The Fourth Pig by Naomi Mitchison Marina Warner Read Free Book Online Page B

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?”
    â€œYou 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 inruins 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!”
    â€œWhy not?” asked Mr. Denys Backhouse, but gestured the panthers flat.
    â€œBecause—” Bill began, “because—what’s the good of it?”
    â€œI 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.”
    â€œNo,” 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?”
    â€œIt 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?”
    â€œNo 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!”
    â€œYou refuse, then, to allow this man’s death, even though Ginger—”
    â€œYou 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 theonly 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!”
    â€œSuppose my panthers clawed him a little? … not to death?”
    â€œIt’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.
    â€œCome along,