No Place For a Lady

by Ann Harries

  A few days later the same woman is unrecognisable. A sort of scurvy has broken out among the camp people: it attacks their mouths, which become covered with sores; their gums bleed and, in some cases, perfectly healthy teeth fall out. The women complain it is the diet, since no vegetables are allowed, even from the expensive stores of the main camp. No matter how often Patch tells them that their daily supply (courtesy of Her Majesty’s Army) of meat, coffee, flour, condensed milk, salt and sugar far exceeds any ration he, as a mere trooper, had ever received on the great flank march, the women continue to insist it is not good enough. For a start, they say, raw meat, flour and coffee have to be cooked, and where is the fuel? The green bushes on the hillside have long ago been used up. In any case, axes aren’t allowed. Sometimes a little coal arrives but you can’t light coal without firewood. The bird-cage women grow frantic trying to get a fire going in their braziers cut from old paraffin tins; they are not allowed the clay ovens of the larger camp. Mrs Roos has organised the hollowing-out of a couple of convenient ant-hills in which batches of bread can be baked for the penal community, and this comforting kitchen smell mingles oddly with the general camp stench.

  But the children of the bird cage are fading away, in spite of the women’s best efforts at feeding them. They grow scabby and spotty, their noses always oozing something green. They walk around sometimes wearing only a vest, not even pants. Only their blonde hair distinguishes them from kaffir children as their skins are burnt deep ochre by the sun, and then there is a crust of dirt over that. Patch has had to witness the deaths of three children, who are taken to the mortuary tent at once. The mothers make head-stones for their sons and daughters out of slate or wood, and inscribe with their own hands the dates of their children’s deaths.

  Mrs Roos begins to complain of fits. She has grown alarmingly thin, and her sapphire eyes gleam even more fearfully than ever in their dark sockets. It is the custom for the whistling doctor to call around at each tent every morning on his horse. Leaning down from his horse he shouts out: ‘Anyone sick?’ ‘Yes, doctor,’ comes the answer from those who do not fear being taken to the camp hospital from whence, in their opinion, there is no return. ‘Well (still on his horse), what’s the matter?’ ‘So-and-so-and-so, doctor.’ ‘All right, I’ll send you some medicine,’ and off he rides to the next tent.

  Needless to say Mrs Roos isn’t putting up with this. She doesn’t like the medicine he has prescribed her. He tries to slip past her tent and begin talking to the neighbouring occupants. She pops her head out of the tent flap. For once, her hair is in some disarray. ‘Excuse me for interrupting you, doctor …’ Even in illness her voice can’t lose that sardonic ring, or is he imagining it? ‘That medicine you sent me doesn’t agree with me. I cannot even retain it. You will greatly oblige me by changing it.’

  Doctor Phillips has no time for women who complain. From the great height of his horse he shouts down at her angrily. ‘It is all nonsense! You Boers want to live on nothing but medicine. You are not ill at all, it is only a sham!’

  ‘If I were not sick I would not trouble you,’ says she quietly.

  ‘You are not sick, it is all fancy. You’ve probably been drinking jackal’s blood or lying in baboon’s dung – then you come to us to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor, if that is your opinion of the case I suppose I must believe it.’ Mistaking her irony for humility, the good doctor whips his horse and canters off, well pleased with the success of his scolding. Next thing, the woman really is ill, her sons whimpering around her,

  ‘Lieutenant Donnelly,’ she whispers (this is her little joke – she has promoted him for good behaviour over the sanitary buckets, which are now cleaned daily, and for slipping her the odd piece of fruit which she immediately gives to her children), ‘could you send for the doctor?’

  Patch is startled by her pallor. ‘D-Doctor Phillips?’ he stutters.

  ‘Not the wandering minstrel, please. Could you perhaps send for Doctor Pern who works at the Tempe hospital? He is not due to do his rounds till tomorrow, and that may be—’ she looks around at her frightened children ‘—too late.’

  ‘I will send a scout to call Dr Pern,’ says Patch though he does not really have this authority.

  Mrs Roos smiles weakly. ‘Thank you, Lieutenant. I always knew you had a good heart underneath all that khaki.’

  He watches the sweat trickle down her forehead into her eyes. What will become of her children if she dies? He knows she has relatives in the Cape who will take them in, but permission has not been granted.

  After a few hours Dr Pern arrives. He spends a long time in Mrs Roos’ tent. Patch hovers nearby, pretending to examine the fraying edges of the tent canvas. Finally the doctor emerges. He looks alarmed.

  ‘This woman must be taken to the camp hospital immediately. She’s dying of starvation, or maybe something more serious.’ He frowns at Patch. ‘Hasn’t she been receiving rations?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Same as everyone else. She probably gives her portions to her children.’

  Dr Pern wrinkles his nose. ‘Terrible smell here. It’s actually worse than the main camp. And these flies – I’d like to throw a vat of disinfectant over everything in sight.’ He pauses to apply a cologne-scented handkerchief to his nostrils. ‘Can you get her carried on a stretcher? She’ll need to go to the central hut.’ He tucks his kerchief into his top pocket and scribbles something on a notepad. ‘Take this.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Dr Pern mounts his horse briskly. ‘There’s some good nursing in that hospital,’ he says. ‘There’s also some bloody awful nursing. Try to get Sister Palmer for her.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sister Palmer, did you say, sir?’

  ‘She used to work in the enteric wards at the height of the epidemic. Got offered the chance to return to Cape Town once things had died down, but applied to work here in the camp hospital. Speaks Dutch, would you believe?’

  Patch wonders if his knees will buckle under him. ‘Sister Sarah Palmer, would that be, sir?’

  ‘Yes, I believe that’s her name. Friend of yours?’ The doctor looks sceptical.

  ‘You could say that, sir.’ Patch can hear he is smirking so straightens out his voice and says more soberly, ‘She nursed me through the enteric. I would have died otherwise.’

  ‘She’s a good woman,’ says the doctor. Patch’s sharp ears pick up a hint of regret. ‘Needs to look after herself though. She works too hard.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Behind him, the whore who lifted her skirts is gathering the children and murmuring to them breathily as their mother is lifted on to a stretcher by a couple of bearers.

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ says Patch to Mrs Roos. He attempts a smile. ‘I may need your help.’ He has recognised her at last.

  Cape Town, January 1901

  Sir Alfred Milner has a weak spot for witty women. He prefers elegance to beauty and claims to know a woman by her posture.

  The woman who now fixes him with a steady gaze and speaks about farm burning and the Honour of England is not elegant, nor is she witty, but her demeanour is composed, unlike other ‘screamers’ he has met. Miss Hobhouse’s face is clear as a mountain pool. It is not just that she is past the first flush of youth; it is clear at once that this potentially good-looking woman has no mystery. She hides nothing. But in spite of these disadvantages Sir Alfred thinks he detects a hint of irony in her speech, perhaps encouraged by the lugubrious roll of eyeball he has cultivated for accompanying the utterance of the word Kitchener.

  ‘Miss Hobhouse, I can do nothing but refer your request to Lord Kitchener. I may be High Commissioner but he is Commander-in-Chief now that Lord Roberts has returned to England. He is in charge of this war, not I.’

  It is a tribute to the intelligence in her face that he has permitted the eyeball indiscretion, usually reserved for close friends, of whom there are few enough, God knows, in this African backwater.

  Miss Hobhouse allows
a flicker of a smile to soften her lips before replying. ‘I should have thought, Sir Alfred, that a woman-hater like Lord Kitchener would welcome my intercession, if only to relieve him of the necessity of dealing with difficulties he has created for thousands of angry women, both Boer and native.’

  The High Commissioner’s opinion of Emily rises at once. He even begins to think she has a certain feel for style, though clearly she has made no effort with her face or hair. But then, you didn’t expect glamour from feminist do-gooders. The only reason why he’d consented to see her was that her aunt, Lady Hobhouse, had asked him to, and you could not refuse the Hobhouses – several notches above himself in the hierarchy of the Upper Classes, pro-Boer though they may be. When she’d arrived at Government House for luncheon, his heart had sunk. Her pale gaze was too direct. He likes a woman whose eyes glint with dark secrets and look upon him with suggestive drollery. He’d get rid of her immediately after the obligatory meal to which he had invited her. He’d asked seven military gentlemen to come along as well and steamroller her for him, but she’d slipped through the net by imploring him beforehand (and, by God, those eyes could implore) to speak with her about the burnt-out women after, not during, luncheon. He pleaded press of work; she pleaded her mission was part of his work; in the end he promised fifteen minutes, not more.

  Now, sitting beside her on the low couch in the cool spaciousness of the great drawing room of Government House, with the windows opening on to the green lawns and grand old oaks planted by Simon van der Stel a hundred years or more ago, he finds that over an hour has passed seamlessly. He has succumbed to his own charm, which Miss Hobhouse has subtly encouraged. If only they could have been gossiping about the gruesome behaviour of certain MPs, or the recent death of his friend Oscar Wilde, he would have positively enjoyed himself, for Emily has a generous smile which lights up the drawing room, and generations of well-bred forefathers have assured her manners are impeccable.

  Unfortunately, she is there to tackle the refugee situation and gain his permission to travel to the camps. Ever since he had seen for himself open truck-loads of women and children roasting in the African sun, he has felt that Kitchener, damn him, had made a ghastly mistake. Miss Hobhouse was right when she asked him how he thought he was going to govern thousands of Joan of Arcs, exulting in the thought of martyrdom.

  Although it was Roberts who had started the whole scorched-earth policy months before, as long ago as October Milner had written to Chamberlain objecting to the indiscriminate burning which he considered both barbarous and ineffectual. Now here is this unflirtatious woman – an Old Maid, really, a proper spinster – asking for permission to visit these Joans of Arc in their refugee camps; though hardly ‘refugee’, more like prisoner-of-war, he has to agree. He doesn’t want to hear about the conditions in the camps: the mere thought makes his sensitive stomach turn. When he’d met Kruger at the conference on Bloemfontein railway station, a few months before the outbreak of war, he’d simply planned to take over the South African Republic, complete with gold mines: a brief war between two nations of white gentlemen which would clear the air and settle the mining problems. A token war, really, over by Christmas. The whole of South Africa, with her unsuspected heart of gold, part of the Empire! Everyone speaking English in a few years’ time! Wonderful! Now, buried in the most secret recesses of his heart is the terrifying thought: he’d got it wrong! Not that, of course, he’d have got it wrong if he’d been allowed to direct the war himself (his comment to Miss Hobhouse had a bitter resonance), but he had misjudged the military: bunglers, every one of them. No idea of the repercussions of their simplistic strategies.

  Now he has to live with the vision of thousands of women and children in cattle trucks on their way to concentration camps, as they were now being called, after the Cuban concentrados. They think that setting fire to the enemy’s house is as simple as burning an unwanted letter. Even if the women in the trucks weren’t the type he’d care to mix with socially, they and their children were living evidence of a flagrant breach of gentlemanly conduct by the British, and the thought of it made his long dry body break into a cold sweat.

  Miss Hobhouse is gazing at him with her compassionate eyes, her head tilted solicitously to one side. He has to resist an urge to pour out his heart in order to be comforted. She speaks calmly, lucidly, about the uneasiness of the English conscience over these very women and children who have been trooping through his nightmares. On behalf of her Distress Committee she wants to take two trucks up to the camps, one with clothing, the other with provisions; she wants a Dutch lady to accompany her. She would appease the situation; she would appease his pain. He would grant her anything. But only, he repeats, with Kitchener’s permission.

  ‘Even a woman-hater like Kitchener would not want to exterminate the entire female Boer population, but that is what he will do, Sir Alfred, unless something is done immediately to ameliorate the situation.’ Yes, he can imagine her on a platform addressing thousands of like-minded women, or retorting to hecklers at local meetings. Would she lose that calmness under pressure?

  He narrows his eyes into hawkish hoods, then decides to risk a little digression. ‘Lord Horatio Kitchener is not a man to be moved by the deaths of women and children if it means winning the war. But the death of a starling – that is a different thing altogether!’

  There! He has startled her! She blinks rapidly several times and shakes her head. A small frown appears between her well-spaced eyebrows. ‘Did I hear correctly?’ And yes, her lips have a mischievous curl to them. Nothing can stop him now.

  ‘He is completely besotted with a baby starling that fell down his bedroom chimney at GHQ. Keeps it in a cage and gets his staff to look after it. Feeds it earthworms he dug up himself and tries to teach it to whistle Irish reels.’

  Milner is not entirely sure he has Miss Hobhouse’s full interest. She is listening intently to what he is saying, but does not snigger or raise her brows as he would have hoped. He can tell that the focus of her attention is not on his story, but that her perfect breeding would not permit her to steer him swiftly back to the reason why she has come. ‘One day,’ he continues nevertheless, ‘while its master was on a visit to some far-flung troops, the bird escaped. Consternation!’ (Come on, woman, at least round your eyes.) ‘A telegram was sent to inform our Commander-in-Chief of the tragedy. On his return he organised a small army to hunt down the starling.’ Milner pauses.

  ‘And?’ Her voice is patient.

  ‘I’m pleased to inform you that it was found in the early hours of the evening in a neighbour’s chimney. The chief himself emerged from the expedition covered in mud from tripping over in flowerbeds. But with his equanimity restored.’

  As she does not snort with derisive laughter he waits for her to return to the concentration camps. Instead she says, ‘I often think we must look to the childhoods of people like Kitchener to discover the roots of their instability. And his iron will. I gather he had an oppressive father.’

  Did he see a shadow flit across her face as she said this? ‘My cousin tells me of the punishments inflicted on the young Horatio by his father,’ she continues. ‘Did you know that if he disobeyed his father in any way he was spread out on the front lawn and his limbs pinned down with croquet hoops?’

  ‘Good heavens!’ Milner tries not to smile at the image. At the same time he can see Miss Hobhouse is troubled.

  ‘Yes, fathers have a lot to answer for,’ she says at last. ‘Thank heavens for mothers – unless they die young.’ There is undeniable pain in her eyes.

  He quells a sudden longing to tell her of his own mother, the widow of a feckless German student half her age; now dead and unable to witness his great achievements. He guides her swiftly back to her Mission. ‘To return to the mothers of whom we were speaking. As I have said, I can do no more than urge Kitchener to allow you to go to the camps, if only on the practical ground that they need to be properly organised. I fear the military men in charge of them hav
e not had much experience in running their own households, let alone an entire refugee camp.’ He grimaces. ‘And they are likely to exist not for weeks but for months, if not years.’

  Miss Hobhouse stands up, perhaps because she knows the interview is drawing to a close, but perhaps so that she might gain in stature. ‘I would be grateful if you would stress to Kitchener the necessity of a Dutch female companion to guide me and translate for me. I have learnt a little Dutch but not enough to make myself understood.’

  ‘I shall do my best, Miss Hobhouse,’ says Milner smoothly. ‘But remember that, even though the Boers of the Cape Colony are loyal, they are not to be trusted once they meet up with their oppressed brethren. Don’t expect too much in the way of charity from the military.’

  ‘A little kindness from the military might lead the Boers anywhere,’ replies Miss Hobhouse. She gazes at him with the full force of her good sense. ‘I know I can rely on you, Sir Alfred.’

  ‘Do please remember me to Lady Hobhouse when you write to her.’

  ‘She will be pleased to hear that we – got on so well!’ Now a full smile breaks out on Emily’s face and for a moment he is dazzled.

  He stands at the great windows watching her brisk departure into the blazing Cape Town afternoon. Up shoots her parasol. Womanly wisdom. Calm efficiency. That’s what the camps need. His conscience will be salved.