Moving Pictures

It was wide and long and steered by means of a little front wheel and a long cast-iron handle. Cast iron, in fact, featured largely in its construction. Bits of baroque ironwork adorned its frame, which seemed to have been made of iron drainpipes welded together. The rear wheels did not in fact have blades affixed to them, but looked as though these were optional extras. There were various dread levers which only Poons knew the purpose of. There was a huge oilskin hood that could be erected in a matter of hours to protect its occupant from showers, storms and, probably, meteor strikes and falling buildings. By way of light relief, the front handle was adorned with a selection of trumpets, hooters and whistles, with which Poons was wont to announce his progress around the passages and quadrangles of the University. For the fact was that although the wheelchair needed all the efforts of one strong man to get it moving it had, once actually locomotive, a sort of ponderous unstoppability; it may have had brakes, but Windle Poons had never bothered to find out. Staff and students alike knew that the only hope of survival, if they heard a honk or a blast at close range, was to flatten themselves against the nearest wall while the dreaded conveyance rattled by. ‘We’ll never get that over,’ said the Dean firmly. ‘It must weigh at least a ton. We ought to leave him behind, anyway. He’s too old for this sort of thing.’

‘When I was a lad I was over this wall, mm, every night,’ said Poons, resentfully. He chuckled. ‘We had some scrapes in those days, I can tell you. If I had a penny, mm, for every time the Watch chased me home,’ his ancient lips moved in a sudden frenzy of calculation, ‘I’d have fivepence-ha’penny.’

‘Maybe if we—’ the Chair began, and then said ‘What do you mean, fivepence-ha’penny?’

‘I recall once they gave up halfway,’ said Poons, happily. ‘Oh, those were great times. I remember me and old “Numbers” Riktor and “Tudgy” Spold climbed up on the Temple of Small Gods, you see, in the middle of a service, and Tudgy had got this piglet in a sack, and he—’

‘See what you’ve done?’ complained the Lecturer in Recent Runes. ‘You’ve set him off now.’

‘We could try lifting it by magic,’ said the Chair. ‘Gindle’s Effortless Elevator should do the trick.’

‘—and then the high priest turned around and, heh, the look on his face! And then old Numbers said, let’s—’

‘It’s hardly a very dignified use of magic,’ sniffed the Dean.

‘Considerably more dignified than heaving the bloody thing over the wall ourselves, wouldn’t you say?’ said the Lecturer in Recent Runes, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Come on, lads.’

‘—and next thing, Pimple was hammering on the door of the Assassins’ Guild, and then old Scummidge, who was the porter there, heehee, he was a right terror, anyway, he came out, mm, and then the guards come around the corner—’

‘All ready? Right!’

‘—which puts me in mind of the time me and “Cucumber” Framer got some glue and went round to—’

‘Up your end, Dean!’

The wizards grunted with effort.

‘—and, mm, I can remember it as if it was only yesterday, the look on his face when—’

‘Now lower away!’

The iron-shod wheels clanged gently on the cobbles of the alley.

Poons nodded amiably. ‘Great times. Great times,’ he muttered, and fell asleep.

The wizards climbed slowly and unsteadily over the wall, ample backsides gleaming in the moonlight, and stood wheezing gently on the far side.

‘Tell me, Dean,’ said the Lecturer, leaning on the wall to stop the shaking in his legs, ‘have we made … the wall … higher in the last fifty years?’

‘I …don’t … think … so.’

‘Odd. Used to go up it like a gazelle. Not many years ago. Not many at all, really.’

The wizards wiped their foreheads and looked sheepishly at one another.

‘Used to nip over for a pint or three most nights,’ said the Chair.

‘I used to study in the evenings,’ said the Dean, primly.

The Chair narrowed his eyes.

‘Yes, you always did,’ he said. ‘I recall.’

It was dawning on the wizards that they were outside the University, at night and without permission, for the first time in decades. A certain suppressed excitement crackled from man to man. Any watcher trained in reading body language would have been prepared to bet that, after the click, someone was going to suggest that they might as well go somewhere and have a few drinks, and then someone else would fancy a meal, and then there was always room for a few more drinks, and then it would be 5 a.m. and the city guards would be respectfully knocking on the University gates and asking if the Archchancellor would care to step down to the cells to identify some alleged wizards who were singing an obscene song in six-part harmony, and perhaps he would also care to bring some money to pay for all the damage. Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

The Chair reached up and grasped the brim of his tall, wide and floppy wizarding hat.

‘Right, boys,’ he said. ‘Hats off.’