Darkest England (4 page)

Then Grandfather Harry, patriarch of the Harryslot clan, took from inside his coat the family's treasure – a beer mug on which appeared a picture of a young woman in a crown, and urged me to study it so I should recognize Her Majesty if ever I found myself in the Royal Presence.

We prepared to vote on the motion that the Society should appoint me as its official representative when Ouderling Basters from the local church, dressed in his toga, arrived to say that our time was up and we were to vacate the premises immediately. Ma Pienaar said he was probably there to count the lightbulbs. But we went away, as we were ordered, as we always do when our time is up.

We left the church hall and moved to the outspan place set aside by the municipality for the donkeys of travelling people, where we concluded the meeting, standing among our carts and beasts. On a show of hands it was agreed that the Society would raise funds for my journey and I was to leave for England as soon as possible.

Old Pa Lottering now objected that owning the Old Queen's Paper Promise was all very well, but how did we know it wasn't a lie and a fraud? The word of white people, in his opinion, was worth no more than sheepshit.

The Society resolved to ask Sergeant De Waal of the police station at Mouton Fountain. It was said that he had been to Cape Town, even. So he knew the ways of the world.

Sergeant De Waal, tearing his hair when he saw the Paper Promise from the great Queen, said, ‘This is the sort
of thing that made all the trouble in our land. This is the paper that robbed the Boers of their birthright. And will do again!' And he yelled at us to get out of the station before he kicked our arses to Timbuctoo.

We knew then that the Paper Promise must be true. We sold my twelve sheep and started a fund. Our people collected money together for the first time in their lives. The fence-menders who work all day in the white heat, lining fences against the jackals who steal the farmers' sheep; the hunters who bait their traps in the bush for the lynx; the shearing gangs who move from farm to farm: all gave to our fund, sure in their hearts that it was not too late to seek a newer world.

Very conscious of the honour conferred upon me, I gave to the Society this promise: I would describe those in England as they were, as I saw them, and as I judged them, free from prejudice … The journey might be long, the country savage, all may be wild and brutal, hard and unfeeling, devoid of that holy instinct instilled by nature into the heart of man. But I, David Mungo Booi, would say what I saw and heard – however dark – among the English.

For my travels I was equipped as follows: a great hat, its brim as wide as an ostrich feather, fashioned from finest buckskin; its cranial capacity very generous, measuring about the same volume as an ostrich egg, lined with three cunning pockets, sewn by Hippo-girl Lottering, with yarn made from the leaf fibres of the green rope bush, and strong enough to snare the wildest guinea fowl.

In the first of these pockets were placed two good strong notebooks, six green Venus pencils, well sharpened, and a small knife.

In the second of these pockets was hidden the flag of our people, which, until it was drawn by Stumpnose Du
Toit to show to the English Queen, had not existed. He was so old, this Stumpnose, that he dimly remembered something of the way our people had done these things once. On a good piece of linen, obtained from the General Dealer in Middlepost, Stumpnose painted our mother, the great moon. High in the right-hand corner, sailing golden and fat, as befits our mother. From the left-hand upper corner a swallow departs. The swallow is one of the rain's things, as we are; and so, as the swallow departs, so we too have vanished from the lands that were once ours. And under the honey-moon, our mother, in the foreground we see two teams of men holding a tug-of-war. The team below is made of white men; for it was from below, from the sea, that the first visitors came to us, those whom we took to be pale Sea-Bushmen. Above is shown a team of Red People. The contest to which this refers took place in the time of the early world, when animals were still people. When the men from Europe arrived in our country they said to us, let us pull the rope to decide who owns the cattle and sheep and goats. And we pulled the rope until it broke, leaving most of it in the hands of the Bushmen. And the white men said: there you are, you have most of the rope, take it and use it to snare game: duiker and eland and springbuck are yours. But we will have the cattle and sheep. You may have tsama melons and dress in the skins of wild animals. But we will wear clothes and sleep under roofs when it rains.

And watching this contest, in the right-hand lower corner, his hand to his eyes, is the praying mantis, the great Kaggen himself, who weeps for his lost Red People.

This flag I was to fly on ceremonial occasions, preferably when the Sovereign and I formally exchanged gifts.

Into the third pocket of my great hat there were placed
five thousand rand in old notes, this being the huge sum raised by our people for my expedition. With this money I would pay for guides and porters and provisions, as well as any taxes levied upon the traveller in England.

It was expected that I should be in the country of the English for no more than two months, as the kingdom was comparatively tiny and a man could walk from end to end in that time. Any monies remaining at the end of my safari, of course, should be returned to the Society. I was to outfit a caravan and endeavour to cut something of a figure. For it was only by a grand progress that I would convince my hosts-to-be that my mission deserved the highest attention.

In my baggage I carried gifts destined for the Queen of the Red Frocks, she being the kin-child of the Old Auntie with Diamonds in Her Hair: a little bush piano; the one-stringed fiddle; two ostrich shells, crosshatched in filigree engraving; a pair of the finest royal firesticks, cut from the oldest brandybush in the Kalahari, said to be the very bush from which, in the First Times, the High God made the Holy Fire from which all fires descend; also a fine digging stick with which she might search for tubers, roots, melons and grubs on her great estate, when the mood took her; a necklace of ostrich-eggshell beads, each bead carefully gnawed by expert crafstmen; a bow of
gharree
wood, strung with eland sinew; a set of twelve arrows, six tipped with flint, in the old manner, and six with iron; a supply of three choice poisons (the first was stored in an old ink bottle, a liquid clear as water, tinged with blue, which we pressed drop by drop from the jaws of the yellow cobra and edged with the dainty sting of the pretty black scorpion; the second, more potent still, was a matchbox which held the pinkish paste, squeezed from the belly of the poison-bulb; and, most effective of all, number three, fruit of the
grubs who hide beneath the
marula
tree; a nest of deadly cocoons, stored for safekeeping in a container made from gemsbuck horn, plugged with grass). And, lastly, a parcel of ‘star-stones', watery pebbles of great significance to the white man, collected from seashore and desert sand, where they lie scattered like gravel. A gift of the !Kung, who assured me that if ever I wished to seduce the aboriginals, I need only produce them; that they were more effective than fish-hooks, more lovely than calico and more lusted after than life itself.

And my people said to me, cross the ocean, David Mungo Booi. Show the Empress of the Rednecks, leader of the Red-frocked soldiers, the Great She-Elephant, child of the Old Auntie with Diamonds in Her Hair, this Great Promise. Say that her people are crying … Say that we have been molested and scattered. Say that we remember her; ask her – does she also remember us?

Now the question arose: who would transport me to Cape Town? Prettyman Lottering, his wife Niksie
⁵
and their three children owned the youngest donkeys, and their cart had new wheels. And they were regarded as very reliable – so they were given the privilege. We left the same day for the aerodrome, and England.

It was a slow journey. Prettyman stopped at the farms Good Luck and Alles Verloren,
⁶
where he had shearing contracts; the last of the clipping was followed by the usual party when the five-man-can went around the fire. The parties lasted longer than the shearing and I began to despair of reaching our destination. When at last we glimpsed Table Mountain we had been on the road for a month.

Cape Town was busier than a termites' nest. Everyone coming or going, always by motorcar, day and night; special roads ensured that the drivers all moved in straight lines without bumping into each other. Where they were going to, or coming from, no one knew or cared. But they were certainly very lively when they approached our donkey cart, sounding their hooters loudly, and waving, which Prettyman Lottering said was a sign they liked us.

I obtained my passport without difficulty after explaining to the clerk I was only the third person, amongst our people, to travel to England. The earlier travellers, Coree and ‘Little Boy' Ruyter, having been stolen, could not be said to have made the journey freely.

This kindly official expressed his regret that so few of us had left the country, saying that, if he had his way, special funds would be available to ensure that more of my sort went to England.

Next we set off to purchase my aeroplane ticket. To my dismay, this consumed much of the money so painstakingly collected by the Society. When I showed Prettyman the paltry amount remaining, little more than one thousand rand, he advised me to think no more about it, giving as his reasons the following. My expedition was bound to be short, since for experienced travellers of our sort, moving through a country, which he was reliably informed was not much larger than several sheep farms joined, would be child's play; that the amount of money remaining represented the annual salary of his uncle, a farm labourer and considered well off because he slept in his own bed and was widely regarded as the luckiest man in Abraham's Grave: finally, I was carrying so choice a selection of gifts for barter and exchange with the English that he doubted I should
ever need money at all, and he would be surprised if I did not return home with most of my funds intact. That being so, he asked, and I did not refuse, a small loan with which he purchased a good five-man-can, and we refreshed ourselves before continuing to the airport, and then set about equipping my expedition.

We bought a brown suitcase of the best cardboard to house the gifts assembled for the Sovereign. We earnestly discussed which clothes would be suitable, and in the end we chose a grey suit because it was known that the country was continuously grey and wet. Prettyman explained it thus: the rain is in love with England in much the way it was once in love with the life-saving fountains of the dry desert, in the days when the San ruled in Bushmanland. My suit, being of the sky's colour, signified our compliment to the heavens, by rendering to the rain the things that belong to the rain.

On the right-hand sleeve of this grand garment there was emblazoned the maker's name, picked out in golden letters on a green background:
MAN ABOUT TOWN
. I thought it a trifle ostentatious, and would have removed it, but Prettyman Lottering said it would show the English that I came of a people wealthy enough to equip a traveller in purest polyester. Wearing the name on my sleeve had other useful applications. I did not own a watch, but I could study the label on my wrist, now and again, thus drawing attention to the quality of the garment. Warmer clothing, Prettyman assured me, would be a waste of my limited funds, since the Queen of the English was bound to present me with woollen garments from her sheep, which were said to number more than the clouds in the sky.

I bought, as well, a pair of black rubber boots – for it is said that their country is one long field of mud, except for a few days in the dry season, and the house of the
Sovereign possesses carpets wall to wall. And an unknown number of indoor toilets. Its roof is as tall as the Dutch Reformed church in Lutherburg.

My suitcase should have been larger. There was only just room for my gifts for Her Majesty. A good selection of trinkets for the general native populace that I had intended for barter – several good clay pipes, a kilogram of copper wire and some bales of rather pretty calico – had to be left behind in the keeping of the Lottering family, who swore they would be returned to Ramgoolam's General Trading Store in Loxton, where they had been purchased, and the sum refunded to the Society. I must say that I had some doubts as to whether the goods would be returned but Prettyman swore that his wife would give birth to snakes if he failed to fulfil his promise.

My misgivings received an unfortunate reinforcement when, as the time came to pay for my modest purchases, my companions suddenly vanished. If there is a fault in our people, it is a certain love of trickery; the low cunning of a yellow cobra who sheds his skin in the veld and he who finds it, taking it for a golden belt, is stung as he touches it. At last I located the family Lottering in the bar of the airport, sipping sweet white wine, purchased, I am sad to record, with a bale of calico. Even so, courtesy required that I send the bottle around for a few last times, since, as Prettyman pointed out, weeping generously, there was every chance that they would never set eyes on me again, for I might be eaten by English wolves or drowned in some bog. As he was likely to be the last of our people to see me alive, some consolation was in order. It was my duty to provide at least another litre of consolation, for surely I did not wish to hate myself for leaving them to face my death alone.

And so I went for further refreshments.

As a result I was carried on to the plane with only moments remaining, and my last glimpse of my companions, which is with me still, is of the Lotterings dashing themselves fruitlessly against the barrier in an effort to accompany me to the door of the aircraft; weeping and waving, until chased away by the police, like naughty children. I have no doubt they then returned to the airport bar to fortify themselves for the long journey back to the Karoo.