Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [200]
The place used by the Trionfi for their meetings was the Bell in Covent Garden, which boasted a good-sized dining-room. In the cloakroom, where he had gone to divest himself of cloak and boots, Kemp found four men, all members of the club, sitting at cards with brandy on the table before them.
‘Here is our worthy President,’ one of them said. ‘Stab me, why do you look so glum, man? Here, have some brandy, get your flipper to the bottle.’
Kemp saw that the man, whose name was Fowler, was drunk already. His waistcoat hung open and the lace front of his shirt had a wet stain on it. Kemp drank from the bottle and sighed loudly and smiled round at the men, widening his eyes in a way that was peculiar to him, slightly devilish. ‘This will wash out the taste of all those confounded speeches,’ he said, and drank again. The men at the table had been looking at him expectantly. They all laughed now, as if in some kind of relief. Kemp had found something of his father’s friendly manners in the course of paying off his debts. To the advantages of good looks and a well-knit figure he had added the useful gift of bonhomie. But there was nothing of the father’s simple and unaffected good-fellowship in the way the son noted now, for future reference, that these men had not thought fit to attend the banquet, preferring to sit here over their cards. He knew them all for profligate and idle. They were the sons of plantation owners, men who had never known the want of money …
‘They have got the ladies in already,’ one said.
Kemp could hear a considerable noise of voices from the dining-room adjoining, and the sound of the fiddlers playing a reel. ‘I must go in,’ he said. ‘I hope that fool of a landlord has not let the women into the dining-room yet – they are to come in later.’
‘No,’ Fowler said, with a loose smile. ‘They are upstairs getting dressed for it, powdering their fannies.’ He tilted back his chair and patted his crotch with an imaginary powder-puff.
‘You will need something more than powder on it, Fowler, to stiffen you tonight,’ Kemp said. ‘Are you gentlemen not going in?’
They began to get up, but he did not wait, passing alone into the long, low-raftered room, where a fire of logs burned at one end. He greeted the dozen men there and took his place at the head of the table. Immediately on his right, as tradition required, was their guest for the evening, a man named Armstrong, the only one there not connected with sugar – he was a lieutenant in the Guards, a relative of one of the members.
While all remained standing the retiring President, lisping in speech but impressively serious in manner, welcomed Kemp to his new office, and handed him the ceremonial white baton, known as the ‘Cane’. No member could command the attention of the others, nor speak to them collectively, without having this in his possession. Kemp tapped three times on the table with it and formally declared the proceedings open. The serving man came forward with the port.
Voices were raised, now that the gravity of protocol had been laid aside. The drinking was reckless. Most of the men there had been tipsy when they sat down, but they drank off bumpers of wine as if it were water. There were toasts to King George and the Royal Princes and Squinting Kate, the Queen of Camden. Kemp got up while he still had his senses about him and expressed the hope that he would give satisfaction as the new President, a sentiment which was greeted by loud and sustained hammering on the table. Some wine was spilled in the course of this and one or two glasses broken.
An undercurrent of excitement ran below the high spirits. It was hot in the room. Kemp felt perspiration break out on him. Several of the men had discarded coats and waistcoats. The air was heavy with tobacco smoke and vinous breath. A low chant began from lower down the table: ‘Trionfi – trionfi – trionfi.’ Kemp made a signal to the two fiddlers,