The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,41
an error in the surrounding circumstances, when an action is being contemplated or is about to be taken. Heedlessness is a wrongful failure to advert to and give due weight to the surrounding circumstances, when an action is being contemplated or is about to be taken.”
Finding no immediate response to this, Sullivan contented himself with nodding sagely. Reedy’s head was declining onto his breast. His words came more slowly now and were more difficult to follow. “Both in their different ways are forms of failure to take care, and both are deserving of punishment if harm or wrong should ensue. I lost my place as a clerk in the firm of Bidewell and Biggs because of the gross heedlessness of Bidewell, who frequently left money in a drawer in the anteroom of his office without ensuring that the drawer was kept locked, thus bringing about the ensuing harm of my dismissal. This criminal heedlessness of my employer was compounded by …”
The voice died away. Something between a sigh and a snore came from Reedy and then no further sound.
“Force of habit,” the woman’s companion said. “He knows somethin’ about that, I dare say. He already had a skinful before you brought the extra. He is here without shelter an’ night comin’ on because he has found his true level, never mind all that talkin’. It is different with us, we got nothin’ to blame ourselves for. Till three months ago me an’ Betty here an’ our three children were livin’ as we had allus lived, as my father lived before me. We had some strips of land in the open fields on the edge of the village of Thetford, not very far from here. We kept fowls, we had a cow, we got our firewood from the common land. Then the new law come in. They enclosed the village an’ shut us out. Most of the common land was taken by the squire, an’ so we lost our livin’. We couldn’t pay the rent, they didn’t want us on the parish poor rates, so they put us out of our cottage, bag and baggage. We found people in the village, freeholders, who were willin’ to take the children for the sake of the work that could be got out of them. We been on the move ever since, livin’ as we can. There is a new factory opened in the town, an’ they wants people for frame-knittin’. We are goin’ to try our luck there tomorrow.”
“We stay together,” the woman said, and Sullivan saw her smile at the man beside her. “Sharin’ makes it easier,” she said. “We been unlucky in some ways, but we still together.”
Sullivan considered for a few moments. The jar was finished, the fire was dead; most of those who had been sitting around it had melted away without his noticing. He had enough money left for two pallets on the floor of a lodging house, but not more. The lawyer’s clerk had no coat to his back, only shirt and waistcoat. Just as I was meself, he thought, when I walked through the prison gates an’ set off for the County of Durham, holdin’ me vow inside me.
He shook Reedy by the shoulder to rouse him. “You an’ me will find lodgin’ for the night, so we can be in better case to welcome the mornin’.”
Roused from his stupor, Reedy affirmed that he knew of a place not far away where a bite to eat and a space on the floor could be secured for twopence a head. “This is a true act of friendship,” he said. “Simon Reedy will be eternally grateful.”
With Sullivan supporting his uncertain and wavering steps, he led the way through a maze of streets until they came to a house that had no inn sign or mark of any kind, only a brass candle lamp set over the door. They were received by an elderly woman of unsmiling looks and short words, to whom Sullivan handed over his last pennies.
The sleeping spaces were straw with strips of hessian laid over them; there was a row of chamberpots along the wall at the far end. There were a dozen people already there, three of them women. Sullivan soon disposed of the slice of bread and the bowl of thin gruel, but Reedy could not stomach more than two spoonfuls of this, so Sullivan obliged by having the rest. “I have always been a foe to waste,” he said.