Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [113]
‘You try it, shipmate,’ Wilson said, face narrow-eyed and sardonic below the stained white cotton headband, the heavy bones of his shoulder-blades standing out under his soaked shirt.
‘Ye dinna see what I am gettin’ at,’ McGann, said. ‘I am talkin’ aboot freedom. I am talkin’ aboot –’
‘Get on, you Scotch runt,’ hissed Haines from close behind him, having approached silently on purpose to startle and affright. ‘You make talkin’ an excuse for not workin’, and I’ll make you sing while you work. You know what song, don’t you?’
The pile of trimmed stakes grew steadily on the clearing of shingle above the moored yawl. By mid-afternoon they had enough. While they were loading the stakes a bushpig came through the mangroves and briefly into the open. Haines fired his pistol at it but the creature fled, with no squeal to register a wound. However, the shot brought a prize of another sort: within twenty minutes of it a number of wary black men arrived by canoe from further upriver. They were armed with short, thick-shafted spears decorated with white feathers below the blade. And they were carrying palm wine in calabashes, which they offered with gestures and guttural sounds to sell.
Some close bargaining followed, at which the seamen were at a disadvantage, it proving impossible for them to keep eagerness for the liquor out of their eyes. Billy’s kerchief and a copper ring belonging to Deakin were all that the negroes seemed interested in, once they had clearly understood that the gold band in Haines’s ear and the hand-axes were not negotiable. Neither Wilson nor Calley nor Sullivan had anything at all to offer. The bargain was finally clinched by Haines, who dug in his waistcoat pocket and produced a brass button. ‘Here you are, I’ll throw this in,’ he said, and perhaps there was something in his voice and manner, and in the quality of stillness now investing all the white men, that caused the negroes to close on the offer.
‘Let me see that button,’ Sullivan said, but he was too late – it was in the black man’s hand now; attempts to retrieve it might have led to dangerous misunderstandings. ‘That was my button,’ he said to the boatswain. ‘That button was off me coat.’
‘What are you talkin’ about?’ Haines said carelessly. His eyes were on the wine. ‘Get out of the way. Come on, lads, it is share and share alike, hoist the liquor up on the beach.’
Thus Haines, with assumed good-fellowship, sought to appear to the others as the provider of the feast, so as to keep a semblance of authority. A natural leader might have carried this off”, but a natural leader would have been more loved than Haines, who in fact was not loved at all and knew it, but was led into unwisdom now by his wish to get drunk.
The negroes departed with dignity and without farewells, making upstream again, their paddles dipping in perfect unison. The first of the gourds began to pass round the seated circle of men. The wine was clouded and sweetish, still fermenting slightly, very potent. The men had eaten nothing since morning. For perhaps half an hour all was harmony and accord among them. The drink passed round. It was cooler now and they were grateful for the leisure after their hours of toil, and for the ease that came to their limbs with the slow onset of drunkenness.
Sullivan, however, brooded. He was a convivial soul, especially in his drink, but he sat silent now. He was not vindictive like Wilson, who was at odds with the world and could not absorb his wrongs without violence. Life had dealt blows to Sullivan. Vagrancy and beggary, interspersed by spells at sea, had been his condition for almost as long as he could remember and he had seen the inside of prison more than once; but he had been blessed with a spirit of optimism, feckless perhaps, but saving him from that saddest