Sacred Hunger Read online

  For Paris too it was a bad time. The fever had reduced him and depressed his spirits. He did not recover quickly from his abandonment of the diseased boy and kept to himself below as much as he could. He was surprised to find his face in the looking-glass unchanged, when he had so betrayed his profession.

  What worse was there that he could assent to now? In the cramped and heaving confines of his cabin he was haunted by the knowledge that he had not paid his score yet, there was worse to come.

  Only Delblanc seemed unaffected by the prevailing mood. He was often to be seen on deck, dressed with careless elegance, conversing in his frank, unstudied fashion with anyone free to listen, not seeming at all inconvenienced by the heaving of the ship. Paris, emerging from his penitential cell, would find himself accosted with some theory of sentiment as the source of knowledge or the arbiter of action. On the very eve of departure Delblanc detained the captain some minutes with an ingenious metaphor derived from the workings of the ship.

  Feeling was the pilot, the passions alone could fill the sails and drive the ship forward, even if their excess might overwhelm it… Thurso meanwhile, constrained to politeness by the other’s status as passenger, looking as if excess passion might overwhelm him at any moment.

  In the early hours of the day following, they weighed anchor and stood off from the south as the wind allowed, with all sails set. Stealthily, in the dark, the Liverpool Merchant began to make slow way against the head swell on the first leagues of its journey to the West Indies. But departure was not so stealthy and way not so slow that the slaves packed close in the hot darkness between decks did not feel the change and raise a cry of despair that echoed over the water and was the only farewell of the departing slaver.

  On the second day after this Paris found three cases of fever among the negroes. Thomas True, who had seemed recovered, though much reduced by his illness, was taken again by a raging fever, this time accompanied by vomiting. The wind lessened, almost ceased, obliging them to tack for the advantage of what breeze there was. But the ship was now so foul that she did not feel a small breeze and by noon she had lost steerage way. The days that followed showed the same pattern of light airs and calms, the ship tacking when she could and loitering for long hours almost motionless. One of the sick slaves died and was thrown overboard into the sluggish, shark-ridden wake. And with this wind failed altogether.

  The hysteria that lay deep within Thurso was roused by such enforced inactivity. He would rather have had storms to deal with. He had the spare sails aired, the yawl turned and coated with brimstone and pitch, the cables repaired from the ravages of the rats. Still the listless weather continued. After six days of sailing, they still had Mount Daro to the north, with the Guinea Current running at two knots against them and not enough headway to get clear. Under the stress Thurso’s temper deteriorated. He sat alone in his cabin, a bottle of brandy before him, brooding on his conspiracy of the elements, seeking to understand the reason. No counsel came to him, he sat in silence, abandoned by his helpers. A reason there must always be, he knew that, something done or left undone… The brandy did not make him drunk but it rendered his mood violent and unpredictable.

  Emerging in early evening on to the quarterdeck, his sight somewhat confused by brandy and by the splendour of the light—the sun was setting and had cast a wide swathe of flame across the surface to landward—he had a brief impression that there was a deformed, two-headed man at the helm. Then he saw that it was Cavana with the monkey at his shoulder. And at that moment his counsellor spoke to him at last: It is the monkey.

  “Get that animal out of my sight,” he said.

  “Aye-aye, sir.” Cavana’s eyes started wildly. He sensed the danger to Vasco but could not leave the wheel. “Out o” sight, sir? Where can I put him? Beg permission to be relieved at the helm, sir, there is no steerage to speak of, while I take him -“

  The hesitation and bewilderment of the seaman was enough for Thurso. ‘Do you dither there and debate with me, you dog?”’ he said. “I’ll get rid of him for you.

  Give me the rope.” The monkey, perhaps sensing the captain’s rage, had begun raising and lowering his scalp in alarmed interrogation. Thurso stepped forward and slipped the loop from Cavana’s wrist.

  Taking good hold of the end of it, he swung the animal clear over the side with a single sweep of his arm.

  Cavana, standing rigidly at the helm, heard the splash the beast made but was spared the sight of its struggles. But Hughes, high up in the mainmast top setting the small sails, and Morgan, who was standing outside the galley to get some air, and Wilson and Sullivan smoking on the forecastle, and those of the slaves who happened to find themselves against the starboard rail, saw the monkey’s brief trajectory, saw him land face down in the bright water and sink and rise again. Because of the bright surface, it seemed to these spectators that Vasco fought for life in very shallow water, a few inches only, a zone shot through with light, agitated with his struggles—all the rest, the dark fathoms beneath him, seemed a different arena. They saw the monkey raise his thin neck, gulp for air. They saw him strike out with his arms as if set on swimming across that great track of light, saw his heavy tail lie briefly on the surface, slick as a snake. Then he thrashed and turned in the water, the black muzzle opened widely and Vasco yearned up at the sky. This brief struggle over, the monkey sank again, and they had a last glimpse of his orange-coloured arms and feet vividly refracted below the surface, dangling like roots. Then the ship had cleared him, he was lost to view.

  Thurso said nothing more. He stood with feet planted on the deck. After a while he raised his head and sniffed for a wind. Cavana waited some minutes, looking straight before him, hands gripped tight to the wheel. Then, very slowly, he turned his head and studied the captain’s face in profile as if trying to memorize the features.

  Later that evening Thomas True died. A man of few words and unclean habits, he had had no friends aboard. Libby sewed him into his blanket and within half an hour of his last breath he was consigned to the sea, Thurso officiating in his usual hoarse mutter, barely audible except to those nearest him.

  As usual he omitted the lesson, confining himself to the short final office: “We therefore commit his body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body, when the sea shall give up her dead, and the life of the world to come…”

  Thurso paused here before continuing. It was the briefest of pauses but every member of the crew knew the reason for it. Startling in the silence, unmistakable, there had come a long fluttering sigh through all the ship’s canvas, first breath of a rising wind.

  PART SEVEN

  34.

  The ship Thurso sent by made quick passage and the letters were in Kemp’s hands within a month.

  “He is leaving without his full complement of negroes,” Kemp said to his son as they sat together in their office overlooking the waterfront.

  “He declares himself short by twelve.”

  They sat at the mahogany table, on whose polished surface objects—jeweller’s scales, a set of weights in silver, an ivory paper-knife, a japanned box—were reflected so deeply and with such lustre that they seemed afloat there. The February afternoon was cold and a banked fire of sea-coal burned in the grate behind them with flickering, rose-blue flames. The sky through the window was gravid with snow and the river ran slate-grey and sullen, half obscured by the warehouses and storage sheds along its nearside bank.

  “Matthew says little beyond that he is well and in good spirits,” Kemp said, passing over his nephew’s letter. “I do not know how Thurso computes that twelve. The commonly accepted figure for capacity is two negroes for every unit of tonnage. The Liverpool Merchant is a hundred and two tons and so he is eight short, not twelve, by my reckoning.” He had aged in appearance of recent weeks; he had lost colour and the flesh of his cheeks had loosened and sagged. But he was as master of the facts as ever. “That is allowing for headroom between the platforms
of two foot six inches,” he added.

  Erasmus looked down at the brief lines of his cousin’s letter. He could see no reference to good spirits in it. Paris sent his best respects, was in good health, asked to be remembered to his aunt and cousin. The rather large, angular characters recalled the surgeon’s physical being strongly and disagreeably to Erasmus. He remembered the subfusc suit, the awkward courtesy, the pale, lined face. That disgraced presence at the dinner table … Erasmus almost never revised opinion or reinterpreted experience. Enmity was like a sort of faith with him. After some moments he found that his teeth had clenched hard together with aversion.

  “Of course,” his father said, “Thurso is an experienced man, no doubt he has ways of disposing the negroes so as to make the most of the space. It seems there has been a case of virulent infection among them, very dangerous if it takes hold. A bloody flux. But he has hopes that by a prompt departure now and with God’s grace a favourable passage, he will bring them without more loss to the West Indies.” Kemp paused a moment, looking up through the window at the charged clouds. Then he said, “I hope I have not been mistaken in the reliance I have placed on Captain Thurso.”

  Erasmus felt an obscure distress. It was like a betrayal, the breaking of a promise, hearing his confident father express doubts and misgivings. Such moments of discouragement had been frequent with him lately. “Diseases among them are rather my cousin’s business,” he said. “It was to look to such things that he went with the ship.”

  But Kemp seemed not to hear this. His eyes were still turned towards the window and the cold reflected light from the river lay along his brows. Erasmus saw an expression of bitterness and sorrow come to his father’s face and heard him say in low tones, “What devil was it counselled me to turn to cotton, I wonder? I should have stayed in sugar.”

  These muttered words and the drawn mouth of his father made an impression on Erasmus never to be effaced; but for the moment it was their seeming irrelevance that startled him, the sense that his father was following some lonely track of his own. He experienced a sort of foreboding and an impulse of protective love.

  He sought for words but found none.

  “Well,” Kemp said heavily after a moment, “let us get out the maps.” It was a favourite occupation of his now to chart the course of the ship and this news of departure had provided fresh incentive.

  They spread the map on the table before them, holding down the corners with the jeweller’s weights. “This is where they left from,” Kemp said. “Here is situated the Company fort.” His nail touched the mouth of the Kavalli River, made a faint scraping sound across the flats of mud that Paris had seen transfigured by moonlight, stopped at the point where the two bound girl slaves, both roughly of an age with Sarah Wolpert, had choked and drowned in the surf.

  In that quiet room, with its oak wainscoting and Turkey carpet, its shelves of ledgers and almanacks, it would have been difficult for these two to form any true picture of the ship’s circumstances or the nature of trading on the Guinea Coast, even if they had been inclined to try. Difficult, and in any case superfluous. To function efficiently—to function at all—we must concentrate our effects. Picturing things is bad for business, it is undynamic. It can choke the mind with horror if persisted in. We have graphs and tables and balance sheets and statements of corporate philosophy to help us remain busily and safely in the realm of the abstract and comfort us with a sense of lawful endeavour and lawful profit. And we have maps.

  “See, my boy,” Kemp said, “Just about here they should be. They have been on the way a month now, near enough. They should be somewhere here, north of Caracas. They will be keeping on a latitude some fifteen degrees above the equator.” His finger traced the lines, caressed the contours of flying cherubs with puffed-out cheeks, and sportive dolphins, and the hulls of miniature ships with bellying sails that travelled this benign Atlantic. Meanwhile the real ship was beating to westward, packed to suffocation with negroes in irons, its hold swarming with rats, other merchantmen keeping well to windward of the stench.

  “They will have caught the winter trades,” Kemp said with something of his old enthusiasm. “I dare say as we sit here talking of it they are already in sight of the Sugar Islands.”

  Erasmus assented to this. It was the best way to look at it. He was glad to see his father returning to a more sanguine mood. Afterwards, after the event, it was to come to him with bitter self-reproach that he had known all the time that more was worrying his father than the progress of the ship, though this became the focus of it. There had been signs— bills deferred, credit renewed on high terms, the abrupt suspending of their policy of buying land adjoining the roads into the city. He could not, of course, have known the extent of his father’s losses.

  Even the indefatigible Partridge, whom Wolpert had set on to look into Kemp’s affairs, had failed to discover the merchant’s disastrous attempts to recoup himself on the Stock Exchange; none knew of these but Kemp and his broker. And throughout this time Erasmus too had been absorbed in his own insulating dream.

  Sarah’s eighteenth birthday was approaching, and with it the announcement of their betrothal; and it seemed to Erasmus that the changes in the seasons and all the sights and sounds around him were merely portents of this stupendous event. It was there in the usual din of the streets, in the smells of raw cotton and hemp that surrounded him in the warehouse, as it was in the silver skies of the March evenings, the bright drifts and linings burrowed out by the sun in the banks of cloud over the Mersey and the ruffling breezes over the water. There later in the new crop of dock and nettle in the waste ground and the songs of larks above the fields outside the city, the air full of climbing, singing birds, rending and repairing the sky with song. And the time from that freezing day when he had looked at the map with his father to this joyous stitching of the larks was for Erasmus all one indeterminate period of waiting.

  Three days before the event, in the early afternoon, he rode over to the Wolpert house, having asked leave beforehand. Afterwards he could not remember any of the words he had exchanged with his father in parting—commonplace words in any case. But he remembered that his father had evaded his eyes.

  It was around the time of year he had first ridden over to the house on the pretext of visiting Charles.

  He remembered his feelings of humiliation, his failure to understand the ancient footman—still in service there, more doddery than ever now comthe clear, unearthly singing that had come to him through the trees and brought him stumbling into the open to be enrolled as Ferdinand…

  Things were very different now. On the day of Sarah’s birthday she would be his by title, by consent, by public acknowledgement. He would never again be required to go against the grain of his nature in order to please her.

  She would love and respect him too much ever to require it.

  In the light of these triumphant feelings familiar sights seemed new this afternoon. The beeches bordering the avenue, in full leaf now, were a fresher green than he could remember, the singing of hidden warblers more deliberately sweet. In the parkland the chestnut trees were candled with blossom and the terraces below the house were vivid with geraniums.

  He was early, which meant he could take his tea alone with Sarah and her mother, old Wolpert and Charles being out at business still and the younger brother, Andrew, in the schoolroom under the eye of his tutor.

  Afternoon sunshine filled the room, entering through the tall French windows. In this radiant light Erasmus looked round him and felt the same triumph, the same sense of newness in familiar things. The water-colours on the walls, the needlework over the chimneypiece embroidered by Sarah’s maternal grandmother, now dead, Mrs Wolpert’s beaded work-box on the low table beside her, the fine set of moulded beakers on their glass shelf, all possessed a special effulgence on this day. It was in this room, he remembered suddenly, that he and Sarah had once come face to face, during rehearsal of the play. He had been looking for his book… He had
failed in address that day, failed miserably, but she had known—he remembered the wave of colour that had come to her face. Afterwards she had seemed to disregard everything in her eagerness to play Miranda. How he had hated that transformation, all that posturing and make-believe.

  And the nonsense of an enchanted island where divisions could be healed and enemies reconciled… He would never allow such a thing to happen again. He caught Sarah’s eye and saw that she was happy.

  Most of the time they spent discussing the arrangements.

  Flowers had been ordered—carnations, red and white. Invitations had been sent out long ago— there were more than a hundred on the list of guests.

  There was to be a ball, with an orchestra of five.

  If the weather stayed fine supper would be served out of doors on the terrace.

  ‘We can dance out of doors, too,” Sarah said.

  “We can dance on the lawns.” Her face wore its usual delicate composure, in which there was always something impervious, or perhaps obstinate; but her eyes were bright with excitement.

  “Outside on the grass?”’ Erasmus laughed a little at the extravagance of it. “That’s an odd notion. Have you forgotten that there is a perfectly good ballroom inside the house?”’

  “Yes, but don’t you see, it would be something different, it would be something to remember. People would remember my party for ever. Everyone dances in ballrooms.”

  This, Erasmus felt, was precisely the point, but he merely smiled and shook his head, glancing indulgently at Mrs Wolpert. Better to say nothing, she would forget the idea soon—or so he hoped.

  However, she was exalted now and took it into her head that he should see her new dress, the one she was to wear for the ball, and not merely see it, but see it on—a suggestion that her mother objected to immediately on grounds of propriety and some alarmed superstition. But Sarah insisted, demanded to be allowed, drawing herself up and raising her delicately moulded chin in the determined way she had when her mind was wholly set on something. In the end the mother gave in, as she generally did when the girl was wrought up in this way; she had learned to recognize the signs. And on this occasion she received no help from Erasmus, who remained silent, divided between his sense of correctness and the desire to view his love.