Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth [124]
‘I trade at the same prices as they do who take slaves to the ship. That is only fair, as I keep them penned here at my expense, convenient for the ships’ boats. There are two rates of bars, one up country and one aboard ship. The ship’s bar is worth twenty per cent more. At present prices a male slave in good condition can be purchased up country, by those that will bring them down – travelling traders like the Vai people and these Susu that are here now – for twenty country bars, which when brought down here we buy for thirty-five or forty. The same slave, sold on board ship or here from the barracoon, will fetch sixty-five ship’s bars, which is equal to above eighty country bars. So I get eighty for laying out forty and the difference is made up in trade goods.’
The dark was gaining now and Owen rose to light the oil lamp on the table. His hands trembled no longer, Paris noted – the rum had steadied him. The lamp had been badly trimmed and it cast a wavering light over the walls of the room and the coarse matting on the floor. Owen’s brows and eyes were left in shadow as he sat back in his chair.
‘It is in determining the value of a bar that you find yourself exercised,’ the factor said. ‘A man has to keep himself abreast of things. The value of a bar can go up or down, Mr Paris, depending on the supply of slaves. A man can incur losses. I have seen men ruined on this coast, decent men, traders like myself, ruined, sir, for failing to remember that the price of a slave can fluctuate.’
Owen leaned forward and the lamplight fell on his face. His eyes were unsteady and Paris saw him frown slightly in what seemed an effort to focus them. ‘For instance, a country bar,’ he said in slow recital, ‘may be worth fifty flints today and sixty-five two days from now. A piece of blue baft is worth ten bars as I speak to you now. Tomorrow, who knows? A man’s intellects are exhausted keeping up with it.’
‘All the same,’ Paris said, ‘if I understand you aright, you are making substantial profits.’
‘Aye, sir, I would be, but for the exorbitant behaviour of the people here, that carry it all away. Your profits are brought down by the expenses of the kings and your own people, which are very unreasonable and great. For example in Sherbro there are three kings who divide the country among them, as well as others of less note. Every one of these expects custom from a white trader, which comes to twenty bars at your first visit, and after perhaps ten or twelve, if you bring a shallop or a longboat. I tell you, I am standing still. I have no more stock now than I did twelve month since.’
Owen paused to refill his glass. His movements were slower now and more deliberate. When he spoke again it was in a different tone, more consciously sociable. ‘You are lately from England, I take it,’ he said. ‘I envy you. How you must look forward to returning there.’
‘No, I do not. To be frank with you, I think I would be content not to set foot in England again as long as I live.’
His voice, deep and rather vibrant at any time, had betrayed an intensity of feeling surprising even to himself. The question, Owen’s assumption, natural as it was, had caught him off guard.
But the factor was too rhetorical with rum by now, and too much occupied with his own deprivations, to notice much of this. ‘You surprise me, sir,’ he merely said. ‘When I consider what it is to live in England, the happiness of conversation, the pleasures of a life free from all inconveniences which must certainly happen in this wilderness, where the inhabitants are scarcely above beasts, ignorant of all arts and sciences, without the comfort of religion, destitute of all wholesome laws …’
‘Comfort of religion?’ Despite himself,