Darkest England (34 page)

It was while still on my knees that I heard behind me hurrying footsteps, and into the room strode a quick fierce man carrying a riding crop. His hair had faded to the dull gleam of the golden double-daisy after cows have eaten it and their milk is already turning sour. He wore jodhpurs; he slapped the riding crop frequently against the side of his breeches with the flat retort of a rifle echoing across the veld when the Boers are shooting our springbuck.

The look of tender dismay that spread across the Sovereign's face told me at once that this person belonged to her
family circle. It was also perfectly plain that she struggled to maintain her regal calm in the peppery presence of this quivery, irritable, sharp, barking man, who was now demanding, in a little voice, not unlike that of the jackal when it scents young lambs in the veld, to know if I was some sort of Chinese chappy.

Rising to my feet and replacing my hat, I replied that I was an ambassador of the Red People.

Was I not rather too yellow to claim that colour? came the response. And why the slitty eyes? Not another bloody foreign honour guard? He touched a flat hand to the bridge of his noble nose, saying he had had them ‘up to here'. More odd-bods from the four corners than he'd had hot breakfasts; little nippy wallahs with wavy knives; also blokes who'd barely taken the bones out of their noses or stopped eating their cousins; not to mention painted chappies from unpronounceable places who sported the most disgusting engine cowlings over their primary bits and pieces. Queuing up to clatter around the Palace courtyard. Didn't matter much any more – if only the poor buggers had known. There would soon be no one left to guard. Her Majesty was surrounded by enemies. They picked off her relatives one by one. Attacked their hunting rites. Jeered at their marriages. The great panjandrums of the press, not to mention the weasels among her Ministers; all determined to sink the greatest Royal House in the world.

Addressing the Sovereign directly, he asked if it was any wonder that so many of their family had gone to pot. Made foolish marriages. Tried to pass themselves off as entertainers, architects, photographers, even – God help him – soldiers or sailors. Anything at all but heirs to the bloody throne! Descendants of the great George and his Dragon, of Arthur, of Harold, of Hengist, not to mention
Cnut. What good was I, then, ambassador of the Red People? Red, green or yellow – it was yet another damn honour-guard of slitty-eyed pygmies wearing funny hats and not much else getting ready to slam the stable door after the horse had bolted. Unless something was done, and done pretty bloody chop-chop, she could kiss her throne goodbye; and she had that from the horse's mouth.

She lifted her nose as though assailed by the rank perfume of that noxious shrub we call the dog-shit-and-piss-bush. When she replied, it was to introduce this individual as the Royal Consort; the Royal Upper Lip was as stiff as a bowstring.

David Mungo Booi, she informed her Consort, hailed from the far Northern Cape, where I had been cruelly oppressed by the Bores. She had found more wisdom in my little yellow person than in a number of people she could mention who had had far greater privileges. And enjoyed a far higher level of sophistication. In the first place, I understood entirely the threat posed to the survival of her family band. I was prepared to stand by her side and fight against the destruction of her natural habitat. I was amongst the few people in the world who did not wish to see her go the way of the quagga, or the wild horse, or the black-maned Lion. I had offered more than mere words; I had pledged an honour-guard of brave San hunters. And I had offered her asylum in far-away Bushmanland. A great place of her own, as well as music, dancing and esteem.

That was interesting, her Consort replied – and cracked his whip, several times – for the Monarch. But what of the children, for example? Would they have residence rights on her new estates between Calvinia and Canarvon? She knew how awkward they could be. What would they do all day? And what would he do?

I was happy to reassure him. Younger royal males would learn musical skills, the arts of hunting, the preparation of poisons, the carving of bows, the finding of honey. Females would study how to carry water in ostrich eggs, the science of roots and tubers, healing, dancing, how to shampoo themselves with sheep's fat and
buchu
, and the knowledge of where the tsama melons lay thickest. The Royal Consort would do, as he had always done: consort with the Sovereign, fish, ride and issue advice, offer opinions and give orders wherever he travelled.

This was satisfactory, Her Majesty declared. But before finally severing contacts with her ungrateful subjects and moving Crown, Consort and household to the banks of the Riet River, she would have to go through the proper channels. However, she anticipated little opposition.

At which her Consort nodded agreement – and laughed bitterly. I should make arrangements for their asylum in Bushmanland as soon as possible.

My impatience now was almost ungovernable. I longed to inform my people of the immense privilege about to descend upon them. But one thing remained.

Again I knelt. I had come to England, I told the Monarch, in search of a child: ‘Little Boy' Ruyter, stolen from his family by her red-coat soldiers. His family had my solemn promise that I would return with the bones of the stolen child and we would lay them to rest under the Karoo stars.

Once upon a time – Her Majesty replied – there had come into the family possession an aboriginal child of very small stature. This manikin had served first as the great Queen Empress's hunting dog. Then as a chimney sweep. Finally as a nursery jockey. Mounted on one of the Royal Dogs, he raced around the garden to the great amusement
of the Royal Children, who loved him almost as much as their favourite pets. When one day he tumbled from the back of a Great Dane, in a particularly exciting race, and broke his neck, the children had been inconsolable for days.

The manikin had been given a state funeral and laid to rest in one or other of her Palaces. Very few foreigners could be said to have risen so far, so fast, in Royal Esteem.

But in which of the Royal Cemeteries did my countryman repose? I asked. Each of her Palaces might have such a graveyard for family pets. And she had many Palaces.

More than they knew what to do with, her Consort confirmed. And a lot of bloody good it did one.

Perhaps the best method, Her Majesty graciously suggested, was to move from Palace to Palace, taking pot luck.

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, catch a red boy by the toe, sang her Consort, in a surprisingly clear tenor.

I needed only to mention her name, Her Majesty assured me, and to say I had come about the remains of ‘Little Boy' Ruyter, the jockey. She would leave instructions that I be permitted to rummage in the gardens of rest to my heart's content. There was just one tiny point of law we should clear up, her Consort interposed. If it could be proved that the child had been stolen, well and good. His remains should then be returned to their rightful owners.

If, however, the Queen continued, her historians could show that her soldiers had paid for the child in beads, copper wire, cowrie shells, fish-hooks or tobacco, then there was no question of returning him: he remained the property of the Crown.

And with that, giving me a gracious smile, she closed her handbag and moved it to the left, as if signifying by this precise gesture that the audience was over. I should not worry about getting in touch with her, she smiled as she
rose and offered her hand, because she would be getting in touch with me.

Her Consort, torch in hand, now led me through darkened corridors to a door at the rear of the palace. As I bade him farewell, without warning he shone the torch on to his face and asked me what I saw. Startled, I replied that I saw a fine English gentlemen. He shook his head. No, that was not true. He was, in fact, a foreigner.
Almost
as foreign as I was. Certainly as far from home. Probably a good deal unhappier.

But what then, I stammered in my astonishment, of his jodhpurs and his whip, the cut of his jib, his vowels, his enunciation, even his stiff upper lip? Surely all showed him to be authentically native.

Again, a quick, regretful shake of the high-domed head. He had adopted their colouring. Camouflage. After years of practice he had acquired this protective covering. He had studied their ways; he had learnt that if you would be truly indigenous, you must learn to pull finger, park your pint, get on your bike, call a spade a bloody spade, live for horses, have a bash at Johnny Foreigner. He had done his bit. Belonged to the right clubs, Colonel-in-Chief of a half a dozen bloody regiments, drunk and joshed in the mess, and thrown bread rolls at more regimental dinners than he could remember. Changed his name to something more acceptable, denied his ancestry, forgotten his country, given a lifetime's service to the family firm.

But where had it got him? Had the locals been deceived? Not a bloody bit of it. After years of parking his pint and getting on his bike and calling a spade a bloody spade, he had got precisely nowhere. To his face it was
‘Your Royal Highness, this,' and, ‘Yes, sir, that' – oh, they were a people for paying lip-service. For bowing and scraping and gongs and ribbons and lords and ladies – but the moment his back was turned, then he was just an out-of-work Johnny Foreigner with an unpronounceable name and disquieting personal habits.

It took one to know one. Precisely because I too was up the creek without a paddle, he offered a word of advice. On no account should I venture near any of his wife's Palaces dressed as I was. Better to forget the entire thing. Forget all about ‘Little Boy' Ruyter. Go home to my own people – before it was too late. He foresaw a bad end to my expedition.

I was grateful for his advice, but I could not turn back. I had promised the Ruyter family, and honour required that I keep my promise.

The Queen's Consort sighed. He did understand. Entirely. Like him, I suffered from an exaggerated sense of honour – and a right bugger it was – though, after years of living amongst the natives, his sense of honour was now somewhat attenuated. But I should rest assured that honour would not help me if I ventured very near Windsor dressed in a skin apron and covered in salad oil. I would be taken for an arsonist, a lunatic or a mad dog. And he would not give two pins for my chances. Then, saying he sympathized, as one dago to another, he pressed a purse into my hands. I was to get myself a decent tailor and a decent set of wheels. He insisted on giving me, as well, his riding crop. He told me to keep my head down, and if the Great Unwashed got my scent, I had better pull finger and get the hell out of there, chop-bloody-chop.

I tried to thank him, but he would have none of it. Two oddbods, abroad in darkest England – God help us –
must show some solidarity. And with that he pushed me into the street, clutching his purse in one hand and his whip in the other.

Turning for one last look at the Palace, I saw him leaning against the kitchen door, an elderly, balding, irascible foreigner, far from home, at sea among strangers. I prayed again to the great god !Kwha to direct my footsteps to the grave of the missing child. And, looking up, I saw at an upstairs window a small figure in a headscarf carrying a feather duster, which she raised now, and waved me into the dark.

Postscript

At this point, the journals of David Mungo Booi break off.

The questions that haunted me were: how had the notebooks of David Mungo Booi been repatriated? And where was he now?

One evening I was sitting in the bar of the Hunter's Arms, watching Clara, the owner, being managerial with a couple of drunken farmers who leered happily every time she turned. I understood the interest. She was wearing a new hairpiece, a chestnut shank twisted into heavy, chainlike plaits which flew this way and that, like bell ropes, when she turned her back. In a tight Tyrolean tunic and skirt, embroidered with forget-me-nots, she looked a bit like Heidi. Except for the parabellum holstered at her waist, and the blue UN baseball cap. A present from Jean-Pierre from Geneva. That's why Clara was in Swiss mode; she wanted Jean-Pierre to stay.

But just as she'd failed to get the UN to declare the
Hunters Arms a protected enclave, she'd got nowhere trying to persuade the UN to extend its mandate in South Africa. They had declared the elections free and fair, and they were pulling out.

The farmers examined her behind with clinical interest. Clara felt it; she spun around, and her blue baseball cap slipped over one eye.

That's when it came to me.

I remembered old Pa Blitzerlik by the fireside as he described to me the woman in the post office who had given him the notebooks. A white woman – in a blue hat. He had sketched with his hand what I taken to be a moon, an arc, a half-circle of air, a curve of such beauty he had never forgotten it.

I checked. It turned out that a certain Elizabeth Farebrother, an Englishwoman, had served as a voluntary electoral observer over in a place called, appropriately enough, Bushman's Fountain in the Murderer's Karoo. The pity was that she had been gone a fortnight. Where she had gone no one could tell me. Volunteers served a term and then signed off. Addresses were never disclosed. But the UN in Geneva would forward letters.