Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

While no one (O God) through the years will say

The simplest, common word in just your way.

When he has finished reading Richard remains standing by the bookshelf looking at the poem, as if expecting another line to emerge from the blank page under the text. An alternative thought to turn the poem around, another last line to answer that which closes it now. He holds the book before him, open across his joined hands like a prayer book. I look at his face and I see his lively eyes have dimmed, rimmed with red and filmed with tears.

♦

After lunch in his little dining room we go back into the front room. Richard sits in his armchair. The day is at full heat outside, the window a white square of pure light behind a thin curtain. I want to know what else Richard knows about you, what he knows about your life before Africa.

‘Well,’ he says, his English accent laced with traces of South African flat vowels, ‘I’ve always been interested in people and when I was with him I thought, well, did I dare ask him about, you know, how he became a Christian and all that? And no trouble at all, he told me his kind of spiritual story.’ Richard leans forward, his elbows on his bare, bald knees. ‘Well, he said, it goes back to one moonlight evening. He was reading Keats’ poetry — he was living in someone’s house, his uncle’s house I think he said, but I don’t know now — and he said, ‘I was overwhelmed with beauty and I walked out into the moonlight garden and all the cadences of Keats’ poetry were surging through my mind and I fell in love with beauty. But I didn’t know that was God at the time.’

’

Richard sits back in his chair, a playful smile on his face and his eyes sparking up again. Resting his hands on his stomach, he continues with the story, speaking Cripps’ words as if from a well-rehearsed script;

‘Then he came across a book called Trooper Peter Halket by Olive Schreiner. In this book Trooper Halket is horrified when he kills an African, and as he looks at the body lying there he sees the figure of Christ, a black Christ, hanging on a cross. A black Christ. This impressed Cripps very much and he wanted to learn more about the cross and Christ, so the next thing he came across was the Life of Francis of Assisi. Now, he put all those things together you see: beauty, Keats’ poetry and God, Christ in people, black or white, and the life of poverty and simplicity of Francis of Assisi.’

Richard begins to cough and takes a drink of water from a glass on the table. So far this is all a story I know. Your story again, in yet another person’s words. The same story, different words.

‘Well, he decided he wanted to become a priest. He did his training and as a young priest or a deacon he was sent to a church, now I’ve forgotten the name of it, but there, well, something happened, so that although…’ He trails off, suddenly less sure of the well-trodden path of this tale. His manner changes and his voice falters, gets quieter. ‘You see, I only learnt what happened much later…Now this is the strangest thing — I don’t know whether to jump the gun and tell you. I only learnt this years, years later you see. It was when I took early retirement, when I was about sixty-two or sixty-five, and my wife and I moved to the retreat, back in Bonda. While we were there we got a letter from a girl called Mazzy, Mazzy Shine, saying could she come and visit us because, like you, she wanted to find out about Arthur Shearly Cripps.’

He shakes his head, smiling again, ‘It was the strangest thing really. She was a nurse in London and she shared a flat with my brother’s daughter, Grizelda Holderness. So they were living in London, and she read, I think the life of Bishop Paget, which has a number of quotations from me, especially about Arthur Shearly Cripps. So she said to Grizelda, ‘Who’s this Richard Holderness, because I want to get in touch.’ Anyway, she came to stay with us at Bonda, and when we were all there she told us the most startling, strange story. She said, ‘You know I am Arthur Shearly Cripps’ granddaughter?’ And I said, ‘But he never married,’ and then she said, ‘But no, that’s the story.’

’

The piano stands in the middle of the hall where the delivery men left it, each of its four carved feet set on thick swabs of cloth, raising it off the floor’s scarred flagstones. Ada sits in a chair opposite, her apron untied, a dishcloth and a letter in her lap, looking at it, trying to stop a sob that is gathering like a cloud in her chest from rising into her throat and her eyes.

The letter came with the piano, folded in an envelope slid into the back of the polished lid over the keyboard. It is from Arthur. It is short and to the point, written in his sloping handwriting, dark across the page. It says he is leaving England. That he is going to Africa. A place called Mashonaland in Southern Rhodesia. It says that the piano is a present. Something to remember him by. It says now she will always be able to sing and play. It says he loves her and he loves Theresa, but it is best for all of them if he leaves. And as always, on another sheet, there is a poem.

Ada reads the letter again. So that is why he came last week. Out of the blue, the first time she’d seen him for over four years. He’d said he was visiting Reverend Churton and wanted to call on them while he was here. He’d said he was sorry he hadn’t warned her he was coming, but he was worried that she would say he could not come. He did not say he had come to say goodbye. He did not say he had come to see his daughter for the first and maybe the last time. He had said nothing about this. Until now. Ada looks up from the letter to the piano again. The front door is still partly open and a slab of winter light falls across it, catching the carvings on its legs and its lid. A dark wooden upright, carved all over with leaves as if it were overrun with dark ivy. Delicate and ornate, it looks out of place in the bare hall. From another world, its clawed feet fantastical above the stone floor.

Ada stands and goes to it. She lifts the lid of the keyboard. Still holding the letter and the cloth in her other hand, she presses her finger against the middle C. The action of the hammer is smooth and effortless, releasing a single note through the body of the piano into the still air of the hall.

As it fades she hears the kitchen door open behind her. She turns and sees Theresa standing there, looking at her. Then she looks at the piano. She walks towards Ada, frowning at the instrument.

‘What’s that?’ she says, pointing at its carved legs.

‘It’s a piano, sweetheart.’

‘Is it yours, mama?’

Ada sits back on her chair and draws Theresa to her, stroking the hair from her face. ‘No, love. It’s ours.’

♦

Ada knew she was pregnant long before she began to show. It was the summer of 1896. A hot summer full with scents and tastes which became more vivid to her overnight. Some just stronger, others repulsive. The honeysuckle in the lane, the turned hay, the pig food, the fermenting hops. The smells she had grown up with all her life, startling and pungent in a way they had never been before. And tastes too. She remembers crushing a raspberry against her tongue and its sweetness seeming almost unbearable in her mouth. As if she were feeling for two. And when she didn’t bleed for the second following month, she knew her instincts were right. She was carrying Arthur’s baby, and it was already alive in her, feeding her sensations as she was feeding its growth.

When she was sure, she told Arthur. He held her and reassured her, told her everything would be all right. He loved her and he wanted her to be his wife. But then they had to tell her father. And Arthur’s brother. She had been so unprepared, she sees that now. She had not expected her world to be taken out of her hands like that. As if her life were not hers after all; as if any sense of it being so had been nothing more than an illusion. She remembers feeling like one of her father’s prize sows, an item of stock to be traded on, passed into another farmer’s hands. She had always hoped one day her father would give her away, but never like that.