Unseen Academicals - Terry Pratchett [80]
Glenda stopped reading at this point because the question ‘How much trouble are we going to get into about this?’ was attempting to fill her whole head. And there was no trouble, was there? And there would not be. There couldn’t be. First, who would think that the beauty in the silver beard, like some goddess of the forge, was a cook’s assistant? And, second, there was no trouble to be had, unless someone tried to make it, in which case they would have to go through Glenda and Glenda would go through them, in very short order. Because Jools was wonderful. She had to admit it. The girl brought radiant sunshine to the page, and suddenly it was plain: it would be a crime to hide all that grace and beauty in a cellar. So what if she had a vocabulary of fewer than seven hundred words? There were more than enough people who were stuffed tight as an egg with words, and who would want to see any of them on the front page?
Anyway, she thought, as she pulled her coat on, it would be a nine-minute wonder in any case and besides, she added to herself, it wasn’t as if anyone would spot it was Juliet. After all, she was wearing a beard and that was amazing, because there was no way that a woman in a beard should look attractive, but it worked. Imagine that catching on! You’d have to spend twice as long at the hairdresser’s. Someone’s going to think about that, she thought.
There was no sound from the Stollops’ house. She wasn’t surprised. Juliet did not have much grasp of the idea of punctuality. Glenda popped next door to see how the widow Crowdy was and then headed, in the drizzling rain, back to her safe haven of the Night Kitchen. Halfway there an all but forgotten pressure in her bodice reminded her of her duty and she dared go into the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork.
Trembling with fear and defiance, she walked up to a clerk at his desk, slapped fifty warm dollars in front of him and said, ‘I want to start a bank account, all right?’ She left five minutes later with a shiny account book and the delightful recollection that a posh-looking man at a posh-looking desk in a posh-looking building had called her madam, and enjoyed the sensation until it ran into the reality that madam had better roll up her sleeves and get to work.
There was a lot to do. She made pies at least a day ahead so that they could mature, and Mister Nutt’s appetite last night had put quite a large dent in her pantry. But at least there wouldn’t be much demand for pies tomorrow night. Even the wizards didn’t call for a pie after a banquet.
Ah, yes, the banquet, she thought, as the rain started to soak into her coat. The banquet. She would have to see about the banquet. Sometimes if you wanted to go to the ball you had to be your own fairy godmother.
There were several obstacles requiring the touch of a magic wand: Mrs Whitlow did indeed operate a certain kind of apartheid between the Night and Day Kitchens, as if one flight of stairs actually changed who you were. The next difficulty was that Glenda did not have, according to the traditions of the university, the right kind of figure to serve at table, at least when there were visitors, and, lastly, Glenda did not have the temperament for serving at table. It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to smile; she was quite capable of smiling, if you gave her enough warning, but she positively hated having to smile at people who actually merited, instead, a flick around the earhole with a napkin. She hated taking away plates of unfinished food. She always had to suppress a tendency to say things like ‘Why did you put it on your plate if you didn’t intend to finish it?’ and ‘Look, you