Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [114]
By the time the third calabash began circulating, drunkenness was general and advanced. The talk had turned to money and what it could buy. It was the opinion of Wilson that money could buy anything. ‘If a man has enough on it,’ he said, ‘it’ll buy him owt i’ the world. Anythin’ an’ anybody.’ His deep-set eyes had a glinting look and there was a quarrelsome note in his voice as he looked round the circle of faces. ‘I know the world,’ he said.
‘Nobody’s sayin’ you don’t,’ Blair said, roused as always to combativeness by any hint of it in another. He leaned his small, pugnacious face forward, blinking to get the hulking Yorkshireman into focus. ‘No use yappin’ on, shipmate,’ he said. ‘Billy Blair knows the world better’n any man here, but that’s no bleddy argument. What about them that has all the money they need an’ live in palaces an’ have servants to wait on ’em? What about the Prince o’ Wales or the Archbishop o’ Canterbury? Are you sayin’ King George would be interested in yor money?’
Wilson’s head sank down and he passed a tongue over his lips as he considered this. ‘Kings an’ bishops, is it?’ he said with slow displeasure. ‘Why is tha bringin’ them in?’
‘Nobody has everything they want,’ Deakin said in his flat, expressionless voice, to which the drink had made no difference. ‘There would always be something, if you could find it out. Might be only some little thing.’
‘Some little thing,’ Calley said in slurred echo of his friend. He smiled slackly, his eyes wide and unsteady. What could it be? he wondered. Something he might find himself, a piece of coloured stone, a bird’s feather …
Wilson raised his head and fixed Billy with a sombre stare. ‘What dost tha mean by talkin’ o’ King George?’ he said. ‘Tha’s always tryin’ to be clever.’ Suspicion came to his face. ‘I see thy game,’ he said. ‘Tha’s tryin’ to trap me into speakin’ agin the king.’
‘Stow that gab, lads,’ Haines said. ‘What you are talkin’ about was all writ in the Bible long years ago.’ He gazed at the disputants with heavy-lidded dignity. ‘Him that has got something already must always try to get hold of more,’ he said. ‘An’ the more he gets, the more will be given to him. That is in the Gospels.’ He paused, passing a hand over his dark stubble and squinting at Wilson and Blair. ‘What that means, my likely lads, is that it is everyone’s bounden duty to try to get more than they have got already. If you have got two shillin’ you try to make it into four shillin’ an’ you try to make that …’ The boatswain paused here again, slightly losing the thread of his discourse. ‘There is no end to it,’ he said. ‘An’ the more you have to show for it, the more the bridegroom will be pleased with you when he comes in the night. I was brung up on the Bible,’ he said, with a sudden, bitter twist of the mouth.
He would have done better to keep quiet. His discipline had never been more than brutality and there was no one to support him here.
‘Who the pox is the bridegroom?’ Billy said with sudden ferocity.
‘We was talkin’ between friends, wasn’t we, Billy?’ Wilson said. ‘Why is he stickin’ his oar in? This cuddy got me a floggin’.’ He looked at Haines as though seeing him for the first time. ‘Dost tha want thy jaw broke?’ he said.
But it was Sullivan who was first on his feet. ‘Is that why you stole me buttons?’ he demanded, swaying slightly from side to side. ‘That’s the divil’s book you’ve been readin’. You done well. You done better than thim fellers in the parable, you made no buttons into six buttons just with a snip or two of the scissors. The bridegroom will be proud of you, Haines, bejabbers, he will take you to hell with pleasure.’
The boatswain sat still for a moment. Then he scrambled to his feet, staggered, recovered. ‘You blasted Irish scudder,’ he said,