Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [59]
‘Sir,’ Partridge said, ‘this is an expanding age, the nation is prospering, our voice is heard in the councils of Europe. As a result of this the cost of everything goes up daily and that must also include gifts, rewards and all manner of pecuniary inducements. Numbers of men are getting richer and greater numbers are getting poorer. Alas, both classes have higher expectations these days.’ The attorney permitted a lean smile to move his jaws. ‘In short, sir,’ he said with a burst, ‘there has been a leap in bribes.’
EIGHTEEN
Day by day the Liverpool Merchant made progress southwards. Under full sail, propelled by fair winds, she dipped and rose through the heavings of the sea with a profound regularity. On the line of the horizon there would sometimes appear the brief stain of another ship, like a breath on a distant mirror; but most of the time she could feel herself alone on the ocean, the sole trader of the world, instead of what she was, a member of a vast fleet sent forth by men of enterprise and vision all over Europe, engaged in the greatest commercial venture the world had ever seen, changing the course of history, bringing death and degradation and profits on a scale hitherto undreamed of.
That the ship was a mere corpuscle in this nourishing bloodstream was not easy to imagine for the men aboard her. To them she was a universe of routine tasks and routine sounds – the bell marking the half hours, shouted orders, the wash of the waves, the wincing tune of the timbers as they were exercised by the sway of the sea. Forces less tangible but equally determinate worked on the men and they were set in relation to one another in sympathy or antipathy, as happens in all communities.
Fourteen days out they began to be sensible of a change in the climate. Hughes felt it high up at the main topgallant masthead, standing by to loose the sail. He was always happiest when alone and high up, past the timbers of the mast-heads; only here, apart from corners of the night-time deck, could he be sure of finding no others close by him. He climbed to solitude hand over hand, looking up towards it where it lived in the sky, bare feet sure in the rat-lines, body moving to the sway of the ship. Most of the crew could work aloft if need be, and men like Blair, Wilson, Libby and Deakin were proficient seamen; but there was no one to match Hughes when it came to working in the tops, no one with his speed and balance in climbing. He could go from deck to cross-trees quicker than men half his age and keep nerve and footing and hand sail in storm and dark when the gail tore at him and the ship bucked like a maddened charger to throw him off.
This sunny morning, leaning to brace in the yard for a free wind, the scent of the south came to him across the water. Some quality of balm had come into the air. The ship leaned to starboard and Hughes saw dolphins swimming alongside, directly below, close to the surface. The sun struck down to them and in their rapid motions the creatures formed and dissolved themselves, dark grey, silver and blue by turns, then shimmering and streaming into sunlight. And Hughes, who from adolescence had been unsettled by people coming too close, who had once scarred a man terribly in the hysteria of contested space, was happy to be in this clear weather, above the clouds of sails, with these rainbow bursts of dolphins following the ship.
Paris, taking his paces on the after part of the deck, felt the change in latitude as a softer quality in the sky and a gleam of pearl at times on the undulations of the sea. He saw flying-fish for the first time in his life and wrote about them in his journal. He had found unexpected solace in this daily recording of observation and impression; it had come to seem a contrivance for talking still to Ruth, telling her of things she might not know, submitting his thoughts to her, to share them and in a way to have them judged, as he had delighted to do when they had been together.
The translation of Harvey, too, he