Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  But there was some sun still, lying flat on the sea. He watched the gulls which earlier that day had found the ship.

  They were following on the starboard side, fewer now, but in good number still, which made him think they were in for no more than light squalls. He tried to count the birds, but lost himself in the rising, dipping dance of their flight, the constant changing of position among them. Thirty at least, completely silent.

  Sea-birds were mute at the approach of bad weather, he knew that about them and much else besides— whatever could be understood from close watching.

  Animals and birds, any creatures other than human, he had always liked to watch. He noted again how the birds rode the wind, how the dying sun flashed on their breasts. Below them the sea was riven with gashes. The wind was rising. He looked away from the birds at last, to eastward. The horizon on that side was pale and clear still and Hughes saw, faint and ragged but unmistakable, the shapes of land. He cupped hands to mouth and bawled the fact to the darkening sky.

  Thurso, standing forward of the helm, heard the cry from aloft and the boatswain’s long-drawn lamentation of response. “Whe-e-re aw-a-ay?”’ He did not wait for the lookout to answer but at once raised his glass. When the answer came, with a rough bearing to larboard, Thurso had already found them, shifting, evanescent, but no shapes of cloud or sea, a line of deep, irregular serrations. A rippling swell swept the ship up and dropped her and he lost his view. But he knew he had seen the mountains behind the Sherbro River; and in these moments of pause, in the cool breath before the onset of the squall, Thurso made proper acknowledgement to his counsellor for having brought them so far eastwards in deep water, beyond the sucking evil of the shoals.

  23.

  Throughout the day the wind had been rising, smelling of rain on the way. It sent ruffles across the lake and swept up the spent May blossom into miniature storms. The cast of The Enchanted Island had assembled in the library, where a fire had been lit.

  “We are all here, I think,” Charles Wolpert said, his accustomed gravity of manner contending with a certain visible embarrassment.

  “Except for Parker, that is. He had duties in the parish—it seems the vicar has returned.

  And of course, Mr Adams.” He paused on this to clear his throat before continuing. “I don’t want to beat about the bush. Mr Adams is threatening to leave us. In fact he talks of decamping on the spot. It appears that dissatisfaction has been expressed with his manner of directing the play. He doesn’t go into details but he names the person. I see no reason why we should not all know who it is.

  It is Erasmus Kemp.”

  Several people glanced at Erasmus now. He looked straight before him. His face wore a slight frown but he was otherwise impassive.

  ‘Good heavens.” Prospero had passed instantly to red-faced, swelling indignation. “That is a piece of barbarity,” he said. “What, did he presume to speak for us all?”’

  “It seems that Mr Adams was intercepted,”

  Charles said. “Is there anyone here you consulted beforehand, Kemp?”’

  “No,” Erasmus said after a moment; he had had to struggle with himself to answer at all, in face of this public questioning. “It wasn’t the business of anyone else. I didn’t speak to Adams about his direction of the play. That is a lie. It was a personal matter. He had no business to complain to you.”

  “No business to complain to me?”’ Charles paused for a moment or two as if at a loss. Then he said more loudly, “He is a guest in my father’s house, at my invitation. He has received discourteous treatment. Who else should he complain to? I must tell you, Kemp, I think you have behaved strangely, and you may make of that what you like.”

  For the first time Erasmus turned his head to look at his interlocutor. Resentment at this public rebuke showed in his suddenly heightened colour and fixity of gaze. This was her brother, a quarrel was out of the question. All the same, it came to him now that he had suffered discomfiture enough from the Wolperts, father and son. When we are married, he thought, I will keep her from them. There was a keenness of pleasure in this thought which he did not pause to examine. For a moment he allowed his gaze to fall on Sarah. She was standing in the recess of the window with her back to the light. She was looking at him steadily but he could not detect any change in the normal composure of her expression.

  “I am fair sick of the whole business,”

  Charles said. “I am sorry now that we thought of it in the first place. Jonathan Rigby was well out of it when he broke his leg. I swear I’ll never be in a play again.”

  “Me neither,” the young man who played Hippolito said. “We have given up hours to it.

  To speak frankly, I don’t care for Adams much. I don’t think he has furthered the play.

  And he takes us for ninnies. I don’t care if he goes.”

  “Nor do I,” Dorinda said suddenly and unexpectedly, tossing her head, perhaps remembering some slight or belittlement.

  “Well,” Charles said unhappily, “now we are coming to the point. Adams has made it a choice. It is either Erasmus or him, he says.

  Either Erasmus withdraws from the play and ceases to attend rehearsals or he takes post from Warrington tomorrow morning.”

  There was a short silence, then Erasmus said, “I won’t be forced out by Adams. I will resign from the play if everyone is agreed they want me out of it.”

  It was the only card he had to play but it was a strong one. He could not believe Sarah would vote against him, even to save the play; and there was a good chance that dislike for Adams would keep some of the others on his side and that deliberations about expelling him would collapse in disorder, along with the play itself.

  He gave the company a short bow and left the room, passing through the house and out on to the terrace.

  As he descended the steps and walked towards the lake he heard the wind in the high branches of the trees and saw the rapid scud of clouds in the sky. Once among the trees he stood still and breathed deeply, as if he had been running. The humiliation of that public interrogation, the rein he had kept on himself, brought their sharp reaction now.

  For her sake he had suffered it all. The words ran fiercely through his mind again: When we are married..

  . Once more he became aware of the wind in the trees above him. He raised his face and saw the branches swaying and rooks flung across the sky beyond.

  When the battle is equally poised, the outcome will often depend on chance. Victory, had Erasmus known it, was being achieved for him not very far away.

  The curate, Parker, seated in the vicarage drawing-room opposite the vicar himself, in a chair that was neither easy nor upright but partook of the awkward qualities of both, saw through the casement window how the wind agitated the yews in the garden, shaking them until they lost all resemblance to trees and became like dark, tossing plumage. With them he seemed to see his role as Caliban in The Enchanted Isle dislodged, shaken loose, blown away for ever.

  ‘We live in dangerous times, sir, perilous,” the Reverend Edward Mansell said.

  “And crucial for the Church.” He was a robust man, well rounded out, with a full gaze and a high, pale forehead and abundant auburn hair, of which he was proud. His black broadcloth suit was of best quality and his collar was of a snowy whiteness amazing to Parker. He said, “It behoves the clergy to be particularly careful in all matters affecting their repute. I go away on essential business, leaving you in charge of the parish, and what do I find on my return? I find you preparing to portray, on the public stage, an uncouth savage given over to lechery and drunkenness and I know not what.”

  The curate leaned forward eagerly, raising reddish hands. His fluffy, light-coloured hair had some energy stirring in its roots which caused a permanent startlement. “Allow me to explain, sir,” he said. “My motives are of the best.

  I am seeking to portray Caliban as debased, not in himself but by others. He is first unjustly subjected by Prospero, afterwards corrupted b
y the bad example of the mariners. The evil of strong liquor is also at the heart of my performance, sir. It is an evil of great magnitude in all parts of England now.”

  The vicar sighed and pursed his lips and smiled upon his curate’s writhings in the spindly, armless chair.

  “So the savage is noble,” he said, “leading a moral life by the light of pure reason, without benefit of scripture, until we Christians come to lend him our wickedness. This is not good theology, Mr Parker. I am sorry you have been infected by these radical ideas. You would say then that Caliban has a soul which renders him capable of receiving the message of redemption?”’

  “Yes, most certainly.”

  “In that you go beyond the councils of the Church. The baptism of savages is not yet established, it is still subject to debate.”

  “The main voice in the debate, sir, at present,” Parker said excitedly, “is that of the slavery lobby, who seek to deny -” Belatedly he remembered that the Mansell family had holdings in the West Indies. In agitation he thrust his hands between his knees and held them there, as it were by force. “We are all children of one father, sir,” he said.

  “No doubt, no doubt.” The vicar remained silent for some moments. He was not sure of the best line to take. He did not want to embitter the curate if he could help it. Parker was an ideal assistant in the main: he had neither money nor connections to reduce his dependence and he was diligent and enthusiastic, ready to do all that was laid upon him.

  “Well,” he said at last, “I cannot allow it, and I am sorry indeed to see that you have elevated yourself in this way. There is only one Revelation, Mr Parker. They invite the fate of Lucifer who presume to weigh eternal truth in the balance of their own judgement.”

  The doomed and flaming angel seemed far to Parker at this moment from the sadly nodding plumes of yew he could see outside the window, waving farewell to his stage career. However, as he sat there, still pressing his hands between his knees, a serious spirit of rebellion was born in him that afternoon. Somewhere under the skies there was, there must be, a place where a man of the cloth could play Caliban. With a last hope that the matter might still be saved by dispute, he began, ‘I do not deny to Caliban original sin -“

  But Mansell had raised a shapely hand.

  “No more, sir,” the vicar said. “This debate has been protracted long enough,” and indeed he had seen from the clock that it had gone past his tea-time. “I see I shall have to be plain with you. I cannot countenance this performance and I must request you to withdraw yourself from it now, today.”

  “Without Caliban the whole play collapses, sir, all the work we have put into it…”

  Looking at the disappointment writ large on his curate’s fair-skinned, rather equine face and at the convulsive way he seemed to catch at his limbs to keep them in check, Mansell wondered briefly if the man might not be something of a hysteric. Too uncontrolled a sensibility there. Parker would not get far in the Church. He thought of his tea, which he would ring for immediately on his curate’s departure, and of his study fire. “Let it collapse,” he said.

  “Ruat coelum, Parker. Principle must be served first.”

  Erasmus paused at the lakeside. Wind stroked the surface of the water and stirred the willows on the other side. He had never been here alone, never, he felt, really seen this stretch of water, this sandy foreshore—it had been merely the scene of his ordeal as love-sick Ferdinand. Now he was surprised by its forlornness, its air of an abandoned encampment. The awning of Caliban’s cave was lifting in the wind and the fabric at the sides of Prospero’s cell was rippling continuously, with a sound like pigeons’ wings.

  He began to make his way round the lake, towards the gate in the wall, which he had so often looked longingly at while chained to the play, waiting to make his appearance, pretend that wonderment at Ariel’s song. Snatches of his lines came back to him now: Sitting on a bank, weeping again the Duke my father’s wrack…

  Glancing back across the water he saw Sarah and her friend Miss Edwards approaching the lakeside.

  She gestured to him to wait. The two girls advanced together until they were some twenty yards away, then Miss Edwards fell back a little and Sarah came on alone. She had put a dark cloak over her dress and wore a felt hat with a scarf over it, tied below the chin. As she came up to him he saw that her eyes had an angry fixity of expression and that her small, full mouth was now tightly compressed.

  “I should like some words with you, Erasmus Kemp,” she said.

  He nodded. ‘We could walk through that gate,” he said, as if obeying some compulsion in a dream, “and up the hillside a little way, if that is agreeable to you.”

  “Anywhere you please, it is immaterial.”

  Her voice quivered. He knew it was anger that possessed her but she was framed so gently that it was indistinguishable from distress.

  They walked for some time in silence. Beyond the gate was pasture land, ridged and hummocked, rising to a line of ancient, racked beeches on the horizon.

  They kept to the path, Miss Edwards dutifully following at some distance behind. As they rose higher the wind grew clamorous against them, plucked at their clothing and their eyes. Sarah was obliged to turn more towards Erasmus than she might have liked, so that her words should not be blown away.

  “I want you to tell me the truth,” she said.

  ‘It was me you talked of, was it not? Charles has hinted so much.”

  Erasmus had little humour in his nature, no resources that might have lightened the terrible seriousness with which he now made his simple assertion above the wind: “I defended you.”

  ‘Defended me?”’ She stopped at this and turned to face him. The brim of her hat, pressed down on either side by the scarf, made a frame for the narrow oval of her face. She was flushed, her eyes bright with tears of vexation. “Cry mercy,” she said, with angry sarcasm. “And to think I never knew I was being attacked. Defended me from what, pray? Who was harming me? And besides, and besides…” She fell silent for some moments, as though helpless, looking down to where her friend had also stopped. “Nobody asked you,” she said. He saw the movement of her throat. She was too tender, he thought, too delicately constituted for such strong displeasure.

  He would protect her from such feelings, he would be careful with her. That she might have just cause did not occur to him. When we are married, he thought again— it was like a refrain.

  “Who appointed you?”’ Sarah said with renewed energy. “How did you dare? You have ruined the play.

  We shall not be able to go on with it now. I believe you intended to do it from the start, because you could not shine.” She paused, in search of further wounding phrases. “You are an exceeding bad actor,” she said. “I am heartily sorry now that ever I asked you to be Ferdinand.”

  Erasmus said, ‘I don’t care anything about the play. I only stayed in it for you.”

  She made some incoherent exclamation at this and turned from him and began walking upwards again, Erasmus keeping by her side. And now the path they were following curved sharply and they passed into a fold between low hills, where there was suddenly no wind at all. Surprise at this brought them again to a stop.

  “You had no right to do it,” she said. “I have a brother already who is watchful of me—too much so.

  Even if we had been engaged, you had no right, not without speaking of it first to me.” But she had lost some vehemence, suffered an abatement of her anger, here in this sheltered place. “The reason you didn’t,” she added in low tones, “speak of it to me, I mean, was that you knew I would tell you there was nothing in it. You meant to ruin our rehearsals.” She looked at him and her eyes widened with an expression almost of awe. “You meant to do it,” she said.

  “He made too free with you. He allowed himself liberties.” He was blind to all other questions but this.

  He wanted her to understand that he was older, wiser, a better judge of what she should permit. Below this there was an
intense wish that she should see and acknowledge her fault. If only she would do this, it would put him in the right—it was the very least she could do to repair the hurt she caused to him.

  “Liberties?”’ Sarah’s voice sharpened.

  “Who is to be judge of that? Do you stand there and say that I have been too careless of myself?”’

  He hesitated on this and saw the girl’s chin rise and her eyes narrow slightly. She was more wilful, more defiant, than he had believed possible. “No, no,” he said at last, “but you are innocent. A man like that -“

  “I found nothing to complain of in him,” she said simply.

  This bold, unfaltering statement of what lay unvoiced at the heart of his complaint against her dumbfounded Erasmus. He could only stand there looking at her, in this hushed enclave they had found.

  “He was perfectly polite,” she said.

  “He often complimented me on my playing of Miranda.” Her tone had changed, some note of provocation or challenge had come into it now.

  “Can you not see anything except in the terms of this playacting?”’ Erasmus demanded.

  She raised her brows at this in surprise real or assumed. “But all that you complain of happened in the rehearsals of a play.”

  A sense of being caught in toils came to Erasmus. “There is a wider view,” he said, but no words with which to enlarge on this came immediately to him.

  He was looking aside, thinking how he could proceed, when he heard her say, “No, I found him quite agreeable. He is a handsome man, I think.

  He is famous in London among people of the theatre there.”

  “Famous as a parasite and poseur, I make no doubt,” Erasmus said, forgetting everything in the immediate promptings of his jealousy. “He would be famous anywhere for those qualities.” He paused a moment. He knew she had praised Adams only in order to wound him. He said with bitter accusation, “He touched you.”

  There was too much force of feeling in this for the loneliness of the place, and he saw the consciousness of it reflected instantly in her face. On the way here the boisterous behaviour of the wind had kept them separate. Now this magic calm, like a descent, a hush imposed on them from above, brought a greater closeness than being alone in a room could have done.