Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  “Aye,” Thurso said, shaking drops over the deck. He had stains of blood on the sleeve and shoulder of his shirt. There were beads of sweat on his face and his chest was rising and falling heavily. “You are singing now, are you? You had better call on Thurso, he is nearer.”

  It was what he had been waiting for. Wilson was a hardy ruffian but he had known he must give way. He took the count to eighteen, however, before throwing the whip to the boatswain. “Clear the thongs well for the next man that forgets himself,” he said, and stumped back up the companion. “Cut the man down, Mr Barton, and send the crew about their duties. Tell Morgan I want hot water brought to my cabin on the instant.”

  Freed from the grating, Wilson collapsed at once upon the deck, his eyes fixed and his face darkly congested, Paris saw him half led and half carried below by two men. He stood for some moments struggling to master his disgust and indignation. It came to him that he could assert his will against this brute in a way that poor Wilson, with no privileged exemptions, had not been able to, and so give some dignity to those lacerations. He stepped forward to face the captain. “Excuse me, Captain Thurso,” he said. “I should like the favour of a word with you.”

  He met the captain’s eyes and saw something vacant in them for the moment, the sort of vacancy that sometimes comes after strong effort or emotion. “It is not convenient at present,” Thurso said.

  “Sir, this is the third time of asking and I have a right to be heard.”

  “A right?”’ Thurso said. “What do you mean?”’ His tone had quickened. “Do you talk to me about rights, here on my deck?”’

  Paris felt a violent contempt rise in him as he met the renewed glare in the other’s eyes. So strong was the feeling that he had consciously to caution himself, discipline himself physically. He clasped his hands together behind his back. “Yes, sir, I do,” he said. He rested his eyes steadily on Thurso and saw something change in the other’s expression as the antagonism was registered. “I am referring to the question of the sick bay. It has not been cleared yet, in spite of my former requests to you. Now there is a clear case of need for it.”

  “Sick bay?”’ Thurso glared up at his listless topsails for a moment. “Are you mad, Mr Paris? What need is there now for it when we have no sickness aboard?”’

  “I intend to treat that man’s back,” Paris said. ‘His lacerations could easily become putrid if not attended to.”

  “Wilson? God damn my blood,”

  Thurso said violently. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at you. I have seen a hundred like him treated well enough with a handful of salt.”

  Paris hesitated. He had not wanted to use his uncle’s name, but he was set on winning the day—and not for his own sake only. He said, ‘allyou compel me to remind you that Mr Kemp intended me to have the use of that room. He so stated and in your hearing.”

  He saw that Thurso had clenched his right fist so that the knuckles whitened. At the sight, with a reciprocal impulse of violence he did not know he possessed, and which he was afterwards to think of as some infection of madness, he advanced his face and brought his hands to his sides. “I want that sick bay cleared, sir, if you please,” he said.

  ‘allyes, I thought we should hear of your uncle before long.” Thurso seemed about to say more, but suddenly his expression changed and he lifted his head.

  “There, can you hear it?”’ he said.

  “Hear what?”’

  “The wind, you fool.”

  Listening now more intently, Paris heard a tune in the rigging that he did not think had been there before, and a moment later he felt a breeze against his face.

  There was a series of rippling sounds as the canvas began to fill out.

  “You can have your precious sick bay if it matters so much,” Thurso said with contempt. He felt the wind increasing, felt the responsive gathering of the ship. It came again, stronger, singing through the ropes, a harmony of high-pitched tones, transmitted to the chains and thence through all the timbers. And it was coming from the west. “You see, it is answered,” he said, turning away. “We have freed the wind.”

  “What do you mean?”’

  No answer came to this. The captain’s face had relaxed into lines of fatigue. He was looking down to the foot of the gangway, where drops of Wilson’s blood still glistened.

  17.

  Erasmus waited for an occasion when his father was in relaxed mood—occasions rarer these days than he had ever known them to be. He chose one evening after supper when his father, at ease in skull-cap and dressing-gown, was smoking a pipe or two in the small, oak-panelled sanctum he called his study.

  “Can you spare me some minutes, sir?”’

  Kemp, observing for a while in silence the military posture that his son had adopted, head up and shoulders braced back, was brought to mind of other occasions, going back to earliest childhood, when Erasmus had stood before him thus. Unexpectedly, and in the midst of his anxieties, he found himself visited by compassion for this self-willed son of his, for whom life had always been a succession of self-imposed tests and ordeals. Just in this way, he thought, Erasmus will bear himself at the news of my ruin, if it comes.

  “Yes, of course, my boy,” he said.

  “What is it?”’

  “I want to ask Sarah Wolpert to marry me,” Erasmus said, looking straight before him.

  ‘That is, I want to ask her father…” He stumbled a moment. “I want to ask for her hand. I wished to know if you had any objections to such a course, sir.”

  ‘Wolpert’s daughter?”’ Kemp was taken aback. He had noticed an increased interest in clothes on his son’s part; the boy took longer over the dressing of his hair and the tying of his neckcloth; but Erasmus had always been fastidious about his linen and careful of his appearance and was now at a foppish age. He knew his son had been going a good deal to the Wolpert house but there was the play to account for this and Wolpert had a boy only slightly younger than Erasmus.

  “I suspected nothing of it,” he said. “I have been much preoccupied of late. Besides, you are secretive—you always have been so. You do not come to me with your feelings, only your decisions.” If there was reproach in this it was mainly for himself, for his failure to notice. Nevertheless, he felt immediate compunction for it. “Well, it is your way,” he said.

  “Are you displeased with me, sir?”’

  “No, I am not displeased. Our natures are different in this respect. I would stop to look at something, take soundings, before my course was so far set. Now I see this business is screwed to such pitch that I could not oppose it without damage.”

  He saw nothing on his son’s face to indicate any appreciation of this. The boy still stood braced there. “Come, sit down,” he said. “Here, by me.

  You keep to your purposes, that is not so bad a thing.

  But you are young to be married. And the girl cannot be more than eighteen.”

  “She is not yet eighteen, sir.”

  “It is young,” Kemp said slowly. Something had changed in his tone, now that surprise had faded, giving time for a glimpse of the implications. These expanded in his mind as he looked at the level-browed, intensely serious face close to his own. “On the other hand,” he said, “your mother was barely seventeen when we were married. I cannot spare you from the business,” he added after a moment.

  “There would be no need,” Erasmus said. The interview was not proceeding as expected—he was surprised to find his father so amenable—but this last objection he had anticipated. “The match would do good for us. The combination of the families would make a powerful force, with the town growing so fast.”

  Kemp nodded, as if this thought had only now occurred to him. “That is so,” he said. “The connection would be of benefit to both.” With some appearance of effort he met his son’s eyes, so like his own. “It is what you want?”’ he said.

  “I am set on her.”

  Kemp was silent for a long moment, looking down.


  Then he raised a face grown suddenly haggard.

  ‘allyou have my consent,” he said.

  It took a further week for Erasmus to discover the right circumstances, poise and apparel for his interview with Sarah’s father. It was not nerve he had to summon —he had enough of that at his command—but humility, the readiness to demean himself, as he saw it, by stating his desires and seeming to petition for their legitimacy.

  He would have felt this whoever the man had been; he had felt it, to some degree, even with his father.

  Love had not so far made him happy. His intention, the fixing of his will on the girl, he experienced as an affliction. His whole being seemed tender, painful to the slightest touch—even at times, the touch of air itself. The impressions of his senses came as blows to his heart, strangely similar to those of loss or violation. In this vulnerable state he experienced the burgeoning of the season like a man set on bruising himself. Never had he noted the symptoms of summer with such particularity. As he saw to the unloading of the pack-trains on the waterfront, or the weighing and recording of cotton bales in the yard behind the family warehouses, he heard the cuckoos calling from the market gardens of Wallasey across the water, all regret and all promise mingled in their notes. In the wood by the lake the bluebells came in swathes and the ash trees emerged from winter overnight, as it seemed, and were hung with reddish, plumy flowers.

  He took particular care with his dress the evening of his visit: an immaculate exterior reduced the appearance of suing. He chose a suit of dark satin, short in the sleeve to show the plaited linen of his shirt cuffs, a white waistcoat and black, pointed-toed shoes in the latest fashion. He had powdered his hair lightly and tied it behind with a long black ribbon; and instead of the usual short hanger, he wore his best sword with the silver chasing on the hilt.

  “I love your daughter, sir,” he heard himself saying, sitting bolt upright on his chair. “I want to marry her.” It sounded angry, almost. He had been unable so far to see any reaction on the broad face before him or in the shrewd, deliberate brown eyes which regarded him now for some moments in silence.

  ‘Do you so?”’ the merchant said at last. He had come from business and was still in outdoor attire, full-skirted cotton summer coat, buff waistcoat, old-fashioned wig with a roll of curls above the ears. “And she, how does she view the matter?”’

  “I think she is not averse to me.”

  “Is that a way of saying there is already an understanding between you?”’

  The question was deliberately disingenuous; he knew already of the young man’s interest: it had been expressed to him by Sarah herself. And he knew to what extent the girl had responded. But Erasmus’s hasty manner inclined him to temporize, partly from the long habit of bargaining, partly because he had been roused to some hostility by it. “I am asking if you have spoken together,” he said rather sharply.

  ‘There is no understanding, sir,” Erasmus said.

  “But she has given me reason to hope.”

  Wolpert considered for some moments. Though phlegmatic in manner, he was acute, particularly where it concerned him nearly. His daughter was a source of delight to him and he treasured her deeply. There was no timidity in the bearing of the young man before him, no personal deference towards himself.

  This first suitor of his daughter was no doubt suffering, but it seemed from arrogance as much as love. He had known Erasmus for many years, had seen him from time to time as he grew up. It was with a feeling of surprise now that he met the dark eyes and realized that the youth had become formidable. “How old are you now, Erasmus?”’ he said.

  “I shall be twenty-two in December, sir.”

  ‘allyou have spoken of this with your father, of course?”’

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wolpert permitted himself a smile. Erasmus was the only son and he knew the extent of Kemp’s ambitions for him. “And how did he take it? With a pinch of salt, I suppose, eh?”’

  “He has given his consent.”

  “Aye, I dare say so.” Wolpert was still smiling. “Why would he not? But as a distant prospect, no doubt? He will want to keep you by him some time yet.”

  “No, sir, he has made no condition regarding the time.” Erasmus had great pride of family and as far as he had pondered his father’s response, apart from his own relief at it, it had seemed to him like a condescension to the Wolperts, something they ought to be pleased at. But now he saw the indulgent smile on the heavy face fade quickly, and for a space of some moments he found the older man’s eyes turned upon him as they might have been on some not fully trusted associate—not unfriendly exactly, but appraising and rather cold.

  “How?”’ Wolpert said in a quieter tone.

  “Are you saying your father has given immediate consent to the match?”’

  “I have said so,” Erasmus returned, rather brusquely.

  Wolpert appeared to muse for some moments, then he said, “Listen well to me, my fine young man. My daughter is not yet eighteen years of age. She is too young to be saddled with promises. You may say to her what you like and she may answer you as she pleases—I cannot be present at it, so I can have nothing to say about it. But I will countenance no special arrangements, at least for the time being. You may continue to see my daughter as you see her now, as a friend among other friends. She will be eighteen in some months, then we shall reconsider.”

  Rising to terminate the interview he caught a blaze from the young man’s eyes such as might have been reserved for a rival. “I expect you to abide by this on our words and my wishes alone,” he said with an involuntary response of severity. “And I will make both known to my daughter.”

  This he did, in gentle terms, and had an impression the girl was relieved at it. That same evening he consulted his wife, who had been aware of the situation for some considerable time, he now discovered, and who had sounded the girl in ways that would not have entered his head. Of the strength of the young man’s feelings there could be no doubt. “He cannot keep his eyes off the girl,” Mrs Wolpert said placidly. “He watches her every movement.” Embroidery in lap, eyes mild, hair tucked under her close-fitting lace coif, she seemed at a long remove from such devouring regards, but managed nevertheless to convey an idea of them to her husband’s mind. Young Kemp’s feelings were written in his eyes. And what eyes they were, full of fire! There was no denying he was a handsome young man, though far from smooth-mannered, and Sarah of course was aware of it, looks and manners both; there was growing up a fashion for wildness…

  “If it is a fashion, it cannot be so wild,”

  Wolpert said drily. “And Sarah, with what eyes does she look at him?”’

  “It is bound to make an impression on a young girl to be the object of so much attention. She is very much aware of him.” Mrs Wolpert paused for a short while, though without looking at her husband.

  “I think she is rather frightened of the young man,” she said at last, “though she would laugh at the notion.”

  “Frightened, you say? She is not easily daunted.” Wolpert considered for a moment, then he said, “If she is frightened, she cannot have much tenderness for him.”

  Upon this his wife favoured him with a look of pity for his understanding; and as usual, in response, he showed himself aggrieved. “Why are these things kept from me?”’ he demanded. “Why am I always the last to learn of a thing? I wager old Andrew knows more of the business than I do. A fine thing for a man’s wife and daughter to plot together to keep him in the dark.”

  But he kept wife and daughter and everyone else in the dark concerning the step he took next in the matter. He might or might not be obtuse, he told himself, regarding matters of the heart; but he was certainly not so where material interest was concerned, and his suspicions had been roused by Kemp’s alacrity. The following afternoon he called on a man named Partridge, whom he had used once before, some years previously, on a delicate investigation into the extent of a client’s credit, and wh
ose thoroughness and discretion he had not forgotten.

  Partridge was accustomed to describe himself as an attorney. He had a close and cluttered office on the upper floor of a house in Limekiln Lane, invaded by the fumes of a nearby tannery; but most of his business was conducted elsewhere: in registry offices, counting-houses, copying-rooms, the taverns and taphouses frequented by clerks and warehousemen and the small functionaries of business houses. He belied the associations of his name, being lantern-jawed, gimlet-eyed and scrawny, dressed in rusty black, with an ancient, dishevelled goat’s-hair wig.

  “Remember,” Wolpert said, “the most absolute discretion is essential, not only as concerns the dealings between the two of us but in all that affects Mr Kemp. I do not want anything noised about, no suspicion attaching anywhere— people are always ready to say that when there is smoke there must be fire. Mr Kemp is an acquaintance of many years, for whom I have considerable regard. There must be no damage to him or to his interests. All I want is the facts of his present situation.”

  “You shall have them. Have no worry on that score, my dear sir.” Patridge nodded and glanced aside through his small, smeared window at the tannery yard below, as if witnesses lay out there, among the malodorous hides. “Joshua Partridge is the soul of discretion,” he said. “Discretion is his strong suit. He is noted for it, famous for it.”

  “Famous for discretion?”’

  “That is not the contradiction it seems, sir. I mean of course among those who have honoured me with their commissions. Without that reputation I could not continue in employment one day longer. In short,” Partridge added with one of the sudden bursts of frankness which characterized his speech, “I should be on the rubbish heap in no time.” He paused for a moment to investigate an ear for wax. Then he said, “I shall require, in addition to the fifty per cent advance of fee we have agreed on, a sum of ten shillings a day while enquiries last. This is to cover all necessary expenses I may incur in the furtherance of my enquiries. In short, sir-“