Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

A peal of deep laughter punctuated the end of a story behind him, perhaps one of Bill’s, with all its words unsaid. The men got up from their makeshift seats and dispersed past Cullen, making their way into the food tent. As Bill passed he acknowledged him with a curt nod of his head and what Cullen thought was probably meant to be a smile. Cullen watched him walk away, massaging the white bud of his crippled right hand with the fingers of his left.

The beat of hooves made Cullen turn back to the field in time to see a rider canter his horse past the drinks tent, warming up for the puissance, the first equestrian event of the day. He felt a rush of tepid air as the animal passed, scents of hot horseflesh, disturbed dust and oiled saddlery blowing over him. Cullen was a keen rider himself and would usually have been entering this competition, but his own mare had thrown a shoe out in the veld last week and the ride back home had left her lame on the near fore. He didn’t want to damage her any further so he would have to settle for being an observer this year. It was a shame, he thought, she was certainly as good as any of the horses cantering about the field now, and he suspected they’d have stood a good chance of being placed, if not winning the event.

His mare was called Daisy and over the last nine months Cullen had grown very fond of her; the idea of leaving her here when he returned to England saddened him every time he thought of it. The first time he’d ridden her in April last year was also the first time he had met Father Cripps. He was buying the horse from a local farmer and he wanted to test her on a long veld ride before parting with the eight pounds the farmer was asking for her. The communication he’d received from Salisbury requesting him to go and visit Cripps seemed like a good opportunity to try her out, especially as the round trip of twenty miles went across some good flat country over which he hoped he could test her speed. The mare, however, had only ever had the farmer as her rider and Cullen found the journey out to Wreningham somewhat unsettling, bouncing around in the unfamiliar saddle as the horse jittered and pranced beneath him, resisting the strange weight and balance on her back. On his arrival at Wreningham he soon found his visit to C. Cripps was to be no smoother a ride.

The request from Salisbury had come down from the Chief Native Commissioner’s office in response to a letter from Cripps protesting about the recent increases in the hut tax. Apparently the priest had published a poem on the matter too, and for some reason it was this that had particularly annoyed the Governor. Cullen was to pay Cripps a visit and smooth things over with the missionary, set the record straight and explain to him why his protest was misguided. The tax, he would inform Cripps, was a crucial part of European governance in Southern Rhodesia.

Cullen was not a religious man. Although raised as a Catholic, in his early twenties he’d made a conscious decision to steer clear of the church. Reason, he had argued, was what separated men from beasts, and it was to the doctrine of reason, if any religion, that he considered himself a disciple. His experiences with the missionary system in Africa had further strengthened this view. He disliked the pious attitude with which so many missionaries he’d met treated the natives. The arrogance of their evangelism annoyed him. The church, he had discovered, obtained the best land, the best farms, supported itself with church fees of one pound per head per annum, and yet its involvement in the country was frequently more disruptive than helpful. He was in Rhodesia himself to develop the country economically and socially and he couldn’t see the point in adding to this considerable burden by meddling with the natives’ souls as well.

So it was with some degree of confidence that Cullen approached the twin gum trees of Wreningham on his new jumpy chestnut mare. Armed with his reason and unburdened by any sense of reverence, he was sure he’d have little trouble defending the administration’s actions to Father Cripps.

♦

From his position resting against the tent pole Cullen watches the first competitor approach the puissance fence in the centre of the field riding a thoroughbred bay mare, her hooves beating out a rhythm on the hard ground. A few strides out he checks her with a couple of twitches on the reins, bringing her hocks under her, the muscles in her rump bunching up with restraint. Three strides out she lifts her head, the slab of her neck muscle contracting. The rider holds her there for one more stride, then gives with his hands, opening the door to her jump. With a kick of dirt and dust she bascules over the single pole and lands with a snort of her nostrils. A ripple of applause runs through the tents on either side of Cullen like a handful of stones thrown into mud.

♦

Cullen had discovered Cripps outside the long pole-and-dagga shack that served as the mission’s schoolhouse. He was sitting on a wooden Shona stool reading from a Bible to a scattering of young children who sat cross-legged at his feet, fidgeting in the dust. While he waited for Cripps to finish his lesson he tied up his horse and looked around the compound. Unlike other missions he’d visited there was little to mark it out as a European settlement. Women passed between the rondavels and the raised kitchen hut carrying pots and baskets just as they did in the native kraals. Open fires smoked into the still air and a group of older men sat at a dare of stones at the far end. The only concession to the mission status of the place was the European clothing the women wore. Bright skirts replaced the usual skins and limbo wrapped around their waists, and homemade shirts covered their usually naked breasts and the filigree of dark tattoos about their waists.

Finished with his reading, Cripps welcomed Cullen, if somewhat formally, to the mission, offering him tea outside his quarters, another pole-and-dagga hut with a crude sheet of corrugated iron for a door. As they sat on a couple of upturned crates a young woman knelt before them and held out a bowl of water for them to wash their hands. Another woman brought the tea, together with a plate of dry biscuits. Cripps spoke to both of them politely and softly and always in Shona. A herd of goats were grazing below the mission and the percussion of their bells lent the morning a delicate quality. Cullen suddenly felt incredibly calm after his jittery ride and he noticed that even his mare was now grazing contentedly where he had tethered her at the edge of the compound.

The two men made polite conversation but Cullen could tell that Cripps was curious as to why he had come to visit him unannounced. So, blowing his fringe out of his eyes he eased himself into the topic of the hut tax, following a line of argument he had rehearsed on the long ride over from Enkeldoorn. Hoping to appeal to Cripps’ academic past he presented his case as a form of thesis, explaining his historical perspective on the current situation. Did he, he asked the priest, know what the name Mashona implied? Cripps said he thought he did but Cullen went on. It meant blanket-draggers, dogs, a nomadic people whose women and stock had been threatened for centuries by the warrior-like Matabele impis. This, he explained to Cripps, was the kind of life the settler administration had saved the Shona from, giving them roads, medical supplies, courts, schools and above all, protection. All this had to be paid for and the hut tax was the most efficient way of doing so.

Cullen was doing his best to make this point in his most affable manner. He had, in his time, charmed farmers, police chiefs and natives with his ability to be liked and he saw no reason why he shouldn’t prove as successful with Cripps.

Cripps listened, but he had an answer for every point Cullen made. He understood his position but didn’t he think, he asked, that his argument suffered from an asymmetry of indulgence on behalf of the philanthropic nature of European settlement? Hadn’t there been as much taking as giving? And anyway, he pointed out, the roads only go to where Europeans want to go, and the courts judge crimes and impose sentences that didn’t exist before the settlers arrived. Cullen would have to forgive him if he still considered the hut tax too high a price to pay for the disruption already caused to the Africans by the settler influence.