Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [126]
Owen raised his head and fixed the surgeon with a sombre regard. ‘I have heard them,’ he said. ‘I have heard the screams. Sounds carry in this place. The Porra hasn’t come this far yet, though.’ He attempted a derisive expression, but there was no change in his eyes. ‘It is all nonsense anyway, no one but a savage could believe in it. They come into town afterwards, this mock devil with his gang about him, and he speaks through a reed, and he tells on what account he comes and demands liquor and victuals. Then he goes away with singing and dancing and all is quiet again. ’Tis all faking – anyone with the curiosity to peer out of their houses would see it was only a man dressed up.’
‘They surely cannot lack for curiosity to that extent,’ Paris said. ‘Either they are too terrified to look out or – and this I think more probable – they accept the mummery for the sake of order, just as we do. You say these people are charlatans. Well, just look at England, she is a paradise for Porra Men: the Church and the learned professions and parliament are full of them.’
He hesitated here, with some feeling of compunction. Owen’s eyes were mournful and moist – he had wanted only to confide his solitude, his fears of the dark. But the surgeon was a little drunk and the memory of his shame was hot in his mind and his old vice of prideful assertiveness had him now in its grip. ‘The system works better here,’ he said. ‘It has great consequence for the peace of the country. In Liverpool, not long before I left, a gang of seamen started to break up a brothel where one of them had been robbed. Others joined in. The watch was powerless to do anything. In the end they had to call in a regiment of militia and read the riot act. Two seamen and a passer-by were killed outright and one of the girls crippled for life before they could restore order.’ Paris paused, smiling his bitter, lop-sided smile. He was arrogant with superior wisdom and intensely dislikeable at this moment. ‘If it had happened here,’ he said, ‘just one screech from the bushes would have solved all.’
‘Are you comparing things at home to this benighted place? I see you are one of those who always think they know better.’ Owen raised his head to look steadily at Paris. Anger had stiffened him, given clarity to his speech. ‘You do not know better, sir. You do not know worse, even. You know nothing at all of the nature of life here, along this pestilential river.’
There was silence between them for a short while. Paris sat with shoulders bowed, his big-knuckled hands thrust between his knees as if for safekeeping. Then he looked squarely into the other man’s face. ‘You are right,’ he said, ‘and I am sorry that I spoke as I did.’ Rage to have the better of it, unwillingness to compromise, these were old failings in him, if failings they be. New, however – no older than Ruth’s death – was the swift remorse that would come to him, a feeling like sorrow, at having delivered a wound for the mere sake of argument. The kind of truth that can be asserted by argument had lost all glamour, all lustre, for him, seeming no more now than another aspect of that ancient urge – much older than the desire for truth – to command attention, dominate one’s fellows. The fuddled man before him was truth enough. He had belittled the nature of the factor’s servitude. Owen needed to despise his surroundings in order to endure them. That a man engaged in this cruel trade still deserved not to be treated with cruelty seemed a mystery to Paris rather than a truth; but it was one which contained a strong imperative for him. ‘Why don’t you get out?