Conversations on the night beat.
Disclaimer:
I refuse point blank to own up to any responsibility for the following piece. I wasn't there, you can't prove anything and I don't even own a Nobby Nobbs or Sergeant Colon. You want them, you talk to Terry Pratchett. He has several. Not that I'm grassing him up or anything…
DDDDD
The Clacks winked like someone with an ill-fitting contact lens having a problem dislodging an errant eyelash. Above the rain soaked streets of Ankh Morpork, thousands of urgent messages flashed through the night, speaking of business deals, deaths in the family, 'we're so sorry for your loss' (applicable for both situations), 'clacks your mother, she's worried about you' and countless other vital pieces of information. Since Moist van Lipwig's 're-allocation' of the seniority of the post office and his exposure of Gilt's embezzlement bonanza (which was a bugger to send on the clacks – too many 'z's…), the towers had undergone a major refit and the Clacks was back in business. Real business. Earning Lord Vetinari real money.
Even when the world slept, business still insisted on being done.
Sergeant Fred Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs fell rhythmically into that part-shuffle, part-stroll that all policemen the world over had mastered. Not too fast, not too slow. Get it right and you could keep the pace up all night. Get it wrong and it looked like you were chewing a toffee with an orifice that was normally meant to expel the waste remains of such sweet treats rather than munch on them.
For once, it really was a quiet night. Even the Shades were down on their normal quota of hoi paloy and unregistered thieves. They'd stopped off at All Al's emporium and whilst 'conducting enquiries' warmed themselves with a bowl of the best Slumpy this side of the Hub. All Al was generous to the Watch in that, 'you'll get a bowl of Slumpy but bugger all else' way that pillars of the underworld community often adopted.
As they wandered through the unusually quiet streets, Nobby glanced up at the flashing Clacks. "At least someone's busy tonight then." He sighed and patted his stomach. "Cracking bowl of Slumpy, that."
"Yeah. Al's a pillar of the community."
"Never understood that. I thought that was…well, politicians and all."
"Nah mate. That's pillocks of the community. Pillars are decent, upstanding people." Sergeant Colon put his hand up to his mouth and let out the most delicate of burps in appreciation of Al's famous Slumpy.
"Don't Al ever lie down, then?"
"What?"
"On account of him being upstanding all the time?"
"It's a figure of speech, Nobby. A metaphor. It means…" Sergeant Colon struggled for the right metaphor. "It means, when he is standing, he's usually doing something decent for the community. Hence upstanding pillar of the community is always preceded by the adjective 'decent'."
Nobby's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You bin readin' again, Sarge?"
"When have you ever known me to read, Nobbs? Captain Carrot told me. About adjectives. And nouns. And stuff."
"What's a nown?"
"Noun, Nobby, not nown. A nown is one of them weird little critters with too many legs and a penchant for eating wood."
"That's a termite."
"Who's the one who knows what an adjective is here, Nobby?" Sergeant Colon pulled himself up to his full height*.
"You, Sarge."
"So do you think you're in a position to correct me on the correct use of a noun? Or indeed the definition of a nown?"
"No Sarge."
Colon sniffed. "Exactly. No Sarge. No, you are not."
"Could be a clown, though. Ya know. One of them foreign ones."
"What could be?"
"A nown."
"What, the ones who juggle lumber axes, stick spikes in their arses and dress weird?"
"Yer. Them lot. Cirque du Sollis or sommat. Saw 'em once. Frightened the bejesus out of the little'uns, so they did. Almost as bad as real clowns." Nobby shuddered and spat on the floor. You didn't mention clowns unless you really had to.
"Don't hold with that foreign type of entertainment." Colon sniffed disapprovingly. He was taking a chance. Sniffing too hard in this part of the Shades could get you a quick trip to the plague clinic or a sharp 'nose-ectomy' courtesy of one of the districts many 'street barbers'**
Nobby realised that unless he did something pretty quickly, Sergeant Colon would launch into one of his diatribes on how 'these foreigners were comin' here, taking our jobs' speeches that always made Nobby feel deeply uncomfortable. Nobby liked the Sarge – he had had his back more times than he cared to remember. But the older man's latent racism made him feel awkward. He'd read those kinds of comments in the Daily Clacks, the latest newspaper to rival the Ankh Morpork Times. The Daily Clacks was full of articles lamenting the 'good old days' when everyone knew their place, the City still had a royal family and those pesky foreigners were safely somewhere else. The letters page always had mail from 'Disgusted of Dolly Sisters' that inevitably had the line 'I'm not a racist but…' at some point. And they always had adverts for collector's editions of plates depicting cats, flowers or scenes from historic battles. And giant slippers that you put both feet in. Right now, one of those giant slippers seemed awfully tempting to Corporal Nobbs. His boots were the wrong side of last year age-wise and starting to let in water. At least, he hoped it was water. In the Shades, you could never tell…
"I tell ya what though, Sarge, old Al's Slumpy?" He grinned and dislodged a bit of Slumpy from a cavernous back tooth. "The mutt's nuts, mate! The mutt's bleedin' nuts!"
"Depends on what kind of mutt you're talking about, Nobby."
"What?"
"Well, if we're talking a pedigree Quirm Toy Poodle with a name like Prince Fredrick Fru-Fru Sasquash Montezooma the Third but is know to all as Popsy, then yeah, definitely the mutt's nuts."
"I fear to ask…"
"But…" Colon carried on unabashed.*** "If it's a flea-ridden bitza with creeping alopecia, half its teeth missing and its nuts had been unceremoniously removed in a threshing accident on the Genuan Cabbage plains and replaced with tin ones, then no, the comparison falls down somewhat." Colon's ability to dissect a metaphor was unrivalled in the Watch. Unrivalled in that nobody ever bothered to do anything even remotely similar.
"Riiiight…" Nobby scowled. "So if the mutt is, in fact, nutless, it couldn't be used as an object of comparison?"
"Exactly!"
Nobby shrugged. "Fair point. How about the cat's dangly bits?"
"Nobby…"
"The camel's humps? The sheep's…um, do sheep have bits?"
"The boy ones do, yeah."
"I've got it! The monkey's nuts!"
"Don't let the librarian hear you say that, mate. He's deadly accurate with a peanut, that Simian."
"The dog's boll…"
"Shall we change the subject, Nobby?" Sergeant Colon had had enough of metaphors. One metaphor a day was the limit for Nobby. They turned the corner into Pseudopolis Alley. "Bloody quiet tonight."
"Eerily so. Almost too quiet, you'd say."
Nobby glanced up at the nearest Clacks tower. "Clacks is busy, though."
"Commerce never sleeps, Nobby."
"Is commerce a thing?"
"Oh yes. A big, fat, wobbly thing with lots of fingers in lots of pies." Colon mentally chastised himself for using another metaphor. This could get ugly…
"Why's it got its fingers in pies? Wouldn't they get all sticky?"
"For the love of Om…" Colon sighed. He considered himself an expert in metaphors, hence his use of them with gay abandon and reckless inaccuracy. But what truly phased him was Nobby's instinctive ability to take them literally…
"Mind you, if Commerce stuck a finger in one of Dibbler's pies, it would probably fall off…" Nobby mused aloud, ignoring Sergeant Colon's pointed sighs. "Does it go around sticking its fingers in pies to see which ones are cherry, or to see how hot they are? Because if it's to see how hot they are then that would be a bit daft if you ask me, on account of the pie might be really hot, ya know, just come out of the oven?"
"Nobby, please…"
"…And in that case Commerce would have a hand full of burnt fingers, a load of pies with holes in, he still wouldn't know which ones were cherry and where would that get anyone?" Nobby stopped, realising that Sergeant Colon had halted under a street lamp and was just staring at him. He turned and faced the Sarge. "What?"
"You're one of Om's special people, aren't you, Nobby?"
"I like to think so, yes."
Sergeant Colon shook his head and extracted the dog-end of a cigarette from behind an ear. Cupping his hands in time-honoured tradition, he lit the limp tube, carefully tilting it upwards to prevent the dust dry tobacco from cascading out of the end before he'd had a chance to reap any of the benefits.
"Sarge?"
"Yes, Nobby?" Colon shook out the match and discarded it.
"Ever wonder what would life would be like if you weren't a copper?"
Colon stopped dead. His face slowly transformed from frustrated resignation at Corporal Nobbs inability to grasp even the simplest of metaphors to puzzled disbelief at the question. "What?"
"Ya know. If we weren't coppers. What would you be?" Nobby joined his Sarge for a fag break, extracting his own dog-end from behind one large and surprisingly clean ear. Nobby had spent his childhood being told to wash behind his ears and, being the literal fellow that he was, had maintained that personal habit even once he'd put the beatings, the drunken rows, the casual violence and sense of menace of homelife behind him and moved to the Shades.
"I…I…I…" Colon was flummoxed. He was a copper. He'd always been a copper. He hadn't learnt to walk, he'd learnt to patrol. The thought of being anything other than a copper was inconceivable. "Um…"
"I'd be a seamstress." Nobby gazed into space with a small smile on his lips.
Colon choked on his dog-end. A 'Seamstress' was not someone who made clothes in Ankh Morpork. Lord Vetinari had legalised prostitution and the 'seamstresses' who ran the brothels in Ankh's red light district were now considered the most respectable of unrespectable ladies. The business was regulated, monitored and they even had their own Guild. Ladies of 'negotiable charm' were now considered pillars of the community. Only with far less upstanding…
Colon choked again as Nobby slapped him hard on the back. "You ought to give up that sailor's shag you smoke, Sarge. Rough as rats, it is."
Once he had composed himself, Colon braced, ready to ask the inevitable question. "Um, Nobby? When you say seamstress…"
"…Ya know, sewing? Me ma taught me how to sew when I was a nipper. Nimble fingers, me. I just love all the fabrics, what you can do with 'em, ruches, ruffles, double-stitched, cross-stitched, Quirm lace…" Nobby's face took on a dreamy expression as his inner world filled to the gentle rustle of taffeta and silk. "I'd open up an emporium. One of them posh ones. For ladies."
Sergeant Colon breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Thank Om for that! I thought you meant…"
"What, Sarge?"
"Um, never mind. Look, it's getting late and it's well past our tea-break."
"We only stopped off at Al's half an hour ago."
"Half an hour? That long? My goodness, doesn't time fly when you're not having fun!" Sergeant Colon stamped manfully on the dog-end to prove a point and, shooting a suspicious glance^ at Nobby, stood up straight and glanced up at the Watch Clacks. "Oh, look. An all units. Better get a wiggle on, Nobby."
"Righty ho, Sarge." Nobby Nobbs stamped out his own cigarette and grinned. "Back to protecting and serving, right, Sarge?"
Colon looked relieved and nodded. "Back to protecting and serving Nobby. Oh, and Nobby?" Nobby looked quizzically at his comrade. "Best not to mention the seamstress thing to anyone else, right? I mean, the lads might take it as a joke and I'd hate to see them teasing you on account of ignorant assumption," he said, skilfully covering up his own, earlier lapse into ignorant assumption.
Nobby grinned. "Aw, Sarge! You've always got my back, ain't ya?"
"What gets said on the night beat, stays on the night beat, Nobby." Colon grinned. "Shall we?"
They patrolled off in the direction of the 'all units', timing it just right to get there just as all the real violence had finished and it was a simple matter of tidying up lose ends, broken windows and broken dwarfs…
The end.
*He kept some of his height in reserve most of the time, ready to pull it out and add it onto the top of his head when the time came to look impressive and imposing. This worked most of the time. Unless he was standing next to Sergeant Detritus. When even his full height brought him up to just below Detritus's elbow…
** Or 'Cut-throats', as they were more commonly known.
*** Told you it was a quiet night in the Shades, didn't I? It was rare that someone went unabashed in the Shades…
^ Which later sued for police brutality.