No Place For a Lady

by Ann Harries

  He calls his secretary and begins to dictate.

  Bloemfontein Concentration Camp, January 1901

  ‘You wish to speak to me?’ says Nurse McKillen with an air of haughtiness. This young nurse from England must remember who is in charge here. Nurse McKillen came from England as well. She and her husband had emigrated to Johannesburg a few years back where they’d been regarded as ‘uitlanders’ – foreigners – by the native Boers. When these Boers expected Mr McKillen to join their ranks in their hostilities against Great Britain, husband and wife had joined the fleeing uitlanders, and become refugees in Bloemfontein. Mrs McKillen was lucky to find work in this camp hospital.

  ‘It is possible that a lady from England will be visiting the camp.’ Sarah feels faint in the stifling heat of the children’s ward. Nurse McKillen frowns. ‘I would like to bring her to visit the children here.’

  ‘As long as she doesn’t interfere and tell us how to do our work. We don’t need busybodies here,’ snorts the senior nurse. There is a sour beery smell on her breath. She gives Sarah a suspicious look. ‘What’s she want to come here for?’

  ‘She’s bringing clothes and comforts for the children,’ says Sarah. ‘How’s little Lizzie?’ she asks quickly to divert the inevitable tirade against ‘pro-Boers’.

  ‘See for yourself.’ Nurse McKillen nods at a bed near a window. ‘Putting on weight, as you’d expect.’

  Lizzie lies, still as death, her eyes wide open, staring at the busy flies on the ceiling. There is more flesh on her arms which lie limply on the unwashed bed cover. Her face has filled out a little.

  ‘Good morning, Lizzie. How are you, my dear? Sarah greets the child in her now confident Dutch.

  A suggestion of a smile appears on the child’s bluish lips. ‘Good morning, nursie. Where is my mother?’

  ‘I tell you what, Lizzie: will you sing for me?’

  The child thinks a moment; then obligingly sings, in a thin whispering voice, the first verse of a Boer hymn, De Here is Mijn Gehulp (The Lord is My Help)

  ‘That’s all we need now,’ mutters Nurse McKillen. ‘A whole lot of Dutch dirges.’

  Poppie comes bustling by, all freckles and smiles, in the whitest apron Sarah has seen for a year. ‘Time for the bedpans!’ she sings, clearly enjoying herself in spite of the malevolent glare directed at her by Nurse McKillen. ‘Are you ready, Jan Pierewit?’

  A grey-faced little boy giggles and hides beneath his grey sheet. ‘No, nursie!’ comes a muffled voice.

  Poppie leans over his bed and tickles the little heap of bones beneath the blanket. ‘Here comes the bedpan bird!’ she cries, swooping the urine receptacle above the sheets and imitating the raucous cry of the ha-de-hah.

  Nurse McKillen sniffs. ‘She’s as bad as the children. As if we haven’t got enough on our hands.’

  ‘That’s all we need,’ agrees her refugee colleague, Nurse Nicholson.

  Outside the ward entrance, someone is waiting.

  ‘Mrs Mopeli!’ cries Sarah. She can tell at once that the ex-washerwoman to the troops is in a state of repressed anguish. No longer either jolly or bitter, she now looks like so many women in the camp: helpless and frightened. ‘What is it?’ for Mrs Mopeli seems incapable of speech.

  ‘Nurse Palmer, will you come with me to the Native Refugee Camp?’ she says in a strained voice. Her eyes have lost their lustre, but she does not appear to be ill. ‘It is my sister’s daughter.’

  Sarah wavers. It is the end of a long weary day among the tents and in the ward, and she longs for the secret luxury of her sail-cloth bath. Just lately she has been too exhausted to visit the native camp after her day’s work with the children, and has felt guilty about this.

  ‘Of course.’

  The two women walk quickly through the Flower Fountain city. ‘Isn’t it amazing,’ remarks Sarah, who cannot bear the silence of her companion, ‘how the roses bloom so beautifully at the height of an African summer.’ She glances nervously at Mrs Mopeli, who shows no interest in the Barronne Prevost Hybrid Perpetuals, their salmon pink faces turned towards her as if in preparation for praise.

  ‘This war,’ says Mrs Mopeli, pushing her way through the soldiers who crowd the pavements and make no effort to stand aside for the two women, ‘is a bad bad bad thing. Now everyone is dying. Children are dying. We thought the British Army came to help us; to give us back our land; to put our people into the government. Now we help the British Army and they kill our children. They even kill the children of the Boer people.’

  ‘Well, not intentionally,’ says Sarah, though without much conviction.

  ‘Is it not intentional when they burn down our kraals and villages, saying that we feed the Boer commandos? Is it not intentional when they steal our cattle and sheep and set fire to our crops? Is it not intentional when they force the women and children and old people away from the homes of their ancestors, into camps which they must build themselves out of rubble? You know that there is not one hospital, not one ward, not one doctor, not one nurse in the native refugee camp, Nurse Palmer. The children are sick. They are hungry, They are dying. You will see when you get there.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can to help your sister’s child,’ gasps Sarah. The thorns of a pale cream Souvenir de la Malmaison cling to her skirt and she wrenches it free. ‘I am a nurse, not a doctor.’

  ‘You can help her.’ Mrs Mopeli sails through the rose garden, untouched by thorns. ‘You must not let her die, Nurse Palmer.’

  The sprightly cadence of bugles and drums precedes a brisk regimental parade; a non-commissioned officer stops the two women. ‘Your passes, please.’ His voice is accusing, as if they have already broken some law. Both women produce their documents with an air of indifference; the young man examines them with exaggerated mistrust. ‘It’ll be curfew shortly,’ he says. ‘Don’t let me catch you out of bounds later on.’

  Sarah can smell the camp before she sees it. The air is suddenly alive with flies and stinging insects. Beyond a row of armed native pickets stands what seems to be a squatter camp made up of precarious-looking shacks. A woman wrapped in a blanket is attempting to light a fire in a tin brazier; naked black children are tumbling about in the mud. The familiar stench of human faeces hangs over the camp.

  ‘There are still no latrines here,’ said Mrs Mopeli emotionlessly. ‘Our people have to go up the hill. Some people cannot wait. They are not used to living like this.’

  ‘Still no tents?’

  Mrs Mopeli looks around at the dwellings built out of scraps of corrugated iron and bits of wood and canvas, and pulls a disgusted face. ‘It is the wish of the British Army. This is my sister’s shack, Nurse Palmer. Her name is Namzuma. She doesn’t speak English.’

  Inside the shack a group of white-haired old people in blankets sit listlessly on the earth floor. There is the smell of hunger: Sarah can see none of the basic rations evident in the Boer bell tents. ‘This is my sister. She comes from the village of Mapele.’ They moved towards a blanket-clad woman whose features Sarah can only just distinguish in the gloom. Namzuma makes as if to curtsey, but is holding a small baby against her naked breast. Sarah lays a restraining hand on her shoulder, then drops it to feel the child.

  ‘What is your baby’s name?’ Mrs Mopeli translates.

  ‘Nyanga, madam,’ says the mother, averting her eyes in the way of country Africans.

  ‘And what is the matter with Nyanga?’ Sarah feels she is choking with the smell in the shack. Flies cake the baby’s face. They attempt to gather round her own mouth as she speaks. ‘Her skin feels hot and dry.’

  Nyanga has chronic diarrhoea. She will eat nothing. According to her mother, who speaks languidly, she defecates a transparent mucus, though this morning her faeces look like fragments of overstewed meat. The baby passes wind as her mother continues with her catalogue, then shrieks in pain. ‘Many many children have this sickness,’ translates Mrs Mopeli. ‘And the old people too. Some have died already.’ She addresses the white-haired p
eople in rapid Sotho. They chorus a reply, holding their stomachs and moaning in imaginary agony. Some of them begin to hiccough. Others pretend to vomit. Sarah can see they are all dehydrated, as is the baby.

  ‘Do you have salt here? These people are suffering from dysentery. It comes from these flies sitting on food. They must drink a lot of water with salt in it. They mustn’t even try to eat. As for Nyanga, if Namzuma will allow it, I shall take her to the hospital. She is very ill. Perhaps they can save her there.’

  Mrs Mopeli speaks in an authoritative voice to her sister. Namzuma moans and rocks Nyanga; then allows Mrs Mopeli to lift up the child. In one deft movement the baby is tied to her aunt’s broad back: ‘Let us go together. You are very tired. You are not strong enough to carry the child.’

  Namzuma murmurs something in a choked voice.

  ‘She says that children die in the hospital,’ translates her sister.

  ‘Only if they come too late.’ How often has she uttered these words? ‘We will take her to the ward for contagious illness. They will drip saline water into her arm. If it is not too late, that will save her life.’

  As Patch, Mrs Roos and the two stretcher bearers draw closer to the central hospital hut, weaving their way through lanes between tents cluttered with kettles, chickens, chairs, children, coffee grinders, slop buckets, flies, clay ovens, guards, pigs, pots, pails and pestles, Patch becomes aware of the beating of drums. Perhaps it is thunder he hears, though the evening sky is clear and the web of southern stars is already flickering into life. The Tommies say the night sky is different ‘back home’, when they can see it through the clouds and smog, that is, but ‘out here’ – they shake their heads and wonder if that starry net might swoop them up into the heavens if they don’t look out.

  He is wondering if he should confess to Mrs Roos that it is her turquoise bracelet that he carries in his pocket, and which now has a leaden feel to it. But then he would have to return it to her and then what would he give Sarah? If Mrs Roos dies things would be easier, but there would still be a sin attached, perhaps only venial … They enter the hospital.

  At the door Mrs Roos murmurs from her stretcher, ‘God help me!’ For the drumming has become a-hammering as hobnailed boots and heavy-heeled shoes pound across the bare planks of the hospital floor, set three feet above the ground; a-hammering that the corrugated walls and roof magnify into a-booming; and into that warp of boom is woven the shrieking of nurses, the shouting of soldiers, the moaning of mothers, the wailing of children, all combining together in one giant cacophony that charges out at you like a savage animal, unleashed as you open the hospital door. And with it the twin beast of heat and stench as the unshaded metal hut slowly roasts the patients who lie within its walls. So violent is the attack on his senses that Patch for a moment wants to faint: he feels sweat break out and run in rivers all over his body. Mrs Roos, on the other hand, seems to have died. She has closed her eyes. The flies make a rush for her face; she does not attempt to brush them away.

  Once he has got his breath back, the sight is familiar to Patch. But there is a difference here, a profound difference between his enteric marquee and this corrugated iron ward. For here is a panorama of the dying – from the anguished infant, through the pallid mothers, to the grey grandparents dissolving with age and illness beneath their dirty blankets. They are not unattended; never has Patch seen a ward so full of scrubbing, sweeping kaffirs, and uniformed soldiers who stride around with documents in their hands, and impatient nurses shouting in English at uncomprehending patients and thrusting thermometers under their tongues.

  He catches the attention of one of these nurses who has just finished berating a flimsy old man who has wet his bed.

  ‘I’m looking for Sister Palmer.’

  ‘She don’t work here,’ snaps the young woman. ‘She’s in the tents.’

  ‘What’s she doing in the tents?’

  ‘Getting the sick babies off their mothers,’ replies the nurse, evidently irritated by his question. ‘Dunno why she bothers. Who’s this then?’ And she glances at the inert form on the stretcher.

  As Mrs Roos is moved on to an empty bed, Patch tries not to look at the children in the corner of the ward. Since leaving the orphanage he hasn’t had to witness large numbers of children crying for their mothers. But his fleeting glimpse of the drumming thrumming rumbling ward shows him that things are worse here for these children than they ever had been in the frigid silence of the orphanage dormitories. One infant actually tumbles out of bed while droning the syllables ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma as his contribution to the cacophony, and Patch cannot prevent himself from watching the emaciated little body being strapped to the bed by his wrists and ankles with strips of linen so that the inconvenience of picking him up would not be repeated.

  Mrs Roos now lies under a dirty blanket like everyone else. Her eyes flutter open and Patch is amazed that they still blaze blue, for every bit of colour has drained from her face which now seems to have been fashioned from wax. She is trying to say something. Patch leans over and places his ear near her mouth.

  ‘Don’t let my children come here,’ she gasps, those brilliant orbs rolling back in her head, defeated at last.

  ‘I won’t,’ says Patch. His voice sounds wobbly.

  The nurse bustles up with a cup of milk. ‘Off you go then,’ she orders Patch. ‘We’ll soon have her up and about. No Boer remedies in this hospital.’ She pulls Mrs Roos’ inert torso upwards and thrusts the cup against her lips. Mrs Roos begins to retch.

  He turns away from her so as not to embarrass; then addresses the young nurse. ‘Sister Palmer,’ muses Patch. ‘Which part of the camp does she visit?’

  ‘Don’t ask me!’ exclaims the nurse, wiping her soiled apron. ‘Come on, madam, drink up.’ She gazes round the ward, following a handsome young medical officer with her hopeful eyes. Suddenly she gives a snort. ‘Well, you’re the lucky one! Here comes Sarah through the door. With another sick baby of course.’ The look on the nurse’s face is slowly rearranging itself. ‘Am I seeing right,’ she whispers, ‘or is that baby black? And who is that kaffir woman with them?’

  Patch hardly dares to look. However, he has his techniques. Turning his head away, he slides his eyes with lowered lids in Sarah’s direction.

  Oh Mary Mother of God, can that be the woman I love?

  The turquoise bracelet which belongs to Mrs Roos is in his pocket. But does he want to give it to this exhausted-looking woman who has aged twenty years since he last saw her? Where is her luminous beauty, her angelic composure? Her face is grey, her shoulders slumped. Disappointment rather than pity wells treacherously in his heart. Sarah does not see him. He turns away quickly and walks back to the bird cage, his head in turmoil.

  Bloemfontein,

  26 January 1901

  Dear Aunt Mary,

  I arrived at Bloemfontein, the only woman, and began to learn from that moment what it is to be dominated by the Military. All the railway officials sink into nobodies and soldiers rule the station. You can’t stir without their sanction. The whole town is full of soldiers – and the little hotels and the post office and a great ring of camps all round and picquets continually demanding your pass. It is a perfect terror, and I feel inclined to kick all day long.

  The splendid truck given me at Cape Town, a large double one, was capable of holding 12 ton. Colonel Cowie had sent word I was to have the largest they had available. My humiliation was that I was not able to fill it. £200 worth of food, groceries, etc. barely filled half, and all the clothing I could muster left much space in the other half. And it was such an opportunity missed for it travelled up gratis. It left Cape Town the day before I did and was hitched on to my train at De Aar and so arrived when I did.

  The first thing I did next day was to go down to the goods station, claim the truck and arrange for its unloading. Mr. Arthur Fichardt, the son of my hostess here, has most kindly put a row of vacant rooms at my disposal and this morning I have spent arranging all my s
tores – unpacking and sorting them. It is very hot work. I think the essence of delightful work is when you quite forget you have a body, but here the heat keeps you in constant recollection that you are still in the flesh, and it is a great hindrance.

  But I must pass on to tell you about the women’s camp which, after all, is the central point of interest. General Pretyman gave me his blessing over it and a permanent pass and introduced me to Captain Nelson who, until recently, has been in charge of it. The Authorities are at their wits’ end and have no more idea how to cope with the one difficulty of providing clothes for the people than the man in the moon. Crass male ignorance, stupidity, helplessness and muddling. I rub as much salt into the sore places of their minds as I possibly can, because it is so good for them; but I can’t help melting a little when they are very humble and confess that the whole thing is a grievous and gigantic blunder and presents an almost insoluble problem, and they don’t know how to face it.

  I explained that I was not going to do what the Military ought to do, but really, when looked into, what they are able to do is so little that I feel that donors would wish that the suffering of the women and above all the tiny children should be the chief thing taken into account. Major Cray, now in charge not only of this camp but of everyone in the once Free State, told me how he was curtailed – no money, no trucks in sufficient quantity, no power to do what he would like to have done. He begs me to go to all the camps – the wild demand for clothing at places like Rhenoster drives him to despair and he and I together are going to concoct a letter to Kitchener to obtain leave for me to go up north. I hope he will.

  The camp is about two miles from this town, dumped down on the southern slope of a kopje right out on the bare brown veldt. Not the vestige of a tree in any direction, nor shade of any description. It was about four o’clock of a scorching afternoon when I set foot in the camp and I can’t tell you what I felt like, so I won’t try.