The Quality of Mercy - By Barry Unsworth Page 0,62
not by chance: if he could get people dancing, he stood to finish off with a pocketful of pennies.
My love wears the tarry trousers,
My love wears the jacket blue,
My love plows the deep blue ocean …
He broke off to play the tune again. The crowd was getting bigger; one or two more coins landed on the waistcoat. He was raising the bow when the man in the white apron who had been shouting the virtues of the Hypodrops approached from behind and tapped him on the shoulder.
“Doctor Muir requests you to go further off,” he said. “Your music is drowning out my pitch—the people cannot hear me.”
He looked younger, now that he was close, and he had a general air of unhappiness.
“A singin’ man has as much right here as a shoutin’ man,” Sullivan said. “More, as the sound is more agreeable. The doctor has not purchased the intoire field, I suppose.”
“No, but we were here first. Those who come late must find their own places.”
Sullivan considered for a moment. He could not emerge with any advantage from this disagreement. The other would stay there and argue the matter, and in the meantime the people who had gathered would drift away; one or two had already done so, the others would follow. “I’ll go, then,” he said. “We are losin’ custom while we stand here.” As he was about to take up his waistcoat and the coins lying on it, he asked the question that had been vaguely in his mind since arriving. “Why does the doctor not do his own shoutin’?”
The young man hesitated and seemed at first not disposed to reply. Then he said, “Well, I’ll tell you, I don’t care who knows, I am fair sick of it, he pays me next to nothing and keeps all for himself. The reason he don’t do the shouting is that he has no breath, his lungs are gone, as soon as he makes any effort he starts gasping and wheezing. If they knew that the inventor of Hypodrops, the wonder-working universal panacea for which he is charging two shillings and sixpence a bottle, cannot raise his voice above a whisper and cannot get to his feet without breathing heavy, they would add to his ills by breaking his bones. Mine too—the one shouting is just as much in danger. It is only watered-down beetroot juice and minced-up sloe berries and a bit of sugar. There, I have told you, and I am glad of it. I will leave him, he can stew in his Hypodrops. He has started making me wear this apothecary’s apron, so as to look more worthy of trust. I have told him it is dangerous, but—”
Suddenly he broke off and his eyes widened as he looked over Sullivan’s shoulder. “I knew it,” he said, and he turned and began to run.
Sullivan had no time to gather up his belongings. Three men armed with staves jostled him violently aside, trampling on his waistcoat and the coins lying there. Doctor Muir was slow in movement even when highly alarmed, and he had only just succeeded in getting to his feet when they were upon him. Sullivan saw him go down, saw the heavy sticks rising and falling, heard the smash of breaking glass. The constables would be on the scene before long; he might be taken and questioned. He grabbed the waistcoat, took up what coins he could see—they were few—and fled in the same direction the doctor’s assistant had taken.
He lost no time in getting clear of the fair and setting off on the road that led toward Doncaster. He was hardly out of the town, however, when he was hailed from the yard of an inn and recognized William Armstrong sitting there with a pot of ale before him. The wrestler beckoned and shouted an invitation to join him in a drink.
“I had best be pressin’ forward,” Sullivan said.
Armstrong heard the reluctance in this and repeated the offer, and Sullivan had not the fortitude to say no a second time, feeling the need for a good draft after the fright he had had. When he was seated with a tankard before him, he told the wrestler about the fracas he had run from.
“I will niver forget that man,” he said. “One minute sittin’ there smilin’, watchin’ the money come in, next minute gettin’ his bones broke. He will stay in me mind as an example of shiftin’ fortunes just round the corner.”