The Heart of the Empire

by Philip McCutchan

  “Well done,” he said. “You’ve done fine work for us, and we’re all grateful. There’ll be more occasions before I ride south for the Tugela River.” He hesitated. “I’m hopeful you’ll come with me, Mr Bland, when I join General Botha.”

  Ogilvie shook his head. “No fighting for me. I’m sorry.”

  “I am sorry too.”

  “Couldn’t I be more use here, to carry on recruiting for you?”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps!” Qpperman frowned, and clapped him on the shoulder. “We shall see. By the time I leave, we may have exhausted the Reitz reservoir — such as it is. But we shall see, Mr Bland.”

  *

  To have seemed too eager would have been a mistake, but in furtherance of Lord Kitchener’s wishes he knew that in fact he must ride on towards the Tugela with Old Red Daniel Opperman. A meeting with Louis Botha, one of the biggest names among the Boers; would be a chance he must not miss. Ogilvie decided he would let matters drift until Opperman’s departure was imminent, and then raise no further objection to leaving Reitz with him. After that, he would simply have to use his wits to avoid having to use a rifle against his own side. If necessary as a last resort, if and when a rifle was thrust into his hands, he would have to abandon Kitchener and Mr Rhodes and try to fight his own way out to join the British lines.

  When he returned alone to his hotel he found he had a visitor: sitting in the little entrance hall was a young woman — the one he had seen that morning during his recruiting drive. As he came in she rose from a chair behind a large potted plant, and came towards him, smiling.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Bland. I hope you don’t mind my presumption in calling upon you?”

  He was aware, once again, of danger. “Not at all,” he said.

  The smile was faintly mischievous now. “But you’d like to know why? And I shall tell you, Mr Bland. You appeal to me. I hope you’re flattered?”

  Frankly, he was embarrassed. But he asked lightly, “Where does my appeal lie, Miss — er — ?”

  “Smith, Mr Bland. Maisie Smith — from Hounslow. Your appeal? Oh, I admire your courage, I think — what you did for Commandant Opperman, what you did in leaving Kimberley and showing so honestly and bravely where your true sympathy lies, that is, with the Afrikaners.”

  He cleared his throat. He had an idea the hotel staff were listening and were laughing at him. He said, “Er — yes.”

  “That is where your true sympathy lies, isn’t it?”

  “Why yes, of course — ”

  “Mine too, in spite of Hounslow. I’ve no doubt Hounslow is being immensely patriotic on the British side.”

  “Yes, indeed, Miss Smith.”

  She looked at him reflectively for a few moments, shaking her head a little, and biting at her lower lip. She really was immensely pretty, and not a bit Amazonian in spite of her lithe and healthy build. Suddenly she reached out to him as she had done that morning, and put a hand on his arm. “Let us talk, Mr Bland. In private. We can go to your room.”

  “I think that would be hardly proper.”

  She laughed. “Nonsense, it would be perfectly proper. That bandage needs attention, and I’m a nurse. As a matter of fact, I’m Dr Heinik’s dispenser as well — yesterday I had gone to the hospital at Bethlehem. Had I been here in Reitz when you were shot, Dr Heinik would have sent me to you. Come, Mr Bland, don’t be shy of me!”

  10

  “WELL, HERE WE ARE,” SHE SAID, LOOKING AROUND Ogilvie’s bedroom. “Proper or not!” Suddenly, staring at her own reflection in a looking-glass, she gave a giggle, a sound that Ogilvie would have thought out of character, for it was an unladylike giggle with a hint of coarseness behind it. She said, “You’re a one, aren’t you Bland!”

  “I don’t quite understand?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Are you a nurse or are you — ”

  “Don’t say it!” Maisie Smith lifted a hand, then giggled again. “This is the Orange Free State, remember. All God and hellfire. They don’t like immorality!”

  Ogilvie said, “I wasn’t going to use the word I think you had in mind, Miss Smith.”

  “But you do know the facts of life — don’t you?”

  “Of course. On the other hand, I tend to believe ladies when they say they’re nurses — until they give me other ideas.”

  She giggled again. “Go on with you! What ideas have I given you, may I ask?” There was a coquetry about her now; the upper class accent, the patrician air, had gone: she was a good actress, Ogilvie thought. The sense of danger was strong: he had no wish to be compromised in his dealings with Opperman, and he had a feeling the red-haired Boer would react badly to any scandal surrounding his curiously-appointed recruiting officer.

  “You want to throw me out, don’t you, Mr Bland?” Her voice hardened. “You better not! I can make a hell of a noise when I’m crossed. They could tell you a lot about that in Hounslow.”

  “Perhaps,” he said coldly, “you’d better explain. Why not sit down?”

  “Ho! Polite at last, aren’t you? But I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you. I rant better standing up, see.”

  “At least you’re honest.”

  She laughed. “God, that’s rich! Honest!” She stared into the looking-glass again, swaying back from the hips and adjusting the large hat, making a face at herself. Ogilvie studied her in astonishment; there was still something very appealing about her, and there was a touch of something else as well, something indefinable to Ogilvie: a hint of sadness, of a kind of … he searched for a word … gallantry almost, a hitting back against a hostile and disapproving world. A little girl lost? Not quite that! She looked capable of taking care of herself and she was not physically little.

  She turned away from her reflection and stood in front of Ogilvie, hands on hips now, looking him up and down and clearly liking what she saw. He felt more and more uncomfortable: he was strong and healthy himself and had been celibate too long, and he knew he desired her. He. wondered, briefly, if the solution might not be to allow both himself and this woman their satisfaction, and then send her packing. He had hardly reached the conclusion that a whetted appetite might prove even more dangerous than abstinence when she spoke again, and shatteringly.

  Smiling, she asked, “Remember Mrs Bates, do you?”

  At first he didn’t understand. There could be many Mrs Bates scattered throughout the world. Then she amplified: “Mrs Colonel Bates — Supply and Transport — Peshawar, India. Got it now? You’re Captain James Ogilvie of the 114th Highlanders, or I’m the Prince of bloody Wales.”

  *

  He had gone cold as death: the sun of Reitz, sending its heat through the open bedroom window, quite failed to warm him. Mrs Colonel Bates, that long-tongued, spiteful woman who had tried to make trouble for him in India years before, the woman he had deliberately snubbed on more than one occasion since then. Ogilvie had detested Mrs Bates, but it wasn’t Mrs Bates who was important now. It was this Maisie Smith. To start with he tried to bluff it but, saying she must be mistaken in her man.

  “Oh no I’m not!” she said, loudly — too loudly. He shushed at her, and that seemed to please her. “Don’t want anyone to hear your guilty secrets, do you, Captain Ogilvie?” But she lowered her voice when she went on, still staring into his eyes, “Let me just prove it. I’ll mention some names. Bloody Francis Fettleworth. Sir Iain Ogilvie — your father! Colonel Lord Dornoch, Captain Black the adjutant. General Lakenham. Colonel Carmichael of the Medical Staff. Shall I go on, Captain Ogilvie?”

  She was triumphant, grinning now like a she-devil.

  “No,” he muttered. “You’ve said enough. Just tell me what it is you want — and what you were doing in Peshawar, for I don’t remember ever meeting you!”

  “Oh, you didn’t,” she said, sneering, curling her lip. “I was a nurse — children’s nurse, I mean. Nanny. Major the Honourable Alastair Duff-Kinghorne, seconded from the Scots bloody Greys. Scotch, see — like you! His lady wife didn’
t want the kids brought up by amahs. Silly bitch. Oh no — you didn’t meet nanny, but nanny saw you often enough.” Once again the giggle. “She liked what she saw, too, and wanted to see a lot more, but she didn’t get the chance. God, you were a lot of bleeding snobs! Mind, I made use of you all. I learned, my God I learned! One thing I learned was how to talk like a lady, and believe me, that’s been useful enough since those days!”

  Ogilvie had got his equilibrium back a little now. He said, “Tell me about the since, Miss Smith. How did you land up here in Reitz?”

  She laughed. “I was given my notice in India. Didn’t you ever hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Well, I see you didn’t, unless you’re pretending. I’d have thought everyone knew everything in Peshawar, but I s’pose the bitch saw to it that it was kept dark. The Honourable Alastair wanted me more than he wanted his Honourable wife — that’s what! He had me once, too, but never again.” She made a grimace. “He was horrible, you can’t imagine! All hair, and his breath stank of cigars and brandy, and he had a gut like a rhinoceros. Well, she found out and that was that. She paid my fare home to Hounslow. I got pregnant on the way back, and when the child was born my father kicked me out. I went on the streets after that, up Soho way. It was a living! My baby was put in a home — they call it a home. Bloody institution! She’s three now and I’ve never set eyes on her since she was a few weeks old — but I still bloody love her, that I do!”

  It could be acting again, but Ogilvie saw tears in her eyes. He asked, “But what about Reitz? How the devil did you end up here?”

  “You may well ask,” she said bitterly. “I met a young man after a while, in London. Not professionally. He didn’t know any of that. He had money — he came from South Africa, from the Orange Free State. He was in London on business. Well, he fell in love with me and persuaded me to come out here, which I did. He wanted to marry me, but wanted his parents to meet me first, and we’d get married out here, see. I’m not going into a lot of detail, but we never did get married. I reckon his mum saw through me, like the Honourable Mrs bloody Duff-Kinghorne. Not so long ago, after I’d come to Reitz — I hadn’t the money to go home to England — I heard he’d been killed in the early fighting.” She shrugged with a show of indifference. “Well, that’s my story, take it or leave it.”

  “Didn’t you say you were a nurse? I mean, a hospital nurse?”

  She nodded. “Yes. Course, I’m not a proper nurse, but I picked up enough to get by — looking after the Duff-Kinghorne kids! God knows, there were bloody nine of ‘em! Probably ninety-nine outside of holy wedlock. And there’s a shortage of any kind of nurse out here just now. Dr Heinik was glad enough, so was the hospital at Bethlehem. At least I’m a woman!”

  “I don’t dispute that,” Ogilvie said with a short laugh. “Wow I think you’d better tell me what you want, Miss Smith — if that really is your name?”

  “Yes,” she said, “it really is, Maisie Smith as ever was. Maisie Smith who wants to get back to England, see? Do you get it, Captain Ogilvie, or don’t you? I want you to take me out of Reitz, out of the Orange Free State, out of South Africa altogether. All right?”

  He knew the answer to the question before he had even asked it: “And if I refuse?”

  She said, “Why, then I’ll go straight to Commandant Opperman and tell him who you are. I’m not bloody blind. It’s obvious you’re here to do a job of work for the high-ups, a sort of spy. Your sort doesn’t drop down to private and then desert, it’s just not in you. Well?”

  “You’d do that — to your own side? You’re still British, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said steadily, “I’m still British and I hate these people with their beards and their Bibles and their bloody stuffiness and I’ll wag a flag at the old Queen with the best of ‘em — when I get back! But while I’m here, Captain Ogilvie, I’ll do anybody dirt — just to get back to my baby again!”

  Then she burst into a torrent of tears.

  *

  It was, in a sense, stalemate: and very dangerously. Ogilvie refused point-blank to encumber himself with a woman who, in any case, would never be acceptable to Old Red Daniel — he was certain of that. Opperman, indeed, had already warned him explicitly not to involve himself in any kind of affair. Maisie Smith was adamant that she would ruin her own life even, if necessary — she admitted that the Boers wouldn’t take kindly to a knowledge that she had tried to strike a bargain with an enemy of their country, but she said she might as well be in a prison compound, or even dead, as carry on with an existence she loathed and detested. Ogilvie asked her why she hadn’t brought the baby out to South Africa with her: she flew at him for his stupidity over that. How, she asked, could she confess to a man she hoped to marry that she’d had an illegitimate child? And even if she could have done that, even if she could have taken the risk, there would have been difficulties with the law unless he had married her first, and that he hadn’t been disposed to do.

  “But you’d have told him afterwards — after you were married?”

  “Yes. Then I’d have gone back for my baby.”

  “And your husband’s feelings?”

  “It was my baby that counted. Nothing else.”

  “So you didn’t love this man?”

  “No. He was a means to an end, that’s all.”

  Ogilvie gave a hard laugh. “It was you who called Mrs Duff-Kinghorne a bitch!”

  “Oh, I know I’m one too. I don’t deceive myself! Well, what are you going to do? Better make up your mind quick.”

  “I can’t do it. In a way I’m sorry … sorry for you … but I can’t do it.”

  “Why not? Why the Christ not?”

  “It’s — it’s impossible!” Ogilvie lifted his arms in a gesture of hopelessness. “Can’t you see? How can I take a woman with me on … on what I have to do? I’m probably riding to the Tugela with Opperman, possibly even to the siege lines outside Ladysmith. I’m heading into the fighting zone — Buller’s troops will be concentrating — it’s no place for a woman! Opperman wouldn’t permit it anyway.”

  “He would if I let myself be recruited by the brave Mr Bland. If I joined his commando! And then, at the right time, whenever that may be, I join forces with you — and you take me away.” She reached forward brazenly, mockingly, to tap him on the chest. “If you still refuse, Captain Ogilvie, I might as well have a rifle with me now, and shoot you dead — for you will die the moment I talk to Opperman, die as a spy, and your job, your mission, will die with you — won’t it?”

  Ogilvie reacted with anger: “You’re a damn strumpet!”

  “Oh!” she said lightly, demurely shocked and, seeing victory in sight, going back to her ladylike speech. “What a delightfully old-fashioned word, Mr Bland!”

  *

  Opperman was in a towering rage. “Sodom and Gomorrah are let loose, Mr Bland! Nations have been lost by the enervating effects of womanising. I took the trouble to warn you personally — and what do you do, eh, what do you do?”

  “I’m sorry, Commandant, I — ”

  “Sorry!” Old Red Daniel raised his arms towards heaven, and shook them as if in the face of a God who had unaccountably gone mad to allow such a development. “Sorry! Bah! You’ve become soft in the head, that’s what you’ve done!”

  “But surely it’s a very natural thing — ”

  “Natural? Natural? Oh yes — it’s natural! But the Bible teaches us that we must control nature! This is what marriage was ordained for, Mr Bland!” He pulled at his whiskers and stared into the wide spaces of the veld, falling ominously silent. Underneath, he was rumbling away in contained fury. Ogilvie had the diverting feeling that old Opperman wanted to say quite a lot — wanted to say that a sensible young man, naturally hot-blooded and eager, would just for a short space have turned a blind eye to the teachings of the Bible and taken the young woman by storm — and then, having kept his own counsel and achieved satisfaction, would once again have remembered th
ose responsibilities to God and His Boers and set his face against further temptation. No doubt in his youth Old Red Daniel had done similar things … or, on the other hand, perhaps not! Perhaps a good Boer did indeed wait for matrimony, just as the Bible taught …

  “Marriage,” Opperman said, breaking suddenly into Ogilvie’s thoughts.

  “Yes, Commandant?”

  “I must assume that you intend to marry this woman when possible.” It was a statement; not a question.

  “Er … ”

  “The prospect worries you?”

  “That’s for the future, Commandant,” Ogilvie said ambiguously. “For the present, if it makes it easier for you to accept her when we ride south, why should she not join your commando?”

  “As a woman who’ll carry a rifle, and fight?”

  “Yes.”

  “The moment she does that,” Old Red Daniel said flatly, “she comes under my orders, and I shall send her in the opposite direction, away from you, Mr Bland!” As soon as it was said, Ogilvie realised, Opperman regretted his impetuosity: the woman certainly wouldn’t enlist now — he should have held his tongue! It was, however, equally clear that Opperman’s native obstinacy would not permit any withdrawal once a thing had been said. Glaring angrily ahead across the empty countryside, he said, “You must marry her. If she is to come, you must marry her. Not at once … I have no wish to take a newly-wed husband and wife with me to the Tugela — this could lead to many complications and divided loyalties under attack. But as soon as matters are more settled than they are at present. Well, Mr Bland?”