Unseen Academicals

  ‘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.

  He headed through the stone corridors to the Night Kitchen. Any optimism he might have retained was dashed one hope at a time by the trail of pie crumbs, but the illumination rose again as he saw Juliet and, oh yes, Glenda, standing in what was left of the Night Kitchen, which was a mess of torn-open cupboards and pieces of piecrust.

  ‘Oh, Mister Trevor Likely,’ said Glenda, folding her arms. ‘Just one question: who ate all the pies?’

  The illumination swelled until it filled Trev with a kind of silvery light. It had been three nights since he had slept in an actual bed and it had not been your normal sort of day. He smiled broadly at nothing at all and was caught by Juliet as he hit the ground.

  Trev woke up half an hour later, when Glenda brought him a cup of tea. ‘I thought we’d better let you sleep,’ she said. ‘Juliet said you looked awful, so obviously she’s coming to her senses.’

  ‘He was dead,’ said Trev. ‘Dead as a doorknob, and then he wasn’t. What’s that all about?’ He levered himself up and realized that he had been put to bed on one of the grubby bedrolls in the vats. Nutt was lying on the roll next to him.

  ‘All right,’ said Glenda. ‘If you can do it without lying, tell me.’ She sat down and watched the sleeping Nutt for a while as Trev tried to make sense of the previous evening. ‘What was in the sandwich again? The one the Igor gave him?’

  ‘Tuna, spaghetti and jam. With sprinkles,’ said Trev, yawning.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘It’s not the kinda thing you forget.’

  ‘What kind of jam?’ Glenda insisted.

  ‘Why ask?’

  ‘I’m thinking it might work with quince. Or chilli. Can’t see any place for sprinkles, though. They don’t make any sense.’

  ‘What? He’s an Igor. It doesn’t have to make sense!’

  ‘But he warned you about Nutt?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think he meant “lock up your pies”, do you? Are you gonna get into trouble about the pies?’

  ‘No. I’ve got plenty more maturing in the cool room. They’re at their best when matured. You have to keep ahead of yourself, with pies.’

  She looked down at Nutt and went on, ‘Are you really telling me he got all smashed up by the Stollop boys and then walked out of the Lady Sibyl?’

  ‘He was as dead as a doorknob. Even old ’addock could spot that.’

 
This time they both stared at Nutt.

  ‘He’s alive now,’ said Glenda, as if it was an accusation.

  ‘Look,’ said Trev, ‘all I know about people who come from Uberwald is that some of them are vampires and some are werewolves. Well, I don’t think vampires are much interested in pies. And it was a full moon last week and he didn’t act odd; well, odder than normal.’

  Glenda lowered her voice. ‘Maybe he’s a zombie— No, they don’t eat pies either.’ She continued to stare at Nutt, but another part of her said, ‘There’s going to be a banquet on Wednesday night. Lord Vetinari’s up to something with the wizards. It’s about the football, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘For some plan, I expect. Something nasty. The wizards were at the game today taking notes! Don’t tell me that’s healthy. They want to shut down football, that’s what it is!’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘Trevor Likely, how can you say that! Your dad—’

  ‘Died because he was dumb,’ said Trev. ‘And don’t tell me it was the way he would have wanted to go. No one would want to go like that.’

  ‘But he loved his football!’

  ‘So? What does that mean? The Stollop boys love their football. Andy Shank loves ’is football! And what does it mean? Not countin’ today, how often have you seen the ball in play? Hardly ever, I bet.’

  ‘Well, yes, but it’s not about the football.’

  ‘You’re saying that football is not about football?’

  Glenda wished she’d had a proper education, or, failing that, any real education at all. But she was not going to back off now. ‘It’s the sharing,’ she said. ‘It’s being part of the crowd. It’s chanting together. It’s all of it. The whole thing.’

  ‘I believe, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt from his mattress, ‘that the work you are looking for is Trousenblert’s Der Selbst uberschritten durch das Ganze.’

  They looked down at Nutt again, mouths open. He had opened his eyes and appeared to be staring at the ceiling. ‘It is the lonely soul trying to reach out to the shared soul of all humanity, and possibly much further. W. E. G. Goodnight’s translation of In Search of The Whole is marred, while quite understandable, by the mistranslation of bewußtseinsschwelle as “haircut” throughout.’

  Trev and Glenda looked at one another. Trev shrugged. Where could they start?

  Glenda coughed. ‘Mister Nutt, are you alive or dead or what?’

  ‘Alive, thank you very much for asking.’

  ‘I saw you killed!’ Trev shouted. ‘We ran all the way to the Lady Sybil!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nutt. ‘I am sorry, I do not recall. It would seem that diagnosis was in error. Am I right?’

  They exchanged glances. Trev got the worst of it. When Glenda was angry, her glance might just possibly etch glass. But Nutt had a point. It was hard to argue with a man who insisted that he was not dead. ‘Um, and then you came back here and ate nine pies,’ said Glenda.

  ‘Looks like they did you good,’ said Trev, with brittle cheerfulness.

  ‘But I can’t see where they’ve gone,’ Glenda finished. ‘Belly-busters, every one of them.’

  ‘You will be angry with me.’ Nutt looked frightened.

  ‘Let’s all calm down, shall we?’ said Trev. ‘Look, I was pretty worried, my oath, yes. Not angry, okay? We’re your friends.’

  ‘I must be becoming. I must be helpful!’ This came from Nutt’s lips like a mantra.

  Glenda took his hands. ‘Look, I’m not bothered about the pies, really I’m not. I like to see a man with a good appetite. But you must tell us what’s wrong. Have you done something you shouldn’t?’

  ‘I should be making myself worthy,’ Nutt said, pulling away gently and not meeting her eyes. ‘I must be becoming. I must not lie. I must gain worth. Thank you for your kindness.’

  He got up, walked down the length of the vats, picked up a basket of candles, came back, wound up his dribbling machine and began to work, oblivious of their presence.

  ‘Do you know what goes on in his head?’ Glenda whispered.

  ‘When he was young, he was chained to an anvil for seven years,’ said Trev.

  ‘What? That’s terrible! Someone must have been very cruel to do something like that!’

  ‘Or desperate to make sure he didn’t get free.’

  ‘Things are never all they seem, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt, without looking up from his feverish activity, ‘and the acoustics in these cellars are very good. Your father loved you, did he not?’

  ‘Wot?’ Trev’s face reddened.

  ‘He loved you, took you to the football, shared a pie with you, taught you to cheer for the Dimmers? Did he hold you on his shoulders so that you could see more of the game?’

  ‘Stop talkin’ about my dad like that!’

  Glenda took Trev’s arm. ‘It’s okay, Trev, it’s all right, it’s not a nasty question, really it isn’t!’

  ‘But you hate him, because he became a mortal man, dying on the cobbles,’ said Nutt, picking up another undribbled candle.

  ‘That is nasty,’ said Glenda. Nutt ignored her.

  ‘He let you down, Mister Trev. He wasn’t the small boy’s god. It turned out that he was only a man. But he was not only a man. Everyone who has ever watched a game in this city has heard of Dave Likely. If he was a fool, then any man who has ever climbed a mountain or swum a torrent is a fool. If he was a fool then so was the man who first tried to tame fire. If he was a fool then so was the man who tried the first oyster, he was a fool, too – although I’m bound to remark that, given the division of labour in early hunter-gatherer cultures, he was probably a woman as well. Perhaps only a fool gets out of bed. But, after death, some fools shine like stars, and your father is such a one. After death, people forget the foolishness, but they do remember the shine. You could not have done anything. You could not have stopped him. If you could have stopped him he would not have been Dave Likely, a name that means football to thousands of people.’ Nutt very carefully put down a beautifully dribbled candle and continued. ‘Think about this, Mister Trev. Don’t be smart. Smart is only a polished version of dumb. Try intelligence. It will surely see you through.’

  ‘That’s just a load of words!’ said Trev hotly, but Glenda saw the glistening lines down his cheeks.

  ‘Please think about them, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt and added, ‘There, I have done a complete basket. That is worth.’

  It was the calmness. Nutt had been spinning, almost sick with anxiety. He’d been repeating himself, as if he’d had to learn things for a teacher. And then he was otherwise – totally reserved and collected.

  Glenda looked from Trev to Nutt and back again. Trev’s mouth hung open. She didn’t blame it. What Nutt had said with quiet matter-of-factness had sounded like not an opinion but the truth, winched out of some deep well.

  Then Trev broke the silence, speaking as if hypnotized, his voice hoarse.

  ‘He gave me his old jersey when I was five. It was like a tent. I mean, it was so greasy I never got wet—’ He stopped.

  After a moment Glenda pushed at his elbow. ‘He’s gone all stiff,’ she said, ‘as stiff as a piece of wood.’

  ‘Ah, catatonic,’ said Nutt. ‘He is overwhelmed by his feelings. We should lay him down.’

  ‘These old mattresses they sleep on in here are rubbish!’ said Glenda, looking around for a better alternative to cold flagstones.

  ‘I know the very thing!’ said Nutt, suddenly all action and plunging off down the passage. This left Glenda still holding a rigid Trev when Juliet appeared from the direction of the kitchens. She stopped instantly when she saw them, and burst into tears.

  ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’

  ‘Er, no—’ Glenda began.

  ‘I talked to some of the bakery lads coming in to work and they’re telling me there’s been fights all over the city and someone got himself murdered!’

  ‘Trev’s just had a bit of a shock, that’s all. Mister Nutt’s gone t
o find something for him to lie down on.’

  ‘Oh.’ Juliet sounded a little disappointed, presumably because ‘a bit of a shock’ was not sufficiently dramatic, but she rallied just as a loud, rough and uniquely wooden noise from the other direction heralded Nutt pushing a large couch, which shuddered to a halt in front of them.

  ‘There’s a big room piled up with old furniture up the hall,’ he said, patting the faded velvet. ‘It’s a bit musty, but I think all the mice have fallen out on the way here. Quite a find actually. I believe it is a chaise longue from the workshop of the famous Gurning Upspire. I think I can probably restore it later. Let him down gently.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ said Juliet.

  ‘Oh, the truth can be a little bit upsetting,’ said Nutt. ‘But he will get over it and feel better.’

  ‘I would very much like to know the truth myself, Mister Nutt, thank you very much,’ said Glenda, folding her arms and trying to look stern while all the time a voice in her head was whispering Chaise longue! Chaise longue! When no one else is here you can have a go at languishing!

  ‘It’s a kind of medicine with words,’ said Nutt, carefully. ‘Sometimes people fool themselves into believing things that aren’t true. Sometimes that can be quite dangerous for the person. They see the world in a wrong way. They won’t let themselves see that what they believe is wrong. But often there is a part of the mind that does know, and the right words can let it out.’ He gave them a worried look. ‘Well, that’s nice,’ said Juliet.

  ‘It sounds like hocus pocus to me,’ said Glenda. ‘Folk know their own minds!’ She folded her arms again, and saw Nutt glance at them.

  ‘Well?’ she demanded. ‘Haven’t you ever seen elbows before?’

  ‘Never such pretty dimpled ones, Miss Glenda, on such tightly folded arms.’

  Up until that point Glenda had never realized that Juliet had such a dirty laugh, to which, Glenda fervently hoped, she was not entitled.

  ‘Glenda’s got a bee-oh! Glenda’s got a bee-ooh!’

  ‘It’s “beau”, actually,’ Glenda said, swiping to the back of her mind the recollection that it had taken her years to find that out herself. ‘And I was just helping. We’re helping him, aren’t we, Mister Nutt?’