The Last Horseman

by David Gilman

  In an effort to help feed some of the more vulnerable children in the camp hospital she had planted vegetables in the depleted soil of her garden, but the yield was poor and disproportionate to her efforts – almost as poor as the responses to her constant letters to anyone in authority who might ease the plight of the women and children being forced from their farms and removed to Bergfontein. There were a few who supported her locally – a handful of women and a couple of Quakers – and whenever a train halted she would attempt to rally support. The young subaltern had no trouble finding her.

  A small crowd of onlookers had gathered on the train station platform. Evelyn Charteris, flanked by a couple of women supporters, stood on a makeshift dais and harangued the bemused passengers, who waited as the engine took on water.

  ‘This war was instigated by British business interests to secure the goldmines of South Africa and force the Transvaal Republic to give the vote to outsiders. And once that vote had been secured the Afrikaners could be dislodged from power.’

  One of the men in the crowd interrupted: ‘Nothing wrong with having a piece of gold in your pocket! God knows I could do with a bit myself.’

  The crowd cheered.

  ‘It is not unpatriotic to be compassionate to the women and children caught up in this conflict –’ she said, raising her voice, but was interrupted.

  ‘You take them in then!’ another in the crowd called, causing more ribaldry and a surge towards the dais.

  ‘They’re the enemy!’ someone shouted.

  Evelyn pointed beyond the train towards the internment camp. ‘They are not our enemy. It is imperative we help them. Do you have no conscience about others’ suffering?’

  The antagonism was picked up by another: ‘You people are nothing but a bunch of bleeding-heart suffragettes with those conscientious objectors, those conchies, hanging on your skirts!’

  ‘Or up ’em!’ cried one of the men.

  ‘Conchies and whores!’ a woman shouted from the back of the crowd.

  Evelyn tried to shout over the belligerent heckling. ‘We are doing whatever we can to help these homeless women and children. Are we so uncivilized we cannot offer them consolation?’

  The crowd were having none of it and pushed forward, elbowing aside the two women who tried to shield her. Had it not been for the subaltern and his men forcing their way forward, she would have been thrown to the ground. The civilians soon yielded, beginning to filter away once the soldiers had reached her. The young officer was unfailingly polite, but equally determined to do his duty.

  ‘Mrs Charteris, I have orders for you to accompany me to the camp commandant.’ For a moment she was flustered and backed away, as if intending to resist. But he stepped quickly in front of her, blocking any chance she had of escaping. ‘By any means necessary,’ he said quietly.

  There was no point in chastising a young officer doing his duty, so she nodded and fell into step as he accompanied her off the platform and along the street. They walked in silence until she reached her house, where she saw a bonfire was burning in the small picket-fenced garden. The two soldiers who had been left behind came out with armfuls of her books and papers and tossed them on to the fire.

  ‘Am I that much of a danger, lieutenant?’

  ‘Apparently more than you realize, ma’am.’

  *

  The thousand white dust-blown tents shimmered in the glaring sunlight. The women and children incarcerated in the sprawling internment camp huddled beneath the flapping canvas scoured by mountain winds that could bring heat, cold and wet in an unforgiving punishment. They were a hardy breed, the Boers, and their womenfolk were used to the harshness of the veld. It was God’s country but there were times it felt as if the devil himself bore down on them. And God tested his people, said the church leaders of the Dutch Reformed Church, their Calvinistic stoicism entrenching their belief that the Almighty had predestined their journey through this vale of tears. Well and good, the women said among themselves, but their men were riding commando, their farms had been destroyed and their children were dying of disease and malnutrition. God’s calloused hand struck them hard. A woman’s bitterness would be ploughed deep and watered with her tears; the crop would yield a hatred for the English that would never be appeased.

  Radcliffe and Pierce sat astride their horses gazing at the tent city in the distance. Radcliffe traced his finger across the map case.

  ‘This is Bergfontein,’ he said, flapping the case closed. The dust cloud had swept from the far valley and across the plain, leaving the rail link and the scattered houses stark against the harsh landscape.

  ‘You think that Charteris woman is still here?’ said Pierce as they eased their horses from their vantage point and down the gentle slope.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Radcliffe. ‘She wrote enough letters to me in Dublin and someone that determined isn’t going to give up easily.’

  Pierce scanned the inhospitable vista. ‘The British found the perfect place to dump people. The Spanish set up camps like this to deal with the Cuban guerrillas. They kept some of the toughest bastards around in them, called them reconcentrados. But I never thought I’d see the day when women and children were fenced in such places.’

  Radcliffe swirled his mouth from his canteen of water and spat. ‘They call them concentration camps here.’

  *

  They urged their horses across the tracks where the stationary train hissed an occasional gasp of steam. The flatbed railcars behind it were empty and African levies sat idly by, backs against the wheels, seeking shade from the sun’s glare. Radcliffe and Pierce rode along the dusty main street with its scattered houses. The barbed-wire encampment on the edge of town needed only a few soldiers to guard its perimeter, and were it not for the tents, Bergfontein would be no different to any other South African dorp, clinging to the lifeline of its rail link.

  It was barely a hundred paces from the tracks to the first house, where an African woman swept the front stoep of a house. She squinted up at them as they rode by, lowered her eyes as Radcliffe glanced her way, and then looked up again at the black man riding at his side. He was no servant. Not with saddle and clothes that matched the white man. And he was armed. Her mouth gaped in disbelief. The woman had heard that the British had given rifles to some of the Africans who scouted for them, but to her eyes it was plain to see that this man was no scout. And now he had reined in his horse and was looking at her.

  ‘Mrs Charteris. You know where she is?’ asked the black rider.

  The woman stared, uncertainty making her dumb.

  ‘You speak English?’ the man said.

  She nodded. But still no words came.

  The rider’s eyes widened in expectation of an answer. ‘Mrs Charteris?’ he said again.

  The woman pointed and finally found her voice. ‘The second street. Her house is there. You will see it.’

  Pierce watched the woman quickly bend to her task again, shoulders hunched, as a white woman stepped on to the street with a disparaging look towards her servant and the man on horseback. She was about to say something to Pierce, an admonishment perhaps, but Pierce held her gaze until discomfort made her turn back into the house. He tongue-clicked a command for his horse to walk on.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said to the servant.

  But she kept her gaze lowered.

  *

  Radcliffe and Pierce tethered their horses to a bungalow’s picket fence.

  ‘You think this is it?’ asked Pierce. There were four other tin-roofed dwellings along the dusty street.

  Radcliffe nodded towards the charred bonfire where a few singed documents and book pages had survived. ‘Who else would have their books burned?’

  A woman appeared from the side garden carrying a basket of vegetables, a broad-brimmed hat shielding her face from the sun. She stopped when she saw the two rough-looking riders walking towards her front door.

  ‘Yes?’ she demanded.

  They stopped and looked at her.
The woman glared at them. But then: ‘I know you,’ she said quickly, her challenge softened as her sharp memory recalled a photograph in an English newspaper.

  ‘We’ve never met, Mrs Charteris. I’m –’

  ‘Joseph Radcliffe,’ she whispered, hand to her mouth. ‘Oh. Thank God,’ she muttered. Her eyes closed as if she might faint.

  Radcliffe’s concern for her made him step towards her, but then she recovered and smiled, extending her hand in greeting.

  ‘Mr Radcliffe from Dublin. And you must be Mr Pierce.’

  Pierce had already removed his hat and took her hand in his own. She gripped it firmly.

  ‘Benjamin Pierce, yes ma’am.’

  ‘Of course you are. Of course. I remember your name so clearly from all the letters. Please forgive me, you took me completely by surprise. I had absolutely no idea that you would actually come. Come inside, come inside at once.’

  The two men looked at each other. From what she’d said it seemed they had been expected. Perplexed, they followed her up the steps to her front door and into the cool, high-ceilinged room.

  ‘We seem to have arrived at an inopportune moment, Mrs Charteris. You’re moving house?’ Radcliffe asked when he saw the sparsely furnished, untidy room. Books were stacked on the floor in front of half-empty shelves, an old leather-topped mahogany desk was laden with untidy piles of letters. A broken chair, one leg torn from its seat, was propped in a corner.

  Evelyn Charteris put the basket down on the kitchen table, draping her hat on a chair. ‘No, no. The authorities searched the house. It will take me an age to put it back together. Food, as scarce as it is, is more important than a tidy house. So it’s all something of a mess,’ she said, and cleared an armful of books and piano sheet music from a couch. ‘They burned a lot of my papers and books. The soldiers have their orders, so one can’t blame them, though they attend to their duties with zealousness.’ She paused, pulling a hand through her short auburn hair. ‘Please sit. You must be weary after your journey and I’m talking too much. Forgive me. I’m being ungracious. One forgets how to treat guests.’

  They shuffled awkwardly further into the room and seated themselves on the edge of the small couch. There was barely any other furniture in the room, other than the broken chair which, Radcliffe guessed, would have seated Evelyn Charteris when it was whole.

  ‘I can make tea,’ she offered. And then apologetically, ‘I don’t have coffee – well, we do, chicory, but...’

  The two men shared a glance like two schoolboys in the presence of a benevolent teacher. They both nodded and muttered their acceptance.

  She smiled as if it was a small victory. ‘Good.’ She stepped to the kitchen and half turned. ‘I have only tinned milk, by the way, there’s no fresh milk... or fruit or vegetables come to that... which is why there is so much illness in the camp.’

  ‘Black tea would be fine, thank you, Mrs Charteris,’ said Pierce.

  She gazed at them for a moment longer. ‘It is an absolute miracle you’ve come. And at exactly the right time. The conditions in the camps are deteriorating and we are sorely in need of a champion like yourself, Mr Radcliffe. I want to hear everything that you have planned, when the others are coming, what the government has said. I can’t tell you what an enormous relief it is that you’ve responded to my letter. I knew that would do the trick.’

  Radcliffe fingered his hat, uncertainty gnawing at him. ‘What letter might that be?’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Benjamin Pierce sipped his tea as he sat in the shade of Evelyn Charteris’s stoep. The verandah offered a view of the dusty street and in the distance the start of the barbed wire encampment. Best leave Joseph and the woman alone, he had decided when she learned that no delegation from England followed them. He shook his head and sighed. That woman had a temper. By God she did. She’d fair torn a strip off Joseph. Made it plain as day what she thought. Why in God’s name had he come all this way if it was not in response to her letter begging him to reach out to those people of influence whose liberal thoughts and concerns needed to be expressed with action? If a delegation could not be brought from England to see the conditions in these camps then women and children would die in their thousands.

  Pierce nursed the china cup and touched a finger to the moisture on his moustache. Mrs Charteris had calmed when Radcliffe told her about Edward, and the belief that he might have been wounded. The woman knew nothing of Radcliffe’s son, but a father’s pilgrimage had softened her temper. Pierce drank the cup dry. A warm sense of contentment settled momentarily on him. It was gratitude. Thank God he had never married.

  *

  Sallow-faced children peered across their fingertips beyond the barbed wire. Their dirt-streaked faces and imploring eyes cut into Radcliffe’s heart as he and Evelyn walked past.

  ‘Women and children shouldn’t be treated like this. I’ll do what I can, but I have to find my son first,’ said Radcliffe.

  The children obviously knew Evelyn and muttered words of respectful greeting to her. One of the women was bent over a washboard at the entrance of a bell tent and straightened to look at them as they passed. Radcliffe noticed that despite the dire conditions these women endured they showed no sign of being victims at the hands of their captors. The proud-looking woman faced them and gave an almost imperceptible nod to Evelyn.

  Evelyn Charteris did not slow her pace or alter her stride; she wanted Radcliffe to walk the wire and see what could not be experienced in a letter, no matter how passionately it had been written.

  ‘These people scraped a living from the land but they ate fresh food. They were healthy. Now they’re given only tinned beef. There’s no milk for the babies, no vegetables, no jam, a pound of corn meal and half a pound of meat a day. There was no meat at all to start with. Our Lord Kitchener has the ear of the British government; they like his proposals of using reduced-scale army rations. Not feeding these people properly saves the government money. Their diet is more restricted than that of soldiers in the barrack room; it leaves these people malnourished and allows the rapid spread of disease.’

  ‘But there are civilians running the camps?’ said Radcliffe. ‘Or so I’ve heard. It’s not all military, is it?’

  ‘No, but who controls everything? The military, of course. We have one doctor and a few nurses for all these women and children. They are mostly bywoners. Sharecroppers, dirt-poor tenant farmers,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘Few of them knew any illness because they lived such remote lives but now there’s a dozen or more to a tent, disease goes through the camp like wildfire. This is why I wrote to you.’

  ‘I passed your letters on to the newspapers,’ he answered. ‘There was not much more I could do.’

  ‘It wasn’t enough,’ she said.

  Radcliffe offered no defence. There was little concern in Britain for the fate of farmers’ wives. ‘But I promise you, I will do anything I can to make them aware of what the high command is doing here. I will stop this,’ he said.

  A couple of soldiers guarding the perimeter fence walked by, rifles slung over their shoulders. They looked suspiciously at Radcliffe, but nodded to Evelyn.

  ‘Mrs Charteris,’ said one in greeting. ‘Not planning any trouble today, I hope?’

  ‘Not today, Albert,’ she answered. She was obviously acquainted with the soldier. Once the men were out of earshot she glanced back at them. ‘I’ve seen him give boiled sweets to the children. Even those who serve here don’t necessarily like their duty.’

  ‘Pierce and I have witnessed violence inflicted on women and children before now. Soldiers don’t have the luxury of refusing to do their duty. Thank God these women and children are not flogged... or worse,’ Radcliffe said. Rape was not unknown to armies at war but as far as he could see the British held their men in check. Despite these being harsh times he knew that soldiers guilty of violating their orders were dealt with by the severest punishments. Some soldiers had been hanged for looting, despite it being commonpla
ce and almost considered a soldier’s right – but more violent acts against women were perhaps held in check by the hatred the Boer women felt for the invaders and the fear of severe retribution by the military.

  She glanced at him. She knew that he had been a cavalry officer. Had he been one of those who had ordered such violence in his time? If that was the case then her own judgement of the man was wrong. She quickly dismissed the thought. Joseph Radcliffe’s reputation went before him.

  ‘These women are not abused by their captors. I’m not saying the superintendents of the camps are bad people, they have no evil intent, but their incompetence is magnified by their lack of supplies. Their own soldiers are dying in their hundreds from disease... but women and children are suffering and dying needlessly.’

  He waited patiently as she expressed her frustration and helplessness at the hollow-cheeked torment that stared at her from the other side of the barbed wire.

  ‘There are times when enteric fever goes through them like a bushfire. It’s malignant. If we had fresh milk that would help nourish them, give them strength. We have a few chickens which give us a meagre ration of eggs, for the really sick, and giving that with biscuits and rice helps. But when the fever grips they need ice packs and where would we get those? Sponge baths are the best we can do for the children, but when it turns to pneumonia we need poultices. We manage to get some supplies – not always legally. Codeine, beta-naphthol, zinc sulphocarbonate, tincture of capsicum, ergotine for haemorrhage.’ She hesitated, a frown creasing her forehead. ‘Some of the women use it to bring on abortion. I’m not sure I can blame them.’

  She fell silent. Radcliffe knew that she did not have a child of her own. Perhaps a childless woman saw the purging of a baby from the womb as some kind of irretrievable loss.