The Dust Diaries: Seeking the African Legacy of Arthur Cripps

At a family reunion in Wales several years ago, the prize-winning poet Owen Sheers stumbled across the mesmerizing story of his great-great-uncle Arthur Cripps, a mysterious figure who turned from poetry to missionary work in Africa and ultimately became a shamanlike figure, ministering to the locals.
Arthur Cripps left his native England in a ship set for southern Rhodesia in 1900. During his time as a missionary in the British colony, Cripps became passionate about indigenous ways, leaving him ostracized from the largely racist, conservative European minority. Railing against colonial injustice, Cripps became a hero to the native population. He chose to exile himself from the Anglican church, factions of which branded him a heretic and burned down his churches. All the while he hid the soul-racking secret of what had driven him from England into the heart of Africa.
The Dust Diaries is the haunting record of Sheers's all-consuming attempt to piece together the luminous fragments of Arthur Cripps's remarkable life, and to understand the mystery of why he abandoned England for life in the African veldt - a journey that takes Sheers from the genteel reading rooms of Oxford University's libraries to the parched landscape of contemporary Zimbabwe. Refracting Cripps's life through the prism of his own vivid imagination, Sheers illuminates the devastating effects of power, the potent effects of grace, and the legacy of an extraordinary life.

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A young British writer investigates his family's history and discovers that his great-great-uncle was a poet and missionary in Africa who became a passionate advocate for the rights of native peoples while also being branded a heretic by the Anglican Church.

Prologue
december 2000

Mpandi was one of the Shona names given to my great, great uncle,
Arthur Shearly Cripps, Independent Missionary to Southern
Rhodesia. The name was translated for me in Mashonaland, where
he lived, as 'the man who walks like thunder' or 'the man who shakes
the earth with his walking'.He was given many names during his life,
but this is the one I have thought of most often as I followed in his
footsteps, literal and metaphorical, over the past three years. Because
for me he has always been walking, always on the move. Always a few
steps ahead of me as I tried to track him down, as I tried to understand
him.What follows is an account of this search: the story of my
contact with him and of how the unfolding of one man's life can resonate
down the years in the lives of others. This account of my search
is true. It happened, just as Arthur's life happened, but the story of
his life that I have written is not true in the same way. This story is
written as a fiction, the fiction I formed in my mind so as to better
understand Arthur's life. It is, however, a fiction based on the facts,
stories, myths and tales I gathered while looking for Arthur Cripps.
Some of the people who feature in this story are imaginary, but most
are not. Of those who really existed, some of their actions I have
invented,many, again, I have not. It is the story of Arthur Cripps' life
reflected through my imagination. It may not always be true to historical
fact, but I hope it is true to the essence of Arthur's story and to
the essence of the man I discovered buried in the nave of a ruined
church far out in the Zimbabwean veld.

Maronda Mashanu,Mashonaland,
Southern Rhodesia

It is dawn in the African bush. Light is expanding from the horizon,
growing over the veld of rock, grass and dust. The first birds are calling
in the winter trees. Arthur Cripps, Independent Missionary to
Mashonaland is lying awake in the rondavel he built next to the
church he named Maronda Mashanu, the Saint of the Five Wounds.
He is lying awake and he is dying. It is his last day on earth. He is
eighty-three years old.
He listens to his breath and counts backwards.
Ten years since he lost his sight.
Thirty-seven years since he went to war.
Thirty-eight years since he built the church.
Fifty-one years since he came to Africa.
Fifty-five years since he fell in love.



3 january 1901
Beira Bay, Portuguese Mozambique

The irregular coughs of the man sleeping in the bunk beneath him
had been chiselling into his sleep all night, but it was the slap of the
sea against the ship's hull that finally woke Arthur. There was something
different about it, a change in its register and rhythm. Keeping
his eyes shut, he tried to work out what it was. And then he realised:
they were still, the ship was no longer moving. They must have finally
been allowed into harbour. They had arrived.
He felt a dip of excitement in his stomach at the thought of being
on land again. The journey from England had been more laborious
than he'd thought it would be; at least, the sea voyage had. He had
enjoyed the earlier train trip through Europe. In Rome he'd even got
a chance to visit the room where Keats died and the Protestant cemetery,
where he'd seen the poet's grave. Standing above the simple
headstone near the grand Pyramid of Cestius he'd looked down at the
engraving of a broken lyre and the strangely ambiguous epitaph: Here
lies one whose name was writ in water. The poet's friend Charles Brown
had interpreted this as Keats' abandonment of any hope of posthumous
fame, but standing there looking at it with the perspective of
eighty years' hindsight Arthur liked to think it was not this simple.His
name is writ in not on water. Part of nature, not fleeting but eternal,
twisted into the currents of history.He had often talked about visiting
the grave, but once there it had felt strangely unreal. But then maybe
that was because he had never expected to be visiting it alone.
From Rome he had travelled to Naples, where he boarded the Hertzog,
and that is when the harder part of the journey began: the unforgiving
hours of boredom looking out at an indifferent sea, the forced
formalities of the captain's table and the joking sarcasm of some of
the pioneer crowd. Most of his fellow travellers were tolerable, and
there was a particular group with whom he had become good friends.
He had a postcard in the pocket of his jacket hung at the end of his
bed with these people's signatures on it, a memento of their shared
trip. But there was another group of men, 'entrepreneurs' they called
themselves, who thought it fun to gently mock him and his vocation,
often late at night, out on the deck when everyone was enjoying the
cooler air. Their breaths heavy with port and cigar smoke, they would
interrogate him about his work in Africa – was he ready to battle with
witchcraft? Did he know they still ate missionaries in the Belgian
Congo? How would he resist the charms of the native girls, out there
alone in the bush? Inevitably the jokes would wane and they would
soon be talking among themselves about their own schemes for fortune
on the dark continent, but they had often irritated Arthur to
such an extent that he longed to take one of them on in a boxing ring.
Zanzibar had come as a welcome break from life on board ship. They
had made a double stop there and Arthur had taken the opportunity
to catch up with his college friend Frank Weston, who was a missionary
on the island. The voyage down from Aden had not been easy. Just
two days after leaving port the Hertzog ran into the south-west monsoon,
a curtain of storms and high winds that lasted for three days.
They were so fierce that when they finally abated and he emerged
from his cabin he saw that the two black funnels rising above the centre
of the deck had been turned a dull grey/white, coated with a layer
of brine from the waves that had broken into and over the ship. The
hull bore marks of the storm too. Immediately below the railings of
the lower decks he could see it was streaked with long pale splashes of
dried vomit, fanning out down to the waterline. Like the other passengers
he had not had a good time of it, feeling the sea beat itself
against the outer wall of his small cabin through long, sleepless nights,
so it was a relief when the clustered white buildings of Zanzibar's capital,
Stonetown, came into view.
The strong smell of cloves and spices carried on a warm trade
wind had heralded the presence of the island hours before anyone on
board could see her shores. The captain told them this would be so.
But there had been another smell too, equally strong, coming in
gusts, that puzzled Arthur. He enquired of it to a passing crew member.
The boy (he looked no older than sixteen) told him simply, 'Oh,
that's shark, sir. They salt 'em in vats on the shore before selling them
to the niggers on the mainland.' Shark and spices. Not for the first
time on that voyage,Arthur felt he was inhabiting someone else's life,
a Rider Haggard-type fiction, and not his own at all.
As the Hertzog steamed nearer through a flat, hot morning with
heatwaves tricking the eye, the buildings of Stonetown became clearer.
A broad white palace with pillars and grand steps dominated the
immediate ground behind the port and its frilling of palm trees. Part
of its façade was covered in a crude scaffolding and half-naked workmen
clambered over its stone like animated hieroglyphs. Arthur
realised it must be Beit el Ajaib, the House ofWonders that Frank had
written to him about, and on closer inspection he saw he was right.
There, behind the scaffolding, the white walls gave to a shattered dark
hole, the last remaining damage of the British shells that had thudded
into the palace back in 1896 in what turned out to be the world's
shortest war. Just forty minutes long, Frank had said. To the south of
the House ofWonders the massive bastioned walls of the old fort rose
from a packed confusion of smaller, square coral-rag buildings, their
wooden carved doors of red, green and blue the only colours in the
white and dull fawn of the new and old stucco plasterwork. Behind
these, the towers of minarets and the domes of mosques were the only
buildings tall enough to be seen.Arthur had expected to be able to see
the spire of the Anglican Cathedral that Frank had also written to him
about, but however much he scanned the outline of the town, he
couldn't find it. There were just the delicate minarets, wavering in the
haze against an African sky so blue he felt the colour as a sensation in
his chest.
As the Hertzog came into port both the town's buildings and the
noise of the place came into focus. A crowd of hundreds of people
were shouting from the quayside, woven baskets of fish and fruit carried
on their heads. After the flat emptiness of the sea and then the
cramped conditions of his cabin Arthur had been disorientated by
the crush of them about him as he disembarked from a launch onto
the harbourside. The dull familiarity of the ship fell away and suddenly
everything was strange again: men with bloodshot eyes
appearing close to his face asking questions in broken English that
sounded more like demands; the musty stench of goats wandering
among the crowd; children tugging at his jacket, softly chanting
'Meester, meester'; the smells and colours of the fish, nuts and fruit
they carried in their baskets.
Frank was there waiting for him. Arthur spotted him through the
crowd, jogging towards him, his arms outstretched as far as the crush
of people would allow and his voice a welcome foothold of familiarity,
'Arthur! Who'd have thought it? God bless you for coming, God
bless you!'Arthur held out his own hand but his friend dodged it and
embraced him instead.
Frank was soon guiding him out of the port area and into the narrow
alleys and passageways behind the main coastal road. It had been
three years since they had seen each other, and he saw Frank had
changed.His pale complexion was now tanned a dark brown, and the
broad face of his youth was leaner, narrower in appearance.He wore a
light safari suit with a clerical shirt and collar and the same wirerimmed
spectacles he had worn in England. He looked older. There
were flecks of grey in his neatly-parted dark hair and Arthur thought
again of the white brine on the black funnels, the signature of the
storm. But he was still the Frank he had known at college: energetic,
nervy, excited, with hands that explored the air around him as he
talked, and a face that managed to express both a frown and a smile as
he listened to you.
This morning he was as excitable as ever, anxious to show Arthur
his world on the island and what he had done there.He walked ahead,
one arm out in front finding a way through the flow of people pressing
against them, talking to Arthur over his shoulder, asking questions
about home, their old tutors, their mutual friends.
'And what of old Gore?' he asked, breathing heavily in the heat and
looking back at Arthur.
'No, unfortunately I didn't manage to see him,' he replied, 'but I
wrote to him and he answered. I have his blessing it would seem.'
'Of course you have, of course you have,' said Frank. 'Why on earth
shouldn't you?'
Arthur tried to continue the conversation as best he could, but he
was distracted, still coming to terms with his new surroundings.
Smells came to him like colours, distinct and pure, while his eyes tried
to keep up with the onrush of new sights after the boredom of the
ship at sea. Thin, leathered old men crouched in groups, dicing or
smoking on tall hookahs, children played at the edges of the passageways,
throwing marbles at tins, and women passed by quietly,
obscured in purdah, their heads averted as if they would rather be
invisible or a part of the walls they kept so close to. All of this seemed
to wash over Frank like the air he breathed, but for Arthur everything
struck him for the first time, as if his senses had been recharged. He
had hardly ever left England before, except for a couple of trips to the
continent, and now, just weeks after sailing from Southampton, he
was walking through the morning life of a world completely alien to
him, and yet so established in itself, comfortable with its own weight
of history (and this is what, on looking back from his bunk in the
Hertzog, he realised had shocked him the most), a world so Arabic.
Frank had told him in his letters about Zanzibar's Sultans and Arthur
himself had read of the Arabic influence on the island, but somehow
he hadn't expected this to be so pervasive, so ingrained in the
lifeblood of the place.And yet it was, and its existence there, in Africa,
in the reality of this unreal life he was leading, focused his newly
sharpened senses on his own situation. As he followed Frank through
the narrow streets, a thin showing of blue sky between the close buildings,
he felt the pressure of history at his back and he felt small in its
presence.
Later that day, after Frank had settled Arthur in his own quarters at
Kiungani, he took him to see the Anglican Cathedral which had eluded
him from the deck of the ship. It was an impressive building, solid
and imposing among the shacks and crumbling stucco of the surrounding
houses. 'The first Anglican cathedral built in East Africa,'
Frank had said proudly, as they approached its broad plastered walls
and tall spire that tapered into the clear sky above a blank patch of
ground.
'This is where the island's slave market stood.' Frank gestured to the
bare dusty earth around the Cathedral. As they walked towards the
Cathedral's entrance, he continued over his shoulder, 'Together with
the trade in ivory, it was this market that ran the island.'
Frank was still explaining the history of the site when they entered
the Cathedral's nave through a heavy carved door, stepping into the
relief of the building's cool darkness from the rising heat of the day
outside. Impatient to show him the peculiar features of the building,
Frank didn't wait for Arthur's eyes to adjust to the dim light, and
immediately began his well-rehearsed tour. In the nave, the huge font
made from Italian marble shipped in from the Apuan Alps, and next
to this, twelve pillars, all upside down, mistakenly erected that way by
the local workmen while the Bishop was off on safari. In the body of
the cathedral he drew Arthur's attention to the elegant Moorish windows,
and a dark crucifix made from the wood of the tree under
which Livingstone's servants had buried his heart.At the altar a single
round piece of white marble was inlaid where the whipping post of
the slave market had stood. Around this, to represent the blood that
had fallen there, were slabs of grey marble veined with red as if that
blood had just been shed and was still unfurling in the stone's frozen
water.
Behind the altar itself was the grave of the Cathedral's founder,
Bishop Steere, buried there in 1882, two years after the building was
completed. Behind this again was the entrance-way down into the old
slave chambers, into which Frank crouched with a lit candle. Arthur
followed, bending down low to avoid the stone of the door frame
above him.
The chambers were low-ceilinged dungeons of disturbingly small
proportions. Frank continued his tour, his soft voice falling like ash in
the bare rooms. This, he explained, was where fifty men or seventy-
five women and children were chained and kept for three days. One
deep channel for faeces and urine ran through the centre of each
chamber, and one narrow slit at the level of the street outside provided
a dusty ventilation. There was nothing else. It was a culling ground.
The weak did not survive, and the strong emerged back into the light
barely human.
After their visit to the Cathedral Frank had left Arthur to his own
devices and he'd taken a walk through the town again. This time,
walking through the streets alone, he found the strangeness of the
place he'd felt that morning had begun to settle into a rhythm of its
own. A rhythm he could identify and feel a part of. He talked to some
of the traders in the tiny, cool shops that punctuated the narrow
streets, and even bought himself a new khaki safari suit from one of
them. It was a little short at the sleeves, but he was pleased with his
rare purchase. Then he had lain down for a few hours in the cool of
his lodgings, listening to the town outside, the distant roll of the port's
noise and the nearer quick talk of women and children, in both Arabic
and Swahili. Eventually he slept, shedding his body of its sea
weariness, until he was woken in the early evening by the muezzin's
call to prayer, skittering across the sky from one of the minarets that
rose above the town's bustle of people, plaster and dust.
That evening he and Frank took a pony and trap out to the British
Governor's house for dinner. His sleep, seeing Frank again, the
impressive Cathedral, feeling the foreignness of the town ebb about
him, all of these had left Arthur with a sense of contentment that he
hadn't felt for years, either in England or on his journey south. Lying
with his eyes closed in his bed on the Hertzog outside Beira Bay, feeling
the gentle rock and swell of the ship, he remembers now how that
short trip out to the Governor's house had seemed so perfect, as if
just momentarily he and his surroundings were in harmony. The sun
blinked, low and orange, between the coconut palms at the side of
the road and dazzled in the sea beyond them. Through the trees he'd
been able to make out the dhows coming home from the evening
catch, each with its single sail, a white wing of wind. Beyond these the
reef turned on itself like a seam in the sea, while on the beach he'd
caught a glimpse of a boy and a girl playing under a stranded dhow's
dropped rigging. Even the swirls of dust thrown up by the pony's
hooves had appeared to turn and wheel as part of a greater synthesis
with which he was in tune. For the first time since departing from
England he had felt he was no longer leaving, but going somewhere
instead.
But that was before the dinner. The dinner which had, for some
reason, so unsettled him, and sent him off kilter as easily as the pieces
of driftwood he'd seen that afternoon caught up against the harbour
wall, turned and swayed on the wilful motion of the waves.
The British Governor's residence was a large coral limestone house on
the coast a few miles north of Stonetown. Again, Frank fulfilled the
role of guide as they rode out there, explaining that the building had
once belonged to Princess Salome of the Omani.
'Quite a woman apparently, marvellous gardener. You'll see when
we arrive, extraordinarily beautiful,' he said, shaking his head in admiration
as he spoke.
Walking through the Princess's gardens, with the scent of jasmine
and honeysuckle in the air and the evening light of a sinking sun,
Arthur saw what Frank meant. The house and the grounds were both
of a remarkable, exotic beauty. A long, open veranda ran the length of
the ground floor, with only a few potted plants and one large round
table occupying its generous space. At the centre of the back wall a
pair of dark wooden carved doors stood open, giving a view into a
large room with a window open onto the sea.White drapes beat over
the window, blown pregnant by the wind off the water. The first floor
was also open on the front of the house: a long covered balcony on
which Arthur could make out an African in a white robe walking the
length of it, lighting the candles that stood in tall holders around its
edge.He could also see that a wooden table occupied the centre of this
balcony and that a group of Europeans stood at its furthest end, holding
drinks and talking. One of them,wearing the white uniform of the
Colonial Service, saw them approaching and came to the balcony railings.
'Father Weston! Good evening! Do come up and join us. If you
hurry, you'll catch the sun!'
The company at that dinner comprised Arthur, Frank, the British
Governor, his almost silent wife, Mr Beardsley, a merchant from
Essex, Charlotte, his timid and much younger female companion, and
a man who introduced himself to Arthur as 'S. Tristam Pruen, Fellow
of the Royal Geographical Society'. As they watched the sun sink into
the sea a servant brought a tray of pink gins and a bottle of quinine.
Arthur declined the gin, but still took his five grains of quinine. The
medicine was bitter on his tongue and he wondered briefly if he
wouldn't rather suffer malaria than this taste lingering in his mouth
every evening.
They ate at the large dark wood table, its surface softened by the
touch of hands over time, and were served crab, red snapper and rice
by wordless, effortless Africans dressed in the same simple white robes
as the candle-lighter. Of the guests, Mr Beardsley, the merchant, was
by far the loudest. When he laughed Arthur watched the tips of his
ginger moustache tremble and he thought he saw the girl by his side
visibly wince at his volume. She looked worried, her strained smiles
failing to convince Arthur of anything other than her anxiety. The
merchant, however, seemed oblivious and was having far too interesting
a time quizzing S. Tristam Pruen to notice his companion's apparent
distress.
S. Tristam Pruen (he never said what the S. stood for) was a writer
of some repute among the European community in Africa, though
the party only had his word to go on for this. A few years earlier he had
published The Arab and the African, which he described to the assembled
company as 'a handbook of my own experience written down to
help and introduce others to the dangers and excitements of this dark
continent'.
On hearing this Mr Beardsley, who had arrived only a few weeks
before, began to ask Pruen for his advice on various matters concerning
adjustment to tropical life. Which did he consider the best cash
crops to grow on the mainland of British East Africa? What was the
most effective method of sisal production? How to prevent white ants
getting in his food cupboard? The best way to approach a native village?
Arthur watched him as he stabbed at a forkful of crabmeat while
asking 'And what about the rats, eh? Bloody things, oh, sorry fathers,
yes, the things keep getting at my meat wherever I seem to hang it. Size
of dogs they are!'
'Yes, that took me a while to work out myself,' Mr Pruen replied,
'and in the end it was my cook who solved the problem. We simply
hung the meat in the centre of the pantry from a rope with a knot in
it, and a square sheet of tin skewered through resting on this knot. The
rat will climb down the rope as far as this tin, but then find its desires
frustrated, slipping off the sheet clear of the meat.'
'Damned clever, very clever, sir. Why didn't we think of that, eh,
Charlotte?' Mr Beardsley turned to the girl at his side who forced out
a weak smile. Arthur thought she was going to cry. The Governor,
recognising that Mr Beardsley was in danger of monopolising the
conversation, interjected before he could ask another question.
'I understand you're quite a hunter too, Mr Pruen, is that right?'
Mr Pruen looked up at the Governor over his food, smiled, and sat
back, placing his cutlery on his plate.
'Well,' he started with a heavy sigh, 'during my time in equatorial
East Africa I have come to know the ways of the bush, and so yes, I
have had my fair number of run-ins and tangles with the wildlife
which lives there. I do therefore also have some knowledge on how
best to bag them. Or escape them, depending on the appropriate
action at the time,' he added with a snort.
The writer continued, his gift for verbosity leading him into a series
of anecdotes about his African hunting experience. Arthur noticed
how these stories all followed a similar pattern. Mr Pruen would
amaze the table with the plumage of the sun-birds or plantain-eaters
or the peculiar habits of the gazelle, leopard or crocodile, speaking
with the authority (and, Arthur admitted, often the love) of the naturalist.
Then he would explain in exacting detail the best method to
capture, shoot, trap or skin the creature in question. It was a surprisingly
candid display, he thought, of man's ability to worship and
destroy. To love and to kill.
He looked around the table. Mr Beardsley was enraptured by the
hunting stories, while the Governor nodded politely, obviously hav-
ing heard such facts and myths before. His wife, in contrast, a stout
woman in her forties, ate throughout Mr Pruen's speeches, silent as
she had been the whole evening, her eyes downcast at her plate, while
the young Charlotte looked straight ahead of her into the garden,
where the midges hovered around the candle flames and the fireflies
ignited themselves in short bursts of electric green. Frank, meanwhile,
sat quiet and small at his side, the way he used to sit at college when in
the presence of authority, real or imagined, as if he could by will alone
remain unnoticed. It was getting late, but the heat had still not
drained from the day, and as he drifted towards his own thoughts
against the distant stream of Pruen's stories Arthur felt a long tear of
sweat gather behind his knee and run the length of his calf into the
heel of his boot.
'But I mustn't talk about this kind of thing all night. Not when we
have new blood at the table . . . How about you, Father Cripps? I'd be
interested to hear what brought you to Africa.'
Arthur was only aware he had been addressed when the faces of the
others at the table followed Pruen's gaze. He felt himself redden at
being caught out not listening, but the Governor, who was experienced
in this kind of social situation, stepped in to help,
'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 '96Mashona 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 dinner parties, bright with
laughter and the sound of glasses in the night. 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. And 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 they 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, 8ft. or 9ft. 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 2ft.3in. 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).
From 'The Outfitter':
Clothes pegs, half gross. (Very necessary articles, usually forgotten)
Alarum – No wild animal will enter a tent at night where an alarum is
ticking. A luminous face (which shines well after exposure to the
brilliant African sunshine) is useful.
Two tweed suits, unlined
Two canvas suits for marching and hunting
Two flannel suits
Flannel shirts with good collar-bands but no collars
Three travelling caps
Two helmets (both good and cheap in Zanzibar)
Brown-leather, broad-toed, thick-soled boots
Strong, thick-soled slippers
Comfortable, easy slippers
Two pairs thin cork soles
One pair of lasts for boots
Spare laces
Linen towels
Turkish towels
Six pyjama suits

He put the book down, wondering why anyone would need six
pyjama suits and leaving the lists that followed for 'Cooking Appliances',
'Scientific Instruments', 'The Luncheon Basket', 'Groceries' and
'Packing Cases' unread.
Turning off the lamp, he pulled the side of his mosquito net down
and tucked it under his mattress. A short gust of air blew in from the
open window above his bed, indenting the net and briefly cooling his
skin. It was still hot and he was sweating despite his decision to abandon
his one pyjama suit and sleep naked. He lay there for a moment,
listening to the night outside: the turning of the sea's pages, the hush
and fizz of the waves on the shore, the sudden screeching and confusion
of two cats fighting, then silence. Just his breath in the sparse
room. Turning onto his side, he thought of his small packing case in
the corner, and of how his belongings compared to Mr Pruen's recommended
supplies. Two suits now (counting his purchase this afternoon),
some notebooks, pencils and one pen, his Bible and Book of
Common Prayer, a photograph of his mother (also called Charlotte –
he had thought of her when introduced to the girl tonight), an old
hat, some shirts, underwear, a pair of boots and not much else. He
rolled onto his back again, closed his eyes and waited for sleep to take
him. The whine of a mosquito caught inside his net swung loud then
quiet then loud in his ear, and he wondered, once again, if he was
prepared for what lay ahead. Or, as he thought of the Princess's story,
for what he had left behind.
That had all been just over a week ago, but already Zanzibar seemed
far away to him, already that visit was organising itself into memories
and so much of what he had thought and seen there had been lost or
altered. But at least now he would know if he was prepared, because
the journey was over, and he was here. Snatches of conversation in the
corridor outside his door confirmed that the Hertzog had been
allowed into harbour and they would be disembarking soon. He considered
going up on deck to take a look, but he was tired and he knew
he would be needing his sleep over the next few days, so turning onto
his side, he pulled the thin pillow over his exposed ear and tried to get
another hour's rest, or at least back to the half-waking thoughts of a
poem that had been drifting in his mind before he had woken. It was
a poem he had been working on throughout the voyage, a version of
the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, and there on the inside of his eyelids
he could still see the imprint of the lines he had formed in his semiconscious
state. They were just about tangible and he tried to call
them back once more, but like the ridges on a sand dune, they disintegrated
under his touch, slipping away, edging back from language
towards images again.Orpheus at the lip of the cave, turning and condemning
himself with every degree of his turn.And there behind him,
Eurydice, his lover, willing him not to, and at the same time drinking
in every molecule of his being before she is tugged back to her darkness.
Yes, he had the image, but not the words. They had gone, silting
somewhere in his sleep.He hoped they would surface again, somehow
they had felt right.
Turning onto his back again, he opened his eyes. Above him the
same dimly lit patch of ceiling that he had woken up to for the past
month came into focus, its cheap paint blistered with damp. From
Naples, through the Suez Canal, Aden, Zanzibar, and now Beira Bay,
Portuguese Mozambique. In all these places he had woken up to this
sight. All his dreams ended here, in this damp patch of ceiling inches
above his head. But he had chosen this, to travel steerage rather than
in the more spacious cabins of 2nd or 1st class. And he wouldn't have
had it any other way, despite both his brother William's protestations
and the concerns of the church committee, both of whom were dismayed
by his choice. Once on board, though, he'd soon realised that
he was still relatively well off, at least compared to the native passengers,
who were restricted to the open deck accommodation.
He had taken a look at their quarters on the second day out of
Aden, and was disgusted at what he found. The men (they were all
men) were Somalis picked up to work on the Rhodesian railways.
They were crouched beneath an ageing green canvas stretched above
them as an improvised roof. The rain, spray and sea wind all blew
through holes in the material, giving the cramped collection of dark
arms, legs and heads a persistent skin of moisture, slick on their bodies.
The area was completely inadequate, the space having been
reduced to make room for extra cargo, and he went straight to the
German captain of the ship and complained, demanding he take
some action to improve the conditions for these men. To his credit the
captain listened and agreed with him that something ought to be
done, though Arthur was aware of an irritation in his manner running
beneath the smooth surface of his words.When he returned in a
couple of days the canvas had been replaced, and a number of the
men had been moved to other quarters further along the starboard
side of the ship. But the situation still frustrated him. The divide in
comfort was a gross insult and Arthur made sure to take half his food
there every day for the rest of the voyage. And he made sure the captain
knew that he did.
The man beneath him was still having a restless time of it, not just
coughing now, but turning on the axis of his sleep as well.With each
shift of his weight the flimsy bunks rocked and creaked, and the loose
screws holding the bed to the wall of the cabin slid in their worn holes.
The man, whose name was Joseph O'Connor, was younger than
Arthur, more of a boy than a man. He was thin and pale, sent on this
voyage by his father to follow in the wake of Rhodes and his pocketfuls
of diamonds. From what Arthur could make of it his father had
booked this voyage for his son because he wanted a new world for
him. London, he had told him, was no place to start a life now, not
when there was so much of Africa to make your own, to build your
dreams in.He himself had travelled from Ireland as a boy to follow his
dreams in England, and now his son would follow his to Africa. And
that was what the boy seemed to be travelling on: dreams, borrowed
dreams, not even his own. But then who was he to dismiss Joseph's
borrowed dreams? Wasn't he, after all, travelling on dreams himself?
Towards them and away from them, pushed and pulled, by borrowed
and broken dreams alike.
He knew his decision to leave England had caused pain.He thought
of his mother's distress, her worries for his safety and his promise to
her to stay in Africa for just two years. But then he thought of his
brother too,William, how he had glanced at his pocket watch as the
train pulled out of the station, as if even then he wasn't leaving quickly
enough.He knew his brother loved him as much as his mother, but
he showed it in a very different way. And he would, there is no doubt,
be feeling some relief now his troublesome younger sibling was so far
away, now that things could finally be allowed to settle. Except of
course, lying there looking at his damp patch of ceiling, Arthur knew
they would never settle entirely; not in him or, he found himself hoping,
in her.What had he done, leaving like that? Maybe he should have
taken the risk and, like Orpheus, not gone on, but should have turned
back instead.And if he had done, then maybe she would, after all, have
still been there, waiting for him to turn.Waiting for him to come back
to her, for the touch of his hands on her face, the sound of his voice in
her ear and the taste of his breath on her skin.
Joseph O'Connor's dreams obviously weren't going to let Arthur
return to his, so, swinging his legs off the edge of the bunk, he let himself
down onto the floor of the cramped two-berth cabin. He reached
for the khaki suit he had bought in Zanzibar, hanging on the end of
his bed. Though a little on the small side, wearing it made him feel
suitably adventurous. He pulled on the trousers and put the jacket on
over his cotton shirt, before slipping his bare feet into his boots. Turning
to the cabin door, he reached for its handle. As he did, he glanced
back at the sleeping form of Joseph, who looked even younger now,
frowning like a confused child over the top of the twisted sheets that
had wound themselves around him. Arthur looked at him and could
not help but feel a pang of concern about what lay in store for this boy
in Africa. Joseph rolled over again, away from him, and Arthur turned
away too, opening the cabin door, stepping through it and walking up
the narrow corridor, acknowledging as he went that the concern he
felt was not just for Joseph. It was for himself as well.
He heard the noise as he climbed the steep stairwells towards the top
deck of the ship.Muffled at first, it became clearer the nearer he got. It
was the noise of men, not at work, but at argument. The cadences of
two languages were confronting each other above him, and while he
could not make out what those languages were, he could tell from
their pitches and rhythms they were infused with high emotions.
Aggression, fear and panic. Coming up onto the first level beneath the
deck he pushed through a heavy door, and the two tongues suddenly
became more forceful, like the heat from an opened oven. He broke
into a jog and took the steps up onto the deck two at a time.

As he emerged into the morning air the brightness of the light took
him by surprise, and his eyes were momentarily confused, shot with
white stars and a prism light reflecting in his pupils. He put his hand
out to steady himself on a rail, vaguely aware of the activity far below
him on the dock to his right, and, shading his face with the other
hand, waited for his eyes to clear. As they did the source of the argument
came into focus. The Somalis from the native accommodation
stood as a crowd further up the starboard side of the ship. All of them
seemed to be there, about fifty in total. They were tightly bunched,
and moving, swaying together, a muscle of men. As Arthur watched
they suddenly contracted as one, recoiling from something he
couldn't see beyond them. They were all agitated, but the raised voices
came from the front of the group, the part he couldn't see despite
his height. The Somalis were a tall people.
As he walked towards the group he could hear the language opposing
the Somali: harsh, Hispanic, but not Spanish. He glanced to his
right. There was the dock, and there was Africa. Black bodies worked
everywhere, carrying, pushing, lifting. A few Europeans stood among
them. Not carrying, not pushing, not lifting. They pointed. They
shouted. And they all wore khaki like he did.
It was the first shot that snapped his attention back to the deck. It
cracked and echoed through the air, leaving a sense of sound displaced.
He didn't think it was a shot until he heard the second, then
the third. He began to run towards the group. But then came the
fourth and the fifth in quick succession, each ear-jarring crack chasing
the tail of the other. The Somalis had broken on the first, and were
now fanning, spreading,melting towards him as he ran towards them.
They hit him like a wave, a riptide of feet rolling him, pulling him
under.He saw the flash of a blade swipe through the corner of his eye,
more feet, more legs and arms, then a body falling, its black chest
unfurling a sheet of blood to the floor. More shots. Six, seven, eight.
He was clear of the feet and legs now, but he remained lying on the
deck, his arms over his head, the same words repeating again and
again in his mind. Why don't they stop? Why don't they stop? And
then they did.
Suddenly, as suddenly as it had begun, it all stopped, and for a few
seconds silence came ebbing back into the vacuum. But it was not
long until more noise arrived, the sound of aftermath rising to the
occasion. More shouts, the German of the crew, an undertone of
groaning, the sea's slap and clap against the hull, his own breath, short
and close in his ear, the winch and pulley of a crane that had worked
throughout. One woman's scream, long on the morning.
The whole incident had passed in seconds, and already it was over,
it had happened. But Arthur's mind had not caught up, and as he lay
there on the deck, his eyes closed, he was still trying to register it, to
adjust himself to the sudden disturbance, the violent brevity of it. The
whole, sight, sound and smell of it. He opened his eyes. From where
he lay he could see the legs of the remaining Somalis, thick together
like a copse of closely planted saplings. Looking up their bodies he saw
they were being rounded up, collected, gathered by men in uniform.
Policemen. Two held drawn swords, one held a revolver, clumsy and
smoking in his hand. Then there, closer to him, were the bodies. Two,
no, three of them. The man closest to him lay on his back, his head
thrown back, exposing his neck, his pointed Adam's apple jutting
from his throat. His mouth was open, and leaked blood from the
commissure of his lips which trailed down his tilted face to his open
eyes, where it collected in an eyelid. A red tear, ready to drop.
He was still staring at the dead man when he felt the pressure of
hands on his body. He was being picked to his feet. Hands under his
arms, pulling him up. A face swam into view, one of the young German
crew, speaking in faltering English.
'You are hurt, Vater?'
No, he was not hurt. His body was fine. He gently pulled his arms
away from theirs and waved a hand in front of his face, making it clear
they should leave him. Behind them other members of the crew were
clearing the bodies. He watched, still stunned, as the man with the
blood in his eyes was hauled over a broad shoulder, and carried off the
ship, like one of the thousands of sacks being carried back and forth
on the dock below him.He felt the bitter taste of bile rise in his throat,
the swelling of nausea in his stomach and, thinking he was going to
vomit, he turned again to the ship's railings, resting his hands on
them, his head bowed, breathing deeply. The urge to be sick passed
and he raised his head once more to look down on the dock, which
was teeming again with work. In fact, it looked like it had never
stopped. It was all energy. Energy and sweat. The essential ingredients
for empire building, for the building of new countries, new lives.New
dreams. But energy and sweat would never be enough on their own.
As he had just witnessed, there was always blood too.

One of the Europeans standing on the harbour side, a stocky man
in khaki, had spotted him looking out over the dock. Arthur saw him
now, squinting up at him, one hand shielding his eyes beneath his
solar hat, the other raised above his face, waving. He seemed to be
smiling, but it was hard to tell.Arthur raised his own arm in reply, and
waved back, not sure in himself if he was waving a greeting to this
man or waving goodbye.

Bishop William Gaul had been waiting in Beira Bay since the previous
day, and on the dockside since dawn. He was, he knew, by nature an
impatient man, but this delay, he felt, would have tried the patience of
even the most saintly of constitutions. The Boer War grinding on in
the south didn't help, cutting off all supply routes from Cape Town,
making Beira Bay the main point of entry for anything and anyone
from Europe (and from where he was standing it seemed as if Europe
was sending most of herself to Africa). The port was impossibly busy.
The ship he had been told was carrying Cripps had stayed stubbornly
anchored far out all yesterday evening, and was still there earlier this
morning. Now, at last, it had been allowed in. But he was still waiting,
and the sun was rising, and the heat of the day was finding itself, flat
and harsh on his skin. So he stood there, at the back of the docks,
stock still among the hundreds of moving bodies and voices, looking
up at the high sides of the ship. Anyone standing close enough would
have heard him muttering frequently under his breath, damning the
Boers for their stubborn persistence in this war, and even occasionally
the British too, for theirs.
Like the other Europeans on the quayside the Bishop wore khaki.
Both his drill apron and his clerical coat were of this colour. He was
small, only five feet tall in his boots, but stocky with it. His face was
clean-shaven, and his skin a sun-burnt brown, taut across his cheekbones
despite his age. He was fifty-five. The only discernible lines on
his face were about his eyes, deep crow's feet, developed by years of
squinting through the sun's glare. His cheeks were lean, and beneath
his helmet, which was tipped back from his forehead, was the suggestion
of closely cropped grey hair, receding above the temples.His eyes
were blue, and made all the brighter in contrast to the bloodshot
whites about them.
Bishop Gaul had been stationed in Rhodesia for seven years now as
Bishop of Mashonaland, and on meeting people had taken to introducing
himself as 'the smallest bishop with the largest diocese in
Christendom'. His listeners often found it hard to distinguish with
which of these feats he was most proud, but he liked it as a line. He
liked people to know where he stood, of the scale of things here. And
he liked to be the first to mention his height, denying anyone else the
chance of an early jibe or comment.
The Bishop had lasted a long time,much longer than most. A total
of nineteen years of service, starting off in the south, far south, in the
diamond town of Kimberley, then migrating north, into Mashonaland
and the sudden violence of the native uprising of 1896. A widower,
he'd arrived in Southern Rhodesia seven years ago a hollow man, a
husk blown north on little more than the wind of his wife's death and
his own song lines of grief.He'd come to replace Bishop Knight Bruce,
looking for more of the pioneering work he'd done in Kimberley,
where he had risen to the challenge of that town to become both rector
and archdeacon. It was a hard town, hard as the diamonds at its
core, where the prospectors spent the days flogging their bodies in the
mines and the nights dreaming of the future happiness their riches
would bring them. They mined the earth for the elusive diamonds,
while he mined their souls for an equally elusive faith. It seemed like
an agreement, a contract, and over time he'd gained a respect in the
town, and not just when he was needed, to marry, bury, christen. He
also won the respect of the miners for who he was – a man doing his
job just like them. And diamonds and God, he'd come to decide, had
a lot in common. They both held promises for men, and were received
either by those who worked hard, who went looking, or more often
than not, by those who just stumbled upon them. No logic. Gems,
hidden in the dirt. Soul prospecting.
He'd had some success with this prospecting in Kimberley. Not
much, but enough to keep his belief lit, enough for him to feel he was
touching the edge of something, here on this wild continent. But that
was a long time ago, and more recently he'd begun to feel his energy
dwindle, his eye wander more towards what was to come, rather than
where he was now. Towards the end, and where that might be. Natural,
maybe, for a man of his age, away from home for so long.Not that
he was sure where home was any more.When he was married it had
been anywhere with her, his wife. Now, however, it was often bush
camps, ramshackle churches, one-horse towns. Would he return to
England? Perhaps. Or would he end in Africa? He'd often thought
about this, ending it in an African way, not an English. Waking one
night in his camp to the sound of the old elephants, swinging their
huge weight through the bush on their way to their mausoleums of
bone. How he'd walk out of his tent and watch their ink-dark shapes
pass before him, and how he'd follow in their giant footsteps, walking
with them to the secret place where he would take one last look at the
veld stars before lying down with them. To end. To disintegrate and
subside into the country which had for so long been calling out for his
body, which had for so long craved this union. Dust to dust, bone to
stone, his blood seeping into the soil.
As he stood there, waiting, the bishop absent-mindedly flexed his
right hand, and rubbed it with his left where it still ached and
blushed across the knuckles. A punch. An upper cut, yesterday, clean
between the man's arms, cracking on his chin. A hard chin, he
thought now, as he opened and closed his hand and felt the soreness
of the bone under the skin. He hadn't wanted to hit the man, but as
was so often the case in this country, it happened almost naturally,
violence evolving like a strange flower out of the barest of provocations.
Like yesterday. A hot, cramped train shunting along, stopping
for long moments of time under the midday heat. Flies in the carriage,
the boring veld outside. And inside, a furnace, where he sat,
sharing his hard seat with a bunch of railway workers, Irish navvies,
work-dirtied hands and week-old stubble darkening their faces. The
close space was filled with their smell, stale and new sweat pungent
on their clothes. They were eating and drinking, swigging beer from
the large brown bottles favoured by the working men. He didn't
mind this, the drinking. That was something else that happened here,
and he understood why it did. But their language, he minded. It was
coarse and blasphemous. The Bishop liked language, he liked words,
and to hear them defiled was for him like watching someone take a
sledgehammer to a beautiful gold watch. Sitting there, his eyes glancing
off the dull yellow and browns of the view, it got to him, the insult
on his ear. So he asked them to stop. Once politely, then, when they
did not, a second time more forcefully, hoping his clerical dress
might at least induce a sense of propriety in them. It did not, and the
loudest of them let him know this. A fat man, his shirt open to his
navel, revealing whorls of matted hair across his chest and overblown
stomach. He leaned over to the Bishop and spoke close to his face.
'If yooze weren't a fecking sky-pilot I'd knock you down for that.
We'll talk haws we want, won'we, lads?'
The smell of the beer, sweet on his tongue, his friends' drunken
agreement. The Bishop felt his anger rise and the adrenalin rush in his
body, making his hands sweat and his balls tingle. He stood up, to the
inevitable response.
'Jeezez Christ, e's a bloody dwarf!'
'Are yooze still sitting there, Father?'
'Feck me if it isn't a pigmy we've got here!'
The man stood up opposite him, again to the laughter of his mates.
He looked down on the Bishop, enjoying the height difference. The
Bishop, however, held his stare while he removed his collar and drill
apron, throwing them on the seat behind him. His heart beat fast,
pumping his anger around his body, but his mind was calm. Still.
'There lies Bishop William Gaul of Mashonaland. Here stands' –
more laughter – 'Billy Gaul.'
The veld rubbing by outside, the sun, brash through the open window.
'Now you can knock me down.'
An awkward pause, in which the man put down his beer bottle on
the bench behind him, then turned slowly to the others, who were all
looking at him, quiet with expectation.He met their gaze, then a smile
opened across his tobacco-stained teeth. He laughed, and they
responded. That laughter pulled at the Bishop's nerves, tugged them
tight, and it was as the man was turning back to him, still smiling, as
he was raising his hands, clenched, that he hit him. Clean on the chin.
And he went down.With the weight of a shot horse, he went down,
and with him went the Bishop's heart, sinking at the sight of this man
folding to his knees.
He looked up from his knuckles to the ship again.Apparently violence
had risen its head there this morning too. From what he could gather
from the rumours and reports doing the rounds of the port, the German
crew had told a group of Somalis brought from Aden they would
be used as slaves, not workers on the railways. It was the young Portuguese
policeman who came to collect them this morning who bore
the consequences of this information. Badly beaten by all accounts.
Which of course had brought his colleagues with their swords and
pistols. He'd heard the shots. He sighed. Thick-skinned as he was, the
indifference with which life was treated here still got to him.
In the past ten years the Universities Mission to Central Africa had
already lost fifty-seven men from the two hundred missionaries sent
to them. Blackwater fever, diarrhoea, animals, uprisings. The country
could find a hundred ways to kill a man, and the Bishop was all too
aware that they were taking its soul with their graves. The new missionaries
knew it too and were now even told to write their will before
making the journey. And choose their epitaph. From what he could
gather though, Cripps was a harder man than most. A boxing and
cross-country blue. Quite a runner apparently. Still, you can never
tell, he'd seen good men go under before. And apparently Cripps was
also a poet.
An increase in activity on board and around the ship's gangway
caught his drifting attention. The first passengers were disembarking.
A bustling stream of hats, leather trunks, dresses and parasols.
Women and children first. The Bishop scanned the people behind the
women, the men, for Cripps, wondering as he did what kind of epitaph
a poet chooses for his grave. He thought he knew who he was
looking for as he was sure he'd seen him earlier, shortly after he'd
heard the shots on board. A tall figure silhouetted against the morning
glare, resting his hands on the railings of the deck. He'd waved,
and the figure had waved back.Disorientedly, slowly.His arm delicate
against the sky.
Half an hour passed before the Bishop finally caught a glimpse of
Cripps coming down the steep gangway. Yes, it was the same man.
Head and shoulders above his fellow passengers. He was walking
beside a younger, pale-faced man and looking about him, his long,
thin frame making him resemble a curious heron. As he neared, the
Bishop took stock.An awkwardness about him. Sun-blushed skin, the
tops of his ears blistered and burnt by the voyage. His safari suit far
too small. Thin wrists. Not those of a boxer really. Striking eyes, not a
stare as such, but certainly a deeper gaze than most. The Bishop took
this all in, his own practised eyes skimming over Cripps once more
before passing judgement. He gave him five years at the most. Five
years before the fever, the sickness, the home-lust, the whole truck and
trial of this country buckled him. He was close now, and the Bishop
walked towards him, revealing himself from the crowd, his sore right
hand outstretched.
'Father Cripps, I presume? Welcome to Mozambique. Bishop Gaul.
The smallest Bishop with the largest diocese in Christendom.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'The smallest Bishop with . . .'
Cripps' eyes were on him; in his, studying him from below a frown.
The Bishop petered out. '. . . the largest . . . oh, never mind.' Then, indicating
the one small suitcase he carried, 'Is this all your luggage?'
'Yes.'
'Well, let's get you out of here. This way.'
Indicating to an African boy to take Cripps' suitcase from him, the
Bishop turned and began to make his way through the moving crowd
to where his car and driver were waiting, thinking as he went that he'd
never trusted poets anyway, but also, that he may have been wrong
about Cripps lasting only five years.His handshake had been that of a
physical man, and his body, though slim, seemed taut with muscle.
And those eyes too, they promised more.
That evening Arthur took a walk along the beach that laced the shore
to the north of the harbour. The sand was pale in the dusky light, and
the remaining threads of a sunset lay across the horizon. He was
relieved to be walking on the beach, out of the quarters where he and
the Bishop were billeted for the night at the Universities Mission to
Central Africa. They were comfortable, very comfortable compared to
his weeks at sea, but he found the place somewhat oppressive. The talk
after dinner had been mainly about the war in the south, or of other
matters of which he knew little.Unlike the other men there he had not
spent his recent years on the African continent and he found the discussion
alien and awkward. The Bishop, too, he was finding difficult.
He was hard to connect with and Arthur felt he had failed to win his
trust, though he couldn't think why. 'A peppery fellow, who I hope to be
great friends with in the future' is how he had described him to his
mother when he'd retired to his room after dinner to write to her.And
he did hope they would grow to be friends. There was the potential, he
was sure, somewhere beneath their awkwardness, for a genuine connection.
Though he knew his mother would want to know every detail of his
first impressions, he'd played down the incident on board the ship
that morning. He could not, however, disregard it completely in the
letter, and had slipped in a few lines about it in the closing paragraph,
hoping it wouldn't register too strongly there. He told her what he
knew of the events leading up to what he had witnessed, then brushed
over the actual confrontation as a 'bit of a set-to on board'. The platitudes
of the phrase jarred in him as he remembered the man with
blood in his eyes, and they were, he feared, betrayed anyway by the
sentence he wrote immediately afterwards. 'I fear,' he told his mother
'that it may be an all too characteristic introduction to this dark continent.'
Perhaps he would try and write the letter again. She knew him
well and he knew her. That line would ring back through the letter like
a plague bell at dawn, transfiguring every other phrase it met until she
would see nothing but danger and death in his writing. And maybe
she would be right. The shooting did after all hang heavy on his mind,
especially since the Bishop had told him the pathetic chain of events
leading up to what he saw.
The evening was on the cusp of night, but he wanted to remain outside,
on the beach. Ahead of him, further up the shore, he had spotted
a cluster of men dragging something from the sea. It was hard to tell
in the half-light, but they looked like fishermen, and he assumed the
weight they were pulling in was a net of fish. But as he got nearer he
saw he was wrong. The shooting had lingered not just in his mind
alone, but also in that of the sea itself, and now it was remembering,
recalling a body onto the shore and delivering it into the hands of
these fishermen, who were tugging its dead weight up the sand away
from the blink and shovel of her waves. As he neared them he could
make out the corpse they carried. There were four of them, one at
each limb, and the body was a man, ingested and swollen with sea
water. It was one of the Somalis from the Hertzog. The whites of his
open eyes were the brightest part of the scene.
As Arthur got nearer still he watched as the men struggled with the
body's wet skin. The left arm suddenly slipped free from its bearer's
grip, and the body tilted, slipped again in their grasp, then fell onto
the sand, face down. The men turned it onto its back, tenderly, and
one of them went to the head, passing his hand across the dead man's
face, wiping his eyes shut. Another folded his arms across his chest,
dusted now in a fine coating of sand. Then they simply stood and
looked down at their strange catch. Arthur looked too, from outside
their tight circle. Nobody spoke. Everyone was looking at the same
thing. A rose of proud flesh, pink and lurid, blossoming above the
man's left nipple. The exit wound of a bullet shot from behind and at
close range. Shot as the man was running away.
The darkness was almost complete when one of the fishermen eventually
left to fetch a policeman. Shortly afterwards Arthur left too, and
made his way back to his billet on the edge of town, which now shone
from its lit windows in the night, transformed by darkness from a
scramble of tin shacks and people into a yellow constellation, grounded.
He walked up the beach, towards these lights, and towards sleep,
trying to expunge the image of that opening flower of flesh from his
mind.His journey was not over yet. Tomorrow it would continue, and
he would need his sleep for it, he told himself. For tomorrow, when he
and the Bishop would ride the train out of Mozambique to Umtali,
and then on into central Mashonaland. For tomorrow, when he
would travel deeper into the strange country that was to be his home
for the next two years.

Copyright © 2004 by Owen Sheers. Reprinted by permission of Houghton
Mifflin Company.

OWEN SHEERS, twenty-nine years old, has received numerous prizes and awards for his poetry in Great Britain, including his selection by the Independent (UK) as one of Britain’s Top Thirty Young Writers. He currently works for the BBC.

In this limpid biography, Welsh poet Sheers reconstructs his English great-great-uncle's unorthodox missionary career in colonial southern Rhodesia. Intrigued by Arthur Cripps's reputation as a poet and as the beloved "shaman" of a rural Rhodesian native community, Sheers recounts his life of self-imposed exile through intercut time frames, imagined points of view and fragments of documentary evidence. Charting Cripps's life from his 1901 arrival in central Mashonaland to his death there in 1952, the author convincingly delineates a portrait of an ascetic subversive, more sympathetic to native custom than to white colonial rule. Sheers effectively conveys the white community's disapproval of Cripps's belief in African land rights and independence, although he does not explore a wider political context for Cripps's colonial critique. As for the contemporary sections of his book, while Sheers's account of his travels in the footsteps of his ancestor provides an informative update on postcolonial Zimbabwe, such journalistic impulses are sacrificed to anticlimactic pursuit of witnesses to Cripps's past. Sheers narrows his focus to a quirky family figure whom he can only distantly imagine, rather than undertaking a fuller historical journey. Obsessing over a rumor of a lost love in Cripps's past, he closes the book on the disappointingly clichéd note of a secret unlocked. Still, if Sheers fails to allow for full imaginative transport to the world he describes, he diligently accumulates absorbing and authentic visual and factual details that will be of value to those interested in Britain's former African colonies. (Mar. 25) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.