A/N are you still there? Okay here's the next of the ladies and if you thought Rosie Palmwas scary you ain't seen nothing yet lol
Chapter 2: Mrs Manger's Story
There were no flies on Agnes Manger. If they tried to come anywhere near her they were overcome by the thick smell of bleach that wafted around her in a permanently steaming cloud. It was as though she took her working atmosphere with her wherever she went. You could always tell when Mrs Manger was going to call because everyone put on their cleanest linen and opened all the windows.
Her face was permanently red and she had a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead even in the deep of winter when even the Ankh had frozen over. Beneath her shining brow were a pair of sharp little eyes that could spot a four week old tea stain you'd tried to wash off with a damp cloth at forty paces.
For nearly forty years she had been the chief washer woman at the School for Assassins1. It had been something of an initiation ceremony enforced on the younger boys that they had to take their first week's washing to her personally after having it thrown in the Ankh by some enterprising seventh year. If they survived the beating from one of the paddles used to stir the boiling tubs of dirty laundry they were left alone for the rest of first year as the course presented enough of it's own difficulties that bullying was really rather tame by comparison. She had even beaten a young Lord Downey for using a pillow case to carry the severed head of a stray dog; he hadn't been able to walk properly for a month. This had amused a young Havelock Vetinari no end; although he was apt to keep out of her way himself as much as the next boy.
When Vetinari became Patrician Mrs Manger became head of the Guild of Washerwomen. She held office at a small, bare and damply clean Guild headquarters in Nonesuch Street. She gave up her job with the Assassins and opened her own little wash house near the office. There she presided over her fellow glowing ladies at twice monthly Guild meetings, the minutes of which made riveting reading if you were interested in the newest design of washboards and how to get coffee marks out of thick cotton table cloths. This went on for a number of months until one day during what several people considered to be the coldest winter in living memory2.
Mrs Manger had been working away, stirring one of the Boil Wash (with extra strong bleach) tubs and her face had gone a shade of fuchsia which is never fetching on heavy set women in their sixties. When she was done she lifted the still steaming linen out of the kettle with the stirring paddle and dumped it in a cold bath to wash off the last of the bleach. The air above the bath sizzled as hot met cold and Mrs Manger sat down to wait.
As she did so one of the young girls she employed came in with a wicker basket of washing that had been drying on the green outside and was ready to be picked up by its owner. She was pink in the face and clearly quite cross.
"What's the matter with your face?" asked Mrs Manger from her snug little corner between the tubs.
"It's this cold Missus," replied the girl. "The washing's freezing on the line and it's a pain the bum trying to break it off. Susie said she even chipped one of the corners off the bath towels for the palace yesterday!"
"Don't be so soft girl," the old woman told her. "And get that basket out front ready for collection."
"Yes Missus."
The front door chimed and the girl headed out front. However no sooner had she disappeared than she was back, looking distinctly paler.
"What is it now girl?" asked Mrs Manger, getting up to remove the washing she had been doing from the cold bath.
"Some… someone to see you Missus," the girl muttered.
"Mrs Manger?" enquired a cool voice from the doorway.
Mrs Manger handed the paddle to the quivering girl.
"See that's lot's hung out will you," she told her before sauntering out to the counter.
On the other side of the shop, dressed in robes of sable wool to keep out the cold and long black scarf was the Patrician. Standing slightly behind him was the figure of Lupine Wonse, his lordship's clerk. The little man was holding something under his cloak and snickering slightly. Mrs Manger raised an eyebrow at him before turning to the Patrician.
"And what can I do for you today sir?" she asked.
"I wish to know why, Mrs Manger this bath-towel was returned to me yesterday, missing one of its corners."
As he spoke Wonse removed the offending article from beneath his cloak and unrolled it so that the washerwoman could see the obvious missing corner.
Bloody Susie, thought Mrs Manger, I'll murder that girl, I really will. And then I'll dock her wages.
Mrs Manger licked her dry lips and thought for a minute.
"I'm waiting Mrs Manger."
"Well your lordship, it's the cold."
She could not quite believe that she was really telling him this but she saw no reason to lie. When she had explained the Patrician raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"The washing is freezing?" he said and she nodded. "Then I suggest you find a way to stop it happening Mrs Manger. Broken bath-towels will simply not be tolerated."
"Yes your lordship."
And with that he was gone. Mrs Manger muttered some rather course words to his retreating back before she turned and marched into the washroom once more.
A way of unfreezing the washing. But that would be nigh on impossible. You'd have to dry the stuff before it got on the green to stop it freezing but then there'd be no point in putting it out there in the first place.
Mrs Manger sat on her stool between the kettles and watched the steam slowly rising. Then she had an idea. It would take a bit of fixing but it might just work.
"What is it Missus?" asked Susie as she and the other girls crowded around the big metal oven which had been constructed at one end of the washroom.
"It's a box for drying things in," replied the older woman proudly.
"What do you call it?"
"The box for drying things in, what else?3"
The girls nodded silently.
"And um, how does it work?" enquired Susie who appeared to have been made unofficial spokeswoman of the group.
"I'll show you. Right Willem, fire her up!"
Mr Manger was, as dictated by the tradition of men who marry large and formidable women, a scrawny little man4. He hobbled around the back of the box and quite soon the girls could hear the sound of another fire, like the ones which warmed the washing kettles being stoked beneath the box. When the fire was hot enough that it had heated the box right up Mrs Manger used one of the stirring paddles to open the door. A blast of hot, dry air hit the girls in the face and they all stepped backwards.
Just inside the door was a kind of metal barrel into which Mrs Manger tipped a load of wet washing before closing the door. Then she moved to a handle on the side of the box and began to turn it.
"This handle turns the barrel see," she told them as she twisted it. "What's the heat Willem?"
Her small husband appeared again and showed her a thermometer.
"Right, that'll take fifteen minutes. One of you girls come and turn this handle for me."
None of them moved and then Susie who saw herself as somewhat responsible for all this in the first place stepped forwards and took the handle from her employer.
"Good, now the rest of you get back to work until it's done."
Fifteen minutes later a very tired Susie was told she could stop turning the handle which she did gladly and sank down onto a stool. Mrs Manger meanwhile had opened the oven-like box and opened the barrel. Using her paddle once more she removed the washing from the barrel and dumped it into a wicker basket.
"Leave it a minute," she told the girls. And then kicked the basket over to them. "See what you think of that little lot."
The girls leant over the basket and gingerly touched the contents.
"They're warm," said one girl carefully.
"They're not just warm, they're dry!" exclaimed another.
"Exactly," said Mrs Manger, beaming at them all. "From now on we don't need to hang the washing out so it won't freeze."
"But it's creased," pointed out one of the girls. "At least when it's hung out it isn't so creased."
Mrs Manger shrugged.
"We can iron it," she said. "After all, those folk who send their washing here get it all ironed when it goes back so why can't we do it here. We could even charge extra." Her eyes were shinning at the thought of it.
"You'll need to hire more people," said Susie tiredly from where she still sat, slumped against the wall. "It's murder trying to turn that thing."
"Then we'll hire more people," said Mrs Manger matter-of-factly.
And they did. Mrs Manger's Wash House grew rapidly with more drying boxes being fitted and long tables set up for ironing. They hired extra girls and a few other assorted species to help with turning the barrels and pumping the fires. Business was booming and the new innovations had been spread throughout the Guild so every wash room in the city now had at least one drying box and two irons. And then Mrs Manger got a message that the Patrician wanted to see her.
The snow was falling again and Vetinari watched it from his window. It occurred to him that the only place in Ankh-Morpok that snow stayed white for any length of time was the rooftops. Up above the layers of smog and polluted air that enveloped the city.
Assassins hated snow. It was harder to cover your tracks and usually meant slippery roof tiles. Also it was harder to creep upon someone if your feet were crunching in the snow. Vetinari smiled at a vague memory of the current head of the Assassins lying in bed with a broken ankle and a back full of bruises while his prey continued to walk the streets, unknowing of the fate he had escaped due to the weather.
There was a tap at the door and he turned around.
"Mrs Manger to see you sir," said Wonse.
"Show her in."
The Patrician sat down and steepled his fingers in front of him as the elderly washer-woman was shown into the office.
"Thank you for coming Mrs Manger. Won't you please sit down."
She sat and folded her arms across her chest in her usual no nonsense manner.
"Now Mrs Manger I have, I'm afraid been receiving complaints about your Guild from certain members of the public and other Guild leaders.
"Complaints? Who's been complaining?"
"People have been complaining Mrs Manger," said Vetinari calmly. "I understand that you have begun to employ methods of drying and ironing the clothes sent to you for washing?"
"Yes. What of it?"
"Well Mrs Manger, as I'm sure you are aware, that contravenes several of the Guild by-laws which you yourself helped to draw up."
"What!"
The Patrician sighed and patiently lifted a piece of paper.
"The by-laws state that the Guild exists for the purposes of ensuring that anything sent to them is washed. They further state that this is the only purpose for which the buildings of the Guild may be utilised. Of course it has always been understood that the drying of washing by means of a drying green at the rear of the premises is permissible however there is no mention of these new drying machines which you have invented and certainly the act of ironing is quite prohibited."
"But that's ridiculous!"
"I have not yet finished Mrs Manger."
The Patrician picked up yet another piece of paper from the pile on his desk.
"There have also been complaints regarding the members of your Guild. I believe the Guild is known as that of the Washer-Women."
"Yes."
"And yet I see here that at present it contains also a number of men, Dwarfs, two Golems and a Troll."
"So?"
"My dear Mrs Manger. The inclusion of such people is also quite against the by-laws of the Guild."
Mrs Manger felt quite lost. Everything had been going so well.
"So what are you going to do?" she asked quietly.
"I have been requested to dissolve the Guild once and for all," he replied smoothly.
Mrs Manger's mouth dropped open and she stared at him.
"Dissolve my Guild! But you can't! I'll be ruined, my girls'll be thrown into the streets. You can't do that!"
"I assure you that I can Mrs Manger. However I have no real wish to. Therefore I have a proposition for you."
Mrs Manger considered this. She vaguely remembered Vetinari as a clever boy who always knew how to get out of a situation. He'd managed to contrive his rise to power well enough, perhaps she could trust him.
"And what would this proposition be sir?" she enquired.
"Quite simply; we change the nature of the Guild."
And so the Guild of Launderers was born. Mrs Manger got to keep her drying machines and her ironing tables and her staff. The Guild was one of the most profitable in the city and always in need of new hands to help out. They started a delivery service and hired men with carts. They refined the drying machines and the washing kettles so that the upper classes could safely send the lace doyleys to be washed along with the bed linen and the silk shirts.
And Mrs Manger always remembered that it was thanks to Vetinari that she had a Guild to look after at all.
1 This was not a job for the squeamish. Blood is a very stubborn stain and by no means the worst you had to remove (Assassins can be very inventive like that).
2 Of course no one can ever agree on this so there have been, at the last count, 27 coldest winters in living memory in the last four decades. If you're being picky this was actually the fourth coldest; that's still pretty damn cold.
3 We are surely all aware of the amazing talent for naming things shown by that great genius of the Disc Leonard of Quirm. Well Mrs Manger was not in any way related to him but they shared, as do many of the people of Ankh-Morpok, that particular flair with words.
4 There is a similar tradition in the Rounworld country of Scotland where it is reffered to as Broons syndrome.