Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [166]
Carried away by his narrative, Sullivan twisted his head to a grotesque angle and made stabbing gestures with a long forefinger down at the deck. “ ‘What the divil’s upsettin’ the craytur?” everybody’s askin’. Nobody knows. The captain doesn’t believe there is anythin’ amiss but he decides to take a soundin’. He can hardly believe his eyes. They are in seven fathom water an’ movin’ in to the bank. Five minutes more an’ they would have been grounded there, with a rising sea. They put about just in time an’ it was all due to that monkey.’
‘What was the point o’ fetchin’ the telescope?’ Wilson said, after an appreciable pause. ‘There were nowt to see.’
‘Aye, I grant you it made a mistake there,’ Sullivan said. ‘There was limits to its sagacity, I’m not the man to deny that.’
‘How did the monkey know?’ Calley said.
‘Ah, there is the question,’ Sullivan said. ‘There is things in nature very difficult to explain.’
There was a short silence. No one but Calley had completely believed this story. ‘Weel,’ McGann said, ‘coming back to this blacky they hae shipped ashore, I’ll lay even saxpences it is a case o’ bloody flux. He didn’t look to hae much fever. Libby, ye can find out from Haines. Wha’ll tak the bet?’
‘Will you listen to that now?’ Sullivan said. ‘You still owe me that shillin for standin’ up to Thurso. Billy, you was me witness.’
‘He cannot witness to what he never heard. How do we know what ye said to Thurso? Ye might hae gone in there an’ said any trumped-up thing.’
‘I told you the truth of it,’ Sullivan said. ‘Are you makin’ to call me a liar, McGann?’
McGann looked at him with pity. He shook his head. ‘Truth or lies doesna’ come into it,’ he said. ‘This is a question o’ money.’
Paris returned bare-chested and barefoot, having left his shirt with the sick boy and his shoes – for the sake of their silver buckles – with an old woman in a thatched hut on the shore above the beach, whom he thought must have mothered children in her time. Squatting on thin hams at the entrance, smoking a clay pipe, she had listened impassively while Jimmy said what Paris had told him to say. This child was sick in the stomach by sovah monou. He was under the special protection of the Great Fort. The Governor himself took a particular interest in this child, as he did in all the weak and helpless. The Governor and his redcoats would be watching from afar to make sure that this child was well treated. The Governor had a mighty telescope up in the sky, right at the top of the fort, and through his telescope he could see everything that happened.
The woman chewed briefly on bare gums then replied at some length in a high-pitched, querulous voice.
‘What does she say? Does she undertake to care for the child?’
‘She say she don’ believe the Governor have any interes’ in dis boy. He too busy sellin’ healthy boy to bother ’bout one small boy with sovah monou belly. She say to redcoats kiss my arse, pardon me, sir. She talk big mouth,’ Jimmy said in scornful aside. ‘Nobody take ol’ hag for slave. She say also, she don’ believe in no telescope. But if you give the shirt an’ also silver buckle off your shoe, she will look after dis boy.’
Paris, whose distress was mounting, hastily assented. He had taken his clasp-knife to cut off the buckles when the old woman spoke again. Having noted his alacrity, she was now asking for the shoes entire. He pulled them off and handed them over, together with a small quantity of powdered quassia in a paper packet that he had brought with him from the ship.
Jimmy transmitted instructions as to the preparation of this emetic. The woman took the packet into her hand but did not look at it. The boy watched everything with the same strained, hallucinated stare, his thin form lost in the folds of the shirt. Shame prevented Paris from meeting his eyes or saying any words to him. But he laid his hand on the boy’s head for a moment before turning away. At the shoreline he looked back: the diminutive figure was