The wizards ducked. Ridcully managed to stop himself.
‘Oh, darn,’ he said miserably. The swearwords settled amiably on his hat.
‘They like you,’ said the Dean.
‘You’re their daddy,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
Ridcully scowled.‘You b-boys can stop being silly at your Archchancellor’s expense and da-jolly well find out what’s going on,’ he said.
The wizards looked expectantly at the air. Nothing appeared.
‘You’re doing fine,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.‘Keep it up.’
‘Darn darn darn,’ said the Archchancellor.‘Sugar sugar sugar. Pooty pootity poot.’ He shook his head.
‘It’s no good, it doesn’t relieve my feelings one bit.’
‘It’s cleared the air, at any rate,’ said the Bursar.
They noticed his presence for the first time.
They looked at the remains of the trolley.
‘Things zooming around,’ said Ridcully.‘Things coming alive.’
They looked up at a suddenly familiar squeaking noise. Two more wheeled baskets rattled across the square outside the gates. One was full of fruit. The other was half full of fruit and half full of small screaming child.
The wizards watched open-mouthed. A stream of people were galloping after the trolleys. Slightly in the lead, elbows scything through the air, a desperate and determined woman pounded past the University gates.
The Archchancellor grabbed a heavy-set man who was lumbering along gamely at the back of the crowd.
‘What happened?’
‘I was just loading some peaches into that basket thing when it upped and ran away on me!’
‘What about the child?’
‘Search me. This woman had one of the baskets and she bought some peaches off of me an’ then -‘
They all turned. A basket rattled out of the mouth of an alleyway, saw them, turned smartly and shot off across the square.
‘But why?’ said Ridcully.
‘They’re so handy to put things in, right?’ said the man.‘I got to get them peaches. You know how they bruise.’
‘And they’re all going in the same direction,’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.‘Anyone else notice that?’
‘After them!’ screamed the Dean. The other wizards, too bewildered to argue, lumbered after him.
‘No -‘ Ridcully began, and realised that it was hopeless. And he was losing the initiative. He carefully formulated the most genteel battle cry in the history of bowdlerism.
‘Darn them to Heck!’ he yelled, and ran after the Dean.
Bill Door worked through the long heavy afternoon. at the head of a trail of binders and stackers.
Until there was a shout, and the men ran towards the hedge.
?lago? Peedbury’s big field was right on the other side. His
farmhands were wheeling the Combination Harvester through the gate.
Bill joined the others leaning over the hedge. The distant figure of Simnel could be seen, giving instructions. A frightened horse was backed into the shafts. The blacksmith climbed into the little metal seat in the middle of the machinery and took up the reins.
The horse walked forward. The sparge arms unfolded.
The canvas sheets started to revolve, and probably the riffling screw was turning, but that didn’t matter because something somewhere went ‘clonk’ and everything stopped.
From the crowd at the hedge there were shouts of ‘Get out and milk it!’, ‘We had one but the end fell off!’, ‘Tuppence more and up goes the donkey!’ and other time-honoured witticisms.
Simnel got down, held a whispered conversation with Peedbury and his men, and then disappeared into the machinery for a moment.
‘It’ll never fly!’
‘Veal will be cheap tomorrow!’
This time the Combination Harvester got several feet before one of the rotating sheets split and folded up.
By now some of the older men at the hedge were doubled up with laughter.
‘Any old iron, sixpence a load!’
‘Fetch the other one, this one’s broke!’
Simnel got down again. Distant catcalls drifted towards him as he untied the sheet and replaced it with a new one; he ignored them.
Without moving his gaze from the scene in the opposite field, Bill Door pulled a sharpening stone out of his pocket and began to hone his scythe, slowly and deliberately.
Apart from the distant clink of the blacksmith’s tools, the schip-schip of stone on metal was the only sound in the heavy air.
Simnel climbed back into the Harvester and nodded to the man leading the horse.
‘Here we go again!’
‘Any more for the Skylark?’
‘Put a sock in it …’
The cries trailed off.
Half a dozen pairs of eyes followed the Combination Harvester up the field, stared while it was turned around on the headland, watched it come back again.
It clicked past, reciprocating and oscillating.
At the bottom of the field it turned around neatly.
It whirred by again.
After a while one of the watchers said, gloomily, ‘It’ll never catch on, you mark my words.’
‘Right enough. Who’s going to want a gadget like that?’ said another.
‘Sure and it’s only like a big clock. Can’t do anything more than go up and down a field -‘
‘- very fast -‘
‘- cutting the corn like that and stripping the grain off -‘
‘lt’s done three rows already.’
‘Bugger me!’
‘You can’t hardly see the bits move! What do you think of that, Bill? Bill?’
They looked around.
He was halfway up his second row, but accelerating.
Miss Flitworth opened the door a fraction.
‘Yes?’ she said, suspiciously.
‘It’s Bill Door, Miss FIitworth. We’ve brought him home.’
She opened the door wider.
‘What happened to him?’
The two men shuffled in awkwardly, trying to support a figure a foot taller than they were. It raised its head and squinted muzzily at Miss Flitworth.
??? Duke Bottomley.
‘He’s a devil for working,’ said Willi~ ???
‘Don’t know what come over him,’ said’m Spigot. ‘You’re getting your money’s worth out of him all right, Miss Flitworth.’
‘It’ll be the first time, then, in these parts,’ she said sourly.
‘Up and down the field like a madman, trying to better ?that? contraption of Ned Simnel’s. Took four of us to do the ~inding. He nearly beat it, too.’
‘Put him down on the sofa.’
‘We tole him he was doing too much in all that sun -‘
Duke craned his neck to see around the kitchen, just in case jewels and treasure were hanging out of the dresser drawers.
Miss FIitworth eclipsed his view.
‘I’m sure you did. Thank you. Now I expect you’ll be wanting to be off home.’
‘lf there’s anything we can do -‘
‘I know where you live. And you ain’t paid no rent there for five years, too. Goodbye. Mr Spigot.’
She ushered them to the door and shut it in their faces, then she turned around.
‘What the hell have you been doing, Mr So-Called Bill ?
I AM TIRED AND IT WON’T STOP.
Bill Door clutched at his skull.
ALSO SPIGOT GAVE ME A HUMOROUS APPLE JUICE FERMENTED DRINK BECAUSE OF THE HEAT AND NOW I FEEL ILL.
‘I ain’t surprised. He makes it up in the woods. Apples isn’t the half of it.’
I HAVE NEVER FELT ILL BEFORE. OR TIRED.
‘lt’s all part of being alive.’
AND HOW DO HUMANS STAND IT?
‘Well, fermented apple juice can help.’
Bill Door sat staring gloomily at the floor.
BUT WE FINISHED THE FIELD, he said, with a hint of triumph. ALL STACKED IN STOOKS, OR POSSIBLY THE OTHER-WAY AROUND.
He clutched at his skull again.
AARCH.
Miss Flitworth disappeared into the scullery. There was the creaking of a pump. She returned with a damp flannel and a glass of water.
THERE’S A NEWT IN IT!
‘Shows it’s fresh,’ said Miss Flitworth,* fishing the amphibian out and releasing it on the flagstones, where it scuttled away into a crack.
Bill Door tried to stand up.
NOW I ALMOST KNOW WHY SOME PEOPLE WISH TO DIE. he said. I HAD HEARD OF PAIN AND MISERY BUT I HAD NOT HITHERTO FULLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT THEY MEANT.
Miss Flitworth peered through the dusty window. The clouds that had been piling up all afternoon towered over the hills, grey with a menacing hint of yellow. The heat pressed down like a vice.
‘There’s a big storm coming.’
WILL IT SPOIL MY HARVEST?
‘No. It’ll dry out after.’
HOW IS THE CHILD?
Bill Door unfolded his palm. Miss Flitworth raised her eyebrows. The golden glass was there, the top bulb almost empty. But it simmered in and out of vision.
‘How come you’ve got it? It’s upstairs! She was holding it like,’ – she floundered – ‘like someone holds something very tightly.’
SHE STILL IS. BUT IT IS ALSO HERE. OR ANYWHERE. IT IS ONLY A METAPHOR. AFTER ALL.
‘What she’s holding looks real enough.’
JUST BECAUSE SOMETHING IS A METAPHOR DOESN’T MEAN IT CAN’T BE REAL.
Miss Flitworth was aware of a faint echo in the voice, as though the words were being spoken by two people almost, but not quite, in sync.
‘How long have you got?’
A MATTER OF HOURS.
‘And the scythe?’
I GAVE THE BLACKSMITH STRICT INSTRUCTIONS.