Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  He had just dismissed with promises a half-pay naval officer, unemployed now that the wars with France were ended, who was seeking his influence with the Admiralty but lacked the guineas necessary to assure it.

  His footman entered to announce the name of a gentleman on business waiting at present in the ante-room with the others, but not the sort to kick his heels long, the footman remarked comthere was between servant and master a close understanding of mutual convenience.

  ‘He would not be fobbed off,” the footman said.

  “He has a short way with him, sir.”

  “Aye, and a long purse, you rascal, I make no doubt,” his master said. “He must have shown you the lining of it for you to bring his name with this dispatch.”

  Briefly pleased with this piece of wit he twitched thin lips in the looking-glass. His face was narrow and long, very pale beneath the crimson silk of his turban, with a mouth that turned up at the corners in an accidental simper oddly at variance with the generally downward-sloping, lugubrious cast of his features. He knew who this visitor was, though he did not say so to the servant, whose eye was upon him keenly.

  “Where the devil is my hot chocolate?”’ he said. “Why am I kept waiting in this fashion?

  Now is the time I need sustenance, sir, as I address myself to the business of the day. Get within and see to it and send Bindman hither to me so I may discuss with him what I shall be wearing.”

  “Yes, sir. And the gentleman?”’

  “When you have seen to all that,” Templeton said with assumed carelessness, “you may admit this person.”

  He spent the interval before his mirror. Entering, Erasmus Kemp saw the Secretary’s long face, gaudy with rouge just applied but not smoothed in yet, looking fixedly at him in the glass, framed by the swimming or flying putti round the rim and beyond this by the pale blue and rose pink stucco cornucopias round the arches of the recessed bedchamber.

  For some moments the two men regarded each other thus. Then Templeton rose and advanced with languid affability, taking short and mincing steps in his loose Turkish slippers. “My dear sir, curse me, this is a pleasure,” he said, holding out his hand. “Will you take a seat, sir? I trust you are well?”’

  “Tolerably well, I thank you.” Kemp regarded the Secretary with a sombreness the warmth of his welcome had done nothing to relax. The years had taken colour from his cheeks and compressed his lips with a certain grimness of endurance or denial comthough it was not evident whether of claims from within or without. But the eyes were unchanged: narrow and very dark, with a piercing insistence of regard that verged always on the antagonistic. He was dressed faultlessly in a suit of dark brown velvet set off by foams of lace at the neck and cuffs. His black hair was longer now, in accordance with the fashion; he wore it free of powder, caught in a dark red ribbon behind.

  “We need not make a long business of this,” he said. “I shall not encroach on your time more than is needful. You have affairs of state to look to.”

  “Cares of state, sir, I prefer to name ‘em.

  There is a neat epigram to be got out of that rhyme, but these days, alas, I have no time for composition. Do you scribble yourself, sir? No? One needs peace for it. You will not mind if I continue with my toilette? I am bidden to my Lady Everney’s in the forenoon.”

  “Indeed? By all means, continue. I would not have you disappoint Lady Everney.”

  Templeton shot him a sharp glance in the mirror, but made no reply. He had begun touching in the paint with a small brush.

  “You know me and you know whom I represent,”

  Kemp was beginning, “so there is no need for -“

  A small negro page boy in a white turban and surcoat came in bearing a sugar bowl, a steaming cup of chocolate and a plate of wafers on a japanned tray.

  “About time, my pretty fellow,”

  Templeton said. “Set it down here beside me. You must learn to be sharper.”

  The little boy smiled and his eyes flashed eagerly.

  He had teeth of amazing perfection.

  “He doesn’t know much English as yet,”

  Templeton said. “I haven’t had him above two weeks. I got him at auction at George’s Coffee House in the Strand. I gave the last one to my Lord Granville, who had taken a fancy for him. This one is even better-looking. One should buy them pockmarked of course, ‘tis more secure, but I like a smooth skin. Will you take some chocolate?”’

  “Thank you, no,” Kemp said. “I have breakfasted but lately.” This was not strictly true as it was now mid-morning, but a certain kind of disgusted impatience was growing in him and he had no wish to share more than was necessary with the man before him—the knowledge there was between them had to be shared, and the space of the room and the stale air in it.

  ‘So then,” Templeton said to the negro boy, waving an irritable hand. “Why are you waiting there?

  Shoo, shoo, shoo. G.”

  “I am come on the same grounds as last time,”

  Kemp said in level tones. “Nothing of substance has been achieved on your part since then, in spite of the monies made over to you for your use as you thought fit.”

  “Ah, base metal, curse me, I knew we should soon come to money,” Templeton said in a tone of disdain.

  “Yes, sir, money,” Kemp said with a slight smile. “You find it a wearisome topic, I dare say, but those who dispense it incline to take an interest in how it is used.”

  His disgust persisted. It was more for himself now. I should have sent someone else, he thought. But he trusted no one. He knew that Templeton was frightened and that his every gesture and inflection was assumed to disguise the fact. He knew more: he knew the man’s circumstances, his connections, those who were in his interest, those who were in his pocket, his gambling debts, his taste for boys, his wife of the days before his preferment alone and drunken in their country house, consoling herself with footmen. He was sick to the soul with his knowledge of Templeton.

  “No doubt it is perverse of them to press enquiry so far,” he said drily, “but there it is.”

  “You are sarcastic, sir. It is not true to say that nothing has been achieved. I have risked displeasure at court by resisting demands for increased sugar duties to swell the revenues. There has been no increase since they were raised to help finance the war with the French, and that is close on four years now.”

  He had spoken with indignation, real or assumed.

  But there was nothing assumed about the unsteadiness of his hands when he set down his cup. “Not to have agreed then would have cost me my place, it would have branded me as unpatriotic,” he said.

  “If you will forgive me,” Kemp said, in the same level tones, “the duties would have been kept down in any case, even without your support.

  As you are aware, we have fifty-three members of the House of Commons voting in our interest directly, as well as some others, whom we both know, whose pockets are affected one way or another. We are strong enough to turn the balance in parliament on any West India business. It is not for the conduct of bills in the House that we need your interest. You know that well, I think, Sir William. We need your voice behind the scenes, in the Council, your urgent -“

  At this moment the valet entered with garments draped over one arm, holding a long stick with a half a dozen wigs on it before him like a lance.

  “Ah, Bindman,” Templeton said, grateful for the diversion. “Let us see, now.”

  “I thought the claret-coloured suit, sir, with the silver stitching,” the valet said, after a brief bow to Kemp, “and a silver wig to go with it; a dull-toned wig will not do well with silver threaded on wine-colour, especially seeing that the suit is satin and has a high shine to it.”

  He had spoken as he was obviously accustomed to speak, in high-pitched, intimate tones, as if there were no one else present.

  He took some gliding steps into the bedchamber and laid the clothes on the bed. “This one?”’ he said returning, lifting one of the
wigs delicately from the stick. He had produced from his pocket a little powder-bellows.

  “Wait, you rogue,” Templeton said.

  “Why do you always hurry me so?”’

  “I would have this interview in private,” Kemp said coldly. ‘I cannot speak to you while this fellow capers about with wigs.”

  Dignity required some delay in response to this. Templeton had commenced already to unfasten the high turban. He continued to do so, glancing at Kemp through the glass. Typical of the low-born fellow to be rendered uneasy by the presence of servants. Son of a provincial bankrupt. The times were bad that could throw up such creatures into positions of power. Templeton had his own sources of information and there was a file on Kemp in his office at the Ministry.

  He took in the careless, lounging posture of his visitor, a carelessness at odds with the tight lips, the insolent intensity of the eyes. A man who had come from nothing and nowhere. It was a career meteoric even in these times of opportunity for the clever and unscrupulous. He had begun as an employee of the firm of Thomas Fletcher, which carried on an extensive trade with Jamaica, dealing on the London Exchange in sugar grown on its own plantations and imported in its own ships. He had made himself useful to his employers in a number of ways, some of them on the edge of legality and some beyond. Templeton knew something of these last, though not enough to be useful. Kemp had been twice to Jamaica to increase the firm’s holdings by bribing or intimidating local officials to sign foreclosure orders on small tenants who had fallen into arrears. These services and others more nebulous had brought him to a full partnership in five years. He had married sugar too, in the person of the daughter of Sir Hugo Jarrold, whose merchant bank had been founded on his connections in the West India trade. Elizabeth Jarrold had neither looks nor elegance but had made up for both by the fortune she had brought, said to be eighty thousand pounds. Kemp’s present wealth could only be guessed at; but the most important fact about him from Templeton’s point of view was that he had lately become Vice-President of the West India Association and could thus speak for the entire faction…

  The turban was removed now and Templeton’s long, nearly naked head stood revealed.

  “Bindman is discretion itself,” he said at last.

  “He has been with me these five years.”

  “He has been with me no more than five minutes but I find it enough,” Kemp said. “I should esteem it a favour.”

  ‘Very well.” Templeton assumed an air of fatigue. “Bindman, you can go. I will dress myself this morning.”

  “Dress yourself, sir?”’ The valet’s attentive bearing was ruffled by solicitude and surprise.

  “Yes, yes, yes. Dress myself.

  ‘Sblood, man, do you think me a puppet with no independent powers of locomotion? Go, sir. And tell Biggs to send away all those who are waiting.

  I will have no time for anyone this morning.”

  Kemp waited till the servant had withdrawn before resuming. He was telling Templeton what for the most part the latter knew already. The local assembly in Kingston, elected by popular vote in the colony and controlling the purse-strings, was bringing pressure to bear on the Governor, whose salary they also controlled, to authorize policies hostile to the interests of the absentee landlords whom Kemp represented. They were seeking to confiscate tracts of land and to redistribute them among small farmers on the island. These measures, of course, were opposed by His Majesty’s Government…

  “Or they should be, sir,” Kemp said. “If they are not, we are abandoning one of the most sacred duties of government, which is the preservation of property. The great end of men’s entering into society in the first place is the enjoyment of their properties in peace and safety.”

  “That is most certainly true, sir. And this present administration of my Lord Rockingham, in which I have the honour to serve, has ever been dedicated to ensuring it.”

  Kemp’s air of nonchalance fell away and he sat forward abruptly. “Then why is this policy allowed to continue unchecked?”’ he demanded. “The legislation is there. Why is it not enforced? Why, above all, are you not more active on our behalf, in view of the sums, the very considerable sums, that you have received? Why am I thus obliged to come in person here and wait on your pleasure and consume my time away? Do you think I find it agreeable, sir? Do you think I find it congenial?

  Do you?”’

  “Good God!” Templeton was shocked at the blaze of antagonism that had come to the other’s eyes. “How can I answer you?”’ he said. He had an impulse to get up and put the dressing-table between them. It was almost as if the fellow were gathering for a spring, as he said later that day to a crony at White’s: “I tell you, I feared for my person,” he said, “and there was nothing there but the stick with my wigs on, which that wretch Bindman had left behind.”

  It had seemed inexplicable, this spasm of fury, quite out of keeping with their conversation, which had been progressing on accustomed lines. Templeton was astute enough, but we never fully succeed in understanding what we cannot feel and so he did not suspect the sense of outrage that had come to Kemp to find himself using the same language, exchanging similar phrases with a man he so despised, as if they were both of the same kidney, as if he had waded through the years only to make an embrace of minds with this depraved fop. If he had suspected anything of this, Templeton would have found it grotesque, in a man who was so strenuously engaged in protecting his own interest. That he did not suspect it was a mark of virtue in a nature not otherwise richly endowed with this commodity. He was venal and corrupt but he did not dignify his motives to himself-only to others.

  “It is not so simple,” he said now, in a tone he strove to make conciliatory. “Let me play the adversary for a while and point out to you the arguments on the other side. The plantations you speak of are owned by landlords who do not set foot on the island once in ten years. Their estates are mismanaged by overseers regrettably subject to the corruption of the climate, in other words liquor and whores, sir, and milked by dishonest attorneys, with consequent loss of duty to the Crown at a time when the demand for sugar is rising. Then there is the disproportion in population, with dangers of a slave revolt. There must be found some way of encouraging more Englishmen to settle in the colony—there were barely twenty-five thousand in the last count, against more than a hundred thousand blacks. The Deficiency Laws have failed to restrain the practice of absenteeism, hence the clamour for redistribution of land in the local assembly. There are those in parliament sympathetic to these demands, especially among the followers of Chatham. Need I name ‘em to you?”’

  Kemp looked down for a while in silence. His anger had gone, leaving a certain familiar sense of desolation. “No, you need not,” he said. “I know well enough who they are. For us, you see, the issue is simple, in spite of what you say. We are ready to guarantee an income for the Governor, whomever he be, that will make him independent of the assembly. But the real change must come in the workings by which the decisions of the Council are put into effect. The Council has the power, the statutory power, to disallow local legislation even when backed by the Governor. If there is delay, it must be because some person or persons are obstructing the procedure. This is not a question of legislation, it is a question of influence. That is why you were approached in the first place, so that you could use your voice behind the scenes.”

  But how strong was this voice? he wondered, looking at the rouged and sorrowful face before him, with its thick eyebrows and slight, incongruous simper.

  And how often, and how earnestly, was it being raised?

  It had been his private belief for some time now that Templeton was taking bribes from the opposite party too. Men like this, grown old in the practice of chicanery, were difficult to frighten for long; they could not easily believe that the streams which had nourished them so long could dry up. In the purlieus of Westminster bribes were paid like pensions, long after it had been forgotten whose interest was secured by them…


  ‘We want results,” he said quietly.

  “We are tired of waiting. It is possible that you imagine we would rather pay you for nothing than risk your disfavour by ceasing. If so, you had better disabuse yourself. That may have been the case in the time of my predecessor, but I assure you it is not the case now. I take the view that when a man’s friendship has not helped us we have nothing to fear from his enmity.”

  He got up, looking squarely at the man before him. “You, on the other hand, have much to fear from ours,” he said. “Put on wisdom with your wig today, Sir William, and ponder my words well.

  I trust I make my meaning clear to you?”’

  “Abundantly crystalline, sir, curse me, translucent,” Templeton said, meeting the other’s gaze with tolerable firmness.

  On this less than cordial note the two men parted. Kemp found his chairmen waiting in the courtyard with the sedan, as instructed; but he paid them and sent them away, feeling the need for air and movement.

  He left the Albert Gate on his left and began to walk towards Hyde Park Corner, crossing the Westbourne by the little wooden footbridge. After a while he became aware of a stinging sensation in his right hand and saw that the palm bore shallow lacerations which were bleeding slightly. He could not at first understand this, then he realized that it must have happened during his interview with Templeton: he had clenched his fist so tightly that he had cut himself with his nails. Only the right one, he thought vaguely —he had been holding his cane with the other.

  Increasingly these days he found himself becoming aware of overwrought feeling through some discomfort felt later, rather as one is woken by some pain in the night.

  He had the wall of the park now on his left.

  Across from him, on the opposite side, there was a row of small houses, then the White Horse Inn with Still George’s Hospital beyond it, fronting on to Knightsbridge. He crossed the road and turned off alongside the hospital garden, which ran into Grosvenor Place. This had no buildings at its lower end, giving directly on to the open heathland known as Five Fields. Kemp stood for a while here looking out over the ponds and brick kilns.