by Adam Roberts
‘Derek,’ called the gatekeeper. ‘Here’s your glee.’
Derek stepped slowly down the ladder and shuffled over the floor towards them. His eyes, in contrast to the gatekeeper’s, were large and enormously protuberant, like two white boils with blue heads. He wiped his nose in a distinctive manner, by rubbing the palm of his hand directly upwards over the nostrils, moving it from chin to crown in one smooth movement, something like a salute. Years of this practice had bent his nose snub, like a fat tick marking approval of his face.
‘A bunch of dwarfs and an old geezer?’ he said, with a thinly veiled incredulity.
‘I’m not a dwarf,’ said Bingo.
‘This is not what the agency promised,’ said Derek. It seemed as if his eyes could swivel through a surprisingly wide range of movements: they looked at the wall, the ceiling, the other wall and back at the party again. ‘A load of dwarfs? What kind of glee is that?’
‘The best kind,’ said Mori firmly.
‘Dancing girls,’ said Derek, ‘is what they promised. Dancing girls and a prestidigitator. You lot aren’t girls.’
‘He is,’ said Mori, pointing to Bingo. ‘And he,’ indicating Gandef, ‘is the greatest expert at pressing digits in the world today.’
Derek looked unconvinced.
‘No, really,’ said Mori. ‘Surely you’ve heard the name? Gandef the digit man?’
‘Never heard of him,’ said Derek. ‘And never heard of you lot neither.’
‘Whhsht,’ added the gatekeeper.
‘Now, don’t have a go,’ said Derek, turning on his fellow.
‘I didn’t say anything,’ said the gatekeeper.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Derek in a hurt tone. ‘But I tell you, I’ll organise this glee proper, if it’s the last thing I do.’
‘And it will be the last thing you do,’ observed the gatekeeper, ‘if Al the Ale finds out you’ve messed it up.’
‘Messed up what?’ Derek asked, casting his eyes about. ‘Nothing’s messed up. Here’s the glee, just like I was deputised to organise. Come on lads, and, uh, miss.’ He wiped his hand over his nose again. ‘Through here.’
‘We were wondering,’ said Mori, as he trotted beside Derek. ‘Are refreshments included in the, eh, perquisites? Of the, the, the glee, you see?’
‘Refreshments,’ said Derek. ‘Beer.’
‘Ah, excellent. And – food?’
‘Beer,’ said Derek, ‘is food. How do you think I got this belly?’ His perfectly spherical eyes swivelled down to look at his perfectly spherical stomach.
‘Excellent,’ said Mori. ‘Excellent. So there isn’t any, I don’t know, chicken? Bread? Potatoes?’
‘Beer,’ said Derek.
‘So,’ concluded Mori. ‘To sum up. Just beer, then?’
‘Beer,’ said Derek. ‘Here you go.’
They had arrived in a long hall. Great stacks of barrels were stacked along the walls. Other stacks of barrels were visible, neatly stacked, just behind these stacks.
‘I’ll go get Al the Ale,’ said Derek. ‘And the rest of the lads. You do your turns here,’ he added, indicating a vague area of floor. ‘We’ll be over there.’ He nodded at two long, benched wooden tables. On each table stood a line of tapped barrels. Empty jugs and earthenware beakers were littered everywhere.
Mori hurried to one of the barrels and knocked it with his fist. Then he tried another, and another. ‘Beer,’ he said. ‘They’re all filled with beer. There’s not one filled with soup.’
The dwarfs were running around the hall, examining the tables, rapping barrels with their knuckles. ‘Isn’t there any solid food?’ Gofur asked. ‘Not, see, that I mind a quick beer, but I could do a chicken stew, la.’
‘Or a beef stew,’ said On.
‘Or a vegetable stew, even,’ said Gofur.
‘Or jutht,’ said Thorri, ‘a vegetable. Even a thmall one.’
But there wasn’t so much as a crumb. It began to dawn on the party that the employees of this brewery ate and drank nothing but beer.4
‘I’m ravenous,’ complained Bingo. ‘And what is a glee? What are we supposed to do?’
‘Play along with it,’ said Mori. ‘Follow my lead. Is that sawdust on the floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Only I wondered if it was oats or something.’ He sighed.
‘Is there any food under that trapdoor?’ asked Bingo.
Everybody looked at the trapdoor.
Mori went towards it and pulled on its metal ring, opening it a few inches and peering through the gap. ‘It leads down into the river,’ he reported.
‘There might be some fish—’ Gofur started saying.
The noise of a large group of middle-aged men could be heard approaching from the far end of the hall. Mori dropped the trapdoor, and the dwarfs hastily arranged themselves into a line as a motley crowd of brewery workers entered. Bingo recognised Derek, and the sniffling gatekeeper. A dozen, or more, men in similar states of physical decrepitude surrounded them: bellies on stilts, ragged purple jowls, high lumpy foreheads and strands of hair plastered over their flaky scalps.
At the front was a larger man. Bingo assumed that this was Al the Ale. Where the others had pot bellies, his was more of a cauldron belly. Where the rest had purple faces and bulbous noses, his face was a deep crimson, overlaid with scarlet broken veins inset into the skin as if in parody of crazy paving. His nose was so enormous, so misshapen and swollen, that it looked as though he had pressed his face against a muslin sack containing several mouldy potatoes, and come away with it as a permanent piece of face furniture. His nose looked like one of Bingo’s feet.
‘Right,’ he said, his voice gravelly to the point of boulders. ‘Where’s this glee that Derek’s organised?’
‘Here they are, boss,’ said Derek, scuttling alongside him. ‘First-class glee, as promised.’
Al stopped and examined the party. ‘Dwarfs?’ he said. ‘And some old geezer?’
‘That one’s a woman,’ said Derek, pointing at Bingo.
Al raked his stare up and down the line of them.
‘Right,’ he said suspiciously. ‘If you’ve organised it, Derek, then I’ll take your word for it. But it’d better be a bloody good glee, or you’re in trouble. Hop knows we need some bloody glee around here.’ He turned to his men. ‘You lot!’ The brewers shuffled and looked shifty. ‘Get yerselves around that table there. Get yourself comfortable, and get drinking.’
A groan rose from the brewers.
‘What?’ bellowed Al. ‘What? Groaning, is it? Get yourself good and proper drunk – I’m not paying you to sit around sober. How can we have a glee if you’re sober? Eh? How can we? Larry, I’m looking at you.’
‘We can’t, boss, you’re right, boss,’ said Larry in a sulky voice. ‘I was drunk at breakfast, boss,’ he added hopefully.
‘Breakfast?’ boomed Al the Ale. ‘What you talking about? Boasting, is it? Twice as much beer for Larry, everybody, you hear? You’d do best to button your lip, Larry, and concentrate on the drink in hand. Nobody likes a smart-ale,5 laddo. Breakfast is breakfast, it’s in the past and long gone. This, here, is the glee. Derek’s organised it, and glee we’ll have or it’ll be the worse for you. You’ll have fun, or I’ll bloody well flay each and every one of you.’
Miserably, the brewers sat at the two tables, filled their beakers with beer and started drinking. Foam dribbled down their chins. Some of them gasped after each draught, a sound that resembled the lip-smacking sound a beeraholic makes on finishing his drink, only more despairing.
‘Come on, you lot,’ shouted Al at the dwarfs, as he manoeuvred his prodigious stomach in between table and bench and reached for a jug of beer himself. ‘Let’s have it then.’
The dwarfs looked at Mori. Mori looked at Bingo. Bingo tried to look at Gandef, but the wizard had fallen asleep against a barrel behind them.
‘Glee!’ shouted Al, banging his fist on the table. It was a fist extremely well suited to th
e business of banging on tables. A meaty and solid fist. ‘What are you waiting for?’
Mori stepped forward. ‘Good, eh, afternoon, good sirs. We are the glee – and I was just wondering – it’s a question, see, I ask at all the functions, wherever we’re booked in, and the question is: what kind of glee would you like? We have so many varieties of glee on offer, you understand.’
Al the Ale stared at Mori. ‘What do you mean?’ he said, with force. ‘What on earth are you talking about? Just do the bloody glee.’
‘You’re the boss, you’re the paying customer,’ said Mori hurriedly. ‘In that case, allow me to introduce the champion glee-er, the most gleeful boyo in the history of glee … Binglee Grabbings.’ He stepped back into line, and Gofur (standing next to the soddit) gave Bingo a shove.
Bingo stumbled forward. All the brewers were eyeing him, some of them over the rims of their tankards.
‘Right,’ said the soddit. ‘Some glee. Here goes. A justice of the peace,’ he said, ratcheting his voice into a more comical tone by pulling his lips tighter and talking more nasally, ‘did ask an old man how old he was, and the old man did reply, “My Lord I am eight and fourscore,” to which the justice replied, “Why not fourscore and eight? ’Tis more the customary expression,” to which the old man replied, “Because, forsooth, I was eight before I was fourscore.”’
He opened his mouth in mock surprise, widened his eyes, threw his arms wide and put his right foot forward.
There was no sound in the hall, except the mournful slurp of somebody drinking beer.
‘What,’ said Al, his brows contracting like an approaching thunderstorm, ‘the bloody hell—’
‘What’s the difference between the sea and vinegar? One’s,’ Bingo gabbled, ‘a beautiful ocean for ships and the other’s a beautiful lotion for chips, ta-daa.’
‘Songs!’ roared Al the Ale. ‘Songs, Not Jokes, You Twits!’ When he yelled in this manner, the words he spoke were unmistakably capitalised.
‘Songs?’ asked Bingo.
‘Of course songs! What kind of glee are you anyway?’
‘Oh songs,’ said Mori. ‘Songs! Of course. Of course songs. You want a singing glee. Of course you do.’
‘What other kind of bleeding glee is there?’
At the far end of the table, one of the brewers belched. He belched again. When he belched a third and fourth time, Bingo realised that he was, in fact, laughing. ‘Fourscore and eight!’ he said, chuckling lugubriously. ‘Eight and fourscore!’
‘Shut it, you,’ snarled Al. He turned back to the dwarfs. ‘Now look, you lot—’
‘Certainly we have songs,’ said Mori, stepping forward and elbowing Bingo back. ‘A song – why not?’ He cleared his throat, and began warbling in a strained falsetto.
Buttercups and daisies,
Oh, the pretty flowers;
Coming ere the springtime,
To tell of sunny hours.
The something-something-something
And something in the trees, um,
Something of the trees, shadow of the trees,
Or – hang-on.
Hang-on.
The dappling, I think it is, from the trees,
And all the summer singing
And sighing in the breeze.
‘That should be,’ Mori clarified, ‘and all the springtime singing, of course. Not summer, see. That was a slip of the tongue.’
Al the Ale was staring at the dwarf open-mouthed.
‘I know another,’ said Mori hopefully.
‘No!’ howled Al. ‘No! No! No! What kind of miserable, twittering, bleeding song is that?’
‘Now,’ said Mori in a warning tone, ‘there’s no need to get personal, boyo.’
‘A drinking song. A song we can sway our tankards to – you morons, berks, fools. You idiots! You teetotallers! What – who – Derek!’ This last word was expressed with such volume and such vehemence that even Bingo shut his eyes and screwed up his face. ‘Derek!’ screamed Al, banging the table repeatedly, making those cups and tankards not in brewers’ hands bounce up and down in time to his blows.6 ‘This is the last drinking straw, Derek. You’ve had your last drink in the last-chance saloon. You’ve gone too far this time.’
‘Boss!’ squeaked Derek.
Al the Ale was trying to haul himself up and out of his seat, but his belly seemed to have wedged itself beneath the tabletop. ‘You stick where you are, Derek. I’ll wring your neck in a minute. Meanwhile, you—’ He gestured angrily at the dwarfs. ‘I’ll wring more than your necks. I’ll wring your heads – one by one.’
He stood up with a loud pop, his belly swooping up and slapping down on the tabletop.
‘Each and every one of you,’ he bellowed, pointing a fat finger at each of the dwarfs in turn. ‘You’re done for. That’s it. Trying to pass yourself off as a glee? Lads – take them and drown each of them in a barrel of beer. Starting,’ he added, rotating his pointing arm so that it indicated Bingo, ‘with her.’
‘Now wait just a moment, boyo,’ said Mori.
But Derek, eager to ingratiate himself with his angry employer, was already halfway across the floor to the soddit. Several other brewers were behind him. The dwarfs, glancing at one another with wild surprise, their hands on their axe shafts, were grabbed by a second cohort of brewers. In a moment the whole party was disabled.
Bingo, squealing and kicking his legs, was carried over to a barrel and held aloft. ‘Wait!’ he gasped. ‘Stop a minute! I know a drinking song! I do!’ But it was too late. The lid was off the barrel, and the beer inside, slopping at the very topmost lip, promised a beery death. The soddit was thrust down. Ale spilled over the edge of the barrel and foamed down the side, and in a trice the lid was being nailed back down. Pitiful thumps came from inside, and the barrel rocked a little on its base. Then it went very quiet.
The mass of brewers turned, as one, to deal with the dwarfs.
‘Really, boys,’ said Mori, ‘you don’t have to do this—’
‘Actually,’ said the brewer with his arm around Mori’s neck (or thereabouts), speaking directly into the dwarf’s ear, ‘to tell you the truth, it makes a nice change, drowning people. Normally we just have to drink all day. At least, if we’re drowning you lot then we’re not drinking.’
‘Stop!’ said Mori. ‘Wait! I’ve an idea.’
But a second barrel was being prepared, its top levered off. Mori was hoisted up and held over the barrel.
‘Stop,’ he whimpered.
‘Stop,’ said somebody else. It was Al the Ale.
The brewers all turned. Al was standing next to the barrel in which Bingo had been drowned. ‘There’s something fishy about this,’ he said. ‘Put that dwarf down a mo. Listen to this.’ He reached out with a knuckle and rapped the side of the barrel.
It returned an empty noise.
‘Get the lid off this,’ Al commanded.
When the nails were pincer-squeezed out and the lid removed, Bingo was discovered sitting in the bottom of a dry barrel. His clothes were not even moist. The soddit smiled.
‘Lord Hop above,’ said Al. ‘Malt things bright and beautiful. Blimey.’ He peered in again. ‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he growled, ‘that you drank all that beer?’
‘Ah,’ said Bingo, standing up. His forehead appeared over the lip of the barrel. ‘Yes, that’s it. That’s what I did. Ye-ee-es. Drank it all, that’s right. Rather than drown, you see. Besides I was thirsty.’
Al put his head back and laughed. It was a scary sound. He laughed and laughed. ‘Now,’ he said, when he had his diaphragm under control again, ‘that’s drinking!’ He reached in and lifted Bingo out, hauling him over to the table and pouring him a beaker of beer. ‘I have to work with these ninnies, these teetotal beer-avoiders. This dwarf girl could drink any of you under the table!’ He laughed again.
‘Really,’ said Bingo, in a small and slightly nervous voice. ‘It was nothing.’
‘Nonsense!’ bellowed the brewer. Lads, rele
ase those dwarfs. Have them round this table. Something to celebrate at last. Beer!’ he called. ‘Beer!’
They drank for hours and hours. They sang many beer songs, amongst which were ‘Be-ee-ee-e-eer Is Love?’, ‘Hit Me Baby, One More Tun’, ‘Shine On You Crazy Double Diamond Works Wonders’ and ‘Beer! Beer! Beer!’ At one point in the proceedings Mori grabbed Bingo’s arm and hissed into his ear, ‘I thought you said no more use of the you-know-what?’ and Bingo hissed back, ‘It was a life-or-death situation, a risk worth taking’, before they were yanked apart by over-affectionate brewers and made to drink more beer. They drank a light wheat beer. Then they drank a beer that tasted like a large jar of Marmite diluted with half a cup of dirty dishwater. Then they drank a beer with a higher alcohol content than whisky.
In a very short time they were drunk.
Despite the fact that only an hour earlier the brewers had tried to drown him, Bingo was now moved to hug these large-bellied men, and tell them the story of his travels in particular detail. The brewers might have become suspicious at how quickly the little soddit became inebriated if they didn’t think that he had already downed an entire barrel of beer. When they congratulated him, he grinned stupidly and patted his waistcoat pocket.
In fact, early on in the binge, he thought of a plan: he would wait until the brewers were dead drunk; then he would use the Thing® to sober himself and his comrades up (telling himself, I’ll use it one more time, and that’ll be the end of it – no more after this). Then he and the dwarfs and the wizard could creep away. It seemed, after two jugs of beer, a good plan. After ten jugs of beer it seemed the most brilliant plan in the world, a plan of such cunning and genius that only a super-hobbld, a hobbld of all hobblds, could have come up with it. At the same time, he could not remember what the plan was. He could barely remember what his own name was. Nor did he care. In fact his recklessness was dangerous.
‘Lemme lemme show you a liddle something,’ he told one of the brewers as they leaned together on the bench. ‘Liddle-liddle-something.’ He brought out the Thing®.