“What, in broad day?” said the Giant.
“It was a dark morning. I anticipated Bruges hangings, and Turkey carpets, and Antwerp silver, but what lay before me was London steel. For instead of any of these things, I saw the stone shelves of a pantry, and my head slammed down, and my hair sheared off, and a penny in my hand, and a crust, and out into the cold among the railings in a yard, and Why, why? And they said, To shore up milady’s wig. And I said sixpence and they said yes, sixpence: one penny for you and five pennies for us. We’re English and we’re entitled, and be glad we’ve not pulled out your teeth.”
Constantine Claffey was such a dandy as you would never think to come out of a thieves’ kennel like Clement’s Inn. His hair was powdered with a strange bluish powder, so his face looked very very white. His bad teeth were painted, and his large front pasted with fine embroidery and one stain from a dripped boiled egg.
“So you’ve got an interestin’ pig?” he said to his brother, in English. “Shall I see it?”
“Ah,” Claffey said. “The pig is only a rumour as yet. It is a topic amongst us. It is under discussion.”
Constantine sneered. “So you brought me all the way to Cockspur Street to view a pig under discussion?”
“It’s scarcely a half-mile.”
“Yes, yes,” Constantine said tetchily. “But I have left projects unsupervised. This is what you don’t seem to understand, bro. Time and tide wait for no man. Not at Clement’s Inn.”
Slig, who had got a couple of drinks in him, seemed less anxious to be away. “Isn’t there some story promised?” he said. “Your idiot Jankin was giving out there’s some story you don’t like to tell, about dwarves. Have you heard of Count Buruvalski? Your man’s exhibiting here, less than three foot high. Have you seen him, Charles?”
“May I correct you?” The Giant brought his eyes to focus on Slig. “The count is not a dwarf. He is a midget. That is different. He is, moreover, a thoroughgoing professional in his line of business. He comes from the land called Poland, where snow is deep and small men are honest. If—Joe Vance—if I should decide to dispense with your services—the count is the man to manage me.”
“I said, have you seen him?”
“I have seen him, I have bought him a drink. I have sat him on the counter to drink it, the count and I are”—the Giant overlapped his fingers—“like that.”
“Oh dear, oh dear,” said Vance. “It’s the first I have heard of this, Charlie. I was aware, of course, that the midget was sniffing around.”
“But look,” said Slig, “I would be obliged if you would get ahead with the story nevertheless, because I always want stories. Any spare you have, O’Brien, I can cost them out, and sell them to Punch and Judy. So, I can give you a shilling for each guinea you make me.”
“Formerly my portion,” Joe Vance said. He sniggered. “How are the mighty fallen.”
“I don’t know, how are they?” the Giant said.
“I’m going to have to bring your viewing fee down to a shilling, Charlie, or maybe a ninepence is realistic. Unless trade picks up, or we get Mester Goss’s pig over sharpish, or we pitch you into prize-fighting, which you seem to resist. You know yourself, nobody comes to see you regular, these days, except that Scotchman, short feller, the animal-trainer—”
“Hunter,” said the Giant. “He wrote down his name for me. He said I should send to him if I was sick. But he says physic is not his line, so I don’t know why.”
Hunter: he had been twice in the last week. “I know that man,” Claffey had said, frowning from the back of the exhibition room. “I seem to recognise the swivel on his nose at the tip there, and his pale eyes. A Scot, unless I am much mistaken.” Claffey was always looking for a fight. He would have thrown out any client who he thought gave offence. But the Scot gave none. “Too mean to spare an insult,” Claffey said. “But that’s his nation.”
He looked sideways at the Giant: didn’t he say his father came out of Scotland?
“The fellow is mannerly enough,” O’Brien said. “So far as it is in him. It is clear that he is gruff, unlettered, rude, whereas I am learned, poetical, and fond of civil company.”
Besides, the Giant thought, he is the only one who asks after my health, and listens to the answer. Yesterday, silent and attentive as ever, he had been among the audience, his odd eyes set on Charlie’s face, looking looking looking. Afterwards, he stepped up. “How do you, sir?”
“The ache in my bones increases.”
“As in mine, sir, as in mine.”
The Giant paused. “But you are not growing, sir, are you? Surely you are past that, your age must decree it? That is the cause of my distemper. Giants are not subject to the rules that govern other mortals.”
“I had observed that,” said the Scot: very dry. “This increase in your stature—do you see a good outcome?”
“In terms of income?”
“In terms of your future, sir.”
“What is it to you, my future?”
And then the little man washed his hands together. His face reddened. The Giant said, afterwards, he had never seen a man so moved. “I’d like to see you again,” the Scot said. “If I talked to your minder, do you think he’d give me some relief on your fee?”
“What, a discount? I think I’m soon down to ninepence, anyway.”
“That’s good news.”
“Not for me.”
“Have you any more signs or symptoms, by the way?”
