The Giant, O'Brien: A Novel

the name of the woman who cut that man, what is the name of the woman who took his purse? Bitch, he says. Yes, I know, says the magistrate, but what is her name? Then our boy rolls his eyes and says, Bitch: or at least she has no other name I ever heard.”

“I see it,” Claffey said. “I understand. It’s a grand scheme. But from day to day can we not …?”

“You can call me Mary,” the girl said.

The Giant said, “That’s all-purpose, too.”

That was a happy week. They had a sea-coal fire, and a handy pump nearby. Bitch Mary found them a hedgehog, to keep down beetles. She also showed them what they could eat: oysters and Yarmouth herring, and hot gingerbread from a stall, fat pork and dumplings from the cookshop, bread and cheese. The vegetables tasted of smoke and the milk tasted of water, but they never minded. Joe Vance was in high spirits. He bought Bitch Mary a blue ribbon, which she put away for Sunday. To drink, they had gin and beer.

I have ordered a white bear from Greenland.

Opportunities for the dissection of whales too seldom occur; I wish I could get a whale. I wish I could get a tame lion, not very old, or the foal of a camel sent to me in a tub of spirits.

Jankin came in, wailing from the street. What’s the matter? they asked him.

“A woman asked me if I wanted to buy a song. I said yes, and she took my penny and she gave me this.” Jankin held out a piece of paper, which he had screwed up in his fist. “I said, ‘That’s not a song, miss,’ and she got in a lather, and she said, ‘Bog off, bog-head,’ and everybody laughed.”

“He ought not be let out alone,” Bitch Mary said.

Joe Vance took the sheet and straightened it out. “‘The Debtor’s Lament,’” he said in disgust. “’Tis forty years old to my knowledge. You’ve been had, piss-wit. Next time you want a song, sing it yourself.”

“What age are you, Charlie?” Joe Vance said.

The Giant stared. “What age? I’d never considered.”

“I need it for the press. We are going to have an insertion in the newspaper. To draw the notice of the best class of person to the fine spectacle you present.”

“Let’s say one-and-twenty. It’s nobody’s business, is it?”

“One-and-twenty it is. The Tallest Man in the World, at home at Spring Gardens for a limited period only, having recently returned from continental triumphs, exhibiting in Cologne, Paris, Strasbourg, and Amsterdam, where Mr. Byrne has been received by the finest and most genteel society and made a conquest of the ladies’ hearts.”

“But that’s a lie!” Claffey said.

“It is usual to lie in advertisements, Claffey. Allow me to know my trade.”

I would like to get a nest, an old cuckoo, and a young cuckoo.

“And then you’ll be meeting the press,” Joe Vance said. He looked around, at their quarters. “It’s a bit bare, do y’know? We could do with fancifying it a bit.”

“All costs money,” Claffey said.

Said Joe, “I’ll lash out a bit. In anticipation of large returns.”

By this time, John Hunter is a great man, with his house at Jermyn Street and another out in the country at Earl’s Court. It is there he keeps his collection of specimens, now growing huge, and his caged animals, who roar and paw and bellow through the night. He has first refusal of all the beasts who die in the menagerie at the Tower of London, and amongst animal sellers deals with Mr. Gough, with Mr. Bailey of Piccadilly, whose trade is chiefly in birds, who will get you anything from a linnet to an eagle, and who is so obliging as to extend credit: with Mr. Brookes, who had crossed a dog with a wolf, and who gave him one of the puppies. (She was a nervous bitch, who habitually ran out into the road and would not come back when she was called. She was given to trembling and starts of terror, which caused some citizens to mistake her for a mad dog and murder her.)

As for Earl’s Court, who knows what comes in and what goes out—everything from leopards to gnats in a jar. There are the bees, silently industrious in their many hives, the seagull to be fed for a year on barley, the vat of live eels sent every month from the fishmonger, and the single swallow tamed by Mr. Granger, condemned forever to get its food dead instead of live and on the wing, and never again to see the African coast. As for the opossums, he must have had a dozen over the years, but breed? They cannot or they will not. Perhaps they propagate by a method as yet unknown?

On their second day in their new home Pybus brought an orange and a lemon, and they all examined them. They cut up the orange and sucked its juice, smacking their lips, and then they cut up the lemon and attempted the same. Bitch Mary exploded in laughter at them, holding it back until she saw their puckered faces and stinging lips.

“Laughing like a country girl,” Claffey said fondly.

Mary ate everything they ate, and was already fuller in the face. Her hair was paler than the lemon’s flesh.

Oxford Street was the problem: Claffey and Pybus and Jankin gawping its length, wanting things. Even by night, when the whale-oil lamps shone, they would promenade, their toes turned out, imagining themselves with a two- shilling tart on one arm, and in the other hand a cane with an ivory knob. The Giant was kept close until his prepared debut, but Joe was out and about, making his excuses for an hour off here and there and coming back with a smirk and his pocket lighter.

“Course, we’ll have to borrow a little bit,” he said. “It’s the usual thing. I’m an agent and I know about it.”

So it came to the day when they were making a wish-list:

A tea-caddy and a spoon.

A tilting tea-table, mahogany: very convenient for restricted space: space being usually restricted, when giant on premises.

A teapot and the correct bowls for tea.

A toothbrush and some toothpowder in a jar.

A salt cellar.

Some glass candlesticks, which are all the go.

A clock.