One of the boys had shit his pants by the time he reached the sty-wall, and the sow smelt him. Her voice took on a different timbre, enjoying the piquancy of their fear.
Instead of the low snort there was a higher, hotter note out of her. It said: I know, I know. Come and be judged.
I know, I know.
She watched them through the slats of the gate, her eyes glinting like jewels in the murky night, brighter than the night because living, purer than the night because wanting.
The boys knelt at the gate, their heads bowed in supplication, the plate they both held lightly covered with a piece of stained muslin.
‘Well?’ she said. The voice was unmistakable in their ears. His voice, out of the mouth of the pig.
The elder boy, a black kid with a cleft palate, spoke quietly to the shining eyes, making the best of his fear:
‘It’s not what you wanted. We’re sorry.’
The other boy, uncomfortable in his crowded trousers, murmured his apology too.
‘We’ll get him for you though. We will, really. We’ll bring him to you very soon, as soon as we possibly can.’
‘Why not tonight?’ said the pig.
‘He’s being protected.’
‘A new teacher. Mr Redman.’
The sow seemed to know it all already. She remembered the confrontation across the wall, the way he’d stared at her
as though she was a zoological specimen. So that was her enemy, that old man. She’d have him. Oh yes.
The boys heard her promise of revenge, and seemed content to have the matter taken out of their hands.
‘Give her the meat,’ said the black boy.
The other one stood up, removing the muslin cloth. The bacon smelt bad, but the sow nevertheless made wet noises of enthusiasm. Maybe she had forgiven them.
‘Go on, quickly.’
The boy took the first strip of bacon between finger and thumb and proffered it. The sow turned her mouth sideways up to it and ate, showing her yellowish teeth. It was gone quickly. The second, the third, fourth, fifth the same.
The sixth and last piece she took with his fingers, snatched with such elegance and speed the boy could only cry out as her teeth champed through the thin digits and swallowed them. He withdrew his hand from over the sty wall, and gawped at this mutilation. She had done only a little damage, considering. The top of his thumb and half his index finger had gone. The wounds bled quickly, fully, splashing on to his shirt and his shoes. She grunted and snorted and seemed satisfied.
The boy yelped and ran.
‘Tomorrow,’ said the sow to the remaining supplicant. ‘Not this old pig-meat. It must be white. White and lacy.’ She thought that was a fine joke.
‘Yes,’ the boy said, ‘yes, of course.’
‘Without fail,’ she ordered.
‘Yes.’
‘Or I come for him myself. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I come for him myself, wherever he’s hiding. I will eat him in his bed if I wish. In his sleep I will eat off his feet, then his legs, then his balls, then his hips —,
‘Yes, yes.’
‘I want him,’ said the sow, grinding her trotter in the straw.
‘He’s mine.’
‘Henessey dead?’ said Leverthal, head still down as she wrote one of her interminable reports. ‘It’s another fabrication. One minute the child says he’s in the Centre, the next he’s dead. The boy can’t even get his story straight.’
It was difficult to argue with the contradictions unless one accepted the idea of ghosts as readily as Lacey. There was no way Redman was going to try and argue that point with the woman. That part was a nonsense. Ghosts were foolishness; just fears made visible. But the possibility of Henessey’s suicide made more sense to Redman. He pressed on with his argument.
‘So where did Lacey get this story from, about Henessey’s death? It’s a funny thing to invent.’
She deigned to look up, her face drawn up into itself like a snail in its shell.
‘Fertile imaginations are par for the course here. If you heard the tales I’ve got on tape: the exoticism of some of them would blow your head open.’