Unseen Academicals

beyond doubt, but possibly beyond belief. They were apparently struggling for possession of a ball; one of them was lying on the ground, and looked as if he was in some pain. The translation of the name of the urn was, said the caption, THE TACKLE .
    According to the accompanying story, someone at the Royal Art Museum had found the urn in an old storeroom, and it contained scrolls which, it said here, had the original rules of foot-the-ball laid down in the early years of the century of the Summer Weevil, a thousand years ago, when the game was played in honour of the goddess Pedestriana…
    Glenda skimmed through the rest of it, because there was a lot of rest to skim. An artist’s impression of the aforesaid goddess adorned page three. She was, of course, beautiful. You seldom saw a goddess portrayed as ugly. This probably had something to do with their ability to strike people down instantly. In Pedestriana’s case, she would probably have gone for the feet.
    Glenda put the paper down, seething with anger, and as a cook she knew how to seethe. This wasn’t football–except that the Guild of Historians said that it was, and could prove it not only with old parchments but also with an urn, and she could see that you were on the wrong end of an argument if you were up against an urn.
    But it was too neat, wasn’t it? Except…why? His lordship didn’t like football, but here was an article saying that this game was very old and had its own goddess, and if there were two things this city liked, it was tradition and goddesses, especially if the goddesses were a bit short on the chiffon above the waist. Did his lordship let them put anything in the paper? What was going on? ‘I’ve got business to attend to,’ she said sternly. ‘It’s good that you bought a decent paper, but you don’t want to read this kind of stuff.’
    ‘I didn’t. Who’s interested in that? I got it for the advert. Look.’
    Glenda had never bothered much about the adverts in the paper, because they were put there by people who were after your money. But there it was, right there. Madame Sharn of Bonk gives you…micromail.
    ‘You said we could go,’ said Juliet pointedly.
    ‘Yes, well, that was before—’
    ‘You said we could go.’
    ‘Yes. But, well, has anyone from the Sisters ever gone to a fashion show? It’s not our kind of thing, is it?’
    ‘Doesn’t say that in the paper. Says admission free. You said we could go!’
    Two o’clock, thought Glenda. Suppose I could manage it…‘All right, meet at work at half past one, do you hear? Not a minute later! I’ve got things to do.’
    The University Council meets every day at half past eleven, she thought to herself. Oh, to be a fly on that wall. She grinned…

    Trev was sitting in the battered old chair that served as his office in the vats. Work was proceeding at its usual reliable snail’s pace.
    ‘Ah, I see you are in early, Mister Trev,’ said Nutt. ‘I am sorry not to have been here. I had to go and deal with an emergency candelabra upset.’ He leaned closer. ‘I have done what you asked, Mister Trev.’
    Trev snapped out of his daydream of Juliet and said, ‘Huh?’
    ‘You asked me to write…to improve your poem for Miss Juliet.’
    ‘You’ve done it?’
    ‘Perhaps you would like to have a look, Mister Trev?’ He handed the paper to Trev and stood nervously by the chair as a pupil stands by the teacher.
    After a very short while Trev’s forehead wrinkled. ‘What’s ee-er?’
    ‘That’s “e’er”, sir, as in “where e’er she walks”.’
    ‘You mean, like, she walks on air?’ said Trev.
    ‘No, Mister Trev. I should just put it down to poetry if I were you.’
    Trev struggled on. He had never had much to do with poetry, except the sort that started ‘There was a young lady of Quirm’, but this looked like the real stuff. The page seemed to be crowded and yet full of space as well. Also, the writing was extremely curly and that was a sure sign, wasn’t it? You didn’t get that sort of thing from the lady of Quirm. ‘This is great stuff, Mister Nutt. This is really great stuff. This is poetry, but what really is it sayin’?’
    Nutt cleared his throat. ‘Well, sir, the essence of poetry of this nature is to create a mood that will make the recipient, that is to say, sir, the young lady who you are going to send it to, feel very kindly disposed to the author of the poem, which would be you, sir, in this case. According to Ladyship,