Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [302]
What, more than anything, he seemed to Erasmus – who had no resources of irony whatever – was an object lesson in how not to conduct one’s life. It was only by a persistent operation of the will that Erasmus could maintain belief in his cousin as a scapegoat worthy enough. He glanced at Paris now, saw the deathly pallor below the tan, the small beads of perspiration that had appeared on the brow. How could a vessel so sickly bear so much blame? There was a terrible discrepancy here and Erasmus flinched from it as from a mortal threat.
‘It is a lesson strangely hard to learn,’ he heard Paris say in low tones.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said coldly. ‘What lesson? A man with anything about him knows what he wants and tries to get it.’ This was so obvious that it made him impatient. ‘That is the way the world goes forward,’ he said, ‘whether in your settlement back there or my larger one on the banks of the Thames. Nothing would ever get done otherwise.’
‘Well, that might not be such a bad thing,’ Paris said, rather faintly.
‘You have not yet told me of your precious hopes.’
In spite of the weariness that was gaining on him now, Paris heard the malice in this question, and something more, something strangely like appeal. His cousin was desperate for him to admit failure, disappointment, defeated hope. ‘You want to take everything from me,’ he said. ‘I cannot understand why you hate me so. Why should I explain further to you, who only want to hear a bad report? I owe you nothing. If I wronged anyone, it is your father. He showed me kindness and might think I have made a poor return. I hope I may be allowed to speak to him and given some chance to explain.’
He had closed his eyes on these last words. He heard a single harsh note of laughter and opened them again to see something wild and disbelieving on his cousin’s face. He saw Erasmus raise a hand briefly to his brow. ‘What is the matter?’ he said.
‘You do not know it,’ Erasmus said. ‘How could you? I had forgot …’
With this, it came from him in a stream there was no stopping, his father’s death – and he did not conceal the nature of this now from Paris – the ruin it had brought, the loss of his bride, all the years of paying back the debts. That these years had brought him also wealth and power he did not mention. The fact was evident enough in any case; and he could think only of his wrongs, only of his cousin’s monstrous guilt. And because of this all caution departed him, all the lessons he had learned in a hard school: that you must keep your object firmly in mind and rigorously exclude all that might be prejudicial to it, that you must always hold something back, keep something in reserve, because that is the way to retain control. All this, in the treacherous fluency that swept him, was forgotten. He found himself talking to this hated cousin, whom he had pursued and crippled and intended more firmly than ever to see hanged, as he could have talked to no one else, with a fervent intimacy that in some part of his mind astonished him still as he spoke, with revelations of feeling long buried within him, the deceit of his father’s silence and its wounding lack of trust, the bitterness of his mother’s superior wit in their dealings with the doctor, old Wolpert’s patronizing treatment of him and Sarah’s inability to see the true meaning of his renunciation. ‘She accused me of wanting to add her to my store of possessions,’ he said. He had never forgotten the words. ‘I was forced to go into sugar when I wanted to build canals. I married against my inclination for the sake of the alliance …’ Sarah was