It was already dangerously late, but Robert calculated there was still time for his father to get a train south to Cape Town and from thence, a ship for Home. By the time they were packed up and ready to leave, however, Kruger’s troops were massed on the border, ready to cross, and an ultimatum had been issued to the British to pull back their own troops within forty-eight hours. Failure to do so would be taken as a declaration of war by the British.
Nonetheless, the ox-cart was inspanned for Jock MacBean to take them to Mafeking, where there was still a chance of getting a train south. It was too late now to reverse their plans. Tommy and October, who had begged to go along for the ride, sat with Louisa on the tail-board and dangled their feet above the thick red dust of the track. It was suffocatingly hot and the dry winds soon covered them all with the gritty dust. Like all frontier towns at the beginning of a war, Mafeking as they entered was a seething mass of confusion. The little dorp in the middle of nowhere had opened its doors to anyone who needed sanctuary and the result was that it was bursting at the seams. Already overburdened with troops and militia, it was now further swollen with people clamouring for transport to the Cape and with those who had fled in from outlying farms, seeking refuge. The war was at last an established fact. Mafeking alone, up here in the far north of southern Africa, offered such safety and protection as was to be had, the town and its environs being now completely fortified owing to Colonel Baden-Powell’s amazing organising ability.
The boys and Jock MacBean unloaded the Fox’s possessions amid a throng of other ox-carts doing the same thing, and Jock, before turning the oxen round towards Orchard Farm thrust into Louisa’s hands a bag of oranges and some honey cakes from his wife. She waved a sad goodbye to the boys until they were out of sight, then followed her brothers and her father into the station.
Robert came away from the booking office with two tickets, after being assured there would be seats available on the next train – which did not look at all likely in view of the milling crowds of tearful women and children on the platform, complete with baggage, accompanied by anxious husbands and fathers waiting to see them off to safety, but which optimistic statement they had no choice but to accept.
Although the brothers were worried about leaving Louisa and her father before seeing them off on the train, they were at last reluctantly persuaded to leave them at the station: Barty had been speaking to an acquaintance who advised them to enlist before the ranks were closed. Much as volunteers were needed, there were only so many who could be provisioned, armed and housed; already there were many freeloaders who were taking the opportunity to provide themselves with board and lodging, gratis. Whether it was true or not that the numbers were to be limited remained to be seen, his friend said, but it was as well to be aware of the possibility. It was quickly becoming a case of every man for himself in Mafeking – rumours were everywhere, of profiteering, unfulfilled promises of transport south, of spies in their midst.
The train was already hours late and showed no sign of arriving, and the station, hot as a furnace, had become a confused mass of tired, overheated humanity, fractious children and people endeavouring to find somewhere to rest while waiting. Gradually a sort of passive resignation descended; those who could, slept; those who couldn’t sat on their luggage and stared into the distance. Hours and hours later, a huge explosion rocked the station. It was followed by a strange, eerie silence and then a hubbub of voices, shouting, screaming and crying; babies and children were pushed to safety under seats; some people attempted to leave the station, but most milled around not knowing what to do, terrified that the explosion, though it had seemingly been at some distance from the town, might signal an attack. Then, in the distance, came the sight of a train.
At last! A concerted outpouring of relief shivered through the crowds like wind passing through the dry grass of the veld. A ragged cheer went up. But as the groaning train steamed into the station, it was seen to be the same one which had left twelve hours ago, crammed with the women and children who had boarded it to travel south. As they poured out to add another dimension to the confusion on the platform, they brought with them the news that the Dutch had torn up two miles of the railway track to the south and cut the telegraph wires. And the explosion, the crowd was informed by loud hailer, had been to the north, out towards Ramathbalama, where the Boers had fired on a couple of dynamite trucks which had been sent out there, away from the town, for security reasons. The hole the explosion had made was forty feet deep.
It appeared that the last train had already left Mafeking. Either way.
For a space of time after this announcement, there was another, incredulous silence, and then all hell broke loose in a stampede for the exit. Several women in the crowd had hysterics, and a woman in late pregnancy fainted. She had been standing near to Gus and Louisa, and he automatically went to offer medical assistance while someone else went to find water. Kneeling beside the woman as she came round, jostled by the bewildered and frightened crowd, it was borne in upon him that the prospect of getting to Cape Town was not cheerful and the possibility of getting back to the farm, at least that day, and possibly for some time thereafter, was equally remote. Himself, he would be content to lay his head down on one of their bags and go to sleep and think about plans tomorrow, but he knew he must try to find some accommodation for Louisa. The child was looking pale, tired and not a little scared. “Come on, my darling, let’s go and find somewhere to stay the night,” he said gently, after the woman he was attending to had been taken away by friends.
Shouldering his way through the disordered crowds outside the station and in the town square, it rapidly became apparent to Gus that there wasn’t much in Mafeking by way of hotels – two, in fact, of a sort, as far as he could ascertain – Riesle’s, and Dixon’s. The latter, he soon found, had been taken over as headquarters by the military, while Riesle’s was packed to the eaves.
Night would soon make its rapid descent and beginning to feel more than a little desperate, he turned away, then bethought himself of Lyall Armitage. He hardly relished the possibility that his enquiry as to where he might find accommodation might be construed as throwing himself on the hospitality of one who was virtually a stranger; at the same time, he didn’t feel he had the right to discount any help in the circumstances, if only for Louisa’s sake. Going back into the hotel to enquire where Armitage might be found, advising Louisa to hold on to his coattails, since his hands were occupied with valises, while the straw basket containing their travelling necessities was strapped across his shoulder, he felt himself tapped on the arm.
“Excuse me, but – it’s Dr Fox, isn’t it? I saw you at the station, attending to Mrs Brightwell.”
Gus found himself looking down at a small woman with dark hair and a sallow complexion. She smiled charmingly and held out her hand. “I believe we have met – my name is Osborne. Hannah Osborne.”
“Of course, of course.” Augustus belatedly recalled the woman who had visited the farm in company with the Armitages. “Augustus Fox. And you remember Louisa, my daughter.”
“Indeed I do. You gave me a bookmark you had made out of ostrich leather, did you not, Louisa? I use it regularly.” She smiled at the exhausted child, hot and dusty and clutching a netted bag of oranges. “Excuse me for intruding myself, Dr Fox, but after this catastrophe with the train, it occurred to me you might be having difficulty in finding somewhere to stay?”
“It occurs to me I might be doomed to failure, Mrs Osborne.”
“Indeed you might. I fear there won’t be a room to be had – and Louisa looks quite done in, poor child.”
“Oh, no, ma’am.” Louisa was indignant. “I’m not in the least tired – only a little bit thirsty.”
Mrs Osborne smiled kindly. “I believe somewhere might be found – at least until the railway line is mended and you can take the train to Cape Town …I presume that’s where you were intended?”
“Yes,” replied Gus with a sigh, facing this uncertai
n contingency with something like despair, and stroking the damp curls of bright hair back from his daughter’s drooping but determined little face. “Where is it you are suggesting, ma’am?”
Her direct glance summed him up. “My own house has been given up to a family who are refugees from outside the town, otherwise you could have stayed there. But I believe they’ll welcome you at the convent.”
The convent building had already been earmarked by the military, ready to be turned into a field hospital, but at present its beds stood empty, ready and waiting for emergencies.
“A friend of Mrs Osborne’s – and a doctor, too?” repeated the sister in charge of nursing, Sister Mary Evangelist, regarding Gus with a considering gleam in her eye. “Well, we have as yet, thanks be to God, no patients here. We are to share the accommodation and care of any casualties with the municipal hospital, for it’s short they are with half their nursing staff fled south to join up with those ladies from England.” A lifetime’s discipline forbade her to elaborate on this last, but had she not been a nun, she would undoubtedly have sniffed. A buxom woman of Irish peasant stock who had been trained under Miss Nightingale at Scutari and observed scrupulous cleanliness and severity in looking after her patients, she regarded nursing as the highest form of service to God. It was clear she considered those nurses who had left as deserters, and the wealthy women she’d spoken of, those self-appointed ministering angels, who had arrived in South Africa (each with her own lady’s maid) with the vowed intention of nursing the wounded, as naïve do-gooders. “A doctor, eh? Well, I dare say we might find you and your daughter a corner somewhere.”
Her face softened as she took Louisa’s hand. Within half an hour, the child had been given something to eat and put to sleep in a cool, white bed, in a tiny room with a breeze blowing through the open window as night fell. Gus stood looking down at his sleeping daughter, wondering hopelessly how they were going to get out of this situation, before tip-toeing out to find Mrs Osborne and tell her that the question of accommodation had been settled. Giving his medical services was a small price for the nuns’ goodness and one which he would be more than willing to pay, since it was looking more and more as though he and Louisa might be here in Mafeking for some time.
The nuns were obviously very fond of Hannah Osborne, who seemed to occupy a favoured position here in the convent. She was a small woman, with a quick way to her and rather clever dark eyes. A thoughtful woman, and somewhat sharp in her opinions, as he found when they talked over a simple meal provided for him by the nuns.
“What of your husband, Mrs Osborne? He’s one of the militia, I recall.”
“In the new commander’s Protectorate Regiment now. He’s so occupied, I scarcely see him. He tells me Mafeking is considered an obstacle in the way of enemy movements towards Bechuanaland and Rhodesia, and the Dutch, as you’ll have gathered, are at the border and their General Kronje is bringing in heavy artillery to take the town. I’m afraid we shall be surrounded, Dr Fox.”
“Help will soon arrive to rout them,” said Gus, fervently hoping this must be so.
“Let us pray that it does. General Kronje is said to be one of Kruger’s best generals. But let him do his worst. We, after all, have Colonel Baden-Powell.”
He glanced at her and surprised a look of irony in her eyes. The name of the energetic commander seemed to be on everyone’s lips and few were critical — his organisation was apparently outstanding, and even more so was his ability to jolly along the spirits of those crammed like herrings into an inadequate barrel.
“Look at it this way, Mrs Osborne. If the enemy does succeed in surrounding Mafeking, at least you’ll have no more refugees like us able to get in. Which I’m sure will be a relief to all.”
“We can scarcely close our doors. But at least two thousand blacks from other tribes have already poured in to camp alongside the Baralongs’ kraal, and there may well be trouble among them. The various tribes don’t always co-exist peacefully, you know.”
“Will they not forget their differences and band together to defeat the common enemy?”
“Perhaps. More worrying is how are they all to be fed.” She explained that the Barolong had their own cattle and crops, but as for the rest, they were nomadic tribes – and how would it be possible to get through the enemy lines to hunt and forage for food on the veld as they were accustomed to do? And when the rains came and the new grass grew outside the fortifications, how would any of them be able to drive their cattle out to graze on it? Above all was the vexed question as to whether to arm the natives or not. B-P, and indeed most of the military commanders – on both sides – were against it. This would be a different war altogether to any so far fought on South African soil – a white man’s war, for neither side wished to invoke the assistance of the blacks, since that would mean arming them, and their huge numbers were potentially dangerous, their allegiances questionable. Once armed, who knew that they might not turn against the men who had taken control of their land? Even the Baralong tribe were not averse to conflict; they had had longstanding grievances with the Boers, who had twice before overcome them.
She repeated what their old chief Lesoto had said: “They took our land and said it was theirs.” He had added that he would very much like to meet the Boer who had once made his wife crawl towards him on hands and knees and then kicked her in the face.
AUGUST
I have read, as most people in the civilised world have now read, accounts of the siege of Mafeking, which subsequently became universally famed. Lest anyone be inclined to make light of the sufferings incurred by those beleaguered in the town, let me say here and now that this wasn’t entirely due to the number of casualties (though a third of the total number of soldiers and civilians confined there was lost or cruelly injured by the time the siege ended, which was terrible enough) but perhaps even more by the constant fear and strain of being under almost incessant and random fire. No one who hasn’t experienced this can begin to imagine what it can be like, day in, day out, never knowing when the next shell might come, or where it might land. As all the world is now aware, it was a time of hardship and privation and exceptional bravery, of incredibly stoical endurance, but it was that continual shelling and its awful consequences – the grief for the dead and wounded – which made the siege hardest to bear. By the end, every man, woman and child in Mafeking was indescribably weary, and for many of them their lives were ruined or their nerves in shreds. That we were desperately hungry goes without saying, though we whites were not quite on the brink of starvation: this was entirely due to men like Lyall and Frank Whiteley, by then the town’s elected mayor, who were far-sighted enough to foresee the possibility of our being cut off and had worked so unstintingly beforehand to lay in provisions. Even they could not have envisaged how desperately we should need them.
But my own, and Lyddie’s, story is not entirely that of the tribulations endured during the siege – or only in so far as they affected us personally. I believe I may be forgiven if I feel that the shattering personal events which happened to us at that time began to seem of more importance than the capitulation or otherwise of the town to enemy forces. We are all, in the end, prisoners of circumstance, and victims of our own natures.
Chapter Twenty
It was all very well to say we could defeat the enemy with resource and ingenuity, but neither was any match for the lack of adequate means to defend ourselves. “Short of men, short of rifles, short of ammunition. When one looks at our armoury, it’s pitiful — obsolete and pitiful.” Hugh was indignant that no response to B-P’s repeated requests for proper ordnance had yet been forthcoming, and he was afraid that, against the powerful long-range weapons the Dutch were known to possess, ours would prove sadly inadequate. All we had were obsolete single-loaders, in all no more than seven Maxim machine guns, a few ancient carbines of limited range and nowhere near enough Lee Enfield rifles to equip every man. Defending the town with such would be like facing an elephant herd with a cat
apult. “And as if that weren’t enough, the gun carriages are in a shocking state, the fittings worn – and the fuses so old they’ve shrunk. There’s nothing for it but to wedge them into the blessed shells with paper.”
Hugh was now with the Protectorate Regiment, an elite corps formed mainly from the reinforcements the colonel had brought with him, led by the flower of the British aristocracy, with names like Cecil, Cavendish, Fitzclarence and the like. I saw even less of my husband than when he had been up north, patrolling the border. Occasionally, he would come home for a quick bath and a change of clothing, but as soon as he’d eaten the meal I’d so carefully cooked, he was off again, scarcely noticing what he’d eaten. His whole attention was focused on the job in hand, with no time or room for anything else. I knew well enough by now that this was the nature of the man I had married; I scarcely expected him to take time off simply to be with me, but my guilt at what seemed like my own disloyalty in hoping for this occasionally grew to be a presence that lived and breathed in the room beside us when we were together. I knew my decision to move in with Lyddie, giving my own house over to refugees, would not make any difference to him.
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