No Place For a Lady

by Ann Harries

  We made our way through the little city’s broad streets towards the school which has had to become a military hospital. The name Bloemfontein means ‘flower-fountain’, a sweetly innocent name, and there is something innocent about the layout of this place, its main streets all blooming with roses – in this heat! Obviously rose petals are far tougher than we have been led to believe in England. However, the poor little city has been entirely swamped by the army. The pavements are crowded with men in khaki, and on the surrounding hills hundreds – or perhaps thousands – of tents are stretched out in neat rows.

  We found my ward to be a tin hut hastily built on to a girl’s school to help accommodate the huge numbers of sick men. Louise is to nurse in a far grander building than my little tin hut: no less than the old Boer parliament, known as the Raadsaal. It seems that no public building still standing has not metamorphosed into a hospital. Everyone is awaiting the arrival of three tented general hospitals, arrived from Britain two weeks ago and so desperately needed here, but which sit in Cape Town waiting for permission from Roberts to be delivered. As ever, medical needs come last on the railway line. Louise and I have been given a bell tent which is to be our home, along with four other British nurses.

  I have to say that the conditions on our tin hut ward are quite appalling: twenty men crammed in on stretchers, no beds as yet (they await delivery from Cape Town); very little fresh water as De Wet has captured the city’s waterworks at Sannah’s Post, and the water from Bloemfontein’s old wells and streams is mostly bad – infected partly from the network of open trench latrines which are black with flies – as are the open-air hospital kitchens. We see the regimental water carts filled without protest at wayside pools that are almost certainly contaminated. It is incredible that men suffering from enteric have to drink infected water. I feel very sorry for the men in our hut, all at different stages of the disease; some with no chance of recovering, some listlessly emerging from the nightmare of illness, others able to walk around and smoke cigarettes and follow their special diet. They are all so thin and sallow; clearly, they were underfed and unable to resist the onslaught of the bacteria. One poor man died in terrible agony within an hour of my arrival. Yet the unfailing good humour of these emaciated creatures can only fill one with admiration.

  20 March

  If conditions in my tin hut are bad, the situation in the field hospitals is a hundred times worse. Today Louise and I were taken on a tour of these tents – I think to prove to us how much better off our wards are – and it was quite heartbreaking to see so many men in the worst stages of enteric fever packed into their tents with only a blanket and a thin waterproof sheet between their aching bodies and the hard ground (which can stream with water after a thunderstorm); no beds, stretchers or mattresses; no nurses; only three doctors to every three hundred patients. The fly situation is actually worse there than in our ward. The hands and faces of the desperately ill men are covered in droves of black flies, attracted by the nearby uncovered latrines, and the stench made us cover our noses and mouths with the edges of our pelisses. The problem is of course that field hospitals are supposed to be mobile, for use on the battlefield; men are not meant to spend more than three or four days in them before being transferred to the base hospitals or hospital trains, but this epidemic has taken the army by surprise. They are dying fifty a day in the city of flowers, and no one with real power seems to care. Reinforcements, horses, food, ammunition and – I’m sorry to say – officers’ personal belongings arrive daily, but not a sign of the tents, beds, staff and equipment that would save so many lives.

  When I came back from my tour I found two new patients had replaced the man who died yesterday. Both seem to be in the last stages of enteric. The orderlies (there are four of them in my hut) were already washing them, and moistening their lips with our ghastly contaminated water.

  Rossetti Mansions, London, April 1900

  Inside the reticule belonging to Miss Hobhouse there are three keys: the largest is for the gigantic front door that opens into the entrance hall of the red-bricked Rosetti Mansions; the smaller one opens the door of her flat, Number 33; the tiny one is for her letter box. It is her habit to stop at the ornamental cherry tree outside the front door and remove these three keys from her bag, in readiness. This evening she looks up at the tree and notices it is already sprouting buds of pink promise on its leafless twigs; by next week she will be able to look down from her sitting room window on to a cloud of pink blossom that confirms Spring has at last arrived.

  She runs up the short flight of steps leading to the solid front door and turns the huge key in the great keyhole. She is feeling exhilarated. Today she has addressed the Oxford branch of the Women’s Liberal Foundation on the disastrous implications of the annexation of the Orange Free State, now that Bloemfontein has fallen to General Roberts. Her address was sympathetically received; someone murmured that a protest meeting should be held; she visited Christ Church where her brother Leonard had tutored for so long; caught the train back to London, and arrived home before dark. And tonight the Courtneys, who live a few blocks away in Cheyne Walk, have invited her to a special dinner to celebrate her fortieth birthday. It is always good to have something to look forward to when one feels happy, she reflects as the front door swings open, so that a little more happiness is guaranteed and melancholy fits are kept at bay.

  She allows the heavy door to slam behind her, the crash reverberating all over the building, and darts over to the bank of letter boxes in the entrance hall, her tiny key poised. Her box is overflowing, as usual, mostly with matters concerning the Concilation Committee, to which she will attend tomorrow in her capacity as the Women’s Branch Secretary. Sophie will come and help tomorrow evening, as will Miss Griffen, if she has recovered from her bad attack of influenza.

  Mrs Potter from Number 32 is majestically descending the stairs, dressed in starched black in sympathy with the forty years of mourning of the Queen, a similar expression of discontent etched on her bloated face. She nods coldly at Emily, whom she considers to be a traitor to her country. (Emily once caught her pulling letters out of her over-full box and examining the envelopes for evidence of treachery.) ‘Good evening, Mrs Potter.’ Emily’s smile is friendly, but it does not crack the ice of her neighbour’s displeasure; Mrs Potter sniffs a message of disapproval far stronger than any spoken word. She sweeps out of the front door, closing it with exaggerated quietness behind her. A whiff of camphor hangs in the air.

  Emily pulls a wry face but, being by now accustomed to this kind of behaviour, continues to turn over the events of the day in her mind; the annexation issue, the earnest ladies of the Liberal Foundation, Christ Church, pleasant train journey, all running seamlessly into each other as she looks through her post. There are several birthday cards in among the circulars and committee letters. She gathers them all into a larger bag she had brought with her to Oxford and runs up the three flights of stairs that lead to her flat, nearly colliding with plump, pin-striped Mr Somerset-Glance of Number 43, the flat directly above her. ‘Really, Miss Hobhouse, you must look where you are going!’ he exclaims in a voice tight with disapproval. ‘Oh dear, I am so sorry!’ she cries. ‘I try to do all the stairs in one go, you know, to get them over with quickly.’

  She is a little breathless as she unlocks the door of her flat and throws herself down at the table by the window. Perhaps it is rather unladylike to rush up the stairs like that, but she always seems to be in a hurry, and to walk sedately anywhere is a trial at the best of times. She picks out her birthday cards from her mail, smiling with pleasure. Cards from all the family and most of the committee; one from dear Sophie, another from Griffy, posted before she went down with flu; and what is this one with an American stamp? Probably from one of the many friends she had made during the ‘95 temperance campaign in Virginia, soon after her father’s death. A Chicago postmark; a typewritten address. She opens it with interest.

  Many happy returns, from J.E. Jackson with
love. (In brackets) I think of you often.

  Her hands are already tearing the card to shreds. ‘I am not allowing you to return!’ she shouts. Her earlier exhilaration has vanished. Her body feels slack. With a wail of horror she makes her way to her bedroom to change, and catches sight of herself in the looking glass on the dressing table. She is unable to move her eyes from what she sees in the multiple mirrors. ‘Forty years old,’ she breathes. ‘And still nothing achieved.’

  Had she been a vain woman she would have consoled herself with the smoothness of her forty-year-old-skin and her open, appetising face, framed by waves of lustrous hair. But she can only stare at these genteel features in despair: four decades have passed and what is there to show? No great work. No husband. No children. Three gigantic craters of nothingness in her life. She has not pushed herself hard enough. The temperance campaign had lasted a mere nine months nearly four years ago, and whatever self-respect she might have gained then was utterly cancelled out by the folly that had ensued. At the mere thought of the Mexican disaster beads of sweat appear on her forehead; her hands begin to shake violently.

  Thank heaven the chiming of the clock tells her it is time to leave for the Courtney’s celebratory meal. Already she is relaxing at the thought of Kate’s bright, intelligent eyes, and Leonard, smiling thoughtfully as he tugs at his little beard. The image of these two precious faces is doing its work: the butcher from Virginia with the ravishing eyes and the elegant moustache is fading from her mind. As she chooses the evening dress she will wear (black velvet with silver trim) she is thinking about an idea she had on the train – a public protest against the annexation of the defeated Boer republics.

  She will be late if she doesn’t leave at once, even though it takes only seven minutes to walk from Rossetti Mansions to the Courtneys’ home.

  She runs up the steps that lead to the Courtneys’ front door. Protest, that was all one could do. Protest against the extinction by force of a state which clings as passionately to its separate nationality and its flag as Britain does to hers. A great protest, too great for the government to ignore.

  And as she rings the Courtneys’ door bell, already preparing her apologies for her seven minute lateness, she is seized by inspiration. She will organise a public protest against annexation composed entirely of women. It will be held in London’s mighty Queen’s Hall. Miss Griffen will move into her spare room and write a thousand personal invitations, vetted by herself. It will be held in eight weeks’ time. If, of course, the Women’s Committee agree.

  Which, of course, they will.

  Bloemfontein Hospital, April 1900

  Patch has wet the bed again. At first the sensation is warm and comforting but soon it grows cold. Sister Madeleine says there is only one way to cure wetting-the-bed and that is via the shillelagh. Although Patrick is only four he understands the cause-and-effectness of this: if you wet the bed you get beaten, same as if you fall down you hurt yourself, or if you tell a joke someone will laugh.

  Now he’s really gone and done it. His whole body is wet, not just the bottom half. So as he curls up in the last hint of warmth in his soaked bed he feels the familiar onset of dread about the shillelagh. And on his bare bum which sometimes has boils on it. There was a time of sweetness a few weeks back when a young novice suggested rewarding him for not wetting the bed. The Sisters of Holy Charity were astounded. But, out of interest and a desire to prove her wrong, tried it out. For five days he woke up in a dry bed, knowing there would be an extra portion of porridge if the sheets didn’t have to be ripped off and washed yet again by Sister Maria, who suffered from tuberculosis and kept all the orphans awake with her coughing. Then on the sixth they were wet again and Sister Madeleine triumphantly went back to beatings, no questions asked.

  He feels the familiar terror gripping his gut. It is not so much the pain of the beating, though that is bad enough, but the fact that she who slashes the bamboo stick on to his thin buttocks is beautiful. Sister Madeleine has calm eyes, good cheekbones and a smiley mouth. But when she hits him, and the sleeves of her white habit flare out and the giant black rosary on her leather belt jingles, she becomes a she-devil, a demon in white who can enter the secret cavities of Patch’s heart and fill them with dread. Later, when he no longer wets the sheets, she will find other reasons to beat him thus, and when he is ten years old and taller than she is, she whips his outstretched palms, sometimes with the bamboo cane, sometimes with a school ruler, sometimes with a broom handle or a splintered plank. For that is how you discipline boys: through fear. Yet Patch could not submit. In a frenzy Sister Madeleine might split the cane across his hands or snap the ruler, but Patch stubbornly remained himself. She might wipe the sweat from her brow, and pant from the exertion of punishment, but her victim would coolly slide back to his desk, apparently untouched by the onslaught on his hands. But inside his heart, what turmoil! What rage, what hatred. But only in his sleep does the anger seep out, poisoning his bloodstream, triggering panic. He wakes with a start, his body seething with revenge. In his mind he sees her face, calm, sweetly cruel, smiling at him in pity. If only he could fist his hand and shoot it into those eyes which mock …

  Now she is sticking a thin cold cylinder under his tongue – a new weapon of torture? – and someone else is ripping off the sheets. ‘Soaked through!’ exclaims a voice. A male voice. Can it be Father McKewan who says Mass every morning and hears the boys’ confessions? Something cool and soft and feathery has landed on his forehead. ‘The fever’s coming down,’ murmurs a female voice. It is not Sister Madeleine’s voice. ‘He’ll be very dehydrated after all that sweating.’ He remembers in a flash that he is twenty years old, and has fought in a battle. He tries to shuffle his mouth into his daredevil half-smile, but discovers his lips have turned to splinters of solid wood. Just the attempt to smile has caused cracks of pain to split open the area where the lips once were. Now someone is sponging cold water over the cracks, washing the stabs of pain away and bringing the lips back, softening the wood.

  ‘Come on, Private Donnelly.’ His head is being raised and a beaker is inserted, gently, into his newlyrestored mouth. ‘Sip.’ His tongue recognises milk and instructs his throat to swallow. Patch has forgotten how you swallow. It amazes him that he ever knew. The milk lies in his throat, threatening to choke. ‘You must swallow,’ urges the female voice. The tip of a finger, soft as a kitten’s paw, massages his Adam’s Apple. In astonishment, a muscle in his throat contracts and a thick dry tunnel opens inside his neck and the milk slides own.

  He slits open his eyes and looks through his lashes.

  A nun is bending over him. Hang on a minute! Definitely not Sister Madeleine. As consciousness floods he remembers he has long ago left the orphanage – and fought heroically in a battle! His body feels jolted as if he’s been tossed around inside a hard, unsprung cart. That swimming sensation in his head is familiar.

  The nun – or is it a nurse? – is smiling serenely. ‘Another sip,’ she says. Through his eyelashes, he studies her perfect features. Her white cap flares in folds from her head. Her eyes are calm. He drinks in her cool composure.

  Another book Dr Simmonds told him about was Gulliver’s Travels. In one part Gulliver is a midget; in another, he is a giant. Patch feels as if he has grown into a giant; he can feel his feet sticking out the end of the bed. His arms have grown as long as the branches of trees. He can feel the bud of his penis blossoming joyously into a gigantic thing.

  ‘And a little brandy,’ whispers the nun-nurse. Whoob! His whole body comes shockingly alive as he swallows. He wants to grab her by the wrist and bring her down on top of him, and feels sweat burst from his forehead and neck. He allows his eyelids to close.

  ‘I have an idea,’ says the lovely female voice to someone. ‘That music box we found in his pocket. Can you bring it here?’

  Next thing his ears are full of song. He knows those sounds, but from where? They soothe him. His head throbs pleasantly with the delicate chimes. No pl
ace like home, they assure him.

  Now rough male hands are rolling him over and pulling off his sodden clothes and tut-tutting about the state of things. Off come his pants and there is a gasp. ‘Will you take a look at this then!’ exclaims the voice. ‘Well, there’s nothing wrong with your manhood, my dear. Better cover you up before the sisters get excited too.’

  But as clean pyjama pants are pulled on, a male hand lingers over his gorgeously erect prick and gives it a bit of a rub. Patch groans in pleasure as the come spurts out on to the helpful, knowing hands.

  Then, miraculously, brandy-soaked sleep takes over.

  Louise’s Diary

  28 March 1900

  Who would have thought it possible that we could have such fun in this dreary little town? Bobs is determined to fraternise with the enemy and the enemy seems only too happy to oblige, with the result that we have an endless succession of parties and dinners designed to make us all friends. Rumour has it that the enemy simply run back to their farms and feed the commandos, then scurry back to the British banquets – well, who can blame them? I could almost have fallen in love with a couple of them for the Boer men are a handsome enough crowd with their sunburnt skin and humorous eyes … but there is a rather attractive senior medical officer, Dr Theodore Chappell, who is making a play for me. Why am I so susceptible to these medical men?