Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [123]
Paris was not sure that he cared to be included in this category, but the pathos of the understatement half won him and the mild and desperate eyes did the rest. And so it was decided: Simmonds would convey the slaves that evening under guard provided by Owen, Paris would remain until next morning.
The mate began preparing to leave at once, desire for more drink routed by the fear of being caught on the river in the dark with a boatload of slaves. Fettered by the legs in pairs, their arms bound tightly behind them, the negroes were thrust into the waist of Owen’s longboat. With a heavily armed Simmonds at the stern and the two Susu spearmen forming a guard, they cast off. Owen and Paris watched the boat out of sight then mounted again to the house. The woman who had been hanging out washing was now in the lean-to beside the house, sitting on a low stool, thighs spread, winding cotton thread round a wooden spool. She looked intensely black in the shade there, so black that her skin glinted blue like coal, reminding Paris of the Kru people who had ferried his first slaves. She watched the approach of the two men without expression. Her face was broad and flat-boned, with a low forehead and a wide, sullen mouth.
‘This one friend me, he sleep here one night,’ Owen said. ‘Two person chicken rice, you sabee?’ He indicated Paris and himself with rapid gestures then made motions of eating. ‘I don’t trust the bitch,’ he said moodily to Paris. ‘Here, come in here.’
The house was built on a single storey with rooms leading off a narrow verandah. Owen led the way into what was evidently his living-room. Rush mats covered an earth floor. There was a European-style couch in worn red plush and some upright chairs round a bamboo table. ‘Have a seat,’ Owen said. ‘She’ll bring in the rum, she knows my habits by this time.’
He had barely finished speaking when the woman came in with glasses and bottle and set them down on the low table. She was tall and full-bodied. The cotton shift was strained across her hips and fell above the knees, showing thick, shapely legs with a faint down of black hair. Having set down bottle and glasses, she looked at Owen briefly and insolently, uttered some soft and high-pitched words and swayed out.
‘She is getting above herself,’ Owen said, with a wry smile that seemed to be intended as an apology. ‘I shall get rid of her one of these days. She has brought her family in and I am expected to maintain ’em all, father, mother, maternal grandmother, two sisters and a man she claims is her cousin. I have reason to think she plays the whore with the men who come here in the way of trade. And moreover I suspect it is her relatives that broke into the storehouse and made away with goods. But I intend calling in the Mandingo priest to get to the bottom of that business. These are difficult times, Mr Paris. On every hand there is news coming in of things miscarrying one way or another. There is Captain Potter’s being cut off by slaves at Mano and the ship driven ashore and the captain, the second mate and the doctor all killed in the most barbarous manner – the slaves were all taken by the natives again and sold to other vessels, so they in no way mended their condition by their enterprise. And along the river here things are rendered difficult lately: it is dangerous to pass and repass because Captain Engelduc, upon his coming up the river, has refused the king his custom, or dashee as we call it, which has bred a great palaver between the king and all the whites trading along the river. Come, Mr Paris, you are not drinking, sir.’
‘I am well enough,’ Paris said. ‘You need not wait on me – I will see to my own glass.’ He watched the factor pour himself out a liberal measure. The light was fading now, shadows lengthened over the rough walls. In the silence Paris thought he heard a faint, continuous pattering sound like distant drums – or perhaps it was the sea, audible even here. This was Owen’s evening then, the rum, the fading light,