Darkest England

by Christopher Hope

  The horses’ hooves drummed on the wet turf. English soil is soft and sounds well across a considerable distance. By laying an ear to it, you can read the state of the hunt while it is still afar off. The dogs were now in clear view, the pack almost hysterical. They had the scent, were heading in my direction – their jaws wide. The hunt was on to something.

  Still no sign of the fox. I reminded myself that Lord Goodlove was not keen-eyed. Many was the time on our hunting expeditions when he had mistaken a hartebeest for a springbuck. But he never minded, saying it didn’t matter a damn, so long as he made a kill.

  Still the hounds came on. I now thought it wise to put some distance between myself and the hunt. My pace, I am pleased to say, was as good as ever. As a young man I could run down a springbuck. I am no longer fleet, but I am still fast enough to outstrip the hounds they like to use, given some small advantage. I increased my pace as I moved past the giraffes’ enclosure and at the same time shifted my direction, aiming for the small wood. As I did so I felt the pack behind me change direction too. I heard the cracked bugle sound again. There was no doubt in my mind now. The dogs, the horses, the hunters, these things were aimed at me. Some mistake had been made. After all, the English redcoats in our land had been fooled by the appearance of the red-tipped aloes striding across the land and mistaken them for black warriors. My skin prickled the way it does when the sharp-toothed, red hair-clipper spider feasts on a man’s curls when he lies asleep at night. If the English had mistaken aloes for Xhosas, I told myself, why shouldn’t this hunting party now mistake a Bushman for a fox?

  The foremost dogs were closer now. The little dark wood still sat way up the incline, and I was conscious that I was slowing. The dogs were faster than I on the hill. And I knew my little lead was vanishing. I remembered the fever of the dogs when at last they close on their quarry. I remembered the cries of the Red Man as he was torn to pieces by the intoxicated hounds. I thought how sad it would be if I should perish this way, on green, foreign soil, without ever having delivered my message to their Queen, my notes gone, my travels among the English buried with me, my very memory lost in the darkness of this island.

  I reached the safety of the little wood ahead of the field. Here, perhaps, was some chance to go to ground. Many a time have I tunnelled into the ant-bear’s hole. The badger’s lair would be no different. Of course, the creature itself might object, but what with the clamour of the hounds above ground, he might not care to ask too closely why another should want to share his home.

  Alas, for the luck of the Bushman! The badger sets I found without trouble. But the entrances were firmly barred against me. Too late I recalled that this was the custom of the Master of the Goodlove Hunt: to block the entrances before the sport began. Another ancient hunters’ tradition.

  This, then, was a place of death. The badgers sealed in their sets would die slowly. The fox, denied refuge, would go more quickly. I turned at bay and I took from my quiver an arrow. They were too many, I knew that. They had always been too many. But some, at least, would die with me.

  It was then that the wood erupted into a screaming, exploding, whistling, jeering, ratcheting, hooting, firecracker world. The hounds yelped and snarled and turned tail. The horses, coming up fast behind, shied and several threw their riders. I saw Lord Goodlove fall slowly, as if he was used to this, and his cracked little bugle described an arc of the sort you still see when the Evening Star fades from the sky at the first light and falls into the veld, ready to be born again the next night.

  The huntsmen were being attacked by an army who came out of the trees and blew whistles and banged drums and rolled beneath the horses’ feet the sort of marbles that children play with. I felt myself seized by the hair and passed from hand to hand, from man to man, above the heads of the warriors, down the line, until I was deposited safely in the rear. Who my rescuers were I had no idea, except to know that they had saved me from the jaws of the hounds.

  As I was carried off by the raiding party, I heard someone say in tones perfectly throbbing with satisfaction that the hunters of Goodlove Castle would rue this day for a long time; that the Lord himself would be as sick as a parrot; that there was after all, perhaps, goodness and justice and peace in the world; that the Goodlove hunt was spitting blood and a damn good thing too because the travellers of Happy Common had just stolen their fox.

  They took me to their camp. A long line of ancient vehicles in a muddy field. There I was directed to one I took to be their king or chief or clan captain, for he lived in a vehicle much grander than all the others. The sort of magnificent conveyance usually seen only among the very rich Karoo farmers when they set off for their holidays on the Cape coast. It had a water tank on the roof, a bed, a stove, a chair; it was an entire house on wheels. I knew as soon as I set eyes on the visitor that here was a luxurious traveller, a rich explorer, and not one at his wits’ end like me. I was suddenly very conscious of my poor appearance. Living, as I had done for weeks now, in the green veld of Goodlove Castle among the giraffe and the lion and the tiger, I was acutely aware of how I must look to this handsome stranger, in my short skin skirt, my cloak and my spear.

  He wore a fine blue suit and carried an umbrella against the rain. But his other characteristics were immediately recognizable. He was short, like me. His hair and eyes and complexion were mine, perhaps a little darker; a Nama, I reckoned with a clash of Griekwa blood. He stepped forward with hand outstretched and spoke to me in my own language: ‘David Mungo Booi, ek se?’ Which I can translate, more or less, as meaning ‘I say?’ But, more accurately, this stranger from my country addressed me as follows: ‘David Mungo Booi, I presume?’

  1

  Accounts of the Cape San people suggest that women displayed a fold or ‘apron’ of skin concealing the vagina.

  Chapter Nine

  David Mungo Booi, I presume? An historic meeting; he is confined in an English asylum and is favourably impressed; returns happily to Little Musing

  Yes.

  With that simple reply, I confirmed my identity. A scrawny, ungenerous response, as it must for ever sound to ‘posterity’ and ‘history’ and ‘generations to come’, all of which would be enthusiastic spectators of our ‘momentous’ meeting, in some future time when news of it reached the outside world. So I was assured by the stranger in the fine caravan who greeted me so unexpectedly after my escape from Goodlove Castle, and who seemed disconcertingly, but distantly, familiar.

  What should I have answered, faced with a question so colossally foolish? I was ‘presumed’ to be David Mungo Booi; at first sight, such tentativeness suggests courtesy and the diffidence of good manners on the part of my ‘discoverer’. Look again, however, and the spurious nature of the question is plain. ‘Presumption’ implies room for doubt; yet where in ten times ten thousand miles might he have found another Bushman in the remote and treacherous reaches of darkest England?

  All this I reflected upon while being pinned to the ample chest of one Hendrik Mamalodi Kosi (for that was the name of my visitor), who filled the air with delighted cries. As soon as we reached civilization – he vowed – the good news would be flashed to the editor of the Zwingli Advertiser; and people back home, from Eros to Compromise, from Lutherburg to Pumpkinville, would rejoice at the knowledge that their countryman had been found alive in these terrible green wastes.

  Mr Kosi’s instructions from the editor of the Zwingli Advertiser had been very direct: ‘Draw ten thousand bucks, right? And go find the lost explorer.’ If the money ran out, Hendrik Mamalodi Kosi was left in no doubt as to how to proceed. ‘Draw another thou. And another. But find David Mungo Booi!’

  And he had done so. God be praised! And once more I found my face making close acquaintance with Mr Kosi’s rich shirt front. And I remembered then why he seemed distantly familiar. The suit, the diamond ring, the air of large confidence, all these had been absent when I had seen him last. He had had an official air, certainly, but then it would have been surpri
sing if he had not done so, for he was the clerk in the magistrates’ court over Eros way, and his job was to bring charges against Ashbush People suspected of stealing firewood from abandoned farms.

  I’m afraid we disagreed from the start. He claimed to have found me. I did not regard myself as being lost. What is more, I did not wish to be bound. In my time in England I may have been detained pending Her Majesty’s Pleasure; I certainly had been found, gagged, almost deported, dropped on my head, saved by a flying Bishop, nearly lynched by Remote-area Dwellers, tranquillized, collected by the Lord of Goodlove Castle, experimented upon by the women of the Castle and hunted to within an inch of my life … but I had always known where I was, why I found myself in a certain place and what I was doing there.

  Until now. We were moving slowly, but steadily, ever deeper into the countryside, bringing up the rear of a convoy of ancient vehicles; we were sole occupants of a spanking motorized caravan sailing along very grandly in a line of elderly vehicles, many rusting buses and vans, lovingly coaxed to a show of speed, hiccuping and belching smoke. The aim of the rescuers, it seemed, was to put a goodly distance between ourselves and Goodlove Castle, lest the Lord mount a counter-attack to reclaim his fox.

  Hendrik Mamalodi Kosi was one of us; that is to say, he bravely mingled in his rich person many family features. But there all similarities ceased. His fine blue suit sported creases so sharp you could have sliced bread with them; the diamond ring I had spied on his thumb flashed rainbows of light; and a thick gold chain snaked around his hairy wrist. I had not seen such prosperity since my one and only glimpse of a Government Minister who, having lost his way, turned up unexpectedly one day in Lutherburg and was persuaded to show himself, briefly, to a crowd of sceptics. That pale Minister had worn a brown suit; his well-oiled hair was much admired; and the sun made rainbows of the diamond in his tie-pin as he stood for a few uneasy minutes on the balcony of the Hunter’s Arms before being hustled back inside because the crowd began pelting him with stones.

  And this was strange. For the clerk of the magistrates’ court is powerful – but he is not rich.

  Yet Mr Kosi’s suit was richer, his diamond larger, his well-fed prosperity far exceeded in girth the person of our fugitive visiting Minister. Only in one aspect did the two resemble each other: they were both sure of themselves. The furtive Minister that he was in the wrong, and my ‘rescuer’ that he was right.

  As our convoy rolled through the green countryside, lashed to a frenzy of luxurious growth by the promise of summer, this intrepid explorer told me why he had come to find me.

  A deputation of nomads, calling themselves the Society for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of England, had turned up one day in the offices of the Zwingli Advertiser and told the editor a most extraordinary story. One of their number, a certain David Mungo Booi, had set out on an expedition to darkest England, there to seek the Queen and to ask her to redeem the promise made to the Red People by her great-great-grandmother – namely, to send her soldiers to the rescue of her beloved San. He had been instructed, also, to locate the grave of ‘Little-Boy’ Ruyter. And to report on the suitability of the country for Bushman settlement.

  Many months had passed without word, and they feared his expedition had tragically miscarried. Rumour was rife among members of the Society. Some believed that I had been killed by savages for violating food taboos. Another, more cheerful, myth held that the Sovereign so favoured me that she had given me a thousand sheep and I dwelt by her grace and favour in a palace, at no cost, along with other faithful courtiers, and I had forgotten the sufferings of my own people. Still others maintained that I had become a champion Royal Jockey, until killed in a fall from my mount while taking part in some ceremonial race.

  Hendrik Mamalodi Kosi had therefore journeyed to England, sponsored by the Zwingli Advertiser. On landing in England, he had attempted to recruit staff for the trek inland. But his expedition had been plagued by terrible difficulties from the start, when he had attempted, as he told me, very emotionally, to put some backbone into the miserable wretches whom he had taken into his service. But labour relations had been poor.

  I told these men, cried my rescuer, that they were fortunate indeed to find paid employment in a noble cause. I assured them that I would be fair but I would tolerate no shirkers, or malingerers, or dumb insolence. I attempted to awaken a spark of pride in the brutes. They were to take on the important roles of bearers and porters. The terms of their employment were generous and followed the guidelines established by past expeditions from their country to mine, and I expected them, at least, to respect their own traditions of exploration.

  Everything would be done in conventional fashion. Each would receive four months’ salary, in advance. In the event of accident or illness, they would be nursed, where they dropped, by a qualified member of the expedition. Each of the porters would be given a pack, never above thirty kilograms, and assigned a place in the line. A man’s pack would remain his personal responsibility, and exchanges between porters would not be permitted. Porters who showed promise I might permit to wait at table, where they proved quick enough in anticipating my wants.

  Next, I explained the procedures of the march. I proposed to dispense altogether with their names, as these were difficult to remember and to pronounce. I would number my men instead. The lead porters, with my supplies strapped to their backs, were numbered One, Two and Three; there would follow my bearers, numbers Four to Seven, carrying my sedan chair, behind whose silken curtain I would repose, reading one of the useful texts of the early explorers.

  My sedan chair was very lovely, built of solid teak with red silk curtains against the heat of the sun, and useful for privacy.

  The carrying poles of my chair were mahogany, rubbed to a dark sheen by the calloused palms of bearers long ago who might, I imagined, have carried it from the Cape to Cairo, from Lake Victoria to Stanleyville.

  But his staff, cried the magnificent Mr Kosi, were quite blind to the honour he did them. They had failed at the first obstacle. They had come to a small lake, which he had ordered them to cross. Their leader, a fine specimen standing well over six foot in his bare feet (bearers were not allowed shoes), broke down and wept like a child when ordered to advance into the centre of the lake. It was the fear of water – the island-dwellers’ phobia.

  Terror overcame him and he froze. I saw the box on his head begin to slide and knew that strong action was called for. Accordingly, I fitted an arrow to my bow and told him distinctly that if he did not move, I would shoot him where he stood. I am pleased to say that the effect was salutary, and in a few moments he splashed on to the further bank, a well-baptized porter, his burden still intact. One hesitates to use force towards them, but sometimes it is only force that is efficacious.

  Mr Kosi’s expedition soon foundered in recriminations and unhappiness. His porters absconded; his bearers stole his provisions. One morning he found himself alone and in England.

  Too late, declared Mr Kosi, I realized that the local tribes will always have more in common with each other, even if it is only hatred, than they can ever feel for the people of Bushmanland or the Children of the Sun.

  Finding the wretches either unwilling to work or ignorant of their own country, he had decided to travel alone rather than trust his life or his purse to rascally natives, riddled with inertia, greed and duplicity.

  He had begun to believe I had perished when, one day, he met the band of vagrants with whom we were now travelling. They told him the way to the Castle and of rumours that a little creature, half man, half monkey, with pendulous posterior, crisp curls and slanted eyes, had been added recently to its wild-life collection. When these vagabonds confided that they were planning to sabotage the Goodlove hunt, he saw the perfect diversion by which to cover his entry into the estate in order to check on the truth of their stories. Imagine his delight when the fox, snatched from the jaws of the Goodlove hounds by the hunt saboteurs, turned out to be none other th
an David Mungo Booi!

  His discovery came not a moment too soon. He had suffered terribly. His hair had gone quite grey in a few months. Fever, suspicion, hatred had walked with him every step of the way. This land had been called, truly, the Red Man’s Grave. Your average native was a hopeless fellow. If you gave him an inch, he took a yard. If you treated him with elementary kindness, he took it for weakness. Firmness, cried Hendrik Mamalodi Kosi, was the only language these people truly understood.

  I said, as one who had no answers at all, I would like to hear the language these people understood.

  His reply came like the cobra’s kiss, so quick, so toxic. Exterminate the brutes! He saw no other way. As one civilized man to another, the sooner we got out of this poxy little kingdom and back to a big country where a man could see the stars, where there was a future, and the beer was cold, the better for both of us. And this was his great good news. The Boer was defeated! Very soon, our people would expel him and set up a council of all the people, freely chosen for the first time ever. A new government would take over. Viva the new Freedom! Viva the new government! Viva the Zwingli Advertiser!

  I waited for him to dry his tears before I gently told him that this was just what I feared. How many times in the past had the travelling people, the hunters, the wanderers the Ashbush People, heard rumours of a new government, and of its plans for their future? First came the Dutch New Government; then the French New Government; then the English New Government; then the Boer New Government. Now, if I understood him, there was to be yet another New Government. Each administration gave way to the next, the way identical beads of ostrich-eggshell are threaded on sinew. One thing, however, always remained the same; the more of governments, the fewer of us. I saw no reason why our latest rulers should be any more tender towards the people of the far plains, the high places, the great road. They were too tall, and we too small. We were so far beyond their gaze that we had fallen off the edge of the world.