“The ache in my bones increases.”
“As in mine, sir, as in mine.”
The Giant paused. “But you are not growing, sir, are you? Surely you are past that, your age must decree it? That is the cause of my distemper. Giants are not subject to the rules that govern other mortals.”
“I had observed that,” said the Scot: very dry. “This increase in your stature—do you see a good outcome?”
“In terms of income?”
“In terms of your future, sir.”
“What is it to you, my future?”
And then the little man washed his hands together. His face reddened. The Giant said, afterwards, he had never seen a man so moved. “I’d like to see you again,” the Scot said. “If I talked to your minder, do you think he’d give me some relief on your fee?”
“What, a discount? I think I’m soon down to ninepence, anyway.”
“That’s good news.”
“Not for me.”
“Have you any more signs or symptoms, by the way?”
“What?” said the Giant.
“I mean, do you have any further indispositions?”
“Besides what I told you? Yes, I have. I have griping in my brain and my ears, where language is destroyed by slow attrition day by day; where thought is bombinated, as if my skull were a besieged city.”
“Anything more?”
“I sleep now. Many hours in the day. I wake at dawn and hear myself growing, before the noise of the criers starts, and the wheels of carts. In the day the city’s noise swamps it, but in the watches of the night you may hear the crack as my bones break free of their moorings, and the slap of the tide beaches against my liver. Mr. Hunter, would you enter into my difficulties? A chair already will not fit me. My tailor has to stand on a ladder. He sends in bills that are insupportable.”
“Your agent … I am surprised, in the circumstances, that he thinks of reducing your rate. I would have thought, on the contrary …”
“I don’t grow quick enough for Joe. Patrick O’Brien in Cork is springing up day by day. They say he’s nine foot tall and practically embarked.”
“Indeed? I shall be most interested to see him. What is his age?”
“Pat? He’s a young lad, seventeen or so.”
“Healthy?”
“Prime.”
“I see.” The Scot frowned. “Nine foot, you say?”
“By repute.”
“We shall see.”
“It appears you are fond of giants, Mr. Hunter.”
“Oh, I never miss my chance to view. If the tariff is reasonable.”
For the benefit of Slig, whose ignorance of dwarves was deep, they had taken to explanations.
“They are the size of a child of seven,” Pybus said. “Their skin is the colour of earth, that is because they live in the earth. Their hair is black when young. Their cloaks are black—”
“Or red,” said Jankin.
“—and they wear long smocks so you don’t see their duck feet. Some of them have hairy ears—”
“And how do they disguise those?” Slig asked.
“With hats,” Jankin said. “They can change a lump of coal to a precious jewel. Can’t they, Charlie O’Brien?”
“They make cheese,” the Giant said. “They have the art of tending to cattle. There was once a man who had seven white cows, and it was the time of year to bring them down from the mountain to the lush valley grass. But the cows were missing, and though he searched all day he found no trace. That night he went to sleep exhausted, and didn’t say his prayers. When he woke the next day—”
“—and still no sign of the cows,” said Jankin.
“—he decided he would go on as if he had the cows still, so he milked them, invisible as they were, and he led them to the valley, and he fed them all winter on invisible food. When spring came—”
“You’d wonder where he got the idea,” said Slig.
“—when spring came, he drove them once more up the mountain. That night, when it was time for milking, his seven white cows came lowing towards him, and trotting after them, nuzzling their silken flanks, came seven shining white calves.”
“If Connor’s grandfather had only known,” Claffey said, sardonic. “Instead of all the shouting, and the breaking of pates among O’Sheas. If he’d just sat tight, he’d have been a wealthy man.”
“Well. There is a lesson to be learned,” the Giant said.
“You’re too tall,” Claffey said, “to be so sententious.”
“The lesson is not about getting beasts,” the Giant said calmly.
“The lesson is about believing that things may be invisible but still exist.”
Constantine Claffey stirred the coins in his pocket, smirking greasily at the deep jingle. “I like the evidence of my senses,” he said.
“Then you are a foolish fellow, Con. Supposing a mosquito lands upon the back of my hand. What do his senses tell him? Ah, here is a nice even plain, very well to romp upon, I’ll tell my friends. Ah, here is nice rich blood, I can take a gallon and tomorrow come back for more, we can drink, me and my wife, we can drink a gallon a piece. Then—splat. So where is he now, the wise mosquito?” The Giant grinned. “He has joined a larger reality.”
“More dwarves!” Jankin demanded. “I want the servant girl in the forest, freezing and starving as night comes down!”
“By the ghost’s waistcoat, you are a nasty piece of work,” Claffey said. “You are a kind of apprentice piece for a monkey, are you not, Jankin? When the Giant is the whole ape?”
“I only said,” Jankin complained, “I only said she is in the forest, and that’s true. I only said her belly’s empty, which it is because she’s been turned out of her home, and I said she’s cold because it’s usually at least autumn when this tale takes place.”
“So she’s walking in the forest,” Joe said. “And night’s coming down? But I bet she spies a little cottage, eh? With a little light burning?”
“Not yet!” Jankin was anxious. “Before she can spot the light she must wander—many hours—and she is shivering and the cold is fierce, each branch of a tree growing into crystal, and she thinks she will not live till morning, for already the ice is crusting her pale hair.”
His head bowed, his voice low, the Giant prompted Jankin. “Think—is the cold her only enemy?”
“By no means—she thinks the wolves will devour her, or the bears.” He looked up at Slig. “Devour is what we say when we mean eat, it is a superior word, more terrifying.”
“You are eloquent, Jankin,” the Giant said.
“For this is a country where there are still bears.”
“I see,” Joe Vance said. “But presently, she comes to a little cottage, eh?”
“And knocks at the door,” Pybus said. “Timidly. The door is opened by a dwarf and behind him are his six brothers, who are all of them dwarves as well.”
“Is she a pretty girl?” Con asked idly.
“I don’t know. Is she?” Pybus looked at the Giant.
“Her eyes as blue as the cornflower,” the Giant said. He felt he was re-using his encomiums. “Her neck like a swan’s on a summer lake.”
“Very passable, then,” Claffey said. “Allowing for the dirty feet and the mud caked on her.”
Pybus touched the Giant’s arm. “Take up the tale, Mester.”
“You know it,” the Giant said. “Tell it yourself.” The fact was, it sickened him, the tale of the seven dwarves. He was always trying to think of a different ending to it, but the snag was that it ended in the truth.
“Pybus, you tell it,” Jankin pleaded.
Pybus raked his fingers through his hair, thinking. “So she comes in. She comes in and she sees it’s a snug little place, a fire blazing and an iron pot over it, and a rabbit cooking in that pot.”
“Rabbit!” Jankin was distraught. “It was a fat hen stewing, was what I heard. Charlie—”
“Whatever,” the Giant said shortly.
“Am I telling it?” Pybus demanded.
“You’re telling it,” Jankin said.
“The table is set ready with a basket of bread, the candles are burning, and through a parted curtain she can see another room, where there is a row of beds, dwarves’ beds, all heaped with animal skins. So the dwarves take her to the fire and she warms herself. She says, ‘My dear sir dwarves, will you let me stay the night, and give me a meal from your pot? For out there in the cold the wolves and bears will eat me.’ Sorry. Devour. So the dwarves look at each other, and the eldest of them—”
“This is the good bit.” Jankin hugged himself.
“—the eldest of them says, ‘There is nowhere to sleep but our seven beds, so choose one of us to be your companion.’”
“If I know women,” Joe said, “she won’t run out into the cold again. She won’t put herself to the inconvenience.”
“You call a bear an inconvenience?” the Giant asked.
“So she consented: saying, ‘Which of you is the eldest?’ The eldest brother spoke up. ‘I’ll share your bed,’ she said.”
“And will the other dwarves watch?” Constantine Claffey said. The Giant’s eyes were rivetted to the egg stain on his waistcoat; did he wear it as a badge of wealth, boasting to his neighbours in Clement’s Inn that he could afford to eat?
Joe Vance said, “What if she had a dwarf baby?”
Con said, “It’s a surprise she didn’t say, ‘Pull down your nethers and let’s have a swift take on your pricks.’ And make her choice so. Or were they dwarf as well?”
The Giant stood up. “A need for air,” he advised.
He trod heavily downstairs, pushed open the barrier between himself and the night. Bitch Mary was slumped against the wall, her face turned towards the east. A glint from a lamp cut a gilded slice from her cheek: a Saracen’s moon. “You’re waiting for a client?” he asked.
“Why not? What’s to lose now?”
“Claffey would have wed you. It was the sound of your debt put him off.”
“Oh, I’ve paid it,” she said. “By God, Charlie, every farthing.”
He climbed the stairs again. The room was clogged with smoke. The fire was almost out. Vance sent to the chandlers for their coal, Jankin carrying it by the half-peck. Sea-coal fire, they called it. It sighed before it crumbled, as if the cold sea’s voice were in it. The voice of the boy Pybus ran on, continuing the story. “And all that night, in the dwarf’s embraces.”
Hunter: that same moon, a dripping sabre-cut, slashing at a window of his town house: shutter closed against it, his feet crossed before a low-slumbering hearth.
They say Wullie’s worse. His practice has fallen off altogether. Well, let him. I am now the famous Hunter. What did he ever snare but smart society snatches? Whereas my collection is the envy of every contemporary practitioner of human knowledge.
He is bolted in alone, in his cabinet at Jermyn Street. Anne is below, occupied with strumming and verse. Sound carries faintly, floor to floor; laughter that he does not understand. He pours a dram, though spirits are not his vice, the example of whoopsy-go Buchanan being ever before him. A half-glass inside him, he begins to pick a quarrel with someone who is not there: Wullie, perhaps.
There are some stupid men who believe fish to be deaf. If you have ever taken the trouble to discharge a pistol near a fishpond, you will find the truth is otherwise.
“In the morning, early,” said Pybus, “a woman of the next village came by, to sell eggs to the dwarves: for they had no fowl of their own. While she was lifting the cloth of her basket, her eyes were travelling about the house, looking to see how the dwarves lived, so she could carry tales to her neighbours. She peeped through the curtain, and then she saw the girl, rising naked from her bed. At once she—”
“Called her a dirty whore,” said Claffey.
“At once she cried out, ‘You catering slut—to sell them eggs is one matter, but to sleep with them in their beds’—and when the woman slapped her, the girl cried out, ‘I was here, only here, to save my life.’
“After the egg-seller had gone, the cottage would be silent. Sometimes she would shake herself, the girl, as if waking from a long sleep, and move half-hearted to the door. But the eldest dwarf would put out his paw to restrain her, with a word and a look of love, whilst his brothers, their cheerful habit subdued, swept out the house and made the neat beds and peeled vegetables for their dinner. So the light began to fade—for it is autumn, and in the forest—and she said, ‘It is too late for me to leave now’—and she felt that she might spend a year or two, winter and spring, in the forest amongst the dwarves.
“But when night fell, they saw the light of torches dance between the trees. They heard the murmur of voices. When they opened the door to a knock, it was the egg-seller that stood there. Behind her were the men of the village, armed with clubs. They dragged out the dwarves into their vegetable garden, and beat them to death, one by one, each dwarf watching the pulping of his brother, and the youngest came last. Then they dug up their vegetables and took them away, to cook in their iron pots. Meanwhile the girl hid in the press, among the clean linen, but then she smelled smoke, and this brought her out; she pitched out of the door, jeered at by the men and women, and punched in the face by the egg-seller, as the flames licked the thatch. They spat at her and shook their clubs, and thrust the burning brands into her face, so that she ran into the forest, screaming, barefoot and without her cloak, until she was lost among the trees, and the night’s blackness ate her up.”
ten
“Now then, O’Brien,” said Joe Vance. “You’ll have to get another trade. It’s not enough to be tall.”
The Giant stretched his hands out before him. They were trembling slightly. He knew his elongation not good news, but he wanted Vance to admire him. “But see, Joe. You’ve remarked yourself how I extend. Paddy, I’ll bet you, cannot top me. Nor will for many a year yet.”
“That’s all very well, growing and growing. But the public’s fickle, and in my opinion it’s had its fill.” He mimicked the mincing tone of an English-speaking gentleman. “Ooh, giants—giants were last year.”
“You mentioned a provincial tour, did you not?”
“Sure, but look at yourself, will you? Huddling by the fire, your nails not trimmed, your coat not brushed, your hair greased on your head like you’d rubbed it with a rasher—are you a sight to inspire Ipswich? Will they batter the doors down in Bath? Will the burghers of Bristol turn out with a pipe band?”
“It was only a thought,” the Giant said, sulking.
“The expense of being on the road, Charlie—I’d have to know it was going to be worth the while. No, what I was thinking … have you considered fire-eating? Fire-eating’s a fine profession.”
The Giant gaped at him. “And why must only I have a profession? Why cannot Claffey?”
“Surely,” Joe said, “you would not want the attention taken off yourself? As I understand it, any man with a steady hand and his wits about him can be a fire-eater, but why should Claffey have the glory? Ask yourself.”
“I wouldn’t mind a profession,” Pybus said. “Highwayman would suit me. If I had a horse.”
“You could be a footpad,” Jankin advised.
“Get out of it,” said Joe. “Earn a living by any other means. Or they’ll tie your gullet, and you’ll morrice on air. Remember the litany of the blind man Ferris?”
The Giant had fallen silent. “I have plenty of money,” he said at last. “I have no need to continue here, I am not bound in articles to you or any man. I could return to Ireland as soon as passage can be booked. I could take my sack on my back, and turn up in person on the holy site where Mulroney’s once stood.”
“I’ll tell you your trouble,” Joe Vance said. “You drink too much.”
Early in November, his followers had been out on the streets throwing squibs and crackers; it was an English custom. “I’ve never been warm since,” Claffey said. There had been fighting
afterwards. This was five days after the gentry of Ireland had flitted to their wintering grounds, moving silently, gliding white in the dusk. It is unwise to obstruct them, to walk on their paths, or look at them directly. Their existence depends on tricks of the light, and shadows moving through water; their natural state is shadow. They don’t count, don’t know the days of the week, and use only wooden implements, distrusting iron and steel. They have children by the basketful, and carry them on their backs. All these gentlefolk are very old.
Constantine Claffey came around from Clement’s Inn—the egg-stain still on his waistcoat—to tell them a piece of news. It seemed that Goss’s pig had become such a huge attraction to the public of Dublin that some cockalorum magistrate rattled in to break up the show, believing it to be an assemblage for the singing of glory-o songs and fomentation of plots against rich men’s hayricks. His sergeants had slapped old Goss around the head and threatened Toby with hanging up and salting. Gathering his belongings and his store of money, Mr. Goss had fled for Chester, but hardly had he disembarked when he was seized by brain fever and expired.
“The murdering bully-boys,” Pybus exclaimed. “Them blows to the skull of old Goss was no doubt the direct result of his brain fever.”
“The cause,” the Giant murmured. “Not the result. And Pybus, post hoc ergo propter hoc is a pernicious fallacy to lead along the streets.”
“I think you are all missing the point,” Vance said testily. “The point is, what has happened to Toby?”
Con, with a heave of the chest: “This melancholy tale I shall relate. Toby mourned for two days by his master’s grave, off his swill and giving tongue to porcine bleats. On the morning of the third day, when the nephew of Goss, that resides in Chester, came to tempt the pig into better spirits—why, he found him gone.”
“Found him gone,” said Charlie. “Now there’s another phrase to ponder.”
The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel Page 13
