He found solace for the spirit now in De Motu Cordis. The Latin text acted on him these days with the power of incantation. He had earlier been labouring to do justice to Harvey’s paean to the heart’s pre-eminence towards the end of chapter eight: Just as the sun deserves to be called the heart of the world, so is the heart the sun of the microcosm and the first principle of life, whose virtue quickens the blood and keeps it free from all taint of corruption…
It was not, he reflected, that the analogy was original; the notion of the heart as the sun of man’s being was an ancient one, deriving from Aristotle; but if you are about to demonstrate, for the first time, the difference between veins and arteries and explain how the blood is transferred from the vena cava to all parts of the body, you may be allowed to borrow your comparisons at least.
There were other great men, of course, who didn’t.
Paris thought while preparing for bed of Newton and that confession of ignorance in which he compares himself to a small boy playing with pebbles by the shore of a great unknown sea.
This led him, by a leap he did not pause to examine, to thoughts of his cousin Erasmus and that lonely struggle of the eight-year-old boy to make the elements conform to his will. Memory of it came first in a wide perspective—the empty beach, the grey sea, the small, intent figure. Then, in one of those swooping approaches sometimes experienced in dreams, he drew near, saw the white face, the bloodied fingers… There was nothing in common here with Newton’s image of human limitation.
Erasmus had wanted to subdue the world. Paris recalled what Barton had said of Thurso a short while ago: he takes it all personal. But that staring child had no world to command, no ship, no community of men to wrench to the shape of his obsession.
Perhaps because of his quickened thoughts, sleep did not come to him, despite the cradling motion of the vessel.
He lay staring up through a darkness so profound that it cancelled all sense of confine; the deck above him was no nearer than the spaces of the sky beyond and the planets in their obedient courses. Docile these too, he thought, as subject to law as the motions of my heart, the flight and homing of the blood. Even in its rages nature was always captive. Man too, led in shackles from the womb. Death is a corruption which befalls by defect of heat, so Harvey defined it. Between the warm and the cold the body flushes a certain number of times. Ruth’s body corrupted by defect of heat prematurely. Again he was harrowed by the thought that it was the unborn child that had nourished the mother.
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 of those who had condemned them. Witnesses were sworn with due ceremony, counsel made their pleas on one side and the other. A burly thief with a towel tied up in knots in imitation of the judge’s wig solemnly pronounced the sentence… It was Deever’s face that Paris saw now as a refuge from Ruth’s, ashamed and fearful, looking from his cage at the tormentors who were his fellow-prisoners too…
So he lay sleepless, trying out versions of the past that might be tolerable to his imagination, while the deck above him lay awash with moonlight and the ship made steady way with all sails set and a following sea. In this warmer weather some of the crew found sleeping space on the deck. Calley, huddled in his blanket amidships, groaned in his sleep, beset by horrors. He started up at last, to stare affrighted across the moonlit deck, his face dewed with sweat. He had woken Deakin, who hissed at him, but Calley was still in the toils of nightmare and could not properly hear.
“What is wrong with you?”’ Deakin asked.
“Why don’t you sleep and give us some peace?
There, get under your blanket.”
“It came out my mouth,” Calley said. He was shivering. “Comin” out an’ never stop.”
‘What are you talking about?”’
“This white worm come out my mouth.”
“What worm?”’
“Africa worm. Long white un”. You swallers it in the water; you can’t see it when you drinks, it is too little. It gets bigger in your stomick an’ it fills up with eggs an’ it comes out to lay the eggs in the water. It can come out anywhere, it can come out your nose, it can come out your belly-button.”
‘Who told you that?”’
“They toFrom me.” Calley never mentioned names. His eyes started round the deck. “It knows when you go near the water,” he said with wonder—he was calmer now. “One come out his eye, that’s why he only got one eye. It can come out your ear, it can-“
“Keep your voice down,” Deakin said. “You ought to have more sense, Dan’l. They were only trying to frighten you with them stories. You don’t drink standing water anywhere in those parts where we are going. You stick by me, you won’t get no worms.” He looked across the
deck for some moments in silence. Then he said, “We will run, Dan’l. You and me. First chance we get. We will get clear of this ship.”
He had never included anyone else in his plans before. Since the day of his quarrel with Libby he had known that he would have to run. No ship ever left harbour with a crew that could all be trusted. Haines or Libby or someone else would turn him in for the bounty as soon as they came up with a navy ship.
Or the captain would hand him over in the West Indies to save wages on the voyage home.
Once they had unloaded the negroes there would be no need for so many men. There might be a naval frigate at anchor in Kingston harbour. In any case, he could not wait to find out. For desertion he could expect two hundred lashes and he did not believe he could survive so many. He would rather take his chance ashore. “When we get the chance,” he said. “When we get to Africa, you and me will run.
But you must keep mum about it.”
“It can come out your arse,” Calley said. Fear had receded now but he was unwilling to part with the horror of the worm altogether. “It can come out your nose,” he whispered, round-eyed in the moonlight.
“Leave off that tack, will you? You and me will run.
We will wait for our chance. Don’t you talk about this to anybody.”
“Will we get some o” them black cunnies?”’
‘allyou’ll get nothing if you blab. You will get a flogging. Do you hear me, Dan’l?”’ As always he saw himself breaking through. But this time not alone. There would be a place, dark among trees, where they could hide until all search was over. This would part like a screen and they would pass into the open, into light… “I will look after you,” he said. ‘But you will get nothing if you blab. You will get a flogging.”
“I won’t blab,” Calley said. He struggled for a moment with the idea of it. ‘What will we do there?”’
“Do? We will get into trade, we will set up for ourselves.” He did not care, really, he was occupied only with thoughts of parting the screen, stepping through into the open, taking possession of the space. He spoke in whispers to the round-eyed Calley. There was a trade in ivory and camwood and gold dust. With money they could take passage from Sierra Leone to Georgia or Carolina…
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
21.
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 a minute or two longer, then took the few paces that brought him within the line of the alley.
The other was approaching, the sunlight twinkling on his silver buttons. He was not more than thirty yards off. There was no way now that a meeting could be avoided, short of one of them turning abruptly about and retreating in the opposite direction.
Adams’s face showed small pleasure at the prospect of the encounter. On Erasmus, watching the director approach, waiting these final moments before speaking, the white gravel of the walk, the clipped green walls of the hedges, made an impression of neatness and order almost dizzying.
“A word with you, sir, if you will be so good.” He encountered the insolently languishing dark eyes. This was perhaps the first time he had seen the director’s face completely in repose, the first time certainly they had spoken together outside of the rehearsals.
“Your servant, sir,” the director said.
“I am awaited, as you know.”
‘It will not take long.” He paused still, however, seeking to control his breathing. Adams’s face at close range and in the intimacy of this narrow space had brought back with a rush all his detestation, which for a while had been submerged in the business of contriving the encounter. This suddenly renewed sense of the other man’s physical being, the eyes, the pimple converted into a beauty spot, the smell of attar of roses and ingested wine, confirmed, touch by touch, lechery, treachery, all sins.
“Well, what is it?”’ Adams was impatient. It was hot there, in the enclosure of the hedges. “You might do better to be practising your lines. You have some way to go, sir, yet, before you can be deemed proficient in them.”
“These lines I have rehearsed,” Erasmus said, and even smiled a little. “I am perfect in them.”
Adams failed altogether to catch the emphasis of these words or hear the faint tremor of control underlying them. He was not a man who noticed others much, unless it was in the way of business. Moreover he was at present rendered somewhat distrait with wine, as he might himself have put it. He had observed the unnatural straightness and stiffness of Erasmus’s posture and the fixity
of his regard; but these he was familiar with already, they were characteristic of the young man in his role of Ferdinand, mere aspects, to the director, of Erasmus’s general uncouthness and lack of talent as an actor. ‘Well, I am glad of it,” he said. “Is that what you waited here to tell me? But there is more to it than being able to recite your lines.
There is the whole management of your movement on stage. There is the language of the body. This is between ourselves, my young sir, but I swear I never saw an actor so block-like in performance, so little in command of himself, and by God I have seen some inept performers in my time. It is not a matter of the state you are in beforehand. There is Mr Keith, presently at the Queen’s Theatre—he was recently in a trifle of my own—you will not get him to go on at all without a pint of Burgundy inside him, but an immaculate performance, sir, immaculate. Why, I remember Mrs Bellamy, she would shake all over with nerves like a damn jelly but cool as ice the moment she was on the boards. Dead now, alas, a great loss to the stage. But you, sir, if you will forgive me, you are a well-fashioned fellow and you have a good face, but you might as well be made of wood. You can’t walk on with any grace, you don’t know what to do with your hands, you don’t know which way to look. Tell me, have you not thought of resigning from the play?”’
“I may not know what to do with my hands as Ferdinand, but I shall know well enough what to do with them as Erasmus Kemp, if you cannot learn to keep your own hands to yourself.”
This, now that he had finally come out with it, he felt to be well phrased; and the feeling did something to lessen his fury at the director’s humiliating criticisms.
“I beg your pardon?”’ For a moment or two Adams was slack-jawed with astonishment. Then he drew himself up. “Here are rustic manners indeed,” he said. “We have awaked the boorish Daphnis, have we?”’
Sacred Hunger Page 17
