Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [73]
In prison I was subject also to defect of heat, he thought, remembering the stone floor, the bare walls. At this interval of time Norwich Jail had assumed the shape of a pit in his mind, with descending levels of damnation. At the lowest level were those who had no money at all and small means of obtaining any. He had been one week here, on the orders of the outraged cleric who owned the prison, as punishment for printing seditious views concerning God’s creation. Here men and women fought with rats in damp cellars for scraps of food thrown down to them through a trap-door, and huddled together for warmth upon heaps of filthy rags and bundles of rotten straw. Lunatics stumbled about here, women gave birth, people died of fever or starvation.
These were people yielding no profit. Higher in the scale were those who could pay for food and a private room and it was here that Paris, until redeemed by his uncle, had found lodging. Two shillings a week had provided him also with writing materials and given him access to the prisoners’ common-room, where there were newspapers, and a fire in the coldest weather; but it had not been enough to free him from the stench of the place, nor the brutalities of some of his fellow-inmates – thieves and pimps mingled with debtors here. Higher yet, serenely above all this and freed from unpleasant associations, were the rich prisoners, who lived as the bishop’s guests and entertained on a lavish scale.
Norwich Jail had given Paris his notion of hell, and its workings afforded an example of docility to law every bit as absolute as the motions of the blood postulated by Harvey. Money regulated every smallest detail of the place, from the paupers in the cellars to the profligate feasters above. All rents went to the bishop, who had spent a thousand pounds to acquire the prison and was laudably set on making his investment as profitable as possible, this being a time when the individual pursuit of wealth was regarded as inherently virtuous, on the grounds that it increased the wealth and well-being of the community. Indeed, this process of enrichment was generally referred to as ‘wealth-creation’ by the theorists of the day. The spread of benefits was not apparent in the prison itself, owing to the special circumstances there and particularly to the very high death-rate.
The keepers at their lower level sought to emulate the governor, pursuing wealth diligently through the sale of spirits, the purveying of harlots and the extortionate charges to visitors. The visits had been an ordeal for Ruth, he remembered now. She was prone to nausea in the first period of the pregnancy and the smell of the place had sickened her. She came with a handkerchief soaked in vinegar and held it from time to time to her nostrils. He remembered her face on the last of these visits, angry and distressed: she had been searched and subjected to indignities by the foul-mouthed viragos in the prison lodge on the pretext she was a whore, and robbed by them of a scarf. He had told her to keep up her courage, told her he would be free soon.
Wide-eyed in the darkness, he saw, or feared to see, the distress on Ruth’s face turn to reproach. He sought for a shield and found one in the absurd and terrified appearance of a young debtor called Deever whose head had been thrust through the legs of a chair by his fellow-inmates of the common-room for his inability to pay chummage – the obligation to buy spirits for the company that was laid on all new arrivals. In this place of misery and shame, they aped the manners and adopted the ritual