Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [188]
‘I had understood it already,’ the young man said, and made to get up.
‘One moment.’ Wolpert raised a hand. ‘I have not yet finished. These debts are not yours, they were incurred by the firm of Kemp, in which you had not yet become a partner. The creditors will recover what they can and that will be the end of the matter, as far as –’
‘No, sir, excuse me, it shall not be the end.’
‘Pray allow me to finish. I have been impressed by your abilities. I am prepared to offer you a place in the family firm at a salary to be agreed on. Thirty pounds a year was what I had in mind – I think you will agree that is not ungenerous. You would be an assistant to my son Charles, who conducts the transport side of the business. There is no need for you to answer at once, but I am sure that the briefest consideration will reveal the advantages of the offer.’
‘To a pauper such an offer must have obvious advantages,’ Erasmus said with a bitter twist of the lips. He remained silent for some moments, then rose to his feet. ‘I have no need of time to consider,’ he said, standing very straight. ‘I thank you for your offer but I must refuse it. Your kindness requires I should explain why. I cannot agree with what you say about the debts my father has left. My father’s debts are mine, whether I am legally responsible for them or not. I intend to clear his name and discharge the bankruptcy. All the creditors shall be repaid in full, with due interest. I cannot do this on the salary you offer, no, not if you tripled it.’
Wolpert sat still for some moments, taken by surprise. ‘Well,’ he said at last in a tone of some displeasure, getting up in his turn, ‘you know your own business best, I suppose.’ In fact, he did not at all suppose it at the moment. There was nothing at all quixotic in the merchant’s outlook on life. Debts were the business of those who had contracted them. That Erasmus would persist in this he did not believe – nor even that the intention would outlast the rawness of his loss. It was the young man’s high-handedness that had nettled him, as on occasion before. Below this lay a certain relief: he had done his duty – and Erasmus might have made a difficult subordinate. There was little left to say between them now – there never had been much. ‘You have my good wishes, in any case,’ Wolpert said as they shook hands. ‘My daughter expressed the wish to see you. She is waiting for you in the small parlour across the hall.’
He found her standing against the tall window that looked over the terrace and the long slope of the grounds towards the lake. She made a movement towards him as he entered, but checked on seeing how straight and still he stood there, just inside the door.
‘Your father said I should find you here,’ he said. He had prepared himself for this interview, rehearsed it. The need to conduct himself properly took all feeling from his voice. Three days before, in the secrecy of his room, in the house that no longer belonged to them, he had wept for Sarah until he was feverish. There were no tears left in him now.
She waited a moment, then said, ‘You have refused, I take it?’
‘Refused?’
‘My father’s offer, you have refused it?’
She was standing against the light. He did not feel that he was seeing her clearly. His eyes felt strangely weak, perhaps with the constant effort of these last days to show the world a clear and defiant regard. He blinked to focus them. He saw Sarah turn her head to one side. There was some movement in the line of her shoulder as she stood in her summer dress against the light and he knew that she was crying.
‘So, that was your idea, then?’ he said. ‘You set your father on to it.’
‘Do you think he is a man to be set on?’
The tears were in her voice. Why was she crying? It seemed to him that all the loss was his. ‘No,’ he said, with an odd attempt to judiciousness, ‘I don’t think that. But you asked him this favour. He doesn’t refuse you anything, does he?’ It sounded like a jibe, though he had spoken gravely.