Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [138]
‘I’ll see he eats,’ Thurso said. ‘He will sup before he dies. Lay forward there for the wrench and the funnel, Haines.’
‘Aye-aye, sir.’
‘The wrench?’ Paris did not know what was meant. He had seen, like a premonition, a certain kind of satisfaction pass over Haines’s face.
‘I want the man brought aft, below me here.’ Thurso turned to the surgeon. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said, ‘you shall see this malingering fellow eat his rice at last.’
The negro came supported between two men, his head hanging. Paris, looking down from the quarterdeck, saw the marks of the lash across his shoulders, saw the red mess of his thumbs, saw at the same moment what Haines was carrying, took it at first for a large pair of dividers, then recognized the notched prongs and the broad wing-screw. ‘But that is the speculum oris,’ he said, and saw the faintly sneering look of knowledge of him, or expectation of some pretext for derision, rise to the boatswain’s face. ‘Aye, is it, Doctor?’ he said. ‘We calls it a gob-wrench.’
‘But you will spoil his mouth,’ Paris said, and watched the sneer deepen on the boatswain’s face. He had seen the instrument used to force open the mouths of patients suffering from lockjaw and he knew the damage it could inflict if clumsily applied – the broken teeth and torn gums. ‘You will reduce his value,’ he said, in an attempt to impress Thurso with a commercial argument, a ludicrously inept one, he knew – the man was near death in any case. ‘Let me try him with food,’ he said. ‘With your permission, sir, I will make an attempt with him.’
‘You are for persuasion still, I see.’ Thurso paused for what seemed some private reflection. ‘Very well,’ he said at last, ‘I will allow you a few minutes. I care not how he comes to it, so long as he does so and is seen to. But you are wasting your time.’
Paris descended from the gangway to the main deck. The two men supporting the negro, Tapley and McGann, finding him a dead weight, had set him down against the base of the gangway ladder. The surgeon crouched in an attempt to look into the man’s face.
‘What shall we try him with, sir?’
This was an offer Paris turned sharply towards, a voice that held something for him. Glancing up he saw that it belonged to Hughes, the misanthropic climber, who had not addressed a syllable to him ever before. Hughes was regarding him with a sombre intentness, not unfriendly.
‘Boiled rice, I think, as before,’ the surgeon said. ‘Can some be fetched?’
‘There is a bit of hasty pudding left over in the galley,’ Cavana said. ‘I do know that because I seen it.’
‘I seen it too.’ This came fervently from the boy Charlie, who was always hungry.
‘They like dried pease boiled in a cloth,’ Sullivan said. ‘All the black races is infatuated on that dish.’
‘God damn me,’ Blair said, instantly furious, ‘we might ha’ known you’d put yor clappers in. Are you goin’ to tell us –’
‘It would take too long to get it ready,’ Paris said. ‘And the hasty pudding is made with oatmeal, which he will not be used to.’ He looked at their faces, struck by a sense of the mystery of things. This man had been taken from his home and tortured and brought to the edge of death – too close to be brought back, he suspected. And now these other men, who had assisted in it, were eager to find some way of tempting his appetite. He was aware of Thurso, up on the quarterdeck, ostensibly withdrawn from the proceedings but able to hear every word that was uttered. Is it concern for the negro they are expressing or support for me? The question sprang to his mind and he surprised in himself a feeling of mingled exhilaration and reluctance. And I? Which do I care more for, this man’s life or proving right? He had not thought this question could come at him again; he had thought it dealt with, disposed of for ever. He looked down at the negro, as if to find an answer there. The man’s thumbs were covered with blood and he could not understand this, until he realized