The Dust Diaries Read Free Page B

go on for this. A few years earlier he had published The Arab and the African , which he described to the assembled company as ‘a handbook of my own experience written down to help and introduce others to the dangers and excitements of this dark continent’.
    On hearing this Mr Beardsley, who had arrived only a few weeks before, began to ask Pruen for his advice on various matters concerning adjustment to tropical life. Which did he consider the best cash crops to grow on the mainland of British East Africa? What was the most effective method of sisal production? How to prevent white ants getting in his food cupboard? The best way to approach a native village? Arthur watched him as he stabbed at a forkful of crabmeat while asking ‘And what about the rats, eh? Bloody things, oh, sorry fathers, yes, the things keep getting at my meat wherever I seem to hang it. Size of dogs they are!’
    ‘Yes, that took me a while to work out myself,’ Mr Pruen replied, ‘and in the end it was my cook who solved the problem. We simply hung the meat in the centre of the pantry from a rope with a knot in it, and a square sheet of tin skewered through resting on this knot. The rat will climb down the rope as far as this tin, but then find its desires frustrated, slipping off the sheet clear of the meat.’
    ‘Damned clever, very clever, sir. Why didn’t we think of that, eh, Charlotte?’ Mr Beardsley turned to the girl at his side who forced out a weak smile. Arthur thought she was going to cry. The Governor, recognising that Mr Beardsley was in danger of monopolising the conversation, interjected before he could ask another question.
    ‘I understand you’re quite a hunter too, Mr Pruen, is that right?’
    Mr Pruen looked up at the Governor over his food, smiled, and sat back, placing his cutlery on his plate.
    ‘Well,’ he started with a heavy sigh, ‘during my time in equatorial East Africa I have come to know the ways of the bush, and so yes, I have had my fair number of run-ins and tangles with the wildlife which lives there. I do therefore also have some knowledge on how best to bag them. Or escape them, depending on the appropriate action at the time,’ he added with a snort.
    The writer continued, his gift for verbosity leading him into a series of anecdotes about his African hunting experience. Arthur noticed how these stories all followed a similar pattern. Mr Pruen would amaze the table with the plumage of the sun-birds or plantain-eaters or the peculiar habits of the gazelle, leopard or crocodile, speaking with the authority (and, Arthur admitted, often the love) of the naturalist. Then he would explain in exacting detail the best method to capture, shoot, trap or skin the creature in question. It was a surprisingly candid display, he thought, of man’s ability to worship and destroy. To love and to kill.
    He looked around the table. Mr Beardsley was enraptured by the hunting stories, while the Governor nodded politely, obviously having heard such facts and myths before. His wife, in contrast, a stout woman in her forties, ate throughout Mr Pruen’s speeches, silent as she had been the whole evening, her eyes downcast at her plate, while the young Charlotte looked straight ahead of her into the garden, where the midges hovered around the candle flames and the fireflies ignited themselves in sh ort bursts of electric green. Frank, meanwhile, sat quiet and small at his side, the way he used to sit at college when in the presence of authority, real or imagined, as if he could by will alone remain unnoticed. It was getting late, but the heat had still not drained from the day, and as he drifted towards his own thoughts against the distant stream of Pruen’s stories Arthur felt a long tear of sweat gather behind his knee and run the length of his calf into the heel of his boot.
    ‘But I mustn’t talk about this kind of thing all night. Not when we have new blood at the table…How about you, Father Cripps? I’d be