Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [131]
Here in this narrow space the captain’s voice had declined to a hoarse mutter, little more than a whisper. He sat back now to drink some of his port, then set the glass down carefully, looking closely at the surgeon from the square cage of his brows. ‘Fifty pounds, Mr Paris. That is money. A man can live a year in England on fifty pounds and not go short of much. And it is a dead loss if they die of sickness or any natural cause. The insurers will not pay except they die in the course of an uprising or insurrection, and even then ’tis scarce half the value. No, sir, we must strive to preserve them. A man who can’t see that is a fool, and there’s an end of it.’
It had been a long speech for Thurso and his face had flushed darker with the vehemence of it; perhaps too, Paris thought, with resentment at being thus driven to explanations. Why he felt so driven was not clear to the surgeon at present, though he saw clearly enough that Thurso had reduced the world to a dominant principle and wrenched his moral frame to accommodate it. By some odd quirk of spirit he found himself fancying that Thurso’s occasional stiff gestures were a physical sign of this wrenching process.
Meanwhile he was at some loss as to how to reply. Silence would be safer, more politic; he was aware that the captain had made a bid for his understanding, perhaps even for his sympathy. But Paris found himself unable to remain silent. In abjuring argument, he had forgotten how bitter it can be to leave an adversary in possession of the field. Even while he thus hesitated he saw the captain’s eyes narrow and the hand on the table slowly clench.
‘I can speak my mind to you, I suppose,’ he said at last, with that air of earnest pertinacity that Thurso had found odious from their first acquaintance, ‘since you have done so with me, and in any case there are none to hear us. I saw that man’s face, sir. I particularly observed his looks. He is not refusing food in order to spite us or inconvenience us, but because he is set on dying.’
‘Are you such a fool that you cannot see that it is the same thing?’
‘The same thing? How the same thing?’ He looked in astonishment at the captain’s face, saw the square jaws clench with a fury almost convulsive. It seemed that his question was by way of being the last straw for Thurso, who now leaned forward and spoke with an unconcealed violence of antipathy.
‘I see it now, you are one of those radical fellows they speak of, who will accept no authority. You will question everything, you will always think you know better. Hark to me now. The black will be tried with food again in the morning. If he refuses to eat, I will set Haines to flog him before them all until the skin hangs off him, and I will continue so until he consents to eat or dies. That has been my practice before and it shall be the same now.’ Pausing, he found the surgeon’s eyes on him, intent, without fear, hatefully perceptive. The other man’s presence was strong, oppressive to him, exerting some constraint that poisoned his fury with a sense of impotence, obliging him to explain, to seek to convert, to look for comprehension. He felt the blood beating heavily at his temples. ‘You preachy fool, you should have been a parson,’ he said. ‘He cannot be allowed to die as he chooses. They must not believe they have the disposal of themselves. If you don’t understand that, you understand nothing. If he is going to die it must be at our hands and in pain, so that the others will not be corrupted.’
Paris rose to his feet. He felt himself quivering internally with the offence of Thurso’s words and the reciprocal violence the other’s antagonism aroused in him. He thrust his hands behind his back. ‘I understand your words,