In appreciation of the thought that had gone into this, the good citizens, or more probably their kids, had covered the walls to a height of six feet with graffiti in many exciting colours.
In a band all along the top of the frontage, staining the stone in greens and browns, some words had been set in letters of bronze.
‘ “NEITHER RAIN NOR SNOW NOR GLO M OF NI T CAN STAY THESE MES ENGERS ABO T THEIR DUTY,” ‘ Moist read aloud. ‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘The Post Office Was Once A Proud Institution,’ said Mr Pump.
‘And that stuff?’ Moist pointed. On a board much further down the building, in peeling paint, were the less heroic words:
DONT ARSK US ABOUT:
rocks
troll’s with sticks
All sorts of dragons
Mrs Cake
Huje green things with teeth
Any kinds of black dogs with orange eyebrows
Rains of spaniel’s
fog
Mrs Cake
‘I Said It Was A Proud Institution,’ the golem rumbled.
‘Who’s Mrs Cake?’
‘I Regret I Cannot Assist You There, Mr Lipvig.’
‘They seem pretty frightened of her.’
‘So It Appears, Mr Lipvig.’
Moist looked around at this busy junction in this busy city. People weren’t paying him any attention, although the golem was getting casual glances that didn’t appear very friendly.
This was all too strange. He’d been – what, fourteen? – when he’d last used his real name. And heavens knew how long it had been since he’d gone out without some easily removable distinguishing marks. He felt naked. Naked and unnoticed.
To the interest of no one whatsoever, he walked up the stained steps and turned the key in the lock. To his surprise it moved easily, and the paint-spattered doors swung open without a creak.
There was a rhythmic, hollow noise behind Moist. Mr Pump was clapping his hands.
‘Vell Done, Mr Lipvig. Your First Step In A Career Of Benefit Both To Yourself And The Veil-being Of The City!’
‘Yeah, right,’ muttered Lipwig.
He stepped into the huge, dark lobby, which was lit only dimly by a big but grimy dome in the ceiling; it could never be more than twilight in here, even at noon. The graffiti artists had been at work in here, too.
In the gloom he could see a long, broken counter, with doors and pigeon-holes behind it.
Real pigeon-holes. Pigeons were nesting in the pigeon-holes. The sour, salty smell of old guano filled the air, and, as marble tiles rang under Moist’s feet, several hundred pigeons took off frantically and spiralled up towards a broken pane in the roof.
‘Oh, shit,’ he said.
‘Bad Language Is Discouraged, Mr Lipvig,’ said Mr Pump, behind him.
‘Why? It’s written on the walls! Anyway, it was a description, Mr Pump! Guano! There must be tons of the stuff!’ Moist heard his own voice echo back from the distant walls. ‘When was this place last open?’
‘Twenty years ago, Postmaster!’
Moist looked around. ‘Who said that?’ he said. The voice seemed to have come from everywhere.
There was the sound of shuffling and the click-click of a walking stick and a bent, elderly figure appeared in the grey, dead, dusty air.
‘Groat, sir,’ it wheezed. ‘Junior Postman Groat, sir. At your service, sir. One word from you, sir, and I will leap, sir, leap into action, sir.’ The figure stopped to cough long and hard, making a noise like a wall being hit repeatedly with a bag of rocks. Moist saw that it had a beard of the short bristled type that suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog.
‘Junior Postman Groat?’ he said.
‘Indeedy, sir. The reason being, no one’s ever bin here long enough to promote me, sir. Should be Senior Postman Groat, sir,’ the old man added meaningfully, and once again coughed volcanically.
Ex-Postman Groat sounds more like it, Moist thought. Aloud he said, ‘And you work here, do you?’
‘Aye, sir, that we do, sir. It’s just me and the boy now, sir. He’s keen, sir. We keeps the place clean, sir. All according to Regulations.’
Moist could not stop staring. Mr Groat wore a toupee. There may actually be a man somewhere on whom a toupee works, but whoever that man might be, Mr Groat was not he. It was chestnut brown, the wrong size, the wrong shape, the wrong style and, all in all, wrong.
‘Ah, I see you’re admirin’ my hair, sir,’ said Groat proudly, as the toupee spun gently. ‘It’s all mine, you know, not a prunes.’
‘Er . . . prunes?’ said Moist.
‘Sorry, sir, shouldn’t have used slang. Prunes as in “syrup of prunes”, sir. Dimwell slang.* Syrup of prunes: wig. Not many men o’ my age got all their own hair, I expect that’s what you’re thinking. It’s clean living that does it, inside and out.’
* Dimwell Arrhythmic Rhyming Slang: Various rhyming slangs are known, and have given the universe such terms as ‘apples and pears’ (stairs), ‘rubbity-dub’ (pub) and ‘busy bee’ (General Theory of Relativity). The Dimwell Street rhyming slang is probably unique in that it does not, in fact, rhyme. No one knows why, but theories so far advanced are 1) that it is quite complex and in fact follows hidden rules or 2) Dimwell is well named or 3) it’s made up to annoy strangers, which is the case with most such slangs.
Moist looked around at the fetid air and the receding mounds of guano. ‘Well done,’ he muttered. ‘Well, Mr Groat, do I have an office? Or something?’
For a moment, the visible face above the ragged beard was that of a rabbit in a headlight.
‘Oh, yes, sir, techn’c’ly,’ said the old man quickly. ‘But we don’t go in there any more sir, oh no, ‘cos of the floor. Very unsafe, sir. ‘cos of the floor. Could give way any minute, sir. We uses the staff locker room, sir. If you’d care to follow me, sir?’
Moist nearly burst out laughing. ‘Fine,’ he said. He turned to the golem. ‘Er . . . Mr Pump?’
‘Yes, Mr Lipvig?’ said the golem.
‘Are you allowed to assist me in any way, or do you just wait around until it’s time to hit me on the head?’
‘There Is No Need For Hurtful Remarks, Sir. I Am Allowed To Render Appropriate Assistance.’
‘So could you clean out the pigeon shit and let a bit of light in?’
‘Certainly, Mr Lipvig.’
‘You can?’
‘A Golem Does Not Shy Away From Vork, Mr Lipvig. I Vill Locate A Shovel.’ Mr Pump set off towards the distant counter, and the bearded Junior Postman panicked.
‘No!’ he squeaked, lurching after the golem. ‘It’s really not a good idea to touch them heaps!’
‘Floors liable to collapse, Mr Groat?’ said Moist cheerfully.
Groat looked from Moist to the golem, and back again. His mouth opened and shut as his brain sought for words. Then he sighed.
‘You’d better come down to the locker room, then. Step this way, gentlemen.’
Moist became aware of the smell of Mr Groat as he followed the old man. It wasn’t a bad smell, as such, just . . . odd. It was vaguely chemical, coupled with the eye-stinging aroma of every type of throat medicine you’ve ever swallowed, and with just a hint of old potatoes.
The locker room turned out to be down some steps into the basement where, presumably, the floors couldn’t collapse because there was nothing to collapse into. It was long and narrow. At one end was a monstrous oven which, Moist learned later, had once been part of some kind of heating system, the Post Office having been a very advanced building for its time. Now a small round stove, glowing almost cherry-red at the base, had been installed alongside it. There was a huge black kettle on it.
The air indicated the presence of socks, cheap coal and no ventilation; some battered wooden lockers were ranged along one wall, the painted names flaking off. Light got in, eventually, via grimy windows up near the ceiling.
Whatever the original purpose of the room, though, it was now the place where two people lived; two people who got along but, nevertheless, had a clear sense of mine and thine. The space was divided into two, with a narrow bed against one wall on each side. The dividing line was painted on the floor, up the walls and across the ceiling. My half, your half. So long as we remember that, the line indicated, there won’t be any more . . . trouble.
In the middle, so that it bestrode the boundary line, was a table. A couple of mugs and two tin plates were carefully arranged at either end. There was a salt pot in the middle of the table. The line, at the salt pot, turned into a little circle to encompass it in its own demilitarized zone.
One half of the narrow room contained an over-large and untidy bench, piled with jars, bottles and old papers; it looked like the work space of a chemist who made it up as he went along or until it exploded. The other had an old card table on which small boxes and rolls of black felt had been stacked with slightly worrying precision. There was also the largest magnifying glass Moist had ever seen, on a stand.