Short Stories 1927-1956

by Walter De la Mare

  The fact in itself perhaps was a little odd. Many times in years gone by he had been called a little pig, but that is a charge incident to childhood in general. He had also, however, been nicknamed Piggy by a few of his favourite school-friends, and even if it were intended as a term of endearment, it at least hinted which way the wind was blowing; though he had never taken the hint to heart. Never until now indeed had he become so acutely conscious of its propriety. The reflection which he had seen in the glass for those few instants had not merely resembled the countenance of a pig. It had been possessed by one.

  With faltering hand he had laid down his worn hairbrush on the untidy little chest of drawers, but he continued to gaze for a while into the glass. For a moment or two he suspected that his reason had become slightly unhinged. He went downstairs and found his aunt, her wide, felt-slippered feet on the fender, knitting in her Windsor chair by the kitchen fire.

  ‘Auntie,’ he inquired, ‘what would you say I am like?’

  ‘Like?’ she replied, peering at him over her steel spectacles. ‘Your mother always said that you took after your poor dear father. In face, I mean, though I could never see it myself. You have got their noses.’

  ‘What was Father like, then?’

  ‘Like?’ echoed his aunt again. ‘Why, I never put a name to it.’

  Andy changed his tack. ‘Were we, our family, I mean, ever farmers, Auntie?’ was his next question.

  ‘Not as I know of,’ said she.

  ‘But farmers,’ Andy persisted, ‘do sometimes take after what they keep, don’t they? Wouldn’t you say so, Auntie? Just like butchers, I mean.’

  His Aunt Clara had dropped a stitch, and was endeavouring to recover it. ‘They may,’ she said. ‘I can’t say as I have ever looked.’

  Yet again – though Andy’s could hardly be described as an active mind – yet again, he changed his tack. ‘I suppose lots of other people,’ he insinuated, ‘often have bacon, just cold or rashers, for breakfast, and – well, for sandwiches … Would you say that what we eat has anything to do with – well, what we look like?’

  For the first time in his life he closely examined his aunt’s peculiar countenance, which with its somewhat untidy arrangement of padded hair, frilled collar, faint moustache and spectacles, more closely resembled a rag-bag than anything in the nature of the edible, except possibly a heart of celery.

  ‘Bacon’s nourishing,’ she replied, with a trace of tartness. ‘It’s the fat. I’m sure I do the best for you I can, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘No,’ said Andy, ‘I didn’t mean that … I shan’t be late home.’

  He was on the outskirts of the border of youthful independence. And he withdrew.

  Beginnings as small and simple as these may have the widest of outcomes. Every Cause, every Institution, every Crusade, with very few exceptions, has had its idea, its origin – even though it were an origin as minute perhaps as a grain of mustard seed – in one single human head. This was its germ, its nucleus. Wheel, Plough, Ship, for example; and Guillotine. How far that of the Society for the Suppression of the Consumption of Pig and its Products had been the outcome of a niggardly Manager’s refusal to add half a crown to the weekly salary of a junior clerk; how far of a mute and casual, though afflicted, glance from the squinny little eyes of a small pig on its way to execution; how far to the fact that Andy’s physiognomy somewhat took after that common to all the members of its species; and, finally, how far to Jimmie’s tender sensitiveness and loyal affection for his friend – well, not even the complete Committee of Management of the S.S.C.P.P. could have decided. And, owing perhaps to his Scots ancestry and a natural reserve, their Chairman was never likely to supply more than a fraction of the relevant data.

  Andy had never issued his ultimatum. Perhaps because he was discreet as well as zealous, he continued in the employment of the Sorbeau Young Pig Sausage Company for three additional years, before, as he put it to himself, he was invited to resign. And, with him, loyally and emphatically, actually did resign his friend, Jimmie.

  It had been on yet another Tuesday that Andy had found himself standing on the further side of the Manager’s desk. There was no trace of the porcine in that face, unless a rhinoceros can also lay claim to it.

  ‘I hear, Campbell,’ he sneered, ‘that you have become one of these Umanitarians?’

  Every sanguinary vestige of Andy’s race had begun to simmer in him at this charge. He flushed, but said nothing.

  ‘You were, I see, granted an increase in salary,’ the Manager had glanced at a paper on his desk, ‘of two shillings and sixpence a week; which,’ he paused, ‘is precisely six pounds and ten shillings per annum. And this, mind you, was no more than seven months ago … Is that what you call loyalty?’

  ‘Loyalty, sir,’ said Andy. ‘I don’t see exactly what you mean.’

  ‘Hah, you don’t, eh? Am I misinformed, then, in supposing that you are a member, an uncommonly and appropriately green one, I admit, of the Feed on Vegetables crew, or whatever they call themselves, and that you have even been chattering about starting what I suppose you would call a branch – or twig – of it, on your own?’ He paused to glare at Andy, who, looking more like the contents of a mediaeval Christmas dish – though far less comfortable – than ever, stared glumly back and crimsoned. There was even a trace of the acid in his reply.

  ‘I think, sir,’ he said stubbornly, ‘there is a great deal to be said for vegetables, and I’m not ashamed of it, neether. There are great men that have been fed on vegetables. And only vegetables too, though I wouldn’t go as far as that myself.’

  ‘Oh, you ain’t, ain’t you? And you wouldn’t, wouldn’t you? If I was interested enough to have a guess at the matter, I should say, myself, that you were potato-bred. Not to mention parsnips and the Jerusalem artichoke. Were you, Campbell? Though, such a glum-faced milksop hypocritical simpleton as you look at this moment might as easily be the product of sugar-water, mutton-fat, and bran. But what I am asking you, what I am asking you,’ he slapped his fat hand upon the desk, ‘is, is it loyal? Is that what you call even common honesty to the firm?’

  ‘What, sir?’ Andy had replied, intending no impertinence. ‘You mean the potatoes?’

  ‘No, sir, I do not mean the potatoes. I mean this vegetarian foolery, this schoolgirl simpering about slaughter-houses, abbatwors, and so forth. And yet, there you stand positively fattening yourself on what to you must be nothing better than sheer blood-money. What the H— do you mean by it?’

  Andy’s cheek had turned the colour of a sheet of paper. ‘You think,’ he stuttered furiously, ‘you think you can sit there and just insult me because you have been chosen, and anybody can see why, to massacre all those harmless miserable pigs! Loyalty! Why, you don’t even eat your own sausages. I know, because I have asked. You think …’ But further words refused to come. For the first time in his life Andy was positively beside himself with rage, mortification and revolt. He had been provoked, it is true, but even at that he went a good deal beyond what is expected of a subordinate if that subordinate is a gentleman. ‘You ought jolly well to be put out to grass, like old King Thingumbybod,’ he said. ‘Then you would have something better to scratch and to scratch with.’

  What was even worse, he had raised his voice, and it being as yet only 10.30 a.m. not a whimper from ‘the House’ had come to drown it. It seemed that the complete establishment, the whole countryside, was listening, and the Manager’s face had also turned not only pale but flabby. He coughed and used his handkerchief. It had a narrow black border, Andrew noticed.

  ‘You will go here and now,’ he said in a quiet voice that came from between his teeth, ‘to the Cashier. And he will give you one week’s salary. Your last. And never do you dare, Master Parsnip Mangelwurzel Pig-faced Campbell, to darken these doors again. Loyalty! Honesty! Namby-pamby pap-tongued schoolgirl cant and flummery! … Get out!’

  Within a fortnight, though still only on the borders of the elderly,
Andy’s poor Aunt Clare had died. Naturally she had been a little shocked at his summary dismissal, but the doctor two days before her decease had assured Andy, who stood there in the little parlour blubbering with grief and remorse, that this had not in the slightest degree expedited the inevitable. Within little more than a fortnight of the event Andy had discovered that he was now, and with due caution might remain, an independent young gentleman with a more or less assured income of some £165 a year, in Consols. Not to mention his aunt’s remarkably miscellaneous goods and chattels.

  At a stroke, he had been put into the position of remaining if he so pleased, for the rest of his life, one of the idle rich. As it eventuated, for a greater part of the rest of that life, he had in fact become much the richer, but had indefatigably refrained from being ‘idle’.

  Until the morning of his dismissal it was rather the fellow-feeling already referred to which had been Andy’s main incentive. He began to take an interest in the Juvenile League to which the Manager had referred. The charge that in addition to this he had himself initiated a little private society within that society was also beyond refutation. An austere moralist might well have agreed that in so doing he was attempting to serve two masters. In the U.S.A., for example, an employee, however modest his position may be, in, say, a firm of pickle-boilers or purveyors of lipstick and face-cream, should be inwardly convinced that these pickles, this lipstick, this allurement, is the best on earth of its kind, far surpassing any rival’s. It is a moral obligation.

  The moment Andy had begun to fulminate among his friends against what he considered to be the abuse of the Pig, its heartless exploitation, whether in the form of sausage manufactured, or of crackling or trotters as a table delicacy, he should no doubt have instantly retired into private life, or secured another post. With a firm, say, engaged in marketing cast iron or groats. Instead, he had held his tongue, and engaged in opposed pursuits, and to that extent, working hours and leisure, had been faithless to both.

  On the other hand he was young. He then had his auntie to consider. He was zealous, and his face was something of a misfortune. His censor had been tactless. In consequence a furious resentment at his insults had proved yet another motive in the early labours of a lifetime – no less vitriolic, that is, than a hatred of the Sorbeau Sausage Company, with its disingenuous slogan, ‘Young Pigs Only’. It was a hatred, moreover, at the intensity of which even he himself had been at times appalled. Time which mellows most things had made something of a memoried laughing-stock of the one, and mulcified the other. There came a day when at mention of his old firm, when sentiment had lent enchantment to the distant view, he would add, with a ponderous wag of his somewhat heavy head, ‘though I am told in confidence that the term Sorbeau should have a somewhat different termination.’

  That of course was little short of slander; but a slander of no real consequence; the actual fact being that the Society had itself been in the nature of a permanent advertisement of the Sorbeau wares. The more actively it endeavoured to reduce the consumption of pork, the more vividly it reminded the heretic of crackling, bath chaps and chippolata. It was inevitable. You cannot preach European ideas of decorum to the naked savage without increasing the sale of the most hideous of reach-me-downs. Even in the nursery it is Rules that encourage rebels.

  Ruminations on these lines had been steadily filing through Sir Andrew’s deeper consciousness as he sat up there on the platform; and many other slides of memory’s magic lantern also. Jimmie had joined him early. Together they had debated, without the ghost of a quarrel or even of prolonged disagreement, every necessity in the inception of the Society they had had in mind, the ideal they aimed at, and what would best serve it. They had debated – after, that is, their funds had begun to accumulate – whether they should remain on a purely honorary status or become salaried officials. The fact that Jimmie had never had an aunt with any money, and only his own industry to depend on, had settled that question – not without some little satisfaction to his friend. It would have been invidious, they agreed, if they had been treated differently. The labourer is no less worthy of his hire if he have a comfortable nest egg in the bank. And the Society had unanimously concurred.

  It had advanced from strength to strength, and since it appealed to such members of the public as have leisure for activities of this nature, and also to those who can afford, as it were, to refrain from certain articles of diet, luxuries, dainties, because their means provide an ample field of selection elsewhere. Indeed the great majority of its members were of the leisured and moneyed classes – those who not only admire the pig per se and so wish to – as well as ought to – refrain from eating him, and those on whom this entails no violent self-sacrifice. The ardent in action, that is, may be shockingly tepid in motive. Even a by-election or a prize-fight may be proof enough of that …

  The years, alas, had brought their sacrifices. There had always been a curious hint in Jimmie’s eye that he was not long for this world. The faintest cloud of a true inward grief and sadness passed over the Chairman’s face as memory of this old loss returned to him.

  Sir Andrew was not ‘musical’ by nature. Even his racial enthusiasm for the bagpipes was mainly psychological. His younger daughter, Jeannie, however, was being taught to use the viola, and when, one sociable tea-time, he had referred casually to a rival colleague as ‘fit after all, only to play second fiddle’, she had intervened, with, ‘But Daddy, darling, that is one of the most beautiful instruments in the whole orchestra. It’s like the stop on the organ which is just like the human voice.’

  In both ways, he now reflected, Jimmie had triumphed. Maybe in part because Jimmie had never been able to free his memory of the spirited little porker who had looked at Andy that far-away morning, and had yet trotted on to its fate, he had never seemed happy at these annual reunions. Albeit it would be impossible to compute how many pigs had escaped being Sorbeaued in their youth – even if many of these had lived on, only to be slaughtered in their maturity, a fate common to so many of us. But this had been largely on account of pure affection for Jimmie. The feminine members of the Society loved Jimmie. And tears had all but crept out of Sir Andrew’s eyes, sitting up there so conspicuously on the platform, and yet seemingly at his ease, as he thought of him – of Jimmie, and of the old, old days when the Society was little better than a remote ideal; Jimmie with his almost cherry-black, wild, far-away eyes, his flaming temper, sudden rages and matchless pluck. His all but hysterical enthusiasm, and those sudden unplumbable desolating dumps – a friend so true and generous and affectionate; for ever borrowing, but never sorrowing; and sometimes paying back in the oddest of fashions, whether or not they were as welcome to his creditor as just simple cash would have been.

  Sir Andrew had never reflected until this very moment whether his own remoter past bore the faintest resemblance to Shakespeare’s ‘carcanet’. If it had, then Jimmie, he would instantly have admitted, had been its mistress-jewel. Mistress rather than ‘master’ because Jimmie had possessed that half-secret something which a boy may inherit straight from a passionate and impulsive mother. And Jimmie’s mother, as Andy knew, had died young.

  The Society had done its best to show their feelings. Thirty-five of its members – many of them bearing floral tributes – and (in spite of its being at Bournemouth) had personally attended the funeral ceremony. It was an expression of their affection and regret. One of them, a very old lady, as well as an ‘original’ member and shareholder – at the last moment tremblingly stepped forward to the very edge of the unhappy cavity and herself dropped into it a minute piglet in pure gold – which immediately concealed itself from view beneath the verger’s sprinkling of ‘dust and ashes’.

  Had Jimmie lived until this Annual Meeting, it would have been deferred for a while, and for the tens present at his funeral there might well have been hundreds.

  It had never entered the mind of the Society to consider what would happen when its ultimate aims had been achieved.
As a matter of fact at no time had there ever been any need for this. The Society showed not the faintest promise of attaining its ultimate aims, and – as almost instantaneously Sir Andrew’s inward eye coursed over previous reunions, resembling lamp-posts beading the darkness in the long road of Time – this particular fact, though it certainly was not what still remained the secret of his daylong disquietude, a little troubled him.

  It was seven years since the Society had reached its zenith. Since then it had not exactly declined – it had settled. The younger generation, cryptic creatures, were not coming along quite so eagerly as they should. The annual statistics which the speaker had already been rather rapidly citing, had been proof enough of that. And he had entirely refrained from mentioning other available statistics which revealed that the annual national sacrifice of pigs far from being static was rapidly increasing. That may be due, Sir Andrew had been ruminating, largely to the ‘Eat More Pork’ crusade, despite its having latterly brought the Society a few new members. It might be owing also in part to the increase of population. In part, since rising wages had given an edge to the ‘Bacon for British Breakfasts’ slogan. More pork may have been consumed too by unaccustomed gluttons of this meat, or by mere distasters or detractors of the animal. Heathen of this order were exceedingly difficult to wean from their habits.

  On the other hand there was the somewhat eerie possibility that certain of his fellow members and associates – a few of them actually present perhaps – habitually refrained from pork, either because they had no taste for it, not the faintest hankering after it, or, no less simple, because it disagreed with them. This was a question, however, he would never deign to face. Beyond that, and here cynicism soured and poisoned the matter, was it conceivable that, in spite of donations, subscriptions, and an unceasingly ardent expression of interest and zeal, were many (or any) of them (in private) treacherously continuing to consume their full share? Pork strictly en famille? Secret ham and baconism orgies? Bedroom porkists? And so reaping mutual moral respect and admiration at no expense to themselves?