The idea appealed to me. “I'm not trained for it, but maybe some of the younger ones â and what about the native children?”
She didn't exactly look horrified, but I belatedly realised this was not a permissible question. The population who had settled here were a diverse mixture of different races and occupations but, though they seemed to manage to exist together without much prejudice or class consciousness, there was little or no integration with the black people who lived in the stadt, apart from making use of them as servants, as everyone did. The white population kept themselves strictly to themselves: the Christians, Jews and Catholics; tradespeople who kept the town going; the army and the police and those who worked in the Bechuanaland administration; the railway engineers and the men who worked for the Telegraph Company, as well as neighbouring farmers and cattle ranchers who came in regularly to stock up with victuals. And the transients, footloose men on their way to and from Salisbury or Bulawayo in search of some new El Dorado. Also the people from Kimberley and Johannesburg who were not deterred by the stories of war in the north, and still wanted to be taken on hunting expeditions by men like Lyall.
Some of them were Dutch, new residents who, like Lyddie and Lyall, were refugees from their farms in Rhodesia. They rubbed along with the rest of the population, but where did their loyalties lie in those still continuing and dangerously escalating quarrels between Kruger and the British Government? Did they
support old Kruger's intransigent refusal to make any concessions in the matter of the Uitlanders? These were questions which had temporarily assumed somewhat less importance in view of the present emergency in Rhodesia, but ones that certainly weren't going to go away.
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Messages came regularly from Lyall, up there over the border, from whence, almost daily it seemed, came news of yet another atrocity, or another miraculous escape. Lyddie held her head high, determined not to let her worry show. She smiled and agreed when everyone said they'd soon have the rebellious niggers by the tail, and order would be restored.
In a military centre such as Mafeking, horses, and everything to do with them, were of paramount importance, and I knew I should have to learn to ride. The task of teaching me fell to Captain Osborne, who was still in Mafeking, kicking his heels, as he put it, impatiently waiting for the arrival from England of General Carrington's new chief of staff, who was to lead a serious campaign into Matabeleland and put an end to the rebellions once and for all: such a task, as most people were beginning to admit, was beyond the capabilities of the amateur fighters, willing and able as they were.
For my riding lessons, I was allotted a little mare I was assured was as mild as milk, though with something as large and heavy as a horse, that seemed to me to be a contradiction in terms. However, I made some sort of progress, and became fond of my staid old Marigold.
But much more than the actual riding, I came to love those cool mornings and the pearly skies, before the punishing sun had risen, when Captain Osborne and I rode out over the wide, open terrain, where above the flowing grasses rose twisted old thorn-thickets and the boulder-strewn slopes of the occasional kopje, or little hill, which here and there interrupted the flatness of the plain. We would ride up to its rounded top, from where we could often see in the distance antelopes or herds of zebra, and sometimes giraffe, and the silver thread of the Malopo winding below, the only promise of fertility in an arid and thirsty land. And I increasingly enjoyed the company of Hugh Osborne. He was very patient with my slowness, when I was sure he'd much
sooner be off at a stiff gallop over the stony plain.
I had to admit I was growing accustomed to the strangeness of living in this town on the veldt and no longer found it quite so dismaying, though I sympathised with Lyddie and could not believe anyone would live permanently in Mafeking by choice, among the choking red dust and the eternal flies, and as I'd told Hugh, I certainly did not want to be here during the blazing summer, when the temperatures would soar. He gave me a rather curious look, which I couldn't, at that time, interpret.
“He's in love with you,” Lyddie said.
“Well, I like him, too,” I answered, trying not to blush.
“Like?” She looked hard at me. “You should marry him. He'd make an excellent husband, you know.”
“Because of all those diamonds, you mean?”
“No, Hannah,” she answered quietly. “Because he's true as steel.”
That silenced me, for I knew she was right, though my feelings on the subject were very mixed. “The question doesn't arise,” I said at last. “He hasn't asked me.”
“He will.” She gave an infuriatingly knowing smile.
At last came the day when General Carrington's new Chief Staff Officer arrived from England. A hearty fellow, experienced in campaigning both here and in India, Colonel Baden-Powell, or B-P as everyone seemed to call him, was a man whose optimism and enthusiasm were unquenchable, and who had no doubts whatever of his ability to succeed in putting down once and for all those savages across the border. And Hugh, in great spirits, remarking that their new commander was like a pint of champagne, rode off up country with him to mount his campaign, equally sure that it would be successful.
In the end, B-P's optimism was justified; by October, a peace treaty had been agreed, but when Hugh returned, as he did from time to time, he came back changed. This had turned out to be more than the usual border skirmishes or expeditions into the interior against the rebellious or cattle-thieving natives that he was used to: this had been blood and death on a grander scale. He had seen settlers, their wives and children, butchered atrociously, and watched his own men and brother officers die, not
always killed by a clean bullet, but dying an agonising death, of gangrene or blood-poisoning, dysentery â or even torture. He'd seen families cut up into pieces. It would, however, take more than that to deter Hugh from doing his duty in the service of his country. Within days, he would be off again with the flying column B-P had commanded to clear the country of the remaining scattered bands of rebels. I saw him rarely but I remembered him every night in my prayers.
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My estimated stay in Africa stretched to months, then nearly two years, during which Lyddie had another miscarriage and there arose the very real prospect of a bigger and very different conflict altogether: war with the Boers. Each passing month made the possibility less remote, and we knew that Mafeking, due to its strategic position on the border railway, would be in the front line. Kruger was making no secret that he was preparing for war, ready to call up his stand-by commando units and stockpiling arms and ammunition to an enormous extent, while from England had come Sir Alfred Milner, on a peace mission which no one realistically visualised as having any prospects of success after eighteen months of negotiations, since he had revealed himself as ardent an imperialist as Rhodes and as obdurate as Kruger in his obstinate refusal to compromise.
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One evening, after a particularly gruellingly hot day, I was sitting in Lyddie's garden under the jacaranda, in the tender dusk that was so precious because it was so short, that hour between the heat of the day and the cold which would come when the fiery, brandy-coloured sunset was abruptly extinguished by the dark of the night. Within half an hour it would be too dark to read the letters we had received that day from Ned. He was eighteen now and had just left school.
âDear Hannah,' mine began, âI expect you are sweltering out there in the heat. I envy you. It rained cats and dogs for two days here, then turned to drizzle, which we've had to endure for a week. It's very dull here without Lyddie to tease me, and no one to have a good old chinwag with, as you and I used to, dear old girl. Bad luck about Lyddie. Ma says losing three babies is more than enough for any woman. She puts it down to the climate, and wishes Lyddie and
Lyall would come home â which would mean you, too. Hooray!
âLet me think of what news there is from here to regale you with. Well, since I declared my intention of not going up to Oxford, I've been given a month by Father and George to make the choice between putting my nose to the grindstone down at the mill or finding some other useful occupation. (Father's words, not mine.) Since no useful occupation has yet occurred to me, I'm making the most of my freedom and have just spent some time in London staying with a chap from school. He's quite decent â very well off â his people have a spiffing house and he has a very pretty sister, so a top-hole time was had by all. We saw some very decent cricket at Lords and some good rowing by the varsity crews at Henley regatta (perhaps I should have decided on Oxford, after all, if they would have had me). I won some money at Ascot â and lost some at Newmarket, and we went to see the new musical comedy,
The Belle of New York,
all the rage, full of pretty ladies and capital tunes that you can't get out of your head. But now Spenderford has gone up to Scotland to shoot grouse with some rich connections of his father, and I've had to come home back to Bridge End and decide what to do with the rest of my life, the prospect of which seems drearier than ever. Don't lecture me â I mean to put my mind to whatever I decide to do, though I'm not sure London was a good idea. It was very unsettling, though I dare say all that talk of junketing and high life must seem very trivial to you.'
Not exactly the kind of life I'd once been determined to discover, perhaps, but one wider than the narrow, circumscribed life here. Suddenly, the trapped feeling â never very far away nowadays â was back. I swallowed and read on. â
The papers are full of the talk of war with the Boers. Most people think it's all bosh that we should go to war just because those Uitlanders want the vote. If it does come though, and we decide to give old Kruger a taste of his own medicine, I shall enlist (even Father must class the army as a useful occupation!) and then maybe I shall see you â and Lyddie, of course, though one would hope and pray the fighting wouldn't reach as far as Mafeking.'
The letter brought Ned's laughing face vividly to mind. Dear Ned. I hated the notion of him fighting, maybe getting killed, but behind all his flippancy, I sensed he had grown up; such
choices would be his to make. I looked up from the page at the parched red strip of earth that served as a garden, watched a column of ants march across it, opened the top buttons of my blouse and thought longingly of the damp days over the Pennines. I would even have welcomed at that moment those sharp cold winds which used to rack my lungs. During this heat, Lyddie and I had dispensed with petticoats altogether and only wore whatever underpinnings were absolutely necessary. The heat pressed down like a lid. The air was so still that when the sun went down you could hear the natives in the distant stadt singing above the crepitations of the night insects. As the darkness closed in, the birds had grown silent â strange but now familiar birds, some with long feathery tails and others black and white like magpies, only not; the stars were thick and brilliant as they never were at home.
Lyddie came hurrying out of the house. “It's Captain Osborne â Major, I should say now â and he wants to see you.”
“Well, ask him to come out here, then. It's too hot indoors.”
“He wants to talk to you privately.”
“Oh.” We looked at one another. During this last spell of leave Hugh had, as Lyddie put it, been living in my pocket, and though I wouldn't have phrased it in quite the same way, we had certainly seen a good deal of each other.
“Go on,” she said.
My hand flew to fasten the buttons at my neck. “My hair! It needs combing. I look a fright.”
“You look neat as a pin, as usual, and hurry up. He's in the parlour, champing at the bit because apparently he's had orders to be off again.”
I couldn't go to my room from here without passing through the parlour, so I did my best to make myself presentable where I was, smoothing the damp tendrils of hair back from my face and tucking my blouse back into my waistband. It was the best I could do â at least the blue voile, despite its lack of starch due to the heat, was one of the most becoming things I had.
My heart hammering, I went into the parlour. Feeling suddenly very shy, I shut the door quietly and waited. He was looking out of the window, overlooking the dusty, now dark, road, his
hands clasped behind his back, and swung round as I came in. Silhouetted against the darkened panes, he looked very large, his broad-shouldered figure seeming to take up most of the space in the tiny, shadowy room. For a moment or two, there was silence, then he began to tell me that he would soon be taking his men back up-country and might be away for several weeks, if not months. Suddenly he stopped, we looked at each other in silence, then at the same moment, we stepped towards each other.
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Although I couldn't, with hand on heart, say it was entirely unexpected, I hadn't realised until this moment just how very fond I was of him. It was true that he had a rather guarded sense of humour â though this was a minor point that I found quite endearing â and I'd learned that he didn't care for me to voice my opinions too strongly, but I admired him more than anyone I knew. I liked his kindness and courtesy, his even temper and his integrity. His manners, like his uniform, were impeccable.