Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

Cullen had no choice but to laugh and agree. It really was late now and he had to get Daisy back to her owner. So he’d left without contesting Cripps’ point, but in many ways, as he rode back to town, he wished he had. Then perhaps he would have resolved what Cripps was getting at, and maybe resolved the comment in his own mind too instead of pondering on it all the way home. At least Daisy had been calmer on that return journey. Her trip into the veld seemed to have tempered her and it was on that day, when Cullen finally saw the first lights of Enkeldoorn in the distance, that he’d resolved to buy her. Damn the eight pounds he couldn’t afford; she seemed settled with him, and he with her. It would be a shame to say goodbye to each other now.

♦

A well-built grey gelding ridden hard by a farmer canters towards the puissance fence, tossing and throwing its head. Cullen watches as it straightens its forelegs a couple of strides out, scuffing up the ground with its hooves, bringing its hind legs sliding under its belly. The farmer lurches out of his seat, losing a stirrup which flips over the saddle behind him. The crowd lets out another gasp, more urgent this time, as the farmer clings on around the horse’s neck and the gelding hits the wing of the fence before spooking and galloping off across the field, the farmer clasped to its side like a child to its mother.

♦

Cullen shifted himself away from the tent pole and stretched his arms above his head. The day was getting hot and he could do with a drink, but thinking of that day with Cripps had made him even more anxious to talk to the priest today. Since April they’d become much better friends than could have been expected after that first discussion, but he still didn’t know him well enough to ask him the questions he had really wanted to on that first meeting. Did he get lonely out there on his own? How did he defend his position as a missionary? What did he think about on those week-long treks of his across the veld? No, he hadn’t asked those questions, but today, if he could catch him, then maybe he would. After all, if he was going to write about Cripps he had to know what made the man tick. What he knew at the moment, the facts, how he acted, what he thought, wasn’t going to be enough.

♦

Another horse approaches the puissance fence, a bay thoroughbred ridden by an army officer. Again Cullen watches as the animal gathers its energy a couple of strides before the pole, now standing at over six foot, then launches itself into the air. With a twist of its hind legs it clears the fence, landing heavily on the other side in a cloud of earth and dust. Distracted by his thinking about Cripps, Cullen has only been half watching the event, but the loud cheering and applause from the crowds indicates this horse has won. The officer swings the thoroughbred around and canters up to the front of the tents where he brings her to some kind of a halt, the mare’s veins standing proud beneath her sweat-darkened coat. Her blood is still pumping hard and she jogs and fidgets under him as Charlie pins the blue first place rosette to her bridle.

♦

After the puissance Cullen watches Cripps compete again, this time in the one-mile walk, lining up with a string of other men, distorted by the midday haze as if they were reflected in a fairground mirror. On the crack of the starter’s gun the line breaks and the men begin striding the three laps of the horse track. A mounted judge trots beside them, moving up and down the line, keeping watch on their stride lengths. Cripps seems in his element and is far out in front when another man suddenly gains on him in the final straight to pip him at the post. It is clear to Cullen that this man had broken into a jog to catch up with Cripps, and sure enough he watches as the mounted judge trots up to Cripps, leans down to speak to him, then canters up to the tents where he brings his sweating horse to a halt and announces Father Cripps as the winner. Cripps walks up to the tents, obviously pleased, to receive his trophy from Charlie. Charlie shakes the priest’s hand vigorously and leads the crowd in a round of applause. As the clapping dies down Cullen thinks this is probably a good time to corner Cripps for a chat, but as he begins to walk over towards him he is stalled by Charlie’s voice booming across the field, followed by more clanging on the milk churn.

‘Last call for entries for the high jump!’

The high jump is the only event Cullen is entering today. He stops by the drinks tent, where he sees Cripps sitting with a glass of lime juice in his hand. The priest acknowledges him with a wave of the hand and Cullen is about to approach him when Charlie’s voice cuts through the chatter again;

‘High jump, Cul! Where the bloody hell are you?’

Managing just a brief smile to Cripps, Cullen turns out towards the field and jogs over to where Charlie is standing with a group of other men, shouting ahead of him as he runs towards them;

‘All right Charlie! Calm down, I’m here.’

♦

Cullen won the high jump, as he had expected to, and it was as he was receiving his own trophy from Charlie, its metal smelling of new polish and two thin blue ribbons tied to its handles, that the screams started.

First a woman’s, a primitive scream of fear, and then others, men and women, two, three, a fourth, joining in like a macabre chorus. The crowd around the tents stands frozen, a painting of the day, looking above each other’s heads as they listen for the next sound to reach them from the town. But it is another voice they hear, a man’s, an African’s, shouting and getting louder as he gets nearer. The first time he shouts, no one can make out what he is saying, but then the words find themselves on the air and they hear him crying out, over and over, ‘ Shumba! Shumba! ’

The word ignites the crowd like a flame to touch paper. The men begin herding the women and children into the two tents, fathers picking up sons and daughters under each arm. Others drop their drinks and their food in the dust and sprint to meet the man running from the town. A large Boer farmer shouts at his boy, his booming Afrikaans voice laying itself down over the panicked chatter like a slab of granite over ants, ‘My gun! Get my bloody gun! Kurmidza! Kuru-midza! Quick now!’ The boy runs off, his pale soles flicking up behind him, puffs of dust touching off the ground with each sprinting step. The army officer is struggling with his horse, hanging off its bridle with both hands as it wheels around showing the whites of its eyes, panicked by the rush of people into the tents and the men into the town.

♦

Arthur reaches the edge of the town shortly after Cullen, who he follows down the side of a house and through a gap between two stores where a group of men are already standing on one of the stoeps. They are all staring at the far end of the high street. Arthur joins them and follows the line of their pointing fingers.

At the other end of the town, no more than 300 yards away, a lioness is padding down the empty high street, golden against the dun road, her head slung low between her powerful shoulders. She is thin and Arthur can see her angular hip-joints protruding, working mechanically under her skin as she prowls down the street and circles to face the post office. She stops and Arthur feels the group of men hold their breaths. McGregor, the police chief, whispers ‘Stay calm everyone, Charlie’s bringing a gun now, just stay still.’ As he speaks the lioness turns her head to face them. Her movement is fluid, slow, careful. Their smell of sweat, cloth and urine has reached her on the breeze and her impassive face breaks into a snarl, her upper lip retreating to bare her white teeth and the fleshy black skin of her gums.

Arthur hears footsteps behind him, someone running towards them, and someone else say, ‘Here he is, here he is now, clear a space.’ But Arthur doesn’t turn to look at Charlie. He is transfixed by the lioness, by the dreadful ease of her body, the amber of her eyes and the way she moves, pneumatically, sliding under her own spine. She should look so strange, there in the street which is normally bustling with people. But to Arthur it is the buildings around her that suddenly look strange, out of place. He watches her move a little further down the street, and however unfamiliar the sight is, unnatural, disjointed, he cannot bring himself to see her as an impostor. She is of the veld, and she is reclaiming her territory, moving between the clumsy buildings of brick and wood, marking them ephemeral with every print of her paw in the dust.