Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [42]
THIRTEEN
Billy Blair woke from stupor to find himself lying in fetid darkness in the hold of some old flat-bottomed hulk like a barge. She was moored in deep water – he could feel how she moved in her chains. His face was stiff with dried blood and his right eye gave him pain. Someone not far away was whimpering tearfully. ‘Wha’s that snufflin’?’ he said. Faint light came through the ill-fitting planks of the deck above and he heard sounds of movement there. ‘Got any grog up there, shipmate?’ he called up. ‘I am parched.’
Someone brought a face down close to the deckboards and spoke through: ‘You can have water.’
‘Water’s no bleddy use, man. My throat is on fire.’ He paused, casting round for further arguments. ‘The bastids have cooped us up down here,’ he said, with pathos.
After a moment or two longer the hatch was raised and he saw the tousled head of a man looking down at him. ‘You keep yer napper stowed below there and don’t try no tricks. I have been set over you till we gets aboard an’ I will do it. I ain’t riskin’ the bilboes for you, so you better not think of tryin’ to cut loose.’
‘Now there’s a friendly soul,’ Billy said. ‘All I am askin’, from yen Christian to another, is have you got any grog?’
There was a short silence and then to his delight Billy saw a bottle swinging down to him, tied with a cord round the neck. ‘God bless you,’ he said, grasping at it. ‘I will overlook them former threats. What’s yor name?’
‘Cavana,’ the man said. ‘The other one here with me is Hughes.’
‘I am Billy Blair.’ He took a drink from the bottle, felt the spirit take its fiery course down his throat. ‘Ah, by God,’ he sighed, ‘that’s better.’
The hatch was lowered, leaving him once again in darkness. A melancholy voice spoke from somewhere near him. ‘Give us a drop, Billy, for the love of God.’
‘Wha’s that?’
‘It’s me. Michael Sullivan.’
‘Sullivan! How the pox did you get here?’
‘Same way as you. They knocked me senses out of me an’ brung me over an’ threw me down in this floatin’ stink-hole.’ The voice paused a moment, then said with deepened sadness, ‘An’ me givin’ them no cause for offence at all.’
‘Were you whimperin’ an’ crying just now?’
‘No, I was not. I was lyin’ quiet here, thinkin’ of me troubles.’
‘Well,’ Billy said, ‘it serves you right. I am passin’ the bottle to you, because it is a charity, but I don’t know that I would choose to drink wi’ you in other circumstances, now that I see what you have come down to, playin’ the fiddle in a whorehouse an’ helpin’ to sell poor sailor lads.’ He saw a dark form raise itself in the dimness of the hold, made out the pallor of the face. He extended the bottle, felt it taken from him, heard Sullivan take a long swallow. ‘That is not work to be proud of, Michael,’ he said. ‘An’ just gan easy wi’ that bottle, will you? Here, let’s have it back.’
‘I was doin’ fine till you come on the scene,’ Sullivan said, in a stronger voice.
‘Now it’s my bleddy fault, is it?’
‘You had to come into that place, didn’t you? An’ just the time when I was in it. Sure, the divil directed your steps. That wasn’t the only place I played in an’ they wasn’t all whorehouses an’ snuffle-dens. If a man finds himself in bad company he keeps mum. That is a first rule an’ I broke it like a idjit. I could get a bite to eat an’ a dram an’ a place to lay me head an I could play me fiddle. Then you come in, full of piss an’ wind, an’ I remember you straight off because you always was full of piss an’ wind, you haven’t changed one iota, an’ I does my best to warn you but you are too drunk to understand anythin’ at all. Like a idjit I get in the way of the fightin’ and get knocked off me feet an’ end up here.’
‘Well,’ Billy said, after a pause for reflection, ‘I see how it was. You played the part of a friend to me an’ Billy Blair does not forget his friends. Here, I forgive you, have another pull at the bottle.’
‘You forgive me? Holy Mary, that’s rich.’
‘There is