Night Watch - Terry Pratchett [28]
“When I was a kid, most of my clothes came from the shonky shop in Clay Lane,” said Vimes. “Everyone we knew got their clothes from the shonky shop. Used to be run by a foreign guy with a funny name…”
“Brother Soon Shine Sun,” said Sweeper. “Not a hugely enlightened operative, but a genius when it comes to pricing fourth-hand schmutter.”
“Shirts so worn you could see daylight through ’em and trousers as shiny as glass,” said Vimes. “And by the end of the week half the stuff was in the pawn shop.”
“That’s right,” said Sweeper. “You’d pawn your clothes in the pawn shop, but you’d never buy clothes from the pawn shop, ’cos there were Standards, right?”
Vimes nodded. When you got right down to the bottom of the ladder, the rungs were very close together and, oh my, weren’t the women careful about them. In their own way, they were as haughty as any duchess. You might not have much, but you could have Standards. Clothes might be cheap and old, but at least they could be scrubbed. There might be nothing behind the front door worth stealing but at least the doorstep could be clean enough to eat your dinner off, if you could’ve afforded dinner. And no one ever bought their clothes from the pawn shop. You’d hit bottom when you did that. No, you bought them from Mr. Sun at the shonky shop, and you never asked where he got them from.
“I went off to my first proper job in a suit from the shonky shop,” he said. “Seems like centuries ago now.”
“No,” said Sweeper. “It was only last week.”
Silence ballooned. The only sound was the purr of the cylinders dotted around the room.
Then Sweeper added: “It must have occurred to you.”
“Why? I’ve spent most of the time here being beaten up or unconscious or trying to get home! You mean I’m out there somewhere?”
“Oh, yes. In fact, last night you saved the day for your squad by aiming a crossbow at a dangerous miscreant who was attacking your sergeant.”
The silence ballooned larger this time. It seemed to fill the universe.
Eventually, Vimes said: “No. That’s not right. That never happened. I would have remembered that. And I can remember a lot about my first weeks in the job.”
“Interesting, isn’t it,” said Sweeper. “But is it not written, ‘There’s a lot goes on we don’t get told’? Mister Vimes, you need a short spell in the Garden of Inner-City Tranquility.”
It was indeed a garden, like a lot of other gardens you got in areas like Clay Lane. The gray soil was nothing more than old brick dust, elderly cat mess, and generalized, semirotted dross. At the far end was a three-hole privy. It was built handily by the gate to the back lane so the night-soil men didn’t have far to go, but this one had a small stone cylinder turning gently beside it.
The garden didn’t get much proper light. Gardens like this never did. You got secondhand light once the richer folk in the taller buildings had finished with it. Some people kept pigeons or rabbits or pigs on their plots, or planted, against all experience, a few vegetables. But it’d take magic beans to reach the real sunlight in gardens like this.
Nevertheless, someone had made an effort. Most of the spare ground had been covered with gravel of different sizes, and this had been carefully raked into swirls and curves. Here and there, some individual larger stones had been positioned, apparently with great thought.
Vimes stared at the garden of rocks, desperate for anything to occupy his attention.
He could see what the designer had in mind, he thought, but the effect had been spoiled. This was the big city, after all. Garbage got everywhere. The main disposal method was throwing it over a wall. Sooner or later someone would sell it or, possibly, eat it.
A young monk was carefully raking the gravel. He gave a respectful bow as Sweeper approached.
The old man sat down on a stone bench.
“Push off and get us two cups of tea, lad, will you?” he said. “One green with yak butter, and Mister Vimes will have it boiled orange in a builder’s boot with two sugars and yesterday’s