1999 - Ladysmith

by Giles Foden

  Ah, here was just the thing. Illusion: A Romance of Modern Egypt. On taking it up to bed and settling down with it, he found that although the author wrote with great assurance, she took little pains with her style and employed an often clumsy extravagance of diction. Her figures, too—the officers of a dragoon regiment quartered in Cairo—had not quite the air of being true to the life of the historical period that they portrayed, of some forty or fifty years ago.

  But as he got deeper into the sensational story, Nevinson began to entertain a very much higher opinion of the author’s talent. For, notwithstanding all her literary deficiencies, she was very effective. The plot seemed impossible, but it was dramatic; the figures seemed unreal, but were well grouped; and the hero, a captain, was thrown into due prominence: a rather commonplace, highly respectable man with many virtues and but one redeeming enthusiasm—his profession.

  The story, which Nevinson finished that very night, went some way along these lines: one night, the captain is discovered hopelessly drunk, but he is popular with his regiment and the affair is concealed. Yet it happens again, and when he disgraces the uniform a third time he is court-martialled and dismissed from the service. He sets off south and is captured by the dervishes and made a slave. Here the honest, puzzled man rises to a great occasion, and after showing the courage of a martyr for the faith that he has, somewhat conventionally, held, he escapes, to find eventually that his disgrace was an ‘illusion’, and that he had been drugged by the enemy.

  The novel was more striking than this bare analysis of its plot would indicate. It was written with an admirable sincerity and, thought Nevinson on going to sleep, was altogether uncommon.

  In the morning, when he awoke, he thought it was rubbish.

  Six

  The Biographer, sick from the effects of typhoid inoculation, could hardly focus upon the chalked words. BOERS DEFEATED—THREE BATTLES—PENN SYMONS KILLED. When he and the other passengers of the Dunottar Castle saw the blackboard hung on the side of the other ship—the Australasian, on its way from the Cape—at first not a word was spoken. Then, slowly, some people began expressing their desire for vengeance at Penn Symons’s death; others, including Churchill, were simply anxious that the fighting would not be over before they reached South Africa.

  The remainder of the voyage was passed in heavy anticipation. The deck games of cricket and tug-of-war lost their gaiety, and people began packing, and sharpening their rusted swords. A special machine—somewhat like a bicycle, with a grindstone for a wheel—was brought out on deck for this purpose. As farrier, Perry Barnes was called upon to do the work, and by the time he had put an edge on 600 swords, he was heartily sick of the sight of steel.

  The Biographer filmed him during his labour, and also got a good sequence of General Buller walking up some steps and looking directly into the lens.

  “That’ll do,” the General said afterwards. “If you take any more, I’ll have you thrown overboard.”

  The last days of the voyage passed. When the rocky shores of Robben Island came into view, Churchill, standing next to the Biographer at the rail, muttered that it was ‘a barren spot’, and retired to his cabin, complaining of the terrible slowness with which they were approaching the anchorage. But finally they arrived, and he came out and with the Biographer gathered round those bringing on despatches from Cape Town. Thereby they learned of the three battles in more detail—and of a shameful retreat to Ladysmith and the imminent besieging of the town. Buller landed in state the following morning, to the cheers of an enormous crowd, and the Biographer caught a good image of the early-morning sun shining upon his face. In a battered hansom cab Churchill, together with Atkins of the Manchester Guardian, went up to the Mount Nelson Hotel to plan their campaign and to conduct interviews with the military staff staying in that grand residence, before leaving for East London by rail, therefrom to catch the mail packet to Natal. They hoped in this way to gain a few days on everyone else in the race to Ladysmith.

  “For that,” said Churchill to the Biographer on bidding him goodbye, “is where the bulk of the Boer army is massed, and where the outcome of this struggle will be determined. Though I cannot foresee any serious reverse for our troops.”

  The Biographer was more circumspect, taking his time to explore Cape Town, while waiting for official acceptance of his formal petition to be allowed to follow the army. He found the town and its Table Mountain a very picturesque location; it was no surprise that the Boers loved this land and were willing to fight for it. The rich and varied grandeur of the place, with its gardens and vines and well-matured oaks, was worthy of a Claude or a Poussin. But the landscape did not awe him to such an extent that he did not film it: with a lens, if not a brush or a pen, the world was at his disposal.

  He filmed the arrival of the New South Wales Lancers during this period, in the process of doing so discovering the considerable fascination that his equipment had for the natives, crowds of whom kept reaching out and touching his apparatus. He also took steps to procure a draft harness and a cart in which to carry his materials, hoping to add mules or horses to them at the next stopping place.

  Finally the petition was granted, and the Biographer, together with his cart, rejoined the Dunottar Castle, which was to proceed to Natal with Buller and his staff. This it did, through five days of rough seas, arriving at Durban on November 10, to be greeted by a crowd of fifty or more rickshaw-runners. Yelling and capering about, they were dressed in outlandish costumes of horn and feather to attract custom. The Biographer took great pleasure in picking out from these magnificent specimens of manhood a figure he considered a veritable Umslopagaas, worthy of Rider Haggard. A horse could not have gone faster, and as he rode high in the seat the Biographer watched the droplets of sweat running down the Zulu’s muscular bare back.

  Having installed himself in a rather grubby hotel (the town was full of refugees from the war, and rooms were difficult to secure), he made preparations, over the next few days, for his great trek north. The cart and harness were brought off the ship and united with a pair of horses. A tent was bought to cover the cart, and cooking utensils and tinned food purchased. The Biograph itself was strapped to the back of the cart in such a way that it could be raised and lowered at a moment’s notice, and also swivelled from right to left. It had rather the appearance of a gun, a passing soldier remarked, and got ‘shot’ for his cheek. Some of the other pictures the Biographer took during this period were less heartening. One in particular remained in his head as well as on the film he sent back in his last London box before the column departed: that of a refugee black woman, weary and downcast, feeding her child. She looked up at him with a cold eye as he secured the image. He wondered if she knew what he was doing.

  Of the other things the Biographer did, in the long waiting time before the column set off (for an army with a mission, it had an extraordinary supineness about it), one was to visit a Hindu temple. There were many such temples in Durban, he discovered, to service that city’s large Indian population, brought over, fifty or so years before, to work as indentured labourers on farms and railways. Lately, many of them had turned to trade, and their success had drawn others to come from India and settle in South Africa as merchants.

  He was called on to remove his boots before going into the temple. The inside of the place was filled with burning incense lamps and the frightening statues of various gods. It was also, as the Biographer discovered on entering an antechamber, the scene of a political meeting. He had heard from men in the Durban garrison that the Indian community had for several years been militating loudly against pass laws and restrictive taxes, and clamouring for representation. He supposed this was the purpose of the meeting. There was a large banner on the wall, reading NATAL INDIAN CONGRESS, and the main speaker was a small, slight young man with sharp black eyes that darted here and there from behind round spectacles. He seemed to have the audience in his spell, and once the meeting was over the Biographer quizzed him as to what he ha
d been saying.

  “Are you trying to throw down the government? Is that what all this is about?”

  The man smiled, and looked down at the ground as they walked towards the Biographer’s rickshaw. The Zulu was seated in the dust with his back against the wheel, smoking a clay pipe with a prodigiously long stem.

  “Oh no, not today. We are engaged upon a discussion about the war. I feel it is our duty, if we demand rights as British citizens, to help in the defence of the British Empire. To that end, myself and my colleagues are collecting together to have our services accepted as an ambulance corps.”

  “But I thought you people wanted emancipation from the British?”

  “We do, sir, we do. In fact, my own sympathies are entirely with the Boers. But it is my honest belief that we Indians, here and in our homeland—and, for that matter, these Zulus and other oppressed races—will only achieve our complete freedom within and through the British Empire. Not by shooting bullets at you fellows, but by persuading you of the error of your ways.”

  “What errors?”

  “Well, for instance, thinking that we Indians are cowards and only ever do things in our own self-interest. That is one reason why this ambulance corps is being formed—although above all it is a humanitarian impulse that is behind its formation.”

  They had reached the rickshaw, and the Zulu sprang up with alacrity. The Indian held out his hand to him in greeting, at which the African looked askance. He gave the Biographer a look of great discomfort, and went to fasten himself between the shafts of his vehicle. The Indian appeared pained at the Zulu’s reaction, and then, to the Biographer’s astonishment, started undoing his shirt buttons, exposing the flesh of his chest.

  “Let me tell you something, sir,” he said.

  “Very well,” replied the Biographer, mystified.

  “This brown skin is my birthright, and it does me honour, but in my heart I consider myself a black man. When I am treated as such, as so often by people of your own colour, I feel pride, not self-disgust.”

  The Biographer nodded contemplatively.

  “You nod, sir, but in truth you have no idea of what it is to be considered a ‘coolie’ or, worse still, a ‘kaffir’. All of our parts and graces are circumscribed by these labels—my friends are thought of as ‘coolie merchants’, while I am nothing but a ‘coolie barrister’. Our bodies, even when we eschew meat and liquor as I do, are considered unclean. I once went to a white barber in Pretoria, and he refused to cut my hair—so I cut it myself with a pair of clippers, and was happy to do so, in spite of my friends laughing at the mess I made of it. What they did not appreciate is that we Indians make similar distinctions in our own culture, refusing to allow our barbers to cut the hair of untouchables. Every time we suffer prejudice in South Africa we reap the reward of our own sinfulness in this regard.”

  Although he had difficulty following the man’s logic, the Biographer was impressed with his passion, and it struck him that the Indian would make a good photographic subject.

  “Do you mind if I take your picture?” he asked. “I’m a cameraman, you see, the representative of the Mutoscope and Biograph Company. I have my pocket machine here with me.”

  “I would happily oblige you,” said the Indian gentleman, doing up his shirt buttons. “But in most instances I believe photography to be the handmaiden of pride, and an enemy of humility.”

  The Biographer was put out by this refusal. “You’ll be facing fiercer enemies than the camera if you join Buller’s army,” he said.

  “A bullet, sir, is not the worst fate a man can suffer. Nor is a beating. I myself have been badly boxed and beaten by whites enraged against my political activities—kicked and pelted with stones by a great crowd. But I bore my bruises with humility and did not prosecute my assailants, in spite of Mr Chamberlain cabling the Natal authorities and asking them to do so.”

  “Really?” queried the Biographer, disbelieving that the Secretary of State for the Colonies would take an interest in the activities of an Indian advocate in far-flung Natal. “Is that true?”

  “Why should I lie to you?”

  “No, of course, you wouldn’t. Anyway, I suppose I must climb into my vehicle.”

  His companion looked at the Zulu, crouched between the traces of the rickshaw, and sniffed. “I do not like those things.”

  “A man’s got to get about. Well, I’ll look out for you at the front. What’s your name, by the way?”

  The Indian had taken off his glasses and was cleaning the lenses with a cotton handkerchief.

  “Gandhi,” he said. “Mohandas K. Gandhi.”

  Seven

  “This place where I am now at has been christened Green Horse Valley,” wrote Tom Barnes from Ladysmith, in his first letter home since arriving. And then he stopped. He never knew what to say to Lizzie, his younger sister. Anyway, it was uncomfortable writing on the ground, and his calves were itching where dust had found its way between the folds of his puttees. He had borrowed Bob’s drum, propping it between his legs and using the skin to lean on. As he sat there, his pencil poised, he could hear Bob himself—seated nearby on a biscuit box in the opening of the bell tent—sucking on the briar that was poking out through his whiskers. The company drummer and Tom’s best friend, Bob Ashmead was engrossed in a magazine.

  “What you reading?” asked Tom, pushing a finger down between the khaki bands to scratch his leg.

  Bob grunted in reply, let out a puff of smoke, and then held the magazine up to show its title: Band of Hope, incorporating Sunday Scholar’s Friend. Two shields on either side of the curly-leafed, Arcadian legend, the one saying ‘Get wisdom, get understanding’, the other ‘For wisdom is better than rubies’.

  “Didn’t have you down as a Bible basher.”

  “My mother sends them,” Bob explained gruffly. “Haven’t got anything else. It’s pious rot most of it, but there’s news too…”

  With mock solemnity, he read out an item. “Last month, a London publican, residing in the highly favoured parish of Islington, was charged at Marylebone Police Court with nearly killing his own daughter of nineteen years of age. The man (although a kind father when sober) had got tipsy on ale at his own public house…”

  “Ale…” murmured Tom, dreamily.

  “Me too. I’m as thirsty as a Derby winner. Let’s go to the hotel next time we’re off duty.”

  Tom thought about the girl there, the one with the unusual short hair. “I’m on. If they’ll let us. Bloody beer will have run out if this lasts much longer. You’ll have to sub me even so; if I get that bastard who took my belt I swear I’ll shoot him. God, I hope we get out of here soon!”

  “Use the Mauser, then it’ll be like a Boer did it.”

  They both looked at it where it lay in the opening of the tent—the pistol they’d taken off a Boer corpse.

  “How long do you think we’ll be here?” asked Tom.

  “It’ll be over in a tick, believe me. They’re just a bunch of farmers.”

  “So am I, if you’ll excuse me. Anyway, they can shoot better than us. You saw how sharp that sniper was the other day?”

  “Mmm,” said Bob, and then they stopped talking. Neither wanted to remember the sight of Private Mouncer falling from his horse, hit by a bullet in the throat. Tom shivered. He had seen Mouncer in hospital. The nurses said the poor fellow would never be able to speak again. What a thing. Tom thought he would rather be dead.

  Lord, it was hot. Above the two of them, the sun was beating down, enforcing quietness on the camp as effectively as a sergeant-major: all that could be heard was the occasional neigh of horses and sounds of men chatting in muted tones in front of their tents. The heat merely added to the nervous torpor that had settled over Green Horse Valley since the last action. It was all waiting, waiting, waiting. But the net was closing in. The telegraph wires had been cut, and the bombardment proper was expected to begin tomorrow. In some ways he wished it would: given the deadlock of force on either side, at
least it would represent some kind of progress. But he knew that wasn’t true really: he had been under shellfire in India, and it wasn’t pleasant. And the Maharaja had not had such powerful and accurate guns as these Boers were understood to have.

  He heard a splash and looked over to where Lieutenant Norris was sitting in a tin bath, scrubbing his neck. His hat, wide-brimmed in the Boer style—probably pinched off a dead one, thought Barnes—was still on his head and the skin of his back was white as the milk that Lizzie used to carry in each morning at home, in the big tin pail. Better do that letter, he thought. For he was on picket duty that evening, and wanted to get some kip beforehand. He set his pencil to the paper:

  LETTER

  We have had serious reverses at Dundee and Nichol-son’s Nek, and three battles said to be victories for British arms—Talana Hill, Elandslaagte and Riet-fontein—but I am not so sure. At Nicholson’s Nek, nearly a thousand of ‘our boys’ were taken prisoner and are now going under escort to Pretoria, the Boer capital. All British forces in the area have made a desperate, mud-covered retreat to Ladysmith, where I am now shut up with General White. The Boers have about twenty thousand within striking distance, so it is not a happy business, although very exciting. They say that General Buller has eighty thousand men on their way to save us from Cape Town. The town is all talk of when he will arrive—and of when we might come under Boer shell. But don’t worry, I will keep my head in one piece, and if I get a knock, put it all back together again!

  The command of D Squadron has gone to Captain Mappin, who is reasonable, and Major St John Gore has assumed command of the regiment as a whole—Colonel Baden-Powell being in command at Mafek-ing, which the Boers are also thought to be investing. We are very crowded here in camp.