Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [173]
‘No one cares a fig for my convenience,’ she began at once, before he was properly in the room. ‘That is always the last thing to be studied; my poor father would turn in his grave if he knew, well, I believe he does. I have so long been used in this way, it would be strange if he didn’t, but this goes beyond the bounds.’
From his mother’s hasty, indrawn breaths and the bridling movements of her head, Erasmus saw that she was in one of her states. ‘What is the matter, Mother?’ he asked, and there had unconsciously come into his voice the tone his father habitually used with her, breezy, affectionate, patronizingly brisk.
‘I have not even had the resolution to ring for the tea things to be removed,’ she said on a calmer, more plaintive note.
‘Well, I will do that.’ He saw now that her hair was powdered and set in the rather elaborate coiffure known as French curls, and that she was dressed for going out in a brocade gown in pink and gold, with a lace stomacher. ‘That is a handsome gown,’ he said, in the same tone. ‘You are altogether very elegant this evening, Mother.’
‘Well, but your father is not come home, he will have forgot it.’ Vexation had paled her, so that the rouge on her cheeks showed too prominently. ‘I have had that fluttering,’ she said, on a note of warning, laying a white hand over the brocaded bodice of her dress. ‘Had it not been for the tincture of hellebore your cousin Matthew recommended, I don’t know what would have happened, and now I can’t be sure the apothecary is making it up in the exact same proportions, and Matthew is not here to advise me. I think it a great pity that my nephew must stay away so long and spend his talents on rough seamen and black people.’
‘Well, I hope you do not blame father for that,’ Erasmus said, smiling. ‘You know he has much on his mind these days.’
‘How should I know it? He does not talk to me of what is on his mind. He promised to be home today in time for tea. We were to have dined early and gone to the Mansion House Gardens that are newly opened and a great draw to all the fashion of the town, to listen to the band.’
‘He cannot be much longer now,’ Erasmus said. He stayed with his mother and entertained her with the description of Sarah’s dress – she entirely shared Mrs Wolpert’s feelings about the propriety of the proceedings. They played some hands of whist together. Cards always calmed her nerves. She was a shrewd and accomplished player with a strong desire to win, which sometimes led her into cheating. Light in the room began to fail and the parlourmaid was summoned to light the lamps. Still the merchant failed to arrive. When the clock struck eight Erasmus got up. ‘He must have overlooked it completely,’ he said. ‘If something had come up in the way of business to detain him, he would have sent word. I will go down to the office and see.’
It seemed too much trouble to have the mare brought out and saddled again. There were always chairmen waiting outside the Lion at the corner of Red Cross Street. Almost at once he found two men with a sedan that passed his inspection as not too impossibly verminous.
On the way he thought of little. The slight rocking motion of the chair and the whoops of the foremost man to clear the way made drowsy rhythm in his mind and he fell into a state between musing and dozing.
He paid off the men at the end of Water Street beside the Ram’s Head and walked through the alley behind the inn on to the waterfront. There was a wind rising from across the estuary; he heard the rattle of a loose board somewhere and the creaking of the ropes that held the heavy inn-sign. A barge with a lantern at the stern lay some way out on the water.
There were no lights on the ground floor of the warehouse and the doors that gave on to the street were locked. He went round to the side of the building and ascended the short flight of metal stairs to the watchman