Sacred Hunger Read Online Free PDF Page A

and son, was seeking to show. “You may rest assured,” he said, traces of the smile still remaining, “that I shall be mindful of my responsibilities.”
    “Good heavens, woman,” Kemp said with a certain testiness, “he is not going as a member of the family, or at any rate not primarily, but as a qualified medical man to ensure the best possible condition of health for the negroes.”
    “And crew,” Paris said mildly.
    “Eh? Oh, aye, the crew too, naturally.
    Matthew has studied at Surgeons” Hall,” he told his wife. ‘He was resident surgeon at one of our great hospitals, he has writ books…”
    “Yes, my dear, you have told us all that. And besides, I knew it before.” Mrs Kemp turned again to Paris. “I have sometimes a kind of fluttering here, below the heart,” she said. She laid a white hand among the lace trimmings that rose above her stomacher. “When I get at all agitated or beyond myself. Do you know of anything for it?”’
    “For palpitations,” Paris said with restored gravity, “I have always found tincture of hellebore to answer very well. I can make one up for you if you wish. And a draught of warm cinnamon water, taken night and morning, is generally soothing to the nerves.”
    Erasmus saw his mother, thus encouraged, preparing to launch on a more detailed account of her symptoms. “Have you been to sea before?”’ he said to Paris.
    “Not what one would call going to sea. I went out with the fishing boats sometimes when I was a boy. At Brancaster on the Norfolk coast.” Paris paused as if in some doubt. His eyes, Erasmus now noticed, were pale green in colour, not blue as he had thought at first; they were set at a slight downward slant, giving his face in repose an expression of mingled obstinacy and melancholy. After some further moments of hesitation, he said, “It was there we last met, all of us—both the families, I mean. You had come on a visit.
    We went down to the sea one day. There was quite a party of us, I remember—some other people too, who lived nearby. I was eighteen that summer, so you must have been eight or perhaps nine. Quite small.”
    “I have no recollection of it.”
    The words came too coldly and emphatically to be altogether trusted; but there was no mistaking the intention to rebuff, the rejection of a shared past his cousin had thus diffidently held out to him.
    “I remember it clearly.” Paris sought refuge once again in his aunt—it was to her that he kept coming back. “I think because of a dam we tried to build that day. My cousin showed great determination of character. He did his very best to stay the tide.”
    He went on to tell her in his gentle baritone about a channel and a reservoir they had built that distant day at the edge of the tide, using stones and driftwood and the thick black mud of the salt flats to line the banks and make a barrier, and how the sea constantly frustrated their efforts, scooping below the foundations so that the walls kept crumbling and the water leaking away, until the others got tired of it and went to divert themselves elsewhere—all but Erasmus.
    ‘He would not give it up. We went to ask him to come away, but he would not. He would not speak to anyone. He had mud all over him. He went on plastering over the stones and bits of plank and the sea went on wrecking his efforts. I thought to myself then that what my cousin sets his mind on it will come hard but he gets it.”
    Paris paused, swallowing at a feeling of a self-contempt. Was it to ingratiate himself with the mother that he was telling this story of heroic persistence? He had found shelter in her invalidism—was he now trying to creep further into her good graces, trying to cement an alliance of the weak? The truth of his memory was quite different…
    “It was as if you were possessed,” he said, looking steadily and rather sternly at Erasmus. “You were white in the face and staring. I remember that your hands were black with the mud but