‘Oh, it wasn’t great art,’ said Sir Reynold. ‘And the man was quite mad, of course. But somehow it spoke to people.’
‘I wish it’d say something to me,’ said Vimes. ‘You really don’t need to make tea for people, dear. One of the officers—’
‘Nonsense! We must be hospitable,’ said Sybil.
‘Of course people tried to copy it,’ said the curator, accepting a cup. ‘Oh dear, they hwere terrible! A painting fifty feet long and ten feet deep is really quite impossible to copy with any kind of accuraceah—’
‘Not if you lay it out on the ballroom floor and get a man to make you a pantograph,’ said Sybil, pouring tea. ‘This teapot really is a disgrace, Sam. Worse than the urn. Doesn’t anyone ever clean it out?’
She looked up at their faces. ‘Did I say something wrong?’ she said.
‘You made a copy of the Rascal?’ said Sir Reynold.
‘Oh, yes. The whole thing, to a scale of one in five,’ said Sybil. ‘When I was fourteen. It was a school project. We were doing dwarf history, you see, and, well, since we owned that painting it was too good to miss. You know what a pantograph is, don’t you? It’s a very simple way of making larger or smaller copies of a painting, using geometry, some wooden levers and a sharp pencil. Actually I did it as five panels ten feet square, that’s full size, to make sure I got all the detail, and then I did the one-fifth scale version to display it as poor Mr Rascal wanted it displayed. I got full marks from Miss Turpitude. She was our maths teacher, you know, she wore her hair in a bun with a pair of compasses and a ruler stuck in it? She used to say that a girl who knew how to use a set square and protractor would go a long way in life.’
‘What a shame you no longer have it!’ said Sir Reynold.
‘Why should you say that, Sir Reynold?’ said Sybil. ‘I’m sure I’ve still got it somewhere. I had it hanging up from the ceiling of my room for some time. Let me think… Did we take it with us when we moved? I’m sure—’ She looked up brightly. ‘Ah, yes. Have you ever been up into the attics here, Sam?’
‘No!’ said Vimes.
‘Now’s the time, then.’
‘I’ve never been on a Girls’ Night Out before,’ said Cheery, as they walked, a little uncertainly, through the night-time city. ‘Was that last bit supposed to happen?’
‘What bit was that?’ said Sally.
‘The bit where the bar was set on fire.’
‘Not usually,’ said Angua.
‘I’ve never seen men fight over a woman before,’ Cheery went on.
‘Yeah, that was something, wasn’t it?’ said Sally. They’d dropped Tawneee off at her home. She’d been in quite a thoughtful frame of mind.
‘And all she did was smile at a man,’ said Cheery.
‘Yes,’ said Angua. She was trying to concentrate on walking.
‘It’d be a bit of a shame for Nobby if she lets that go to her head, though,’ said Cheery.
Save me from talkative druks… drinks… drunks, Angua thought. She said, ‘Yes, but what about Miss Pushpram? She’s thrown some quite expensive fish at Nobby over the years.’
‘We’ve struck a blow for ugly womanhood,’ Sally declared loudly. ‘Shoes, men, coffins… never accept the first one you see.’
‘Oh, shoes,’ said Cheery, ‘I can talk about shoes. Has anyone seen the new Yan Rockhammer solid copper slingbacks?’
‘Er, we don’t go to a metalworker for our footwear, dear,’ said Sally. ‘Oh… I think I’m going to be sick…’
‘Serves you right for drinking… vine,’ said Angua maliciously.
‘Oh, ha ha,’ said the vampire from the shadows. ‘I’m perfectly fine with sarcastic pause “vine”, thank you! What I shouldn’t have drunk was sticky drinks with names made up by people with less sense of humour than, uh, excuse me… oh, noooo…’
‘Are you all right?’ said Cheery.
‘I’ve just thrown up a small, hilarious, paper umbrella…’
‘Oh dear.’
‘And a sparkler…’
‘Is that you, Sergeant Angua?’ said a voice in the gloom. A lantern was opened, and lit the approaching face of Constable Visit. As he drew near, she could just make out the thick wad of pamphlets under his other arm.
‘Hello, Washpot,’ she said. ‘What’s up?’
‘… looks like a twist of lemon…’ said a damp voice from the shadows.
‘Mister Vimes sent me to search the bars of iniquity and low places of sin for you,’ said Visit.
‘And the literature?’ said Angua. ‘By the way, the words “nothing personal” could have so easily been added to that last sentence.’
‘Since I was having to tour the temples of vice, sergeant, I thought I could do Om’s holy work at the same time,’ said Visit, whose indefatigable evangelical zeal triumphed over all adversity.[16]Sometimes whole bars full of people would lie down on the floor with the lights out when they heard he was coming down the street.
There were sounds of retching from the darkness.
‘“Woe unto those who abuseth the vine”,’ said Constable Visit. He caught the expression on Angua’s face and added: ‘No offence meant.’
‘We’ve been through all that,’ moaned Sally.
‘What does he want, Washpot?’ said Angua.
‘It’s about Koom Valley again. He wants you back at the Yard.’
‘But we were stood down!’ Sally complained.
‘Sorry,’ said Visit cheerfully, ‘I reckon you’ve been stood up again.’
‘The story of my life,’ said Cheery.
‘Oh, well, I suppose we’d better go,’ said Angua, trying to disguise her relief.
‘When I say “the story of my life”, obviously I don’t mean the whole story,’ mumbled Cheery, apparently to herself, as she trailed behind them into a world blessedly without fun.
The Ramkins never threw anything away. There was something worrying about their attics, and it wasn’t just that they had a faint aroma of long-dead pigeon.
The Ramkins labelled things. Vimes had been into the big attics in Scoone Avenue to fetch down the rocking-horse and the cot and a whole box of elderly but much-loved soft toys, smelling of mothballs. Nothing that might ever be useful again was thrown away. It was carefully labelled and put in the attic.
Brushing aside cobwebs with one hand and holding up a lantern with the other, Sybil led the way past boxes of ‘men’s boots, various’, ‘Risible puppets, string & glove’, ‘Model Theatre and scenery’. Maybe that was the reason for their wealth: they bought things that were built to last, and they seldom, now, had to buy anything at all. Except food, of course, and even then Vimes would not have been surprised to see boxes labelled ‘apple cores, various’, or ‘leftovers, need eating up’.[17]
‘Ah, here we are,’ said Sybil, lifting aside a bundle of fencing foils and lacrosse sticks. She pulled a long, thick tube out into the light.
‘I didn’t colour it in, of course,’ she said as it was manhandled back to the stairs. ‘That would have taken for ever.’
Getting the heavy bundle down to the canteen took some effort and a certain amount of shoving, but eventually it was lifted on to the table and the crackling scroll removed.
While Sir Reynold unrolled the big ten-foot squares and enthused, Vimes pulled out the small-scale copy that Sybil had created. It was just small enough to fit on the table; he weighed down one end with a crusted mug and put a salt cellar on the other.
16
They say there’s one in every police station. Constable Visit-the-Ungodly-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets was enough for two.
17
That was a phrase of Sybil’s that got to him. She’d announce at lunch: ‘We must have the pork tonight, it needs eating up.’ Vimes never had an actual problem with this, because he’d been raised to eat what was put in front of him, and do it quickly, too, before someone else snatched it away. He was just puzzled at the suggestion that he was there to do the food a favour.