Flight of a Maori Goddess

by Lark, Sarah

  “They didn’t let us near the young ones,” Jenny said. “Which was better, anyway. I mean, who wants to go dancing with a girl who has, um—”

  “Washed his rear end.” Daisy laughed and lolled in her berth. “Go on and say it.” She turned to Roberta. “Didn’t you have any men in your classes?”

  Roberta described the three hopeless male students. Only a few days later, she felt close enough to her new friends to tell them of her love for Kevin Drury.

  She expected mockery similar to Atamarie’s and kneaded her stuffed horse nervously, but Jenny and Daisy found her mission romantic.

  “Oh, you could write a book about that,” Daisy sighed. “A girl who goes to war to find her lost love again. And then he’s definitely wounded or the like, and only you can save him, and then—we’ll need to teach you a bit of first aid, just in case.”

  Jenny made a face. “He’s a doctor, Daisy! And if he happens to sprain his wrist while operating, there must be twenty other doctors around. But seriously, Robbie, why do you think you won’t be able to find him? All you need to do is ask army command. There’s a Major Robin responsible for all the New Zealanders. We’ve been sending him tons of protest letters about the camps, so I know his address in Pretoria by heart. When he tells you where your Dr. Drury is stationed, you can write him.”

  Roberta blushed. “I could have written him a long time ago. It’s just, I don’t know if—”

  Daisy rolled her eyes. “You travel halfway around the world, and then you won’t even write to him?”

  Jenny was more sympathetic. “You can pretend it was a coincidence. You followed Miss Hobhouse’s tracks to the cape, and then it occurred to you that he’s—or no, his mother said you needed urgently to contact him. Mothers are always good for that sort of thing. Do you know his mother?”

  Miss Hobhouse’s organization also gathered its forces in Australia—not in the military port of Albany, but in Sydney. Roberta thought she’d have to join the dour-looking teachers, but Jenny and Daisy wouldn’t hear of it, and she went with them to see the natural harbor and the old prison buildings from when Australia had been a penal colony.

  “Botany Bay, Van Diemen’s Land,” Daisy announced gravely. “Girls, back then, this place was crawling with handsome men who back home stole a sheep one day. We could have presented ourselves as jewel thieves and—”

  “This one listens to too many Irish folk songs,” Jenny remarked with a long-suffering flutter of her eyelids. “But, Daisy, if you’re hot for blokes you can shear sheep with, why are you going to South Africa? You come from Canterbury. The plains are full of young men who reek of wool.”

  On the passage from Sydney to Durban, Roberta shared her cabin with the six other teachers and did not have half as much fun. Since they’d be assigned to different camps, none of them wanted to bother making friends. The young women engaged in a politely distant manner—half of them were seasick anyway. Roberta spent as much time as she could on deck with the nurses. There were more than fifty on board, and very few of them were dour. The young women flirted with the sailors and made bets about who could get the officers’ attention first. The bravest even snuck off to dance in the evenings. One sailor played the accordion, another the fiddle, and Daisy improvised a drum. Roberta envied the fun they were having, but did not dare to join them. The other nurses covered for their colleagues, but if the older nurses caught a young one at such “shameless” pleasures, they would no doubt report her. Roberta was under no illusions: the ladies’ committee around Miss Hobhouse clung to virtue just like the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. Roberta and Atamarie knew how their mothers had been forced to hide any drop of champagne while they worked for those disputatious women in Wellington. Matariki in particular had hated that.

  “Wouldn’t it be a shame if we had to part now?” said Daisy on the last night of the voyage. The young women had slipped onto deck with the excuse of wanting to see the lights of approaching Durban. “What do you think? Who do we need to convince to assign us to the same camp?” She slipped a flask to Roberta.

  Roberta took a sip, then coughed at once: watered-down whiskey. “This tastes terrible!” she laughed. “And I can’t imagine they’ll ask us our opinion on assignments.”

  “But you’re going to speak with that Major Robin anyway,” Jenny mused, and took an appreciative pull from the flask. “While you’re at it, you could also bring the conversation around to whether we—”

  Roberta felt herself blush. She would die of embarrassment if an opportunity actually arose to approach the major with her requests. On the other hand, if she did not venture it, she would lose face in front of her friends. She took another sip of the whiskey. After all, they did say the stuff gave a person courage.

  In the end, the business proved laughably simple. The representatives of a local charity committee welcomed the young women, but they did not distribute any posts. When the women were asked if they wanted to be sent to the camp in Orange or in Transvaal, Daisy elbowed Roberta.

  “Transvaal’s where Pretoria is. Jenny and I will choose it, too, so you won’t be alone.”

  Jenny and Daisy did not much care where they worked. Daisy would probably have preferred Transvaal anyway because it lay farther inland. She wanted to see as much of Africa as possible and was already spellbound by the many different skin colors of the people they encountered in Durban. Unfortunately, however, she did not have any real contact with the tall, deep-black Zulu people who fascinated her most.

  “It’s funny. I thought we were fighting here to give them more rights,” she observed, “but the English treat them horribly. Mrs. Mason’s girl did not even dare speak to me.”

  Jenny and Daisy had been lodged with a Mrs. Mason until they left for Pretoria. Roberta and her colleagues were taken in at a girls’ boarding school. They did not see any black students or teachers there either. Native help was employed only in the kitchen.

  “Though there are a lot of Indians,” Roberta replied. “It seems the English get along with them better.”

  “Well, the Indians speak English,” Jenny pointed out. “And at most, the blacks speak—what’s it called? Afrikaans? We should probably try to learn some if we want to work with the Boer women.”

  Since Afrikaans wasn’t recognized as its own language, Roberta bought an English-Dutch dictionary and hoped it would do the trick. She planned to study it on the train ride to Pretoria, but the landscape through which they rode captivated her as much as it did Jenny and Daisy. The train line led straight across the country, and Roberta’s colleagues were a little on edge, since there were still Boer guerillas who might want to blow up the tracks.

  “Surely not in broad daylight,” Daisy scoffed. “Besides, they would have scared away the gnus over there. And the zebras! Look, zebras! They really do look like striped ponies. I thought they’d be bigger. Oh my goodness, a giraffe! A real giraffe!”

  After some time, Daisy’s enthusiasm grew tiring. Even the twentieth giraffe elicited screams of excitement. But then the flatland gave way to the foothills of the Drakensberg. There was always something new to discover, and Roberta’s dictionary couldn’t compete. Once night fell, the girls fell asleep, and the next morning, they woke to find themselves already in Transvaal. They rode past burned-out farms and wasted fields, but most chilling were the endless miles of barbed wire. Every few hundred yards, there was a tightly secured blockhouse.

  The young women fell silent when one of the camps for the black population came into view: Simple round huts, skinny children sitting in dirt, and exhausted women toiling in fields under the scorching sun. Barbed wire surrounded the camp, too, and soldiers who looked almost as unhappy as the prisoners watched the gates.

  “How terrible,” Daisy said after they had left the camp behind and slowly found their voices again. “I expect it’s better in the camps for the whites where we’re going.”

  Jenny shook her head. “Not according to Miss Hobhouse. Haven’t you read the rep
orts?”

  The black children would not leave Roberta’s head. For a short time, she forgot Kevin Drury and the reason she had gotten into this adventure. She was not here to chase a dream. She was here to help.

  “If it’s better in the white camps,” she declared, “then we need to go to the black ones.”

  Pretoria, where the train arrived in the late afternoon, was a lively city, which surely had something to do with the many British Army units stationed there. The English seemed determined and optimistic, the normal residents anxious. They walked the streets with lowered heads.

  “Boer women, I’m sure of it!” hissed Daisy, again unable to hide her fascination. “No one in New Zealand or Australia still dresses like that. Look at those bonnets!”

  They saw few Boer men. They were likely either prisoners or still fighting the occupation. Among the men in the street, military uniforms dominated. Roberta started when one of the Boer women spat at a lieutenant passing by.

  “They don’t like us,” Jenny said, “but can you blame them?”

  They also saw few black Africans. Indian “boys” served the officers in their clubs.

  A young Indian man opened the door to the office of Lord Milner, the gentleman in charge of the concentration camps in Transvaal. Milner received the roughly thirty female nurses and teachers in a meeting room.

  “Welcome, ladies. We’re exceedingly grateful to you and naturally to our, hmm, esteemed Miss Hobhouse for your engagement,” he remarked. The military’s contempt for the peace activist was no secret. “You are needed in the refugee camps for the care of the inmates as well as their schooling. You will discover that many of these women lack any basic knowledge of civilized housekeeping.” Roberta screwed up her face in confusion. That made no sense. Plus, the women in Pretoria looked quite kempt. “They are also uncooperative and unwilling to learn. Difficult tasks lie before you, my valued ladies. If there is anything I can do to ease them, do not hesitate to address the camp command. Now, if there are no further questions—”

  Lord Milner clearly intended to end the audience as quickly as possible. Roberta’s breath caught when Daisy raised her hand.

  “Three of us are friends who would like to work in the same camp, sir,” she declared. “Do you think that could be done?”

  Lord Milner smiled amicably at the buxom, black-haired girl. “Unfortunately, we cannot assign three nurses to one camp. We have too few for that, but—”

  “We’re two nurses and a teacher,” Daisy interrupted him.

  Milner looked stern for a moment, then nodded indulgently. “That should be doable. Sergeant Pinter,” he addressed an adjutant sorting papers behind him, “please select a suitable workplace for these young ladies. And if others have particular requests regarding their assignment, we’ll be happy to address them, as long as it lies within our power. We do want you to feel comfortable here. Which likewise goes for our, hmm, Boer, hmm, charges. If there are occasional grievances in the camps, then they are, hmm, by no means intentional, and besides, well—thank you once again, ladies, for your selfless action. I turn it over to you, Pinter.”

  The lord left the room while his secretary reached for his pen.

  “If you would please step forward, ladies, one after the other.”

  Daisy cheekily placed herself first in line. Jenny and Roberta followed a little self-consciously.

  “So, you’re the troika. Let’s see, two nurses and a teacher. Well, you could go to Barberton or Klerksdorp or Middelburg. Springfontein is in a very lovely area. Oh yes, and Dr. Drury asked for two nurses in Karenstad.”

  “Dr. Kevin Drury?” Roberta stammered.

  Daisy grinned from ear to ear. “Many, many thanks, Sergeant Pinter. We’ll go to Karenstad.”

  Chapter 9

  Johanna van Stout’s death led to unrest at Karenstad. The rumor that the girl had been murdered by the guards spread like wildfire. Bentje van Stout was highly respected, her husband’s unit famous. When she made accusations, the other women took them seriously.

  “What sort of riot is she going to cause when she hears of her husband’s death?” sighed Kevin.

  He had just finished another tour of the camp, assuring the women that the guards had not even had access to the camp the night of Johanna’s death. The women could only laugh at this. Greenway was right. Not every Boer woman shared the strict moral principles of Doortje van Stout. A few saw no sense in letting their children starve, so they’d formed a sort of camp brothel. The guards paid in bread or marmalade, tins of fish or sweets. And the children did not starve, but they were subject to mockery and disdain. Kevin did not want to imagine what would happen once the camp was dissolved and no one was there to stop the women from tarring and feathering the “Tommy whores.” In any case, everyone knew the guards did not respect the ban on entering the camp at night.

  “As a widow, she’ll really be a heroine.”

  Cornelis nodded. “I should tell her. And tell Doortje about Martinus. But then I won’t have a leg to stand on here.”

  So far, the two men had stuck to Cornelis’s story about his unit being ambushed. Supposedly, two men had been shot, Cornelis wounded and taken prisoner when his pony was shot out from under him. The rest had ostensibly escaped, including Adrianus van Stout and Martinus DeGroot.

  “I don’t dare to think about how Doortje would react,” Kevin said sadly.

  Cornelis looked at him sympathetically. “I know you’re in love with her, Doctor, but it’s hopeless. She’s—” Cornelis searched for words.

  “She’s a Boer, but she’s a woman too,” Kevin said. “She could laugh, love, and enjoy things. If she would only let herself.”

  Cornelis shook his head. “She’ll never be who you want,” he insisted. “She can’t be broken in—”

  “Heavens, I don’t want to break her in,” groaned Kevin. “I just want—I want to love her, to be good to her, to spoil her.”

  “For that, you’d need to upend her faith, along with her patriotism. And then, who knows what would be left, Dr. Drury. Or if you’d even still want her.”

  Kevin looked him in the eye. “I will always want her, no matter what,” he insisted. “If only she’d give me a chance.” He looked away when Cornelis did not respond. “Shall we ride upriver tomorrow? I still really need to see the blacks’ camp.”

  Cornelis nodded distantly. “As you wish.”

  Kevin sighed again. Cornelis might have been unusual for a Boer, but he had no appreciably different attitude toward black people than his cousin. Cornelis, too, thought the natives robust but inferior. He would have ignored the black camp like Lindsey had, and moreover, he held it against them that some had cooperated with the British. Sure, he did so himself, but only to help his countrymen. Many black workers betrayed their former white masters, and Cornelis could not see past that, let alone understand it.

  “We were always good to them,” Cornelis insisted the next day as he rode Vincent’s black mare alongside Silver. “Before my people came here, they were primitive savages. They didn’t know the Bible.”

  “Primitive? The Zulu had a powerful empire with a well-organized military. As for the Bible, Cornelis, don’t you realize every land has its own gods? I’m no theologian; I don’t know how it all coheres. But I do know it’s no excuse to enslave other people.”

  “But we didn’t,” Cornelis persisted. “They came of their own free will. There are still Kaffirs with the guerillas.”

  Kevin made a face that spoke volumes. “I’m sure free will has long since been beaten out of them. And what about the Voortrekkers your aunt tells such vivid stories about? The ones who slaughter three thousand Zulu in one day? Only to take their land and generously let them live there as slaves?”

  Kevin was working himself up, but his words soon caught in his throat. The blacks’ camp suggested that the English thought as little of the native population as the Boers did. The refugees were housed in conditions that almost made the whites’ camp seem luxu
rious.

  “What kind of hovels are those?” Kevin asked a soldier. The gate he guarded was pro forma, as the black inmates were not forbidden from leaving. Many men worked outside, and whoever had money could go shop in town at any time. “Were no tents delivered here?”

  “No, sir, the people were supposed to build for themselves. Some have.”

  Alongside a few handsome round huts were rows of provisional shelters constructed from oil drums. Many women and children apparently slept outside on the muddy ground or in tiny tentlike shelters made out of sheets.

  “No wood,” one of the refugees explained in broken English.

  “That is to say, nothing to build with.” Kevin turned sternly to the guard.

  “These people can work, sir. They’re supposed to earn the materials for their houses and then build them.”

  Kevin scowled. “Something needs to change here and quickly. Cornelis, we need a translator. What about the van Stouts’ servants? Nandi and her brother spoke good Afrikaans and a little English too. Maybe they’re here.”

  The guard confirmed there were no records in this chaos, so Kevin set off in search of them, followed by a reluctant and repulsed Cornelis. Here, there were no latrines, the insect infestation was unbearable, and the “hospital” was just an emergency shelter without any sort of doctor. It was overflowing with the sick and starving. Many of the women were no longer able to feed their babies, and Kevin discovered several corpses among the living. Unlike in the other camp, no functionaries here removed them, let alone gave them funeral rites. If family members were well enough, they would bury the body themselves.

  When Kevin was about to give up, he found Nandi. The young woman lay weakly in one of the huts pieced together with oil drums. Two young men seemed to be guarding her, but they let the camp director and his assistant in. They eyed Cornelis suspiciously.

  “Miss Nandi.” Kevin tried to hide his shock at her emaciated face.

  “Mijnheer Doctor, you back? What with baas Bentje? And Doortje? And children?”