‘Bugrem,’ said the man, and broke the sausage into two democratic halves.
~blk~
William wrote a short paragraph about Patrician Visits The Bucket, and examined his notebook.
Amazing, really. He’d found no less than a dozen items for his news letter in only a day. It was astonishing what people would tell you if you asked them.
Someone had stolen one of the golden fangs of the statue of Offler the Crocodile God; he’d promised Sergeant Colon a drink for telling him that, but in any case had got some way towards payment by appending to his paragraph the sentence: The Watch are Mightily in Pursuit of the Wrongdoer, and are Confident of Apprehen,’ion at an Early Juncture.’
He was not entirely sure about this, although Sergeant Colon had looked very sincere when he said it.
The nature of truth always bothered William. He had been brought up to tell it or, more correctly, to ‘own up’ and some habits are hard to break if they’ve been beaten in hard enough. And Lord de Worde had inclined to the old proverb that, as you bend the twig, so grows the tree. William had not been a particularly flexible
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twig. Lord de Worde had not, himself, been a violent man. He’d merely employed them. Lord de Worde, as far as William could recall, had no great enthusiasm for anything that involved touching people.
Anyway, William always told himself, he was no good at making things up; anything that wasn’t the truth simply unravelled for him. Even little white lies, like ‘I shall definitely have the money by the end of the week’, always ended in trouble. That was ‘telling stories’, a sin in the de Worde compendium that was worse than lying; it was trying to make lies interesting.
So William de Worde told the truth, out of cosmic self defence. He’d found a hard truth less hard than an easy lie.
There had been rather a good fight in the Mended Drum. William was very pleased with that one: ‘Whereupon Brezock the Barbarian picked up a table and delivered a blow to Moltin the Snatcher, who in his turn seized hold of the Chandeliers and swung thereon, the while crying, “Take that, thou B*st*rd that you are!!!”, at which juncture, a ruckus commenced and 5 or 6 people were hurt.’
He took it all down to the Bucket.
Gunilla read it with interest; it seemed to take very little time for the dwarfs to set it up in type.
And it was odd, but. . .
. . . once it was in type, all the letters so neat and regular . . .
. . . it looked more real.
Boddony, who seemed to be second in command of the print room, squinted at the columns of type over Goodmountain’s shoulders.
‘Hmm,’ he said.
‘What do you think?’ said William.
‘Looks a bit . . . grey,’ said the dwarf. ‘All the type bunched up. Looks like a book,’
‘Well, that’s all right, isn’t it?’ said William. Looking like a book sounded like a good thing.
‘Maybe you want it more sort of spaced out?’ said Gunilla.
William stared at the printed page. An idea crept over him. It seemed to evolve from the page itself.
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‘How about,’ he said, ‘if we put a little title on each piece?’
He picked up a scrap of paper and doodled: 5,’6 Hurt in Tavern Brawl.
Boddony read it solemnly. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. That looks . . . suitable. .’ He passed the paper across the table.
‘What do you call this news sheet?’ he said.
‘I don’t,’ said William.
‘You’ve got to call it something,’ said Boddony. ‘What do you put at the top?’
‘Generally something like “To my Lord the . . .” ‘ William began. Boddony shook his head.
‘You can’t put that,’ he said. ‘You want something a bit more general. More snappy.’
‘How about “Ankh-Morpork Items”?’ said William. ‘Sorry, but I’m not much good at names.’
Gunilla pulled his little hod out of his apron and selected some letters from one of the cases on the table. He screwed them together, inked them, and rolled a sheet of paper over them.
William read: Ankh-Morpork times.
‘Messed that up a bit. Wasn’t paying attention,’ muttered Gunilla, reaching for the type. William stopped him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Er. Leave it as it is . . . just make it a bigger T and a smaller i.’
‘That’s it, then,’ said Gunilla. ‘All done. All right, lad? How many copies do you want?’
‘Er . . . twenty? Thirty?’
‘How about a couple of hundred?’ Gunilla nodded at the dwarfs, who set to work. ‘It’s hardly worth going to press for less.’
‘Good grief! I can’t imagine there’s enough people in the city that’d pay five dollars!’
‘All right, charge ’em half a dollar. Then it’ll be fifty dollars for us and the same for you.’
‘My word! Really?’ William stared at the beaming dwarf. ‘But I’ve still got to sell them,’ he said. ‘It’s not as though they’re cakes in a shop. It’s not like–‘
He sniffed. His eyes began to water.
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‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have another visitor. I know that smell.’
‘What smell?’ said the dwarf.
The door creaked open.
There was this to be said about the Smell of Foul Ole Ron, an odour so intense that it took on a personality of its own and fully justified the capital letter: after the initial shock the organs of smell just gave up and shut down, as if no more able to comprehend the thing than an oyster can comprehend the ocean. After some minutes in its presence, wax would trickle out of people’s ears and their hair would begin to bleach.
It had developed to such a degree that it now led a semi-independent life of its own, and often went to the theatre by itself, or read small volumes of poetry. Ron was outclassed by his Smell.
Foul Ole Ron’s hands were thrust deeply into his pockets, but from one pocket issued a length of string, or rather a great many lengths of string tied into one length. The other end was attached to a small dog of the greyish persuasion. It was possibly a terrier. It walked with a limp and also in a kind of oblique fashion, as though it was trying to insinuate its way through the world. It walked like a dog who has long ago learned that the world contains more thrown boots than meaty bones. It walked like a dog that was prepared, at any moment, to run.
It looked up at William with crusted eyes and said: ‘Woof.’
William felt that he ought to stand up for mankind.
‘Sorry about the smell,’ he said. Then he stared at the dog.
‘What’s this smell you keep on about?’ said Gunilla. The rivets on his helmet were beginning to tarnish.
‘It, er, belongs to Mr . . . er . . . Ron,’ said William, still giving the dog a suspicious look. ‘People say it’s glandular.’
He was sure he’d seen the dog before. It was always in the corner of the picture, as it were – ambling through the streets, or just sitting on a corner, watching the world go by.
‘What does he want?’ said Gunilla. ‘D’you think he wants us to print something?’
‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said William. ‘He’s a sort of beggar. Only they won’t let him in the Beggars’ Guild any more.’
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‘He isn’t saying anything.’
‘Well, usually he just stands there until people give him something to go away. Er . . . you’ve heard of things like the Welcome Wagon, where various neighbours and traders greet newcomers to an area?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, this is the dark side.’
Foul Ole Ron nodded and held out a hand, ‘ ‘s’right, Mister Push. Don’t try the blarney gobble on me, juggins, I told ’em, I ain’t slanging the gentry, bugrit. Millennium hand and shrimp. Dang.’
‘Woof.’
William glared at the dog again.
‘Growl,’ it said.
Gunilla scratched somewhere in the recesses of his beard.
‘One thing I already noticed about this here town,’ he said, ‘is that people’ll buy practically anything off a man in the street.’
He picked up a handful of the news sheets, still damp from the press.
‘Can you understand me, mister?’ he said.
‘Bugrit.’
Gunilla nudged William in the ribs. ‘Does that mean yes or no, d’you think?’
‘Probably yes.’
‘Okay. Well, see here now, if you sell these things at, oh, twenty pence each, you can keep–‘
‘Hey, you can’t sell it that cheap,’ said William.
‘Why not?’
‘Why? Because . . . because . . because, well, anyone will be able to read it, that’s why!’
‘Good, ‘cos that means anyone’ll be able to pay twenty pence,’ said Gunilla calmly. There’s lots more poor folk than rich folk and it’s easier to get money out of ’em.’ He grimaced at Foul Ole Ron. ‘This may seem a strange question,’ he said, ‘but have you got any friends?’