Merton had set the date for the slaughter. “Percy’ll be ’ere at three, so I’ll not go upstairs to bed.”
Brian was at the table shelling a bowl of peas: “What pig are yer goin’ ter kill, grandad?”
“Come wi’ me, and I’ll show yer.” He took his stick, and as he walked out and along the yard, Brian noticed for the first time his slightly bent shoulders. Maybe he is very old, he thought, remembering his father’s reference to “that owd bogger.”
Merton pointed into the pigsty. “That one, Nimrod. See it?” Black and pink, they huddled together near the trough, squealing at the expectation of an unlatched gate with buckets of food to follow. “See it? That fat bogger as can ’ardly move.” He turned away to roll a cigarette.
“Will it hurt it when you kill it, grandad?”
“Nay,” Merton said, his face lost in smoke. “A man comes up special to kill it. I can’t do it myself ’cause I ain’t got a licence.” He turned and smacked one of the pigs across its rump for pushing a nose too insistently at the door of the sty, then took a steel scoop from the wash-house wall and stirred the large barrel of crusts and old potatoes, meal and bran. Brian unhooked the latch, and the pigs, smelling food, squealed and crowded at the empty trough so that Merton couldn’t get to it. He put the buckets down: “Pass my stick, Nimrod: I’ll get the boggers out o’ the way.”
Buckets of meal splashed into the trough, the pigs congealed into a solid row, gurgling and gobbling, Brian fascinated at the swill-level going down before his eyes.
The pig to be killed was driven from the food by Merton’s stick, kept wild-eyed and squealing in a corner until the rest had finished and were looking round for more. It was as if the sky had altered colour for it. While the rest seemed happy at not having been singled out for this limbo before death, the victim walked round the sty with nose to the ground, sniffing with nervous quickness. Its steel grey eyes, deeply sunk into an obese face, gazed at the sty fence that Merton and Brian leaned against; then it walked back to the trough, still unable to believe it had been left out, and expecting to find food there, hoping that its last sensation of having been set apart for some incomprehensible purpose had been only a dream. But it kept walking around the sty, repeating these expeditions to the trough, in between time squealing loudly with fear at the incontrovertible difference thrust upon it.
The pig-killer arrived, a small man of forty with a brown wrinkled face and a grey moustache. He wore a flat greasy cap and lit a cigarette as he stopped near the kitchen door. Over the cross-bar of his bike hung a small sack, in which he carried knives and an apron. “We ain’t hard up for time,” Merton said. “So we’ll ’ave a cup o’ tea first.” Brian followed them into the kitchen: “Can I watch the pig being killed, grandad?”
“Yer can for me. It wain’t hurt yer to see a drop o’ blood.” His grandmother overheard. “Don’t let ’im. It ain’t nice. You’ll see enough blood when you’re a big lad.”
“He’ll be all right,” Merton said.
But Mary didn’t want Brian to see it. He’d have bad dreams, she maintained, and Merton agreed: ay, maybe he would. Mary in fact wished the pigs could have gone to the slaughterhouse, for such piteous dying squeals chilled her; so she stayed in the parlour, turned chalk-white when the death blow was struck. It was impossible not to tremble for them: “Poor thing!” she muttered. “Poor thing!”
A large tin bath was placed on the table outside. Percy sorted his knives, got Brian to tie the strings of his apron: “Mek a tight bow, there’s a good lad.” A continual grunting and squealing came from the sty, as if the pigs were somehow able to smell the last blood-stains already washed from the slaughterer’s knife. Buckets of boiling water were carried from the wash-house copper until the bath was two-thirds full. “I might ’ave another done next month,” Merton said, “if I get enough orders for this one.” More people were wanting meat than last year, for work was coming back on the market. “You know where to find me,” Percy said.
The final column of hot steam was poured into the bath. “I’ll mek it right,” Merton promised. “There’ll be a good piece for yo’.” The poultry hatches were abnormally quiet: even the dogs and cats had fled from the vicinity of the house, though they would be back for scraps when the carve-up began.
Brian felt afraid at this silent inexorable display of purpose. Each twig of the nearby tree was significant and isolated as before a thunderstorm. His grandmother had forgotten he was outside, and had gone into the parlour until it was all over. Part of the yard where he stood was empty, for Percy and his grandfather had gone to get the pig from the sty. A wall of cloud darkened the yard and, strangely enough, even the pigs weren’t whining any more. He knew this to be a good time to escape without being thought foolish by his grandfather, yet he was unable to go indoors, was held by a gap in the hedge that showed him the dead fixity of a stubbled cornfield.
Squeals came round the corner, with scuffing and the smack of Merton’s stick across a pig’s back. Then the vacuum of silence was overfilled by every pig screaming at once.
They dragged the half-crazed animal along the ground, its eyes staring like ball-bearings to where it was being taken, but seeing nothing because the squeals were in its eyes and blinding it. Legs kicked from its podged body. Merton cursed, hit it with the stick he still managed to hold, but the blows only confirmed the animal’s instinct that it was going towards some terrible fate, and so caused it to squeal louder.
Those left in the sty were infected with its fear, joined the lament in the hope that they would not be next. With one heave the pig was on the table. Merton held its hind legs and Percy the front. It stared at a patch of blue sky through the branches of the alder tree. Then its head went to one side, and in the distance Brian heard a train passing, as if the pig had turned to watch it at that moment. Percy reached for a wooden-handled knife, held it above the pig’s throat. The blade curved, almost sickle-shaped: like that picture of Shylock, occurred to Brian. Percy’s arm came down strongly, pierced the throat, and ripped it sideways. A metallic, almost human cry covered the house, and died quickly, like a train whistle.
Blood was aimed into a bucket and nearly filled it. They lifted the pig (heavy like iron now) into the bath, and the steaming water changed magically to pink. “Well,” Merton said, “that’s that.” Percy wiped his knife on a cloth.
That’s what pigs is for, Brian said to himself. Its trough-searching snout was dead meat, ready to be cooked and eaten. On the point of tears, he remembered its struggle: that’s what it’s for, though, and now he had seen it. He went into the house.
“Is it dead then?” Mary asked.
Merton was angry that she looked so pale. “Course it is, why?”
“Nothing.” She filled the kettle to make tea.
“There yer goo agen,” he exclaimed, “worryin’ yersen to death over the bleddy pig. Anybody would think I was a bleddy murderer. The soddin’ ta-tas we ’ave over this. Don’t yer know you’ve got to killa pig to get summat t’eat?” Brian had heard his mother say that these words passed every time between them. “I know. But they squeal so.”
Merton took a packet of Robins from the shelf and offered Percy one. “Well, that’s their fault. We kill ’em as neat as we can. I hope I die as quick, that’s all I can say.”
After tea, the oil lamp lit, Mary stood in the pantry salting the pork. There was a great block of salt on the kitchen table, and Merton knocked off lumps, crushing them to powder with a rolling pin, filling basins for Brian to carry down the pantry steps. Slabs of pork hung from the ceiling, so clean that it seemed life was still in it. Bowls were filled with blood and lengths of intestine ready for blackpudding next day. All Brian’s sympathy for the pig had gone — except that on his way to bed faint squeals from its dying returned and during the night mixed with train whistles that made excursions into his dreams.