And so Dr Hix was now tolerated as a useful, if slightly irritating member of the Council largely because he was allowed (by statute) to say some of the naughty things that the other wizards would really have liked to say themselves. Someone with a widow’s peak, a skull ring, a sinister staff and a black robe was expected to spread a little evil around the place, although university statute had redefined acceptable evil in this case as being inconveniences on a par with shoelaces tied together or a brief attack of groinal itch. It wasn’t the most satisfactory of arrangements, but it was in the best UU tradition: Hix occupied, amiably, a niche that might otherwise be occupied by someone who really got off on the whole mouldering corpses and peeled skulls thing. Admittedly, he was always giving fellow wizards free tickets to the various amateur dramatic productions he was obsessively involved with, but, on balance, they agreed, taking one thing with another, this was still better than peeled skulls.
For Hix, a crowd like this was too good to waste. Not only was there a plethora of bootlaces to be expertly tied together, but there were an awful lot of pockets as well. He always had some flyers for the next production in his robe,10 and it wasn’t the same as picking pockets. Quite the reverse. He stuffed them into any he could find.
The day was all a mystery to Nutt, and it stayed a mystery, becoming a little more mysterious with every passing minute. In the distance a whistle was blown and somewhere in this moving, jostling, crushing and in most cases drinking mob of people there was a game going on, apparently. He had to take Trev’s word for it. There were Oos and Aahs in the distance and the crowd ebbed and flowed in response. Trev and his chums, who called themselves, as far as Nutt could make out over the din, the Dimwell Massive Pussy, took advantage of every temporary space to move nearer and nearer to the mysterious game, holding their ground when the press went against them and pushing hard when an eddy went their way. Push, sway, shove . . . and something in this spoke to Nutt. It came up through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, and slid into his brain with a beguiling subtlety, warming him, stripping him away from himself and leaving him no more than a beating part of the living, moving thing around him.
A chant came past. It had started somewhere at the other end of the game and, whatever it had been once, it was now just four syllables of roar, from hundreds of people and many gallons of beer. As it faded, it took the warm, belonging feeling away with it, leaving a hole.
Nutt looked into the eyes of Trev.
‘Happened to you, did it?’ Trev said. ‘That was quick.’
‘It was—’ Nutt began.
‘I know. We don’t talk about it,’ said Trev flatly.
‘But it spoke to me without—’
‘We don’t talk about it, okay? Not that sort of thing. Look! They’re being pushed back. It’s opening up! Let’s shove!’
And Nutt was good at shoving . . . very good. Under his inexorable pressure people slid or gently spun out of the way, their hobnailed boots scraping on the stones as, short of an alternative, the owners were rolled and squeezed alongside Nutt and Trev and deposited behind them, somewhat dizzy, bewildered and angry.
Now, though, there was a frantic tugging at Nutt’s belt.
‘Stop pushing!’ Trev shouted. ‘We’ve left the others behind!’
‘In fact my progress is now hindered by a pease pudding and chowder stand. I have been doing my best, Mister Trev, but it has really been slowing me down,’ said Nutt over his shoulder, ‘and also Miss Glenda. Hello, Miss Glenda.’
Trev glanced behind him. There was a fight going on back there, and he could hear Andy’s battle cry. There was generally a fight going on around Andy, and if there wasn’t, he started one. But you had to like Andy, because . . . well, you just had to. He— Glenda was up ahead? Surely that meant that she would be there too?’
There was a commotion further on and a vaguely oblong thing, wrapped now in tatters of cloth, rose up in the air and fell back, to cheers and catcalls from the crowd. Trev had been right up to the game face many times before. It was no big deal. He’d seen the ball dozens of times.
But how long had Nutt been pushing a pudding stall in front of him like a snowplough? Oh my, Trev thought, I’ve found a player! How can ’e do it? He looks half-starved all the time!
In the absence of any way round in the press of people, Trev scrambled between Nutt’s legs, and for a moment looked down an avenue of coat hems, boots and, right in front of him, a pair of legs that were considerably more attractive than those of Nutt. He surfaced a few inches away from the milky-blue eyes of Juliet. She did not look surprised; surprise is an instant thing, and by the time Juliet could register surprise, she generally wasn’t. Glenda, on the other hand, was the kind of person who instantly whacks surprise on the meat slab of indignation and hammers it into fury, and as their gazes locked and metaphorical bluebirds cleared their throats for the big number, she appeared between them and demanded: ‘What the hells were you doing down there, Trevor Likely?’
The bluebirds evaporated.
‘What are you doin’ up front here?’ said Trev. It wasn’t repartee, but it was the best he could do now, with his heart pounding.
‘We got shoved,’ growled Glenda. ‘You lot were shoving us!’
‘Me? I never did!’ said Trev indignantly. ‘It was—’ He hesitated. Nutt? Look at him standing there all nervous and skinny, like he’s never had a good meal in his life. I wouldn’t believe me, and I am me. ‘It was them behind,’ he said lamely.
‘Trolls with big boots on, were they?’ said Glenda, her voice all vinegar. ‘We’d be in the game if it wasn’t for Mister Nutt here, holding you all back!’
The unfairness of this took Trev aback, but he decided to stay there rather than argue with Glenda. Nutt could do no wrong in her eyes, and Trev could do no right, which he couldn’t contest, but rather felt should be amended to ‘never did any serious wrong’.
But there was Juliet, smiling at him. When Glenda looked away to talk to Nutt she slipped something into his hand and then turned her back on him as if nothing had happened.
Trev opened his hand, heart pounding, and there was a little enamel badge in black and white, the colours of the hated enemy. It was still warm from Her hand.
He closed his hand quickly and looked around to see if anyone had spotted this betrayal of all that was good and true, i.e. the good name of Dimwell. Supposing he got knocked down by a troll and one of the lads found it on him! Supposing Andy found it on him!
But it was a gift from Her! He put it into his pocket and rammed it down to the bottom. This was going to be really difficult, and Trev was not a man who liked problems in his life.
The owner of the pudding stand, having enterprisingly sold a number of portions to passing trade during its journey, strolled up to Trev and offered him a bag of hot pease.
‘Tough mate you got there,’ he said. ‘Some kind of troll, is he?’
‘Not troll. Goblin,’ said Trev, as the sounds of the strife drew nearer.
‘I thought they were little buggers—?’
‘This one isn’t,’ said Trev, wishing the man would go away.
There was a sudden, localized silence. The kind of noise made by people who are holding their breath. He looked up and saw the ball, for the second time in the game.
There was a core of ash wood in there somewhere, then a leather skin and finally dozens of layers of cloth for grip, and it was dropping with pinpoint inevitability towards the beautiful, dreamy head of Juliet. Trev dived at her without a moment’s thought, dragging her under the cart as the ball thumped on to the cobbles where She had been gracing the world with Her presence.
Many things went through Trev’s mind as the ball hit the ground. She was in his arms, even if She was complaining about getting mud on her coat. He had probably saved Her life, which from a romantic point of view was money in the bank, and— oh, yes. Dimmer or Dolly, if one of the hardcore posses found out about this the next thing to go through his he
ad would be a boot.
She giggled.
‘Shush!’ he managed. ‘Not a good idea if you’d rather not know how you would look with that beautiful hair shaved off !’
Trev peeped out from under the stall, and attracted no attention at all.
This is because Nutt had picked up the ball and was turning it over and over in his hands with a frown on what was visible of, if you were kind, his face.
‘Is this all it is?’ he said to a bewildered Glenda. ‘A most inappropriate ending to a pleasant social gathering with interesting canapés! Where is this wretched thing supposed to be, then?’
Glenda, hypnotized by the sight, pointed a wavering finger in the general direction of down the street.
‘There’s a big pole? Painted white . . . well, spattered with red at the bottom . . .’
‘Oh yes, I see it. Well, in that case, I’ll— Look, will you men please stop pushing?’ Nutt added to the crowd, who were craning to see.
‘But there’s no way you’ll ever get it there!’ Glenda yelled. ‘Just put it down and come away!’
Trev heard a grunt from Nutt and absolute silence from the rest of the world. Oh, no, he thought. Really no. It must be more than, what, a hundred and fifty yards to that goal, and those things fly like a bucket. There is no way that he could—
A distant pock broke the breathless silence, which healed itself instantly.
Trev peered over a shoulder as the sixty-foot goal post gave up its battle with termites, rot, weather, gravity and Nutt, and fell into its own base in a cloud of dust. He was so astonished that he hardly noticed Juliet standing up next to him.11
‘Is that a kind of, like, sign?’ said Juliet, who believed in such things.
At that moment, Trev believed in pointing a finger towards the other side of the street and shouting, ‘He went that way!’ and then hauling Juliet upright and butting Nutt in the stomach. ‘Let’s go!’ he added. He couldn’t do anything about Glenda, but that would not matter; while he held Juliet’s hand Glenda would follow him like a homing vulture. People were trying to run towards the hidden goal; others were making for the apparent location of the long-distance scorer. Trev pointed in a random direction and yelled, ‘He went down there! Big man with a black hat!’ Confusion always helped, when it wasn’t yours; when it was time for a hue and cry, make sure who was hue.
They halted a few alleys away. There was still a commotion far off, but a city crowd is easier to get lost in than a forest.
‘Look, perhaps I should go back and apologize,’ Nutt began. ‘I could make a new pole quite easily.’
‘I hate to tell you this, Gobbo, but I think you might have upset the kind of people who don’t listen to apologies,’ said Trev. ‘Keep moving, everyone.’
‘Why might they be upset?’
‘Well, Mister Nutt, first, you are not supposed to score a goal when it is not your game, and anyway you are a watcher, not a player,’ said Glenda. ‘And second, a shot like that gets right up people’s noses. You could have killed someone!’
‘No, Miss Glenda, I assure you I could not. I deliberately aimed at the pole.’
‘So? That doesn’t mean you were sure to hit it!’
‘Er, I have to say it does, Miss Glenda,’ he mumbled.
‘How did you do it? You took the pole to bits! They don’t grow on trees! You’ll get us all into trouble!’
‘Why can’t he be a player?’ said Juliet, staring at her reflection in a window.
‘What?’ said Glenda.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Trev. ‘With him on the team you wouldn’t need a team!’
‘That’d save a lot of trouble, then,’ said Juliet.
‘So you say,’ said Glenda, ‘and where would be the fun in that? That wouldn’t be football any more—’
‘We are being watched,’ said Nutt. ‘I am sorry to interrupt you.’
Trev glanced around. The street was busy, but mostly with its own affairs. ‘There’s no one interested, Gobbo. We’re well away.’
‘I can feel it on my skin,’ Nutt insisted.
‘What, through all that wool?’ said Glenda.
He turned round, soulful eyes on her. ‘Yes,’ he said, and remembered Ladyship testing him on that. It had seemed like a game at the time.
He glanced up and a large head drew back quickly from a parapet. There was a very faint smell of bananas. Ah, that one. He was nice. Nutt saw him sometimes, going hand over hand along the pipes.
‘You ought to get ’er home,’ said Trev to Glenda.
Glenda shuddered. ‘Not a good idea. Old Stollop’ll ask her what she saw at the game.’
‘Well?’
‘She’ll tell him. And who she saw—’
‘Can’t she lie?’
‘Not in the way you can, Trev. She’s just no good at making stuff up. Look, let’s get back to the university. We all work there, and I often go in to catch up. We’ll go directly now and you two go back the long way. We never saw one another, right? And for heavens’ sake don’t let him do anything silly!’
‘Excuse me, Miss Glenda,’ said Nutt meekly.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Which of us were you addressing?’
‘I have let you down,’ said Nutt, as they strolled through the post-match crowds. At least, Trev ambled; Nutt moved with a strange gait that suggested there was something wrong with his pelvis.
‘Nah, it’s fixable,’ said Trev. ‘Everything is fixable. I’m a fixer, me. What did anybody really see? Just a bloke in Dimmer kit. There’s thousands of us. Don’t worry. Er, how come you’re so tough, Gobbo? You spent your life lifting weights, or what?’
‘You are correct in your surmise, Mister Trev. Before I was born I did indeed use to lift weights. I was only a child then, of course.’
They strolled on and after a while Trev said, ‘Could you say that again? It’s got stuck in my head. Actually, I think part of it’s stickin’ out of my ear.’
‘Ah, yes. Perhaps I have confused you. There was a time when my mind was full of darkness. Then Brother Oats helped me to the light, and I was born.’
‘Oh, religion stuff.’
‘But here I am. You asked why I am strong? When I lived in the dark of the forge, I used to lift weights. The tongs at first, and then the little hammer and then the biggest hammer, and then one day I could lift the anvil. That was a good day. It was a little freedom.’
‘Why was it so important to lift the anvil?’
‘I was chained to the anvil.’
They walked on in silence again until Trev, picking each word with care, said, ‘I guess things must be sort of tough in the high country?’
‘It is not so bad now, I think.’
‘Makes you count your blessin’s, that sort of thing.’
‘The presence of a certain lady, Mister Trev?’
‘Yes, since you ask. I think about ’er all the time! I really like ’er! But she’s a Dolly!’ A small group of supporters turned to glance at them, and he lowered his voice to a hiss. ‘She’s got brothers with fists the size of a bull’s arse!’
‘I have read, Mister Trev, that love laughs at locksmiths.’
‘Really? And what does it do when it’s been smacked in the face by a bull’s arse?’
‘The poets are not forthcoming in that respect, Mister Trev.’
‘Besides,’ said Trev, ‘locksmiths tend to be quiet blokes, you know? Careful and patient and that. Like you. I reckon you could get away with a bit of a joke. You must ’ave met girls. I mean, you’re no oil painting, that’s a fact, but they like a posh voice. I bet you ’ad them eatin’ out of your ’and . . . well, after you’d washed it, obviously.’
Nutt hesitated. There had been Ladyship, of course, and Miss Healstether, neither of whom fitted easily into the category of ‘girl’. Of course, there were the Little Sisters, who were certainly young and apparently female but it had to be said looked rather like intelligent chickens, and certainly weren’t seen at their best when you
watched them feeding – but once again, ‘girls’ did not seem the right word.
‘I have not met many girls,’ he volunteered.
‘There’s Glenda. She’s taken a real shine to you. Watch out, though, she’ll run your life for you if you let her. It’s what she does. She does it to everyone.’
‘You two have a history, I think,’ said Nutt.
‘You are a sharp one, aren’t you? Quiet and sharp. Like a knife. Yeah, I suppose it was a history. I wanted it to be more of a geography, but she kept slappin’ my hand.’ Trev paused to search for any flicker in Nutt’s face. ‘That was a joke,’ he added, without much hope.
‘Thank you for telling me, Mister Trev. I will decipher it later.’
Trev sighed. ‘But I ain’t like that any more, and Juliet . . . well, I’d crawl a mile over broken glass just to hold ’er ’and, no funny business.’
‘Writing a poem is often the way to the intended’s heart,’ said Nutt.
Trev brightened. ‘Ah, I’m good with words. If I wrote ’er a letter, you could give it to ’er, right? If I write it on posh paper, something like, let’s see . . . “I think you are really fit. How about a date? No hanky panky, promise. Luv, Trev.” How does that sound?’
‘The soul of it is pure and noble, Mister Trev. But, ah, if I could assist in some way . . . ?’
‘It needs longer words, right? And more sort of curly language?’ said Trev.
But Nutt was not paying attention.
‘Sounds lovely to me,’ said a voice above Trev’s head. ‘Who do you know what can read, smart boy?’
There was this to be said about the Stollop brothers: they weren’t Andy. It was, in the great scheme of things, not a huge difference when you couldn’t see for blood but, in short, Stollops knew that force had always worked, and so had never bothered to try anything else, whereas Andy was a stone-cold psychopath who had a following only because it was safer than being in front of him. He could be quite charming when the frantically oscillating mood swing took him; that was the best time to run. As for the Stollops, it would not take long for a researcher to realize that Juliet was the brains of the family outfit. One advantage from Trev’s viewpoint was that they thought they were clever, because no one had ever told them otherwise.