by Ann Harries
Four
Bloemfontein, September 1900
‘Return to Cape Town,’ advises Louise. ‘Join me at the convalescent camp by the sea. Theodore says there is a ladies’ swimming club.’ She looks closely at Sarah’s face. ‘You must take more care of your skin, my dear. It is coming out in little heat blisters. What a shame there is nothing left of my skin emollient.’
The two women have ridden their ponies up the iron-ribbed little kopje just outside Bloemfontein and are resting at its flat table-top. September: the end of winter. Scarcely credible. The landscape seems little changed from its aspect at the height of summer, though films of green now shimmer in the dry grasses. Even the trees round the scattered farmsteads have not lost their leaves. By British standards it is a hot summer’s day. Only the faint crispness in the atmosphere – which seems actually to sparkle when drawn into the nostrils and lungs – reminds one that the nights are icy and hot-water bottles are necessary.
The enteric is abating; the general hospitals are moving on. Only last night the little nurses’ house in Rondebosch had appeared again in Sarah’s dreams, the frangipani she had planted at the bottom of the garden miraculously bursting into starry bloom in the space of a few months; Rushda and Sameela waving at the gate.
‘He won’t come back,’ Louise assures her friend. ‘It’s been at least four months since he left. Roberts is determined to reduce the ex-republics to cinders and that will take sometime. Besides,’ and here her voice sharpened, ‘you’re wasting yourself on him, my dear. Let’s be frank. He comes from nowhere and he’s going nowhere. Your family would be mortified. Don’t look at me like that, Sarah. I can understand a flutter, you know me; but to mope over that – scarecrow – this is absurd.’ And here Louise blows out a long stream of knowing cigarette smoke which Sarah fans away with her hand.
‘I promised to wait,’ she says calmly. There is a radiance about her today that has been lacking for many weeks. Louise wonders if she is adding rouge beneath the blisters.
‘You’re impossible!’ exclaims Louise. ‘There are at least half-a-dozen medical officers madly in love with you, all from the best families with town houses and country residences, and who do you choose? A common, yes, common-as-dirt young man with no family at all and certainly no fortune. Come to your senses, my dear.’
Sarah smiles and inhales deeply. ‘I often think that breathing in this air – this common-as-dirt air – is like drinking a very fine chilled hock, don’t you, Louise? It quite goes to my head.’
‘You haven’t received even a line from him since you left. Don’t think I don’t see your face on mail days.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ Sarah gropes in her pocket, ‘I heard from him just yesterday. He sent me this.’
She had not meant to show anyone; to keep his gift entirely to herself; to savour the joy of it alone but, provoked, she changes her mind.
‘A rosary!’ Louise looks at the gleaming beads with distaste.
‘His rosary.’
‘Is he trying to convert you?’
‘Who knows?’ Sarah squeezes the mother-of-pearl beads in her fisted hand. The sensation is thrilling, as if the rosary might be the beginning of a chain that ends in Patch’s hand.
Louise laughs. ‘I’d forgotten he is a Papist on top of everything else. A Papist and a pauper. Your parents will be pleased!’
But Sarah is staring down at the base of the kopje. A few neat rows of bell tents have appeared on its slopes and a number of ox wagons are being unloaded by some black servants. Some Tommies wander about.
‘Lend me your field-glasses, Louise. Something very odd is going on down there.’
With the aid of magnifying lenses Sarah is able to make out a few bustling Boer women, their faces hidden in the folds of their great sunbonnets. A black man is chasing after a small herd of cattle; chickens scratch in the dry soil. Clay ovens already stand before some of the tents. A few Tommies are digging a pit some distance off. A Boer burgher, instantly recognisable by his heavy beard and waistcoat, carries a mattress into a tent. Another burgher seated at a table energetically grinds coffee.
‘Good heavens, who are those people?’
Louise glances at the scene. ‘Oh, those are the refugees. You know, the hands-uppers – the Boers who’ve signed the oath of allegiance and handed in their firearms. They are loathed and detested by their brethren. They’re being brought in here next to the military camp for their own safety, to save them from their bitter-end brothers who’d probably execute them for their treachery. An act of mercy on behalf of the British army, you could say.’
‘How do you know all this, Louise?
‘Oh, I know Captain Nelson of the Imperial Yeomanry quite well. He’s a friend of Theodore’s. We play bridge together often. He’s been put in charge of the camp.’
‘They look a sullen lot. I suppose they don’t want to leave their homes and live in tents.’
‘They should have thought of that before declaring war against us,’ says Louise airily. ‘Now, Theodore says we can use the army tennis courts and he’ll lend us racquets. It’d be such fun to biff a ball about.’
Since their earlier estrangement a certain coolness had settled between the two women. Louise could not see Sarah without the shadow of that penniless trooper lurking over her, and though they had returned to their former outings, and tea-drinking at the Railway Hotel, they no longer shared intimacies. In any case, Louise’s impending marriage in Cape Town absorbed much of her energies. A date had not yet been set, but her parents were planning to come to the wedding and Sarah had agreed to be bridesmaid, along with two Australian nurses. Sarah herself was resigned to the new relationship, and happy that at least something of the old friendship remained. Once Louise leaves for Cape Town she will be alone again. She touches the rosary in her pocket.
On arriving back at the hospital she finds a problem has developed. Mrs Mopeli is refusing to wash the sick soldiers’ dirty linen. Her smiling face has turned to stone. She no longer envelops her haunches in her multi-striped Union Jack. Once again a small bundle is tied by a blanket on to her back.
‘Passes!’ It is a good word to spit out and Mrs Mopeli allows a great deal of saliva to fly out of her mouth as she exclaims in disgust.
Sarah wipes her cheek. ‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Mopeli. There must be a good reason. The war …’ They have bumped into each other outside the Boer woman’s bread shop.
‘We African people have chosen to help the British, Nurse Palmer. We expect the British to help us. Now they have brought the Pass back worse than the Boers. My husband, he received five lashes because he could not show his Pass. My husband, he is born in this town. He works for the Imperial Railway. That is very terrible, Nurse Palmer.’
‘Oh I agree, I agree!’ cries Sarah. ‘Your husband, a respectable man – but we all have to carry passes these days, Mrs Mopeli.’
The washerwoman looks at the young nurse with such contempt that Sarah cringes. ‘A white person’s pass is a very different thing, Nurse Palmer, very different.’
‘But at the end of the war Britain will not let you down, that I can promise you.’ Sarah does not care for her role as envoy for the British Government and cannot quite meet Mrs Mopeli’s eye.
A shrill mew rises from the bundle in the blanket. The washerwoman jogs her body. then points to the great pot on her head. ‘This is what the British Army is doing, Nurse Palmer.’
‘What is in there, Mrs Mopeli?’
‘In there is mielie-pap, which I take now to my people by the railway station.’
‘The refugees?’
‘The black servants who also lost their home when the Boers’ farms are burnt. Where must they live? They must build their own shelters by the railway, and find their own food. The British do not think of them when they burn the Boer homes. My very own aunties and uncles live down there now with nothing.’
The bundle on her back emits a small complaint. She hums a brief lullaby. ‘We are very very
disappointed, Nurse Palmer. We want respect. We expect respect.’
And she sails off, her head high.
Sarah stares after her in dismay. So this is the messy aftermath, neither contemplated nor intended, of a war that is by no means over; devastation and homelessness for those very people who had expected just the opposite from the invading forces. She makes a quick decision: she will visit the kaffir refugee camp from time to time during her afternoons off, for sickness is sure to break out in such makeshift quarters.
Extract: Letter from Sir Alfred Milner to Lady Edward Cecil, 29 September 1900
Kitchener! It is fortunate that I admire him in many ways so much, and admiring, am prepared to stand a lot and never take offence … I am determined to get on with him … but shall I be able to manage this strong, self-willed man ‘in a hurry’ (for he is dying to be off in time to take India), and to turn his enormous power into the right channel?
Extract: Letter from Sir Alfred Milner to Lord Kitchener, 30 September 1900
… I should take all the houses I could lay my hands upon, but I should burn no houses, except for definite acts of treachery, nor should I attempt to clear the district of food-stuff or of population. Instead of rounding up the cattle, I should turn my attention to chivvying the marauders, and in that enterprise I believe it would be possible gradually to associate some of the inhabitants with us … In any district once cleared of the enemy, garrisoned and policed, I think we should be fully entitled to call the war over … I believe that if we were to devastate all South Africa – an impossible task anyway – we should only find that we had a greater number of roving blackguards to deal with than ever.
Hard Choices, October 1900
Louise has returned to Cape Town. Though their parting was warm enough with a few tears shed, Sarah has not yet received a letter from her friend. She herself has written twice to the convalescent hospital where Louise has been posted, mentioning her visits to the black refugee camp. Perhaps Louise does not care to read about the suffering of the kaffir people, driven from their homes to live in shacks on the edge of the city. She would consider it to be another humanitarian act by the British Army, rescuing homeless people, for how can anyone survive upon a scorched earth? Sophie, on the other hand, will be horrified to hear about this development and Sarah has sent her several pages of description of the camp with its lack of medical facilities and outbreaks of measles epidemics among well over a thousand forcibly removed and distraught farm workers. Perhaps Miss Hobhouse could be informed.
Riding in her free time is a source of delight that offers warm contact with her beloved little pony as well as the calm lines of the local landscape. There is a limit to how far she may go but the veldt is vast and though occasional columns of soldiers go by, sweating copiously beneath their rigid pith helmets, she is seldom required to show her pass.
In the distance the railway line to the Cape Colony glints among the dusty thorn bushes. An armoured train, packed with armaments and troops, thunders slowly northwards. It is only when its iron-clad carriages have finally lumbered from sight, smudging the skyline with a trail of black smoke, that she notices the cattle trucks in the siding. A couple of Tommies lounge nearby, their rifles in their hands. Louise has given her a pair of field glasses as a farewell gift, and Sarah raises these to her eyes to see what manner of cattle need military protection.
Inside the trucks are not cows, but people. Women and children are neatly packed together, standing upright to save space. There are a number of very old men and women wedged between them. She can hear the dismal, hopeless howls of a baby. It is two o’clock in the afternoon and the mild spring air has suddenly grown furnace-hot. She cannot read the expression on the faces of the women. They are enduring an emotion which she does not know.
Where are these burnt-out families going? Something too appalling for her to understand is about to happen, something worse even than the burning of homes, that much she can tell. A wave of nausea overcomes her. She digs her heels into her pony’s flanks and gallops away.
The land is shimmering: the salt lakes in the distance rise into the air and hang there, gleaming fantasy-lakes. She rides towards them, the hooves of her pony drumming out any thoughts that attempt to form in her head. Her mouth is dry.
She passes a farmhouse, nestled among bushy African willows and karee trees. Black men are picking oranges from the adjoining orchard; a windmill spurts water into a round corrugated iron reservoir. A warm wind laps at her body, converting the heat into streams that flow into the folds of her garments and over her flesh. A thorn bush sails through the sky. She sees a crowd of meerkats sitting on their haunches, erect and alert, their dark eyes watching her movements anxiously.
Sarah trots up to the farm, scattering ducks and chickens on the way. A flurry of snow-white bantams bursts out of the crimson hibiscus tree on the lawn, crowing raucously. Pumpkins of all shapes and sizes ripen on a flat roof. Some children are playing on the great shady stoep that extends across the front of the house. She greets them in Dutch. ‘Good day, children. Can I have a little water, please?’ She has addressed them in Dutch, but is very conscious of her English accent. The children stare at her as if she is a poisonous snake risen from beneath the thorn bushes.
A woman emerges from the house. She wears a kappie even though she is not in the sun. She wipes her floury hands on her apron and smiles a welcome. ‘Kom binnen, kom binnen. You must be thirsty in this heat.’ She peers at Sarah’s sunburnt face. ‘My dear, you are letting the sun hurt your beautiful English skin – peaches and cream, is it not? Come in, come in.’
The woman’s friendliness envelops Sarah like a gust of sweet, unexpected music. ‘I have a special cream that will heal your broken skin, my dear, made from the wild flowers of the veldt,’ she continues. Her face shines with kindly concern. ‘And you know what it also has in it?’ Sarah shakes her head. ‘Something very precious from our own beehives – buchu honey – you will be surprised at the result!’
The completeness of the welcome is something she has not experienced before. She has heard it said that Boer women are well-known for their hospitality, their generosity, but this has a dimension beyond welcome. She does not remember that Dutch women welcome so extravagantly so it can’t be inherited from the forefathers. Perhaps the phenomenon is a result of living so far apart – twenty or thirty miles at least – and seeing so few visitors. But she succumbs gratefully to the woman’s warmth, and steps over the threshold of the farmhouse.
The interior of the house is dark and cool. They pass through the sitting room with its sparkling furniture, its scrubbed floor boards, its embroidered biblical texts hanging on the wall. There is a smell of polish and soap, and other mysterious cleansing odours which seem to clear Sarah’s brain as she breathes them in. A large upright piano is centrally placed with a hymn book open on its stand. The gigantic family Bible rests on a table nearby. ‘Excuse the mess in my house.’ The woman laughs apologetically. Although the wind is raging now, stirring the dry earth into clouds of crimson, Sarah can see no mess or untidiness in this spotless room, unless one considers that someone’s jacket hanging on the back of a chair creates disorder.
In the kitchen the farmer’s wife offers her milk from a stone storage container. Spirals of tangerine skin dangle in the window to dry. A black woman is chopping up a pumpkin; she smiles and greets Sarah. Two of her children romp with a small Boer child beneath the table. Strips of dried meat studded with spices hang from the ceiling.
As the farmer’s wife stands by the window, pouring the milk, Sarah experiences a déjà vu. For a sudden moment she is a child in an Amsterdam museum, staring at a painting of a woman in a kappie pouring milk. She is pouring light into the bowl, not milk says her governess, a Miss Pieters. Sarah drinks gratefully, though she would have preferred water. Through the small window she sees the farmer out in the yard giving orders to a group of black labourers. He points a finger at the orange orchard and his voice rises in anger. The
workers eye the plaited sjambok which dangles in his other hand.
The farmer’s wife is concerned for Sarah’s safety. ‘You shouldn’t ride alone, my dear.’ Her Dutch has seventeenth-century words and constructions as well as other vocabulary that Sarah does not recognise. ‘The Kaffirs think they can do what they like now. They think the British are going to give them our farms and that makes them cheeky. You must watch out. Here, my dear, have a slice of seedcake with your milk. I am going to get you the cream I told you about.’ She bustles into the enormous pantry.
Just outside the kitchen door the smell of baking bread drifts from a clay oven. Sarah enjoys the comforting fumes. Surely, where bread is still baked things must be well. The smell mingles headily with the powerful scent of the oranges which topple from great wooden crates as the workers load them on to a wagon.
The woman reappears with a stone jar in her hand. ‘Please take this. You will be surprised how quickly our Boer remedy’ – she emphasises the two words – ‘will heal your skin.’ For the first time Sarah detects a hint of resentment, for Boer remedies are held up to ridicule by the British medical officers. ‘And take some oranges with you to keep away the thirst,’ urges the woman, as if to make up for her moment of quiet bitterness.
‘Thank you – dank u. After all your kindness, I don’t even know your name.’
‘Theron. Eva Theron. That is my husband, Dawie.’
Dawie Theron nods from across the yard. He does not smile.