The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel

eight

“Howison, go out and fetch me some paupers. I want to make them vomit.”

Howison only stares.

“Vomiting, man, vomiting. I am doing an experiment on it.”

“Yes, your reverence. But what shall I say is the going rate?”

“Oh, God dammit, man! It’s not as if they’ll take permanent harm. Would they do it for a penny?”

“I doubt it, sir. If you’re going to make a man throw up, you must at least give him the price of a meal. Threepence, I’d say. Though a woman would do it for less, and you can always find an Irishman who’ll undercut the rate for a job.”

“Females and Irishmen let it be, then.” He goes away grunting, wondering to himself if Irishwomen would be cheaper still.

He has a theory that it is the action of the diaphragm that produces vomiting, not, as some jimmy idiots maintain, the action of the stomach. It is the diaphragm, that puissant muscle, contracting itself and dipping into the cavity of the abdomen … but how to prove it? You would have to feed a subject an emetic, then paralyse the diaphragm. He cannot imagine what physiological mayhem would ensue during the experiment, if his theory is correct.

Moving day. They are leaving Spring Gardens for new rooms on Piccadilly, at the sign of the Hampshire Hod. Joe is hovering between two possibilities: either load everything onto the Giant and walk him round, or hire a carrier. The first course is cheaper in the short term, but has the long-term disadvantage that the Giant will be shown off free.

“We might as well auction this swivelling mahogany tea-table,” Joe said. “’Tisn’t as if we could afford to treat ourselves to tea.”

“How can’t afford?” the Giant said.

“It may have escaped your imperial notice, but since the dog days our trade has declined.”

“We are victim to fresh sensations,” Bitch Mary said. “Come to town for the fall.”

“Charlie could keep us in tea,” said Pybus. “He has a ton of money, I have seen it. Or at least, I’ve seen the great bag that it’s in.”

“Yes,” said the Giant. “Joe, I must broach again this question of a strongbox.”

From the earliest days, Joe had encouraged the Giant to keep his money with him at all times, saying, “Who would dare rob a giant?” The Giant had said, “Should we not have an iron-girt strongbox?” Vance: “The strongest box is vulnerable to the ingenious London thieves. If you were at home and on guard, there would be no need for the device, and if you walked abroad, you could not carry it with you. It would be a social inconvenience. It would look gauche. No, better keep your cash on your person.”

Now, Joe Vance, who was no more a fortune-teller than you or me, had dimly foreseen a day when he might be the happier for this arrangement, without being able to imagine precisely why. Since the Giant had hardly been allowed out to spend anything, he had now accumulated an amount that Claffey and Pybus could only guess at, a sum that was secret between Joe and his account book. Their fingers and eyes might have been tempted to stray; but O’Brien slept with his savings for a pillow, while Vance kept his ledger under locks.

The day of the move, Bitch Mary sat crying in her corner. “Come with us,” said Pybus. “Ah, do, dear Bitch.”

“I cannot. I have promised to work for the landlord for a penny a day.”

“Joe Vance will give you a penny a day, and more.”

“But I have contracted my work, until I have paid off a debt.”

“What debt?”

The girl’s brow wrinkled. “I hardly know. Bride knows.”

“Whose debt is it? That bawd herself?”

“Bride was a mother to me,” Mary said, “when I came off the boat. True woman of Ireland, she plucked me from the quayside and certain ruin, for I was being enticed to go away with a vendor of maidenheads. Bride took me to a shelter and gave me bread and a blanket, and she and the blind man, who is called Ferris, brought me to London together. I lodged then at Henrietta Street, until I came to this place, one penny per day, clean straw and my food all found. As for the debt, I don’t know whose it is, but I know I am bound to it, and if I go with you to the sign of the Hampshire Hod the landlord will come after me and fetch me back and knock my teeth out, for so he always promised if I strayed away.”

“Who is the landlord?” Pybus said.

“His name’s Kane, he’s a Derry man.”

Pybus was shocked. “One of our own?”

“Of course. Or why would your agent Joe Vance be doing business with him?”

Pybus thought, this is a poor state of affairs. He waited till Claffey came in. Claffey had a white moustache and beard, from drinking milk from a bucket he had seen standing in the yard. Pybus didn’t like to mention it, but it was hard to concentrate on the conversation. “Mary won’t come,” he said, “she’s got a debt, she don’t know how great.”

“A debt?” Claffey said. “That’s not good news. She’s young for a debt.” He snivelled hard—the morning was dank and rheumy—and Pybus saw the milk-vapour rise towards a nostril, as if it might ascend upwards to his brain. It was not hard to imagine Claffey an infant. Fists clenched, beating the breast. His hair sparse—as now—his heels drumming while he sucked a rag.

Pybus blinked. His attention had been elsewhere. Claffey was saying, “ … leave it then. I thought her a tender little morsel, though she has hardly any tittles, but if she comes with a debt I shall be wrapping my bundle and on the road elsewhere.”

Pybus went to the Giant. “Bitch Mary has a debt,” he said. “She is forced to slave.”

“Let it be paid, let it be paid,” said the Giant. But then he flopped back, his great head subsiding onto his store of money. More and more he wanted to sleep these days, and less and less did he fight the impulse. His strong snores drove Pybus from the door.

Pybus said to Vance, “Bitch Mary has a debt.”

“So she does” was the genial response. “And must work to pay it.”

“But for how many years?” Pybus said.

Joe shrugged. “Who knows how many? And should she sicken and die, another will pay it in her place.” He stood up and stretched. “Time to shift ourselves,” he said. “Come on, boy, why are you standing with your mouth ajar? Hurry up and box our effects, the carrier will be here in a half-hour.”

For Joe had opted for medium-term profit, choosing not to parade the Giant through the streets with a close-stool on his shoulder and their bird cage and siskins dangling from one finger. “Rouse up, Charlie,” Vance shouted from the doorway; this failing, he crouched down on the floor, and bellowed in the Giant’s ear.

The Giant turned over, muttering, and his arm flailed, and his blanket lifted like a galleon’s sail filled with stormy air. Whoosh! He sat up. Startled awake. “Would you consider, Joe, that you pay me the proper respect?”

“Due to what?”

“Due to a prodigy and a scholar.”

“Shite and shite again!” said Joe. “Your school was in the hedge, and when the English cut it down you had to confess your learning complete. Your scholarship consists of a few Latin tags and your native talent for talking that which I above mentioned.”

The Giant yawned. Joe was tapping his timepiece. “Get up off that floor. From noon today this patch of floor reverts to the Derry man, and he has already let it to a merman and his school.”

“What Derry man?” asked the Giant. He rubbed his eyes, tentatively. They felt as if they were bulging out of his skull. “What merman? What school?”

An hour later, they were at the door and ready to go. Joe said, “Look, considering that we’ve gone to the expense of hiring a cart in order to keep you sub rosa and in camera—”

“Who’s the tag-man now?” The Giant smirked.

“—can’t you stoop double? And we’ll wrap your head in a sack?”

“Wrap your head in a brick, Joe.” The Giant took a swig from the chased silver flask he kept always in his pocket. He waited till the warmth hit him, just beneath his clammy and floating breastbone. At once he felt strengthened, from the inside out. He swigged again. Waited. Felt a resurgence there, a little stir of dead nerves. His feet, these days, were increasingly far away. His fists also. He swept up one fingertip, and bringing it through a vast arch placed it not unprecisely on Joe Vance’s shoulder. “Come along, thou great classicist. Down to Piccadilly we go, tag, rag, and bobtail.”

He thought, why should you wrap my head in a sack? When God has wrapped it in the clouds?

“Still,” Claffey had said. His narrow eyes downcast, his red knuckles kneading.

“Still. Debt may not be so much. Maybe she cannot count.”

“Don’t think of it, Francis.”

Joe Vance had never before used his familiar name. He felt flattered.

“Put it to yourself this way. The landlord has been paid a sum down, not for me to guess at what it might be. Call it a retainer, call it what you like. He contracts to feed her and give her an easy scrubbing job, keep her for a year or whenever she gets a bit of hair below and a bit of swelling up top. Then she can be traded out, and the investment gets paid.”

Claffey rubbed his head. “Do that much more,” Joe said, “and you’ll cause another bald spot. I’ve never known London wear out a man’s hair so fast.”

“I thought,” Claffey said, “that there was a prime trade in little skinless flesh—I mean, not heads, but little girls. So I was told by a man I met in Dover Street. I was told that there are gents who will pay five guineas to force a nine-year-old.”

“You thought you could pass off Mary as nine?”

“She’s very small and low.”

“Oh yes, but Bride Caskey—”

“Is that what she calls herself?”

“Bride, who has the experience, says that she will not do as a nine-year-old or even a twelve-year-old, for those gentlemen want the appearance of innocence if not the reality, and she says Mary hasn’t got it. She says she is tractable as all these girls are, but that she looks puzzled, when she should look frightened. That she will insist on talking, when she should be dumb.”

“And so?”

“So Bride thinks it’s best to fatten her a year, and wait. Till she gets to an age when her expression suits her better.”

Pybus hung around at Spring Gardens. He wanted to give Mary a flower. When she came out the door, though, she was rushing with her flaxen head down like a ram’s, and wearing a hat that belonged to somebody else. She stooped, dashed, she didn’t see him. She had a soiled bedsheet draped round her shoulders, flapping in the heavy air, and she had in her hand something weighted and clanking and skin-like, that is to say, a purse. He barred her way. “Pybus!” she said.

“Is that the Giant’s purse?”

“Did you not see O’Brien bear off his money?”

“True, I did.”

“So?”

“So is this the Derry man’s store?”

“This is my back-wages. Bride told me how much to take.”

“Are you coming with us to Piccadilly then?”

“I’ll be seeing you.” She tore off down the street, her plait whipping over her shoulder like a rope made of light.

The Giant did not care for the rooms at the Hampshire Hod. They lodged close under the roof, and he sometimes had to bend double, his arms swaying, his knuckles on his boots. Claffey declared he looked like the grand-daddy of an ape that he had seen on a chain at Bartholomew. What manner of man was this ape, the Giant asked, interested, and Claffey replied he must be a near relation of yours, Charlie, for he grunts as you do in your sleep, and though he was wide awake nobody could credit a word he spoke.

When that first evening Mary did not arrive, they were forced to make up their own beds and fetch up water. “The Derry man will have her under lock and key,” Joe Vance said. “We must get another scrubber.”

Pybus thought of the meeting in the street. He kept quiet. Good luck to her, he thought. “She might visit us,” said Jankin.

When Bitch Mary had not appeared in three days, Jankin began to fret. Joe tired of his whimpering, and gave him a back-hander. But he did agree that they could go out and walk the streets and call for her, and—stipulating only that they should wait until dusk—that the Giant should come with them. “For you can see over the buildings, Charlie,” Jankin said. “You can see into the back courts and over walls, and look into the high-up windows.”

So it was, in the hour after the lamps were lighted, that Londoners at their supper were surprised by the giant face of an Irishman appearing behind the foggy glass. Some cowered and some cursed, and some called for their watchdog to be let out. “Mary, Bitch Mary!” called Jankin, in his piping voice. Children ran after the Giant—barefoot, bow-legged, toothless children, wilder than any they had seen—and one of them threw a stone which struck Joe smartly on the shoulder. The band did not stop calling until they reached the fields to the west, where they sat down and rested on the rippling black grass. The cold crept into their bones, and the Giant winced as he flexed his fingers, and reached up to knead the back of his neck. They went home to bread and some maggoty cheese. Joe had ceased to order up suppers from the cookshop. “Face it,” he said, “trade’s not what it was. We cannot keep up our standard as aforesaid, unless O’Brien here puts his hand in his sack.”

“But the money is for my own purposes,” the Giant said. “It is not for laying out in mutton pies. That money is to go back to Ireland.”

“For why?” Pybus asked. “It’s not as if you’ve relatives living.”

“It’s for rebuilding Mulroney’s tavern. This time in dressed stone, with columns. That don’t fall down. With marble fireplaces, decorated with urns and wreaths. With lyre-backed chairs for furniture, and marquetry tables inlaid with the fruits of the season.”

“He has started to believe his own stories,” Claffey said.

“With looking glasses surmounted by gilded swans, and consoles supported by gilded ladies with wings and their upper torso bare. With clock cases trimmed with laurel leaves and the sun with a smiling face. With fire screens with Neapolitan vistas on them, and serpentine chests with secret drawers. And a frieze with the nine Muses dancing.”

The next night, Vance stayed at home sulking. He declared he had better things to do than be stoned by street-life. “Like what?” Claffey asked him slyly. “Sit and count the Giant’s money?”

Joe did not know whether the question expected the answer yes or the answer no.

He scowled at Claffey. “You get above your station, rag-arse.”

“I’ll be taking my sack with me,” the Giant said. His tone was serene. “That way, there can be no doubt whether anything has gone out of it, and there need be no harsh opinions. Tonight we look east, my brave fellows. I swear we will see a glint of Mary before the sun rises.”

For he looked to find her, this misty night, seated by the grey smudge of the river, her hair streaming like a comet, and the sky’s last deep blue pooling in her eyes; to find her in the nasty sites of Old Street by calling her name, or to hear her laugh in Clerkenwell. Oh Mary, darling of our hearts, have you set your foot on Pickle-Herring Stairs? Are you hawking tripe or picking rags, are you scouring ale-pots in Limehouse or sifting ash on the city’s fringe?

He left Jankin sitting on a wall somewhere, complaining of his feet, and lost Claffey to a game of dice and Pybus to a game of skittles. He stopped in a room of greased beams and smoky tallow, where he ate hot water gruel with some bread crumbled in it and garnished with pepper; he asked for a pat of butter, and the landlady said, what do you think this is, Holland House? He saw some bandits eyeing up his money bag, and stood to his full height, at which they left the room, muttering.

Later they were waiting for him, in strength, but he casually placed an elbow in the eye socket of one, tripped another bloodynose squash on the cobbles, and nudged a third into the wall head first. Then he picked up their leader—he was tired, and wanted an end of it—and tossed him into a midden.

It came on to rain. Ambling home down the Strand, towards midnight, he glanced into a back court, and under a dripping gable he saw a woman he recognised, but it was not Bitch Mary. He had seen her last in Ireland, stepping between the puddles, her child riding high in her belly. He could not be mistaken in those lakes that were her eyes, or the white arms which her rags exposed. So she left the grave after all, he thought, the grave of her hero son. I asked her to share my throne.

He would not shame her by speaking; she was selling herself, it was clear, to Englishmen. He took a coin from his bag, and, as he passed her, let it drop into the filth at her feet. “Here.” Her voice rang out, hard and empty. “Fucking freak throws his lucre at me.” He turned back. Noted her tone: whore bred in Hoxton. He saw that her face was not the same at all.

Back at the Hampshire Hod, he troubled the landlord for spirits, and climbed the stairs.

“Did you get her then?” Joe asked. He was hunched in the corner with his prince book and a candle.

The Giant didn’t answer. “I want to move from here,” he said. “Insufficiently commodious.”

“Listen Charlie, I’ve been thinking.”

“Have you so, Joe Vance? Is that the wailing and grunting that carries from here to Ludgate?”

“Sarcasm doesn’t suit you,” said Joe, looking up. “Broken pates is more your line. What say we pitch you in a prize-fight with that small giant who’s showing at the Haymarket?”

“No.” The Giant sat down. “It is a man on stilts, and besides, I don’t feel well. I don’t feel right in myself, and I want to move house.”

“The porterage fees are mounting up. What with your whims and fancies.”

“It wasn’t my fancy to come here. Anyway … you’d been thinking, you said.”

“Thinking about that volume of money you’re toting around. Would you let me transmit it back home for you?”

“Back to where?”

“O’Connor’s cabin would be safe enough. The man who comes raiding is only looking for his rightful cows; he wouldn’t be so brutal as to loom in and steal from Connor’s chest.”

“It’s my Mulroney’s money, you understand?” The Giant brooded. “Thank you for your offer, Vance. But I think I’ll keep it where I can see it, for now.”

Every night they lay at Piccadilly, the Giant dreamed of the Edible House. The travellers who arrive at the house begin by eating it, but it ends by eating them.

On quarter day they moved to rooms in Cockspur Street. Their new landlord—not so new, because it was Kane—checked them in, and ran through the inventory with Joe.

“Lucky we’ve brought our own fire-irons,” the Giant said. “That black and evil-looking set of tongs is the devil’s own implement, and the poker inspires me with disgust.”

“One pot for boiling,” said the landlord.

“One pot for boiling,” Joe said. “Do we pay extra for the hole in it?”

“One cup for keeping salt. One iron candlestick—”

“Dented,” said Joe.

“Dented, but functional. One bolster, any objection to the bolster? Anything to say about it? Fine. Two chairs with straw seats, one painted chair with a dint in the back, one three-legged stool. And you’ll please not say that it wobbles for that’s just what a three-legged stool don’t do. Three tin pint pots. One jar for vinegar. A pair of green woollen curtains with barely noticeable moth holes. And a deal table.”

“It’s a table fit for vagrants,” Claffey said. “Jesus, Kane, there’s not a single piece in this establishment that a pawnbroker would look at.”

“That’s the idea,” said Kane.

It was Claffey who followed him to the door. “Have you any idea of the whereabouts of the girl Mary?”

“No, but if I had I’d peel the hide off her.”

“Because our idiot, Jankin, he is off his fodder, and none of us is too happy till we know she’s not drowned or lost. Would you know the whereabouts of Bride Caskey?”

“If I knew where Caskey was, I’d call the watch and see her marched to Newgate. When your girl Mary upped and left me, she helped herself to my purse with a guinea in it, and I’d swear Caskey put her up to it.” His eyes narrowed. “Why do you want Mary, anyway?” He sniggered. “You want to put her on the streets and live on her while she’s fresh meat. You’re after making an income for yourself and swaggering out as you used to this summer. Are you feeling the pinch? Your giant’s not what they call open-handed, is he?”

“He is saving up,” Claffey said. “To restore the Court of Poetry.”

Kane stared at him.

Indoors, Joe was trying to put a brave face on it. “It’s not the standard we’re accustomed to, but we can soon impart the individual touch. Wait till I get my set of satirical prints hung up, that will raise the tone.”

“Somebody’s nailed this window shut,” Pybus said. “And look at these rags stuffed in the cracks. When the fire’s going, the air in here will be so thick you’d need a knife to slice it.”

“The prudent and economical man,” Joe Vance said, “has no need of silk bedcurtains, and makes do with linsey woolsey. As for this set of spoons—why, a philosopher would not despise it.” Joe looked around at them, smiling. “I’m off to the jobbin’ now. Get some more bills printed. I’m bringing your price down, Charlie. You’re coming down by a shilling. It’s to stimulate demand and appeal to a new class of investors.”

“Is there any news of Patrick O’Brien?” Claffey asked.

“Yes.” Joe didn’t cease to smile. “They say he’s booked his passage, and an entourage with him.”

Their cage was set upon the deal table; and the siskins began to sing.

One of their first visitors after the price had come down was a low, strong-looking man with not much top to his head, with sandy whiskers and a big jaw. He sat at the back when the viewers were ushered in, and folded his arms and never spoke, but he never took his eyes away either.

“Jesus,” the Giant said. “He ought to pay double, for the amount he looked. His eyebeams would slice through your flesh.”

At the point where the usual questions were over—How does it feel to be a giant? Did you always want to be a giant? Can anyone be a giant or are you born to it?—Joe had risen as usual, softly clearing his throat, his fingers making tactful little whisking movements towards the door. The sandy cove had stepped forward, and as the other clients took their leave he asked, “Are you quite well, my good fellow?”

His words were Scotch, and sharp. But close to, his glance did not seem perturbing; it wandered, and he squinted more than a little.

“Am I well?” the Giant had said. “Not precisely. My feet are enlarged, and I feel the springy gristle of my ankles and knees to be calcined. My hands are swole, and my arms drag out their sockets. There is a raddling in my kidneys, and my memory fails. I have taken a hatred to strong cheese, my head aches, and I stub my toes as I walk.”

“I see,” said the Scotchman. “Anything else?”

“I feel a gathering of the waters of the heart.”

“Ah.”

Just at that moment, Joe Vance, who had been ushering out the clients, came bursting back. “Charlie, I’ve been wanting to tell you—I’d the letter just before we exhibited—do you know Mester Goss of Dublin, Goss that trained the intelligent horse?”

“How so intelligent?” the Scotchman said. “A horse that did tricks, did it?”

“Tricks you may call them,” Joe said, “but they induced in Goss prosperity and fame. Why, the equine could count! It was exhibited through Europe. Surely you’ve heard of it, sir, or where do you live? Well, the thing is, Charlie, I hear now that Goss is training up a sapient pig. And I’ve been wondering, when it’s trained, to make him an offer for it. Couldn’t we do grand business, don’t you think, a giant and a learned pig on the one bill?”

The Giant asked, “What is the name of it?”

“Toby. All sapient pigs are called Toby.”

“Is that so? It is one of the few facts I had not taken under cognizance.”

“Well, gentlemen,” said the Scot, “I would recommend you take expert advice before parting with your money, and if it comes to a contract, insert a clause allowing you to return the pig if you are not fully satisfied—within a reasonable time, say, a calendar month, which will give you the opportunity of a fair trial.” (All this time, his eyes are boring into Charlie; the Giant feels his bones will split open and the marrow ooze out.) “That’s my advice and freely given, for I’ve seen a number of these so-called educated bears and the like, and it’s notable that they don’t perform nearly so well when they are parted from their first keepers.”

“Perhaps they grieve,” suggested the Giant.

“No, it is a code. If they can count, or tell fortunes, it’s because the keepers have taught them a code.”

“It’s clever in itself,” said the Giant. “I could take to Toby, if he knew a code.”

“I wonder,” Vance said, “would you invest in it, Charlie? The money out your sack? Or some of it? If I were to write a billet to Goss?”

The Giant rubbed his chin. “Could I feel your pulse, sir?” asked the Scotchman.

“I don’t know. Do we charge for it, Joe?”

“A donation would be gratefully received.”

The customer put his hand in his pocket, and slapped down a farthing. His mouth turned down. He grappled the Giant’s wrist in his. “Hm,” he grunted. “Hm.” He began counting. “Hm,” he said again.

Released, the Giant stood up. The customer came to his waist. “Are you in the physicking line, then?”

“No, my trade is other. Bid you good day.”

Joe Vance stood looking after him. “He was a queer little pepper-and-salt gentleman, was he not? He tried to put us off our pig. Does he train creatures himself? I wonder. And seeks to get our trade?”

O’Brien said, “Have you heard of the Red Caps, small gentlemen of Scotland? They are four feet high, they carry a staff, their nails are talons, and their teeth long and yellow. How do their caps get red? They dye them in human blood.”

Pybus came up the stairs, bellowing, “Are you ready for your supper?”

Joe bawled down, “What is that supper?”

Yelled Pybus, “It is herring.”

“It is always bloody herring these days,” Claffey said.

John Hunter, back at Earl’s Court, surveys the space he has available. I must expand, he thinks, get better premises, somewhere central, and set up a gallery, where I can exhibit. Leicester Square strikes him as convenient; those environs generally. It will add to his fame and maybe bring some money in. He rubs his eyes. He rubs his head. I am ruined, he tells himself, by lashing out on specimens. Experiments will bring me to bankruptcy; I’ll go barefoot for knowledge. My wife will leave me. And my friends desert in droves. There, he thinks, just there shall Giant hang. I will move that armadillo three feet to the left, and the giant bones will sway, suspended on their wires, boiled and clean; for the man’s a goner. The freak says it himself; the tides are gathering behind his ribs, the salt oedematous tides. His digits no longer obey him, his faculties flag; give it six months, and the pagan object will be mine.

“So,” Joe Vance said, “despising your scepticism as I do, let me set out to you how such a pig works. You lay out letters around him, on cards, and ask him to spell a name and he goes to each letter and points with his trotter.”

“It’s superior entertainment,” the Giant said. “For those that can read.”

“Then you put down cards with numbers, and give it sums to do. After that, you put down letters again, and ask it to read the thoughts of the people in the audience and spell them out. Or tell their fortunes, as the Scotchman hinted. Sometimes, if your pig’s the prime article, you can blindfold it, and it will work just the same.”

“But would you trust your fortune,” the Giant asked, “if it were told by a pig?”

“Well, I do so think,” said Pybus. “For a pig won’t give you a favourable one, to get a tip.”

“The boy reasons well,” Joe said.

“And if a pig said, beware of a dray coming up fast on your left and mushing you against the wall, well, you’d beware.”

“But not if a human said it?” the Giant asked.

“You see, Giant,” Pybus explained, “the pig wouldn’t have any interest whether it came true or not. But if a human told it you, and the dray came up and dunted in your ribs, you’d suspect that the said dray was driven by the fortune-teller’s uncle. It’s what they call a ploy. It’s to get future money off you.”

“Well, well,” said the Giant. “You seem wise in the ways of the world, all of a sudden. Have you been looking into Joe’s book about the prince?”

Pybus reddened. “I cannot read,” he said. “And you know it, Charlie. Still less any book in a foreign tongue.”

“You much neglect your advancement.” The Giant sniffed. “Joe, how are you to persuade the ladies to our show? And the fine gentlemen? For a swine do smell.”

“There you are under a mistake,” Joe said hotly. “There is nothing in the breed, inherently, to make it smell, and you speak out of gross prejudice, O’Brien, at which I am surprised. Goss’s pig almost certainly does not smell.” He spoke with more loudness than conviction.

Claffey said, sniggering in the corner, “Joe Vance is related to a pig, that’s why he stands up for his tribe.”

“Come outside, skin-head,” Vance proposed, “and I’ll pound your liver to a fine paste that I will use to stop up the chinks in the door frame.”

“Gentlemen,” the Giant said, “your complaints are grating in my ears and your incessant quarrels are scratching around in my brain like a rat in a hatbox. Would you not like the story of Bernard Owen O’Neill, whose uncle when on his way to fish for trout met a man without a head?”

And from his shelf, Hunter plucks out a book.

Wm Harvey: “Blood is the first engendered part … blood lives of itself … blood is the cause not only of life in general but also of longer or shorter life, of sleep and of watching, of genius, aptitude and strength.” Give me a piece of luck, he prays. Get me this giant. For I have never had a piece of luck. Brother Wullie has had it all.

He lays down the book. Takes up tourniquet, his lancet. The instrument punctures the skin. Tender swollen vessels. Draw off a little ounce or five. Never miss it. As he bleeds his recalcitrant apes, to make them quiet; subdue the animal excitement as it rises inside. Like garnet lava, like molten jewels, it slides down the sides of the china basin. His lamp gutters. A draught lifts the papers on his desk, their fibres oppressed by the weight of his writing.

Pybus, going out to piss in the yard, found Bitch Mary crouching by the wall. When she lifted her head, he saw a dark patch around her mouth. “Get me a rag,” she said.

He tried to raise her to her feet. “A rag to staunch,” she said.

“Never mind,” he said. “Come indoors.”

“I need a rag to wipe the blood from between my legs. I do not want a man such as the Giant to see how his countrywomen are reduced.”

Wm Harvey, having observed the pulsating heart of the chick in a fertilised egg, misunderstood what he had seen, and reported that the blood had its life, its own quivering beat. Its vitality lasted so long as it was not shed. Once it was shed, the living principle escaped. The blood separated then into its dead constituents, some serous, some fibrous; into parts that had no existence in living blood. Its nature was transformed by death: corrupted, he said, resolved.

Mary was shaking with cold. Her hair was cropped, hacked off in patches, shorn above her ears. Her money was gone; not a halfpenny to bless herself with. The month was now November, and the moon small and peevish: a copper coin lightly silvered, a counterfeit light.