Strandpiel 27: Kunswaardering – Art Appreciation
Here we are again... yet another chapter.
Back to it. Doing what I usually do when I know what I want to write and even have it plotted. But still feeling blocked. Browsed TvTropes for a while to absorb possible directions and ideas. Applied time-wasting. Works a treat...
As always, will come back to review, revise and maybe add footnotes. Bekkki will be back in Lancre next chapter - Hogswatch is over! This one has a lot more to say about Ruth S-R-S - she's fixed more in my mind now as a character. Third tidying. Keep spotting damn typos.
Dad? I know you've got to go and talk to Mum sometime. But. Please let me go in there first? I think I know what to do."
Bekki steeled herself. She knew Mum would have retreated to her private study.
She left the room, and went to where her mother had her own private study, for School and academic work. She paused at the door. Somebody else had got there first... Bekki paused and listened, reassuring herself that she wasn't being intrusive or noisy. Well, she was. But she was a witch. It was part of the job description...
Johanna closed the door firmly and sat at her desk, gently twanging with anger and indignation. She was aware she still had guests and had to go back to them at some point. It was rude, otherwise. But not in this mood. She started doing calming breaths, the deep regular Zen breathing that her colleague Koukouchou-san(1) taught, so as to refocus and to make the mind an oasis of calm in the middle of turmoil. It helped.
Bloody, bloody, Vetinari. But what do I do about this?
Johanna picked up the Device, one of several that sat on her desk. It was made of glass and leather, and was about three feet long. They were manufactured in a variety of sizes to accomodate various sorts of male animals. Early on, when seeing the potential of these things, she had gone to Scrope Tuttle, who she knew to be a gifted leatherworker and honest enough in his way, a man who had a real genius, if a slightly specialised one, for odd devices made from leather and hide. She knew, from times where her colleague Alice Band had imparted Too Much Information, that Tuttle was entirely at home with things of this size, shape, and intended to relate to the same specific physical region. This was just a different application, and it needed a mind like Tuttle's to handle the specifics of design and manufacture. The specialist leatherworker, intrigued, had come into the project early as her principal designer. She had cut him a small but appropriate percentage of sales for his input, and had got him working with an equally specialised glassblower she had recruited, by listening to other Artisans making dissapproving and somewhat morally scandalised noises.(2)
And the Smith-Rhodes Device was selling really, really, well, together with the associated tecnology for, err, safely and hygenically collecting, storing and transferring the... product. She even had local agents as far away as Fourecks, the Foggy Islands (model two, designed for sheep and ovine creatures, was a big seller there), and in her own Rimwards Howondaland.
The Device was, she realised, making her potentially very rich indeed. She couldn't easily remember the last time she'd accepted any sort of Guild contract; there was no need at all now. The patents and contracts she'd drawn up with Mr Thunderbolt secured her intellectual and physical property rights and the future, financially speaking, looked very sound indeed. She had other ideas, and Ponder was getting a good cut from ideas turned into practical things in the Thaumatalogical Park.
Services to agricultural and zoological science...
Johanna winced.
Ag, I should have seen this coming!
Again, she tried to backtrack to any occassion where her usual candour might have irritated Vetinari. There had been one occassion at the Palace, not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago, in fact, where the Patrician had warmly complimented her on a concept that looked set to improve the general quality of stock among farm animals. Vetinari had noted that his information was that two Pegasus mares were now gravid via the intervention of this Device, and, as the – active component – was collected from a Pegasus stallion via this Device, the resulting foals were almost certain to be the rare and elusive wingèd horses. And thus of extreme value to this City.
Johanna smiled, reflecting that she'd get some sort of a bounty for this.
Vetinari had reflected that he'd heard Johanna's daughter had sold the idea to Mr Hobley and demonstrated the ubiquity of the Device. Give her my thanks.
"Ja, Rebecka did very well..."
She was interrupted by a snort of braying laughter from Lady Regina Rust, present at a small City Council assembly because, well, the Old Lords always were. Johanna turned.
"I'd be ashamed, if I made my daughter do for a living something the Seamstresses' Guild would put on as a specialised animal act!"
The other Old Lords joined in the laughter. Johanna took a deep breath.
"Point taken, my Lady." Johanna said, with great deliberate calm. She smiled slightly at Lady Rust.
"The purpose of the Device is to improve end to enhance the quality of livestock elong their bloodlines." she had said. "Otherwise those bloodlines become ettenuated, inbred, end deteriorate. You end up with sickly, scrubby, mean creatures, possibly brain-impaired end of evil temper, who are unfit for purpose."
Johanna paused for just long enough.
"End how are your sisters, Deborah end Lucinda, who I sought to educate?" she asked.
She left it for just long enough for the counter-insult, not specifically said, but very definitely implied, to sink in. The Duke of Ankh, who despite being a noble was one of the best people she knew, saw it first and burst out laughing, adding a "Good one, Johanna!"
Vetinari had glanced at Lady Rust, who looked as if she had been slapped, then mildly said, turning his gaze back to Johanna,
"A good point, Doctor Smith-Rhodes. Perhaps there is a case to be made for improving the general stock of titled and noble people in this City. I shall give it some consideration."
He nodded to the Duke of Ankh.
"Improving the stock of nobility with the occassional, shall we say, helping hand, has certainly worked in the recent past."
Sam Vimes looked sober and refective again, the smile gone from his face.
Johana then gave a brief report on how sales of the Device were going in various areas, and how in faraway places like Howondaland and Fourecks, she had recruited locally based Assassins, graduates of hers, to have a place in its local management and ensure the accounts were kept totally honest. Her sister Mariella was keeping an eye on sales in Howondaland, for instance. Just to avert any misunderstanding. She hoped soon to have a manufacturing plant set up in the town of Piemberg, with her father on the management board, to service the local market. And stud fees plus the speed of international travel, say via the Pegasus Service, meant that a prized stud bull in the Shires could become the proud father of calves several thousand miles away – without ever leaving his own field near Ankh-Morpork. She was looking into this, an arrangement where the farmer got the stud fee, less a fair percentage to herself for facilitating, and thus Ankh-Morpork could influence the quality of agricultural livestock around the world.
Vetinari had taken this point, genially approved of the enterprise involved, and said that in these circumstances the growing Pegasus Service could ensure same-day delivery. Less a small and appropriate sum in Export Tax payable to the City, of course.
Johanna had been thanked and had been dismissed. Leaving with a nod and a smile to a fuming Lady Regina Rust, now completely and impotently aware she was the butt of a joke.
And now, sitting in her office, those words came back to haunt her, about there being a case to be made for improving the general stock of titled and noble people in this City. Vetinari had also said I shall give it some consideration.
And, damn the man, he had.
And that thing about the Smith-Rhodes baronetcy... according to the rules of the business, it did descend down her line of the family, from firstborn to firstborn.
Damn, Damn. Damn. Why couldn't it go down Uncle Charles' side? At least he'd have the bloody knighthood, and he'd actively welcome it. And Sir Julian Smith-Rhodes, ultimately, would not be a bad thing at all...
A thought occured to her, and she held it for consideration later.
There was a knock on the door. She knew the knock. Only one sort of person knocked like that. She took a deep breath.
"Come in, Claude."
Her butler entered with smooth grace, manipulating a tea-tray with ease. He set this down on a side-table.
"I took the liberty, my... madam." he said. "At times of difficulty, a hot soothing drink with sugar is reccomended. Rooibuis, as Madam likes it."
Johanna noted the slip, but said nothing about it.
"Three cups, Claude?" she enquired, accepting one with thanks.
"I anticipate other members of the family are keen to speak with you, Madam." he said. "Sir Ponder... that is, the Professor... for one. And one other, in her own time."
Johanna nodded. She tried not to let her eyes narrow too much at the reminder she was now married to a Knight. Which makes me a...
"I understand other Assassins were honoured with social preferment." Claude said. "Miss Sanderson-Reeves, for instance. She is now Dame Joan. As Deputy Guild Mistress, this was considered appropriate. No doubt, should she succeed Lord Downey, the role of Guild Mistress would confer a peerage on her, as is customary."
"End your point is, Claude?" Johanna asked. She really wanted to be on her own. But she recognised her butler was absolutely loyal, had been part of the family for nearly sixteen years, had seen the birth and upbringing of her three children, and was a man she should listen to.
"If I may speak frankly, my lady?" he said. Johanna winced. Don't say anything. He's a butler. Of course I can never be just "Madam" to him again. Butlers do not think like that.
"When your employer – in this case, both my employers – are advanced in social rank, their servants are made happier. It is a source of prestige to us. It is seen as a measure of the success and the vitality of the household, of which we are part. The others are equally joyous for you. They too know what it means."
Johanna nodded.
"I know. It's not just ebout me. Or Ponder."
"Indeed, my Lady." Claude said, with urgency. "I can now go to the Guild of Butlers, Gentlemen's Gentlemen and Senior Domestic Servants, as the butler to a Knight and a Dame, not merely as servant to a sir and a madam. Please permit me that moment of selfishness."
"Understood, Claude." she said. They arrived here as black Howondalandians, drafted from townships and small tribes, to serve as indentured servants to White Howondalandians, the Boys and the House-Girls to the baas-lady. Expected to be nothing more than they were at Home. Just – the blecks. But Ankh-Morpork changes everybody. They've assimilated. Gone native.
"And also consider, My Lady. The three young ladies are also advanced, by default. I know from speaking to my peer Mr Carter, who is Butler to Lord Downey and the Dark Council, that social rank is highly valued at the Guild. Miss Famke will return next term as The Honourable Miss Famke. A small step in the rankings, but one which the Guild will note. It may, if she is clever, as she undoubtedly is, be something she can turn to advantage."
Johanna nodded. Damn nobility. The Guild ran on the stuff. But useful for impressing people and getting a foot in certain doors behind which were impressionable people. She took a deep breath.
"Okay, Claude. Thenk you for being so open." She read the atmosphere and the local environment and sensed watchful anxiety nearby.
"Rebecka? You cen come in."
Bekki took her cue. Claude stood back and waited to be dismissed.
"Mum. We were starting to worry." she said.
"Over it now." Johanna said. "Time to cool down end think. Claude, could you?"
The butler stepped across the room and poured a second cup of tea.
"Thanks, Claude." Bekki said. She took her mother's hand.
"Just know, mum. They could make you High Grand Duchess Of Just About Everything and it wouldn't matter. There are still three of us out there who will only ever call you Mum."
There was a pause.
"Thenk you, Rebecka." her mother said.
"You know, mum. They've made you a Lady once and by the look of it, a Dame twice over. You can't wish it away. I don't think this is how these things work. I'm not sure, but if Lord Vetinari gives you a present, you can't send it back and say, the colour was wrong, or something. Or ask for the receipt so you can take it back to the shop. I get the idea he won't like that. So what do we do about it? I mean, does it give you any advantages, or something you could get from it?"
Johanna smiled slightly.
"Wellnow. My father's still alive, but he was able to renounce the knighthood and straightout say he doesn't want the thing. The rules mean it then hes to come to me, end es his oldest child, I have to put up. For now. It occurs to me that you'll turn eighteen in a little over two years?"
Johanna smiled at her oldest daughter.
"Well, I've got a spare Damehood I do not need. You were born in Enkh-Morpork, so it does not cerry the same beggege. Look out for a surprise eighteenth birthday present. Think of this, es your oupa does, es a game of pess-the-percel."
Bekki blinked and sighed.
"Okay, mum. I suppose I asked for that. But I'm still going to be Rebecka Smith-Rhodes, Witch. That's the only title I need."
"Hold thet thought." Johanna said. "Es far es I'm concerned, the Dame thing is there end I cennot wish it eway. But the only title I need is Doctor. End et Home, plain simple mevrou Doktor will suffice. Maar, Bekki, Dame of the Enkh-Morporkian Empire. En Empire our country fought like bloody Hell not to be a pert of. My encestors were pert of thet fight. This is Vetinari's idea of a good joke. It hes to be."
She paused, and considered.
"Bekki? When you speak to... the encestors.. next. Et least two of whom fought like bleddy Hell not to be a pert of any sort of Enkh-Morporkian Empire. Esk their opinions, will you? If I were to die end join them – end I hope thet is not justnow – I do not want an Efterlife of snaark and bed jokes."
She grinned. Bekki realised this was something she could usefully do, and agreed. Her mother continued.
"But for justnow, I put up with it, I suppose. The Guild will not let me get eway with this."
Johanna sighed.
"End once, I winced et being called ma'am." she sighed. "Well, shell we go beck to our guests? Your father is probebly sitting there suffering egonies, poor man. Perheps I should reassure Sir Ponder."
They left the study together. Claude permitted himself a satisfied butlerian smile. He'd risen in rank and status too. It was a perk of the butler's life.
Life went on. The rest of the Hogswatch holidsay passed in a blur. Shauna's Gang reconvened with whoops of joy and delight. Johanna conceded that it was a shame she hadn't even thought of asking Gillian Lansbury to be Ruth's formal Godsmother, but the two of them had found each other later on, and Gillian appeared to be filling the space remarkably well.
"So – would you?" Johanna asked.
Gillian smiled happily.
"Johanna. Thank you. She is a talent. A real talent. With a natural gift. I'm so pleased to be a part of her life. Even if some of the things she's been doing with that... special... paint Ponder got for her, Gods know from where, can make my eyes water."
Johanna nodded sympathetically.
"Ja. The special paint."
Ruth Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons took after her father. Remarkably so. Where her two older sisters had their mother's dominant physical genes for startlingly red hair, freckles and pale skin, and where Famke appeared to be 98% her mother, with only a few little stray corners that people could look at and detect even the slightest Ponder Stibbons, Ruth was her father's daughter, with very little detectable Johanna.
She had the shock of hair so dark brown it was almost black. She was physically slight, almost frail, not destined to grow up to be overly tall, and was shy and reticent around people she did not know. She had big, startlingly big, brown eyes, and projected a helplessly waif-like attitude to the world. It followed on that people around her were tempted to be fiercely protective of her; her parents and older sisters loved her dearly and Famke, especially, gave the impression that anybody seeking to spoil her baby sister's day was going to feel a world of pain.
Ponder had tested her for magic, as he had Rebecka and Famke. Bekki and Famke had both gone off the scale, but at opposite ends.
With Ruth, the results had been more mixed and inconclusive. Ponder had conferred with Johanna.
"There's something there, Johanna, but I'm not sure what." he said. "It's threshold. Not quite strong enough to bar her from attending the Guild School..." he paused, reflectively. Johanna sighed.
"I know, Ponder." she said. "Would she be happy there? I can see she isn't exactly Assassin material. I fear she would struggle. It might be better to find her somewhere else."
Ponder smiled gently. "What there is in Ruth comes out in flashes and spikes. Intermittent. It's not strong and constant as it was with Bekki. Is with Bekki. And given her interests. The witches say magic can sublimate. Be used in the creative arts. Take Agnes Nitt, the singer. She's a witch, but she flares it off safely enough as a singer. I suspect that the magic Ruth has is sublimating. It comes out in her fingers. What happens in her mind turns into music, when she's at the piano. Or in the things she draws and paints."
They agreed just to watch her for now. Observe.
Ruth was clever, she was happy, she was imaginative, she was creative. But no sign of her turning that creative imagination into a familiar, as Bekki had done at the same age. Ponder had tried her out with Baby's First Grimoire. Bekki had loved it and had gone on to do unexpected things with it. Famke had turned the pages dutifully enough, taken a little interest in the pictures, pushed it away, and never looked at it again.
Ruth had been interested in the pictures rather than the words and set about copying them onto blank drawing paper, as best she could. She had also asked why there was a blank space where Grindguts the Destroying Demon should be, on his page.
"Well, long story, love..." Grindguts had said, perching next to her. Ruth had jumped. After she had calmed down, Grindguts had offered to pose for drawings. The two had become friends, and Ruth, aged three and four, had started to turn out interesting artwork. Her class teacher at Seven-Handed Sek's reception class had had to be led away by kindly hands for a lie-down, after the class assignment to "draw all the members of my family" had been handed in.
Ruth Smith-Rhodes Stibbons had submitted a drawing of "Annaliese. Mummy. Daddy. Rbeceka. Fakme. Me, (Ruth). Caulde the Bluter. Eve and drthea and Blessign. Rooibois the dog. Klkipdrift the dgo. Pyn and Smart the cats. Grnidguts the Demon. Our goblins..."
It now hung on the wall at home, in the dining room. Dad had had to go to the School and apologise to the highly-strung Sister Concilia, a woman now half-convinced that little Ruth's head was going to spin through 360° and start spewing pea-green soup. The fact she drew demons so well... Mother Superior, who knew the Family, had spoken severely but kindly to her nun, and then sent her to a quiet convent in the backwoods, one where there were no sudden loud noises and a rule of silence applied, to "recuperate".
Ruth's creativity had grown with her years. Gillian Lansbury had taken notice of her paintings during a visit, when Ruth was five, then asked Johanna if she saw anything unusual about her daughter's approach to art.
Johanna had said "No..." and looked puzzled for a second, then reflected that Gillian was a very experienced Art teacher. There had to be a reason for her colleague to raise this.
"Look at it, Johanna. She's painted a picture of a wood with an open meadow. Lots of horizon. But she's painted the blue sky right down to the horizon where it meets the fields."
"Okay? End?" Johanna had said, slightly bemused. Gillian shook her head.
"Johanna. How many children of five do that? The default position is to do the sky as a blue band at the top of the picture because, well, the sky is above us, isn't it, over our heads. Then there's that vast acreage of white in between sky and grass. Straight away, without needing to be told, Ruth's taken her sky right down to the horizon. No white space. Anywhere. Have you any idea how rare that is for a five-year-old? And she's done clouds. Not as the usual optimistic white blob. She's had a go at shading and highlighting in shades of grey. Grey, Johanna, not white! Not brilliantly – she is five, after all – but it's not just colouring in, with one shade. And this tree. See it? It isn't the usual upright pole in brown. She's really trying to paint various shades of brown and grey, with a bit of green for moss. How many children that age look at things so closely?"
Asked her opinion, Ruth had shyly said "But I painted it that way because that's how it is. When you look outside, and you see the sky. It's above you, but when you look, it comes all the way down too, where it meets the sides. Am I doing something wrong?"
Gilian had smiled.
"No, not at all. I think you're painting what you see. Some of my students who are ten years older than you still have a big problem with that, you'd be surprised. I'd really love to see some more of your paintings, Ruth!"
Johanna sighed and decided to let them get on with it. Free child-care was not to be scorned, after all. And Gillian needed a hobby – it might as well be one where she acted as a free art tutor to Ruth...
Oh, Ruth had her official Godsparents. She had Mustrum Ridcully and Joan Sanderson-Reeves as the locum grandparents in Ankh-Morpork. Both had accepted they'd be grandparents-by-proxy to all three of Johanna and Ponder's children. But Gillian was more than welcome: an adult who Ruth liked and trusted and who, most crucially, shared and could guide interests that nobody else in the family was properly fitted to help with. Gillian, after all, knew her Art. She taught it. Being allowed a gifted protegée to look after – well, any teacher would snap your hand off for one. And best of all, Gillian could keep an eye on her and remind her which paints were not nice if ingested by mouth. Johanna tended to worry about this. Gillian Lansbury, on the other hand, knew all about the detrimental effects of Cadmium Yellow, Cobalt Blue, Cyan(ic) Green, Cinnabar Red and many, many more. In fact, a creatively specialised and imaginative application of this knowledge had led her to Assassination. Gillian had indeed used her paintbox creatively and imaginatively. Then the Guild had found out, offered her a Mature Students Course, and then a salaried position as Art Mistress.
And Ruth, at six, had read about how the Old Masters used egg yolk as a fixative. She had shyly asked Dorothea the cook how you separated white from yolk. Dorothea, as she had done with Bekki and Famke, had given the youngest girl some basic cooking lessons. Then Ruth had politely thanked her and dissappeared with a small bowl full of separated egg yolk. Dorothea had scratched her head in puzzlement and gone to advise the Professor.
Ponder had found Ruth in her bedroom, carefully experimenting with mixing the sort of coarse cheap pigment powder thought suitable for young children into measured doses of egg yolk, just to get the mix right, Daddy. It doesn't last if you use it mixed with water only, it rubs off. This makes it last. And can I have some oil paints, please, Daddy, soon? I promise not to eat them. Mummy's worried about that. I know some are bad for you. Gillian says.
Gillian had come round, as she did once or twice a week, and supervised. She had been impressed.
"Egg tempera. Egg yolk used as a size. Really impressive!" she said. "Ruth, do you know you can use other things as sizing agents? That make the pigments fast – that means hard and permanent – and of course it gives the final piece a silky, lustrous, sort of look."
Johanna let them get on with it.
There had been the day Ruth had, unusually for her, become het up, frustrated, and tearful. Ponder Stibbons went to console his daughter. He found her room strewn with many attempts to paint a rainbow. Some, he thought, were really quite good. She'd got the slightly see-through brilliant lustre so well on this one, in the standard seven colours...
"What's up, sweetheart?" he asked a tearful daughter. Then he held out the usual hostage to fortune. "Let's see if Daddy can make it better."
"Daddy." She said. "I can't get the colours right. I can't mix the colour I want."
"Oh, dear." Ponder said, sympathetically. He tried to remember the sort of art taught to eight year old boys. You blended colours to make other colours, didn't you? Can't be difficult...
"How can I paint properly, when there's one colour I just can't do?" Ruth wailed. "I can't buy it in the shops, Daddy. I try to describe it but they look really strangely at me!"
Then he looked at the paintings of the rainbow again. Those seven brilliant glowing colours were let down rather by the eighth, which had come out as a muddy-looking grey-blue-green. He blinked.
"Ruth..." he said, slowly. "how many colours do you see in the rainbow?"
"Eight, Daddy." Ruth said, after some silent counting. "Doesn't everybody?"
Ponder took a deep, deep, breath. Then he explained about the Octarine.
"Oh. So you can see it. Mummy can't. Bekki can see it. But Famke can't. If I can see it, Daddy, does it mean I'm magical?"
"This may be so." Ponder said, remembering the tests he'd run that indicated Ruth had a little magic. He reflected that Alice Band could see into the octarine too. But that didn't make her a witch. Far from it.
"I think my magical little girl can see the Octarine because the magic makes her an artist." he said. "Art is your magic, Ruth."
He spent time with her, looking at other pictures she'd sketched and painted, and pointing out that she'd done well here. This is the way the octarine flickers and shifts, to people who aren't magical. They don't see the actual colour, they see the space where it is. It's the only way most people, including your mum and your sister Famke, get an inkling that the Octarine even exists, that we're not making it up. For now, why not try to paint and draw it like this? "And I agree it's a shocking thing nobody does an octarine coloured paint..."
He eventually put Ruth to bed and waited for her to fall asleep. Ideas were forming in his head. He kissed her goodnight and went downstairs.
The next morning, he started looking down the rolls of Wizards in current residence at the University. He knew these were not complete, and by their very nature could never be complete. Unseen University wasn't that sort of place. Ah well, I can ask around the Faculty... He had soon compiled a shortlist of likely candidates and their academic specialities. But, being prudent, he asked Mustrum Ridcully for his advice. Some older wizards in the furthest outliers could get prickly.
"Interestin' selection." Ridcully said. "And I discern a common theme here, lad. Might I ask what exactly you've got in mind?"
"It's to do with my daughter Ruth, sir."
Ridcully grunted, but looked more attentive.
"Who is, by default and accepted convention, me grand-daughter. So I can ask you the reason?"
"Yes, sir. We must have an Art Department here somewhere? After all, this University has got everything else."
Ponder quickly explained the reason. Ridcully smiled slightly.
"Is that all? Well, I recall about fifty years ago, lad, we had a Professor in the Theory and Practice of Art, "Gadget" Riley. Not sure if he's still around, but some of the fellows who were aware he had some odd habits called him Bridget, as I remember. His paintin's got locked away, for very good reasons, as you will soon see. Librarian has them in his custody. Comin' for a walk?"
They set out for the Library.
"If that chap at the Royal Gallery got to hear of it, he'd want these. I know there are damn good reasons to keep 'em away from the general public. Vetinari would agree. Look sharp, man!"
"Ook?"
"Need to see the Riley collection." Ridcully explained. "Young Stibbons has no idea they exist. Need to educate him."
"Oook..."
"I know. Wear dark glasses."
"Sir?"
"You'll see, lad. Thank you, that ape. Put these on. You'll see why."
The Librarian led them down to a lower floor in the Library. Ponder had never been here before. He had no idea the University had an Art Repository. Well. Statuary not on public display tended to gather dust in semi-forgotten cellars around the place. So he reasoned the same must apply to paintings. He'd just never bothered looking for them. There'd been no need before.
The Librarian unlocked a door to a large open space. It was lined with big open racks each containing pictures slotted in on their sides, often shrouded, with only the side edge visible. Ponder interestedly read the names on the racks underneath each group of pictures.
"R.U. Pickman." he read. He looked at a group of larger, thicker, artworks on a reinforced rack, again racked up with only their edges showing. They looked like carvings of some sort, low-relief sculptures rather than paintings, possibly shaped in clay. The edges and margins of ill-defined shapes were visible. He read the name underneath these. "Henry A. Wilcox."
"Lad? Do not pull any of those pictures out to look at them." Ridcully said, urgently. "I mean it. Important."
"Oook!"said the Librarian, nodding urgent agreement.
Ponder restrained a thought in his mind that was saying "One little look...", and moved on. There was a locked box on another rack simply labelled "Ghatian Wallpaper sample. DO NOT OPEN, We mean this." He passed this too. Another sealed box was also labelled "Acerian yellow wallpaper, five rolls. STRICTLY NOT TO BE OPENED."
"Here we are. G.B. Riley. Got the dark glasses on, lad? Good..."
Ridcully pulled a painting free. He brught it into the light with a flourish.
"Ugggh." said Ponder.
The picture tormented the eyes. Regular lines and curves, well-crafted abstract shapes... but in clashing primary colours. Trying to follow the logic of the lines and the twists and turns made his head ache. He suspected other rules of perspective applied here. That somehow there were a lot more dimensions going on here than the accepted two. There was a brilliant mind here, yes. But the sort of brilliance you'd run away from if you met it in the street. He looked away. Ridcully hauled a second painting into the light. It was as warped a piece of genius as the first. The lines and curves and regular twists and turns seemed to hang in the air. It was the sort of Art that would rip the eyes out of your head and never give them back, keeping them as souvenirs in a glass jar full of formeldehyde on a shelf in a dark cellar somewhere.
Then he blinked.
"Sir?" he said. "That shouldn't be happening. I mean, where did Riley buy his paint?"
Ridcully grinned.
"He was an old-time artist, lad. He made his own. From his own recipes. Ground his own pigments. Not much call for it, now you can go into an artists' supply shop and buy yer own. But I hear there's a clever woman at the Assassins' Guild who's rediscovered how to do it. Made her name on that."
"Gillian Lansbury..." Ponder breathed.
"Friend of Johanna's. Dead keen on bringing yer talented little girl along. The little girl who's frettin' because she can't get octarine paint anywhere. Well. Riley managed it."
"So I can see." Ponder said. He paused.
"Sir?"
"Yes, lad?"
"Put it away? Please?"
The eye-tormenting picture, with its octarine paint, the paint that made the design flow and float into more dimensions than a flat piece of canvas stretched over a frame could possibly hold, was reslotted into the rack. Ponder breathed with relief.
Ridcully patted him on the shoulder.
"Seen enough? Now let's go to the Stacks and dig out Riley's personal effects, shall we?"
The Stacks was the part of the library that served as the repository for the notes, writings and relevant professional effects of long-gone Wizards. The librarian led them in a search for an hour or so until they found, in the Recent R's, the effects of G.B. Riley, former Emeritus Professor of Experimental Art. Ridcully opened a large cardboard box.
"Me memory still works, then." he said. "Knew it'd be in here." He withdrew three large tubes of squeezy artists' paint, in metal toothpaste-like tubes.
"Octarine paint, lad. Give this to the little girl, with her grandfather's blessin'. Don't worry, it's stable. Lasts, too!"
He opened a tube and squeezed out a tiny amount of pure octarine onto his fingertip. It hung, sparking, in the light. He nodded appreciation.
" I reckon old Bridget Gadget would approve. It's goin' to another artist. And from what I hear, she knows exactly what to do with it. And... here's the recipe. For when you run out. Call it a Hogswatch present?"
Ponder resolved to get Gillian to check if it was toxic. He'd give her the recipe too. She was good at sourcing pigments...
And Ruth was delighted with her Hogswatch present, that came jointly from her father and her grandfather. Ponder smiled, a happy father.
To be continued
(1) Koukouchou-san, Miss Pretty Butterfly, taught Agatean Culture, which wasn't all about kicking somebody so hard their kidneys flew out through their nose. Indeed, Butterfly painstakingly taught pupils the basic gradations of Agatean honorifics, which ran to my peers and equals I am Koukouchou-san. To my closest and most valued friends, I am Koukouchou-chan. As you are neither, you will use the respectful Koukouchou-sama. Sensei will also suffice in the disciplines I teach. As students knew, she had ways of making this memorable if they slipped up and used the inappropriate honorific. Nobody made that error more than once.
(2) Even so, she had to steel herself to walk into his shop and was aware of the potential for hideous embarrassment if anyone she knew saw her walking out of it again. Scrope had, out of some sales imperative of his own, remarked that "you've been married for sixteen years now, Doctor Smith-Rhodes? Could I interest you in… ah well, perhaps not."
Notes Dump:
Somewhere in a sea roughly halfway between two continents, the one of the tale being currently written and the semi-glimpsed one of future tales yet to be committed to paper, where isolated ideas are given lifebelts and a signal rocket against being spotted and rescued.
Just realised. My description of Ruth S-R-S is coming out to make her look like a child version of Kate Micucci (Lucy in The Big Bang Theory, and one half of musical comic duo Garfunkel & Oates). Didn't mean this consciously – but a waif with very dark hair and big easily startled eyes… Ponder could so easily have a daughter who looks like this… one where the Smith-Rhodes genes stood back and said "Take a break, guys. Physically, this one can be a Stibbons, we've had two good goes already. Ponder's idle lazy genes can do the work here. Never mind them bleating about being "recessive". They've got a kid to make."
And with one daughter committed to Magic and one to Assassination – that satisfies the necessary narrative causality, and the third can take a life direction all of her own….
Of course, Ponder and Johanna have actually met Lucy. (in The Many Worlds Interpretation) Wonder if they've seen it too? And if they're fretting about deer…
Conversely (and this will make no sense outside Britain, but bear with me) the girl in the current Easy Jet holiday advert, the one who gets pursued everywhere by a creature made out of flowers, is a good referent for an adult Ruth…. Google or YouTube on on "Explore Europe with easyJet... #WhyNot?"
Also a nod to British abstract artist Bridget Riley, whose work is - wow. Eye-watering, but in a fascinating way. Eye-catching, certainly, but in this world it's socialised to let you have your eyes back afterwards.
Various references to Roundworld horror stories, one easy to pick up on if you know the referents (reader Carrie VS spotted it) but also to a maddeningly elusive horror short I read many years ago, about a guy returning from colonial service in India who brings back a souvenir. Namely a Hindu design of such fiendish refinement that to gaze upon it can drive you insane. What does he do, as any rational Englishman should? He has it made up into wallpaper and decorates an entire room with it - including the back of the door. his intention might be to lure a hindersome wife in there and to lock the door on her. Or something. But going in to relish the mind-slurping horror of it for a few seconds... the door slams shut behind him... Looking for this story online, could I find it? Could I hell. I think this may have been one of Saki's. Every referent online was to a different gothic-American tale around 1898 called The Yellow Wallpaper, which has the same sort of theme and which is now read as a proto-feminist thing - about a new wife who lives in a house with a room with sinister yellow wallpaper which may induce hallucinations and definite psychosis in her. Result - she goes nuts. Taken today as a metaphor for the suffocating nature of Victorian marriage and what it did to women, apparently. So the Interior Design Section of Unseen University's Art Depository therefore had to have wallpaper in it.