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.
And the Giant, turning in his sleep, hears Francis Claffey coming in, and singing on the stair.
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 you 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
