Shadows & Lies (29 page)

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Authors: Marjorie Eccles

Tags: #Mystery, #Historical

BOOK: Shadows & Lies
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An unspoken feeling was growing that we might perhaps not be able to last out as long as we had been told. We were being continually shelled now, a nerve-racking bombardment that made the nights as disturbed as the day. The Boers had a massive range of artillery with which they intended to make short work of our resistance; their general, Cronje, fearless and one of their most able commanders, evidently expecting to pulverise us into submission, was boasting he would wipe out every man, woman, child and beast in Mafeking. I began to believe this might not turn out to be an idle boast, or that we should be so worn down and short of sleep we should find capitulation the better option. Some hoped the Boers would get fed up and go away, but this unlikely prospect was one no one took seriously, especially after the arrival of an even bigger, long-range gun, a massive ninety-six pounder, so heavy it had to be pulled by sixteen oxen. It was positioned more than seven miles away, yet its range was such that the enormously heavy missiles had no difficulty in reaching the town. They made a terrible noise as they flew over our heads and burst, throwing great hot pieces of heavy metal for hundred of yards. A warning bell was rung in the town square when it was seen from the look-out tower to be loaded. If we were lucky, by the time the shell landed we had been able to take cover under upturned wagons or dugouts. But not everyone escaped. The injuries and mutilations inflicted by this big gun were horrific beyond words – arms and legs were regularly blown off and thrown into trees, on to roofs or far distant streets; it wasn't uncommon for insides and blood to be splattered everywhere. We became accustomed to treating children at the hospital for
burns when they vied with each other, in spite of warnings, to find the biggest piece of shrapnel, and picked up pieces of still-hot metal as souvenirs.
The Boers didn't have it all their own way, though: daring raids on the enemy, sometimes with fixed bayonets, were ordered by B-P to clear out their advance positions. In one of these Roger Marriott was killed.
As retaliation, the nights were made hideous with smoke and flame as great shells came thundering through the dark, causing the doors and windows to rattle as they flew past. During the day, we learned to keep out of the streets as much as possible – or to run like billyo for shelter when a burst of machine gun fire rushed past our ears, sounding like the clattering wings of a plague of locusts. The silence when ambulances drove by and carts came past covered by blankets quickly became a fact of life.
The only respite we had was on Sundays, the day B-P decreed should be set aside for entertainments such as cricket matches, concerts, sales of work and competitions, as a morale-building antidote to the strain we all lived under, being the only day we were not troubled by the Boers. It was against their religion to kill on the Sabbath.
I watched Hugh's face grow older and thinner, the crease between his brows become permanent. We hadn't shared a bed since the siege began; when he could get home for a good night's rest, I slept on the sofa, so as not to disturb him by the restless sleep that had become habitual with me, though I doubt whether anything would have wakened him: as soon as his head touched the pillow, he slept as if pole-axed. I wished he would take a leaf from his admired commander's book: no one could accuse Baden-Powell of not being wholly absorbed in the struggle we were involved in, but at the same time, he understood the necessity of at least a pretence at living life normally, and the importance of keeping up morale.
Nil desperandum
was his repeatedly encouraging watchword. We shall beat Johnny Boer yet. Never let it be said that we Britishers didn't keep the flag flying.
Nil desperandum.
 
Caroline Douglas took the news of Roger Marriott's death so badly it made me feel I'd maybe been too hard on her, in
belittling their affair as simply a passing infatuation, or the determination of a spoiled young woman not to be thwarted in what she desired. We all mourned the loss of a gallant officer – for Roger had been brave, no doubt of that – but Caroline was inconsolable. “I wish it had been me,” she said, time after time. “Perhaps it will be, soon,” she would add, as another shell whizzed by. I was sorry for her, but to tell the truth, I couldn't help feeling she was enjoying the drama and, by the time several weeks had elapsed and she was showing no signs of even trying to overcome her grief, and had several times expressed the wish to follow Marriott to the grave, I was not the only one who lost patience with her.
“These bandages need to be rolled,” Sister Evangelist told her crisply, handing her a pile of sheets torn into strips, “and they've been disinfected, so try not to weep all over them, my dear.”
But Lyddie said generously, out of her own happiness, “Poor Caroline. We must all look after her.”
Lyall had persuaded Mother Superior to let Lyddie stay in the convent for the last few weeks before her confinement, now that Dr Fox was in permanent residence there and would be on hand to keep an eye on her. Both he and Dr Smythe were cautiously optimistic, as the birth drew nearer, and there were no signs of her losing the child.
All hands were needed now to help with the nursing, and I was at last allowed to help as I wished in caring not only for the wounded, but the increasing numbers of sick children and others who were brought in suffering from malnutrition, dysentery and other problems associated with poor and inadequate food. Inevitably, this applied mostly to the children in the location. The tribes were not able to hunt for their usual food, the Dutch were shooting and stealing their cattle, mealie-meal was scarce and they did not have the money to buy other food, which had become far too expensive.
The boys acting as very useful message-carriers between one defence post and another undeniably had one of the most dangerous tasks, dodging bullets and flying shrapnel in the thick of an attack, but children were learning to grow up fast in Mafeking, and every person was need to play their part, even
Louisa, who took food to her brothers in the trenches. The Cadets were formed into a well disciplined band, drilled and given a uniform like a junior army, and one of their number held the rank of sergeant. Louisa watched them, green with envy, and her father, seeing this, allowed her to help him. Soon she was never far from his side when he attended to the sick. Despite the horrific nature of the injuries inflicted by the shelling, she didn't faint at the sight of blood, or when she passed the dressings for an amputated limb, nor did she gag at the stench of a gangrened wound. She heard the screams of the wounded as they tore off their agonising bandages, and didn't flinch at the sight of mangled flesh. There were many who expressed the view that it was shocking for such a young girl to be allowed to witness such sights, but the patients loved her and Dr Fox calmly allowed her to continue. I, for one, believed he was right. Like many of the other children, Louisa had grown up overnight.
No one could have failed to be aware of the rain that came down all that day just before Christmas, blotting out the light and making it difficult to hear what anyone was saying, but the mother of the sick little girl from the location, the nuns and I were too busy to pay it much attention at first. Emang was only one of several native children who had been brought in to the convent hospital with fever and dysentery. Several of them were very ill indeed, but she was the sickest of all. Sister Mary Columba and I took it in turns to sponge down the child's hot little body, while Mrs Mahelebe squatted by the end of her daughter's bed in dumb misery.
We had been thankful of the rain at first: at least it would cool the air and perhaps help us to get the fretful children's temperatures down a little. We went on doing what was necessary as the storm crashed over our heads, but we began to exchange worried glances as the rain grew into an absolute deluge and then came down in a positive cataract. An unheard-of panic seemed to be gripping the normally hushed and disciplined convent. Outside the wards, orderlies ran about like scalded cats, and as the afternoon wore on, brought news to us of the havoc wreaked by the storm: the hospital kitchen was under six feet of water; the dinner was spoiled; and the sisters' bombproof had been washed away, while the covered trenches in the women's laager were now nothing less than a subterranean canal.
“Carry on,” ordered Sister Mary Evangelist calmly.
And so we did, and after a while, the rain abruptly ceased. Little Emang stopped thrashing about in her delirium and became very quiet. Sister Mary Columba held her hand until, a few minutes later, in the hush that at last succeeded the cloudburst, the child breathed her last. The sister laid Emang's hands across her breast, crossed herself and bowed her head. Then she spoke softly to the mother in her own language and the woman's keening began, soon taken up by the family who had been crouched outside on the veranda, waiting.
I left the ward, and walked round to the other side of the
building, where I stood in the unusual quietness, staring out into the still-dark afternoon. The deluge had at least brought a respite from the shelling, the Dutch presumably having their own disasters to look to, but the storm damage, and the steam now rising from the earth, had added an unreal dimension to the desolation already caused by the shelling of the compound. Tree branches scattered the ground; the tin roof of a little outhouse blown off by a shell, which had lain on the ground for days, now floated on its own little lake on the red mud that was now the path to the women's laager. A telegraph pole which had been hit lay on the ground like a wounded warrior.
Devastation and despair seemed to lie over everything. I felt overwhelmed by sadness. I suppose little Emang could have died at any time of such a fever, but she might have had a more sporting chance had she been better fed and well-nourished to begin with. How long could we go on like this?
“Mrs Osborne?”
Louisa was tapping my arm. “I can't find Mrs Armitage anywhere.”
“Perhaps she's with Mrs Douglas.”
“I can't find either of them. Nobody seems to have seen them for ages.”
I looked round for the little Kaffir who ran errands for the nuns, and asked him if he'd seen either Lyddie or Caroline. He gave his wide smile and said, “They go see, missis.” He pointed in the direction of the river.
I felt a sudden, inexplicable panic. I knew that as soon as the rain ceased people had flocked down to the river bank to marvel and see what the storm had done, as people will – but what on earth had possessed Lyddie to do likewise? She was so careful of her unborn baby that for the last few weeks she hadn't ventured out of the convent grounds, where she could easily dive for cover when the shelling started. With all that rain, the roads and paths would be traps for the unwary, and besides, the Dutch might take advantage of the confusion to start firing again at any time. My faith in Caroline as a protector was not great.
Louisa said in a frightened voice, “It's awful down by the river. The foot-drift's impassable and they say the stadt's flooded out.”
For a moment, I stood paralysed, then flew for my bicycle. I grabbed it and began to pedal for all I was worth, followed by Louisa on the nuns' old boneshaker.
Darkness would arrive within an hour. But the boy hadn't said how long they'd been gone, so perhaps they were even now on their way back. All the same, I pedalled furiously and headed towards the river bank. Louisa valiantly kept up, and as we bumped through the streets without meeting them coming the other way, my worry and a premonition that something terrible had happened grew with every turn of the wheels. By this time, it had become apparent that the bicycles were worse than useless. With one accord, we dismounted and let them fall where they would, though it wasn't much better on foot.
The light was fading quickly, and as we neared the river, it seemed that the onlookers had abandoned their gaping. I heard the screams before I saw them, somewhere over by the Chinese garden. I lifted my skirts and ran as well as I could. Louisa, younger and unhampered by skirts, outstripped me, but not by much. I could hardly speak by the time we were near enough to see what looked like a struggle taking place on the river bank, two shapes outlined against the line of poplars on the far side, before they disappeared. When we reached the bank, they were nowhere to be seen.
It wasn't unusual for the river to flood during the rainy season, but today flash floods had swept the Malopo through its creek with a violence rarely seen before. The wide, slow-flowing river had become a rushing torrent of muddy, coffee-coloured water, simply tearing along, bringing with it chicken coops, dead fowls, cooking utensils, the carcase of a heifer, bathtubs.
At this point, the soft red earth of the steep, unevenly sloping bank was a mud slide about ten or twelve feet above the river. I couldn't see either of them, then I discerned one figure lying in a huddle on a sort of ledge or shelf a mere foot or two below the overhanging lip of the bank. Lyddie, thank God! She was making no sound and at first I thought she had lost consciousness, but then I saw her arm lift. I wanted to shout ‘Don't move!' but dare not. The churned-up river racing below was a dangerous torrent. A corrugated iron roof was swept past as though it were a leaf
and I knew if she fell in, she would be carried away just as surely as Caroline must have been …for I could see nothing of her.
Louisa seemed to know just what to do, and she and I together knelt and grabbed, first a handful of the shawl Lyddie had pinned around her shoulders, and then her arms. God knows how, but we managed to haul her up to safety. But then, just as we laid her on the grass and I was relieved of her weight, my feet slipped from under me. Unable to save myself, I tumbled helplessly down the bank and into the water. Had I not gone in feet first I should have followed Caroline. Even so, I was in up to my neck, right in the deep water of a
sluit,
one that led into the market garden, but hidden under the rushing water. Gasping for breath, bracing myself not to be knocked over by the tide of muddy water swirling around me, feeling the ugly suck and pull of it against my body, I suddenly saw strong hands were being extended towards me. Feeling as though my arms were being dragged from their sockets, I was eventually deposited on the grass beside Lyddie.
I wondered where they had all come from, what had brought them all there: the two Chinamen, several women from nearby houses and a few children. Then I remembered the screams. It seemed like hours since I'd heard them, but it could only have been minutes. “Lyddie?” I struggled to kneel over her where she was still lying on the ground, trying not to deluge her with water. “Are you all right?” I asked stupidly.
Her voice was the faintest whisper. “I shall be, directly. I only slipped.”
One of the rescuers was a sensible woman with four children of her own whom I knew a little, and she took one glance at Lyddie and saw she must be attended to. “Mr Rowlands has a little cart. Best get him to take her home – I'll send one of my boys for the doctor.”
“She's staying at the convent. There's a doctor there.”
She nodded. “But you'll need attention too, otherwise you'll get pneumonia.”
“Caroline —?” I began.
But Caroline had gone.
 
 
The sisters had Lyddie into bed within minutes. I was shivering in my wet clothes and they gave me some dry ones of a sort. My hair was in rat's tails but I was too exhausted to do anything but rub it roughly dry while Dr Fox examined Lyddie and advised that sleep would be the best medicine. There was no sign of the baby coming prematurely, so perhaps nothing more would come of this sorry adventure. Sister Mary Evangelist gave her some hot milk and I stayed with her and held her hand while she told me drowsily what had happened. Apparently Caroline had insisted that she would never sleep that night if she didn't get some fresh air; it had stopped raining and she said she was going to take a walk towards the swollen river and see if all they'd heard about the flood was true. Like me, Lyddie had never really believed she would carry out those histrionic threats of hers to follow her lover to the grave. Unlike me, she'd good-naturedly agreed to keep an eye on her, and decided she'd better agree to go with her.
“She was in such a strange mood, Hannah, I couldn't let her go alone. But I never thought that she meant —”
“She didn't, I'm sure …don't think of it. Try and sleep.”
But she needed to talk before she could sleep. They had reached the river, she went on, and were peering down into the rushing water from the bank when Caroline began to talk wildly of how easy it would be, just to jump in and let herself be carried away. Lyddie had held on to her, desperately trying to talk her out of it, to pull her back, screaming for help, until somehow they both fell. “She wouldn't have done it, Hannah, when it came to it, I know she wouldn't. She was only trying to steady herself by holding on to me, and we both slipped. Such a silly accident.”
Silly – and needless. Had Caroline ever meant to take her own life, or had it only been a gesture, a means of attracting attention? I had over the last few weeks become very tired of Caroline and the unnecessary drama she was making out of her situation. I felt ashamed of myself now. I should have had more sympathy, more compassion.
All the same, I could not imagine why Lyddie had agreed to that ridiculous request, especially knowing Caroline's state of mind, though she was not entirely rational either, these days. If this was what having a baby did to you, perhaps I was fortunate
not to be having one.
Presently she fell quiet and her lids began to droop. “Don't worry about me, Hannah – or the baby,” she whispered. “He has a charmed life.” She fell asleep with a smile on her lips.
There was nothing I could do by staying at her bedside but I was not easily persuaded to leave her. I gave in only when Lyall arrived to take my place to sit grey and stone-faced by her side.
“I'll come back and see her tomorrow morning, first thing.”
“God help you, Hannah dear,” said Sister Mary Evangelist oddly.
I went to see Louisa before I went home. She had fallen into the deep, easy sleep of youth. I kissed her forehead, my gallant little friend, and she never even stirred. Our bicycles were still down by the market garden, but it didn't matter. I doubted whether I could have kept my balance, for my legs had been trembling uncontrollably ever since we had pulled Lyddie back from the brink of that fearful river. I walked homewards with dragging steps through the oddly silent streets, my footsteps echoing. The guns were still silent and the air smelt sweet. As I walked, my face was brushed by moths and night breezes.
With a part of my mind that was not still seeing those struggling figures on the bank, or feeling that filthy, rushing, sucking water around me, I noticed in a detached way how much damage the storm had done to the town which had already been looking very shabby and knocked about, its windows cracked and patched up with cardboard, tin roofs askew or missing altogether, piles of debris wherever a big shell had scored a direct hit. The lookout tower on top of Riesle's stood black against the sky, and through a line of poplars I saw the little red fort on the top of the kopje and I wondered if I should find Hugh at Lyddie's house when I arrived, for once snatching time off from military matters, as other men seemed able to do from time to time. I was not really surprised when I did not find him there. We were becoming virtual strangers
The truth was, I had fallen out of love with my husband (or thought I had, which came to much the same thing). I had slowly come to realise that we had never, perhaps, spent enough time together to enable us to get to know each other. I saw now how
different we were in our natures, how little we had in common, with few shared interests. He was a good man, none better, but the spark had gone from our marriage. There were black holes in our relationship, which we could only fill with superficialities. Wider issues were never discussed. But I tried not to think of it. These were black thoughts at the end of a black day.
Then as I walked up the short path to the house, I was halted in my tracks by –
music.
Not gramophone music, but a piece I didn't recognise, played on Lyddie's second-hand piano. A liquid outpouring of notes, as unlike her cheerful, energetic strumming of the popular songs of the day as anything could be. I was reminded of my first day in Mafeking, with Nellie Melba's glorious voice singing over the desert air. In its way this was even stranger. No one I knew played like this.

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