Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  It was a quiet corner. The rumble of carts and coaches on the cobbles of Piccadilly and the cries of hawkers came to him, but distantly. A ragged, crippled man was playing a barrel-organ at the Knightsbridge end of the square, dragging one leg and glancing up at the windows for pennies. The music carried to Kemp, softened and distorted, unrecognizable. He could see the gleam of the ponds and gulls wheeling above them and the figures of fishermen. It was early October and the weather had been wet and windy, though today there was some faint sunshine. He could smell the damp leaf mould from the garden behind him.

  He recalled with distaste the conversation just past, the posturing and evasions of Templeton. He had nailed the fellow, though, in the end. What steps could have led him to such a man? He could almost believe he had come upon him by some unrepeatable chance, as one might come upon a creature in a labyrinth. But of course it was not by chance… He experienced a slight feeling of nausea at the openness of the sky, the flashes of the gulls’ wings over the pale water, the spaces beyond. London ended here, his London at least. It lay all to the back of him, the precincts of government, the banks and counting-houses; and with it lay all he had achieved in these twelve years: his partnership in Fletcher and Company, his holdings in his father-in-law’s bank, his house in Still James’s, the power and position that had come with his money. He had laboured and denied himself and stopped at nothing, however unworthy. His promise, his father’s memory, had purged everything of wrong. In restoring his father’s name and credit, he had established and consolidated his own. Kemp was a name to be reckoned with again. And he was still some months away from his thirty-fifth birthday.

  It was a triumph… He looked again at the solitary fishermen, dark in the distance. There would be pike in those deep ponds. Beyond them, he knew, there was the toll-gate and beyond that the road through the market gardens of Marylebone and the fields where the cowkeepers had their shacks… Something, some nostalgia or desire for completeness, came to him with the strength of a physical impulse, though without aim or direction. The music of the barrel-organ was nearer now. Kemp moved away across the square but after a moment returned to give the man a florin.

  For a moment he met the dark eyes, saw marks of hardship on the face, had a fleeting sense of the streets the man would drag through, grinding out the same tunes.

  He went down the steps and cut across the park past the keeper’s lodge and came out on Piccadilly, turning off again when he drew opposite the reservoir. His house was on one corner of Still James’s Square, overlooking the railed gardens.

  He found his wife at home as he had expected, still in her bedroom. It was past midday now but she had just risen. He knew her movements well: she would spend two hours at least on her toilette, take her tea and leave the house in late afternoon on a round of visits. They would not meet again that day comperh not until this time tomorrow. He wanted to speak to her about her father, Sir Hugo, with whom he was now on rather bad terms because of recent business disagreements and because it was to her father that Margaret complained of him.

  The elderly French maid was in the room, clearing away the remains of breakfast. He noted that as soon as he appeared she began to delay. Fritz, his wife’s poodle, yapped when he entered—there was an old enmity between them, unyielding on both sides. Margaret Kemp chided her dog and greeted her husband in more or less the same tones.

  Across the top of her head there lay a large round cushion covered with black crepe, over which the hair was combed back and fastened with curlers. She was a martyour to fashion and the fashion now was for a high, piled-up style. Her face was completely covered with white cream.

  “Will you ask her to take away the things and leave us alone for a while?”’ Kemp said, receiving in response a snap of black eyes from the maid— Marie shared the poodle’s feelings precisely. tWhy? You know she does not gossip.”

  Kemp sighed. It was the second time that morning.

  “I know nothing of the sort,” he said. “Can you not exist for ten minutes without her presence in the room?”’

  “I am glad I have not a suspicious nature,” his wife said. ‘Go, Marie, I will ring when I need you.”

  Kemp waited until the maid had gone, then began to speak to her about her father’s latest passion, which was for speculating in negroes. The old man had somehow become convinced—and how and by whom were among the things Kemp most wanted to know—that the trade in slaves was shortly to be made illegal by Act of Parliament. He had instructed his agents in Barbados and Virginia to buy up as many blacks as possible in order to get compensation from the government when the bill was passed into law.

  “He is going mad,” Kemp said. “That is the only possible conclusion. There is no such a bill in prospect. There are not above three members of parliament who take the abolitionist line. I am told reliably that your father is buying up negroes of no quality whatever, with no value on the market. Old, diseased, crippled, it makes no difference. He has got fixed in his mind this absurd notion of compensation. The blacks will all have to be fed and kept alive somehow, at great expense.

  Half of them will die on his hands in spite of everything.”

  The mask of cream which covered his wife’s face allowed no expression, except what showed in her eyes. These were brown and glistening and full of ill-humour. They were not looking at him.

  “Could you not find an occasion to speak to him and dissuade him from this folly?”’ he said.

  “Lord, sir,” she said, “you speak with rare feeling. ‘Twas in those very tones you wooed me. I would not have credited you with such tender solicitude for my father’s welfare.”

  Kemp said nothing for a while. Pride made him wish to seem indifferent to the sarcasm, with the same indifference he showed towards the irregularities of her conduct, her absences from home, her suspected infidelities. At heart he felt it to be no more than justice. He saw it as he might have seen a balance sheet. The money she had brought had provided substantial investment funds much earlier than he had hoped, at a time of expanding opportunity in the London property market.

  She had saved him the many years of scheming it would still have taken to pay off his father’s debts. He had protested love in order to get her and since he had not repaid her in that currency, she was free to choose other means of repayment. He kept to his side of things by not reproaching her. And it was this that gave her the greatest offence of all.

  He looked at her obscured face, the grotesquely high setting of her hair. Seven years of marriage and he could not remember a time when there had been trust between them. “Well,” he said at last, “if you have any regard for him you will disabuse his mind.” A thought struck him suddenly.

  “Try to discover who is communicating these ideas to him,” he said.

  She had begun to remove the cream from her face with moist pieces of cotton, dropping the used swabs into a little silver dish on the bed beside her. The clear complexion she had possessed when he married her, and which had been her best feature, was gone now; unhappiness had made her sallow and frequent use of cosmetics was clouding the skin.

  “You are asking me, in other words, to spy on my own father,” she said after a moment.

  “It is for his good and ours, the good of the bank. I am asking from you no more than the duty of a wife.”

  Kemp had no sense of irony in saying this and was surprised to see a smile come to his wife’s face. The interests of the bank were paramount in his mind. He took a few steps across the room. “I would be interested to know who is spreading these rumours of abolition,” he said. His movements had brought him too close to the cushion on which the poodle was reclining and it set up a furious yapping, baring its teeth, and shaking the beribboned tufts of its mane at him.

  ‘Be quiet, you little brute,” he said.

  “Pray do not disturb poor Fritz.”

  “Poor Fritz, is it?”’ Kemp eyed the beast. “I have never been able to see what a dog like that is good for.”

/>   A silence fell between them. Now that he had said what he had come to say, he did not know what else to talk about. His wife’s activities and interests were remote to him, her circle of acquaintance quite different.

  “I shall not be home this evening,” he said at last.

  “I am dining out. I shall not need the coach, however.”

  ‘Well, that is a blessing. You are at your club?”’

  “No, it is a celebration banquet of the Association. I have spoke to you of it, I think?”’

  But he saw that she remembered nothing of the matter, and he himself could not be sure whether he had mentioned it to her or not. He certainly would have said nothing about the plans of the younger element to go on afterwards to a Covent Garden tavern for a meeting of the Trionfi Club, of which he had now, as Vice-President of the West India Association, become the leading figure. The activities of the Trionfi were under oath of secrecy. But he thought it possible he had mentioned the banquet, as it was such a great occasion. The Assembly in Jamaica, in order to raise revenue, had sought to impose a duty on every negro imported into the colony. The Sugar Interest, supported by the Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, had naturally resisted this iniquitous tax on their profits. There had been a protracted legal battle, but the Association’s lawyers had pleaded the matter successfully and the Board of Trade had finally condemned the law as unjustifiable, improper and prejudicial to British commerce.

  Something of this he tried to tell her now, but quite soon she interrupted him to ask if Marie could be recalled. “I must have her back,” she said. “I did not think you would stay so long. She must positively come and unpin this cushion, she is the only creature in the world that knows how to do it.”

  On this he took his leave. He spent the afternoon closeted in his study with his secretary, dealing with correspondence of various sorts. His position in the Association, which he took very seriously, had involved him in much extra work. The President, Sir James Wigmore, over eighty now and increasingly infirm, did little these days but put in an appearance on ceremonial occasions—he was due to make a speech at the banquet that evening. This was to be held at the premises of the African Merchants off Chancery Lane. The members of the Association were guests of the Company for the evening.

  The streets were miry after the recent rain and he wore a long riding-cloak to protect his royal-blue satin suit. He stabled his horse in the courtyard, consigned cloak and boots to the stable-boy, changed into the elegant wedge-heeled shoes he had brought with him and mounted to the ante-rooms, where he was announced in stentorian tones. There were a number of people already assembled here, several of them known to him. Sir James arrived and passed directly into the dining-hall. Distributing smiles, his head in its full-bottomed wig trembling incessantly, he was deftly supported to his place at the head of the table by a liveried footman of Herculean proportions. His installation was the signal for the call to dinner. The orchestra in the gallery struck up with “Conquering Heroes” and some seventy persons trooped to their places at the long table amidst the splendour of coffered ceilings, double rows of Doric pillars and gleaming stucco mouldings in blue and gold recently completed by the Italian plasterer, Pietro Francini, at very considerable expense.

  The first toast came, as usual, after the soup. It was delivered by the Chairman of the Company, who welcomed the guests and drank perdition to any who would lay import duties on British goods.

  Sir James was then helped to his feet by the footman who stood behind his chair. He gave thanks to their hosts on behalf of the West India Association and raised his glass to the principles so triumphantly vindicated by the recent decision of the Tribunal. He added his congratulations to those who had pleaded the case and particularly the advocate who had led them, Mr Joshua Moore, who was a guest of honour that evening. Through their victory the value to the nation of the Triangular Trade had been clearly recognized. The East India trade was pernicious, in his opinion, draining England of bullion and committing her to buy unnecessary wares. The Africa trade, by contrast, was a sane and healthy trade, carried on by means of English manufactured goods and rendering the nation independent of foreigners for her supply of tropical products … Sir James drew himself up and looked with palsied benignity round the table. “And to what tropical product do I refer in particular, gentlemen? May I hear your answer?”’

  The reply came in jovial shouts: “Sugar, sir! Sugar!”

  “So here is to sugar,” the old man said, and drank a second glass amid cheers.

  Kemp, sitting a little lower down the table, glanced at the lawyer, who had been placed opposite him.

  Moore had a sharp-boned, watchful face, flushed a little now with what he had drunk. He had listened with good-humoured impassivity to Sir James’s congratulations. Meeting Kemp’s eye, he nodded and raised his glass. “Your health, sir,” he said.

  “And yours.” Kemp rarely drank enough to disturb his judgement, but he was drinking more than usual tonight.

  He felt some tension about the meeting of the Trionfi planned for later; it was his inauguration as the new president of the club and his conduct would come under scrutiny… “Some of us may differ from Sir James as regards the East India trade,” he said to Moore, “but we are unanimous in our admiration for the way you conducted our case.” The fellow would have been just as eloquent on the other side, if his fee had come from that quarter, he thought with some disgust. Lawyers were mercenary creatures. This one was Irish, too—a nation of talkers.

  “I am glad of your good opinion,” Moore said with a slight smile. “I take it you approve of the East India trade?”’

  Kemp hesitated a moment from habitual caution. But this was public knowledge. “My firm supports the Company of Elliot and Son,” he said. “They are one of the main importers of China tea. Did you know that duty was paid on more than six million pounds of tea coming into this country last year?

  And the volume will increase. All reports indicate that our new Colony of India is capable of large-scale production. The East India Company is doing us a service. The more tea, the more sugar—it takes no prodigious wit to see that.”

  “I see you are far-sighted, sir,” the other said. There was something slightly ironical in the tone of this. Kemp found himself being regarded by a pair of humorous blue eyes. ‘Tell me now,” the lawyer said softly, “with all this tea coming in, do you not think the price will fall so that the common people can afford it?”’

  “Why, yes, in time.”

  “In quite a short time, do you not think? And if they take to drinking tea, will they not require sugar in vast quantities?”’

  “Of course.” Kemp refilled his glass.

  He was nettled by the other’s manner—it was as if he were being rather teasingly cross-examined. He was aware that others nearby were listening. “And that will help our business,” he said curtly. “Any fool can see that.”

  “Here is one who can’t,” the lawyer said with unruffled good humour. “You are digging your own pit, sir, if you will pardon me. We are talking about a time when tea will be cheaper than beer. Once the true magnitude of the sugar market is grasped, do you think that control of the prices will be left in the hands of a few West Indian planters? People will look elsewhere for their sugar, sir—wherever it is cheapest. There is no divine right in commerce.”

  Kemp was indignant. He could not imagine any government, of whatever complexion, exposing the nation to foreign competition. One country could only grow rich at the expense of another—it was an axiom and an article of faith with him. But he had no time to retort upon the lawyer. The remains of the beef were being cleared, they would be bringing in the sorbet, it was time for him, as Vice-President, to propose the health of their hosts, the Africa Merchants. He got to his feet and rapped with his spoon for silence.

  This took some time to obtain, as the guests were loud and heated now with food and drink. He spoke easily and well, timing his pauses, inserting the humorous remarks
prepared beforehand. Though still as scornful as ever of actors, he had learned much about the art of pleasing over the years.

  When he came to the heart of his speech he grew serious, pointing out the value and importance of the slave trade, on which every man in the room in some way depended. It was a sign of this value and importance that through all variation in the administration of public affairs, through all variation of government and party, this trade had always been approved, its encouragement voted, its benefit to the nation recognized on all sides…

  These were the things above all that this company of men enjoyed hearing and he resumed his seat to general applause. He did not speak again to the lawyer or look at him but devoted his attention to the man on his right, who was already well known to him, as to most people in the room, and always to be found at these gatherings. Dr Ebeneezer Slingsby, familiarly known among his associates as Dr Sugar, was a man who had done more for the trade, in his own way, than almost anyone, having been for more than thirty years a tireless publicist for the medicinal virtues of sugar in every form, and having published not much previously a learned treatise entitled “A Vindication of Sugar”, in which he proved beyond doubt that sugar was beneficial to everyone, of whatever degree or age or sex. Throughout all this time his researches had been helped forward by generous subsidies from the West India Association.

  Slingsby was corpulent and somewhat short of breath and his teeth were ruinous; but his full, round face had a good high shine on it and his eyes glistened as he described to Kemp his new remedy for all ailments of the eye: two drams of fine sugar-candy, one grain of leaf gold, one quarter-dram pearl.

  “Made into a very fine and impalpable powder, sir,” the doctor said. “When dry, blow a convenient quantity into the eye. Relief will be felt within two minutes.”

  “The pearl and gold leaf will make it an expensive remedy, I fancy,” Kemp said.