No Place For a Lady

by Ann Harries

  The troopers tear the place apart like wild barbarians, looking for flags but helping themselves to violins, sewing machines, perambulators, cutlery, trinkets, jewellery, it’s all the same to them. The women look on with eyes of freezing disdain. Then – up in flames go their carpets, furniture, paintings, ornaments. Patch wants to hang his head in shame but he has found a beautiful silver bracelet with a turquoise stone in the trinket box of a silent woman. With what contempt did she gaze at him as he shoved it into his pocket just as she came into her room to fetch her clothes. He couldn’t really explain to her it was for Sarah and expect sympathy.

  Cartwright has developed a routine: he likes to pull the piano out (strange, how many houses have them) and get a Boer girl to play on it while the flames roar behind. ‘Sing!’ he shouts, and the family gather round and bellow out their doleful hymns as if the hand of God might come down from heaven and put the fire out. In the meantime the Tommies fling stones at the poultry and throw themselves prostrate on terrified chickens and squawking ducks as the hymns thump out. Further off, other troopers collect cows and sheep and horses and drive them off, or slaughter them then and there while, on top of the nearest high ground, a party of men, rifles in hand, stand guard against a surprise attack from the enemy, a few of whom can often be seen in the distance, watching the destruction of their homes.

  Then, as the family is bundled on to the ox wagons, Cartwright raises his axe high into the air and smashes it down into the guts of the piano and chops it up as if it was a log of wood. What hair-raising dissonances thunder from the strings and metal frame! The echoes ring through the farmyard for hours, or so it feels. Everyone says pianos make the best firewood but, though Patch enjoys the barbecued meat afterwards, he often fancies he can hear a mournful music rising from the charred cinders of the upright Bechstein or Broadwood.

  Now, his mouth sweetened by oranges, Patch keeps his eyes on the hard red earth. Captain Cooper has ordered them to look out for buried ammunition, or treasure, come to that. When the Boer women hear you are coming they bury the Mausers and bandoliers belonging to their men, or the family china and jewellery. Yesterday they’d uncovered a whole cache of rifles which all turned out to be Lee Enfields, looted from the Imperial troops, with the barrels exposed to make them lighter. Cheek! Mind, he’d like to lay his hands on a Mauser if he could get one. You could load five cartridges simultaneously, unlike his own Lee Metfield where the cartridges have to be loaded one after another, giving the Boers more time. Only trouble, they were running out of Mauser bullets. So if he did manage to loot a Mauser he wouldn’t be able to shoot with it.

  He is getting closer to the farmhouse now. He hopes there will be water to wash in, piss-free water, that is. He can smell his own sweat, a dark perfume drifting from his armpits in that dry air. Some plant on the mountain in Cape Town smells like that. What wouldn’t he do to be there now. Can that twinge in his heart, like the string of a fiddle twanging out of tune, can that be homesickness in someone who never had a home?

  He begins to run in case they’ve decided to burn down the house now instead of tomorrow. He’s running through the field of mielie-corn and then out across the vegetable garden. Not much there now. A squawking chicken flutters up. There are strange things hanging on the tree, thongs of leather waiting to be turned into God knows what. Reminds him of the blessed martyr’s flagellation kit, a bit creepy, really. The Catholic religion is so lush with blood and grief and pain, we’re brought up on the Queen of Sorrows with her legs wide open and the whipped son like an unstrung puppet across her knees. With a Requiem Mass in the background, plain chant, or resounding with trumpets and drums and triangles, enough to shoot you up to heaven like a rocket, or a bit of dynamited Boer thatch. But in this land there are no pietas, just thin lips and muttered prayers under the kappies, and God has a larger purpose, it’s all in the family Bible, the Old Testament specially.

  It is at this point in his tumbling reflections, which so often tilt back to the Catholic church these days, that Patch spies newly dug soil. And stops his running. He begins to dig with his bare hands.

  Liskeard, Cornwall, July 1900

  A riot has broken out in Liskeard Town Hall. Though the members of the audience who sit in the front rows look up seriously at the speakers on the stage (Emily recognises the cook, the gardener and the maidservant from The Rectory), the members at the back are waving flags and whistling patriotic airs. The chairman of the meeting, Mr A. Quiller-Couch, is a famous Cornish novelist and poet, but the youthful brigade at the back of the hall are impressed neither by his literary status nor his introductory words. So little do they accord respect where it is due that they have succeeded in shouting him down every time he tries to speak.

  To Emily, sitting behind the platform table and preparing to deliver her speech, the worst moment (and there are to be many very bad moments) comes with the public betrayal of that most honourable of politicians and her closest friend and mentor, Mr Leonard Courtney. She can scarcely believe what she is hearing.

  ‘Mr Courtney has served you well,’ says Mr Quiller-Couch. ‘He is a man whom you have trusted long—’ No more! No more! yells the mob. ‘He has brought honour on your constituency,’ continues the famous author nevertheless. ‘You have been proud to have such a man to represent you in Parliament.’ (Groans and hisses.) ‘But now, because he advocates conciliation between the white races of South Africa you have turned your backs on him and chosen another candidate for the next election.’ Quite right! Hooray! And the mob, most of whom have been helped out of some scrape in previous years by Leonard Courtney, break into cheers and clapping at the back of the hall.

  ‘I am merely a private citizen whose judgement refuses to approve of the war,’ declares Mr Quiller-Couch. The hissing that fills the hall at this announcement drowns his next words. ‘But our speakers have higher credentials than I. Despising popularity they have come to speak the truth as they see it.’ This information is greeted by catcalls and an impromptu march around the back of the hall to ‘Soldiers of the Queen’. The Cornish Bard raises his voice. ‘May I remind you that the war you support so vociferously costs us over one hundred men and about £750,000 per day?’ Someone blows a voluntary on a tin trumpet. This is the signal for a prominent citizen of Liskeard, with an equally prominent belly decked in buttons and chains, to mount a chair and raise a Union Jack. The mob bursts spontaneously into the National Anthem and the prominent gentleman conducts this melodious expression of patriotism with a baton of red, white and blue. The more timid ladies in the audience flee to the ante-rooms for safety.

  Emily breathes deeply. ‘Calm and composed,’ she reminds herself. Leonard Courtney’s advice. She stands up. The crowd that stares back at her is hostile. Even as she tries to project composure, a familiar throb of hot anger overwhelms her. She entirely forgets her official opening words. ‘I think you will agree with me that if Her Gracious Majesty the Queen, whom you are so anxious to save, if she were present now she would be heartily ashamed of her Cornish subjects!’ She is shouting. There is uproar. ‘I have addressed meetings lately all over England – in Leicester, London, Leeds, Bradford, Liverpool and Manchester – but it has remained for me to come to Cornwall, my home county, to see the worst behaviour of all!’

  This is not a good start and both Emily and the audience know it. But nothing can stop her now. ‘One wonders how the people of an old respected town like Liskeard should endure a handful of thoughtless boys to upset their meeting.’ Her voice brims with contempt. The handful of thoughtless boys wave a forest of miniature Union Jacks and burst into ‘Soldiers of the Queen’ again, thumping their feet on the floor in time to the marching rhythms.

  Once the din has subsided a little she draws herself up and cries out: ‘No one in this hall can be more patriotic than I. And let me assure you that there is no one at this table who is a pro-Boer. We are all pro-Englanders, every one of us. We are firstly concerned about our own country and whether or not she is acting
upon the highest principles of justice and humanity’

  At this the handful of boys, whose numbers seem to be swelling to a hall-full, spring to their feet and sing ‘Rule Britannia!’ with great energy, as far as they know the words, and Emily loses her last vestige of self-control. ‘And do you know what our beloved Britannia is doing to the women and children of South Africa?’ she yells. Even her hair loses its control as several strands fly from her coiled coiffure and spring over her eyes. Mr Quiller-Couch rolls his eyes at the Quaker organisers. ‘I’ll tell you if you don’t. The soldiers of the Queen you admire so much are marching through the Boer Republics—’ ‘Ex-Boer republics!’ calls someone from the middle of the hall. ‘—setting fire to farmsteads and private homes, and leaving innocent women and children and old people to wander homeless about the veldt in the middle of winter. And I have letters to prove it.’ From her opened reticule she whips out a pile of papers.

  ‘Here is one from Captain March Phillips. I’ll read you a paragraph.’ The uproar abates suddenly. The entire audience leans forward to hear. Emily’s voice has grown even stronger – perhaps there is a touch of Madame San Carlo in her delivery. ‘The worst moment she reads – then pauses to savour the intensity of the silence in the hall – ‘the worst moment is when you first come to the house. The people thought we had called for refreshments, and one of the women went to get milk. Then we had to tell them we had come to burn the place down. I simply didn’t know where to look. And here’s another, from Private Percy Day: We were only there for a few minutes but we did do a little damage in a short time. I put the butt of my rifle through a large looking-glass over the mantelpiece and put my foot through a sideboard with glass doors. One of the others smashed up a piano and an organ. The women didn’t half scream. I thought they would go for us, but it was an awful sight. I should not have thought that I could have done such a thing, but when you get in with the regular soldiers and have a good gallop we get a bit excited and don’t care what comes next.’

  Emily puts down her bundle. For a moment the audience stares back at her, stunned. Then, from the back of the hall – ’Forgeries! Fakes! Lies!’ and even ‘Serves ‘em right!’ The entire audience seems to erupt and Emily steps back. The handful of flag-bearing boys leap from their seats, march up the side hall, sweep up the stairs and surge upon the platform, bellowing, singing and cheering all the way. One tries to turn over the speakers’ table; the others seize a number of chairs and pile them in a heap across the middle of the platform. In the ensuing chaos Emily distributes Conciliation leaflets among the audience – and to her horror she sees several local councillors and farmers tear them to pieces and throw them in the air. The cook and the gardener crumple her leaflets contemptuously and hurl them on to the stage, though the kitchen maid merely chews her knuckle – how humiliating to see one’s servants trample over one’s attempts to convert them.

  Now another speaker, Mr Lloyd George, the Radical member for Carnavon, who has not yet uttered a single word, moves to the platform centre with a view to dismantling the barricade of chairs. At once the mob rushes at the chairs and begins flinging them in all directions, at which point the police arrive on the platform and the conflict abruptly ceases.

  Emily’s cheeks are burning scarlet as she and the other speakers leave the stage in exasperation. She pins up the undisciplined curls and blots away the beads of perspiration that have gathered on her forehead. As the singing and horseplay continue (someone has just fallen off the stage with a crash, causing much hilarity) she exclaims, ‘And to think this is a non-political meeting.’

  The Quaker organisers raise their eyebrows but not their voices. ‘A little mafficking goes a long way,’ says Mr Quiller-Couch. He accepts a cup of rather milky tea. ‘It’s time the British public calmed down and became more objective. One sugar, thank you.’

  ‘Women and children in distress,’ said Emily bitterly. ‘You don’t have to be objective to recognise that what’s happening to the Boer people is a crime against humanity.’

  A rescue plan is already formulating in her head.

  Orange River Colony, June

  When Patch had started digging up the loose earth with his bare hands, his imagination came up with all sorts of wild ideas about what lay down there: rifles, tea sets, jewels, gold, diamonds. Something he could give Sarah to impress her, along with the turquoise bracelet. Maybe even something for the woman on the island.

  Now his fingers scrabbled through the red earth and, sure enough, struck something hard. A box. He felt a surge of pride, of achievement. The satisfaction of discovery, possibly even leading to promotion. He brushed away the layer of earth covering the lid, planks of cheap wood nailed hurriedly together from the look of it. He lifted the lid in a state of some excitement, as if opening a Christmas box. Inside it, a shape was wrapped up in a piece of cloth. A shawl. The soft fabric was embroidered with Dutch biblical texts.

  A cold shadow of fear dropped over him. The hope that the shawl would contain fine china or the family jewels vanished, the knowledge of what was really in there made his skin crawl with an army of flies, as bad as Cronje’s laager …

  The baby boy’s eyes were shut. His skin was not quite waxen. He bore the mark of illness.

  Patch heard a terrible sound, like a cow giving birth, or a train howling in the wilderness. It was only when he began to vomit that the sound stopped. He pushed the earth back on to the box. Still on his knees, he began to pray, his face in his dusty hands:

  Out of the depths I have cried to thee O Lord

  Lord hear my voice.

  O Lord hear my prayer

  The oranges were lying all around, spilt on to the red earth. He gathered them on to the burial place and arranged them into a crucifix of bright fruit. As he prayed, he lifted and held them, one after the other, as if their radiance might enter his darkness.

  And let my cry come unto thee.

  And let my cry come unto thee, O Lord.

  But the image of the dead baby in the biblical shawl kept bobbing about in his head, like a discarded box on a slippery sea …

  Sarah’s Diary

  13 July 1900

  Why is Louise doing this to me? Nearly two months have passed since she found me with Patch – surely by now she should have forgiven me. For what, though?

  The pain of waiting to hear from her combined with the agony of waiting to receive a letter from Patch is beginning to wear me down. Never did I think Mail Days would be so painful for me. Now I understand so much better my poor patients’ suffering when nothing arrived for them, week after week.

  At least I have heard from Sophie. She writes of the wonderful Queen’s Hall all-women meeting – how inspiring – I should love to have been there. How sad that both the Boer republics have been annexed in spite of this magnificent protest, but at least the women can feel they have made their voices heard about the iniquity of war. Sophie asks me if there is any evidence that their message of support has reached the women of South Africa who are so much in this war, specially those who have had their homes razed to the ground. (It is so dreadful to hear that this is happening round here, and the hideous thought occurs to me that Patch may be involved in this wicked farm-burning policy.) I must approach the Loyal Ladies’ League here in Bloemfontein and find out whether they are aware of the great Queen’s Hall message. I believe they are non-partisan. Perhaps I can join their League and make a contribution towards Conciliation through them. At the very least it would take my mind off my waiting.

  15 July

  Yesterday I paid a visit to a Mrs Stuart of the Loyal Ladies’ League. She made it quite plain that the League accepts only loyal daughters of the British Empire who will throw their womanhood’s loving gentle influence on the right side. After a short conversation with her I realised that my contact with the Conciliation Committee immediately disqualified me for membership of this august League. The fact that the women at the Queen’s Hall had sent a message of support to suffering Boer women
made it clear that they were all pro-Boer; she was surprised the meeting had been allowed. The Loyal Ladies felt no sympathy with the Boer women, who deserved to have their houses burnt down.

  I left her house feeling a very disloyal daughter of Empire, and not a little entertained by Mrs Stuart’s views. If only I could talk to Louise about this – what fun we would have!

  Still no word from Patch. I never thought one could grow so weary through waiting.

  Louise’s Diary

  24 July 1900

  Today, during our time off in the afternoon, I heard a light tapping on my fine Raadsaal bedroom door. On opening it, I was greeted with the sight of tear-stained Sarah, who broke down in sobs the minute she saw me. Though my first impulse was to slam the door in her face, on speedy reflection I decided I had punished her long enough, and she must be coming to apologise for – for all those misdeeds concerning the Papist scarecrow.

  ‘Darling!’ I exclaimed, and opened my arms. She flung herself against my upholstered breast, wept copious tears all over my apron-bib, then snivelled, without looking up at me, ‘Oh, Louise, I have just heard such a terrible thing.’

  ‘And what is that, Sarah? There, there, it can’t be as bad as all that.’ (I have no hesitation about using the most blatant of clichés, as often this is exactly what unhappy people want to hear.)

  In between horrid gulps and snorts she whispered: ‘I have just heard that Patch’s column burns down six farmhouses a day, at least. Oh, Louise, can it be true?’

  Though this was not at all what I’d expected her to say, I felt obliged to answer wisely. ‘Oh yes, indeed it is. All Roberts’ idea. He did the same thing in Afghanistan, you know.’

  At this, Sarah raised her stricken face to mine and said in a voice, fierce in its intensity, ‘But we must stop it, Louise. It is a vile wicked thing. How can a British general order his men to behave like this? We must protest, we must—’