Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [75]
His whispers went on, lulling Calley to sleep again, becoming briefly part of the life of the ship, the play of shadows over the decks, the slow creak of the boom, the faint language of the canvas and ropes. To these sounds the captain, released for a while from his demon, slept in his cabin; Hughes the climber slept wrapped in his blanket in the fore topmast staysail and Thomas True in his hammock in the forecastle, lying face down to save his torn back. Sullivan dozed under the punt and was discovered and kicked awake by the second mate, whose watch it was. Wilson, ordered forward on lookout, set his saturnine face to the glimmering horizon and thought of ways of broaching the rum in the storeroom. In the darkness between decks Evans and Johnson found each other.
The moon rode clear in the sky now and the ship’s sails were the colour of bleached bone. Moonlight, falling through this high pyramid of sail, made of the deck another sea, with a trailing, glinting weed of rat-line and shroud, and shoals of moonbeams flickering across her as the ship rose and fell. The real sea was unbroken, luminous to the horizon. With the utmost regularity, like a sleeper breathing in the deepest vale of sleep, the Liverpool Merchant dipped into her moonlit reflection and rose and dipped again, as if she could never have enough of her own image, the curving headrails, the full cheeks of the bows, the bosomy wraith of the Duchess of Devonshire yearning up to meet her and endlessly falling away.
PART FOUR
TWENTY-ONE
From where Erasmus was standing he had a view across to the open farmland rising beyond Wolpert’s estate. The day was slightly fluffed with mist and in this moister air colours were deepened, the distant corn fields flat jade, the hedges of the beech walk, from which the director would shortly emerge, soft emerald. Somewhere nearby a chaffinch was singing. Though waiting here in ambush, Erasmus felt a little drowsy.
There are moments in anyone’s life when some blend of circumstances, some consonance of surroundings and situation and character, show him in a light peculiarly characteristic, make him seem more intensely himself – to the observer, that is: the subject will not be aware of it. He seems to us then to be immobilized, taken out of time – or he steps, rather, into some much older story. So the blind mulatto, sitting among shadows, talking of paradise. So – to take an example among many – the first mate, Barton, extracting from a waistcoat pocket his dainty thimble, standing on the moonlit deck, explaining the nature of fear to Matthew Paris. So Erasmus waiting there, near the beginning of the alley that goes down between tall hedges of beech, waiting for the rival he has fashioned for himself to give grievance to his love. He is there imperishably, wild with his jealousy, vague with the peace of the day. He is always, always to be found there.
He had watched Adams go up to the house for his snatch of repose, as the director was accustomed to term it; Madeira and biscuits were set out for him in a small room adjoining the library. He would return by the same path, ever more offensively free in his manners, or so Erasmus considered. He knew now that this confrontation was the only way. There had been no time for manoeuvring. He was convinced that Adams was plotting to expel him from the cast and bring in another Ferdinand to take his place and usurp his love. I had rather force it to a fight, he thought. I would kill him rather. With this he came awake, experienced an increase of purpose. But the readiness to shed the director’s blood was not new – it had been there already, implicit in his vow.
He saw Adams, in his pale blue coat, descend the steps from the terrace, cross the short lawn below and disappear between the hedgerows. He waited where he was for