with commendable speed, sir,’ said Corporal Nobbs. ‘Despite it being Hogswatchnight
and there being a lot of strange things happening and most
importantly it being the occasion of our Hogswatchly piss-up, sir. But this is al right
because Washpot, that’s Constable Visit here, he doesn’t drink, sir, it being against his
religion, and although I do drink, sir, I volunteered to come because it is my civic duty,
sir.’ Nobby tore off a salute, or what he liked to believe was a salute. He did not add,
‘And turning out for a rich bugger such as your good self is bound to put the officer
concerned in the way of a seasonal bottle or two or some other tangible evidence of
gratitude,’ because his entire stance said it for him Even Nobby’s ears could look
suggestive.
Unfortunately, Mr Crumley wasn’t in the right receptive frame of mind. He stood up
and waved a shaking finger towards the top of the stairs.
‘I want you to go up there,’ he said, ‘and arrest him!’
‘Arrest who, sir?’ said Corporal Nobbs.
‘The Hogfather!’
‘What for, sir?’
‘Because he’s sitting up there as bold as brass in his Grotto, giving away presents!’
Corporal Nobbs thought about this.
‘You haven’t been having a festive drink, have you, sir?’ he said hopeful y.
‘I do not drink!’
‘Very wise, sir,’ said Constable Visit. ‘Alcohol is the tarnish of the soul. Ossory, Book
Two, Verse Twentyfour.’
‘Not quite up to speed here, sir,’ said Corporal Nobbs, looking perplexed. ‘I thought
theHogfather is s’posed to give away stuff, isn’t he?’ This time Mr Crumley had to stop
and think. Up until now he hadn’t quite sorted things out in his head, other than
recognizing their essential wrongness.
‘This one is an Impostor!’ he declared. ‘Yes, that’s right! He smashed his way into
here!’
‘Y’know, I always thought that,’ said Nobby. ‘I thought, every year, the Hogfather
spends a fortnight sitting in a wooden grotto in a shop in Ankh-Morpork? At his busy
time, too? Hah! Not likely! Probably just some old man in a beard, I thought.’
‘I meant … he’s not the Hogfather we usual y have,’ said Crumley, struggling for
firmer ground. ‘He just barged in here”
‘Oh, a different impostor? Not the real impostor at al ?’
‘Wel … yes … no. . .’
‘And started giving stuff away?’ said Corporal Nobbs.
‘That’s what I said! That’s got to be a Crime, hasn’t it?’
Corporal Nobbs rubbed his nose.
‘Wel , nearly,’ he conceded, not wishing to total y relinquish the chance of any festive
remuneration. Realization dawned. ‘He’s giving away your stuff, sir?’
‘No! No, he brought it in with him!’
‘Ah? Giving away your stuff, now, if he was doing that, yes, I could see the problem.
That’s a sure sign of crime, stuff going missing. Stuff
turning up, weerl l, that’s a tricky one. Unless it’s stuff like arms and legs, o’ course.
We’d be on safer ground if he was nicking stuff, sir, to tel you the truth.’
‘This is a shop,’ said Mr Crumley, final y getting to the root of the problem. ‘We do not give Merchandise away. How can we expect people to buy things if some Person is
giving them away? Now please go and get him out of here.’
‘Arrest the Hogfather, style of thing?’
‘Yes!’
‘On Hogswatchnight?’
‘Yes!’
‘In your shop?’
‘Yes!’
‘In front of al those kiddies?’
‘Y–‘ Mr Crumley hesitated. To his horror, he realized that Corporal Nobbs, against al
expectation, had a point. ‘You think that wil look bad?’ he said.
‘Hard to see how it could look good, sir.’
‘Could you not do it surreptitiously?’ he said.
‘Ah, wel , surreptition, yes, we could give that a try,’ said Corporal Nobbs. The
sentence hung in the air with its hand out.
‘You won’t find me ungrateful,’ said Mr Crumley, at last.
‘Just you leave it to us,’ said Corporal Nobbs, magnanimous in victory. ‘You just nip
down to your office and treat yourself to a nice cup of tea and we’l sort this out in no
time. You’l be ever so grateful.’
Crumley gave him a look of a man in the grip of serious doubt, but staggered away
nonetheless. Corporal Nobbs rubbed his hands together.
‘You don’t have Hogswatch back where you come from do you, Washpot?’ he said,
as they climbed the stairs to the first floor. ‘Look at this carpet, you’d think a pig’d
pissed on it . . .’
‘We cal it the Fast of St Ossory,’ said Visit, who was from Omnia. ‘But it is not an
occasion for superstition and crass commercialism. We simply get together in family
groups for a prayer meeting and a fast.’
‘What, turkey and chicken and that?’
‘A fast, Corporal Nobbs. We don’t eat anything.’
‘Oh, right. Wel , each to his own, I s’pose. And at least you don’t have to get up early
in the morning and find that the nothing you’ve got is too big to fit in the oven. No
presents neither?’
They stood aside hurriedly as two children scuttled down the stairs carrying a large
toy boat between them.
‘It is sometimes appropriate to exchange new religious pamphlets, and of course
there are usual y copies of the Book of Ossory for the children,’ said Constable Visit.
‘Sometimes with il ustrations,’ he added, in the guarded way of a man hinting at
licentious pleasures.
A smal girl went past carrying a teddy bear larger than herself. It was pink.
‘They always gives me bath salts,’ complained Nobby. ‘And bath soap and bubble
bath and herbal bath lumps and tons of bath stuff and I
can’t think why, ‘cos it’s not as if I hardly ever has a bath. You’d think they’d take the
hint, wouldn’t you?’
‘Abominable, I cal it,’ said Constable Visit.
The first floor was a mob.
‘Huh, look at them. Mr Hogfather never brought me anything when I was a kid,’ said
Corporal Nobbs, eyeing the children gloomily. ‘I used to hang up my stocking every
Hogswatch, regular. Al that ever happened was my dad was sick in it once.’ He
removed his helmet.
Nobby was not by any measure a hero, but there was the sudden gleam in his eye of
someone who’d seen altogether too many empty stockings plus one rather ful and
dripping one. A scab had been knocked off some wound in the corrugated little organ
of his soul.
‘I’m going in,’ he said.
In between the University’s Great Hal and its main door is a rather smal er circular
hal or vestibule known as Archchancel or Bowel ‘s Remembrance, although no one
now knows why, or why an extant bequest pays. for one smal currant bun and one
copper penny to be placed on a high stone shelf on one wal every second
Wednesday.15 Ridcul y stood in the middle of the floor, looking upwards.
‘Ten me, Senior Wrangler, we never invited any women to the Hogswatchnight
Feast, did we?’
‘Of course not, Archchancel or,’ said the Senior Wrangler. He looked up in the dust-
covered rafters, wondering what had caught Ridcul y’s eye. ‘Good heavens, no. They’d
spoil everything. I’ve always said so.’
‘And al the maids have got the evening off until midnight?’
‘A very generous custom, I’ve always said,’ said the Senior Wrangler, feeling his
neck crick.
‘So why, every year, do we hang a damn great bunch of mistletoe up there?’
The Senior Wrangler turned in a circle, stil staring upwards.
‘Welt er … it’s … wel , it’s … it’s symbolic, Archchancel or.’
‘Ah?’
The Senior Wrangler felt that something more was expected. He groped around in
the dusty attics of his education.
‘Of … the leaves, d’y’see … they’re symbolic of … of green, d’y’see whereas the
berries, in fact, yes, the berries symbolize . . . symbolize white. Yes. White and green.
Very … symbolic.’
He waited. He was not, unfortunately, disappointed.
‘What of?’
The Senior Wrangler coughed.
‘I’m not sure there has to be an of,’ he said.
‘Ah? So,’ said the Archchancel or, thoughtful y,
‘it could be said that. the white and green symbolize a smal parasitic plant?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said the Senior Wrangler.
‘So mistletoe, in fact, symbolizes mistletoe?’
‘Exactly, Archchancel or,’ said the Senior Wrangler, who was now just hanging on.
‘Funny thing, that,’ said Ridcul y, in the same thoughtful tone of voice. ‘That
statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to ful y comprehend every particle of
its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?’
‘It could be both,’ said the Senior Wrangler desperately.
‘And that comment,’ said Ridcul y, ‘is either very perceptive, or very trite.’
‘It might be bo–‘
‘Don’t push it, Senior Wrangler.’
There was a hammering on the outer door.
‘Ah, that’l be the wassailers,’ said the Senior Wrangler, happy for the distraction.
‘They cal on us first every year. I personal y have always liked “The Lily-white Boys”,