Sacred Hunger Page 14

  Wolpert was ready to pay but it was against his engrained habit to pay without discussion. “That is considerably more than I remember paying the last time I had the honour to employ you, Mr Partridge.”

  “Sir,” Partridge said, “this is an expanding age, the nation is prospering, our voice is heard in the councils of Europe. As a result of this the cost of everything goes up daily and that must also include gifts, rewards and all manner of pecuniary inducements. Numbers of men are getting richer and greater numbers are getting poorer.

  Alas, both classes have higher expectations these days.” The attorney permitted a lean smile to move his jaws. “In short, sir,” he said with a burst, “there has been a leap in bribes.”

  18.

  Day by day the Liverpool Merchant made progress southwards. Under full sail, propelled by fair winds, she dipped and rose through the heavings of the sea with a profound regularity. On the line of the horizon there would sometimes appear the brief stain of another ship, like a breath on a distant mirror; but most of the time she could feel herself alone on the ocean, the sole trader of the world, instead of what she was, a member of a vast fleet sent forth by men of enterprise and vision all over Europe, engaged in the greatest commercial venture the world had ever seen, changing the course of history, bringing death and degradation and profits on a scale hitherto undreamed of.

  That the ship was a mere corpuscle in this nourishing bloodstream was not easy to imagine for the men aboard her. To them she was a universe of routine tasks and routine sounds comthe bell marking the half hours, shouted orders, the wash of the waves, the wincing tune of the timbers as they were exercised by the sway of the sea.

  Forces less tangible but equally determinate worked on the men and they were set in relation to one another in sympathy or antipathy, as happens in all communities.

  Fourteen days out they began to be sensible of a change in the climate. Hughes felt it high up at the main topgallant masthead, standing by to loose the sail. He was always happiest when alone and high up, past the timbers of the mastheads; only here, apart from corners of the night-time deck, could he be sure of finding no others close by him. He climbed to solitude hand over hand, looking up towards it where it lived in the sky, bare feet sure in the rat-lines, body moving to the sway of the ship.

  Most of the crew could work aloft if need be, and men like Blair, Wilson, Libby and Deakin were proficient seamen; but there was no one to match Hughes when it came to working in the tops, no one with his speed and balance in climbing. He could go from deck to cross-trees quicker than men half his age and keep nerve and footing and hand sail in storm and dark when the gail tore at him and the ship bucked like a maddened charger to throw him off.

  This sunny morning, leaning to brace in the yard for a free wind, the scent of the south came to him across the water. Some quality of balm had come into the air.

  The ship leaned to starboard and Hughes saw dolphins swimming alongside, directly below, close to the surface. The sun struck down to them and in their rapid motions the creatures formed and dissolved themselves, dark grey, silver and blue by turns, then shimmering and streaming into sunlight. And Hughes, who from adolescence had been unsettled by people coming too close, who had once scarred a man terribly in the hysteria of contested space, was happy to be in this clear weather, above the clouds of sails, with these rainbow bursts of dolphins following the ship.

  Paris, taking his paces on the after part of the deck, felt the change in latitude as a softer quality in the sky and a gleam of pearl at times on the undulations of the sea. He saw flying-fish for the first time in his life and wrote about them in his journal.

  He had found unexpected solace in this daily recording of observation and impression; it had come to seem a contrivance for talking still to Ruth, telling her of things she might not know, submitting his thoughts to her, to share them and in a way to have them judged, as he had delighted to do when they had been together.

  The translation of Harvey, too, he persisted with, as a focus for the mind, something, in the monotony of these southward-sailing days, to give him a sense of choice, of independent being, some relief from the oppression of passivity which stalked his days and nights. He felt as subject to external forces as the ship was, or as the sea itself, whose every twitch was determined, whose rages and calms were equally docile. Docile too the vast forces that ruled her and the shores she nibbled at. Paris thought I3I of it as a maze of concentric circles on a single plane, each continuous with the next, like a flattened spiral, with himself a speck on some interior rim. Somewhere beyond and above was that principle of harmony eloquently espoused by Mr Pope in his “Essay on Man”. The couplet ran through his mind now: All discord, harmony not understood. All partial evil, universal good.

  The followers of this harmonizing God, in a spurt of partial evil, had killed all his hopes and ruined his life. And now, at some other rim of the maze, there were flying-fish, which Ruth had never seen.

  They are, as far as I can judge, some eighteen inches in length, with tails forked like a swallow’s, but one side is shorter. They have two wings, which are not properly speaking wings at all but which I lake to be the fins of the breast enlarged and shaped to this purpose of flight. [It is a large question how this shaping came about.) I did not observe the fishes to flap their wings, but to glide rather. They appear to build up speed under the water and, on gaining the surface, make rapid beats of the still-submerged tail, and it is this which gives them the final impetus they need to rise up into the air. Once airborne thus, they are capable of performing several consecutive glides over the water, the tail propelling them up again each time they sink below the surface.

  These creatures are fashioned precisely to their purpose. The fashioning is open to observation, but the purpose remains obscure. Why should these fish alone, among the denizens of ocean, be equipped for flight? Can there be aspiration among fishes? A question I could put to our good captain, if only to see him struggle with the furious contempt it would cause him.

  If aspiration determines development, the eagle would be judged superior to the wren… It occurs to me as a legitimate question, whether these flying-fish could replace their fins if damaged. We now know a lizard can do so with its tail; and Reaumur has demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that a crayfish can grow a new claw. These are strong arguments against a fixed creation and an unchanging order. If a crayfish can grow a new claw, why cannot a bird? If a lizard was given this particular attribute at the moment of creation, why were other creatures not given it?

  Paris paused. The door of his cabin was open and from where he sat he could see the stern of the punt, which was hoisted amidships just forward of the mainmast. It made a beaker-shaped angle with the boom on which it rested, and the beaker filled and drained with exact regularity as the ship dipped her bows and raised them. The liquid, pale cobalt in colour, was not at first associated in his mind with the sea at all; for some moments, seeing this calm filling of the beaker, he was back in his student days, at a long, stained bench with others, testing for acids with litmus, holding up the glass vessel to see the obedient stain. He was distressed now at the memory. Those days were like a time before a fall; the ruin of his life lay between. How wonderful he had thought that suffusion of red… The memory of Wilson’s flogging came suddenly to him, the start of blood across the man’s back, the pattern of drops on the deck, Thurso’s expression of fulfilment … Conviction pierced Paris before he could summon any customary defence: this was not some other point in that maze of circles, he and Wilson occupied the same point. My back, my blood, me sullen in chains, me calling for help…

  He started away from this as from some appalling temptation, hastily closing and stowing away his journal and taking out, as antidote to such poisonous abasement, Harvey’s treatise and the pages of his translation.

  After some minutes the plain and closely argued Latin text succeeded in putting other thoughts from his mind. It had fascinated him and struc
k him as paradoxical from the start that this treatise, destined to change beliefs held since Galen’s time and assert a new path for the blood, should still be couched in the strict form of scholastic disputation unchanged since the Middle Ages.

  He had got as far as chapter eight, in which the author explains his reasons for the forming of his famous hypothesis. To restore himself he looked at the beginning of the third paragraph, one of the most profoundly influential in the history of medicine, and marvelled once again at the miraculous tentativeness of it, almost casual, like a man working from dream to truth: Coepi egomet mecum cogitare… I began to bethink myself whether it might not have a kind of movement as it were in a circle …

  He was interrupted by the appearance at his door of McGann, a small, tight-faced Scot, one of the men who had been deloused and hosed down on the captain’s orders soon after sailing. The working rig he had been issued with was too big: his canvas smock hung round him and he wore the baggy breeches rolled up to his knees.

  “Beggin” your pardon, Doctor,” he said, removing his woollen bonnet to show a cropped head, ‘I hae been pissin” pins an’ needles again, an’ “tis unco” painful.”

  ‘I have told you why it is,” Paris said. “And you knew it well enough before.” Nevertheless, he was glad in a way to see the man there. His medical duties had so far been less than onerous. He had seen to the lacerations on Wilson’s back; he had pulled a tooth for a man called Bryce, which had been broken in some shore fight and subsequently rotted; he had dressed a burn for Morgan, the cook, and given a course of mercury to McGann for his gonorrhoea. It was not much, in more than two weeks at sea. “You are past the worst of it,” he said. “You have no venereal chancres. Your general health is not impaired.”

  McGann glanced up at this. His eyes were watery grey beneath sandy brows and they possessed a kind of spurious alertness. The nature of his disease gave him no apparent disturbance. It was no more then an item in the sum of difficulties and small stratagems that his life represented. “Tis unco’ painful,” he said again.

  ‘no doubt it is,” Paris said. “They talk about the pains of love, don’t they? But it will pass.”

  McGann made no immediate move to withdraw, but remained where he was, cap in hand, eyes lowered, as if waiting for some gift of words that he could carry away with him. Or possibly something more tangible, Paris thought. He had grown more sensitive to faces of late and he had seen in McGann’s a sort of ultimate reduction to the necessities of survival. Everything possible in the way of misfortune and abuse had been endured by the small-featured, freckled face before him, with its pursed-up mouth and spurious shrewdness of expression. McGann’s life seemed entirely a matter of improvisation, of seeking advantage, however small, from every occasion.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” the surgeon said. “You are quite fit for duty. All you are now suffering from is a slight inflammatory discharge of mucus from the membrane of the urethra.”

  McGann seemed impressed by this, though he kept his eyes respectfully lowered.

  “Jimminy-jig,” he said. “I’ve got a” that too, have I? Where is it situated?”’

  Billy Blair, hoisting out the punt to try the current along with Sullivan and the taciturn Wilson, felt the change too, some essence of scent dissipated by distance. He raised his blunt nose and sniffed at invisible shores. ‘We are gettin” south,” he said. ‘Soon be up wi” the Canaries. I can smell them bleddy pine trees an’ spices. Blair has the keenest nose of anyone. I can smell them African wimmin already.

  I can smell the palm oil in their cunt-thatches.”

  It was said, as much as anything, as an attempt to deflect Sullivan from the grievance of his forcible ablution. After a fortnight at sea any mention of cunt was likely to cause a diversion. However, on this occasion it failed to do so. ‘no,” the fiddler continued, “look at it howiver you like, to take a man an” strip him an’ throw water over him an’ burn his clothes an’ give him clothes he niver asked for an’ wouldn’t be seen dead in an’ cut his hair close enough to draw blood an’ all against his consent, mind you -“

  Sullivan paused to take breath, gazing at Billy over the bows of the punt. His long bony face, dark eyebrows and bemused green eyes were more evident for the shearing away of his hair. “

  “Tis a blow struck against the liberty of the subject,” he said, “an” it bears on ivery man aboard of this ship.”

  ‘It doesna” bear on every man aboard o’ the ship,” Billy retorted. ‘Every man aboard o” the ship is not full o’ bleddy fleas. I an’t for one. How about you, shipmate?”’

  This was to Wilson, who pondered for some moments darkly, then gave it as his opinion that there was many a worse thing than fleas.

  ‘Well, ‘course there is,” Billy said impatiently, “there is crab-lice, there is rats, there is bleddy lockjaw, but that is not the point I am seekin” to make. That coat was rotted, it was fallin’ off him, it’s no use him denyin’ it.”

  ‘That coat could have been mended,” Sullivan said. “That coat only needed a lovin” woman’s hand. An’ another thing, that coat had six brass buttons on it, good as new. Where are thim brass buttons now? I am goin’ to ask Haines one of these days about thim buttons. I am waitin’ for the right moment. An’ they have took it out of me pay, they have took another three shillin’ off me for this linsey-woolsey stuff I niver asked for.”

  ‘Well,” Billy said, “they have took less fra you than fra me.”

  “They are takin” two months wages off the both of us to pay back what they spent to get us,”

  Sullivan said.

  ‘Aye, but I am signed for an able seaman an” you are signed for an ordinary seaman an’ the difference between us is four shillin’ a month. So the bastids are takin’ eight shillin’ more from me.”

  ‘That’s another thing that is woundin” to the spirit,”

  Sullivan said. ‘Why should you be worth four shillin” a month more than me? We are both men, aren’t we? An’ I am gifted for the music.”

  ‘Curse me,” Billy said, striking at the gunwale of the boat with the flat of his hand. “I have seen some cuddies in my time, Sullivan, but I never saw anyone the like o’ you for gettin’ hold o’ things the wrong bleddy way. You should be glad to be losin’ eight shillin’ less than me.”

  ‘We are both losin” the same,” Sullivan said. ‘They are takin” the same off the both of us.”

  ‘now just a bleddy minute.” Billy’s tone was irate but his face was beginning to wear a baffled look. “God-amighty,” he said, “if they are takin” eight shillin’ more from me than they are from you, how the pox can they be takin’ the same from both of us?”’

  ‘That eight shillin”,” Sullivan said patiently, ‘t is just a idea in your head, Billy. That is the different value them miscreants have set on us. But we are both goin” to work two months for nothin’ an’ risk our lives among them heathen blacks…”

  Sullivan appeared at this point to lose the track of what he was saying. He was gazing forward to where two or three men, Libby among them, were sitting up against the windlass, working on some cable; in anticipation of long anchorage off the Windward Coast, Thurso had ordered the cables to be rounded so as to protect them from chafing in the hawse.

  ‘Come on then,” Billy said irritably, “finish what you are sayin”, man, give over dreamin’.”

  ‘I have finished,” Sullivan said. “At the end of two months we have got nothin”, so they have took the same from the both of us. How do you think he knew?”’

  ‘Who?”’

  “That miscreated mortal down there, Libby. I just remembered somethin” he said to me about gettin’ a new suit. He knew they were goin’ to take me clothes off me.”

  “I an’t surprised,” Billy said after a moment. “He is Haines’s catch-fart.”

  “They knew each other from before,” Wilson said.

  “They have been together on a Guineaman before.” The moros
e and saturnine cast of his face brightened with a sudden radiant intention of violence. “Haines,” he said. “Son of a whore. He picked the wrong cull this time. After this voyage he’ll never walk straight again. I have swore it.”

  Unaware that he was under discussion, Libby was enjoying a joke of his own, of the kind he liked best, bringing present ridicule and future misfortune for the victim. He and a man named Tapley and the boy Charlie had been set to binding a length of the ship’s cable upwards from the anchor ring to protect it from chafing. Each had taken up a section and was winding old rope-strands firmly and closely about it.

  Calley, sent forward to join them, had come upon a length of hawser lying there waiting to be spliced. In his eagerness to do his work well and correctly he did not notice the two-inch difference in circumference and set to work at once, head lowered in utmost concentration.

  Charlie seemed about to point out the mistake but Libby stopped him with a quick gesture. Tapley he merely winked at. He waited until Calley was well into the work, then he said, “Gettin” on well, ain’t he?”’ and grinned at Tapley and the boy, both of whom he knew, with the bully’s infallible instinct, to be afraid of him. ‘They will make a sailor of yer yet, Dan’Like”

  Calley smiled without looking up. His mouth hung open a little and his blunt pink tongue protruded slightly in the unremitting attention he was giving his task. A dribble of saliva had escaped its soft crease of containment at the corner of his mouth and made a silver thread like a snail’s track on his chin. There was a bright shine of snot on the short slope of his upper lip. Everything exuded by Calley had a magical shine and purity about it, the beads of his sweat were like small pearls. Without saying a word to anyone he had been filling with the pride of achievement. He tied the strands round and round as he had seen the others do, in his big, calloused hands, keeping the tarred threads of the yarn tight and close together, making sure not to cross them or leave any gaps, the thick hemp rope lying warm and heavy across his thighs.