“Picture his snuff box,” one fellow said. “It would be like a soup-plate.”
“Picture his linen bill! It will be like the national debt.”
“Picture his …” And the speaker choked; the whole room fell back as one, and opened its eyes wide, and fanned itself with a hand.
Just this morning Joe had said, “Play it up a bit, about the ladies, Charlie. Will you do that? Will you do that for me?” He had been every inch the impresario, purring and preening, but his guts turning over with nerves inside; now he stood grinning, caressing his bruised chin, neverminding about it, his gratified lips open and his greedy pink tongue just peeping out between.
The Giant leaned forward, causing the front row to sway back. “As you suspect, gents,” he said, “my organ is proportionate.”
A new sound filled the room: wistful, sibilant, yearning. The Giant sat back while it played itself out, melted sighing into the corners of the room. A young fellow spoke up, gathering his courage: “Yet women say, the women I know … they say size don’t count.”
“Do they?” The Giant held up his hand, scrutinised his fingernails. “And they say that to you, do they? Ah well. One can imagine why they would.”
A little laughter, edgy. “I see, gentlemen,” the Giant said, “that you wish me to enlarge. On the theme. On the subject. It is proportionate, as I say. Will I stand up again, so you can appraise my proportions? No; there is no need, I perceive; you can view my assets while I recline. A Tower of Ivory,” he explained, “at the base of which they fall, stunned. Not but what they do not recover themselves; the fainting, I think, is out of politeness largely. And then, gentlemen, their rhapsodical sighs and moans—but I see by your faces that you already know those sounds, albeit only in your imaginations. First they try to scale this tower—the ambition is natural to them—with their slick little tongues like the tongues of kittens. When I am satisfied in that way, I put out my little finger and flip two or three of them on their backs. When I say ‘two or three,’ when I say ‘them,’ I speak advisedly—for I have about me every night an eager set of the female sex. They fear … they fear indeed—but oh, it is their fear that delights them! And gentlemen, when dawn comes, I am the complete gallant. Which of you can say as much? I have a fellow in Covent’s Garden who brings each morning a selection of fresh bouquets, wound up with ribbon such as ladies like. Each morning he fetches half-a-dozen, at five o’clock—and when, three or four times in the week, more are needed, I have a smart lad who goes to run and tell him. And when you, at some stale hour, are rolling from your mattresses, and roaring for your piss-pots, and grinding the yellow pills from your eyes—and when, I say, your foetid molls are trolling forth, booted from your couches, unwashed, fishy, chafed between the thighs, slowly dripping your lukewarm seed—my douce delights are receiving their bouquets, with pearls of pretty laughter. Each one carries within her a giant baby. How can she not conceive? My seed is propelled within her like a whirlwind. I do not spill forth, like little men—I come like the wrath of God. When the years have flown, and my dear delights are grandmas, they will need only to think of the business we transacted, and their dried parts will spin like windmills in a gale.”
Clarke has got a preparation of an extra-uterine pregnancy. The foetus lodged in the tube and began to grow there, the mother dying of it. It is a very fine preparation, and I mean to have it. I have said to Clarke, will you give it to me? No, I will not. Surely you will. Positively, I will not. You will sell it me then. No no and no. Then if I see you in a dark alley I will murder you, I said. Clarke half-believes me, for he sees the flush rise up in my cheeks. I half- believe myself. I must have it.
“That’s my boy,” Joe said, when the pressmen had surged out, chattering, into the street. “It’s the very way to treat them, a touch of the flattery and a touch of the imperial contempt.”
Yet there was something nervous about Joe: he was glad and sorry, he was thinking it had gone well and yet it had gone too well, it was out of his grasp a bit. As the gentlemen had exited, he had called out in his brightest voice, “Eleven till three, five till eight, six days a week, only half-a-crown a person!”
One of the gentlemen had stopped. “Look here, sniveller, don’t be crying your wares as if your giant were a hot pie—get a handbill printed.”
“A handbill?” Vance gawped. His hand closed on the man’s arm. “Where would I get that?”
Claffey dug Pybus in the ribs, and turned down his mouth.
“Why, go to a jobbin’ printer,” the pressman drawled. “And will y’ quit molesting my cuff?”
Joe took his hand away as if the sleeve were heated iron. He was desperate not to offend.
“Jobbin’ printers,” Claffey said to him afterwards. “That’s what I heard mentioned by a few. I suppose you know what they are?”
“Them?” Joe guffawed. “Isn’t my uncle the chief jobbin’ of the parish? Leave it up to me.” He turned on the Giant, rubbing his buttocks, complaining. “I came down with a rueful crash there. There was no need to turn me arse-over-pate to make a comedy.”
“I was trying to calm you,” the Giant explained. “My finger went astray.”
Later, Jankin stole up and said, “Giant, have you ever, you know … with a lady?”
The Giant was impressed to know that Jankin had not believed a word he had said to the newspaper men. He confessed, “I am a perfect stranger to the rites of Venus.”
“Ah, then it’s only me,” Jankin said, melancholy. “The virgin of the world. If Joe would put a twopence in my pocket, I could make my addresses to a lady.”
“Has he given you naught?” The Giant fished a coin out. “Buy a sweetmeat. Offer it to a lady, do you understand? Don’t take out your diddler and ask her to suck it.”
“Can I not have a bite of the sweetmeat myself?”
“If she offers. But give it her nice, wrapped up. Not with your fingers stamped in it.”
“I wouldn’t know how to address an Englishwoman. Could I address Bitch Mary?”
“Mary? Leave that alone. Claffey would yoick your entrails out.”
The Giant stooped, and passed his hand over the seat of his throne. “Here.” He pulled out a great iron nail and held it up. “Is this your work, Jankin? All the time I’m boasting about Paris and Amsterdam, and this little device boring into my buttocks.”
“Sorry,” Jankin said.
“Ah well,” said the Giant, and snapped the nail in two between his fingers.
