Free Sacred Hunger by Barry Unsworth

the deepening colours of the hawthorn blossom on the slopes above the lake, the appearance of soft spikes of flower on the chestnut trees in the grounds. Amidst this slow flushing of the season experiences took on an importance for Erasmus that somehow belonged rather to their associations than to themselves and made odd fusions in his mind. Already there, the virulent speck that would curdle his memories, already working among the impressions of the time, a man sniffing at timber, another the sport of rats in an alley, a haunting song of deep seas and dead fathers that came to him while he waited for his cue.
    Sometimes he went with his father to the yards to see how work was progressing on the ship. One of these visits was towards the end of May and it stayed long in his mind because of an accident that happened then.
    She was framed up by this time, with all her cross-beams in place, and the oak timbers which would support the bowsprit, and the flexible ribbands of fir nailed along the outside of the ribs so as to encompass the body lengthways and hold it in frame. On this day they were putting in the first of the long single planks that ran the length of the vessel from stem to stern. Erasmus stood beside his father on the bankside, following with his eye the curve of her hull as it bellied out away from him comshe would slide down into the water stern-first when ready.
    The vertical timbers shoring up the scaffold at her sides rose sheer above. Erasmus looked up but his eyes pained him, he could see little beyond the gunports. The air was full of sunshine and smoke. Higher up the bank, but still quite close to the slipway where the ship rested in her cradle of scaffolding, three men had overturned a barge and they were burning the crusted filth of the river off her.
    There was an acrid smell and smoke hung in the air, blue from the faggots, black and oily from the melted pitch of the boat’s bottom.
    “They are putting in the first of the strakes,”
    Kemp said. “They have marked out where the next plank is to go, you can see the line of the batten.”
    Erasmus narrowed his eyes to see through the bright haze the pale line of the batten that ran a good third of the vessel’s length. Nearby, running alongside the slipway, was the long kiln for steaming the planks —the oak had to be softened until it was pliable enough to be moulded to the shape of the hull. Erasmus could hear the hiss from the copper boiler housed inside; steam rose from it, adding to the sunshot haze.
    “Here’s Thurso now,” Kemp said. “He mentioned that he would come by to see how things are going forward. He has got someone with him.”
    They came from beyond the ship, passing through the deep shadows under her bows and out again into sunlight, the square-built, deliberate captain whom he had met already and a lean man, rather dandified, with a sailor’s walk and his hair in a short pigtail.
    As they came out from the shadows into the sunlit space between the ship’s hull and the beam-sheds, there was a sudden ruffling breeze over the water and Erasmus saw the man with Thurso raise a sharp face and sniff like a dog.
    Thurso raised his short black cane to the corner of his cocked hat. “I thought I’d bring Mr Barton along with me,” he said. “I have spoke of him before, I think. He is to be my first officer.”
    “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