by Ann Harries
Though the camps are called refugee, there are in reality very few of these people … It is easy to tell them because they are put in the best marquees and have time given to them to bring furniture and clothes. Very few, if any of them, are in want.
As ever,
Your loving niece,
Emily
Bloemfontein Concentration Camp, 17 March 1901
On St Patrick’s Day, the letter Patch has been dreading arrives. He recognises Mrs Witbooi’s handwriting at once; solid, round, like her own comfortable shape. Fancy. Johan. Each name is a blow aimed at his head. Mrs Witbooi offers no consolation. Her grief and anger are embedded in her silence. At the end of this death knell a short sentence ripples accusingly: Your son is waiting for you.
‘All right, Private Donnelly?’ enquires Mrs Roos. It appears he has been sitting on the anthill oven for some time, staring into space. His mouth tries to articulate a reply but succeeds only in opening and shutting like a gasping fish.
‘Bad news?’
‘I have lost …’ A swelling has mushroomed in his throat; his voice comes out high-pitched, squeaky, like a child’s. He dare not speak further.
She looks at the envelope he is holding and sees it comes from Cape Town. ‘You have lost someone dear to you in the plague?’ she suggests gently.
He nods, bewildered.
‘You have told me –’ She hesitates. ‘About your friend here. You must go to her. Tonight. And Private Donelly,’ she adds as he stands up, ‘I’m very happy that she is wearing my beautiful bracelet.’ Her eyes gleam with ironic amusement but her smile is friendly. Patch feels a wave of hot shame. He has no reply.
* * *
Patch is walking among the rows of tents filled with sleeping women and children, grandparents and kaffir maids; tripping over stacks of plates, bookshelves, buckets of water, a mincing machine, a copper kettle, and a small portable organ that wheezes out a reproving chord as his boot crashes on to its ivory keys. He slips on something soft that gives off a foul smell; later he sees a dark shape nosing through the detritus – could it be a hyena? A baboon? One of the camp guards shot a lioness the other night.
He is walking towards her tent. It lies just beyond the camp, a little apart from the other tents. He has not visited her there since the first time; such visits are forbidden and could result in expulsion. Once again he feels drawn to the glowing canvas, careless of any punishment.
He can hear the slapping sound of water in her tent. The smell of warmly scented soap floats into the unappetising night air.
‘Sarah?’ The water stops splashing.
‘I’m bathing.’ Her voice drifts out with the soapy aroma.
‘I’ll wait here.’
The water splashes, then subsides. ‘No, come in.’
‘But …’ He glances around. It is past ten o’clock and the other tents are in darkness. He swiftly unties the strings of the tent entrance and passes inside. Where he cries out in delight. She is seated in a little sail-cloth bath, her knees nearly touching her chin, blocking his view of her breasts. The light from the lamp gleams on her wet skin. He moves over to the bath.
She looks up at him, smiling. Her hair, normally so neat and hidden, is piled up carelessly, with many fronds hanging loose and wet. She is the cleanest, sweetest-smelling creature he has seen for months. She stops smiling and says, ‘What’s wrong, Patch?’
He licks his lips and tries to remember how to form a sentence. ‘Friend. Dead. Plague.’ What a struggle to release these words.
‘Oh, Patch!’ She stands up briefly in the flimsy bath. Her body is exactly as he has imagined it would be, right down to the dark bush between her legs. The Virgin Mary, unclothed at last. ‘Is it Johan?’ She knows all about Johan and Cartwright, the Trusty Trio.
He nods, struck dumb by the beauty of her wet body.
‘Can you pass me my towel?’
It is almost a relief to see her limbs and breasts disappear as she wraps herself in the worn cloth. ‘This is a terrible war.’ She rubs her body briefly. ‘I am so sorry.’
To his horror, a tear has escaped his left eye. It runs down his left cheek like a bead of blood.
‘Come here,’ she commands.
Then her smooth arms are round him and her perfume is intoxicating him and making his knees weak. She rocks him and hums something tender. He bends his head to reach her lips.
He finds her little breasts under the towel as he kisses her. Oh, the silkiness of them, the roundness. And the soft pointy nipples becoming firm beneath his fingers. His tears run down her body as he sobs out his sorrow into the warmth of her embrace.
Bloemfontein Concentration Camp, April 1901
On her way to the tent committee meeting, shortly after returning from a visit to the concentration camps of Kimberley and Mafeking, Miss Hobhouse has an accident. The lanes between the tents seethe with khaki; normally she does not deign to cast a glance in their direction. For their part, the troopers too ignore the women and children, other than to check no trouble is brewing or to shout at an insolent Boer child. Miss Hobhouse’s head is full of mattresses at the time: the tent committee has agreed to employ camp women to make at least one mattress per tent, once the superintendent has provided the forage for stuffing as well as the fabric. Emily, who has a good head for figures, has calculated the cost for nearly two thousand tents, but weeks have gone by, and still nothing has arrived. How frustrating! Still, if De Wet will go on blowing up the railways … Now she will have to inform the committee that the mattress project cannot go ahead for the moment, though a number of camp women are expecting to begin sewing next week; they are also expecting to be paid for doing so. At the same time the number of burnt-out women and children has doubled during her visits to other camps so that means her calculations are out-of-date. If a spasm of despair overtakes her as she walks between the tents, she shakes it off with a brisk twitch of the shoulders and vigorous inhalation of breath deep into her diaphragm, as her doctor had suggested.
The night before, stair-rods of rain had lashed down, which means that once again the earth is sodden both inside and outside the tents. Emily has to watch her feet as she picks her way among the tin buckets and trunks; the Shakespeare bust; the mounted antelope horns; the piles of pots and pans, lifting her skirts to avoid the slippery mud. Every now and then a child cries out Hello, Auntie! and Emily smiles and lifts a hand to wave; or a woman runs up to her with some tale of misfortune, which Emily respectfully records in the notebook she carries round with her; so it isn’t altogether surprising that in between waving and scribbling she is sometimes unable to watch her feet – which suddenly slither down the sloping lane to crack against a three-legged iron pot, much favoured as a cooking utensil by Boer and Black alike, though now home to a stuffed Sacred Ibis and a portrait of President Kruger. Although not given to screaming, a surprised cry escapes her lips, and she finds herself toppling over on to a passing Tommy with such force that they both tumble into the mud, one on top of the other, to the high embarrassment of both of them.
The young trooper is on his feet first – he is not, after all, encumbered by voluminous skirts – and naturally holds out his hand to help the lady up.
‘I’m so sorry!’ she finds herself gasping, for the collision is indeed her fault. ‘It’s this wretched mud! It’s lethal!’
She then lifts her head to meet the apologetic eyes of the trooper – and, in a moment is back in her Mexican hacienda, pouring tea for her fiancé, a guitar strumming in the servants’ quarters, the smell of cinnamon in the air. There sits Mr Jackson, grinning sardonically at her, the same emerald eyes flickering with treachery. How is it possible for two men to have the same impossibly green orbs, the same lean body supple as syrup, the suggestive slipperiness of the limbs – though this trooper has no moustache, unlike her fiancé whose heavy handlebar of hair outlined the self-deprecating downward pull of the mouth. For a moment her head swims with delirium; then she shrinks from the young man who has
knocked her into the mud, rapidly withdrawing her outstretched hand as well as her unhappy gaze.
Now the mothers and children are flocking out of their tents to attend to their muddy angel, producing boxes of illegal Boer remedies to apply to her bruised shins.
Miss Hobhouse declines offers of sweet tea and acacia poultices. She thanks the mothers for their assistance, shoos them back into their tents, and continues on her way, lightheaded with shock. Now, as she treads carefully along the muddy paths, Emily sees once again the fashionable Plaza del Domingo; once again she climbs the flight of graciously curved marble stairs and moves among the gigantic pillars that hold up a ceiling adorned with vast panoramas of Spanish victories … But where is Mr Jackson? Why isn’t she leaning proudly on his arm, fanning herself in the delicious heat? Now Emily feels that aching loss which could not be consoled by the discreet fountains and tumbling foliage of the hacienda-style ranch she had bought as her home, where Mr Jackson would manage the cattle and horses for the rodeo … the ache of longing, far worse than any physical pain she has experienced; an ache that turns to despair, and results in telegrams to Virginia and a suggestion to meet in Chicago to become man and wife; her family’s shocked silence; the wedding postponed. Emily finds she has walked right past Mrs Botha’s tent as these frantic thoughts surface, released from the cage of her memory, but look! Once again paradise seems to shimmer above the snow-capped peaks and dizzying cataracts of the mountains; and in the ranch bedroom wardrobe now hangs a foaming white frock: just look at the beadwork on the bodice; smell the perfume of heady jasmine; look at the sunset slithering like blood down the white slopes of the mountains where human sacrifices were once performed by a circle of Aztec priests …
And as she abandons herself to her grief, the beloved faces of her brother, her aunt, her uncle, loom from behind the mountains of the Aztecs; they are watching her with hard eyes, they have made a decision – and in a sudden bolt of illumination she understands everything: They paid him off! They gave him money not to marry her!
She reels over, flimsy, insubstantial with shock. Perhaps she will allow herself to drift down into the mire, and lie there like a heap of discarded clothes …
‘Miss Hobhouse!’
Someone is running after her and calling her name laughingly. She pulls herself upright; she expels the moan that has broken from her lips and fills her lungs with foetid air; her concentration is ferocious. She drives back Mr Jackson, the fountains, the forbidding faces of her relations, the unworn wedding dress; her body stiffens in triumph.
Sarah reaches Emily at last. Why is Miss Hobhouse staring into space like that, her hands fisted, her skirt and jacket smeared with mud? ‘Goodness, Miss Hobhouse, you’re miles away!’ she exclaims.
Emily turns to her, at first without recognition. She appears not to know where she is. Then a faint smile breaks across her face; her eyes dimly register the face of the young nurse who stares at her with such anxiety.
‘You can see I have taken a tumble.’ Miss Hobhouse’s voice is shrill but strong. She brushes her fingers over the fast-drying sludge on her skirt. ‘We really must get Captain Hume to do something about this mud, it’s lethal. I’m so sorry to keep the committee waiting. Have you ever eaten anything actually cooked in these three-legged pots? They seem to be used as dustbins or buckets or obstacles for silly women like me to trip over. Thank you so much for finding me. Perhaps the sun has gone to my head after all, just as some less charitable citizens of Bloemfontein have suggested.’
Yet in the midst of her frantic chatter her brain is calm. Now that she understands the mystery of his disappearance she can despise him fully. The last vestige of physical longing for him lies in the mud, shed from her heart like a snakeskin which will never grow again. A delicious feeling of relief unfolds through her body, warm as sunshine. She places her arm round the young nurse’s shoulder and, to Sarah’s astonishment, murmurs, ‘Sister Palmer, I hope you will marry a man who deserves you.’
Bloemfontein Concentration Camp, 21 April
Lizzie has been returned to her mother for several weeks now. Things have not gone well; once again the child has drastically lost weight and displayed symptoms of her former mysterious illnesses. In this she is no different from a thousand children in the camp, but the suspicions of Dr Phillips and the children’s nurses have grown to accusations, and it is rumoured that Mrs van Zyl will be criminally charged for the deliberate starvation of her child.
Yesterday Miss Hobhouse had arranged for photographs to be taken of skeletal children, which she plans to display to the British Public to make them realise where the brunt of war is most heavily falling. During the session with Lizzie, Mrs van Zyl is once again at the washing-dam, but her two other daughters try to arrange Lizzie’s hair and nightdress so that the little girl, whose body has been reduced to skeleton and skin, will look pretty in her photograph. The child’s life seems actually to be ebbing away before the camera lens. While the appalled photographer buries himself in his black cloth, the familiar wandering minstrel whistle and the thud of hooves announce the arrival of Dr Phillips himself. Miss Hobhouse silences him as he peers into the tent, an expression of deep cynicism engraved on his ruddy features. When the photographic session is over and Lizzie’s flower-stalk limbs are wrapped up in the little blanket provided by Emily from the Fund, the doctor calls out in a mocking voice, ‘Miss Hobhouse, may I have a word with you outside, please?’
Emily flashes him a contemptuous look. ‘I happen to be speaking to Lizzie,’ she says dismissively. ‘Or rather’ – her voice softens as she smiles – ‘Lizzie is speaking to me.’
A drift of cigar smoke enters the tent. ‘That’s all right,’ says Dr Phillips. He whistles another bar to show he has plenty of time. ‘I’ll wait out here.’
Lizzie is indeed speaking to Emily, though it is astonishing that her frail body can produce the energy required for speech. In her arms lies the little rag doll Emily had given her a few weeks before ‘Auntie gave me this dolly,’ she whispers, her huge eyes appearing to double in size as she speaks. ‘Now auntie must give the other children dollies too.’
Emily strokes the little girl’s thin hair while her sisters cluster round. ‘Does your dolly have a name?’ she enquires in her careful Dutch.
A smile trembles on the child’s dark lips. ‘I call her Miss Emily!’ she exclaims, then breaks into a fit of choking.
‘I’ll leave now.’ Miss Hobhouse touches the arm of a sister who is clutching Lizzie’s hand. ‘I think you should call your mother.’
Dr Phillips is waiting outside the tent, a cigar in one hand, the reins of his horse in the other. ‘Seeing you plan to unleash photographs of dying children on the innocent British public, I thought you might like to know the true details of this case.’ His horse tosses its head impatiently.
Miss Hobhouse lifts her chin and stretches her neck. ‘Dr Phillips, do you speak Dutch?’ She might have been the late queen speaking to her footman, thinks the doctor, wincing.
‘I don’t believe English people are expected to know that language,’ he says coolly. ‘There is no reason.’
‘I think there is every reason for English people to speak Dutch,’ replies Her Majesty. ‘Specially for English doctors in Boer concentration camps, so that they may understand the symptoms of their patients.’
‘I don’t need to speak Dutch to understand what I can see with my eyes: filth, sloth, indolence, superstition!’ In spite of his resolutions to remain languidly cynical he feels his temper rise. ‘And in this case, deliberate cruelty inflicted by a mother!’
‘On what grounds’ – oh, how the ice in her voice would make a lesser man shiver – ‘do you adopt this opinion?’
‘The neighbours. They speak English.’ The doctor shrugs. ‘They say so. They’ve heard the child cry out for food. The mother did nothing. The child was in a filthy state. The mother did nothing. But worse than that—’
‘I have heard enough from you, Dr Phillips, to be
lieve that you are breaking your Hippocratic oath.’ Emily’s voice cuts through the bell tents. ‘May I inform you that I have very considerable connections within the government of Great Britain, and I will not hesitate to report your libellous opinions if I hear them expressed again.’ She adopts a different tone. ‘You know perfectly well that malnutrition and disease are the causes of Lizzie’s present condition.’
‘Worse than that,’ splutters the doctor, inserting his foot into the stirrup and swinging himself into his saddle, ‘she’s been seen to feed the child on her own faeces! Is that good enough for you, Miss High and Mighty Hobhouse? Go and tell that to the government of Great Britain!’ And digging his heels into the horse’s flanks he canters off towards the army camp, trailing behind him a defiant minstrel-whistle song to disguise his fury.
It is at this point that Sarah arrives with a basketful of carrots and spinach, and a bowl of fresh eggs. She runs towards Emily, having heard something of this exchange as she approached. Miss Hobhouse is trembling. Her back straighter than ever, her jaw clenched, she is magnificent in her outrage. ‘How dare he!’ Her voice has sunk a whole octave. ‘How dare he!’