The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,105
gan on with tittle-tattle about Hartlepool an’ Sunderland.”
This was the husband, Percy’s father, he who had made the kite. Sullivan found himself being regarded with eyes of a singular intensity, even shadowed as they were by the brim of the cap, which he wore well pulled forward. Here was one at least under the spell of the story, and Sullivan’s spirits lifted with the perception of this. He had wanted his words to grip and enthrall, to crown his long journey, even though Billy’s death was contained in them. He was taking a risk and he knew it. It was not very likely that news of the part played by the crew of the Liverpool Merchant would have reached such a remote place—these men and women did not have the look of newspaper readers. But that it was possible he had known from the beginning. His vow had always involved this risk, and the miracle of his escape had made it worth taking. The interest written on Bordon’s face confirmed him in this feeling and gave him heart to go on.
“We niver got there,” he said. “We niver got to Jamaica at all. We were blown off course. The skipper was dead by this time. We were beached up on the coast of Florida.”
“Florida,” Bordon repeated, and his voice lingered on the name.
Sullivan did not try to describe the efforts they had made to haul the ship up the creek and so conceal all traces of it. “We had no choice but to stay there,” he said. “The ship was wrecked. We lived there twelve years, Billy an’ me an’ the others, white an’ black together, them that were left. We made a life for ourselves.”
Out of duty to Billy’s memory, so they would understand the way he had lived as well as the way he had died, he tried to describe the life they had had, the ocean never far away, the lagoons and jungle hummocks and mangrove swamps, the alligators and snakes and deer, the great flocks of white herons that rose all together with a great beating of wings, flying up suddenly for no reason anyone could know or determine, settling again as if they were snow or big white petals.
“Twelve years,” he said again. “Billy came to his end there.”
“What end was that?” Nan said. “What happened to our Billy?”
“Unbeknown to us, the sojers were comin’. The man that owned the ship took some redcoats to get us. He said we had stole the ship an’ the slaves aboard her—in his way of thinkin’ they were still slaves, even after the years we had all lived together. The sojers were closin’ round us, but we niver knew it till they started shoutin’ for us to come out an’ give ourselves up. Billy wasn’t in the compound, he was outside, mebbe a mile away. He was fishin’ in the creeks with his mate, whose name was Inchebe, a man from the Niger. It was just getting’ light and these two were on the way back with the catch …”
He paused here, aware of having arrived at a difficulty but impelled still by the sense of duty, the need to do justice to Billy’s life in the settlement, all their lives. “These two were close,” he said, “because they were sharin’ the same woman. You see, there were more men than women, more than twice as many, so the women could have two if they were inclined that way, an’ mostly they were.”
“What, our Billy an’ another man sharin’ the same woman?” John Blair said. “A never heered of such a thing, it’s nay decent.”
“Tha’d rather have it t’other way round, woudn’t tha?” his wife said. “It would be decent enough then, a’ll be bound.” There had been a note of bitterness in this, as it seemed—some strain between them had been brought out by this revelation.
“Our Billy only done what the others was doin’,” Nan said. “A wouldna want two men mesen, one is enough for me.”
“More than enough sometimes,” Bordon said, and he smiled at her, the lines of tension on his face softening into tenderness.
“He shared a woman with a black man?” Michael Bordon said, but there was more curiosity than disapproval in his tone. He was wondering, though he did not say so, whether they ever came to blows over whose turn it was. How he would hate to share Elsie with anyone. Even another hand, touching her lightly …