‘They’ll want to watch this one,’ said Throat. ‘Trust me. Have I ever lied to you?’
Bezam scratched his head. ‘Well, one night last month you sold me a sausage in a bun and you said-‘
‘I was speaking rhetorically,’ snapped Throat.
‘Yeah,’ said Detritus.
Bezam sagged. ‘Oh. Well. I dunno about rhetorically,’ he said.
‘Right,’ said Throat, grinning like a predatory pumpkin. ‘Just you open up, and you can sit back and rake in the money.’
‘Oh. Good,’ said Bezam weakly.
Throat put a friendly arm around the man’s shoulders. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘let’s talk about percentages.’
‘What’re percentages?’
‘Have a cigar,’ said Throat.
Victor walked slowly up Holy Wood’s nameless main street. There was packed sand under his fingernails.
He wasn’t sure that he had done the right thing.
Probably the man had just been some old beachcomber who’d just gone to sleep one day and hadn’t woken up, although the stained red and gold coat was unusual beachcombing wear. It was hard to tell how long he’d been dead. The dryness and salt air had been a preservative; they’d preserved him just the way he must have looked when he was alive, which was like someone who was dead.
By the look of his hut, he’d beachcombed some odd stuff.
It had occurred to Victor that someone ought to be told, but there was probably no-one in Holy Wood who would be interested. Probably only one person in the world had been interested in whether the old man lived or died, and he’d been the first to know.
Victor buried the body in the sand, landward of the driftwood hut.
He saw Borgle’s ahead of him. He’d risk breakfast there, he decided. Besides, he needed somewhere to sit down and read the book.
It wasn’t the sort of thing you expected to find on a beach,
in a driftwood hut, clutched in the hand of a dead man.
On the cover were the words The Boke of the Film.
On the first page, in the neat round hand of someone to whom writing doesn’t come easily, were the further words: This is the Chroncal of the Keeprs of the ParaMountain coppied out by me Deccan Beacuase Of the old onne it being fallin Apart.
He turned the stiff pages carefully. They seemed to be crammed with almost identical entries. They were all undated, but that wasn’t very important, since one day had been pretty much like the other.
Gott up. Went to lavatry. Made up fire, announused the Matinee Performanse. Broke fast. Colected woode. Made up fire. Foraged on the hille. Chanted the Evening Performansee. Supper. Sed the Late-Nite Performanse chant. Wnet to lavatry. Bed.
Gott up. Went to lavatry. Made up fire, sed the Matinee Performanse. Broke fast. Crullet the fisheman from Jowser Cove have left 2 fyne see bass. Clected woode. Heralded the Evewning Performanse, made up fire. Howskeepeing. Supper. Chanted the Late Night performanse. Bed. Gott up at Midnigte, went to lavaotry, checked fire, but it was not Needful of Woode.
He saw the waitress out of the tail of his eye.
‘I’d like a boiled egg,’ he said.
‘It’s stew. Fish stew.’
He looked up into Ginger’s blazing eyes.
‘I didn’t know you were a waitress,’ he said.
She made a show of dusting the salt bowl. ‘Nor did I until yesterday,’ she said. ‘Lucky for me Borgle’s regular morning girl got a chance in the new moving picture that Untied Alchemists are making, isn’t it?’ She shrugged. ‘If I’m really lucky, who knows? I might get to do the afternoon shift too.’
‘Look, I didn’t mean-‘
‘It’s stew. Take it or leave it. Three customers this morning have done both.’
‘I’ll take it. Look, you won’t believe it, but I found this book in the hands of-‘
‘I’m not allowed to dally with customers. This isn’t the best job in town, but you’re not losing it for me,’ snapped Ginger. ‘Fish stew, right?’
‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’
He flicked backwards through the pages. Before Deccan there was Tento, who also chanted three times a day and also sometimes received gifts of fish and also went to the lavatory, although either he wasn’t so assiduous about it as Deccan or hadn’t thought it always worth writing down. Before that, someone called Meggelin had been the chanter. A whole string of people had lived on the beach, and then if you went back further there was a group of them, and further still the entries had a more official feel. It was hard to tell. They seemed to be written in code, line after line of little complex pictures . . .
A bowl of primal soup was plonked down in front of him.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘What time do you get off-‘
‘Never,’ said Ginger.
‘I just wondered if you might know where-‘
‘No.’
Victor stared at the murky surface of the broth. Borgle worked on the principle that if you find it in water, it’s a fish. There was something purple in there and it had at least ten legs.
He ate it anyway. It was costing him thirty pence.
Then, with Ginger resolutely busying herself at the counter with her back to him lighthouse-fashion, so that however he tried to attract her attention her back was still facing him without her apparently moving, he went to look for another job.
Victor had never worked for anything in his life. In his experience, jobs were things that happened to other people.
Bezam Planter adjusted the tray around his wife’s neck. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Got everything?’
‘The banged grains have gone soft,’ she said. ‘And there’s no way to keep the sausages hot.’
‘It’ll be dark, love. No-one’ll notice.’ He tweaked the strap and stood back.
‘There,’ he said. ‘Now, you know what to do. Halfway through I’ll stop showing the film and put up the card that says “Wy not Try a Cool Refreshinge Drinke and Some Banged Grains?” and then you come out of the door over there and walk up the aisle.’
‘You might as well mention cool refreshing sausages as well,’ said Mrs Planter.
‘And I reckon you should stop using a torch to show people to their seats,’ said Bezam. ‘You’re starting too many fires.’
‘It’s the only way I can see in the dark,’ she said.
‘Yes, but I had to let that dwarf have his money back last night. You know how sensitive they are about their beards. Tell you what, love, I’ll give you a salamander in a cage. They’ve been on the roof since dawn,- they should be nice and ready.’
They were. The creatures lay dozing in the bottom of their cages, their bodies vibrating gently as they absorbed the light. Bezam selected six of the ripest, climbed heavily back down to the projection room, and tipped them into the showing-box. He wound Throat Dibbler’s film on to a spool, and then peered out into the darkness.
Oh, well. Might as well see if there was anyone outside.
He shuffled to the front door, yawning.
He reached up, and slid the bolt.
He reached down, and slid the other bolt.
He pulled open the doors.
‘All right, all right,’ he grumbled. ‘Let’s be having you . . .’
He woke up in the projection room, with Mrs Planter fanning him desperately with her apron.
‘What happened?’ he whispered, trying to put out of his mind the memories of trampling feet.
‘It’s a full house!’ she said. ‘And they’re still queueing up outside! They’re all down the street! It’s them disgusting posters!’
Bezam got up unsteadily but with determination.
‘Woman, shut up and get down to the kitchen and bang some more grains!’ he shouted. ‘And then come and help me repaint the signs! If they’re queueing for the fivepenny seats, they’ll queue for tenpence!’
He rolled up his sleeves and grasped the handle.
In the front row the Librarian sat with a bag of peanuts in his ,lap. After a few minutes he stopped chewing and sat with his mouth open, staring and staring and staring at the flickering images.
‘Hold your horse, sir? Ma’am?’
‘No!’
By mid-day Victor had earned tuppence. It wasn’t that people didn’t have horses that needed holding, it was just that they didn’t seem to want him to hold them.
Eventually a gnarled little man from further along the street sidled up to him, dragging four horses. Victor had been watching him for hours, in frank astonishment that anyone should give the wizened homunculus a kindly smile, let alone a horse. But he’d been doing a brisk trade, while Victor’s broad shoulders, handsome profile and honest, open smile were definitely a drawback in the horse-holding business.
‘You’re new to this, right?’ said the little man.
‘Yes,’ said Victor.
‘Ah. I could tell. Waitin’ for yer big break in the clicks, right?’ He grinned encouragingly.
‘No. I’ve had my big break, in fact,’ said Victor.
‘Why you here then?’