The Dust Diaries

by Owen Sheers

  It was not just the message but also the medium that struck a chord with the Mashona. Poetry was part of their lives: there was a poem for grinding the maize, a poem to speak to your ancestors and praise poems for great chiefs. It had been particularly painful that after the failed 1896 uprising the whites had celebrated the fall of their spirit mediums in song. The settler paper, The Nugget, had printed it in triumph, a long piece of doggerel ending on a threatening note of intention:

  As others have learned long ago,

  So the young generation must learn to know

  That the White Queen means to reign.

  But now Arthur had spoken out against the White Queen and although his voice may have been silenced in Salisbury, it continued to resonate in the kraals of the Mashona, who in turn resonated their new-found respect for Arthur in the names chosen for him in the months following his protest. Father Cripps became Baba Cripps, Baba Cripps became Chapea, He-Who-Cares-for-People, and then Chapea became Kambandakoto: He-Who-Goes-About-as-a-Poor-Man.

  ♦

  Arthur was nearing the end of his morning’s journey. As he came over a lip in the track the buildings of Enkeldoorn appeared before him, a mile or so off and about a hundred feet lower than where he stood. He rested against a young tree, shifting his satchel strap away from a raw patch of skin on his shoulder, and looked down on the town. Its scattering of tin roofs reflected the sun in a white glare so the settlement shone in the shallow valley like a trace of diamond in base rock. On the near side of the town he could see people scattered out across a flat area of land cleared of the tall veld grass. They were making the final preparations for the annual New Year games. Ladies’ white parasols and wide-brimmed hats stood out against the dun red of the earth, clustered together like the petals of oversized flowers where they stood in groups, chatting. In contrast to the stillness of these white islands their husbands and sons ran between them, pulling lengths of rope, guiding ox wagons into position and testing the ground with the heels of their boots. A temporary flag pole had been erected and the Charter flag, a Union Jack with a lion proud at its centre, beat and fluttered over the scene.

  Adjusting his satchel again, Arthur set off towards the cleared field. He didn’t want to be late, he had a service to conduct later that day and he wanted time to prepare after he’d competed in the games. He knew, though, that in Enkeldoorn he may as well concentrate on the sports, as it was there on the games field he was most likely to win the respect of his white parishioners, rather than later from the pulpit.

  ♦

  Charlie Anderson shielded his eyes with his hand and squinted at the figure making its way down the kopje path towards the field.

  ‘Looks like the Devil Dodger’s decided to join us,’ he said, partly to himself but loud enough for the man crouching beside him tying a rag to the tug-of-war rope to hear.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The Devil Dodger, the peripatetic parson, that’s him, isn’t it?’

  The other man stood up and looked where Charlie Anderson pointed. He was taller than Charlie and wore the bush uniform of a District Commissioner, khaki short-sleeved bush shirt, long shorts to above the knee, white woollen socks pulled up to just below, and for the occasion of the games, an Oxford Blues tie and a khaki Wolseley helmet.

  ‘Mmm, yes, that’s him. Good, I was hoping he’d come. He’s pretty fit, you know.’

  ‘So he bloody should be,’ Charlie said, turning away from the sun towards the taller man. ‘All that rucking walking. I don’t know why he doesn’t get a bloody horse.’

  ‘He did.’ The taller man’s voice was softer than Charlie’s, less of Africa in his throat. ‘But he never rode it. I saw him outside town once, leading the thing like a pet. It died. Tsetse fly I think.’

  A couple of native boys carrying a trestle table caught Charlie’s eye over the taller man’s shoulder. ‘Self-righteous bastard,’ he mumbled, before yelling at the two boys, waving his arms in front of him. ‘Ho! Daniel, not there you bloody fool! Over there, behind the tent, right back!’ He paused, then said, ‘Sorry Cul, better go and do it myself.’ He walked off towards the two boys, shouting at them again, this time in stilted kitchen kaffir. ‘Tsaukakuruboshwe! Shurc! Shure the bloody tent!’

  The tall man watched Charlie’s stocky, bow-legged frame stride off towards the tents at the side of the games field, then turned back to follow Arthur’s progress down the kopje. A fly buzzed his ear. He made a half-hearted swipe at it and was surprised when he felt the tick of its body against his fingers. Looking down he saw where it had fallen: a dark currant, vibrating in the dust, one wing useless, the other flicking madly at its side. He lifted his right foot and brought the heel of his boot down on the fly’s panicked dance, twisting it into the ground like the stub of a cigarette.

  The tall man’s name was Cullen Gouldsbury, and he was Assistant District Commissioner for the Enkeldoorn Charter area. Cullen had been serving in Southern Rhodesia for all of his first three-year tour and although still officially an assistant he’d taken on the duties of a full blown DC. Despite his age (he was only twenty-two) it was a promotion he had taken in his stride. He had an affable, easy manner, with enough of a public school education to get on with the officials and enough of a country childhood to get on with the farmers. His habit of flicking his blond fringe away from his eyes by blowing up into his hair made the kaffir children laugh, and he was popular with their parents too.

  Cullen enjoyed his work. One day he might be overseeing native court cases and handing out licenses to farmers, another collecting taxes and holding an open surgery for the problems of the natives. Those surgery days could be some of the hardest, when fifty or sixty African men appeared out of the bush before dawn. A crowd of young and old, some in torn European clothes, most in the traditional scraps of limbo or skins, crouching silently on the ground before his veranda waiting for him to arrive. When he did, accepting them into this cramped office one at a time, their petitions often seemed endless. And sometimes seeing them there in the town was not enough. During his time in Enkeldoorn he had often been called out to preside over disputes in the local Mashona villages too, sitting as judge on cases as diverse as arguments over land and chieftainship to accusations of adultery or abuse. The extent of his influence often bewildered him, and it sometimes made him feel uneasy when the headmen called him Shumba, the Shona for ‘Lion’, or when he looked at the simple figures of his situation. Just him, aged twenty-two, a police chief and half a dozen native policemen governing over more than a hundred thousand natives and several hundred whites.

  But Cullen had aspirations beyond his Colonial Office work. Since arriving in Africa he had written about his experiences on the continent in novels, short stories and poems, and his tales of pioneer characters and settler adventures had been as well received in London as they had in Fort Salisbury. He was hoping to build upon this fledgling reputation, and that is why he was watching Father Cripps today. That is why he observed the priest’s every movement as he approached the games field, as he paused by the stone boundary and fanned himself with his old panama. Because the priest, he was sure now, would be the subject of his next book.

  Cullen had recently finished his latest novel and had been looking for a subject for his next. It had struck him, as he sifted through the people he knew and his three years of memories in Rhodesia, that the missionary might well provide him with one. There was something about the man that fascinated him: the excessive nature of his pastoral care, his outspokenness, his empathy with the natives and his strange mix of contradictions. And there was something else too: a fissure in him, a fracture that worked upon itself, creating a friction that only ever reached his surface as an intonation, a tremor. Cullen could only surmise what this disturbance in the missionary may be, but he hoped that today he might get closer to finding out, that he might be able to talk with Cripps and get nearer to what lay beyond the priesthood that he wore so faithfully, like a blessing and a curse.

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nbsp; ♦

  The 1904 New Year games had been organised by Charlie Anderson, a local farmer known more commonly in the area as ‘Champagne Charlie’, a moniker he’d earned as a miner in Kimberley ten years before. For a few days back then Charlie had been the embodiment of the dream that kept so many young men travelling south, and which kept them there, year on year, in the face of endless disappointment. Because Charlie had struck diamonds, and not just a couple of stones, but a rich seam, packed as tightly in his claim as bees in a hive. Rather than mine them himself he’d sold his rights to the Company and earned his nickname the same night he signed his deal. Taking his cash to the Belgrave, Kimberley’s finest hotel, he’d treated as many men as he could fit in the bar and the billiards room to free drinks. Then he bought out the hotel’s stock of champagne and booked himself into its most expensive suite, where he filled the bath to the brim with the drink, emptying the bottles, frothing and spluttering, two at a time into the white enamel tub. In the bar below the corks sounded from above like gunfire for half an hour and with each pop the men cheered, drunk not just on Charlie’s generosity but also on the idea of his success, which in a way was theirs too, keeping at bay as it did their own doubts and fears, even if just for one night.

  Charlie shared his champagne bath with a couple of whores from the brothel across the road who waited until he had passed out before robbing him blind. They left town that night, leaving Charlie still in the bath, a smouldering cigar perched on his lower lip, wagging in time to his snores.

  The owner of the Belgrave found Charlie the next morning standing naked in the back yard behind the kitchen blowing apart the chef’s chickens with a Rigby shotgun. Two dogs crouched and whined in the corner, the terrified hens flapped and squawked about the dusty patch of ground, and Charlie stood in the middle of it all, a belt of cartridges across his shoulder and his feet caked in a dough of earth and champagne. Downy white feathers were stuck all over his body, as if he had been caught in an innocent pillow fight and not with a smoking rifle in his hands.

  That morning marked the end of Charlie’s brief celebration and the start of a slide that took him gradually further and further north up the railway and eventually into Southern Rhodesia. Enkeldoorn was where he came to rest, blown in like so many others on the winds of their past lives. He bought a couple of hundred acres of land and a small herd of cattle, mostly jumped from native villages, and resigned himself to the life of a small-time farmer. But he never regretted that night and he still dreamt of it often. The proud moment of a man who had lived. The taste of women and champagne, flesh and drink, the stars of Africa through an open window and the thrill of success. He wouldn’t change it now even if he could. That feeling of optimism, of possibility, had been too sweet to ever regret. At least he had felt it once, that what’s he told himself, and it was this thought that kept him going, through the monotonous days of farming, drinking and remembering.

  Today was a different kind of day, though. Today he was in charge, and the games were his to organise. Overseen by Charlie a team of native boys had cleared an area the size of four football pitches out of the bush grass that grew around the town. It was marked out at its four corners by a couple of opposing thorn trees and a couple of stakes, driven into the ground. A boundary of stones had been laid to further mark out his new territory. Along the town side two large canvas tents had been erected, for food, lime juice and ginger beer. Cullen wanted to keep this a dry games this year, and he’d made that clear to Charlie. One whole half of the square was roped off for the horse races and the longer running races, while the shorter sprints would take place right in front of the tents, where everyone could get a good view. Some Scotch carts had been brought in for people to stand and sit on, but many of the ladies had brought their own folding camp chairs, and some families had even brought their wicker veranda furniture.

  Charlie looked around him from where he stood beside the food tent. It was filling up, a good crowd. Most of the townspeople were here. The doctor and his family, Pastor Liebenberg, Vie from the hotel, the Nashes and the Tullys, Majumder who owned the biggest supply shop in Enkeldoorn, and the usual crowd of British administrators, Company men, Dutch farmers and a few Portuguese traders. There was even a reporter from The Nugget down from Salisbury. A scattering of natives sat on the slope on the other side of the games field, drinking kaffir beer from clay pots. Charlie eyed them suspiciously. He made no secret of disliking the natives, especially this kind, who hung around the town in their ragged uniform of cast-off European clothes. He’d drafted in a couple of native policemen to keep an eye on them, but he’d be watching them himself too.

  He checked his watch: ten o’clock, time for the games to begin. Picking up a milk churn resting against the tent he strode out into the centre of the field, carrying it in his arms like a groom taking his bride on to the dance floor. He placed the churn on the ground, and sliding a hammer from his trouser pocket began beating its sides with a rhythmical swing of his arm. The hollow clangs resounded across the cleared ground like the peals of a church bell colling the people to service, and it was with satisfaction that Charlie watched the entrance of the drinks tent switch from dark to pale as the crowd there turned to face him.

  ♦

  From the shade of the drinks tent Cullen Gouldsbury watched Arthur enter the first race of the day, the hundred-yard sprint. The games had started with some fun sports for the children—sack racing, an obstacle course and a mini gymkhana—but this was the first adult race. The priest had taken off his jacket and Cullen watched him walk out towards the starting line (a thin pouring of flour between two cricket stumps) with the other shirt-sleeved men. The entrants made a good cross-section of the settler types he had worked with over the last three years: stocky, tanned farmers in riding breeches, a Portuguese trader, a couple of store keepers and some administration officials. There were no Africans, although Cullen noticed that Arthur, like a few of the others, had chosen to run ‘native style’, taking off his boots and socks.

  The police chief, McGregor, took the role of official starter. He was a barrel-chested man with the air of a sergeant major and an impressive moustache that obscured much of his mouth beneath his white Wolseley helmet. His call of ‘Marks!’ reached Cullen and the crowd around the drinks tent and the chattering hushed as he raised his arm and they waited for the report of his pistol. The men crouched into their starting positions. Cullen could make out a thin cloud of flies hanging above them, like starlings come to roost. The silence seemed on the point of breaking when McGregor eventually fired, the crack of his pistol resounding across the flat earth and a puff of white smoke emerging at the tip of his raised arm.

  The noise of the pistol startles Arthur, and it is only when the other men around him surge forward that he starts running, pumping his arms in an effort to drag his weight up to sprinting speed. But it’s a bad start, and already the Portuguese trader on his left is ahead of him, and one of the farmers, Jones, is hard up on his right. All around him there is the sound of breath and the flapping of flannel trousers and loose shirts. The ground is rougher than he thought and as he lands again and again on the stones and pebbles he realises it was a mistake to have gone without his boots. He can see the thin tape of the finishing line now, but the trader is well ahead, as is another man on the far right, although he seems to have lost the farmer. He is still sprinting hard when the trader breasts the tape ahead of him, his arms high, its ribbon giving about his chest then escaping the grip of its holders to curl about him in a brief, fluttering victor’s embrace. It is already falling to the ground and coiling into the dust when Arthur crosses it, a disappointing fourth.

  He stops, feeling the sun-heated dust burning the soles of his feet, and bends over, supporting his hands on his knees, a wave of sweat washing over his skin. The other men congratulate and commiserate around him. Over by the tents the trader’s companion is whooping and waving his hat, shouting to his friend ‘Ganhaste! Primerio Lugar!’ A couple of h
ands rest on his heaving back for a second, accompanied by voices. ‘Well run, Father’, ‘Good race, Padre.’ No one calls him by his name.

  ♦

  Cullen had been waiting all morning for the right time to approach Father Cripps, trying to keep an eye on him between the tide of conversations and duties that events like these always brought his way. So far, however, he’d been unsuccessful and now he had been waylaid again, this time by Mrs Chesterton and her niece, Miss Haverly. Miss Haverly was fresh from England, come to Rhodesia to ‘keep house’ for her aunt, a common euphemism for looking for a husband. It was well known that in Africa the men outnumbered the women ten to one. Cullen knew he was one of a handful of eligible bachelors that Mrs Chesterton had in her sights, but although Miss Haverly was perfectly agreeable he didn’t intend on getting within striking distance. As an aversion tactic he did his best to exaggerate the misfortunes of his way of life, giving the ladies a particularly grim sketch of Colonial Office living. He finished with a tale about another DC who had tried to end the despairing loneliness of his isolated position by cutting his own throat with his razor. He’d survived, but only because his African boy had found him and coaxed his master back to health. He’d returned to England now, Cullen told them, taking a whisper of a voice and a neat choker of scar tissue as mementos of his stint in the bush. He left the two women wide-eyed under their parasols, Mrs Chesterton giving the worried-looking Miss Haverly a squeeze of the arm with her white-gloved hand.