“Oh, good, good!” said Joe Vance. “By the private parts of Mary, this will give him a check, Mr. so-called Patrick Byrne!” His honest blue eyes were blazing. “Let’s have a drink on it,” he said.
In September, the days innocent of chill, they went to Bartholomew Fair. The Giant was confined indoors, as usual, but they told him everything when they got home. Dancing dogs and monkeys. Musical operas, a French puppet show with Mr. Punch and the Devil behind doors.
“We had some cabbage to eat at Pye Corner,” Pybus said, “and a slice of beef each. Joe treated us.”
“That was handsome of him,” the Giant said.
“We ought to go down, Charlie,” said Claffey. “Get you a booth.”
“What, like a dancing monkey?”
“It’s where the crowds are, and where the crowds are, that’s where the money is.”
Pybus blurted out, “Joe Vance says you are growing.”
“Do you not see the change in me?”
“We see you every day,” Claffey said. “If it’s gradual, we might miss it.”
“But it’s proved by the measuring stick,” Pybus said. The late sunlight caught his red hair and made a fire in it. “By God, Charlie, I’m glad I decided to come on this voyage. Our fame is assured. We shall ride in sedan chairs!”
“Carry one, more like. That’s an attribute of Irishmen.” He looked up, at Claffey. “So—you have your own notions of taking me to market, do you? You think you know better than my accredited agent?”
Claffey puffed himself up. “I certainly know this town, Charlie, I can say I know this town. What say we ship Joe back to Ireland to fight it out with Paddy’s people, and I take on managing you, at a reduced percentage?”
The Giant studied Claffey. Narrow grey eyes close-set. An unintelligent expression, but an avaricious one. “So,” he said, “did you bring anything for Mary, from your day at the fair?”
“Oh, he did,” shouted Jankin. “Oh, he did and I liked the Devil behind doors. Oh, he did bring her Cyprian Wash-Balls.”
“Come forward, Bitch Mary,” shouted the Giant.
Mary crept from her bedding. She stood before Claffey without meeting his eyes.
“Claffey means to pay you his proper addresses,” Pybus said. “He is advanced in the art of courtship. He don’t mean to force you against a wall, but wait till you’re ready and you give him the word.”
“That’ll be enough,” Claffey snarled, practically spitting in his ire. He took a shuddering breath—calming himself, so as not to split and rupture Pybus on the spot: only because, afterwards, the woman would have to clean the floor. “Mary,” he said, “I am giving you these Cyprian Wash-Balls, but on one condition.”
“And what is that?”
“I have seen you at the gate these nights, when I am coming in, talking with that whore that wears a green kerchief.”
“Bride is her name.”
“I want you to keep away. Never greet her more.”
“Because she piqued your vanity,” the Giant said. “She did so, that night in the cellar. She worsted you and Joe both.”
“Not for that,” Claffey said. “But because she is a whoremonger. The very tips of her fingers are creeping with disease.”
“I’ll do what I must, and when I must,” Bitch Mary said. “Till then, I reserve my opinion. Will that content you?”
“I don’t like it,” Claffey said. “But go on—there you are.”
“What is the use of these Cyprian Wash-Balls?”
“To keep your hands white.”
Bitch Mary stared down at her paws. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll have to think. I like your addresses, Claffey, but then you may decide to quit these shores, which I know I never shall.”
“Ah,” said Jankin, “you are easier with their language than us. Even Charlie has not your sweet manipulation of the tongue.”
Claffey felled him with a blow. “What do you know of her tongue? You stuff-brain, you couldn’t turn your tongue around a corner!”
Mary ran for the bucket and a cloth. A large part of Jankin’s brains looked to be burst on the black floorboards of their room. Indifferent, she swabbed Jankin and the planks. She hummed softly as she worked. Pybus stood over her, drooling, looking down at her laboring flanks. “Bride says she can offer me lucrative opportunities,” Bitch Mary said.
Night’s drawing in. By candlelight again—just one for economy—John Hunter is compiling (speculatively) the index to his great work on venereal disease.
Decay of the Testicle 45
Carbuncles or Excrescences 48
Odematous Inflammation 75
Of f Sarsaparilla 112
And the Giant, turning in his sleep, hears Francis Claffey coming in, and singing on the stair.
There’s not a mile in Ireland’s isle,
Where the dirty varmint musters,
Where’er he puts his dear forefeet,
He murders them in clusters;
The toads went hop, the frogs went pop
Slap haste into the water.
Claffey: the entrepreneur.
And a pause, some bumping and boring in the dark. Then the Giant hears a different voice, though still Claffey’s; it is broken, distant, sober. “Give me to drink I beg you … a bottle of mountain dew.”
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 y
ou 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.”