Sacred Hunger

by Barry Unsworth

  “Beyond the means of most.”

  “That is true, sir, it is designed for people of fashion. But I am presently seeking patents for a hand-lotion made from sugar paste which will be a sovereign cure for all manner of external lesions and well within the means of the common general. And I am working also on a dentifrice made with powdered sugar, which should come out cheap enough. Alas, too late to save my own teeth.” The smile he gave at this point attested in a graphic fashion to the terminal condition of these. “But we do not work for ourselves alone,” he said. “It is the younger generation who will thank us. There is a Slingsby Sugar Snuff now on the market which I believe will replace tobacco entirely, to the better health of the whole population.”

  The doctor paused to drink some of his wine. His nails, Kemp noticed, were a strangely uniform whitish colour without any evident presence of blood behind them. “Well, that is good news,” he said. “I had not thought sugar could be put to so many uses.”

  Dr Sugar set down his glass. ‘Sir,” he said, “sugar has a thousand uses, it is the most versatile of all commodities in the world. It is first of all a food, of course, and an excellent one. A man can live on the products of sugar alone for many weeks together without the smallest detriment, as I have proved upon my own person. But sugar is also a preservative, a solvent, a stabilizer. It is equally valuable as excipient or diluent. It gives consistency of body, it masks bitter-tasting drugs. It can be used in syrups and elixirs, as a demulcent or as a binding agent for tablets. It is a base for confections, oil sugars, aromatic sugars, candy cough lozenges. It improves the eyesight, preserves the hair and sweetens the blood. Sir, there is no end to the virtues of sugar.”

  By the time Kemp had followed the doctor through this catalogue he was beginning to feel the onset of drunkenness. However, when the guests rose he was still steady enough in his movements and clear in speech.

  The place used by the Trionfi for their meetings was the Bell in Covent Garden, which boasted a good-sized dining-room. In the cloakroom, where he had gone to divest himself of cloak and boots, Kemp found four men, all members of the club, sitting at cards with brandy on the table before them.

  “Here is our worthy President,” one of them said. “Stab me, why do you look so glum, man?

  Here, have some brandy, get your flipper to the bottle.”

  Kemp saw that the man, whose name was Fowler, was drunk already. His waistcoat hung open and the lace front of his shirt had a wet stain on it. Kemp drank from the bottle and sighed loudly and smiled round at the men, widening his eyes in a way that was peculiar to him, slightly devilish. “This will wash out the taste of all those confounded speeches,” he said, and drank again. The men at the table had been looking at him expectantly. They all laughed now, as if in some kind of relief. Kemp had found something of his father’s friendly manners in the course of paying off his debts. To the advantages of good looks and a well-knit figure he had added the useful gift of bonhomie. But there was nothing of the father’s simple and unaffected good-fellowship in the way the son noted now, for future reference, that these men had not thought fit to attend the banquet, preferring to sit here over their cards. He knew them all for profligate and idle. They were the sons of plantation owners, men who had never known the want of money…

  “They have got the ladies in already,” one said.

  Kemp could hear a considerable noise of voices from the dining-room adjoining, and the sound of the fiddlers playing a reel. “I must go in,” he said. “I hope that fool of a landlord has 4ff5 not let the women into the dining-room yet—they are to come in later.”

  “No,” Fowler said, with a loose smile.

  “They are upstairs getting dressed for it, powdering their fannies.” He tilted back his chair and patted his crotch with an imaginary powder-puff.

  “You will need something more than powder on it, Fowler, to stiffen you tonight,” Kemp said. “Are you gentlemen not going in?”’

  They began to get up, but he did not wait, passing alone into the long, low-raftered room, where a fire of logs burned at one end. He greeted the dozen men there and took his place at the head of the table. Immediately on his right, as tradition required, was their guest for the evening, a man named Armstrong, the only one there not connected with sugar—he was a lieutenant in the Guards, a relative of one of the members.

  While all remained standing the retiring President, lisping in speech but impressively serious in manner, welcomed Kemp to his new office, and handed him the ceremonial white baton, known as the “Cane”. No member could command the attention of the others, nor speak to them collectively, without having this in his possession.

  Kemp tapped three times on the table with it and formally declared the proceedings open. The serving man came forward with the port.

  Voices were raised, now that the gravity of protocol had been laid aside. The drinking was reckless. Most of the men there had been tipsy when they sat down, but they drank off bumpers of wine as if it were water. There were toasts to King George and the Royal Princes and Squinting Kate, the Queen of Camden. Kemp got up while he still had his senses about him and expressed the hope that he would give satisfaction as the new President, a sentiment which was greeted by loud and sustained hammering on the table. Some wine was spilled in the course of this and one or two glasses broken.

  An undercurrent of excitement ran below the high spirits. It was hot in the room. Kemp felt perspiration break out on him. Several of the men had discarded coats and waistcoats. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke and vinous breath. A low chant began from lower down the table: “Trionfi— trionfi—trionfi.”

  Kemp made a signal to the two fiddlers, who broke into a rendering of’Lads and Lassies’.

  This was the cue for the club’s Italian sugar chef, Signor Gasperini, to advance into the room in his tall hat and spotless white apron. Behind him, greeted by a rousing chorus of yells and whoops, came three attendants bearing a litter on which stood a three-foot high model of a negress fashioned in chocolate. Except for bracelets, anklets and pearl collar, which were all made of sugar-crystal droplets, and the red sugar-paste rose in her hair, she was naked. To the continuing strains of the fiddle, they made the round of the table with her. At her base was a plaque of chocolate with letters picked out in spun sugar: the SABLE VENUS.

  Kemp rapped with his baton for silence. “In accordance with custom, Signor Gasperini will now explain to the company the mysteries of this delectable lady’s composition.”

  The chef had a lively eye and a smile so extensive that the corners of his lips and eyes seemed almost to join in a circle. The negretta was made of pasta di cioccolato e cacao, sweetened with fanid, flavoured with vanilla, moulded by his own hands—he threw them up with the gesture of a conjuror. “The hairs is made from caramella,” he said jubilantly, “her leeps is pink pasta of sugar, the eyes zucchero jino, she have sugar cherries for neeples, dolcissimi, no? Ecco Signori, a voiUP He swept off his tall hat and gestured proudly towards his creation, who regarded the company with gleaming, affrighted eyes. ‘Only the best sugar go to make this fanciulla,” Signor Gasperini said.

  “What the devil is fanid?”’ muttered the young lieutenant in Kemp’s ear. It seemed he had experienced a moment of intellectual enquiry. His eyes were round with drink and wonderment.

  “It is the juice of the sugar cane after it has been boiled down and skimmed,” Kemp said. “It makes a sweet black dough, like thick syrup.”

  He stood up rather unsteadily and inclined his head to the chef. “Gasperini,” he said, “you have excelled yourself. My congratulations. The guest may now be served.”

  Armstrong, after some fuddled hesitation, and to the accompaniment of much profane advice, chose the left breast with its cherry nipple. He was served with dexterity by the attendants, who could not, however, avoid some of the shoulder coming away with it. Thereafter the others were served, beginning with Kemp, who took her nose and eyes, proceeding down the table, the lea
st senior members having to pick among the fragments. Sauternes was served and a sweet, heavy Malaga wine.

  Kemp saw one of the junior members get up suddenly and make for the door, his face overspread with a chalky pallor. Fowler had slumped forward in his chair; his head rested on the table among the remains of his chocolate. So much for the powder-puff, Erasmus thought. He was distinctly drunk himself now, but his stomach felt firm enough. The chanting began again, this time accompanied by a flat-handed striking at the table: “Trionfi-trionfi- trionfi.” The volume rose, drowning out the fiddles. On the crest of it, laughing among themselves, the women came in, sent by the prudent landlord before things started to get broken.

  There were eight of them, scantily dressed and painted and high-stepping—they had been given drink while waiting. They sat in the laps of the men who were quickest to catch them, except for one, who came unbidden to Erasmus, a wild-haired, gypsy-looking young woman with a bold mouth. She wore nothing above the waist but a muslin bodice.

  Her breasts moved unconfined below it, the nipples showing through with a dark glow. She drank from his glass and smiled at him, her eyes shining below the thick fringe of hair.

  Erasmus, whose senses were swimming now and whose only care was to see that no one took away his precious baton of office, fumbled with the buttons of her bodice, at the same time trying to explain to Armstrong, with a vestigial sense of his duty as host, that the trionfi were due to appear now: it was these that gave the club its name, little figures made from cast sugar. “Cast on marble,” he said, enunciating with immense care. His tongue felt too thick for his mouth. “The marble first lubricated with oil of almonds…” Armstrong did not appear to be listening closely. The girl on his lap had slid a hand inside his breeches.

  Gasperini’s men brought them, in boxes tied with red ribbon, one for each person in the room. They were unwrapped and held up and turned this way and that in the lamplight, glistening white replicas of horse-shoes, pigs, rosettes, shells, keys … A long-drawn aaah went round the table: Erasmus’s girl had extracted from her box—as all had known she would, since it was marked for her— a sugar penis, gleaming with crystals, heroically tumid, with a red tassel attached. Smiling, she held it up for all to see. And as she did so, the chanting began again, a single barking syllable now: “Up-up-up.”

  She laid the dildo before Erasmus and leapt up in a single movement on to the table. Dishes, glasses, remnants of food were swept aside.

  She tossed her head and snapped her fingers at the hollow-eyed fiddlers, who went into the rhythm of a gavotte. She commenced a swaying dance in the centre of the table, removing her garments piece by piece and throwing them down among the spectators, petticoats, bustle, bodice, stockings.

  Naked, she was beautiful in the lamplight, her skin like warm pearl. She swooped for her gift, danced into a half-squatting position. Still to the stately rhythm of the music, she inserted it between her legs, pressing it slowly into herself with both hands, raising her face with an expression of simulated ecstasy, while the voices round her rose again, overlapping, indistinguishable, like the baying of dogs.

  The woman rose and raised her arms to show the hands were empty and danced a few gyrating steps, keeping her knees close, working her thighs, rounding her mouth to make oohs of bliss. The crimson tassel hung down between her legs like some trailing tissue of blood. She kept to the centre of the table, stepping short, turning to avoid the hands that snatched, though more in jest than earnest, at the swinging cord.

  She came to rest where she had begun, before Erasmus, and smiled down at him and swayed her hips, while the whole table loudly exhorted their new President to take it out-ou-out, and he reached up and took the strip of velvet and drew on it and a roar went up at the expected sight of how wilted and eroded that proud prick was now, how it dangled grotesquely misshapen on its thread—in accordance with hallowed custom it had been made of powder sugar, designed for quick melting in the hot spice of the vagina.

  Erasmus knew what was expected of him. He rose and swung the naked woman off the table and set a staggering course with her towards the door. Then he remembered the Cane, symbol of his office, and came back for it. On inspired impulse, he turned his lapse into triumph, raising the baton and making a sign of the cross with it in a gesture of blessing and farewell, adding that night—though without design—to the proud traditions of the Trionfi Club.

  The girl led him down the candle-lit passage into a small room with a narrow bed. On this, with some laughter but no words, she lay down and waited for him. The melted sugar had leaked from her, he saw the shine of it on her thighs. Without words or touch of the mouth, they copulated briefly and violently. She clutched at him and made an angry cry and he felt the slight knifing of her nails. He was released in a series of groaning shudders and fell down beside her like a stone and slept at once.

  He woke to a throbbing head and a feeling of utter desolation. There was a grey light in the room. The woman was gone. The tavern and the streets outside were silent and he judged it to be not long after dawn.

  There was a jug of water and a basin on the small table against the window. He washed his face and hands, drying himself with his handkerchief. The room looked out over the courtyard and the stables, half obscured in mist. Erasmus shivered a little in the chill air. A certain impulse of escape came to him. He would rouse the lad in the loft over the stables, have his horse saddled, his cloak and boots fetched. The streets would be quiet. At this hour even crime was sleeping … But he made no move yet to leave. His white baton was still there by the bed where he had let it fall. He went to pick it up. The movement sent shoots of pain through his head. Holding the baton he stood for some minutes longer in the dim room, going over things in his mind, recapitulating his assets.

  He had passed his initiation triumphantly—he knew it. Everything lay in his hands. He was acknowledged leader of the younger set, and his position in the Association would enable him to influence events and steer business the way of Fletcher and Kemp. Fletcher was old and he had no sons; day by day he was relinquishing control. Now that the debts were paid, more money would be free for investment. He would go into banking on his own account. The future lay with those who dealt in money, not commodities… It lay with people like himself, people who could see. Why then did he feel this desolation, which was not sickness of body, which would not be dismissed as the aftermath of debauch, coming as it did at other times and often quite unexpectedly, a feeling of being thrust without shelter under remorseless skies? The successful cannot be unhappy—it was a contradiction in terms. But as he stood there, in this time of licensed introspection, with night over and duties of day not yet resumed, he fell again to rehearsing in his mind the actions he was about to take, as if seeking to give them, and with them his life as a whole, some fuller reality. Crossing the greasy cobbles, shouting for the stable-lad… Perhaps he would climb to the loft to shake him awake. His horse would be led out, snorting in the cold air. And he would turn her head south towards the river and ride through the empty streets… Suddenly he felt like a man who has played by the rules and been cheated by an opponent more cunning—so cunning that it was not possible to see how the trick had been done.

  38.

  At home he found his man, Hudson, already up and dressed and waiting with his usual discreet blend of deference and reproof. Hudson had been with him for almost eight years now and was licensed in various ways, but Erasmus cut him short this morning, sending him off in a hurry to make tea and get water heated for a bath.

  He stayed a long time in the scented tub, Hudson labouring back and forth with buckets of warm water to pour over him. When he rose from this long immersion, he was feeling slightly languid but triumphant again. He dressed as usual with the greatest care, in a plain shirt and a suit of dark broadcloth. He was intending to spend the rest of the day at the offices of the bank, on Cheapside, where he was due to meet the owners of a shipping company in need of short-term credits.

&
nbsp; However, he had scarcely finished dressing when Hudson came to announce a visitor, a Captain John Philips, who had called without appointment.

  “A sea-captain?”’

  “Yes, sir. A merchant captain, by the look of him.”

  “There is none of that name on our books. Does he say what he wants?”’

  “No, sir. When I asked him to state his business, he spoke short to me, as if he thought I should be hauling on the ropes. All he will say is that he has something of interest to impart to you.”

  Erasmus sighed. “I don’t doubt it,” he said. “But whose interest, his or mine? That is the question, Hudson.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, you had better show him into the study.”

  Making his way there some minutes later, Erasmus found himself facing a thickset, weathered-looking man of middle years, in nankeen trousers and a buff-coloured top coat.

  “I am Erasmus Kemp,” he said, advancing to shake his visitor’s hand. “You have some business with me, I believe. I am rather pressed this morning…”

  “Not business, sir, not exactly business,” the captain said. He hesitated for some moments, as if not sure how to proceed, though his gaze remained firmly on Erasmus. “I knew your father,” he said. “By repute, I mean, not personal. I am a Liverpool man, sir.”

  “Indeed?”’ Erasmus had stiffened involuntarily at this reference to his father. But the captain’s blue eyes under their thick, fair brows wore a frank and friendly expression.

  “Aye, sir, and I knew Captain Thurso.

  On rather closer terms—too close for comfort. I sailed under Thurso once, before I got my own ship. Once was enough—more than enough.”

  “Sir, excuse me, my time is short this morning. May I ask where this is leading?”’

  “The Liverpool Merchant, that was her name, his last ship. There was a deal of talk at the time. There is always talk about a ship that goes down. And this was a new-built ship. I remembered it, being your father’s ship and skippered by Thurso.”