Sacred Hunger (44 page)

“Well, of course I know that,” Delblanc said, with a hint of impatience—he was quick and open in all expression of feeling, as Paris was to learn.

“That doesn’t explain anything. You do not seem to me to be typical, that is why I asked.”

Something extremely youthful, innocent almost, in the confidence of this pronouncement amused Paris suddenly and took the stiffness out of him. Delblanc, who like many enthusiastic 3T9 persons often amused without intending to, saw the long, patient face opposite him break into a smile of singular sweetness.

“I have not had time to become typical,” the surgeon said. “I suppose it takes time, doesn’t it? This is my first voyage.”

“Ah, that is it then.”

The note of disappointment in this, as at some promising line of enquiry frustrated, made Paris smile again. “What are you doing here, for that matter?”’ he asked, borrowing the other’s directness. “I believe you are an artist?”’

“I do not know if I would so dignify it,”

Delblanc said. “I can paint a good likeness.

Or so I thought.” A shadow had come to his face.

He appeared to reflect a moment or two, then said, half to himself, ‘It occurs to me… I wonder if your captain would agree to take me as a passenger.”

Before Paris had time to answer this, the Governor had risen to his feet, a signal for everyone else at the table to do the same, and remain so until he had left the room, the major by this time relying heavily on the back of his chair for support, and the treasurer, who had said nothing during the meal, also visibly befuddled.

“Mr Paris,” Delblanc said quickly, “I know we have not been long acquainted, but there is a matter I would dearly like your advice on. I suppose you are staying here tonight? I would be most grateful… I have some rather good brandy in my room.”

Paris hesitated briefly. He had been looking forward to the solitude of his own quarters. But there had been a quality of appeal in Delblanc’s tone, as there was in the clear, ingenuous eyes that now regarded him. ‘Very well,” he said, “but I had better make sure first that Captain Thurso has no further need of me.”

Thurso, who had requested half an hour with the Governor after dinner, was ready enough to confirm this; he did so, in fact, with discourteous emphasis.

Paris’s presence was increasingly an irritant to him these days. Nevertheless, it was in a spirit of resentment rather than relief that he watched his surgeon’s retreat, the broad-shouldered, awkward form, the tendency to step a little short as if about to alter pace or make some bounding advance which in fact was never made. The man had been no earthly use from the start, merely a source of trouble and vexation…

He was conducted into a small chamber on an upper floor, which the Governor used as an office.

Here he was offered brandy, while the Governor himself, now in pale blue robe and round black skull-cap, sipped at a glass of pale fluid. “Camomile tea, sir,” he said with customary languidness. “An excellent specific for the digestion. I take a glass of it lukewarm every evening, before retiring for the night.

Lukewarm, not too hot—in case you ever feel tempted to try it.”

A small fire was burning in the grate, though the evening was not cold. He had one lit, he explained, in all the apartments he used. “To combat the infernal damp that is constantly emanating from the stone,” he said. “Well, sir, how may I be of service to you? I understand from Saunders that you saw the slaves but expressed some reservations.”

“Reservations.” The word came gravelled with effort, as if only outrage could have forced it from the reluctant larynx. “Sir, I cannot buy the slaves at the prices you are asking. There is no profit for my owner at those prices.”

“Come now, Captain.” The Governor spoke with the same nonchalance, but his gaze had sharpened.

“You know well that there is still profit in it for you.

If we were dealing privately together, no doubt I could offer you a lower price. But you must remember the heavy expenses the Company is under in the maintenance of this fort. There is a small army here of clerks, factors, artificers, who all have to have their wages.

There is a chaplain. There are the permanent officers of the Company. There is a garrison of a hundred troops, at the Company’s charge for victuals.

Allow me also to remind you that you enjoy all the advantages of warehousing here, without a penny of cost. The Company acts as a depot for the goods, they are collected here and wait for you, saving you the trouble and danger of foraging in the unhealthy swamps behind.

Moreover, the Company takes care of relations with local chiefs and all intermediaries in the trade, and lays out money to keep them well disposed. But I don’t really need to remind you of this, do I, Captain? You are an old hand.”

“Yes, sir, I am. Of course I know the Company has expenses. But so they did in the days of your predecessor, and he kept the surcharge to five bars a head. I know these up-country prices -I would be surprised if you were paying more than twenty bars. Your predecessor -“

“My predecessor died here.” The Governor’s face was still set in its usual expression of cold composure, but his voice had risen. “He lies out there in the graveyard on the hill, with his name cut rough in the stone by a drunken mason. He lasted eighteen months before drink and the climate finished him. It is not my way to explain myself, Captain Thurso, but tonight is perhaps something of an occasion—it is a year to the day since I came out here.” The Governor paused for some moments, with head raised. “That knocking still,” he said. “They are working through the night.”

“They will have light enough for it,” Thurso said stolidly. “It is a full moon tonight.”

The Governor compressed his lips. There was so little colour in them that only the moulding at the corners indicated the contours of the mouth. Again, in what was clearly a habitual gesture, he dabbed at his face with his handkerchief. “A year to the day,” he said. “And apart from some loss of colour and occasional qualms and fluxes, I am as well as ever I was. Sir, I spent everything I had to purchase this post as a Director of the Company. The competition for such positions nowadays is fierce, as I dare say you know. I spent many months soliciting interest on my behalf in London. I had to go to the Jews for the balance of the money, and agree to pay the interest they asked. I have to recover what I have laid out and make my profit while there is time, sir. This climate eats Europeans. War with France could come any day now, with French privateers lying off these coasts, disrupting our trade. You take my meaning? It is a question of time, Captain.”

“Well, sir,” Thurso said, “it is a question of time for all of us, one way or another. If I am obliged to wait for more favourable prices, some of the slaves already purchased will die on my hands.”

He had no hope now of getting any reduction in the prices; he knew obduracy when he met it, and he had met it now in this slack-wristed, invalidish fellow. But long experience had taught Thurso that an argument is rarely lost completely, if it is persisted in; and certain concessions he was still hoping for.

“What is to stop us trading independently?”’ he said.

The Governor smiled at this, not very pleasantly.

“There is no independent trade here, my friend,” he said. “Not as far as our writ runs—and it runs far. You have heard no doubt what happened to the
Indian Maid
? Very sad business. They were attempting to trade privately upriver and were cut off by the natives and two killed and their longboat a total loss. We could do nothing to help them.”

“I have heard what happened to the Dutchman with the Corymantee negroes aboard.” Thurso fixed his eyes on the other but could detect no slightest change in the expression of his face.

‘The natives are very loyal here,” the Governor said, with a return to his more nonchalant manner. “They see the Company as their father.”

If Thurso had doubts on this score, he gave no indication of it. After a long moment he said, “Well, it seems that I shall have to trade on your terms, sir, if I want to trade at all.”

“I am glad you take that view, Captain. You will have your pick of the slaves, sir, I can promise you that.”

And it was on this note of harmonious accord between them that Thurso obtained the spoils of the vanquished, which he had all this while, in his dogged and cunning fashion, been pursuing: on the understanding he would take the slaves presently in the dungeons, subject to their being passed as fit, the Governor agreed to let him have eight armed men and two canoes for a week’s absence on private business, the expenses of this to be charged to the Company.

Meanwhile Delblanc had not yet made clear to the surgeon the nature of the advice he was seeking, though both men had made some inroads into the brandy by this time and had grown fairly confidential with each other. The painter occupied a single, square-built chamber, which seemed to have been intended originally as a guard-room. It was high on the ramparts, at the same level as the governor’s quarters, but facing east, away from the sea.

The night was warm and Delblanc’s windows were open; he had stretched squares of fine bobbin-net across them to keep out insects. “I carry those nets around with me wherever I go,” the young man said. “I had rather do without a bed than without those.”

Moonlight shone through these precious screens, silvering the mesh, as if to confirm Delblanc’s high estimate. Though earlier wreathed about in cloud, the moon had ridden clear now and hung in the sky, serene and radiant. Blanched pools lay below the casement windows and Delblanc’s shadow fell momentarily across them as he walked to and fro, holding his glass. An array of paints and brushes and jars lay on a low trestle table against one wall. In the centre of the room, masked by a square of pale cloth touched down one edge by moonlight, a canvas stood on an easel.

‘This moonlight is amazing strong,” Paris said. “Strong enough to read by, against the windows. I can hear the sea still, but it does not lie before us, does it?”’

“No, the room looks east, along the coast.

I am on the leeward side here—it grows confounded hot during the day. The best quarters are those that get the sea breeze, like those of our esteemed Governor.” As he spoke Delblanc glanced with a harassed expression at the veiled canvas.

“As you’d expect,” he added, running a hand through his thick, already somewhat disordered light brown hair.

“That is he, isn’t it, under the sheet?”’

Paris nodded at the easel.

“Yes, that is he,” Delblanc said.

However, he made no move to uncover the painting.

“Have some more brandy,” he said.

“I will.” Waiting for his glass, Paris was struck suddenly by the wonder of existence. He said, “It is quiet, but for the waves. I could not tell for a while what the difference was, but it is that—they have stopped their hammering.”

“What? Ah, no, they will begin again. They need a store of coffins in reserve. You cannot keep corpses long in this climate. For most of the last week they have been at it, practically all the time I have been -” He broke off, as if struck by some notion. “I wonder if that is the reason,” he said.

“You will understand when you see the portrait, I think. But I shall need another glass before bringing it to view. Anyway, it is an ill wind that blows no one good. The Reverend Kalabanda has been kept busy with funerals, for which he gets an emolument from the Company.” Delblanc’s expression of harassment gave way suddenly to a smile. “There’s a character for you. That unctuous way he talked about preaching to his free brethren. His free brethren have to listen to his sermons whether they want to or not. They are all in debt to the Company, which makes it a policy to give them drams and goods on credit. The Company could sell them tomorrow to recover the debts and they know it.”

“Like Tucker,” Paris said.

“Who is he?”’

“Oh, he is a mulatto trader on the Sherbro River, where we have just been. He has a big trade connection there and is the principal man of the region. By advancing credit he puts people in fear of him and so gets everyone in his power.”

“Well, it is common practice,”

Delblanc said, “and not only in Africa. Though one sees it in a pure form here, not so much shrouded with hypocrisy. One sees the sacredness of money.”

He passed a hand through his hair again. His eyes were light hazel in colour, very large in the iris and set rather shallow; with the clear, high forehead they gave to the whole face a sincerity almost disturbing in its nakedness and absence of concealment comand greatly at odds with the gentlemanly offhandedness of his manner. He was smiling slightly now but his expression was unhappy and rather bitter. “Money is sacred, as everyone knows,” he said. “So then must be the hunger for it and the means we use to obtain it. Once a man is in debt he becomes a flesh and blood form of money, a walking investment. You can do what you like with him, you can work him to death or you can sell him. This cannot be called cruelty or greed because we are seeking only to recover our investment and that is a sacred duty. Still, the negroes are not much worse off than the whites, from what Saunders tells me. He is one of the factors here.”

“Yes, we met this afternoon. He took us to see the slaves. He did not look in good health to me.”

“He will die if he does not get away from here. He would leave if he could, while he still has some chance of recovering his health, but he cannot—the Company has got him as fast as if he were in chains. Seventy-five pounds a year sounds well enough in Leadenhall Street. But when he got out here he found that it was paid in crackra.”

“What is that?”’

“It is a kind of false currency that can only be used in the Company stores—at Company prices. It is all Saunders can do to buy cankey, palm oil and a little fish to keep himself alive. For other necessaries he has to go into debt. And the others are all in the same case.

I tell you, they are all a company of white negroes here and it is the same in the other trading forts I have been in. The only ones who do well out of it are the high officials of the Company.”