The Tale of Two Williams.
William the First.
Bill was a Slaughter House worker. Who even after a hot tub, still emitted a faint sickly sweet smell of decaying blood.
I drank 3 or 4 pints of pale bitter ale with him whilst on military leave. But my connection went back much further than that. Bill was Madge�s 3rd man and who had fathered her 3rd child.
Madge was tall for a woman, with long dark blonde hair, who had no problems in attracting men. The same held good for women, for she had many women friends, my Mother amongst them. Her odour was a sort of wildness, a spirited horse fighting the bit and bridle of circumstance. In my childhood world I always saw her as the Pirates woman with a soft heart. The most searing of those mental snapshots was of seeing her upon the death of her second child. Ashen face turned up to the gas light a black gaping hole for a mouth, from which issued a heart tearing keening, that was cat feral in its anguish.
I had arrived early, and sipped a beer whilst waiting. In those days the city markets were always close to the rail depots .. a city of one million takes some feeding. Weekly, a thousand beasts for slaughter, were driven through those city streets. When it was wet, the cobble stones slick and slippery, bought down many a hapless creature, only to be lashed quickly and unsteadily to their feet again by repetitive savage blows.
The killing spanned 5 days .. during which the hoarse bellowing fear of the sacrifice rolled like miasma over the surrounding district, all one could smell was hot blood and excrement. The sewers of the city would be running reds and browns. I hoped they changed colour before the arrival of the Lords day. In those days the working week was 55 hours. 10 hours per day. 5 hours on Saturday. If one did not have a note from the Doctor it was instant dismissal, that was one reason for the Doctors position as family friend. I knew that Bill had worked in the Charnel house of hooks and knives for at least 18 years .. yet he managed to maintain his equilibrium. Perseverance and endurance were his watch words as he trickled away his life .. I wondered .. had he asked the question?
Bill stood at the bar waiting for the beer to be drawn from the pumps. He was in his time, what the ladies used to call .. Tall, dark and handsome .. but the ravages of his function had wasted him. Tall like Madge, the same fine facial bone shape. Cavernous eye sockets from which his eyes glimmered strongly, and beneath them the tell tale blue black smudges. Hair black, long and lank and greased back to the nape, this in the days when the pudding basin was the highest aspiration of the tonsorial arts in those city streets. He sported a cravat and displayed a heavy gold band on his ring finger. His hands were supple and with artists fingers that were disfigured with many scars. He stood out as different in a crowd.
The brimming glasses were set down without loss of drop. Having toasted each other .. and allowed the alcohol to loosen the tongue, we fell to talking and all the while, I am hedging around the question � he told me that after the horror of the first three kills .. a numbness of mind sets in .. a blessed anesthesia that automates the body and allows one to endure. I finally asked .. Bill why do you do it? In his look .. and before he answered, he conveyed a weight of regret .. �It helps to feed the Kids� .. he sighed .. and that was the answer to my question.
Ω
William
the Second Here
Ivor Hughes.
Dedicated to Karen
Seagreen.
Auckland. New Zealand. March 24th 2006
