Sacred Hunger (8 page)

“Humble servant, sir.” Barton gave father and son a look and a bow in turn, then took two deferential paces back and stood with his hands at his sides. He had restless black eyes and a thin mouth that smiled easily.

“Well,” Thurso said, in his hoarse, uninflected voice, “she lies sweetly in the slip. She has been well framed, Mr Kemp.”

“I am glad to hear you say it.” The merchant’s look of pleasure was testimony to this.

“Tis true she sets well, she is broad enough in the beam.”

“I don’t trust a ship with a narrow bottom,”

Thurso said. ‘Eh, Mr Barton?”’

“Right, Captain, right, hunnerd per cent.”

“Or a wench either,” Kemp said. “All the same, between you and me, Captain Thurso, I have sometimes repented that I did not have her made bigger.

There are Bristol ships that will hold you six hundred negroes, so I am told.”

“Aye, but how long must they stay on the Guinea coast before they are full-slaved? Why, sir, flux or fever will do for half of ‘em before you are ready to sail. We will be home and dry while they are still rotting there. No, take my word for it, a ship the size of this one is what you need, around a hundred and twenty tons” burden. You’ll get two hundred blacks between decks on the Liverpool Merchant, clean as a whistle, and off again in three months.

You’ll see that I am right, sir.”

‘A man can see a deal of things by lookin”,”

Barton said unexpectedly, ‘pervided he knows how to use his lamps.” His voice was quick and fluent, unhesitating.

“The strakes they are putting in now will need to be laid right,” Thurso said. “It is the planking lengthways that makes the difference to a ship.”

“Those already laid fit snug enough. Come down nearer, Thurso, and take a look. You will scarce see the joins between them.” Face glowing, Kemp drew the captain towards the ship’s side, to where a ladder led up to the work platform high against the hull.

A group of workmen waiting at the foot of this for the next piece from the kiln made way for them respectfully.

Erasmus did not follow immediately but turned instead to look out towards the glimmering, slightly ruffled water of the river. On the wharf before him men were hoisting down barrels into a lighter. Out in midstream a skiff with two timber-rafts in tow was making towards the Pier Head. When he turned round again he saw that Barton had remained beside him and felt constrained to speak. “It will be a delicate business, I suppose,” he said, “fitting those heavy planks on to a curving surface.”

He saw Barton raise his head in the same alert, dog-like way, as if sniffing for the right line to take with the owner’s son. The movement raised his throat slightly clear of the red silk choker he was wearing and exposed the upper part of a pale, puckered scar, which ran for some four inches along the side of his neck, revealing with an ugly fidelity the curve of the cut that had made it. “The hull curves two ways, sir,” he said, “beggin” your pardon, that is what makes the job ticklish-like, as you rightly say.”

‘How do you mean?”’

“Well now, a ship’s hull.” Barton’s voice had a sudden energy of pleasure in it. He raised a brown hand, palm upwards, fingers slightly curled. “Think of a fourth portion of a orange what you have took the peel off it all in one piece, if you think of that portion of peel, sir, the edges will curve inwards top and bottom and at the same identical time that peel will curve along its length, fore and aft. It is the same thing with a ship’s hull. Every blessed one o” them planks has to fit snug against the next along its length and by its depth.”

It was clear that Barton had a way with words; there had been a savouring, lingering quality in this; he was smiling still with pleasure at the comparison. ‘That is what makes it ticklish-like,” he said.

Kemp and Thurso had turned back towards them.

Four of the men had begun to climb to the platform, a double plank in width, slung against the battens. The men by the kiln were wrapping rags round their hands.

“They are fetching the next pieces out,”

Kemp said to his son. “They have been steaming long enough—near eight hours. We shall stay and see them laid in place.”

Erasmus saw the great oak plank drawn smoking from the kiln. It must have been thirty feet long. Six men, their hands swathed in rags, went at a crouching walk with it across the dozen yards to the ship’s side. Here it was roped and hoisted from above —men had been waiting on the cross-pieces of the unfinished deck, high up in the smoky brightness, difficult to see. He watched the plank hauled to the level of the platform, saw it manhandled into position against the batten markers, saw it driven into place with heavy mallets, the blows sounding in ragged unison as the men forced the heavy timber to bend in obedience to the curving shape of the hull. Once in place it was held there against the strain of its cooling fibres with thick wooden billets that fitted flush against the plank and were bolted through and locked on the inside of the vessel.

“By God, those two fellows are putting their backs into it,” Kemp said in tones of approval.

It was not quite flush, Erasmus noticed: the billets amidships, where the convex curve was greatest, did not seem long enough, and had to be lashed to the bolt-heads; the two men his father had referred to were hauling at the short ropes, leaning back on their narrow platform to get a better purchase.

Kemp took out his watch and consulted it.

“Less than fifteen minutes to get that timber in place.”

Thurso was beginning, in his laborious, impeded way, to say something in reply, when there was a wrenching sound from the ship’s side, followed at once by a strangely tuneful twanging note, like a single vibrant beat of pinions. Erasmus glimpsed a flying shape of white caught in the sun like a flash of wings, saw the gap where the timber had sprung free, sweeping the two men working there off the platform, one to slide down between hull and slipway and lie groaning out of sight, the other, whose fall his eye had caught, flung clear on to the wharfside, where he lay broken and still.

The pause of shock, before the men’s mates moved towards them, was of the briefest; but to Erasmus, when he thought later about it, it had no limits, extending without dimension of time into the blank afternoon, the hazy light, that twanging note of death. He was young enough still to glance at the others’ faces for guidance in composing his own; and what he saw there had no end or beginning either. The only face on which he could detect any expression at all was Thurso’s, whose small eyes contained a look of satisfaction, as at some promise fulfilled.

From a man maimed and a man dead and a look in another man’s eyes, his memories of the ship took a sweep over a void and only found lodgement again in the week before she was launched. There were difficulties with the figurehead, which continued almost up to the last minute, due to his father’s wish for changes and his consequent altercations with the carver, Samuel Oates.

Oates was a notable craftsman, famed for his execution of figureheads, quarter figures and all kinds of ornamental scrollwork for the timber heads. He had been a shipwright till a fall from scaffolding had lamed him and sent him back to his boyhood passion for carving wood. With the expansion in shipbuilding he had prospered greatly and now employed two journeymen and several apprentices.

These days he did not take kindly to customers who pestered him over details.

Kemp, however, was adamant. He knew the importance of emblems; and he knew what he wanted. For the rudder he wanted the bust of a man in a plumed hat and full wig, to epitomize the newly formed Company of Merchants Trading to Africa, of which he had become a member. For his figurehead he wanted the Duchess of Devonshire as the Spirit of Commerce, flanked by two small lions. He had seen the duchess once and thought her splendid. It was she now who was causing the difficulty. Either Oates had misunderstood his instructions or comz Erasmus suspected—his father had changed opinion, which he more frequently did these days. In any event the carver had fashioned her bareheaded, whereas Kemp had decided that he wanted some regal adornment, something like a diadem or coronet. “Not a crown,” he said. “It would not be seemly for her to wear a crown. But if she is to represent the enterprise that creates the nation’s wealth, she must have a coronet at the very least.”

It was here, in Oates’s workshop, that Erasmus came nearest to a sense of wonder at what they were setting in motion, felt something of the spirit that emanated from his father, among these staring effigies in this long gallery of a room, amidst smells of paint and wood shavings, viscid brews of varnish and oil, resinous bubblings from the open jars where Oates distilled his turpentine. A naked, waxy nymph, her lower regions concealed in bright green foliage, a turbaned Turk, two gilt cherubs and a prancing unicorn looked down at them through the vaporous air. Oates stumped among his creatures, limping and irascible. “You must understand, Mr Kemp,” he said, “I have other work in hand, I cannot begin her over again and have her ready in time for you.”

The huge, brightly coloured duchess loomed above them, her blue eyes fixed in a wide stare. She was sealed and waxed and shining, ready for all weathers.

Her long yellow hair flowed down her back. Her royal blue gown, voluminous at the skirts, left her white shoulders bare, and her great smooth breasts with their brilliant crimson nipples.

Her arms were drawn back behind her, disappearing in the folds of her dress, and this gave her a poignant look, like a captive giant pinioned for sport or sacrifice.

Kemp turned passionate eyes on Erasmus.

‘By God,” he said, “she makes a fine figure. But I must have a coronet for her.”

“I can fashion you a gilt coronet in best elm,” Oates said, with a sort of irritable resignation, “I can set it on her brows and fix it into quarter-inch panels round the head and glue it in place I make a glue here that will stick you till the last trump, Mr Kemp. It will be a separate piece but there is no stress on it to speak of This was the solution finally agreed on; but because of the delay the installation of the duchess had to be done almost at the last, the shipyard carpenters hoisting her into place and setting her on the prow amidst other last-minute tasks, finishing the hatches, mounting the swivel guns on the bulkheads of the quarterdeck, coating the ship’s bottom with the mixture against ship-worm newly recommended by John Lee, the master-caulker of the Royal Dockyard at Plymouth, composed of tar and pitch and brimstone.

The launching itself was a quiet affair. It had come to Kemp that he would be tempting fate to make a show.

In the event there was just father and son and a few bystanders and the people of the shipyard to see her into the water. Kemp had champagne served at the dockside and he made a short speech, thanking the men who had worked on her. They cheered him with full throat; he had always been popular with them and it was known that he had dealt generously with the widow of the man who had been killed and the family of the disabled survivor.

There was the customary silence as the last of the scaffolding was removed, the shores knocked away and the ship eased up from her blocks. She seemed at first undecided whether to settle again, then she moved massively forward down the greased slipway, the timbers that cradled her keel moving with her. For those few moments she glided resplendent, all below the water-line new-painted white, her clean plank above shining with resin, her mainwales and the lettering of her name picked out in dapper black; but she lost this gliding grace when she touched the element she was made for, ducking her rear into the dark water, wallowing there while the timbers of her cradle, freed at last, floated up alongside.

The last Kemp saw of his ship was the duchess yearning away from him, as the Liverpool Merchant was towed out stern-first into midstream, where her masts would be fitted. It is true that on the eve of her sailing he would stand at the dockside, peer across the misty water, see, or have the illusion of seeing, the masts and spars of his ship where she lay anchored out in the Pool; but this was any ship now, a shape become generic, universal. His last real sight of her had been that swanning glide, that brief, ungainly wallowing, that yearning retreat of the figurehead. It was the last of her he would ever see.

Matthew Paris’s last night on shore was spent at an inn in Water Street, not far from the docks.

He had called earlier at Red Cross Street to make his farewells, declining all hospitable urgings, deeming it easier for himself as for his patron if he did not impose himself for such a short stay.

His wish was for solitude; more of his uncle’s ardent prophesying he did not feel able to endure and he might have been constrained to show it.

He was ready for the voyage, as far as concerned physical readiness; he had the bare wardrobe he thought would suffice, together with his medicine chest, instruments, bandages and dressings and a large store of medicaments and drugs: not knowing what to expect, he had brought everything he could think of, from mustard to eucalyptus oil. In the lacquered box his aunt had given him he had his writing materials and in a larger one of tin plate lined with wood his books, which for reasons of space were few and carefully chosen: Pope, Maupertuis, Hume, Voltaire. These four he had rescued from the bailiffs, who had taken almost everything else. On the fifth, Astley’s New Collection of Voyages and Travels, he had spent some of his uncle’s money, having been assured that it was a mine of information for anyone wishing to learn about Africa. Alongside these, in that same stout box, was the unfinished translation of Harvey’s Treatise on the Movement of the Heart and Blood, which he had begun in prison, when with his uncle’s help he had been able to afford a private room.

Books were a habit and so a need. But whether or not to include Harvey was something he had hesitated long over, caught in a contradiction he could not resolve. Stepping on to a slaveship, sailing with her, was as near to cancelling his former life as he felt he could come. And that was what, when he interrogated himself, he believed he most wanted—he wanted to cauterize the nerves that held him to the past. And yet he had not felt able to leave Harvey behind. Ambition, the wish for some lustre to fall on him from this great and revolutionary work? But how could that live in one breast with a desire to kill the self, to smother it in darkness, a desire so urgent at times that it came to him like an impulse of violence? And why, in spite of this, did the past lie in ambush for him at every unguarded turning of his thought? His desolation bristled with such questions, like blades.