by Ann Harries
By 15 February, foreign powers are notified that Cape Town is a port infected with bubonic plague. Johan dies horribly in the plague camp hospital hastily erected near Maitland; Siyabulele gains both an acquittal and an apology on the same day; Cape Town, which has escaped the horrific epidemics of the war up north, is thrown into a state of panic. Extreme measures must be taken immediately, starting with the rat-infested District.
The City Health Department moves swiftly. The Witbooi family – including a three-month-old baby with blazing green eyes – are evacuated to the plague camp in Maitland, where they are isolated, inoculated and disinfected. The house is cleaned, fumigated and whitewashed by a team of masked men largely composed of foreigners and convicts. Even so, it is too late for Fancy, whose groin and armpits began to swell the day after her brother died. As she is swept off to the isolation hospital, she cries out to her mother: ‘Tell Patch he must look after his son!’ Her red skirt drips over the edge of the stretcher; even in her dying throes her hair shines blue-black and her eyes are fierce. Sunflowers and lilies lie in her arms, sent in great bunches by the Parade flower-sellers, and are thrown with her body into the mass grave for victims of the plague a few days later.
In the meantime, doors all over the District are sealed up for fumigation and daubed with yellow. A leaflet, accusing in tone, is distributed by a self-righteous Health Department: For cleanly people in cleanly homes which are free from rats there is practically no danger of getting the plague … DIRT, OVERCROWDING, WANT OF VENTILATION AND THE PRESENCE OF RATS encourage the presence of Plague in any home or locality. Old, dilapidated, dark, unsanitary, and overcrowded houses infected by rats are particularly dangerous as filth associated with darkness and dampness is peculiarly favourable to the growth of the microbe. Rats and house vermin often carry the infection from dirty into clean houses.
Mrs Witbooi, even in her grief, is outraged. Didn’t she scrub, clean and polish her house from morn till night? Didn’t the plague start in the docks through careless administration? Isn’t the local council to blame for not getting rid of the rats? She holds Fancy’s gurgling son in her arms and rocks him angrily.
It is time the father of the motherless baby is told the news.
Bird Cage, February 1901
There is a stir among the inmates of the Bird Cage: a new undesirable is arriving. She is being shepherded by two Tommies across the barren land that lies between the penal area and the main concentration camp. Thin and pale, she has nevertheless a regal air about her which even the hardened troopers feel; one of them extends his hand to help when she stumbles, the other is carrying her bag of belongings.
Patch looks up from the cleansed sanitary buckets he is inspecting. His thoughts are on the Island, his uncle, his mother, Sarah. In his mind they are all sitting round a table in his mother’s garden, surrounded by hollyhocks and roses and contentedly humming bees. The lawn beneath their feet is green and smooth. Sarah is pouring out the tea. ‘Three sugars, please,’ says his mother in her husky Irish voice. Bill and Cartwright drift about diaphanously, unburnt by the fires of hell.
‘Private Donnelly!’ calls out one of the whores. ‘She is returning!’
Now that she is closer to the barbed wire, the approaching woman is suddenly recognisable. Mrs Roos! The women clap their hands and wave. Her name rustles among them; her children cry out in delight.
Patch too is glad. He has seen so much death and suffering that he has hardened himself against her inevitable terminal decline, so he welcomes her unexpected reappearance. He grins with pleasure as he unlocks the bird cage gate. The lopsided smile has long ago disappeared.
Mrs Roos sails in, her sharp eyes searching for her children among the gathered inmates. They run up to her, shouting with joy as she embraces them one by one.
‘We have already lit a fire for coffee!’ exclaims the mother who has looked after these children. ‘Though we use the last of our firewood, we cannot celebrate your return without coffee.’
There is laughter all round, even though everyone knows that there is precious little coffee in the beverage they will drink. Even Patch laughs.
Mrs Roos looks at him. ‘You are a happier man,’ she pronounces. ‘It must be the company you keep here.’
Now he understands she is teasing him, and pulls an agonised face at the whores. In fact, these women have been doing him a favour recently. Like every other Tommy, Patch’s uniform is crawling with lice. A million nits are embedded in the seams of his jacket and trousers. The whores, who originally laughed at his agonised scratching, have taken pity on him and boil his trousers once a week. This does not entirely eliminate the problem but keeps it under control, for which Patch is grateful.
He has a sudden longing to tell Mrs Roos about Sarah, and the unexpected problem he is encountering with her. He has managed to waylay her on her tent rounds so as to discuss their return to Cape Town, but to his irritation she tells him about the wonderful Englishwoman who is transforming the camp with her energy and efficiency – preparations are being made to boil the camp water; a consignment of soap has been ordered; fifty milch cows have arrived. Although she looks at him with delight and clearly enjoys his physical presence, Patch can tell her mind is often focused on the measles epidemic or the sewing-machine project rather than his own personal yearnings and needs.
Now he eavesdrops on Mrs Roos and her friends. She is telling them of her stay in the hospital; how a black child had been admitted with dysentery and under-nourishment, but is now miraculously thriving; how the doctors discuss with the nurses whether the plague in Cape Town will reach Bloemfontein, and how the kaffirs in that unhealthy place called the District would soon be moved out forcibly because it was thought that the plague had started in their squalid rooms.
Patch’s ears prick up at this, and a nameless anxiety flows through his veins. It is nameless because he does not dare to say the names of those concerned to himself. He diverts his dread by frenziedly digging a deep refuse hole at the back of the bird cage, as the kaffir workers look on in surprise
Bloemfontein Concentration Camp, February
On her way to the Thursday afternoon tent committee meeting, Sarah passes the original ‘hand-suppers’ camp. She does not usually walk this way but the meeting is to be held this week in Mrs Malan’s tent, which is close to the surrendered burghers’ slightly superior accommodation. Just lately she has been feeling strangely exhilarated. Her exhaustion has vanished; she feels the blood beating pleasantly in her cheeks as she speeds from one task to the next. Suddenly, her life is presenting her with two very clear directions: Miss Hobhouse beckoning her to follow down the humanitarian road, Patch taking it for granted she will come with him down the tempting road of physical love. If only she could choose both; the dual attractions revolve in her head as she hurries along.
‘Sister Palmer!’
Her name floats towards her from the direction of the hands-uppers’ camp. A woman is smiling at her from behind the barbed wire fence which separates the two camps. ‘You do not recognise me, I think?’
Sarah approaches the fence, frowning a little. She has nothing against these people herself but has heard them maligned so often by the mothers that she tends to think of them as traitors and cowards. As she focuses on the woman’s face, enclosed in the great frills of her sunbonnet, the gentle face of the kitchen maid and her milk jug in the old Amsterdam portrait stares out. She closes her eyes and remembers. ‘Mrs Theron! I am so sorry to see you here.’
‘It is for our protection,’ says the woman in her sweetly reasonable voice. ‘At least our farm has not been destroyed. A troop of Tommies has been billeted there, we are told.’
‘But your lovely farm!’ cries Sarah. She knows what Tommies do to their temporary barracks.
‘Everyone’s lovely farms are paying the price for this war of the farmers,’ says Mrs Theron quietly. ‘But your skin, Sister Palmer, how much better it is looking. Have you been using my honey emollient?’
/> ‘Oh, I have, I have, and it is quite wonderful. The dryness has all gone.’
‘Sister Palmer, may I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘I know the children in the bitter-enders’ camp suffer from a deficient diet. Things are a little better on this side of the fence. I even have a small vegetable patch outside my tent. It would make me very happy if I could supply some needy children with the carrots and sweet potatoes that are so much a part of our Boer diet.’
‘That would be very helpful, Mrs Theron. I can think at once of which children would most benefit. Their mothers would be grateful.’
Mrs Theron shakes her head vigorously. ‘No, they would not, Sister Palmer. You must not tell them the vegetables come from me. They think we are spies and informers over here. They hate us for signing the oath of neutrality and trying to stop this terrible war by any means. There is no chance at all that the Boer commandos can outdo the British army, yet they persist in believing that the Lord will save His people.’ She has grown agitated. ‘On no account must you tell them the vegetables have come from me.’
‘But surely … if it is for the good of their children?’
‘You know what these bitter-end women are like. The bitter, bitter end means even their children will be sacrificed rather than give in to the enemy. And they hate us hands-uppers more than the British!’
‘Mrs Theron, I have a meeting to attend now. But tomorrow I will come and fetch the vegetables.’ Smiling politely, Sarah hurries off, and after a minute turns round to wave at the woman who clings to the fence with white-knuckled fingers. No longer is she the placid milk maid: her face is now swollen and distorted with shadows, for all the world like a Rembrandt self-portrait in old age.
Today the tent committee is discussing how to provide new clean clothes for the camp inmates most desperately in need. The seven mothers who make up the committee have prioritised: sick children first, exhausted mothers next; then the old bewildered grandparents whose only clothes are so caked with mud and sweat that they could stand upright without the owners inside them.
Those mothers who own them have brought their sewing machines to the tent, for Miss Hobhouse has bought fabric, scissors and thread in the Bloemfontein shops with the remains of the funds from England. As Sarah draws near the meeting place, still shaken by her encounter at the fence, the whirring of these machines, accompanied by womanly chatter, spreads out from the tent. She pauses a moment to savour these homely sounds. Emily’s voice erupts into laughter now and then as she speaks a humorous mixture of Dutch and English; the machines hum busily, as if sewing together the tattered fragments of camp life and repairing the rifts that have fractured lives. She enters the tent; the women greet her warmly. She has brought a list of the neediest children with her – if only she could mention Mrs Theron’s offer. What would Miss Hobhouse think of this? Surely she would accept nutritious food for the children even if offered by the devil himself?
But Emily is looking distressed. ‘Scissors!’ she exclaims as Sarah approaches her with the list. ‘There is an utter famine of cotton and scissors. I have been to every shop in Bloemfontein and found precisely one pair of scissors and a few reels of thread. Our sewing programme can only go so far and no further if we cannot cut the fabric. Colonel Goold-Adams says he’ll raise the money to pay for this project and we are still waiting. Oh, Sarah, I sometimes think cleaning the Augean stables was an easier task than cleaning up this camp.’
Something has happened to Emily’s face. She now has the dark rings of exhaustion that encircle the eyes of everyone in the camp. Her complexion is no longer a confection of peaches and cream, but has roughened into a reddish-gold that may darken into a duskiness dreaded by most white women. Sarah considers offering her the honey emollient. Miss Hobhouse has worn delightful sunhats and carried a parasol, but nevertheless the sun has caught her hair as well and bleached it into tawny stripes so that as she sits, erect and energetic in the stifling tent, she radiates colour: even her grey eyes have turned blue in their new setting of bronzed facial skin. The women gaze at her adoringly. So what if there is only one pair of scissors: this Englishwoman has cut through more than cotton fabric – she has miraculously snipped through the bureaucratic red tape which has prevented improvement in camp conditions, and for this they will always love her.
At the end of the meeting, as Miss Hobhouse packs her notebooks and needles into her basket, she lifts her head and says in a rush, ‘There is one other matter I’d like to mention.’
‘And what is that, Miss Hobhouse?’ enquires Mrs Botha.
Emily blinks rapidly. ‘The virtue of the camp, Mrs Botha. There are so many impressionable girls here in these tents, innocent daughters who do not have the firmness of their fathers to instil discipline. The camp seethes with Tommies of the most uncultivated kind, many of whom smell – stink – of alcohol. Perhaps the members of this committee could report any suspicion of immoral behaviour.’
Sarah hopes her flaming cheeks are not noticed by the committee members. Strangely, Miss Hobhouse’s words have the opposite effect to which they were intended upon her body: a wave of sudden desire floods between her legs and up into her belly and breasts. However, Mrs Botha is clearly not having the same reaction as she replies sombrely, ‘And we still have none of our Dutch Reformed ministers, who could take the place of the fathers who are on commando and advise the young girls of their morals.’
Afterwards, while walking away from the meeting and back towards the central hospital, Sarah finds Miss Hobhouse’s remarks on camp morality beating guiltily in her head. For the first time she begins to wonder about the sinfulness of her desire for Patch. Where exactly is the line between sin and purity drawn? Though her spiritual advisor from the Church of the Holy Rosary in Bloemfontein has made it clear to her that impure thoughts and sexual intercourse before marriage would deny you heavenly access (should you be so unfortunate as to die before confessing these sins), the boundaries of these sinful activities are blurred. Of course, actual penetration is out of the question, but kissing? She is too embarrassed to ask her spiritual adviser, a ruddy-faced Irishman suffering from emphysema, whether the entrance of the lover’s tongue into one’s mouth – being a form of penetration – means instant damnation, or whether it might fall into the venial sin category. There is other fondling too, involving sacred parts of the body … surely this is permitted if you plan to marry the lover?
She steps over a pile of frying pans, bread tins, coffee pots, butter dishes and a framed portrait of President Kruger. Mrs Pienaar calls a greeting from her new mattress where she lies, surrounded by neighbours, waiting for the contractions. Two small girls in enormous kappies stagger past carrying a drum of water which splashes a dark trail over the dust behind him. They sing out good wishes for the afternoon.
But does she plan to marry Patch? To go to the Island and meet his mother? Or will she continue to be swept by the flow of Emily’s dedication and willpower? Miss Hobhouse, by all accounts, had once been infatuated by an inappropriate man. Would she have abandoned her humanitarian principles for love of this man? Yet some women could have the love of a man together with their charitable work: look at Lord and Lady Hobhouse, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, Leonard and Kate Courtney; who together, man and wife, had achieved so much for the improvement of mankind. But Patch is not exactly a Sidney Webb or a Leonard Courtney; he shows no interest in high moral causes, yet she is in love with him: it is all too complex for her to try to sort out at this moment.
By now she has reached the enteric ward. Mrs Mopeli’s niece will be ready to return to her mother: she must try to arrange for bearers to take her to the black camp. As she moves towards her little cot, she sees Poppie moistening the lips of a feverish woman patient; a week ago the young Boer girl had been moved to this ward to gain further nursing experience. Poppie has privately complained to Sarah about the careless way the ward is run; enteric sheets are not boiled, but washed in cold water with other she
ets and clothes; blankets are filthy; the pails from the enteric latrines are not disinfected; milk for the whole camp is often left on the window sills of the ward.
‘The little kaffir girl has completely recovered – isn’t that wonderful!’ she cries out. ‘You brought her just in time, Nurse Palmer.’ She stands up, pats the hand of the feverish woman, and begins to walk across to Sarah. Halfway across the ward she gasps, grips at her belly, and doubles over.
‘Poppie, what’s the matter?’ Sarah runs towards her in alarm.
The girl straightens up and smiles bravely. For the first time since she started this work, she looks tired; older, sallow. ‘Agh, it’s something I ate last night.’ She lowers her voice. ‘They say there is ground-up glass in our sugar rations and barbs in our bully beef. Some of it has got into my stomach, I think.’
‘There are rumours about everything,’ says Sarah gravely. ‘But I would like you to see Dr Pern to check on the state of your health generally.’ She turns to the little cot. ‘Oh look! She’s laughing. What an adorable child!’
Bloemfontein,
4 March 1901
Dear Aunt Mary,
I just want to say while it is on my mind that the blouses sent from England and supposed to be full-grown are only useful here for girls of 12 to 14 or so. Much too small for the well-developed Boer maiden who really is a fine creature. Could any out-out sizes be procured? And for camp life, dark colours are best; it’s hard to keep clean and soap is a luxury – water not super-abundant. You would realise the scarcity and poverty a little had you seen me doling out needles and pins by twos and threes and dividing cotton and bits of rag for patching. A few combs I brought up from Cape Town were caught at with joy.
With regard to the vexed question of differing nationalities, is it generally known and realised at home that there are many large Native (coloured) camps dotted about? In my opinion these need looking into badly. I understand the death rate in the one in Bloemfontein to be very high and so also in other places – but I cannot possibly pay any attention to them myself. Why shouldn’t the Society of Friends send someone if this War goes on, or the Aborigines Protection? In my camps there are many kinds of nationalities … Often there are little Kaffir servant girls whipped up and carried off with their mistresses, and those too need clothing. Decency demands that all should be provided and though it is the business of the Government, which has either burnt or left behind their own clothes, yet that Government is so slow and uncertain and so poverty-stricken that it is on the cards the camp will be disbanded before it provides material!