‘Would you mind telling me who these unpleasant people are who buy maggots?’
‘Maggots are bought by fishermen, Mr Hoddy. Amateur fishermen. There’s thousands and thousands of fishermen all over the country going out every week-end fishing the rivers and all of them wanting maggots. Willing to pay good money for them, too. You go along the river there anywhere you like above Marlow on a Sunday and you’ll see them lining the banks. Sitting there one beside the other simply lining the banks on both sides.’
‘Those men don’t buy maggots. They go down the bottom of the garden and dig worms.’
‘Now that’s just where you’re wrong, Mr Hoddy, if you’ll allow me to say so. That’s just where you’re absolutely wrong. They want maggots, not worms.’
‘In that case they get their own maggots.’
‘They don’t want to get their own maggots. Just imagine Mr Hoddy, it’s Saturday afternoon and you’re going out fishing and a nice clean tin of maggots arrives by post and all you’ve got to do is slip it in the fishing bag and away you go. You don’t think fellers is going out digging for worms and hunting for maggots when they can have them delivered right to their very doorsteps like that just for a bob or two, do you?’
‘And might I ask how you propose to run this maggot-factory of yours?’ When he spoke the word maggot, it seemed as if he were spitting out a sour little pip from his mouth.
‘Easiest thing in the world to run a maggot-factory.’ Claud was gaining confidence now and warming to his subject. ‘All you need is a couple of old oil drums and a few lumps of rotten meat or a sheep’s head, and you put them in the oil drums and that’s all you do. The flies do the rest.’
Had he been watching Mr Hoddy’s face he would probably have stopped there.
‘Of course, it’s not quite as easy as it sounds. What you’ve got to do next is feed up your maggots with special diet. Bran and milk. And then when they get big and fat you put them in pint tins and post them off to your customers. Five shillings a pint they fetch. Five shillings a pint!’ he cried, slapping the knee. ‘You just imagine that, Mr Hoddy! And they say one bluebottle’ll lay twenty pints easy!’
He paused again, but merely to marshal his thoughts, for there was no stopping him now.
‘And there’s another thing, Mr Hoddy. A good maggot-factory don’t just breed ordinary maggots, you know. Every fisherman’s got his own tastes. Maggots are commonest, but also there’s lug worms. Some fishermen won’t have nothing but lug worms. And of course there’s coloured maggots. Ordinary maggots are white, but you get them all sorts of different colours by feeding them special foods, see. Red ones and green ones and black ones and you can even get blue ones if you knew what to feed them. The most difficult thing of all in a maggot-factory is a blue maggot, Mr Hoddy.’
Claud stopped to catch his breath. He was having a vision now – the same vision that accompanied all his dreams of wealth – of an immense factory building with tall chimneys and hundreds of happy workers streaming in through the wide wrought-iron gates and Claud himself sitting in his luxurious office directing operations with a calm and splendid assurance.
‘There’s people with brains studying these things this very minute,’ he went on. ‘So you got to jump in quick unless you want to get left out in the cold. That’s the secret of big business, jumping in quick before all the others, Mr Hoddy.’
Clarice, Ada, and the father sat absolutely still looking straight ahead. None of them moved or spoke. Only Claud rushed on.
‘Just so long as you make sure your maggots is alive when you post ’em. They’ve got to be wiggling, see. Maggots is no good unless they’re wiggling. And when we really get going, when we’ve built up a little capital, then we’ll put up some glasshouses.’
Another pause, and Claud stroked his chin. ‘Now I expect you’re all wondering why a person should want glasshouses in a maggot-factory. Well – I’ll tell you. It’s for the flies in the winter, see. Most important to take care of your flies in the winter.’
‘I think that’s enough, thank you, Cubbage,’ Mr Hoddy said suddenly.
Claud looked up and for the first time he saw the expression on the man’s face. It stopped him cold.
‘I don’t want to hear any more about it,’ Mr Hoddy said.
‘All I’m trying to do, Mr Hoddy,’ Claud cried, ‘is give your little girl everything she can possibly desire. That’s all I’m thinking of night and day, Mr Hoddy.’
‘Then all I hope is you’ll be able to do it without the help of maggots.’
‘Dad!?
?? Clarice cried, alarmed. ‘I simply won’t have you talking to Claud like that.’
‘I’ll talk to him how I wish, thank you Miss.’
‘I think it’s time I was getting along,’ Claud said. ‘Good night.’
Mr Feasey
We were both up early when the big day came.
I wandered into the kitchen for a shave, but Claud got dressed right away and went outside to arrange about the straw. The kitchen was a front room and through the window I could see the sun just coming up behind the line of trees on top of the ridge the other side of the valley.
Each time Claud came past the window with an armload of straw I noticed over the rim of the mirror the intent, breathless expression on his face, the great round bullet-head thrusting forward and the forehead wrinkled into deep corrugations right up to the hairline. I’d only seen this look on him once before and that was the evening he’d asked Clarice to marry him. Today he was so excited he even walked funny, treading softly as though the concrete around the filling-station were a shade too hot for the soles of his feet; and he kept packing more and more straw into the back of the van to make it comfortable for Jackie.