The Fourth Pig (5 page)

“I think I shall manage, Xanthias; yes, I think I shall be quite comfortable. It will still be easier, even in slaveless times, for a person in my station of life to purchase service for himself.”

“I don't like leaving you. Truth, I don't. You'll go getting into some mess. And who's to carry the luggage?”

“But you're going to be free, Xanthias.”

“It's not what I've been accustomed to.”

“Well, we needn't cross that rather unpleasant looking river. Frogs can always be ignored by the sensible person.”

“But I
will
cross! Blast you, were you trying to stop me when I was all but free!”

“If you swear at me, Xanthias, I shall beat you here and now, just to show you. And you know I can hurt if I choose to exert myself … and use the vines and the panthers … No, don't look at me like that: one would think I were Medusa in person. There, boy, you'll be free in a minute and no one shall beat you. They'll only do—other things.”

Brekekekex, exploit, exploit! The frogs are beginning, bulbously staring at the two climbing down the slippery bank, with a delicately godlike squeal or a proletarian grunt. Knowing there are always thistles, they have turned the donkey loose. A boat awaits. It slithers and wobbles over a heave of frogs. Brekekekex, you mutts, you mutts! Grey elephants of mist approach, circumscribe. Does the boat move still? Both banks are lost. With an injunction not to pawn, Lord Dionysos slips a ring over to Xanthias. Call me and I will come. Old companionship even of whip and chain. Brekekekex, the whip, the whip! Xanthias however
accepts, feels warm, peers past mist elephants, ready and eager for all, planning new life. Dionysos Bacchos, being God, is less tense. Brekekekex, too late, too late! Now elephants part and drift trailing formlessly back to entrap new voyagers. But still the prow cuts the dangerous dark glassy waters of Anti-Styx. It seems that Xanthias is remembering forward, through the long causeless lapse of lives of other red-heads. He scowls and shifts, uneasy. There has been first for centuries slavery, the thing he knows with his own body, not changing much. Worst with Rome, then sometimes better. The slave is the soil's. The soil, once no man's, goes to kings, to barons. Runnymede not for red-heads. Brekekekex, no luck, no luck! Dead by war, plague, overwork. Churches demand souls, sometimes give help, sometimes sit back owning. With prosperity, new worlds, new markets, all shifting rise, the serfs also. Leaving the land—for what? Xanthias, as the bank nears, clenches fists, sweating. The God too seems saddened. Brekekekex, alas, for arts! The red-heads to the factories, to the looms, the mines, the foundries, mills not of God but man. The grovelling dark increase of the herded red-heads when babes are needed to tend machines. Each for himself, alcohol sole remedy. Ah Iacchos, the vines once trailing from the Acropolis … Brekekekex, the drink, the drink! Pubs and chapels. Xanthias looks despairingly at his master, gets no help. The stunted red-heads swarm boxed by day to work as hands for not even a known owner, by night to breed in slums. Xanthias knows all. Slack at the thwart, the frogs gobble at him. But ah here, hold up and wait, for the next memory floats up. The red-heads begin to stand together, to stand by one another. They begin to learn not to be afraid. Almost at once the machines wilt, lose grip a little. The masters
come together too. All hardens. Talk in the air, thought. Brekekekex, class war, class war! Now the far bank nears, shallows slope up under the boat's keel, frogs oar away with surface flipping of wet toes. Heavy and dizzy with knowledge, hand to forehead, Xanthias steps from the boat, free. With a thin, fleeting smile, Lord Dionysos follows. The boat drifts back from their heels as though on a ferry rope. The final chorus of the frogs seeps up faintly from depths. Brekekekex, no use, no use …

Both now wear the dress of their station in life. Xanthias carries a bag of tools, Dionysos a smart ebony cane with golden band, presented by admirers. For him a Rolls-Royce glides, pauses, invites. He slips a hand in his pocket: there is half a crown for Xanthias. Munificent. But a film star can afford these gestures: who knows—a reporter may have seen.

The door of the Rolls-Royce closes with a discreet kiss of polish on polish. Denys Backhouse leans back with his well-known charm, crosses pale trousers, dangles a foot, taps thoughtfully on a cigarette, recedes. Ginger, the free man and citizen, picks up his tools, pockets the tip, spits after the Rolls-Royce. He knows a bit too much history to be as impressed as he should be. He starts to walk along the same road, breathing in the softly settling dust and stink of the car. His boots hurt a little, but he is used to that now.

***

There was a man standing, leaning his backside against the wall by the door where already the bricks were polished from the listless and unemployed backsides of the slump years. His name was Bill and he was intolerably unhappy because his pal Ginger
was ill and, as he suspected, dying, and he could do nothing about it. From time to time he heard a cough from Ginger in bed in the front room and that tore at his guts; he had been with Ginger for an hour or two, but there wasn't anything to be done. Bill wasn't an expert at conversation with the sick, so, after they had failed to play cards at all successfully, Ginger had fretfully told Bill to clear out if he was going to look at him like a bloody girl the whole time.

Bill would have liked a fag, but he didn't have one. Wouldn't till Saturday. And if old Ginger was to get that strengthening stuff like the doctor said he ought to—well, someone had to pay for it. He kicked aimlessly at the wall, then thought of his shoes and stopped. There was nothing to think of, look at, no comfort.

A girl came out of the house and joined him. Although equally without sixpence at the moment she was considerably less unemployed than Bill, as she and her mother did all the housework; the two women had been getting through a bit of washing that morning, some of the heavy stuff, greasy overalls and that. Now she was tired and her back ached real bad. Florrie her name was. There'd been a time when she and Ginger, her mother's lodger, had wanted to get married, before he was took bad, but they hadn't been able to afford that. Not that—or anything. You can't take risks. Not these days. That was before he got the job at the brickworks that had near killed him. He oughtn't to have took it, but there was nothing doing in his own job. No, she thought, I didn't ought to have let him take it. But what's a man to do?

They stood side by side, saying nothing. Opposite each other, up and down the street, were some forty houses, exactly like the house they were leaning against. At each end the street opened
into another street, exactly the same; at one corner there was a sweet shop, at the other a public house, both sad and grubby. Nothing happened. It was a bit of a walk to get to anywhere different, the park or the shops. It was a walk and then a long tram ride—if you'd got the fivepence—out to the country. Florrie and Ginger had been there twice. And now Ginger was coughing and coughing and there wasn't anything his friends could do.

A lorry passed the corner by the pub. Then a dog. Then a hand cart. Then a very large and beautiful car which glided round and so to their astonishment, and at a tap on the glass, stopped a few yards off. As the door opened Florrie flushed and gasped: “Cor lumme, Bill, it's Denys Backhouse, yes it is! I seen him in
Desert Wings
, Saturday—me and Ma went. Oh, Bill, I
know
!”

And Denys Backhouse came across the pavement and addressed them. They were dumb and staring, but after a time it penetrated to them what he was asking for. Suddenly Florrie burst into speech: “That's him coughing what you hear, sir! We put him in the front room, Ma and I did, so as he could get more air, an' the doctor said we done right, sir! He was Ma's lodger, ever so nice he was—” She began to cry. She wanted to tell it all to this stranger—this beautiful, terrible—in
Desert Wings
he'd worn a … what was it … white and soft-like round his face—but why had Ginger never said? If he was any sort of a friend of Denys Backhouse … Ma'd took her to the pictures, Saturday, to cheer her up, and it was the first time without Ginger. They'd used to go regular before that cough of his took a bad turn, once a week to the fourp'ny seats. And she'd cried a bit, quiet like, and then she got to looking at the story and then
he
came on—yes, she'd sat there, twisting that old-fashioned ring Ginger'd given her and
sort of getting into the picture, being the heroine herself, and then sort of calling on Denys Backhouse to come and help her … partly to help the girl in the picture who'd been carried off by savages and partly to help Florrie whose Ginger was dying. Only then it all ended and there was a comic and they'd come back, and there was Ginger fretting about, not asleep yet …

Bill opened the house door and pointed to the front room. Denys Backhouse went in. The car waited, lovely-lined, shining, valuable, to be peered at and stealthily touched.

***

“Why didn't you call me earlier, Xanthias?”

“I never called you. You get out. Coming mucking round with your bleeding charity!”

“Ah … Xanthias, where is the ring?”

“I gave that ring to my young lady. See? And I'm through with you. See? And if you've come to get something out of me it's too late. See?”

“Don't get angry. It only makes you cough. You're not well, Xanthias.”

“I'm dying, that's what. You keep your hands off me!”

“Why, Xanthias?”

“Oh, I don't care. Let 'em be. 't's all right. You aren't so bad. Bleeding parasite an' all that. How d'you like your job, anyway? Posh life I don't think!”

“Xanthias, I was the God who inspired men to frenzy and beauty and creation. Now all I can give are hollow dream-sweets, an hour's padded escape. Because of me and my art the citizens are docile and without frenzy.”

“Dope, yes. Why couldn't you give us better stories?”

“It wasn't in my hands, Xanthias. I was only the artist, the one who becomes a God for the multitude. I was caught by the same thing which has caught you. I had to do what I was paid to do.”

“Don't say you didn't have some choice!”

“A little, a little. And I liked the worship. Difficult, if one has been a God, to give up all that … I was always easy-going … not like Apollo and Artemis and those nasty Spartans of theirs. Besides the Company gave the public the kind of pictures it liked. If it had been offered frenzy and a new vision, would it have taken them?”

“Some of us would!”

“Not enough to pay for a modern super-production, Xanthias. And you?”

“When things were bad, I took a job in the brickyard, stoking the furnaces for the kilns. 'twasn't even Union rates … And I'd been a good Union man before. But the bad times killed all that, Lord Dionysos. Will it always be bad times for us red-heads whenever there's been a spell of good and we could take it easy for a moment, lift our heads, look about us?”

“That's in the hands of the red-heads, Xanthias. If you have faith … though what the deuce you're to have faith in … But perhaps Themis will wake up soon. What did they do to you at the brickyard, boy?”

“It was a sixty-five hour week and that's too much on a furnace. Dried my lungs out, it did. And my heart began to go queer and I'd no stomach for my meals. But I kept at it. And then … Keep your hands on me, so I don't cough. I'm fair sick of coughing.”

“Do you think you are going to die, Xanthias?”

“Yes. And never marry my young lady. Nor nothing. Remember what … old who-was-it … said, takes away half a man's manhood …”

“That was slavery.”

“You never worked me so hard as they did at the brick-kilns. Saturdays and all. And knowing all the time if I didn't keep it up, there'd be a dozen knocking themselves over to get my job. And then it would be signing on again at the Labour … and how they look at you when you come after a job … trying to kid yourself you're a man too. But you aren't. You're only a hand. If you've the luck to be that …”

“What shall I do for you, Xanthias?”

“The doctor said I should have port wine …”

“And haven't you?”

“Hell, no.”

“My dear boy, that kind of miracle's child's play. There … And some decoration for this rather uninviting room. So. How do you like that vine? Reminds one of dear old Attica. And quite disguises the damp patches on the wall which must be a trifle uncongenial from the sick-bed … And some pretty little kids to nibble the lowest leaves. And an oread or two to show a leg from behind the greenery!”

“If Bill were to see that he wouldn't half laugh …”

“Shall we have some panthers? Gentle panthers to loop and slither round the vine stocks … come, my pretties … it's dark and cool here under the vine, but outside there's sun bright and hot and the quartz pebbles sparkling … What is it you hear, Xanthias?”

“Lord Dionysos, I hear the frogs. Lift me a little, put your arm behind me … be with me to the brink … Dionysos Anikete.”

Brekekekex, come back, come back … It is not every slave whose master tends him to the bank, to Charon's ferry-boat. Charon tips his forelock to Dionysos, recognising a major Immortal. Yes, he will take particular care of this passenger. Yes, he looks somewhat over tired. Brekekekex, to sleep, to sleep … Xanthias sits in the boat. He is not coughing any longer. He is not bothered by thoughts of his young lady or any eternally post-poned epithalamion. He is not afraid or angry or anxious about his job. The boat pushes off silently through the goggling golden eyes, the spring-green humped backs, the webbed water-fingers. Brekekekex, good-bye, good-bye …

Thus it was that Bill and Florrie, peeping round the corner of the door, discovered that Ginger had tactlessly and in the most inconsiderate manner for one in his station of life, died in the arms of the great film star. It was something for Florrie to tell the reporters about, something beautiful and soothing and comforting. Dignity and importance had come to the house for the first time in its history. Their shadow made Florrie, who had genuinely loved her Ginger, for a time beautiful and romantic. So in the end, and with the help of press photographers, it was better for her than if she had married the man she loved.