Jingo - Terry Pratchett [140]
“Call that gratitude?” sniffed Colon.
The man reappeared carrying two large packages.
“My wife made this specially for you,” he said. He added, “She said she knew you’d be along.”
Colon pulled aside the waxed paper.
“My word,” he said.
“Special Ankh-Morpork curry,” said Mr. Goriff. “Containing yellow curry powder, big lumps of swede, green peas and soggy sultanas the—”
“—size of eggs!” said Nobby.
“Thank you very much,” said Colon. “How’s your lad, then, Mr. Goriff?”
“He says you have set him an example and now he will be a watchman when he grows up.”
“Ah, right,” said Colon happily. “That’ll please Mr. Vimes. You just tell him—”
“In Al-Khali,” said Goriff. “He is staying with my brother.”
“Oh. Well…fair enough, then. Er…thanks for the curry, anyway.”
“What sort of example do you think he meant?” said Nobby, as they strolled away.
“The good sort, obviously,” said Colon, through a mouthful of mildly spiced swede.
“Yeah, right.”
Chewing slowly and walking even slower, they headed toward the docks.
“I was gonna write Bana a letter,” said Nobby, after a while.
“Yeah, but…she thought you was a woman, Nobby.”
“Right. So she saw, like, my inner self, shorn of…” Nobby’s lips moved as he concentrated, “shorn of surface thingy. That’s what Angua said. Anyway, then I thought, well, her boyfriend’ll be coming back, so I thought I’d be noble about it and give her up.”
“’cos he might be a big stroppy bloke, too,” said Sergeant Colon.
“I never thought about that, sarge.”
They paced for a while.
“It’s a far, far better thing I do now than I have ever done before,” said Nobby.
“Right,” said Sergeant Colon. They walked on in silence for a while and he added: “O’ course, that’s not difficult.”
“I still got the hanky she gave me, look.”
“Very nice, Nobby.”
“That’s genuine Klatchian silk, that is.”
“Yeah, it looks very nice.”
“I’m never going to wash it, sarge.”
“You soppy old thing, Nobby,” said Fred Colon.
He watched Corporal Nobbs blow his nose.
“So…you’re going to stop using it, are you?” he said, doubtfully.
“It still bends, sarge. See?” Nobby demonstrated.
“Yeah, right. Silly of me to ask, really.”
Overhead, the weathervanes started to creak round.
“Made me a lot more understanding about women, that experience,” said Nobby.
Colon, a much-married man, said nothing.
“I met Verity Pushpram this afternoon,” Nobby went on, “and I said how about coming out with me tonight and I don’t mind about the squint at all and I’ve got this expensive exotic perfume which’ll totally disguise your smell, and she said bugger off and threw an eel at me.”
“Not good, then,” said Colon.
“Oh, yeah, sarge, ’cos she used to just cuss when she saw me. And I’ve still got the eel, and there’s a good feed off it, so I look upon it as a very positive step.”
“Could be. Could be. Just so long as you give someone that scent soon, eh? Only even the people across the street are starting to complain.”
Their feet, moving like bees toward a flower, had found their way to the waterfront. They looked up at the Klatchian’s Head, on its spike.
“It’s only wooden,” said Colon.
Nobby said nothing.
“And it’s, like, part of our traditional heritage an’ that,” Colon went on, but hesitantly, as if he didn’t believe his own voice.
Nobby blew his nose again, an exercise which, with all its little arpeggios and flourishes, went on for some time.
The sergeant gave in. Some things didn’t seem quite the same any more, he had to admit. “I’ve never really liked the place. Let’s go to the Bunch of Grapes then, all right?”
Nobby nodded.
“Anyway, the beer here is frankly piss,” said Colon.
Lady Sybil held her handkerchief in front of her husband.
“Spit!” she commanded.
Then she carefully cleaned a smut off his cheek.
“There. Now you look very—”
“—ducal,” said Vimes gloomily. “I thought I’d done this once already…”
“They never actually had the Convivium after all that fuss,” said Lady Sybil, picking some microscopic lint off his doublet. “It’s got to be held.”