Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [84]
But Mansell had raised a shapely hand. ‘No more, sir,’ the vicar said. ‘This debate has been protracted long enough,’ and indeed he had seen from the clock that it had gone past his tea-time. ‘I see I shall have to be plain with you. I cannot countenance this performance and I must request you to withdraw yourself from it now, today.’
‘Without Caliban the whole play collapses, sir, all the work we have put into it …’
Looking at the disappointment writ large on his curate’s fair-skinned, rather equine face and at the convulsive way he seemed to catch at his limbs to keep them in check, Mansell wondered briefly if the man might not be something of a hysteric. Too uncontrolled a sensibility there. Parker would not get far in the Church. He thought of his tea, which he would ring for immediately on his curate’s departure, and of his study fire. ‘Let it collapse,’ he said. ‘Ruat coelum, Parker. Principle must be served first.’
Erasmus paused at the lakeside. Wind stroked the surface of the water and stirred the willows on the other side. He had never been here alone, never, he felt, really seen this stretch of water, this sandy foreshore – it had been merely the scene of his ordeal as love-sick Ferdinand. Now he was surprised by its forlornness, its air of an abandoned encampment. The awning of Caliban’s cave was lifting in the wind and the fabric at the sides of Prospero’s cell was rippling continuously, with a sound like pigeons’ wings.
He began to make his way round the lake, towards the gate in the wall, which he had so often looked longingly at while chained to the play, waiting to make his appearance, pretend that wonderment at Ariel’s song. Snatches of his lines came back to him now: Sitting on a bank, weeping again the Duke my father’s wrack …
Glancing back across the water he saw Sarah and her friend Miss Edwards approaching the lakeside. She gestured to him to wait. The two girls advanced together until they were some twenty yards away, then Miss Edwards fell back a little and Sarah came on alone. She had put a dark cloak over her dress and wore a felt hat with a scarf over it, tied below the chin. As she came up to him he saw that her eyes had an angry fixity of expression and that her small, full mouth was now tightly compressed.
‘I should like some words with you, Erasmus Kemp,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘We could walk through that gate,’ he said, as if obeying some compulsion in a dream, ‘and up the hillside a little way, if that is agreeable to you.’
‘Anywhere you please, it is immaterial.’ Her voice quivered. He knew it was anger that possessed her but she was framed so gently that it was indistinguishable from distress.
They walked for some time in silence. Beyond the gate was pasture land, ridged and hummocked, rising to a line of ancient, racked beeches on the horizon. They kept to the path, Miss Edwards dutifully following at some distance behind. As they rose higher the wind grew clamorous against them, plucked at their clothing and their eyes. Sarah was obliged to turn more towards Erasmus than she might have liked, so that her words should not be blown away.
‘I want you to tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘It was me you talked of, was it not? Charles has hinted so much.’
Erasmus had little humour in his nature, no resources that might have lightened the terrible seriousness with which he now made his simple assertion above the wind: ‘I defended you.’
‘Defended me?’ She stopped at this and turned to face him. The brim of her hat, pressed down on either side by the scarf, made a frame for the narrow oval of her face. She was flushed, her eyes bright with tears of vexation. ‘Cry mercy,’ she said, with angry sarcasm. ‘And to think I never knew I