No Place For a Lady

by Ann Harries

  ‘What has happened?’ cries Sarah.

  ‘That doctor —’ begins Emily, but now Mrs Botha is running up to them, her solid features distorted by anguish.

  ‘It’s Poppie! Poppie is dead! She caught the enteric and died within days!’

  ‘No!’ shouts Sarah. ‘It can’t be true!’ Only last week she had seen Poppie, not well, admittedly, but with a clear bill of health from Dr Phillips. And pushing the vegetables into the hands of the Van Zyl sisters, she rushes to the enteric ward, with Emily not far behind.

  Bloemfontein,

  22 April 1901

  Dear Aunt Mary,

  … Yesterday I had lunch with Colonel Goold-Adams and he was, as always, very agreeable. But he tells me that more and more are coming in. A new sweeping movement has begun, resulting in hundreds and thousands of these unfortunate people either crowding into already crowded camps or else being dumped down to form a new one where nothing is at hand to shelter them. Colonel Adams says, what can he do? The General wires ‘Expect 500 or 1000 at such a place’ – and he has nothing to send there to provide for them. He being wholly out of tents, has sent to Port Elizabeth and had thirty shelters made of sorts, and there they lie, he can’t even get them up. And I told him I wasn’t surprised for I don’t believe all his power as a Deputy Administrator (and that is not much) would get things sent up unless he went and stood in the goods yards himself and saw the trucks packed, as I found necessary in Cape Town or I should never have got a garment north.

  About food too – the Superintendent of a camp is getting in rations for such and such a number and suddenly 500 more mouths are thrust upon him and things won’t go round. No wonder sickness abounds. There have been sixty-two deaths in the camp [in six weeks] and the doctor himself is down with enteric.

  Two of the Boer girls we trained as nurses and who were doing good work are dead too. One of them, Poppie Naudé, was a universal favourite. She did not know where her mother was. Her father was in Norvals Pont and there had been some talk of my taking her to join him; but in the end she thought she was doing useful work where she was, earning two shillings a day, and had better stay and nurse the people in the Bloemfontein Camp … The doctor, the nurse and all had said, ‘We can’t spare Poppie’.

  The Government clothing about which they made so much noise has hitherto come to nothing. I formed, as agreed, the committees; the camp was divided into sections, the minimum required was noted down and the total requisitioned for. There it has come to a full stop. Thus had it not been for our clothing, things would have been bad indeed.

  Your loving E.H.

  Bloemfontein Concentration Camp, April 1901

  On the night of 30 April, Miss Hobhouse receives news that a berth has been found for her in a first class cabin on RMS Saxon which is due to leave in a few days’ time. What is more, the Saxon will carry Sir Alfred Milner back to Southampton, where he will be met in full splendour by the new King – who refuses to be crowned till the war is over. Sir Alfred is to receive a peerage in return for his role in the war: he will assume the title Lord Milner of St James and of Cape Town, and will have even more power over the Colonial and War Offices. (The citizens of Cape Town are bemused; St James is a small seaside resort much beloved by children and entirely lacking in gravitas.) In her mind, Emily has already cornered Sir Alfred on the upper deck and made him promise to speak to the Colonial Office about the sweeping changes needed to save children’s lives in the camps … but first she must arrange a train to Cape Town as quickly as possible – tomorrow, if she can pull the right strings. She has warned everyone of her imminent departure but that evening will suddenly be her last and she must, at the very least, say goodbye to the tent committee members.

  She makes her way towards Mrs Botha’s tent, taking care not to trip over three-legged pots. She is received lovingly; she assures everyone she is leaving only so that she might arouse the sympathy and support of public opinion; she will show the photographs of Lizzie and others to the newspapers so that a committee of women – including herself, preferably – might be sent out by the Colonial Office to formally investigate camp conditions so that the lives of tens of thousands of Boer and Black women and children might be saved; that she will return in October, whatever happens. Mrs Botha embraces her; uninhibited tears run down the Boer woman’s cheeks, already deeply furrowed.

  Then Emily races across the camp to the staff living quarters. It is dark by now, but at least the aisles between the tents are clear. Nevertheless she is careful, the collision with the young trooper suddenly thrusting itself into her mind as she hastens on. She stops to ask a passing Red Cross nurse for directions.

  An almost maternal love for Nurse Palmer has slowly bloomed in her heart, unnoticed at first, but nurtured and warmed by the young nurse’s steadfast devotion. This is the daughter Miss Hobhouse would love to have produced for mankind: selfless, gentle, loyal and – if possible – beautiful. When she returns to South Africa in a few months’ time, Sarah will be there for her, of this she has no doubt, but her daughter-disciple must not make the near-fatal mistake she herself had made: she must never jettison her life’s work for the sake of an undeserving man. No doubt she will succumb to marriage, but perhaps Emily can help her choose a worthy husband.

  These thoughts and plans spin through her mind as she makes her way towards Sarah’s tent. She looks forward to the warmth of their farewell: perhaps they might embrace and shed a few tears, but if the young nurse is asleep she must not be woken, not even to say a final goodbye. Nurse Palmer must conserve her energies for the great task she has set herself …

  Kitchener to Roberts, 19 July 1901

  I see a number of ladies are coming out, I hope it will calm the agitators in England. I doubt there being much for them to do here as the camps are very well looked after.

  Cape Town, October 1901

  On the evening of Sunday, 31 October, three orderlies are called from the Green Point military hospital to make up a stretcher party. It has become necessary to carry an hysterical Englishwoman from the Avondale Castle, anchored in Table Bay, to the hospital ship Roslin, about to return to Southampton.

  Orderly Patrick Donnelly is annoyed. His uncle, Jack Simmonds, is over from the Island to help prepare for his mother’s arrival next week – and for his wedding. The taciturn doctor had clearly resolved to help his sister and nephew to the very best of his ability; he had, for example, recently bought Frangipani Villa, which was large enough for everyone, even Sarah’s madcap friend Louise, now in an advanced state of pregnancy. The two women had moved into the house only last week, and tonight he would have enjoyed a celebratory meal. But he is still on parole after the tent episode in Bloemfontein, and has no option but to obey the sudden, inconvenient orders.

  Nearly six months have passed since their expulsion from Bloemfontein. Sarah still weeps every day over the shocking loss of Miss Hobhouse, as she has no doubt that the Englishwoman had reported their love-making to Goold-Adams – at least two women had seen her on her way to Sarah’s tent on the night before she left for Cape Town. Patch himself has long since got over the disgrace of being demoted to orderly, and as the weeks have passed, has found himself actually enjoying the work: having spent so much time in hospitals as the passive patient, he takes some satisfaction in assuming a busy active role in administering to the needs of sick and wounded troopers. Perhaps he might even train to be a doctor one day, if he can get the educational qualifications – he certainly knows more than most about enteric and dysentery.

  Occasionally he sees his green-eyed son who, for the time being, is living with his grandmother in the District. At first Mrs Witbooi had been resentful, but has softened since meeting Sarah. Sometimes he plays the music box for the child, and croons the melancholy words, there’s no place like home – and you’re a lucky boy to be getting a home, as well as a new mother and granny. The child sways blissfully to the music. He is learning to walk, and Patch can already sense his own easy saunter
in his son’s toddling. Not that there is much of the saunter left in himself. His thigh wound aches in the damp Cape winter, causing him to walk warily. To him, one leg feels shorter than the other, though to everyone else only the slightest limp is visible. Yet even Sarah had to admit that some of the jauntiness was gone; now there was no slithering of the hips or shoulders, such as first drew her to him. In fact, she has become aware that a certain ponderousness is beginning to prevail, perhaps as his confrontations with death and dying begin to take their toll mentally. She had had to gently interrupt as he told the story of Cronje’s laager yet again: his conversation is weighted down with war.

  As for the wedding, Sarah was determined to be married in the church of Our Lady of Mercy, with the nuns dancing around in delight; even Sister Madeleine, who seemed to have forgotten about the beatings and punishments and now declared him to be a fine young man. How longingly she gazed at the froth of Sarah’s wedding dress, as if trying to imagine how she herself would look in trails of white lace and tulle. Well, Patch has a surprise lined up for them for the actual ceremony: across the black frock coat, which Uncle Jack has bought him for the occasion, an orange and purple sash will be draped, with all its Presbyterian eyes and ladders and open Bibles on full display, right in the heart of the Papist church. In this way Bill would be his Best Man, for he was the best man Patch had ever met, in spite of the Orange marches and kick-the-Pope bands. Most probably Sarah, newly converted, will be shocked, but not as shocked as those so-called Sisters of Mercy, who might have to call in an exorcist or someone to decontaminate the church afterwards.

  On his first day off he had taken his bride-to-be to the Island. Uncle Jack and he shook hands solemnly then set off for the English Country Garden. How often had his mind feasted on this square of brilliance in the midst of desolation. Now, to see the real thing was an agonised joy but a mismatch with his fantasy. The garden was not as well-kept as he had imagined: there were bare patches, dry leaves; a certain carelessness about the place that he didn’t remember. The lawn at least was thriving, and the vegetable plot had been carefully tended – just look at the size of that cauliflower!

  Uncle Jack had prepared Mary Donnelly for their visit but there was no sign of her. Sarah, lovely as a flower herself, pressed Patch’s hand. He opened the gate, which still meowed like a sick cat. To think that it still meowed after all he had been through – battles, illness, scorched earth, deaths, concentration camp; how utterly his life had changed, yet the gate still meowed as if nothing but his mother’s simple life and the bad island weather had happened in the last two years. And, for a moment, that plaintive sound deleted all those tragedies and he felt himself transform into his boyish self of two years ago, with all the innocence that had since evaporated.

  He tried to hold the lightness of that feeling as they entered the garden and moved slowly down its central path. Sarah exclaimed in delight at the roses and lavender, which exhaled perfumes soothing to her hidden agitation. For her, too, the occasion was momentous – a preparation for the bridal journey up the aisle, strewn with petals. In the roar of the wind lurked exultant organ chords, but also those strange words of Miss Hobhouse: I hope you marry a man who deserves you. What on earth had made her say that out of the blue, after tripping over a three-legged pot? Quickly Sarah dismissed thoughts of Miss Hobhouse before her heart sank with sorrow, and tried to focus on the meeting that lay ahead.

  At the ramshackle front door – the house was no more than a hut, after all – attempts had been made to disguise the deficiency of paint and woodwork by the bright petals of a climbing rose. Souvenir de la Malmaison! cried Sarah in delight. Patch, bending his head beneath the tangle of blooms, knocked on the closed front door. ‘It’s always been open before,’ he murmured fretfully.

  It seemed there was no one there. The silence inside the hut was thick as mud. ‘I told her you were coming.’ Even Uncle Jack sounded querulous.

  On impulse, Sarah slipped round the side of the little dwelling. The garden was everywhere, miraculously crowded with blooms that belonged to conflicting seasons: hollyhocks, snapdragons, white arum lilies, purple irises, obeying their own impulses and those of their gardener. In the far distance, over the high hedge, the trio of mainland mountains shimmered misty blue, like the pale silk of her evening gown.

  A woman was sitting on a bench behind the house, flowers growing rampant all around her. She wore a loose crimson robe, her grey hair was tied up. In her lap lay a bouquet of roses. She did not move. From where Sarah stood a tromp l’oeil occurred as medieval portraits sprang to mind: the mountains appeared to be draped over the woman’s shoulders. She was smoking a cigarette with the remaining fingers of one hand, inhaling abruptly. Sarah froze, then jumped as an arm encircled her waist. Patch pulled her close and she could feel his warmth and the shape of his body even through their thick clothes.

  ‘Mother!’ he called. The woman did not turn her head. ‘Mother, I have brought you a daughter.’

  Mrs Donnelly dropped her cigarette and ground it into the soil with her shoe. She rose from the bench, brushing ash from her robe, the roses a medley of brilliant colours in the crook of her arm. ‘These are for you,’ she said in her hoarse voice.

  And it was the daughter, not the son, who stepped forward and kissed the leper mother’s cheeks. Then Patch soundlessly enclosed the two women in his arms; they remained so entwined till Uncle Jack came to find them.

  Now the months had passed and Sarah and Louise were preparing a room in Frangipani Villa for the arrival of his mother next week. Uncle Jack would bring her to the house and they’d have a welcome-home meal which everyone loved: Irish Stew with rice; a treat, because mutton was hard to come by these days. There was an argument about whether carrots were allowed but Mrs Donnelly, being the only one who had actually lived in Ireland, had the final say: there are no carrots in Irish Stew.

  Patch would eventually be living in a house full of females, what with Louise there as well, but at least she’d calmed down a bit and joined a group of women who made comforts for the exiled Boers in Ceylon. Sarah was carrying on in bossy Miss Hobhouse’s footsteps in spite of the old maid’s treachery. (He felt a personal distaste for the woman, not that he’d ever met her, or even seen her, as far as he knew.) Sarah had continued to show an interest in the fate of the Boer women, and had formed a friendship with Mrs Roos after that formidable woman and her sons were allowed to join her sister in Cape Town. When the Ladies’ Commission led by Mrs Fawcett arrived to inspect the camps, Sarah had been puzzled and disappointed that Miss Hobhouse was not among them. She made an appointment to speak to Dr Jane Waterston, a member of the commission who had very firm views about the ‘hysterical whining’, as she put it, which was going on among the pro-Boers in England. Sarah was anxious to tell this woman doctor about her own experiences in the Bloemfontein camp and the crucial role played by Miss Hobhouse, but Dr Waterston was interested only in voicing her own opinions. ‘This war has been remarkable for two things,’ she said. ‘First, the small regard that the Boers from the highest to the lowest have had for their womenkind, and secondly, the great care and consideration the British have had for the same, very often ungrateful, women.’

  Sarah stared at her in disbelief. ‘But I was there,’ she said. ‘I saw what was happening.’

  ‘You fell under the spell of that Hobhouse woman!’ snapped Dr Waterston. ‘She could make one believe black was white if she wanted. She told those Boer women they were being treated badly and although they knew how well they were being cared for, they believed her of course.’

  ‘The presence of the concentration camps has in every way violated the articles of the Hague Convention,’ said Sarah coldly. She could even quote chapter and verse. ‘Good day to you, Dr Waterston. It is a pity that you cannot feel as strongly about the suffering of the inmates of the camps as you do about their hygiene,’ she finished, and went straight out and joined the Cape Conciliation Committee. She and Mrs Roos seemed to spend mos
t of their time collecting clothes for the camp women and children, and going to meetings. Though this was not quite what he expected from his wife-to-be, Patch felt sure this phase would pass – especially when she started producing his children. That was what women were meant to be: mothers, not political firebrands.

  Milner’s Journal, August 1901, after the inspection visit of the Ladies’ Commission

  In considering the steps necessary for improving the health of the camps, we now have the benefit of the experience of the Ladies’ Committee … They have furnished notes on the condition of the great majority of the camps, and it is evident that they have subjected them to a most careful investigation. Their suggestions must, I think, strike everyone as both thorough and practical and we have much cause to be grateful to them for the reasonable spirit in which they have approached their task. I think a very grave responsibility would rest upon us if any one of these suggestions were not acted upon, except there was some insuperable physical obstacle to carrying it out.

  Cape Town, 31 October 1901

  Once aboard the Avondale Castle, Patch and the other members of the stretcher party drained their faces of any expression as they took up their positions on either side of the saloon door – to prevent escape of the mad woman, presumably? The Colonel came stamping through, fit to explode. Without altering their gazes they listened to him exclaim, in splintered tones, to the person hidden in the sofa: ‘Now, Miss Hobhouse, you have had the scene you wanted. I am now obliged to arrest you forcibly under martial law.’

  Miss Hobhouse! Patch felt his face flush violently. Was she going to follow him everywhere? Well, he might have guessed that the old harridan would stir up this sort of trouble. Best not to tell Sarah about it or she’d get even more tearful about things.

  A weak but authoritative voice answered (sending shivers down Patch’s rigidly straightened vertebrae), ‘They may take my baggage but they will not take me.’