The Fourth Pig (6 page)

But Denys Backhouse took Bill aside and said: “Where is this brickyard? For it's my opinion it killed Ginger.”

Bill said heavily: “That's what I say, sir. But you can't get anything out of the insurance … Christ, I wish I could get at the bastard that owns it!”

“Who is the … gentleman?”

“Bleeder of the name of Thompson. Pays Union rates in the yard when he's got to, but the minute he can get round them, like on the furnace work, he does.”

“That is not unusual, Bill … may I call you Bill? I suggest that we proceed to the brickyard and interview Mr. Thompson.”

“What—about Ginger?
He
won't do nothing. And we can't. And old Ginger's dead, blast him! And some other poor bastard'll get his job and get done in the same way.”

“I'm not so sure. Come into my car, Bill. So.”

At a touch the engine woke, the wheels glided forward, glided past the corner, for ever out of the street. Bill sat forward on the seat, cap in hands, feet together, aware in contrast with the sleek cushioned and shining car, that he was grubby, ugly, inferior, that his boots were through at the toe, that he was wearing a ragged muffler instead of the collar and tie a Rolls-Royce demands. All this enhanced his misery. And he would never be able to laugh about it with Ginger—Ginger so good at laughing at toffs! Ginger lying there queer and still, not coughing, not answering back. Ginger finished, done in, dead. He wiped his eyes with his cap, hoping Mr. Backhouse wouldn't notice. And Mr. Backhouse leant back well used to softness and glitter, but his eyes appeared peculiarly black and hard and his lips had tight muscles pressed round them. And so they arrived at Mr. Thompson's brickyard, and Bill cautiously, cap in hand, followed the great film star out of the Rolls-Royce.

Mr. Thompson himself came to interview such a potential customer, beaming with class-servility. He was a very ordinary man, no special villain. He regretted the death of his employee, but such things cannot be blamed upon working conditions. No
doubt the man was constitutionally unfitted for such work. Long hours? The industry demanded them. It was impossible to run a brickyard in any other way. These were hard times and if he was unable to make any profits he would have to close down and then where would his workmen be! Anyway, this was a free country, the man had accepted the conditions and the wages. They hadn't been forced on him, and he needn't have taken the job if he hadn't wanted it! And as for you, sir, if you've come to my yard not as an honest customer but a meddling busybody, I'll thank you to clear out!

Mr. Backhouse swung his gold-mounted cane: “Those, I take it, are the kilns whose furnaces killed your employee?”

“You clear out of my yard this instant or I'll have the police in!”

Bill flinched, but not Denys Backhouse, who had never had occasion to fear the police. He waved the cane once more. Something peculiar seemed to be happening to the kilns. The bricks in the walls were bulging. Three or four dropped out with a loud, disconcerting noise. Bill stayed very still, crouched a little, twisting his cap in his hands, breathing chokily. Where the bricks had dropped out a vine was growing with great rapidity, crawling up and down, loosening more and more bricks, bulging into lewd, mocking grapes. Mr. Thompson sat down abruptly, on nothing. Nobody even laughed. There were other vines pushing the brickyard about. They shoved the neat baked piles crashing. They rippled leafily along. The foreman and half a dozen men were watching, eyes and mouths open. One of the vines plucked at a man's leg; he swore violently and bolted; the others followed. The vine pulled over a couple of wheelbarrows. The face of Mr. Denys Backhouse was intent and pleased. The brick kilns were all in
ruins now. Out of the ruins delicately stepped a panther, then two. Mr. Thompson crawled rapidly towards Mr. Denys Backhouse, hatless, earthy, squeaking in an unpleasant way. The gold-mounted cane, waved once, held him in position, scrabbling. The panthers approached with snarls and greedy tail-twitches.

Bill said, in a loud and sudden voice: “You can't go doing
that
, sir, not even if the whole bloody thing's a bloody dream!”

“Why not?” asked Mr. Denys Backhouse, but gestured the panthers flat.

“Because—” Bill began, “because—what's the good of it?”

“I think we agreed that this gentleman who is about to have his throat bitten out by my panthers, virtually murdered Ginger. I think, don't you, it would be nice to do justice for that murder.”

“No,” said Bill, “I don't, and I won't have it! Ginger was my pal. We done things together. Agreed he was as good as murdered. But this isn't going to make him alive, so what's the use, I ask you, what's the use?”

“It might stop other owners of brickyards from making the same bargain with other men who are out of work and have no choice. Don't you think so, Bill?”

“No I don't, and it's not sense. Killing one man won't alter nothing, an' he's no worse than the rest. It would be only—accidental-like. It's not just brickyards, neither, the whole blasted thing's wrong, and it'll take more than you to put it right even if you was God almighty!”

“You refuse, then, to allow this man's death, even though Ginger—”

“You lay your tongue off of Ginger, though I say it to your face, sir, whoever you are! Ginger and me, that's finished. And I'm the
only one knows about it now. And this won't help and it's not what I'm used to and what we need is Unions for all and all in the Unions! And we aren't killing anyone, least of all so bloody casual!”

“Suppose my panthers clawed him a little? … not to death?”

“It's not
English
!” said Bill, white to the lips now, and his hands had twisted all the lining out of his cap, “and it's not going to do no good!”

With that, Mr. Denys Backhouse waved his cane once more and the panthers stalked away and disappeared among the foliage, and even that wilted and withered and vanished. But the kilns were down and the brick piles overset, and their owner was still grovelling in the mud. Yet now again he was beginning to murmur words about the police.

“Come along, Bill,” said Mr. Denys Backhouse, “the car is waiting.” Bill stumbled after him and into the car, not conscious now of shine or softness. By this time Mr. Thompson had crawled to knee-height and was shaking both fists after them. Again the Rolls-Royce drew away. “Where can I drop you, Bill?” asked the film star, flicking a morsel of lime from his trouser-leg. And added: “What do you propose doing now?”

Bill said: “I'm on the dole. It's all one to me. Christ, I'm tired! Them bloody brutes.”

“I could offer you a job,” said his companion slowly.

“Could you, sir? A tempor'y job, like?”

“No, permanent. Ginger's old job, as a matter of fact.”

“He never said …”

“I can imagine that he wouldn't. Yet it was a nice job in a way. Compared with his last. But you would lose your freedom, Bill.”

“Freedom. What for?”

“Oh. To vote and all that.”

“There's a lot o' firms where they don't like you voting Labour. Dunno that I care much. Not if it's a decent job.”

“And you'd have to ask before you got married.” “That's so in some firms. But if it's a decent job—”

“And you wouldn't get any regular wages. But you'd get food and lodging … and a good deal of fun. And if you were ill you'd get looked after.”

“But—Who are you, anyway, sir?”

“I happen to be the God Dionysos Bacchos. An Immortal. The God of divine frenzy. By the way, would you like a drink?”

“I could do with one, sir … And this job?”

“Your pal Ginger was my slave.”

“But that's not … legal.”

“It is where I come from and would take you. Oh, ever so legal. Would you mind being my slave?”

“'twouldn't be so different from now. Wage-slaves, that's us. In a manner of speaking. Ginger, he used to say so. In a nasty kind of way, if you take me, as though he'd been expecting something else. Which there isn't. Not for the likes of us. Not yet. And so he gets done in. Christ, I got bloody fond of old Ginger an' his talk!”

Bill bowed his head in his hands. Mr. Denys Backhouse lighted a cigarette and watched the even flowing-by of houses; now they were passing through suburban acres of villa and small garden; above none showed any Acropolis. He observed at last: “Do you agree, then, to come?”

“I dunno,” said Bill. “Why didn't Ginger never mention you, like?”

“It's apt to be rather difficult, mentioning the Gods.”

“You are a God—straight?”

“Yes.”

“Then—when it come to them panthers—why did you do what I said? You didn't need to have—not if you was a God. You might have set them to killing me.”

“I'm not above taking advice. Besides, was your affair primarily, as Ginger's friend. I once did something of the same kind with some pirates, but it was my affair then. I'll tell you all about it if you come with me. In any event, ideas change; no one questioned my action in regard to the pirates, some of whom I killed and some of whom I turned into dolphins; but that was some time ago. Bill, do you believe I'm a God?”

“Yes.”

“Coming?”

“It don't seem right, somehow, once having run across a God—which I haven't up till now, for all they give me liquorice sticks at Sunday school—to turn him down. But then—what about Rule Britannia and all that?”

“Do you call yourself a free man now, Bill? Are you able freely to create and wander and think and love?”

“Hell, no.”

“Coming?”

“Yes.”

The car now had passed through the suburbs, out into the country, beyond the tram stops, beyond the hikers' rambling-spots, beyond anything Bill had ever known. Ahead lay a large river, planting itself down across England without leave of atlases. And Bill began to hear the croaking of the chorus of frogs.

THE FURIES DANCE IN NEW YORK

So we said, where shall we find the loveliest thing in New York?

And some said in Fifth Avenue or Fifty-seventh Street, and some said

In the Socialist Party, or, as they were mostly highbrows,

In the Communist Party. And what about Radio City?

And what about Manhattan Bridge and what about …?

But we were already slinking off,

Finding the voices a trifle difficult, feeling a little browbeaten, having been told that England

Is dead and decaying, her culture rotten from its class basis up,

Or having been told, still worse, that England is marvellous,

The one place that will be left standing in a chaotic world

(Like an exhibit of a stage coach and two crinolines).

So, as I said, nickel in fist, we had slunk off into the El.

Here in the Natural History Museum, having dodged the meteorites

Which God the mathematician for some odd reason saw fit

To strew like Xs over Kansas (X equals nothing),

We have come to the Indian section. The Indians, as everyone knows,

Are being assimilated, that is the Good Indians

Who go to the Church schools and learn to sell things and be customers themselves.

The Bad Indians were all killed by the ancestors of the Christian Scientists,

The ancestors of the Rotarians, the readers of Esquire, and the D.A.R.,

The ancestors of Franklin D. Roosevelt, General Johnson and Huey Long.

What the hell anyway. The Bad Indians were killed.

And a good job too.

This Indian pottery is more beautiful than anything in Fifth Avenue,

If it had been made to-day in a studio, on some fresh inspiration,

People would be going crazy over it, the art critics and the highbrows;

It would be sold for large sums to Park Avenue, but the Communists also

Would tell us it was authentic.

This Indian basket work, this exquisite feathering,

This accurate bloom of colour, this patterned certainty,

Precariously preserved in a few glass cases, it is astonishing, I think,

Do you not think so?

Citizens of New York, flock round in reverence.

Could you have made these things? No. No fear. Jeez, no!

What can you make, citizens? They answer, look at us.

Look at us!

We are unskilled labour, we can turn wheels, press handles, put salted nuts in bags,

But we can't make anything.

Citizens, citizens, your fathers made ploughshares, made ox-yokes,

Your mothers embroidered linen shirts, in Dalmatia, in Italy,

In Greece, in Portugal, in Poland, Hungary, Latvia,

What have you done with the skill of your fathers and mothers?

What have you done with their patterns?

But the citizens shake their heads, not comprehending all this:

Our fathers and mothers were dumb: who wants ox-yokes,

Who wants embroidered shirts? Woolworths don't stock them, huh?

Our fathers and mothers, they got quit of that on Ellis Island.

We got nothing. We want nothing. See?

Let us return to the glass cases, to the difficult contemplation of beauty

That was being made in this continent three centuries ago,

That was of value for the world, for mankind, for all these abstractions

Which somehow we believe in (although no doubt

We shall be told they are the results of a class education

At places like Oxford, England.)

And this civilisation was shot up, destroyed, ended,

Lost for the world and mankind. Lost, all that it might have turned into.

Lost. Lost.

People who destroy things are apt to get a curse on them.

We should have observed this often enough in history

(Only history is dumb stuff, as Henry Ford said, bunk)

To have realised its necessity. No use trying to escape