‘That’s enough,’ said Tamar. ‘We don’t discuss personal hygiene at the dinner table.’
As she reached for the potatoes, Mrs Muldoon came quietly into the room. ‘Mr Murdoch,’ she murmured. ‘May I have a word, please?’
‘Of course,’ said Andrew, buttering a slice of bread.
‘A private word, if you don’t mind.’
‘Oh. Certainly.’ Andrew and Tamar glanced at each other as Andrew followed Mrs Muldoon into the hall, where she stopped abruptly and said in a loud whisper, ‘There’s a Post Office boy at the door. With a telegraph.’
With a sudden sinking feeling, it hit him. ‘Oh God, it must be Joseph!’
He hurried to the front door, where a boy of about thirteen stood miserably under the portico, cap in one hand and a folded piece of paper in the other. As he handed it over he mumbled, ‘Telegraph, sir. Arrived at Napier Post Office this morning,’ and turned away, not wanting to be involved in someone else’s grief.
‘Hold on,’ said Andrew gruffly as he fished in his pocket and presented a handful of coins. What a rotten job for such a young lad.
‘Thank you, sir,’ said the boy as he stuffed the money into his pocket and ran down the steps.
Andrew opened the telegraph, dreading what he would read. It was bad, very bad, but not the news he had been expecting.
Tamar and Andrew,
John reported killed in South Africa. Need your help. Please telephone.
Riria.
Andrew looked up at Mrs Muldoon who was standing at a discreet distance. ‘You’d better get Tamar,’ he said dully, then moved slowly over to the stairs and sank onto the bottom one, the telegraph fluttering from his hand. He bent his head in grief, willing himself not to weep.
‘Andrew? What is it?’ Tamar asked as she hurried into the foyer. Glimpsing the pain on her husband’s face, she cried out in disbelief, ‘No, not Joseph!’
Andrew shook his head. ‘No, dear,’ he said. ‘It’s John. He’s been reported killed.’
Tamar snatched up the telegraph and read it for herself. ‘There must have been a mistake,’ she said eventually.
Andrew took her in his arms. ‘No, darling. It’s from Riria. She would have been informed officially.’
Tamar looked up at him in bewilderment. ‘But I don’t want him to be dead,’ she said childishly.
‘I know,’ he murmured tenderly as she started to cry. He hugged her to him, feeling her intense physical and emotional pain as her chest heaved and her shoulders shook. Weeping himself now, he smoothed her hair and rocked her gently, the wretched telegraph discarded on the floor.
Andrew rode into town the following morning to telephone Riria. He went straight to the Post Office and asked for a connection to be put through to Riria’s number, then went outside to wait for the Postmaster to tell him his party was on the other end.
The connection was poor and he could barely hear Riria, but he gathered she and the children would be boarding a steamer for Napier the next day. He attempted to express how he felt about John’s death, but gave up in the end and just said he was terribly sorry.
Riria arrived six days later. With her were Simon, sixteen now, darkly handsome and looking uncannily like his mother; Rose, who at fourteen was surprisingly fair although with Riria’s striking features; and twelve-year-old David. John had always joked he was vastly relieved his children took after Riria, and not himself.
Riria was clearly not herself. She was upset and agitated, but in Tamar’s opinion not behaving like a newly bereaved widow. She wondered if her dear friend was suffering from some sort of emotional disturbance in response to the shocking and unexpected news. Her suspicions were confirmed later that afternoon when Riria made a very odd request. ‘If you do not mind,’ she said conversationally, ‘I would like to leave the children here when I go to Port Chalmers.’
Andrew and Tamar glanced quickly at each other.
Uneasy, Tamar enquired, ‘Dunedin?’
‘Yes, I will be going to meet the next troopship. John will be on that one, or the one after.’
There was a painful silence.
‘Riria,’ said Andrew gently. ‘John won’t be coming back.’
‘The telegraph and the letter from Major Anscombe were both misinformed. He is still alive.’
No one knew what to say. Riria didn’t seem to notice their discomfort. ‘I have consulted a tohunga,’ she continued. ‘He has told me he has seen John alive. I would know in here if he had been killed,’ she added adamantly, tapping her breast. ‘He is not dead. I know it.’
Andrew moved over to the cabinet where the drinks were kept. He poured a small brandy and handed it to Riria. ‘Drink this, dear,’ he said compassionately. ‘It will help settle your nerves.’
‘There is nothing wrong with my nerves and there is nothing wrong with my mind,’ she responded firmly. ‘I know exactly what I am talking about. John will be coming home.’
The Second and Third Contingents were expected home any day now, having been relieved by the arrival of the Sixth Contingent in March. Riria fully expected John would be with them.
She left for Dunedin two days later, boarding the train to Wellington then travelling by steamer to Christchurch, then Port Chalmers, in time to meet the troopship. When she returned two weeks later, she was unperturbed by the fact John had not been on board the SS Tongariro. She departed for Auckland with her children, but not before asking Tamar and Andrew if she could bring them to Kenmore again when the next troopship came home.
Out of kindness and worry for her state of mind they agreed, not at all sure they were doing the right thing. They had seen the telegraph from the New Zealand Government, and Major John Anscombe’s personal letter, and were both convinced John had indeed been killed, although they were having a great deal of trouble coming to terms with his loss themselves. John had been very special, and what they would do about Riria, they had no idea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
May 1901
After more than eighteen months of war, Joseph decided he’d had enough and requested permission to return home with the Fourth and Fifth Contingents in June. To his slightly guilty relief, his request was granted. Sergeant Bob Thornton had remained with the Fourth, Jimmy Malone had been sent home just after Christmas with his left arm amputated at the shoulder, and Joseph, assigned to work with a British mounted unit, had seen nobody he knew for months.
The war had meandered depressingly on, neither side willing to capitulate and the British stubbornly pouring more men and arms into the conflict. The Fourth and Fifth had been split between different British units — the Fifth serving most of its time with the Kimberley Flying Column — and the enforced separation quickly eroded the New Zealanders’ morale. As always, decent horses were at a premium. Over two hundred animals had died or been removed from service in April alone, and there were never enough replacements. While on the move the men slept in the open, suffering from extreme heat, or numbing cold and heavy rain, depending on the season. Food was often scarce, sickness was still rife, and the New Zealand contingent had been depleted by the voluntary transfer of 170 men to permanent positions within the South African Police or Railways Departments, operating under British military command.
At home, public enthusiasm for the war was beginning to waver; there seemed to be no end in sight and no one appeared to be winning. Letters questioning the wisdom of New Zealand’s continued involvement began to appear in the newspapers, and cartoonists had a field day, although the official line still maintained New Zealand’s full support for the Empire. Despite waning public ardour, when the Government raised a new contingent in February 1901, almost six hundred men volunteered. The Seventh Contingent was farewelled on 6 April by a crowd noticeably less enthusiastic than its predecessors, the troops packed uncomfortably on board the Gulf of Taranto, a small chartered ship. Aware of the public change of heart, and mindful of the next election, Seddon stated no further contingents would be raised unless express
ly requested by the British authorities.
Joseph had been deeply affected by John Adams’ death. Raised within a warrior culture, he had no problem accepting people were killed in war, but he could not reconcile the doctor’s fate with the fact he had died rescuing men wounded as the result of a British commander’s incompetence. The more time Joseph spent in South Africa, the more he came to believe the war was injust. There were lurid rumours of what had happened to the bodies of the men killed at the base of that miserable kopje in March. The story of the missing skull had assumed legendary proportions, some insisting body parts had been dragged off by wild animals, while others swore black Africans had stolen the bones for sinister and barbaric witchcraft rituals. Although Joseph could see the rumours for what they were — speculation and ghost stories — he was nevertheless upset. A man’s head was tapu, or sacred, and it was essential it be interred with the rest of his remains. His dreams were beset with visions of John Adams’ headless spirit wandering the earth — incomplete, lost and in endless purgatory.
Late in April Joseph witnessed the execution of three Boer soldiers, discovered hiding in a barn. They had been wearing British uniforms and, as a result, were sentenced to death, a policy introduced after British forces suffered heavy losses when ambushed by Boers wearing captured khaki. The trio had been lined up in front of a wall, their hands tied in front of them and with the indignity of their appropriated trousers removed. All three had stared unflinchingly at their captors until, silent and impassive, they had been blindfolded, then shot. They died like men, and when Joseph glanced at the faces of his cohorts, he saw many shared his shame. Although not involved in the execution, he had felt sickeningly whakama at having been there.
The following week, prior to his return to New Zealand, he was assigned temporary guard duty at a Boer concentration camp in Pretoria. By mid-1901 more than ninety thousand Boer civilians and their African servants and farmworkers had been incarcerated. Camp Irene, where Joseph was detailed, was one of the largest and most notorious. It was overcrowded and unsanitary, with death from disease and starvation common. Henry Campbell-Bannerman, leader of the British Liberal Party, had been campaigning to have the harsh treatment of Boer civilians moderated. There were moves afoot to improve conditions in the camps and cease future imprisonment of Boer women and children, but when Joseph entered Camp Irene he was appalled at the conditions in which the prisoners were living. The compound was criss-crossed with stinking, open drains holding raw sewage, the accommodation and utility buildings filthy, dark and poorly ventilated. Everywhere he looked he saw skinny, dull-eyed, listless children in dirty rags, and equally emaciated women, their faces lined with anger and a hopeless despair.
He was assigned for the next two weeks as one of two guards in the hospital ward, and shook his head in disbelief the first time he entered the extensive, dormitory-like building. It was packed with rows of stretchers no more than six inches apart, the whole ward reeking of illness. Fat black flies crawled over everything, the patients too weak to wave them away.
Initially he had scoffed at the idea that this roomful of sick and dispirited women and children, most of whom looked as if they could barely sit up let alone attempt an escape, needed to be guarded. But a visiting British medical officer had been stabbed by a patient who had concealed a knife beneath her skirt, and the entire ward was now judged too dangerous to be left unsupervised. Sister Abercrombie, one of the four British nurses at Camp Irene, rolled her eyes when she imparted this information to Joseph, as if she too thought the situation absurd, but added under her breath that in her view the British officer overseeing the camp shouldn’t be in charge of a chicken farm.
She bustled ahead of him, her floor-length grey uniform and slightly grubby white apron swishing as she walked. At the end of the long ward she lifted aside a blanket tacked to a door frame and stepped into an annexed area.
‘This is where you will be accommodated,’ she said, opening a door to a small room. ‘Rather basic, but I can get you some soap and water if you want to scrub it down. We keep the rest of the ward as clean as we can but, without adequate supplies, we’re fighting a losing battle.’
Inside the narrow room was a low cot with two blankets folded at the end, a single wooden chair and a small shelf in one corner.
‘It’s nurses’ accommodation, but we keep one or two rooms spare. It’s mixed because we haven’t the space for propriety. As you’re assigned to guarding the ward, you’re accommodated here, like the other fellow you’ll be working with, but the other guards have their own building. You’ll be eating with them, and using their privies,’ she added. ‘Oh, and there are a couple of Boer women in this annex. They work as nurse aids in the ward so they’re permitted to sleep here, as they’re often on call.’
As she said this, another door opened and a young woman emerged. She stood around five foot six inches tall and was unhealthily thin. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled harshly back under the distinctive pleated bonnet most Boer women wore, and she was dressed in a drab, patched dress. As she glanced up, Joseph was startled to see she was attractive despite her thinness, with huge, almost luminous pale blue eyes, a small upturned nose and a mouth that would have been sensuous had it not been set in a frown. She shot him a hostile look as she brushed roughly past and disappeared into the ward.
‘That is Lina Van der Hoeven, one of the nurse aids. You’ll get a lot of that, I’m afraid,’ commented Sister Abercrombie matter-of-factly. ‘Most of them are very bitter. And, to be honest, I can’t say I blame them — rounded up and herded into camps, their homes destroyed, and some of them have lost husbands and sons — but who am I to comment on the wisdom of the powers that be?’
‘So you don’t consider the British should be in South Africa?’ Joseph asked, a little surprised at this woman’s rather cynical commentary.
‘I’m a nurse, Private Deane, not a politician,’ she answered, a little grimly. ‘I go where I’m needed — I don’t have any say in why I’m needed.’
Joseph considered her reply, then changed tack. ‘If these women are all as bitter as you say, then how do you get anyone to cooperate?’
‘They don’t, sometimes, but women have a knack of making the best of things. They know we nurses are here to help, and they do as much as they can to help themselves. Lina, for example, lost her husband last year and her baby daughter five months ago. She has two other children under six, poor little mites, but she helps in the ward as much as she can. She works her fingers to the bone, because it helps to take her mind off everything else. She may be bitter, but I’ve never had cause to complain about her.’
‘Why don’t the British let these women and children go?’
‘Don’t be naive,’ the sister replied, smiling. ‘You know the answer to that as well as I do. If we did, they’d go straight back to their land, rebuild everything, plant new crops, and start supplying and supporting their menfolk as soon as they could. Wouldn’t you?’
‘I expect so,’ said Joseph.
‘Well, there you are, then. So they need to be kept out of the way. Except that thousands have died in these camps, which I imagine has only made their men more intent on fighting to the death.’ She sighed and looked at the watch pinned to the front of her uniform. ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I’ve work to do. We had more deaths during the night, two children, and I need to certify them before the women prepare the bodies for burial. Welcome to Camp Irene.’
Joseph was assigned to work with another soldier named Gabriel Lightfoot, an Aboriginal tracker with an Australian mounted unit, who was also waiting to go home.
They were sitting outside the hospital ward enjoying a cigarette before starting their first shift together, Joseph on a wooden box and Gabriel Lightfoot cross-legged on the ground.
After examining Gabriel’s heavy brow, wide flat nose, dark skin and dirty bare feet, Joseph said, ‘I thought Blackfellows weren’t allowed to serve in the Australian military?’
The Abo
rigine looked back at Joseph, then scratched his backside contemplatively and grinned widely. His teeth were a startling white in his dark face. ‘And I thought Maoris weren’t supposed to be in the New Zealand military, mate,’ he said in a thick Australian accent.
Joseph laughed out loud. ‘I’m only part Maori.’
‘And I’m only part Aborigine. Yolgnu, from Arnhemland. Me mother’s a Blackfeller and me father, well, Christ knows who he was, except he was white.’
Joseph grinned again and stuck out his hand. ‘Other way round for me. My mother’s white and my father’s Maori. Ngati Kahungunu from the East Coast of the North Island.’
Gabriel spat on his palm and energetically returned the handshake with another grin. They sat in silence for a minute. Then, as he painstakingly rolled tobacco into a coarse paper and licked the edge to stick it down, Joseph asked casually, ‘What do you think of this place?’
‘It’s a fucking disgrace, mate. All them high fences and frightened kids and the stink of them dunnies. Reminds me of home.’
Joseph lit his cigarette, inhaled then let the smoke drift back out through his nose. ‘That bad, is it? At home, I mean,’ he asked with genuine interest.
‘In some places, yeah,’ Gabriel replied.
Thinking back on the experiences of his own people, Joseph asked, ‘Does it bother you?’
Gabriel had his head down rolling his own smoke. He lit it and said, ‘Nah, not really. My people are part of the land. We been there forever, and that won’t change. Ya can’t kill the land.’
‘So why volunteer?’ asked Joseph, curious. ‘You don’t owe the British anything. Or didn’t you volunteer?’
‘Oh yeah, I volunteered all right. Don’t know why, really. Something to do, I suppose. There’s no other way a feller like me’s likely to see the world. What about you?’
‘We all volunteered. In some ways I’m glad I did, but I’m sorry as well. It’s not what I thought it was going to be.’
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