Terry Pratchett - Snuff

Vimes picked up his knife and fork. ‘Please don’t ask me again,’ he sighed. In his head meanwhile a little voice said, Lord Rust tells me there is nothing here for me. Oh dear, I’d better find out what it is, what?

He cleared his throat and said, ‘Sybil, did you actually look at that book I’m reading to Young Sam?’

‘Yes, dear. Felicity Beedle is the most famous children’s writer in the world. She’s been at it for years. She wrote Melvin and the Enormous Boil, Geoffrey and the Magic Pillow Case, The Little Duckling Who Thought He Was an Elephant …’

‘Did she write one about an elephant who thought he was a duckling?’

‘No, Sam, because that would be silly. Oh, she also wrote Daphne and the Nose Pickers , and Gaston’s Enormous Problem won for her the Gladys H. J. Ferguson award — the fifth time she’s been given it. She gets children interested in reading, you see?’

‘Yes,’ said Vimes, ‘but they’re reading about poo and brain-dead ducklings!’

‘Sam, that’s part of the commonality of mankind, so don’t be so prudish. Young Sam’s a country boy now, and I’m very proud of him, and he likes books. That’s the whole point! Miss Beedle also finances scholarships for the Quirm College for Young Ladies. She must be quite wealthy now, but I hear she’s taken Apple Tree Cottage — you can practically see it from here, it’s on the side of the hill — and I think it right, if you don’t mind, of course, that we invite her here to the Hall.’

‘Of course,’ said Vimes, though his don’tmindedness was entirely due to the way his wife’s question had been phrased and the subtle resonances that Miss Beedle’s attendance was a done deal.

Vimes slept a lot better that night, partly because he could feel that somewhere in the universe near by there was a clue waiting for him to pull. That made his fingers itch already.

In the morning, as he had promised, he took Young Sam horse-riding. Vimes could ride, but hated doing so. Nevertheless, falling off the back of a pony on to one’s head was a skill that every young man should learn if only so that he resolved never to do it again.

The rest of the day, however, did not work out well. Vimes, suspicions filling his mind, was metaphorically and only just short of literally dragged by Sybil to see her friend Ariadne, the lady blessed with the six daughters. In actual fact there were only five visible in the chintzy drawing room when Sybil and he were ushered in. He was feted as ‘the Dear Brave Commander Vimes’ — he hated that shit, but under Sybil’s benign but careful gaze he was wise enough not to say so, at least not in those precise words. And so he grinned and bore it while they fluttered around him like large moths, and he waved away yet more teacakes, and cups of tea that would have been welcome were it not that they looked and tasted like what proper tea turns into shortly after you drink it. As far as Sam Vimes was concerned, he liked tea, but tea was not tea if, even before drinking, you could see the bottom of the cup.

Still worse than the stuff he was being offered was the conversation, which inclined towards bonnets, a subject on which his ignorance was not just treasured but venerated. And besides, his breeches were chafing: wretched things, but Sybil had insisted, saying that he looked very smart in them, just like a country gentleman. Vimes had to suppose the country gentleman had different arrangements in the groinal department.

There was, besides himself and Lady Sybil, a young Omnian curate, wisely dressed in a voluminous black robe, which presumably presented no groinal problems. Vimes had no idea why the young man was there, but presumably the young ladies needed somebody to fill with weak tea, suspect scones and mindless twittering conversation when someone like Vimes wasn’t there. And it seemed that when the subject of bonnets lost its fascination the only other topics were legacies and the prospects for forthcoming balls. And so, inevitably, given his restlessness in female company, a growing disaffection for urine-coloured tea, and small talk that would barely be visible under a microscope, Vimes said, ‘Excuse me asking, ladies, but what is it that you actually, I mean actually do … For a living, I mean?’

This question elicited five genuinely blank looks. Vimes couldn’t tell the daughters one from the other, except the one called Emily, who certainly lodged in the mind and possibly also in doorways, and who now said, in the tones of one slightly out of her depth, ‘I do beg your pardon, commander, but I don’t think we understand what you just vouchsafed?’

‘I meant, well, how do you make a living? Are any of you in employment? How do you make your daily crust? What work do you do?’ Vimes could pick up nothing from Sybil, because he couldn’t see her face, but the girls’ mother was staring at him with gleeful fascination. Oh well, if he was going to get it in the neck he might as well get it all the way down. ‘I mean, ladies,’ he said, ‘how do you make your way in the world? How do you earn your keep? Apart from bonnets, do you have any skills — like cookery, for example?’

Another daughter, quite possibly Mavis, but Vimes was guessing, cleared her throat and said, ‘Fortunately, commander, we have servants for that sort of thing. We’re gentlewomen, you see? It would be quite, quite unthinkable for us to go into trade or commerce. The scandal! It’s just not done.’

By now there appeared to be a competition to see who could terminally baffle who, or possibly whom, first. But Vimes managed to say, ‘Don’t you have a sister in the timber business?’

It was amazing, he thought, that neither their mother nor Sybil was as yet adding anything to the conversation. And now another sister (possibly Amanda?) looked about to speak. Why in the world did they all wear those silly diaphanous dresses? You couldn’t hope to do a day’s work in something as skimpy as that. Amanda (possibly) said carefully, ‘I’m afraid our sister is a bit of an embarrassment to the family, your grace.’

‘What, for getting a job! Why?’

Another one of the girls, and Vimes was in fact getting really confused at this point, said, ‘Well, commander, she has no hope of making a good marriage now … er, not to a gentleman.’

This was becoming a tangle and so Vimes said, ‘Tell me, ladies, what is a gentleman?’

After some whispered conversation a sacrificial daughter said, very nervously, ‘We understand the gentleman is a man who does not have to sully his hands by working.’

Adamantium is said to be the strongest of all metals, but it would have bent around the patience of Sam Vimes as he said, with every syllable carefully smelted, ‘Oh, a layabout. And how do you go about snagging such a gentleman, pray?’

Now the girls looked as if they were indeed praying. One of them managed to say, ‘You see, commander, our dear late father was unlucky in the money market, and I’m afraid that until the death of Great-aunt Marigold, of whom we have expectations, there is, alas, no money for a dowry for any of us.’

The heavens held their breath while the concept of a dowry was explained to Sam Vimes, and ice formed on the windows as he sat in strangulated thought.

At last, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Ladies, the solution to your problem, in my opinion, would be to get off your quite attractive backsides, go out there in the world and make your own way! A dowry? You mean some man has to be paid to marry you? What century do you think you’re living in? Is it just me, or is it the most bloody stupid thing you could ever imagine?’ He glanced at the beautiful Emily and thought, good grief, men would line up on the lawn to fight one another, my dear. How come no one’s ever told you? Gentility is all very well, but practicality has its uses. Get out in the world and let the world see you and it might find a new word in its vocabulary such as, perhaps, ‘Wow!’ Aloud he continued, ‘Honestly, there are lots of jobs out there for a young lady with her wits about her. The Lady Sybil Free Hospital is always on the lookout for sharp girls to train as nurses, for example. Good pay, very fetching uniforms, and a fine chance of snagging a skilled young physician who is on the way to the top, especially if you get your boot behind him. Plus, of course, as a nurse you inherit an amazingly large amount of amusing and embarrassing stories about things which people put … Perhaps this is not the time, but anyway, there is also the possibility of becoming matron if you reach the specified weight. A very responsible job, of use to the community at large and giving you at the end of a long day the satisfaction that you have done some good in the world.’