Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [115]
Sullivan had raised his fists but Billy was up now and between the two men. He knew Haines was too strong for the Irishman and suspected that his own chances were not much better, though nothing of this doubt appeared in his bearing. ‘Come on, then,’ he said, half naked and profane and dark red in the face with alcohol and excitement. ‘Last time my hands was held behind, do you remember, you scut-head bastid?’
However, in the event, it was Wilson who fought the boatswain. Billy, his vision still clouded, found himself pushed out of the way by the gaunt Yorkshireman, who seemed to come from nowhere, shouldering him aside and striking out at Haines in the same movement and without uttering a sound. The others scrambled to give the two men room enough.
That first blow had jolted Haines but not hurt him much. The drink had slowed him down but he had a natural agility and recovered balance quickly. He caught the advancing Wilson with a sweeping left-hand blow to the side of the head which sent him sprawling to the ground.
He was up on one knee immediately, shaking his head to clear it. He was a heavy man, without Haines’s natural athleticism, but his ugly temper had furnished him over the years with much experience of brawling. Even through the fog of drink a sort of cunning still operated in him. He got to his feet slowly and stood with his hands low and his head hanging.
The savage urge to inflict damage on his opponent while he seemed thus defenceless made Haines unwary. He struck at Wilson with left and right. The other rode back from the full force of these blows, though the second split his lip. Then, in the moment that the boatswain was still off-balance, Wilson made his recovery, jabbed with his left hand at his opponent’s eyes and when the boatswain gave back, followed with a straight blow from the shoulder which landed square on the other man’s jaw. Haines staggered, tripped on the shingle and fell heavily.
He struggled up again but the heart was out of the fight now. The blows they had taken and the heavy falls, combining with the quantities of drink both had consumed, had put lead into their limbs. They staggered and flailed about for some minutes more, faces marked with blood, occasionally landing blows, occasionally clinging to each other for balance in what resembled a clumsy and ill-coordinated dance. The boatswain, blind now on his left side, got in the way of a swinging blow that landed high on the cheekbone and sent him reeling. Wilson, trying to follow this up, swung at him again, missed, staggered and fell flat, winding himself. It took him a long time to get up and when he did so the two men did not close but stood some paces apart, breathing heavily and regarding each other with a sort of bafflement.
Thus by unspoken consent the fight was abandoned, though not the quarrel – neither man offered to shake hands. The spectators had by now lost interest in the proceedings. McGann was already asleep and within a short while the others slept too, lying sprawled and stertorous on the shingle.
It was not until they were awake again and grumbling in the chillier air that they discovered that Deakin and Calley had disappeared and did not answer to their shouts. With them had gone two axes and Haines’s pistol.
Deakin and Calley heard the shouts distantly from where they crouched in the shrub some quarter of a mile upstream. Calley had been sick from the palm wine and still did not feel quite well. It seemed a lonely thing to stay hidden and make no answer to these voices. Sitting there, lips tightly compressed to show his friend Deakin how determined he was not to make the slightest noise, he had a confused and painful memory of shouts of children on the streets, shouting his name in mockery, keeping him out – the children flowed away from him, re-formed somewhere out of his sight, always out of his sight, leaving only the fleeting, mocking reiteration of his name … These shouts now were different, asking for him, wanting to include him. They died away finally and he