a woman pregnant with rabbits. I wouldn’t cross the street to see it—no more would I ride out over wild heathland where I might have my purse taken.”
“Ah, sir, you might have your purse taken any fine night in Bond Street.”
“Not that ought is in it,” Hunter said, sighing, and scratching himself a little. “I am the greatest surgeon in Europe, Howison, it is acknowledged, and I frequently find myself as poor as when I was a raggedy scamp with a snivel nose and a hole in my breeks.”
It is a pity he has not got a hole in his breeks now, Howison thought, it would be convenient for him to ease his itch. “You have laid out so much in experimentation, sir,” he said, “and in the purchase of specimens.”
“And on Mrs. Hunter! Do you have any idea, Howison, what that woman costs me per annum
“I have no claim on gentility,” said Howison. “The women I know will open their legs for oysters and gin.”
“Stick to your own kind, that’s my advice. If I had not the damned expense of her minims and her crotchets, not to mention her nightcaps—she must have lace, Howison, on her nightcaps—I would be able to purchase a savage.”
“I could get you a black, easy. Dead or alive or anywhere in between.”
Hunter wrinkled his nose. “Your London blacks have lost their virtue. They are bronchitic and gone slack. No, I want a free savage, the dust of the bush still upon him, his wanton yodel rattling through the clear pipes of his chest, his tribal scars still raw, his cheeks and ribs fresh scored, his parts swinging and unfettered …” Unlike mine, he thought, breaking off in a sulk, for it had become necessary for him to resort to a suspensory bandage.
Howison did not like to be worsted by circumstance. Hunter employed him for his resource as well as his brute strength and steady hand. He knew his master was mean as well as skint, but he knew also that he could find ways of laying his hands on funds if the right subject for experimentation came along. As if reading his thought, Hunter said, “I cannot just purchase from a seaman—for then my savage will have been spoiled, its sweating body swaddled in a tail-coat and its guts churning with weevil-biscuits and porridge. Oh, I know what you will say—go out to savage realms, and choose for yourself. But then, I am advanced in years, and the pepper of my temper as a Scotchman makes me unsuited to a voyage in the torrid zones of this world.”
Howison hoped that John Hunter was not hinting that he should go in person, off to Patagonia or Guinea, in search of some cicatrised wailer with webbed feet and his head under his arm. He, Howison, had got his feet under the table at the Dog and Duck in St. George’s Fields, and had hopes of confluence with the landlady’s god-daughter at the Swan with Two Necks: at least, she was supposed to be her god-daughter, and he had never heard of her charging anybody, not so far. Howison, for luck, turned his money over in his pocket; it was the night of the new moon.
Jankin had come home at dusk, inhumanly excited: “We have been to see Dr. Katterfelter’s magic show. He appeared a black kitten in a man’s pocket, he did, Charlie, so he did!”
Joe didn’t bother to look up from his book. “Katterfelter is a common conjuror.”
Claffey and Pybus came in, shouting, “Here, Bitch Mary!”
The girl came, from the corner where she rested from her labours; in this corner she settled herself on rags, like a dog’s wife scraping a nest for whelps.
“You see this water?” Claffey said. “You see this water in this bottle? It is no ordinary water. This water has been blessed by His Holiness the Pope and specifically magnetised under license by Monsieur Mesmer, the sage of Vienna and Paris. Its name is called Olympic Dew. The queen of France bathes in it every day.”
“Ah well,” Bitch Mary said. “Not enough for a bath, more a little facial splash—but I thank you, gentlemen.”
“But look here,” Claffey said. His fierce freckles were glowing; his peel-nailed finger went dart, stab at the bottle’s label. “See just here the cross, that means His Holiness, and here’s the painted eye within a triangle that means Monsieur Mesmer has blessed it himself with the animal spirits—”
“You sure he didn’t piss it?” Joe inquired.
“Or the pope piss it?” said Mary.
“For shame,” Jankin said. “His Holiness does certainly never piss.”
“His water is drawn off by angels,” the Giant said, “without pain or embarrassment, of course. What would you say that we all stay in tonight and I tell you a story?”
He hardly dared to raise his head.
Jankin said, “The dwarves with duck-feet, is it?”
“I hope if you met them, Jankin, you would not be so impolite as to mention their duck-feet.”
“Small chance of that,” Claffey said. “You claim that they occur in Switzerland. We could not prove you wrong.”
“And I could not prove me right,” the Giant said. “But at the mere breath of scepticism, I fall silent. What interest have I, Claffey, what possible interest could I have, in convincing you of the existence of web-footed Alpines of diminutive habit?”
Claffey gaped at him. He could not understand the question. His face flushed up to the hair-roots. He felt his big moment with Bitch Mary had been spoiled.
“Besides,” the Giant said. “You know I do not like dwarf tales. They are too sad. I do not like them.”
At nine-thirty that evening it was still light, but it had begun to drizzle. Bitch Mary, crouching by the window, made a squeak of surprise; they all swarmed—except the Giant—to see what it was, and within seconds Claffey, Pybus, and Jankin were down the stairs and out.
“What was it?” said the Giant. He felt disinclined to move; his legs ached.
“It was an Englishman,” Bitch Mary said. “Walking beneath a canopy on a stick.”
“Umbrella,” Joe said, bored. “The apprentices are always turning out against them. It’s a fact that they are
