Bitch.”
“I cannot. I have promised to work for the landlord for a penny a day.”
“Joe Vance will give you a penny a day, and more.”
“But I have contracted my work, until I have paid off a debt.”
“What debt?”
The girl’s brow wrinkled. “I hardly know. Bride knows.”
“Whose debt is it? That bawd herself?”
“Bride was a mother to me,” Mary said, “when I came off the boat. True woman of Ireland, she plucked me from the quayside and certain ruin, for I was being enticed to go away with a vendor of maidenheads. Bride took me to a shelter and gave me bread and a blanket, and she and the blind man, who is called Ferris, brought me to London together. I lodged then at Henrietta Street, until I came to this place, one penny per day, clean straw and my food all found. As for the debt, I don’t know whose it is, but I know I am bound to it, and if I go with you to the sign of the Hampshire Hod the landlord will come after me and fetch me back and knock my teeth out, for so he always promised if I strayed away.”
“Who is the landlord?” Pybus said.
“His name’s Kane, he’s a Derry man.”
Pybus was shocked. “One of our own?”
“Of course. Or why would your agent Joe Vance be doing business with him?”
Pybus thought, this is a poor state of affairs. He waited till Claffey came in. Claffey had a white moustache and beard, from drinking milk from a bucket he had seen standing in the yard. Pybus didn’t like to mention it, but it was hard to concentrate on the conversation. “Mary won’t come,” he said, “she’s got a debt, she don’t know how great.”
“A debt?” Claffey said. “That’s not good news. She’s young for a debt.” He snivelled hard—the morning was dank and rheumy—and Pybus saw the milk-vapour rise towards a nostril, as if it might ascend upwards to his brain. It was not hard to imagine Claffey an infant. Fists clenched, beating the breast. His hair sparse—as now—his heels drumming while he sucked a rag.
Pybus blinked. His attention had been elsewhere. Claffey was saying, “ … leave it then. I thought her a tender little morsel, though she has hardly any tittles, but if she comes with a debt I shall be wrapping my bundle and on the road elsewhere.”
Pybus went to the Giant. “Bitch Mary has a debt,” he said. “She is forced to slave.”
“Let it be paid, let it be paid,” said the Giant. But then he flopped back, his great head subsiding onto his store of money. More and more he wanted to sleep these days, and less and less did he fight the impulse. His strong snores drove Pybus from the door.
Pybus said to Vance, “Bitch Mary has a debt.”
“So she does” was the genial response. “And must work to pay it.”
“But for how many years?” Pybus said.
Joe shrugged. “Who knows how many? And should she sicken and die, another will pay it in her place.” He stood up and stretched. “Time to shift ourselves,” he said. “Come on, boy, why are you standing with your mouth ajar? Hurry up and box our effects, the carrier will be here in a half-hour.”
For Joe had opted for medium-term profit, choosing not to parade the Giant through the streets with a close- stool on his shoulder and their bird cage and siskins dangling from one finger. “Rouse up, Charlie,” Vance shouted from the doorway; this failing, he crouched down on the floor, and bellowed in the Giant’s ear.
The Giant turned over, muttering, and his arm flailed, and his blanket lifted like a galleon’s sail filled with stormy air. Whoosh! He sat up. Startled awake. “Would you consider, Joe, that you pay me the proper respect?”
“Due to what?”
“Due to a prodigy and a scholar.”
“Shite and shite again!” said Joe. “Your school was in the hedge, and when the English cut it down you had to confess your learning complete. Your scholarship consists of a few Latin tags and your native talent for talking that which I above mentioned.”
The Giant yawned. Joe was tapping his timepiece. “Get up off that floor. From noon today this patch of floor reverts to the Derry man, and he has already let it to a merman and his school.”
“What Derry man?” asked the Giant. He rubbed his eyes, tentatively. They felt as if they were bulging out of his skull. “What merman? What school?”
An hour later, they were at the door and ready to go. Joe said, “Look, considering that we’ve gone to the expense of hiring a cart in order to keep you
“Who’s the tag-man now?” The Giant smirked.
“—can’t you stoop double? And we’ll wrap your head in a sack?”
“Wrap your head in a brick, Joe.” The Giant took a swig from the chased silver flask he kept always in his pocket. He waited till the warmth hit him, just beneath his clammy and floating breastbone. At once he felt strengthened, from the inside out. He swigged again. Waited. Felt a resurgence there, a little stir of dead nerves. His feet, these days, were increasingly far away. His fists also. He swept up one fingertip, and bringing it through a vast arch placed it not unprecisely on Joe Vance’s shoulder. “Come along, thou great classicist. Down to Piccadilly we go, tag, rag, and bobtail.”
He thought, why should you wrap my head in a sack? When God has wrapped it in the clouds?
“Still,” Claffey had said. His narrow eyes downcast, his red knuckles kneading.
“Still. Debt may not be so much. Maybe she cannot count.”
“Don’t think of it, Francis.”
