SET THINGS TO RIGHT (CONCLUDING CONCLUDING)

Andy Warhol, Fiesta Pig, 1979  


    Mr Rock moved across to shut the gate on his pig.  What with the torch, the case he carried, and that latch, he fumbled a good deal.  Then he listened for, and heard, Daisy's heavy breath.  He leant inside, felt about. The moment he touched her, she squealed terribly.  But he got hold of the slipper and jerked it from her neck.  She yelled as though about to be stuck and then, as soon as he moved off, she stopped.  He hurled the shoe away.  Once it was no longer in moonlight it disappeared, the thing might have flown.  He did not, of course, hear it fall.  Upon which he realised he still had Elizabeth's shoes in the despatch case.  She could scarcely dance in rubber boots.  He thought to call her back, but decided against.  Gum boots would not help Birt, he considered, not realising they would force her to take the young man outside.

    He entered the cottage, switched on a light, began the routine he carried through each bedtime, set things to right.  When he was just about done he heard a cat discreetly yowl.  He went to the door.  It was Alice.  After getting her in with some milk, he climbed the stairs to bed.

    On the whole he was well satisfied with his day.  He fell asleep  almost at once in the yellow woolen nightshirt.

THE END

Andy Warhol, Cat, 1976

Henry Green, Concluding.  London, The Hogarth Press, 1948. 

FORETOLD -- CONCLUDING

Mr Rock rose with a groan.  Crossing to the open bedroom window he shone his torch out on fog.  His white head was gray, and white the reflected torch light on the thick spectacles he wore.  He shone it up and down.  It will be a fine day, a fine day in the end, he decided.

     He looked down.  He clicked his light out.  He found there was just enough filtering through the mist which hung eighteen foot up and which did not descend to the ground, to make out Ted, his goose, about already,  a dirty pallor, almost the same colour as Alice, the Persian cat, that kept herself dry where every blade of grass bore its dark, mist laden string of water.  Old and deaf, half blind, Mr Rock said about himself, the air raw in his throat.  Nevertheless he saw plain how Ted was not ringed in by fog.  For the goose posed staring, head to one side, with a single eye, straight past the house, up into the fog bank which had made all daylight deaf beneath, and beyond which, at some clear height, Mr Rock knew now there must be a flight of birds winging, Ted knows where, he thought.

Henry Green, Concluding.  London, The Hogarth Press, 1948. 

Laurie’s New and Entertaining Game of Goose, 1831.

Constant Troyon, Grazing With The Goose Girl (detail), 1854.

Jean-Francois Millet, The Goose Girl, 1863.