THE UNIVERSITY OF HULL Fair Game for the Whole Hog: celebrating abjection and puerility in a comic novel being a Thesis submitted for the Degree of PhD in the University of Hull by Jim Younger BA (York) Cert Ed (Garnett College) October 2011 CONTENTS Page 3 – Fair Game for the Whole Hog (a novel) Page 249 – Commentary Page 312 - Bibliography 2 COME ASHORE JOLLY TAR AND YOUR TROUSERS ON Where we live, we’re out of the way. The track turns to the river, drops, and vanishes into the estuary mud - or estuary water, depending on the tide. On the night we slaughtered the last of the summer porkers the tide was running full when brother Daz came home safe from the war and his ditty-box of treasures hoisted on his shoulder. Pappy Barking and me were sledging a most unhappy piglet over to the Doughnut when we heard Daz’s cheery whistle below on the track - causing us to pause, cock an ear, and look seaward. Out in the estuary, in the deep purple gloaming, we traced the shadow line of his darkened ship. A signal lamp winked amber. Up from the river, out of the shadow, Daz came bowling toward us, free hand raised in salute. ‘Proper job,’ said one-eyed Pappy Barking, ‘dropping you right by your door.’ ‘Britannia owes me,’ said Daz. Baco and Ham snuffled in the sties - original parents of thousands or more, so the Breed Book tells. Baco and Ham wept for the last of the present litter, but Ham was noisiest. You would think she’d be used to it by now, the selection going on until there’s only one porker left and no choice in the matter. Ham moaned and roared and butted her huge backside against the gate that kept her from Baco. Baco snorted and stamped his trotters, poaching the ground by his water trough into a Passchaendale of mud. He hoisted his snout and dashed forward a few paces, hither and thither, sniffing the air and jabbing his tusks at phantoms. But the swine (to call them by their rightful name) soon gave up the palaver when Daz jabbed Ham with the electric prod, and Pappy Barking dropped a fresh load of mangel-and- 3 acorn in Baco’s manger. Tomorrow, we would put Baco in with Ham, and let him do the business-from-behind, to have porkers enough for the new season. Together we hauled the sledge over the cobbles - the trussed piglet was squealing for his mum - with Pappy Barking pulling and me and Daz pushing, into the Doughnut and over to the sluice. We hooked the tackle chains to his harness and hauled piglet screaming up to the block, rump-cheeks first, and Daz cut his throat with one swift stroke like he was never away, which was a mercy. I held the nine-pint coggie and the blood spurted and gurgled until all was drained and I poured the thick black blood into the pudding-tub. Pappy Barking sawed through the rib cage and dug his hands in the paunch, and hauled out the kidneys and melts and liver and lights et cetera, while Daz and me wibbled away with the boning knives to get the quartering and chining done quick, and we parcelled him up in small portions for dainty eaters, half an hour’s work all told. We popped the head in the boner to strip the meat for pungent headcheese and sliced off his harry-pipe – his pizzle, that is – into the delicacy tray for stuffing later, along with his bladder. We washed ourselves in the trough then dried off. Daz and me snapped towels at each other in noisy horseplay, kicking up the sawdust. Pappy Barking’s vulture eye feasted on his frolicsome boys. He rubbed himself down with a boxer’s sponge dipped in vinegar-and-water. He pulled on his smock, and crowned himself with a battered Stetson, set all round with plastic mistletoe for a hatband, and a gilt-edge card tucked snug among the berries, reading Kiss Me Quick. ‘Let’s go in and surprise Mum,’ said Pappy Barking. 4 ALL THE NICE GIRLS LOVE A SAILOR The clock on the mantelshelf, though broken, was still making tick-tock. The hand that ruled the seconds rocked forward and back - tick-tock, tock-tick - not making time. The minute and the hour were stuck at ten-to-three. Mum was dozing in her Big Mamma armchair by the fire with the telly on quiet. Beside her, on the antique table I fetched her from Chafford market last Mothering Sunday, there was a half-drunk cup of tea, a few crusts of toast, and an open jar of honey with an Apostle spoon standing proud. A honey-drugged bluebottle spiralled slothful around a crumpet. The telly flickered with vague-out-of-focus pictures of copulation projected from Mum’s sleeping brain. Mum snored. Daz grinned. He held a finger to his lips. ‘Sshh.’ We tiptoed across the room. Hell-cackle burst from the telly and Mum woke in a fright. She started to whimper, but when she saw Daz, resplendent in his Navy dress- blues, Mum gurgled with delight. Daz leaned over Mum and she rose, straining up to his face for a kiss. Daz kissed her honeyed mouth, and licked away her tears. Mum settled back against her cushion. ‘Did you meet any nice girls while you were overseas and East of Eden, son?’ ‘A fair few. More than most shipmates, not so many as some. Madam Jojo saw a fair bit of action. Budge up, and give a sailor a berth.’ Daz sidled in beside our ample Mum. It was a squash, but neither seemed to mind. They cosied up and concentrated on the telly. The screen was fully in focus now, alive with bodies writhing and screaming in ecstasy and terror. Daz had his arm around Mum’s shoulder and his hand on her left marimba. 5 ‘Did you put many to the sword while you were abroad and overseas, son?’ said Mum, putting her hand over his, and pressing it down towards her heart. She kept her eyes on the screen. ‘A fair few, East of Eden. More than most, not so many as some. Old Tickler saw a fair bit of action,’ said Daz. A GHOSTLY WHIMPER I left them to it and went in the back yard. Jip came staggering over. I crouched down, legs apart, and Jip padded his front paws playful on my crotch, teetering on his one back leg, good old boy. I nuzzled his stump and he yelped. I walked down the dirt track through the dunes to the shore. The stars were fading in the east now the moon was rising blood-red on the Ness. The ship that bore my brother home was a faint smear on the dark horizon. Across the river, westward on the Kentish bank, the Gravesend crematorium hoisted a plume of orange smoke, erasing the stars in its wake. I paced with short steps up and down the shingle. The pebbles crunched. The lapping tide slish-sloshed over my canvas shoes. I turned and saw Jip, his tongue lolling and breath steaming in the night air, cold now the moon was up. He had a bloater, good old boy, so I took him by the collar and hauled him over to the dunes, among the reeds. I knelt down and flipped him over on his back. He yielded a ghostly whimper, like he was in love with me. I had a groaning bloater of my own. I unbuttoned and spat on my fingers. Whitelady’s seventeenth haiku came to mind. Seventeen sly strokes - Masterful hand spends treasure - Pearl on golden sand 6 You can’t find golden sand round our side of the Ness, but fair do’s to the versatile Whitelady (‘I do like to be beside the seaside/In the company of pale young boys’) he was abusing himself and others in the bygone days, before the carbon economy was rolling and rocking. Jip padded his paws on me again. He sashayed on his one back leg, good old boy, and I let him lick the dripping end of my dada, which he’d never done before, so it was spunk for spunk, a bit risky because of his fangs, but at last we were soul brothers, tit for tat. On the way back to the house, I took a detour, past the hulk of the tramp doughnut we’d snuffed the week previous. Tramps sometimes tried to land to stake a claim, but Pappy Barking was always ready for them with his flamethrower. This particular gang of renegades barely made it out of the hatch before Pappy zapped them. I kicked a fire- blackened skull. The skull shattered. I trod the fragments under my heel. A GOOD LIKENESS OF CALIGULA In the house, Daz was alone, sitting in Mum’s place. I watched him a while from the doorway. The telly was off. He was scanning a book, scribing notes in the margin with a pencil. Now and again he looked up, to study his reflection in the blank tellyscreen. Turning to the flyleaf, he sketched a self-portrait with brisk confident strokes. He saw me come forward. He held out the book – A New Grammar of the Old Hittite Tongue. I glanced at the sketch. A good likeness of Caligula, in Caligula’s latter days. Treasures and mementoes of my brother’s time East of Eden were strewn about his feet: a handful of knuckle bones, a fetish twisted from human hair, copper bangles and silver links, silken scarves, wisps of lingerie, photo albums, a tambourine with a genie tattooed on its skin, and newspapers and pamphlets in wiggly writing.