhere!’

She left him shaking his head and ran down the road. The troll would never expect to get a fare up here and there was no sense in hanging around and getting covered in paint. She might just about be able to catch up with it on its way down town. After a minute or two she realized that someone was following her.
Chasing
her in the gloom. If only she’d remembered to bring the knife. She stepped into a patch of deeper shadow and, as the knife-wielding maniac drew level, stepped out and shouted, ‘Stop following me!’

Juliet gave a little scream. ‘They’ve got Trev,’ she sobbed, as Glenda held her. ‘I know they have!’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Glenda. ‘There’s fighting all the time after a big match. No sense in getting too worried.’

‘So why were you running?’ said Juliet sharply. And there was no answer to that.

The bledlow nodded him through the staff door with a grunt and he headed straight away for the vats. A couple of the lads were dribbling in their meticulous and very slow way, but there was no sign of Nutt until Trev risked his sanity and nasal passages by checking the communal sleeping area, where he found Nutt sleeping on his bedroll, clutching his stomach. It was an extremely large stomach. Given the usual neat shape of Nutt, it made him look a little like a snake that had swallowed an extremely large goat. The curious face of the Igor and his worried voice
came back to him. He looked down beside the bedroll and saw a small piece of piecrust and some crumbs. It smelled like a very good pie. In fact, he could think of only one person who could ever make a pie quite so beguiling. Whatever it was that had been filling Trev, the invisible illumination that had made him almost dance here from the Watch House, drained out through his feet.