1999 - Ladysmith (21 page)

Bella felt hands either side of her, tugging at her underwear.

“You mustn’t,” she said, tensing.

Full of regret, she sat up, her legs apart with him kneeling between them. To keep her balance, she was forced to throw her arms around his neck. This pulled her down on to him, and then he slumped to one side, breathing heavily. She could feel him pressing against her through his breeches. Determined to distract him, yet still half-full of exploring zeal, she snaked down a hand. Tom moaned, and rolled over on to his back. She rubbed against the straining tip of him, using the palm of her hand as he had done upon her breast.

“Like this,” he whispered, shaking his head, and at first she didn’t understand that it was an instruction, not an expression of pleasure.

He reached down and moved her hand aside, and with a quick movement undid his belt and the top button of his breeches. Almost reluctantly, Bella pushed her hand into the gap—felt the fleshy top of him, warm underneath her palm, astonishingly warm, and softly textured. That vel-vetiness of skin was more striking to her than the prodding, hard way the thing pushed up against her hand. Tom put his own hand on top of hers and moved it up and down, and then undid some more buttons, until he sprung free.

Long Tom!

She smiled at her own thought, and in the consciousness of it gripped him more firmly. Moving her hand up and down the stock of him, she could feel a long, arcing vein under her fingers. Or was it a muscle? Every now and then it twitched a little. She noticed quickly that Tom moved about and made small, breathy noises at the beginning and end of each movement of her hand. The fascination was in the pure mechanism of it; she felt like an engineer, one surprised by some chance discovery in the field of iron bridge building, or steam. She was even more surprised when Tom released a sharper breath than all the previous ones, kicked out his legs, and a small, wet frog landed on her bare arm.

“Frogs!”

Herbert Foster swore as the Boer shell buried itself in the earth breastwork beneath his emplacement on Junction Hill, making the whole thing shake. The redoubt was more like a conning tower than a sandbag epaulement, they had built it so tall—shoulder-high and six foot thick, with the Armstrong sticking out at forty-five degrees and the Maxim trained point blank. But Long Tom was getting the better of the exchange…

“Bloody Frogs! Bloody Huns! Bloody Irish! If they weren’t all fighting with them, then we might have a chance.”

No one was listening, and even if they had been they could not have heard him over the noise of battery and counter-battery fire. But he was not really addressing his remarks to anyone in particular, just expressing his frustration at the good aim of the gunners of the
Staats Artillerie
.

The reference to the French was based on little more than the fact that some of the Boer guns were made by a French company (thus supplementing the Kaiser’s Krupps), and the imprecation upon the Irish was a consequence of the discovery that the Boers, like the British, had their own Irish brigade—‘full of paddywacks with a grievance’ as Foster put it—whose second-in-command was a renegade nationalist politician called MacBride. News of the existence of this brigade had already caused some tension in the ranks, being the cause of a brawl between a man of the Leicesters and a sergeant of the Dublin Fusiliers, who resented his loyalty to the Crown being called into question. The man got a double beating, first from the sergeant, and then from the provosts, on account his having struck a superior.

But there were larger quarrels, ones in which such discriminations counted for naught. The big guns on Umbulwana and Pepworth Hill had kept up their racket all week, making no distinction between famous or ordinary human beings, or for that matter between human beings and animals. Lord Dufferin, Dr Jameson (of ‘Jameson Raid’ notoriety) and Colonel Frank Rhodes (brother of Cecil) were disturbed by a shell while sitting for a photograph. Another mule of Rashid, carrier to Gunner Foster, had been disembowelled at the naval gunpit, and now he had to carry the shells himself.

It was not all one way, not by any means. Foster’s Armstrong was roaring like a bullock today. It searched the country for Dutch blood, as if in revenge for the ill-fated mule.

“A Boer name on every round,” Foster would say, and spit, as Rashid staggered over with the heavy shell in his arms.

This utterance would be made from a low shelf beneath the parapet, upon which Foster would sit down between firings to smoke his cigar. Rashid, even without his beast of burden, was so quick with the shells that he hardly had time for more than a couple of puffs before he had to be up taking the shells in and supervising the firing. The consequence of this was—albeit hard to distinguish amid the mazy hell of a gun position in action—a pretty little counterpoint of bluish smoke: the big puff of the Armstrong, the little one of Foster’s cigar.

Apart from technical details to do with aim and elevation, the question of where the shells were actually going was hardly entertained. Whenever he tried to think about the other side, an awful blankness descended upon Foster.

They were just—the enemy. It could not be otherwise, for to extend any particularity towards them made the job impossible. Humanity lived on this side of the gun, began and ended within the confines of Ladysmith—and, like others, he was quite happy to exclude the Africans and Indians from that compass.

Not everyone thought like this. In the quiet of the night, that sturdy freethinker, Nevinson of the
Daily Chronicle
, thought about the black families he had seen on the way up here, as the rumour of war swept across the country. Thought, too, about the Dutch women and children being rounded up and brought in by British soldiers from farms close to Ladysmith. Most had escaped under the protection of their menfolk, but perhaps twenty or thirty of these fatherless families had been locked up in the Dopper Church, along with those long-standing Afrikaner inhabitants of Ladysmith who had not gone out to join the rebel armies, and the new ‘shady characters’. Even in many of the Dutch cases—such as that of one Heer De Vries, a long-beard of ancient years—it was clear that such people could pose no threat to the security of Ladysmith, but the order had been given by General White and that was that.

Behind their wire fence, the prisoners made a pitiful sight when they came out to exercise each day. There were now, reflected Nevinson, so many enclosures and fortifications in and around the town, from the Klip earthworks and the sangars of the outer defences to the merest piling up of sandbags around a cottage window, that seen from above (as he supposed the men in the observation balloons saw it), it must have appeared a near-impregnable series of plots and snares. But although Ladysmith now had something of the Great Wall of China about it, there were many gaps, and the fortifications were far from impenetrable. On balance, it was fear of bristling bayonets that prevented the Boers from simply storming the place, rather than the crudely built demi-lunes, hornworks and ravelins of the town’s hastily erected defences. All that traditional siege-craft and geometrical deviousness became irrelevant when the shells came whistling over: that demanded fortification of a different type—getting as low as possible in a cushioned hole, walling yourself in on top as well as at the sides. And everyone, all the town and garrison, was doing it, covering themselves in layer after layer of earth and stone, hoping that the layers underneath, those of skin and flesh and skeleton, would stay unharmed.

“It’s as if we are all protecting some dreadful secret,” he said to Steevens on his nightly visit to the sick man.

Enteric was taking its toll. Steevens had been sweating heavily all day, soaking the sheets, and the room smelt of diarrhoea. But he maintained his customary cheerfulness and wit.

“I know what you mean,” he replied from his pillow. “We should all be shaking hands and sharing cups of tea with the Boers, telling them our innermost thoughts. Perhaps even building a new world order with them, circling outwards from the Cape, as Rhodes thinks we should. What a load of rot. Imagine it, the connection of good Afrikaner stock with British brains. He reckons he would conquer the world by that kind of admixture. To my mind, it seems a very dangerous kind of thinking. Talking of which—I’ve got some bits and pieces for the
Lyre
, if you might take them down to the office.”

Steevens gathered a sheaf of papers from the bedside table and handed them to Nevinson.

“And if, by any miracle of fate, you lay your hands on another paper from outside, I’d give my right arm for it.”

“I’ll ask about, and see if any of the runners has brought one in,” said Nevinson. “Probably be weeks old again, though.”

“Better than nothing.”

“Anything else you want?”

“Dancing girls,” said Steevens loudly. “My own troupe. And a box of Turkish delight!”

His drolleries, reflected Nevinson as he went next door to his own room, were becoming more extravagant by the day. Perhaps it was the fever. He prepared himself for bed and then settled down to peruse Steevens’s contributions to the
Lyre
.

THE SITUATION

The situation is unchanged.

NEWS

There is no news.

THE CONVENT

The Convent is evacuated. Nun there.

THE DIARY OF A CITIZEN

Nov. 14
: General Buller has twice been seen in Ladysmith, disguised as a kaffir. His force is entrenched behind Bulwan. Hurrah!

Nov. 20
: HMS
Powerful
ran aground in attempting to steam up the Klip. Feared total loss.

Nov. 21
: Hear on good authority that gunner of Long Tom is Captain Dreyfus.

Nov. 22
: Dreyfus rumour confirmed.

NEW SONGS

‘Oft in the Stilly Night’

Boer Artillery Chorus

‘Over the Hills and Far Away’

Relief Column Chorus

They’re after me, they’re after me,

To capture me is everyone’s desire;

They’re after me, they’re after me,

I’m the individual they require.

By Colonel Rhodes, on account of the Boer shells which follow him however often he changes his residence.

SKILL COMPETITION

A bottle of anchovies will be awarded to sender of first opened solution of this competition: “Name date of relief of Ladysmith.” Generals and inhabitants of Ladysmith who say ‘Ja’ instead of ‘Yes’ will be disqualified as possessing exceptional sources of information. Send answers, with small bottle of beer enclosed, to Puzzle Editor,
Ladysmith Lyre
.

WHERE TO SPEND A HAPPY DAY

To the Ladies of Pretoria: Messrs. Kook and Son beg to announce a personally conducted tour, Saturday to Monday, to witness the Siege of Ladysmith. Full view of the enemy guaranteed. Tea and shrimps (direct from Durban) on the train. Four-in-hand ox wagon direct from Modder Spruit to Bulwan. Fare 15
s
. return. One guinea if Long Tom is in action.

FRAGMENT OF A POEM

(found in a hole in the ground)

A pipe of Boer tobacco ‘neath the blue,

A tin of meat, a bottle, and a few

Choice magazines like
Harmsworth’s
or The Strand -

I sometimes think war has its blessings too.

O
n the day of the cricket match, a strange silence hung above the beleaguered town. Talk of a truce had been heard around Ladysmith and (so the spies said) behind the Boer lines as well. At any rate—thanks in no small part to the counter-battery fire of the naval guns, like that of Foster and his team, carted in from HMS
Powerful—
the Boer firing had slackened. A collective sense of relief had spread through the garrison and townsfolk. The quartermaster felt it, to the extent of issuing several barrels of stockfish for general use; the press corps felt it; two sisters sitting in deckchairs under some blue-gums by the edge of the pitch felt it.

The band of the Leicesters played the game in, mostly with tuba and trombone. A large crowd of Ladysmithites and assorted military were there to watch, though not all from the same vantage point. The soldiers, for propriety’s sake, had been ordered to keep on the opposite side of the pitch to the ladies. Near to Bella and Jane was a large white tent which had been brought in from the cavalry lines to serve as a refreshment stall: cordials were on offer, along with sandwiches filled with cucumber and stockfish paste. Two large bowls of pears stood on a trestle table outside, covered with muslin fly-guards.

The pitch itself was a stretch of coarse grass on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t, as many of the cricketers remarked, a good wicket, being hard and bumpy. The outfield was so overgrown with elephant grass that it could indeed have concealed an elephant, never mind a withered lump of leather. All seemed set to enjoy themselves in fair measure—given good weather grace of the Umpire in the Sky and, more important still, a quiet, shell-free sky, grace of Long Tom. A stake of a case of champagne, one of few remaining in the town, had been raised for the game.

The sisters watched their father walk out for the toss. Against his will, against his better judgement, against, for that matter, fact (unless Ireland were to be called a colony), he was captain of the Colonial Born…Lieutenant Norris, wearing a hideous parti-coloured silk cap, was captain of the Mother Country. “You call this a ball?” he said to the hotel-keeper, holding it between thumb and forefinger, with a queer look on his face.

“You’re not at Lords now, sir,” Kiernan replied, piqued. “In the Colonies, Lieutenant, we have to make do.”

The Mother Country won the toss, and elected to bat.

“Why are we going in first?” asked a drummer boy of Hussars, who though he had played many good games for his school, had not been given a place in the team.

“Because both science and cricketing lore tell us,” said Major Mott, “that a bad wicket is likely further to deteriorate over time.”