Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [15]
‘The clargyman is performin’ as a savvidge.’ Andrew’s pale mouth drew down. ‘There is some as don’t think it befittin’.’
‘I don’t know what you are talkling about,’ Erasmus replied briskly. He had made a sort of recovery. ‘See to my horse, will you? Or get someone to do it.’
He began to make his way towards the coppice, a certain offendedness growing in him as he did so, a sense of having been excluded. Though so far locked within his breast, his love, he illogically felt, gave him rights.
When he reached the trees he did not know which way to go; Andrew’s clutch at the landscape had given him no very precise idea. The lake was no longer visible. After a moment’s hesitation he decided to go straight forward. He startled a blackbird, which flew off with a low, reproachful fluting. The wood was more extensive than it had looked from the house and it had clearly been neglected of late years; the oaks had bushed out at ground level and there was a thick undergrowth of saplings and bramble and straggling clumps of rhododendron. Erasmus was obliged to make detours. He should not have come through the wood, he realized now, but skirted round it. Glancing up, he had a swift impression of scarlet – the sun was piercing through the red casing of the elm leaf buds. He could hear nothing. He had no idea in which direction the lake lay. He felt uncomfortably hot inside his satin suit. It came to him that he was – not seriously of course but for the moment indubitably, and quite absurdly – lost.
He moved forward again. After some moments he thought he heard voices and he turned in the direction of the sound. The trees were thinning out. He caught a glimpse of water. Ahead of him and to his right a man’s voice was raised, sonorous and loud.
Beware all fruit but what the birds have pecked,
The shadows of the trees are poisonous too;
A secret venom slides from every branch.
My conscience doth distract me, O my son!
Why do I speak of eating or repose,
Before I know thy fortune?
Erasmus had come to an involuntary halt. There was a brief pause, then another voice, which he thought he recognized as that of Charles Wolpert, said, ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, the second part of that speech is supposed to be delivered aside. The others are not supposed to hear it, you know. It is marked “aside” on your copy. The part beginning, “My conscience doth distract me”.’
Some words followed too low for him to catch. Then the first voice came again: ‘But they are bound to hear it if the audience is to hear it.’
‘There are theatrical conventions, Rivers.’ A different voice this, higher-pitched, slightly nasal. ‘What Wolpert is getting at is that you are delivering the whole speech in the same tone and at the same pace. You could make a pause by advancing to the foot of the stage and addressing the audience directly.’
‘Thank you, Parker, thank you.’
There was very little gratitude in the tone of this. Erasmus stood transfixed. He would seem ridiculous, blundering out of the wood into the open, into full view. Other voices came now, lower, blending together so that he could make nothing out. These fell away to silence and a moment later, without warning, he heard a girl’s voice, plaintive and sweet, raised in song:
Come unto these yellow sands
And then take hands.
Curtseyed when you have and kissed,
The wild waves whist …
Erasmus gave one wild glance upwards towards the scarlet blaze of the elm leaves, then one down as if to see where his feet had led him. The new curls of the bracken were red too, he noticed in this moment of vivid particularity, the folded serrations of the fronds rust-red in colour. For a moment he felt on the verge of some momentous discovery.