The Dust Diaries (3 page)

‘Yes, Father, I’d be interested to hear what brought you here as well, if you don’t mind. From what Father Weston has told me you had quite a literary career in the offing back home, and a Trinity living too, I believe?’

Arthur turned to the Governor, at once grateful for his help, but also reluctant to be drawn on his motivations for missionary work, especially in the company of people he had only just met.

‘Well, there were many reasons really,’ he replied, ‘and actually Frank was one of them. I mean, Father Weston and I are old college friends, and he used to write to me about what he was up to here…’ He talked on, sketching out his education under Bishop Gore at Oxford, how he had met James Adderley, a travelling preacher he’d accompanied on treks through the Essex countryside, how he hoped, in coming to Africa, to lessen the blow of two cultures meeting. He said nothing, though, about why he had chosen Southern Rhodesia. Nothing about the book he had read a couple of years before, sitting in his armchair under a veil of light from his standard lamp, the winds of an Essex night beating in waves at his window. The book was
Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland
, written by Olive Schreiner in a white heat of anger after the ‘96 Mashona uprising. It told the story of trooper Peter Halket, who is ordered to shoot an African prisoner, but who helps the prisoner escape instead, and so is executed himself. But he said nothing about this book or how its story lit his imagination. And he said nothing about the book’s frontispiece either, a photograph that had burnt its image onto his mind. A tree, a mimosa tree as he would come to learn, around which a group of white Rhodesian pioneers rested, all men, lying on the grass propped up on their elbows, leaning on their long rifles, smiling into the camera. And hanging from the tree three more men, all black. Three Africans on long ropes, naked, slow-turning, hanging from the branches of that mimosa tree, their heads dropped, chins to their chests, the bad fruit of a day’s work. He said nothing about any of this; somehow he knew it would not have been welcome information at the table. And he said nothing about Ada either.

He stopped talking. A change had come over the company when he said ‘Christianity’, the word travelling down the table like a cold wind. He smiled briefly at the Governor, then looked down at the scratched and dented surface of the table. Clearing his throat in preparation, it was Pruen who first spoke again.

‘Yes, well, at least Mohammedanism will not be a stumbling block for you, Father,’ he said. ‘Not that I consider it to be a really serious one anywhere on mainland Africa. Apart from here and maybe in Dar I’ve never seen a native perform any Mohammedanistic religious duty beyond turning a sheep or a goat towards Mecca before cutting its throat.’

He laughed, and Beardsley and the Governor joined him. Arthur thought of the elegant minarets and the women in purdah.

Pruen carried on. ‘And I know what you mean about the meeting of two cultures. I’ve spent much of my own time in Africa trying to right the wrongs of such a meeting. Just last month I was at a freed slave station, arranging apprenticeships for the boys there. But you’ll not have that problem in Rhodesia either; the natives there have, I understand, managed to escape the plague of slavery.’

Arthur looked up at him. ‘I was thinking more of the meeting between our own society and the African,’ he said, ‘rather than the Arab and the African.’

‘Oh, come now, Father, I think you have nothing to worry about on that count,’ Pruen said, looking a little surprised. ‘The natives of Mashonaland have not suffered from their meeting with the white man, I assure you. No, your concerns in a place like that should not be with worries of native suffering, but with the natural obstacles you will come across in bringing the gospel to the heathen. Indifference, slow minds and witchcraft, that’s what you should prepare yourself for, Father. But the Mashona are a humble people too, full of humility, and once converted can be quite perfect Christians, I believe. Good material to work with, I’d have thought.’

Before Arthur could reply the Governor addressed Pruen himself, taking in the attention of the whole table at the same time, speaking as he did, a little too loudly. Arthur suspected a case of tropical deafness.

‘I don’t believe I’ve told you the history of this house, have I, Mr Pruen? Or indeed any of you. Except Father Weston’—he smiled at Frank—‘and of course my dear wife, who has heard it all before.’ The Governor turned to his wife. She did not look up from her plate on which she was pressing her fork onto the last grains of rice that had, until now, eluded her. He turned back to the assembled company and as the servants cleared the plates and served coffee, he began his story of the house and its previous owner, Princess Salome.

Settling back into his chair, the Governor told them how the Princess had been betrayed by her brother, the Sultan Mahjid, when in 1870 he gave the house they were now sitting in to the British to use as their consulate. The Princess, an emotional and passionate woman, was distraught. She had put the energy of a mother into the gardens that surrounded them, and she wept bitterly when she had been guided out of the house with her servants under the watchful guard of her brother’s men. She was moved to a third-storey apartment in town, where she pined for her house with its spacious rooms and balconies through which the coastal wind wandered freely. Her apartment was cramped in comparison, and without character. From its high window she watched her island change at the hands of commerce: the influx of Europeans, the bustle and activity of slave market days, the tall ships that sailed into harbour to take their spices across the oceans to the tables of Russia, Europe, the Americas. It was not, however, the view of her pulsing capital that came to fascinate her, but the view of another window, opposite her own. This window looked into the rooms of a young German merchant from Hamburg and, lit at night by oil lamps, it provided an insight into another life too tempting for the Princess to resist.

She had watched the young man move in and unpack his belongings: a few books, his new solar sun hat, a sepia photograph of his mother placed on his desk. Then over the following months she had watched him grow into the island, and it into him. She traced the sun’s effect on his pale skin, from the red blushes on the back of his freckled neck to a darker brown that showed in contrast to the milky whiteness of his torso when he took off his shirt. She watched him acquire friends and observed their Western din tier parties, bright with laughter and the sound of glasses in the nighi. He bought a gramophone and she listened with him when he played his scratched records of Bach and Wagner. She watched him when he was alone and despondent, dreaming of home, and she watched him when he was cheerful and excited, dressing for a party. Anc! in this way she fell in love with him.

When they finally met (ironically, introduced to each other at a British consulate party, so that just for one night she had both her house and the man she loved together in her life), the attraction was instant. She wore her traditional dress with long amber beads looping around her neck down to her exposed waist. But what the young man had noticed was not the finery of her jewellery or the scent of her perfume but the smoothness of her skin and the darkness of her eyes. They spoke to each other in broken English, each understanding more than they said, and that night, for the first time, she appeared in the window she had watched for so long, finally a part of its small, bright life.

Shortly after news of their affair reached the Princess’s brother, the couple left the island, and Princess Salome sailed with the merchant back to his home in Hamburg. It was the first time she had left the island other than to travel to Dar es Salaam, and as the ship steamed away from its shores she tried to locate her beloved house and gardens. But all she could see was palms, dipping onto the sands, and dhows, circling inside the reef.

In Germany they married; the Princess converted to Christianity and they set up home in Hamburg. Life was strange for her. Some people wouldn’t talk to her, and in the winter the bitterness of the cold made her cry. But she loved her husband and the two children she gave him, a girl and a boy. Then, three years after their arrival, her world fell apart when he slipped on some ice avoiding a salesman’s cart and fell under a tram. He was dead before the screech of its brakes had died on the November air.

‘She did return once, back in ‘85 I think, before my time.’ The Governor looked away, moved for a moment by his own story. ‘She wanted her children to see her island, and of course this place. She got quite a welcome, but didn’t stay. Apparently by then she spoke Arabic with a German accent, but I’m not sure if I believe that.’

The table was quiet and even Mr Pruen just nodded sagely rather than offering comment on the Princess’s story. Arthur looked out past the other guests into the unmanned dark. The Governor’s tale had saddened him, and not just out of feeling for the Princess whose house they now sat in. It was a more personal sadness than that; a sadness of empathy as well as sympathy.

It was Mr Beardsley who broke the silence, nudging his young companion and jokingly admonishing her, ‘You see, Charlotte, that’ll teach you to go running off to strange lands with merchant men!’ He followed the remark with a hearty laugh that sent his head back and his mouth open so Arthur could see the rotten state of his lower teeth.

Charlotte did not share his amusement, and the gentle nudge in her ribs finally upset the tears that had been brimming inside her all night. Her face dismantled under the weight of them, and gave way completely with a bursting sob as she pushed her chair away from the table and ran through the huge double doors into the central vestibule. They heard her small feet on the wooden floorboards receding behind them, then the slam of another heavy door.

The merchant looked sheepishly around at them all. ‘Gosh, I do apologise. It’s been a long day, and the heat you know…I’ll just…’ He made to get out of his chair.

‘No, don’t bother yourself, I’ll go and see to her.’

It was the Governor’s wife, speaking for the first time that night. With a sigh which seemed to say that she’d seen it all before, she rose from the table, ample in a bottle-green evening dress, and walked slowly and purposefully through the carved double doors. While she was gone the servants served port. Again, Arthur declined but he did allow himself a smoke of his pipe as he sat back and listened to the others talk about matters of commerce, the railways and the war in the south. The cicadas sang their static song in the darkness beyond the balcony and he wondered if he would ever get used to their sound, or indeed any of Africa.

Eventually the Governor’s wife returned, but just to excuse herself and say goodnight. She was about to leave when Mr Beardsley cleared his throat;

‘Er, Charlotte. Is the old girl all right?’

She looked at him as a mother might at a tiresome child.

‘Oh, yes, fine. Silly girl was wearing a corset. In this heat,’ she added, shaking her head, and then as she turned to leave, ‘Nearly cut in two with heat rash, no wonder she looked so miserable.’

The merchant managed a weak smile. ‘Oh good, jolly good,’ he said quietly, avoiding the eyes of the others and swilling the last dash of port in his glass.

The dinner party ended not long after the Governor’s wife retired. Mr Beardsley and Mr Pruen were both staying at the consulate, so a car was ordered for Frank and Arthur to return to Stonetown. Beardsley made his excuses and also left them, apparently now back in buoyant mood.

As they waited on the balcony for their car to arrive Mr Pruen also retired to his room, but returned again just as they were taking their leave of the Governor. He had a brown leather-bound book in his hand, which he held before him as he approached Arthur.

‘It was very interesting to meet you, Father Cripps. I wish you well on your mission.’ He took Arthur’s hand and shook it, then placed the book in it. ‘A copy of my book. I always try to travel with a few. I’d like you to have it. Never know, may come in useful.’

He let go of his hand and Arthur thanked him as the headlights of their car swept and trembled up the rough track towards the house. The four of them made their way down the exterior steps into the garden, and at the bottom of the steps thev all shook hands once more. With a crunch of tyres over stone the car pulled up outside the garden wall and Frank and Arthur walked down the path, through the jasmine and honeysuckle, the cicadas loud
in
their ears as the footsteps of the two men behind them receded up the stone steps back into the house. As he got into the car Arthur noticed how its headlights lit the beach at the end of the track, spotlighting the waves, bowing again and again in their beams like actors at the end of a play.

After his prayers that night Arthur had looked through the pages of Mr Pruen’s book, lying on his bed with a flickering kerosene lamp beside him. There were sketches of animals, traps, how to build a bush dwelling, descriptions of sicknesses and their bush cures, and a daunting appendix listing the supplies considered necessary for ‘one person travelling in Central Africa for one year’. He skimmed over the lists, noting Pruen’s advice after some of the items. From ‘Personal Supplies’:

• One tent, 8
  ft
  . or 9
  ft
  . square, with fly, and extra ceiling inside of dark green baize
  
• One canvas camp bedstead, with unjointed poles
  
• One Willesden canvas bag, open at one end only for bedstead
  
• One very easy folding chair
  
• One ribbed hair mattress
  
• Two small pillows
  
• Four pillow cases
  
• Two pair of sheets
  
• Six blankets
  
• Mosquito net, arranged on cane ribs, in shape like the hood of a perambulator, but 2
  ft
  3
  in
  wide, and half instead of one-quarter circle. It should have a linen fringe all around and tuck in.
  
• One dressing case, well fitted
  
• One India-rubber camp bath, whalebone ribs
  
• One ebonite flask
  
• One bull’s-eye lantern
  
• Four dozen boxes of matches
  
• One luminous match box-case
  
• Six ‘Charity’ or ‘Art’ blankets (two for servants, two for headmen, two for sick porters)
  
• Two policeman’s capes, for messengers in rainy season (N. B. Tents, blankets, etc., must be
  lent
  ; on no account given as presents, or they will be bartered for food or drink at the first opportunity).