He turned the page. And then he turned back. And then he read on. At one point he took a ruler out of his drawer and looked at it thoughtfully.
He opened his drinks cabinet. The bottle tinkled cheerfully on the edge of the glass as he tried to pour himself a drink.
Then he stared out of the window at the Opera House on the other side of the road. A small figure was brushing the steps.
And then he said, ‘Oh, my.’
Finally he went to the door and said, ‘Could you come in here, Mr Cropper?’
His chief printer entered, clutching a sheaf of proofs. ‘We’re going to have to get Mr Cripslock to engrave page 11 again,’ he said mournfully. ‘He’s spelled “famine” with seven letters-‘
‘Read this,’ said Goatberger.
‘I was just off to lunch-‘
‘Read this.’
‘Guild agreement says-‘
‘Read this and see if you still have an appetite.’
Mr Cropper sat down with bad grace and glanced at the first page.
Then he turned to the second page.
After a while he opened the desk drawer and pulled out a ruler, which he looked at thoughtfully.
‘You’ve just read about Banana Soup Surprise?’ said Goatberger.
‘Yes!’
‘You wait till you get to Spotted Dick.’
‘Well, my old granny used to make Spotted Dick-‘
‘Not to this recipe,’ said Goatberger, with absolute certainty.
Cropper fumbled through the pages. ‘Blimey! Do you think any of this stuff works?’
‘Who cares? Go down to the Guild. right now and hire all the engravers that’re free. Preferably elderly ones.’
‘But I’ve still got the Grune, June, August and Spune predictions for next year’s Almanack to-‘
‘Forget them. Use some old ones.’
‘People’ll notice.’
‘They’ve never noticed before,’ said Mr Goatberger. ‘You know the drill. Astounding Rains of Curry in Klatch, Amazing Death of the Seriph of Ee, Plague of Wasps in Howondaland. This is a lot more important.’
He stared unseeing out of the window again.
‘Considerably more important.’
And he dreamed the dream of all those who publish books, which was to have so much gold in your pockets that you would have to employ two people just to hold your trousers up.
The huge, be-columned, gargoyle-haunted face of Ankh-Morpork’s Opera House was there, in front of Agnes Nitt.
She stopped. At least, most of Agnes stopped. There was a lot of Agnes. It took some time for outlying regions to come to rest.
Well, this was it. At last. She could go in, or she could go away. It was what they called a life choice. She’d never had one of those before.
Finally, after standing still for long enough for a pigeon to consider the perching possibilities of her huge and rather sad black floppy hat, she climbed the steps.
A man was theoretically sweeping them. What he was in fact doing was moving the dirt around with a broom, to give it a change of scenery and a chance to make new friends. He was dressed in a long coat that was slightly too small for him, and had a black beret perched incongruously on spiky black hair.
‘Excuse me,’ said Agnes.
The effect was electric. He turned around, tangled one foot with the other, and collapsed on to his broom.
Agnes’s hand flew to her mouth, and then she reached down.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’
The hand had that clammy feel that makes a holder think longingly of soap. He pulled it away quickly, pushed his greasy hair out of his eyes and gave her a terrified smile; he had what Nanny Ogg called an underdone face, its features rubbery and pale.
‘No trouble miss!’
‘Are you all right?’
He scrambled up, got the broom somehow tangled between his knees, and sat down again sharply.
‘Er. . . shall I hold the broom?’ said Agnes helpfully.
She pulled it out of the tangle. He got up again, after a couple of false starts.
‘Do you work for the Opera House?’ said Agnes.
‘Yes miss!’
‘Er, can you tell me where I have to go for the auditions?’
He looked around wildly. ‘Stage-door!’ he said. ‘I’ll show you!’ The words came out in a rush, as if he had to line them up and fire them all in one go before they had time to wander off.
He snatched the broom out of her hands and set off down the steps and towards the corner of the building. He had a unique stride: it looked as though his body were being dragged forward and his legs had to flail around underneath it, landing wherever they could find room. It wasn’t so much a walk as a collapse, indefinitely postponed.
His erratic footsteps led towards a door in the side wall. Agnes followed them in.
just inside was a sort of shed, with one open wall and a counter positioned so that someone standing there could watch the door. The person behind it must have been a human being because walruses don’t wear coats. The strange man had disappeared somewhere in the gloom beyond.
Agnes looked around desperately.
‘Yes, miss?’ said the walrus man. It really was an impressive moustache, which had sapped all the growth from the rest of its owner.
‘Er. . . I’m here for the. . . the auditions,’ said Agnes. ‘I saw a notice that said you were auditioning-‘
She gave a helpless little smile. The doorkeeper’s face proclaimed that it had seen and been unimpressed by more desperate smiles than even Agnes could have eaten hot dinners. He produced a clipboard and a stub of pencil.
‘You got to sign here,’ he said.
‘Who was that. . .person who came in with me?’
The moustache moved, suggesting a smile was buried somewhere below. ‘Everyone knows our Walter Plinge.’
This seemed to be all the information that was likely to be imparted.
Agnes gripped the pencil.
The most important question was: what should she call herself? Her name had many sterling qualities, no doubt, but it didn’t exactly roll off the tongue. It snapped off the palate and clicked between the teeth, but it didn’t roll off the tongue.
The trouble was, she couldn’t think of one with great rotational capabilities.
Catherine, possibly.
Or. . . Perdita. She could go back to trying Perdita. She’d been embarrassed out of using that name in Lancre. It was a mysterious name, hinting of darkness and intrigue and, incidentally, of someone who was quite thin. She’d even given herself a middle initial-X-which stood for ‘someone who has a cool and exciting middle initial’.
It hadn’t worked. Lancre people were depressingly resistant to cool. She had just been known as ‘that Agnes who calls herself Perditax’.
She’d never dared tell anyone that she’d like her full name to be Perdita X Dream. They just wouldn’t understand. They’d say things like: if you think that’s the right name for you, why have you still got two shelves full of soft toys?
Well, here she could start afresh. She was good. She knew she was good.
Probably no hope for the Dream, though.
She was probably stuck with the Nitt.
Nanny Ogg usually went to bed early. After all, she was an old lady. Sometimes she went to bed as early as 6 a. m.
Her breath puffed in the air as she walked through the woods. Her boots crunched on the leaves. The wind had died away, leaving the sky wide and clear and open for the first frost of the season, a petalnipping, fruit-withering little scorcher that showed you why they called Nature a mother. . .
A third witch.
Three witches could sort of. . . spread the load.
Maiden, mother and. . . crone. There.
The trouble was that Granny Weatherwax combined all three in one. She was a maiden, as far as Nanny knew, and she was at least in the right age-bracket for a crone; and, as for the third, well. . . cross Granny Weatherwax on a bad day and you’d be like a blossom in the frost.
There was bound to be a candidate for the vacancy, though. There were several young girls in Lancre who were just about the right age.
Trouble was, the young men of Lancre knew it too. Nanny wandered the summer hayfields regularly, and had a sharp if compassionate eye and damn’ good over-the-horizon hearing. Violet Frottidge was walking out with young Deviousness Carter, or at least doing something within ninety degrees of walking out. Bonnie Quarney had been gathering nuts in May with William Simple, and it was only because she’d thought ahead and taken a little advice from Nanny that she wouldn’t be bearing fruit in February. And pretty soon now young Mildred Tinker’s mother would have a quiet word with Mildred Tinker’s father, and he’d have a word with his friend Thatcher and he’d have a word with his son Hob, and then there’d be a wedding, all done in a properly civilized way except for maybe a black eye or two.[1] No doubt about it, thought Nanny with a misty-eyed smile: innocence, in a hot Lancre summer, was that state in which innocence is lost.