Keepers of the House

by JH Fletcher

  ‘Tell me at least if she is alive.’

  ‘The last we heard she was.’

  ‘Not her husband, though,’ the man said. He brandished the news bitterly as though it gave him satisfaction. ‘But you will have heard that.’

  ‘I had not heard. When did it happen?’

  ‘Six months ago, at least. Where have you been, man?’

  Deneys stared him down. ‘Fighting. And you?’

  The man flushed angrily. Before he could speak, Deneys turned back to the woman. ‘Where is she? Do you know?’

  She shook her head. ‘Food first.’

  A small square of coarse bread, a scrap of home-made sausage, a mug of harsh black coffee. One plate; they were not eating with him.

  ‘You will say a blessing,’ the woman said.

  Obediently Deneys gave thanks. He wondered how big a hole he was making in their stores by accepting, but knew he had no choice. It was the only dignity left to them, to offer hospitality to a stranger.

  He finished the food, polished his plate carefully while the man and woman watched. ‘I thank you,’ he said formally.

  ‘They took your sister away when they burned the farm,’ the woman said. ‘With the children.’

  He tried to visualise it. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We did not see it, you understand. Only what we heard.’

  He did not ask who had told them; in war you did not ask such things.

  ‘The soldiers were tired and dangerous. No doubt they had done more of the same that day. They ordered everyone out of the house. Then they searched, to make sure no one was left. They rounded up the livestock while other soldiers guarded your sister and the children and the maid servant who lived in the house.’

  ‘The English are so frightened they need to guard babies?’

  ‘I am telling you what I heard,’ the woman said. ‘One of the soldiers took a big copper kettle from the house.’

  ‘I remember that kettle,’ Deneys said. ‘It came from my father’s house in the Cape.’

  ‘He was going to steal it, you understand, but the sergeant made him put it back. He said they were not thieves but on their King’s business.’

  ‘Some business, to destroy good farms and make women and children homeless. What happened to the kettle?’

  ‘It was burned up with the rest. The children were crying. The maid, too. But your sister stood like stone until the flames had taken everything.’

  ‘I would sooner the soldier had kept the kettle,’ Deneys said. ‘That way at least it would be some use.’

  ‘Lammers would kill you for saying that.’ The man smiled maliciously. ‘Giving aid to the enemy …’

  ‘A kettle?’ Deneys said. ‘What enemies does a kettle have?’

  ‘You might say the same of the land we stand on. If you weren’t still fighting, your sister’s farm would be standing along with the rest.’

  ‘A man is more than a kettle,’ Deneys said. ‘And we have burned nothing.’

  ‘Louis Botha said he would burn the house of anyone who surrendered. What is the point?’ the man demanded furiously. ‘We will never beat them.’

  The woman looked at him, as at a slug. ‘Not everyone has given up, if you have.’

  ‘Oh, let us keep going, by all means. Let us destroy the whole country rather than bow our necks. You were right about the kettle,’ he told Deneys. ‘Maybe you should stick to kettles and leave the country to the rest of us.’

  ‘Maybe you should bite your tongue,’ the woman told him angrily. ‘You want Lammers to come with his commando and burn the house over our heads?’

  ‘Burn and be damned.’ Dark eyes blazed. ‘Everything is finished, one way or the other.’ And flung himself furiously across the room and through the inner door, which slammed to shake the house.

  The woman ran her hand over her face and Deneys saw how tired she was. ‘Take no notice,’ she said. ‘He was brave, once. You see how he walks? Shrapnel it was, at Spion Kop. But the shrapnel took more than his foot.’

  ‘He sounded glad my brother-in-law’s dead.’

  ‘He is not glad. He can’t handle it any more, that’s all. It is what war does to you. People think of the injury they see, the foot, the hand, but they are nothing. The injury to the mind is what matters. What he told you was right. If the soldiers find out you’ve been here, they will burn the house. It is hard to be a man, waiting and not knowing.’

  ‘It is the same for a woman.’

  ‘A woman is used to waiting. Carrying a child, she waits. When her man goes to war, she waits. It takes courage, certainly, but not a man’s courage. A man makes a child, he goes away. In war, he kills or is killed. No waiting. Courage also, but of a different sort. When a man has to wait instead of going to fight, it does something to him. Believe me. I live with it every day.’

  Deneys did not want to talk about it. ‘My sister …?’

  ‘They put them on a train. There were hundreds of them, women and little children. Old folk, too. They took them to the concentration camp at Koffiekraal.’

  ‘Concentration camp?’

  ‘Where they put the women and children after they have burned the farms. There are many of them.’

  Deneys nodded. ‘Good. I am glad.’

  She stared. ‘Glad?’

  ‘At least they will be safe.’ He walked to the door.

  ‘Let me first make sure the road is clear.’ The woman opened the door and went outside. In a minute she was back. ‘Nobody,’ she said.

  ‘I must thank you,’ Deneys said again.

  ‘You wish to thank us, don’t come back.’

  He nodded and walked outside. The night was still. The darkness could have concealed a thousand eyes. The woman stood with the door half-closed behind her, the light drawing a line across the dust.

  ‘My man brought you into the house. A coward would not have done it.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right.’ Looking up and down the street, anxious to get away.

  ‘You see?’ she said. ‘Waiting is not so easy.’

  ‘It is stupid to stand here. If a patrol comes —’

  ‘One more word and you can go.’ Her voice was troubled. ‘I am frightened of these camps.’

  ‘Frightened?’ He looked at her.

  ‘You saw what the war has done to my man? Not his foot, I mean, the other. I think the war has done something to the English, too. Once they would not have burned the farms. The war has made them angry.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Unlike us, they have the power to take their hurt out on others.’

  ‘Surely never on the women and children? That would be madness.’

  ‘So is burning the farms.’

  ‘If they do that, the war will never end. We will fight them to the death.’

  Her smile was like the baring of a skull. ‘What are you doing now?’

  ‘But this … I will not believe it.’

  ‘Pray God you are right.’ She put her hands on his shoulders. ‘Go with God, then. And remember the brave man of Lydenburg who took you into his house.’

  She went back inside. The door closed.

  They put Anneliese and the two children into a train and took them to the camp outside Koffiekraal, three hundred miles south-west of Lydenburg. They were not alone; the train — a dozen cattle trucks — was packed.

  It was a weary journey. Twice a day the train stopped and the prisoners were allowed out for food and water and to relieve themselves. There were no toilets, but a lot of the people had known nothing but the veld in any case, so that was no problem. Then back into the trucks while the train went on.

  In between stops there was no food or water. No veld either and, with both young and old aboard, the stench soon became so thick they could have sliced it.

  It took five days, the train trundling slowly across the burning plains. For one whole day they passed the Drakensberg Mountains. They floated like dreams on the horizon, but no breath of coolness came from
those far peaks. Anneliese clutched the slatted side of the truck and watched through the cracks as long as they were in sight. She and her husband had gone that way to the farm when they had first married. Green hills, steeply-forested valleys set with waterfalls, the drifs across the streams with the water cold and clear about the wagon wheels, the clean freshness of the mountain air … Memory was like a plague, but still she had to watch.

  All too soon the mountains were gone. The truck groaned and swayed. Dust and heat buried them. Now through the slatted sides Anneliese saw only the empty veld burning beneath a brazen sky.

  She thought, I have lost my husband and my farm but still I have my children. I still have hope.

  The camp consisted of bell tents set in lines, far too few for the number of prisoners they packed into them. There was a wire fence patrolled by soldiers, a central kitchen, latrine trenches set in rows, visible to all who cared to look. The tents had no groundsheets or blankets so all the prisoners had to lie on the bare earth. There were no washing facilities, no protection from heat or dust, no medical attention of any kind. There was nothing to do but sit and look through the wire at the veld stretching treeless to the horizon.

  Into this place the English put them. A thousand to begin with, then more than a thousand, all of them brought there from the burned farms, the stripped countryside.

  They would have improved their own conditions if it had been possible, but there was nothing they could do. They needed better food, clean water, some medical attention, at least, but there was none to be had. They complained, but no one did anything.

  Many of the people had no idea of even the most basic hygiene. On the farms, when they had needed to relieve themselves, they had squatted where they were. When they were finished, they went on. There it hadn’t mattered. In the camp it was death.

  Waste fouled the ground. Its stench fouled the air. People, first the youngest and then the older ones, began to die.

  Two other women and eight children shared the tent with Anneliese: Ella Joubert, thin and nervous, dark hair drawn back from a scraggy neck, frightened eyes; Margaretha Koch, fat and blonde as her two boys were fat and blonde. To begin with, at any rate.

  One day Ella’s oldest child awoke in tears, complaining of a sore throat. Her body was hot with fever and the back of her throat was coated with a grey film.

  ‘An infection of some sort,’ Margaretha said. ‘She’s young. It will pass.’

  It did not pass. It grew worse. Next day the child complained of double vision. She had difficulty swallowing, and the film at the back of her throat had grown thicker. After the fourth day she complained no longer but lay still, limbs stiff, eyes half-closed and unmoving, breath so faint they could hardly see her chest rise and fall as she lay on the ground inside the tent.

  ‘I’ll get help.’

  Anneliese went to the wire, called one of the guards.

  ‘One of the children is very sick.’

  Her English was rusty, but it served.

  The sentry’s face was red and dripped sweat beneath his white helmet.

  ‘So?’

  ‘She needs a doctor.’

  ‘Ain’t no doctors ’ere.’

  ‘She tried to take hold of his sleeve through the wire. ‘Please. I am afraid for her.’

  He shook himself free. ‘I told you —’

  ‘Please,’ she said again. She could hear herself pleading and hated herself for it. The enemy. But what else could she do? She heard herself say, ‘I’ll do anything …’

  That stopped him, at least.

  He stared at her consideringly. ‘What’s wrong wiv ’er, then?’

  ‘Some infection.’

  It was the worst thing she could have said.

  ‘Infection?’

  He made off down the wire, Anneliese following him, arms out-thrust, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘’N klein kind, meneer. A little child … Surely you cannot let her die? What kind of man are you?’

  He turned savagely. ‘I’ll tell the sergeant. Okay?’

  It was the best she could hope for.

  ‘Thank you. Oh, thank you …’

  She went back to the tent. Heat and the stink of sickness was like a blow in her face.

  ‘He’s getting the sergeant.’

  Margaretha said, ‘You could have saved your effort. Die kleintjie is dood. The kid is dead.’

  The soldiers did nothing.

  Two months later, two hundred children and thirty-seven adults had also died.

  Ella Joubert. Her remaining daughters. Her son.

  Cornelia Erasmus, whom Anneliese had known in Lydenburg. Her two children.

  One hundred and ninety-three children and thirty-five adults whom Anneliese did not know.

  Her own daughter Amalie. Aged four.

  All dead.

  The soldiers did nothing.

  Anneliese closed her son’s eyes and went out of the tent.

  The sun was setting. The tent cast a long shadow across the bare earth. Beyond it more tents, more shadows marching like soldiers to the wire. Beyond the wire, the veld writhed with heat.

  She sat on the ground, feet stretched out.

  Emptiness was a chasm.

  Her children dead. Her husband dead. Her farm dead.

  Margaretha’s voice blubbered somewhere. ‘Last week it was Amalie. Now Stoffel. Who will be next, Anneliese? Who will close my eyes? Who will close yours?’

  Strength rose in her. Hatred was a dark fire in her heart.

  ‘No one will close my eyes. I shall not permit the English to kill me. I shall walk out of here. I shall keep the memory of this place alive. In my heart and in my head. Forever.’

  An anthem of hatred, overwhelming and eternal. Her blood carried it, her brain burned with it, her heartbeats echoed it. She neither screamed nor wept.

  She said, ‘Before God I curse the English and those who have helped them in this war. The scythe of God is in my hand. I swear on the bodies of my children that I shall do to them everything they have done to me. And more. While I have breath I shall never forgive them, never forget.’

  On her deathbed, Anneliese had told her great-granddaughter, ‘I never did. Never, to this day. I shall hate them and curse them until the moment I die. And afterwards, God willing. They will never be rid of me.’

  At fifteen Anna — or Tamsin Fitzgerald, as she had been then — had been appalled by the old woman’s undying hatred. Was about to turn away, to run from this room of death, but Anneliese’s cracked voice forestalled her.

  ‘They forced me to leave my home, my family, my country. They made me come here, to wander the roads of this land that has never been mine. But one thing they could not prevent: not one mile, not a single step has passed without my curse upon their memory. And before I had to leave I made them suffer. Oh yes.’

  Two days after Pieter had lent her his grandfather’s journal, Anna once again drove north-east out of Cape Town along National Route 1 until she reached the turn-off to Stellenbosch and the valley lying in the mountains beyond. Oleander trees ran down the middle of the four-lane highway; the tyres of passing trucks hammered the concrete; it was difficult to imagine the existence of a world that had witnessed all the happenings that she had heard about from Anneliese, had read about in Deneys Wolmarans’s journal.

  The world goes on, Anna thought, gaining no satisfaction from the platitude, but it carries too much of the past, the evils never forgotten, the lust for vengeance that keeps wrongs alive forever.

  Even now as she drove, she too was carrying with her the freight of the past: Deneys, riding through a desolation of burnt homes, ruined pastures; Anneliese rail-bound towards the fate that awaited her children and herself in the living death of the Koffiekraal concentration camp.

  It was the most terrible of all the tales that Anneliese had told her; had told her, moreover, not simply to share the past but to ensure that her own hatred did not die with her but would remain to poison one more
generation, and the next, and the one after that. Forever.

  How wrong it was, how self-destructive! Yet could she in all honesty claim that in Anneliese’s situation she would not have felt the same? Humanity’s inhumanity, Anna thought. Dear God, what a terrible thing it is. Yet if we do not forgive, what hope is there for the world?

  An hour after taking the Stellenbosch turn-off, Anna sat with Pieter Wolmarans on the stoep of Oudekraal. There was a bottle of wine upon the table and two glasses; the atmosphere between them was very different from how it had been at their first meeting.

  Pieter admired the contents of his glass. The wine shone as red as rubies in the warm and shadowy air.

  ‘Our own wine. Pinotage 1967; a good year.’

  Ceremoniously he raised his glass. ‘To Oudekraal. And the Wolmarans.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘You are not married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You need a child. Children. All of us need that.’

  ‘Not everyone would agree with you.’

  ‘Children are eternity. The only eternity, I would say. Not that the dominee would agree with me.’

  They sat side by side, the half-full glasses on the table between them. Above them leant the great oak tree that Colin Walmer had planted two hundred and forty years before. Beyond its green embrace, the rows of vines ran away until they joined the terraces stitching the slope of the mountain.

  ‘You never married,’ Anna said.

  ‘The time never seemed right. A mistake. Now it is too late.’

  ‘You’re not so old.’

  ‘Too old for a young wife. For any wife, perhaps.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Over the years a man gets used to having his own way.’ He sipped his wine, turning his head to look at her across the table. ‘Don’t make my mistake.’

  He stood and refilled her glass. She smiled up at him, feeling completely comfortable with him now.

  ‘1902,’ she said.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘When your grandfather came back from the war. At the end of his journal he mentions his homecoming, the big party they had, but he doesn’t go into any details.’

  Pieter laughed as he resumed his seat. ‘There was a party, all right. Right over there, where the grapes are growing now. The field they called the Nagmaalvlakte. He told me about it himself.’