Sweethearts and Wives (The Regiment Family Saga Book 2)

by CL Skelton

  ‘What offices are those?’

  ‘Wilson and Bruce, diamond merchants. Obviously, we are not doing any diamond dealing at the moment. I also believe that the building next door could be used for the same purpose.’

  ‘Yes, I know the place,’ said the colonel, and he rubbed his jaw. ‘And you want an immediate answer?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Maud.

  ‘Would you be prepared to attend to Boers as well as our own people?’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Stores? Linen and all the rest? Have you thought about that?’ he asked.

  ‘If you give us permission, we will organize a group of older children to collect whatever people can spare.’

  ‘You seem to have thought of everything. Let me see if I have it right. You want to do this, you don’t want any help, and you don’t need anything from me?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Brenda.

  ‘Well, don’t sit there, ladies. Get on with it.’ He rose to indicate that the interview was at an end.

  ‘Thank you, Colonel,’ said Maud, and they made their way to the door.

  ‘Let me know when you’re ready,’ called the colonel as they reached the door, ‘and thank you, ladies, thank you very much.’

  He sat down again at his desk as his orderly brought in a cup of black coffee. ‘Damned fine pair, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said the uncomprehending orderly.

  And Colonel Kekewich picked up a letter from Cecil Rhodes, grimaced, and got on with his work.

  Things went well. The local hospital gave them the services of a trained nurse, and within two days, after a long and tiring series of house calls, they had managed to accumulate sufficient beds and bedding to deal with up to twelve patients. It was a case of getting a bed here, blankets there, a pillow, some pillowcases, and sheets somewhere else. In a very short space of time they had sufficient to be able to say that they were ready to receive their first patient.

  They were going to start the next morning, the sixteenth, training in simple basic nursing. Nurse Wickstead, a matronly woman in her forties, would be their mentor, and Maud and Brenda and the two ladies whom they had co-opted had scrubbed and polished until the company offices were immaculate.

  All the heavy work had been done by Donald ‒ Donald who, after wrestling with his conscience, had decided that he could not, under any circumstances, join the volunteer force. He was delighted to find that in this work of mercy, he had a way out. He found it quite reasonable that he should help the injured, if injured there were, for casualties had been extremely light, and do something other than face what was to him the appalling alternative of firing on his fellow men.

  It was late in the afternoon of the fifteenth of November. Donald and Brenda went out to collect the last of their supplies. They had arrived at a stage when they were able to live with the shelling. The idea was that you waited for a shell to fall. After that, you knew that you had two hours at least before the next. The Boer had never fired at an interval of less than two hours, and so it was that, immediately after a shell had fallen, the town came to life and people appeared on the streets.

  There were two houses to call on. They lay facing each other on opposite sides of a wide, dusty road leading off the market square. The ladies of those houses, though both had young families, were anxious to help and had offered to do the laundry. They had taken all of their linen to them the previous day and were now on their way to collect it.

  Every horse had been commandeered by the military authorities, and Donald was pushing a handcart made out of rough wood upon which he had mounted a pair of wheels from an old perambulator. He left the cart outside one of the houses and started to cross the road to collect the linen from the other, leaving Brenda with the crude vehicle. He had almost reached the door of the house when he heard the rising scream of a shell.

  ‘Down!’ he screamed at the top of his voice and started to turn to run back to his wife.

  He had barely gone a pace before the shell landed and the air between him and Brenda was filled with thick dust. For a moment he could see and hear nothing, and then he heard Brenda scream.

  He ran through the dust, falling over the shattered remains of his cart, and almost on top of his wife who was lying beside it. A large jagged splinter of wood was protruding from her stomach. She was clutching it with frantic hands and moaning.

  ‘Brenda! Brenda!’ he called, crawling to her.

  There was no recognition in her eyes. They were open and staring, but not seeing. He heaved the piece of wood out of her gut and tore the shirt from his back, stuffing it over the wound in an attempt to staunch the flow of blood. He heard someone running down the street towards him.

  ‘Get a doctor!’ he yelled, not looking up. ‘I’ll get her home.’

  Gently he picked her up and stumbling, half running, half staggering, made his way to their house. He went in through the open door. He took her into the first room, the one which had held the safe and now held four beds. He laid her gently on the nearest of these and shouted for the nurse.

  Nurse Wickstead hurried into the room and went straight to the figure on the bed.

  ‘It’s Brenda,’ said Donald.

  The nurse did not reply. She pulled Donald’s blood-soaked shirt off the wound and started to cut away Brenda’s clothes.

  ‘Get the doctor,’ she called.

  ‘He’s coming,’ said Donald tonelessly, and he slumped on to the next bed, feeling helpless and useless as he watched while the nurse tried to stop the bleeding.

  Maud rushed into the room.

  ‘Donald, what’s happening? Oh, God!’ She saw Brenda and went to her. ‘Can I do anything?’

  ‘Get your son out of here as soon as the doctor arrives,’ Nurse Wickstead said. ‘She’s not conscious. There’s nothing we can do.’ She looked up. ‘I think that is the doctor now.’

  Through the window Maud could see a dogcart pulling up in front of the house.

  ‘Try and get him away,’ said the nurse.

  ‘Come with me, Donald,’ said Maud.

  Donald did not reply. He just sat there staring at Brenda. Maud went over and stood in front of him, cutting off the vision of his wife.

  ‘Donald,’ she said.

  She got him out just as the doctor entered the room. She took him upstairs into the little sitting room. As soon as she got there, Maud called Nambi.

  ‘Nambi,’ she said, ‘I want you to keep the children in the playroom and stay with them there. Their mother has been injured and Mr Bruce is in a state of shock. I don’t want him disturbed.’

  ‘Yes, missie,’ said Nambi. ‘I look after Master Donald, if you like.’

  ‘That will not be necessary. Just do as I say,’ replied Maud, and Nambi went out.

  Several times Maud tried to speak to Donald but there was no response. He just sat in his chair staring straight in front of him.

  About half an hour later she heard the sounds of the doctor leaving.

  ‘Donald,’ she said, ‘I’m going downstairs to try and find out what the doctor has said. Please stay here, I’ll be up as soon as I know.’ He did not even turn his head as she left him.

  In the little ward Brenda now lay between clean sheets. There was a mound in the middle of the bed where some cage-like contraption had been erected to keep the weight of the sheets off her wounded stomach. She was very, very pale, and her eyes were now closed.

  ‘She’s not ‒?’ said Maud, turning to the nurse.

  ‘No, Mrs Bruce, she’s still alive, but there’s very little hope, I fear. Doctor will come back every two or three hours to administer sedatives and something to ease the pain, but he says that there is very little else that he can do. What about Mr Bruce?’

  ‘I don’t think that we should tell him,’ said Maud. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

  A moment after Maud had finished speaking, Donald came back into the room.

  ‘Donald,’ said Maud, ‘what are you
doing here? I asked you to stay upstairs.’

  He ignored them both and went and sat on the bed next to his wife. Very slowly and gently, he touched her forehead with his hand, but he did not speak.

  It was dusk on the seventeenth when Brenda died. In all that time Donald had not moved from her side nor had he spoken to anyone. The doctor had left a bottle of some sort of medicine for him, but he ignored it. He just sat on staring at Brenda, refusing to be moved.

  When the doctor came in and examined Brenda and then stood up shaking his head, and gently laid the sheet over Brenda’s face, Donald neither spoke nor showed any emotion. He just got up from the bed he was sitting on and walked out the door.

  It was beginning to get dark outside and the night sentries were being posted as Donald Bruce walked through Kimberley with two and a half days of stubble on his chin and the dust from the explosion which had killed his wife still clinging to him. He was unarmed apart from a hunting knife which he always carried in a sheath on his belt.

  On he went. He got close to the forward pickets without being challenged. Then, summoning up the instincts of his Highland blood and the skills learned as a boy stalking the deer on the hills around his home, he started to creep through the picket lines.

  Donald knew clearly, in spite of his confused state, exactly what he was going to do. Somewhere ahead of him would be the Boer pickets and they were the people who had killed Brenda and Donald Bruce was going to punish them.

  Slowly he made his way across the flat land, taking advantage of every little hillock and tuft of sun-parched grass which he could use as cover. Ahead of him, in the light of the half moon, not more than ten yards away, he saw a hole in the ground. That was what he was looking for. He made a wide sweep to get behind it and then, silently, crept forward.

  The Boer in the pit was called Pieter. Usually Jan was with him, but Jan had gone home for a few days to see to his farm, so Pieter was alone. Pieter was taking it easy. Night pickets were fairly safe. Nobody ever opened fire, and if they did not bother you, then you did not bother them. Like his comrades, he believed that as long as they could maintain the siege, Kimberley would have to fall eventually, and the less blood that was shed, the better.

  So Pieter lolled in his pit, striking the occasional match to keep his pipe going, his Mauser lying against the side within reach. But he never reached for his rifle. Donald Bruce’s arm wrapped itself around his nose and mouth, and Donald Bruce’s hunting knife sliced a great gash across his throat. Donald felt the bubbling fountain of blood spurting from the wound as he waited until the body went limp and the life passed out of it.

  As soon as Pieter was quite dead, Donald went through his pockets and found forty cartridges in clips of five. He took off the man’s jacket and his slouch hat, picked them up with the Mauser, and headed out on to the open veld.

  Two hours later he assumed that he was clear and found himself a place to rest by a small kopje. He had been there only a minute or two when a voice called his name.

  ‘Master Donald. Master Donald.’

  ‘Who’s there?’ he hissed, reaching for the Mauser.

  ‘Nambi. I follow you.’

  And suddenly in the moonlight, he saw her. She was standing, straight and black and beautiful with her full young breasts naked and silhouetted against the night sky. She was wearing nothing but a skirt, and she was carrying a bundle.

  ‘I bring you blanket and some food, Master Donald. On the veld, it is cold at night.’

  ‘How did you know what I was doing?’ asked Donald.

  ‘You are man,’ she replied. ‘In my tribe, if a man has his woman chopped, then he must chop man that did it. If he does not, he is not man. Was that the man that killed your woman?’

  ‘That was only the first,’ said Donald through tight lips.

  ‘You eat now,’ she said, producing a cold chicken from her bundle.

  He suddenly realized that he was starving and ate ravenously for a while, tearing the carcass apart with his hands. He had the Boer’s canteen with him and he took a little sip of the precious water and then offered her some. She refused.

  ‘No,’ she said, sitting down beside him. ‘After tonight, I go back and look after Master Donald’s children and his mammy.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Donald. ‘You’ll be safe, of course.’

  He said it because the blacks were not part of this white man’s war and they could pass unharmed.

  ‘You can go now if you want to,’ he said. ‘Thank you, Nambi, for bringing this.’

  ‘No, Master Donald,’ she replied. ‘Tonight I stay with you. I keep you warm.’

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, Master Donald. Tonight you make me have child. All the girls in my village will have children now. I know it. I am old and ashamed for not having children. You give me child. I want your child, Master Donald. That will be a fine child.’

  ‘It is not possible, Nambi,’ he said. ‘You had better just leave me.’

  But he felt the warmth of her body close to him and when her breasts lightly brushed his face as she came closer to him on her knees, the passion rose within him and he obeyed her request. His desires, long restrained, were at last fulfilled.

  It was the pleasant time when Donald awoke, that brief period between the chill of the night and the sweltering heat of the day, when the sun had just tipped above the horizon. He stretched out a hand to touch Nambi, but she was not there. He was wrapped in the blanket that she had brought with her. Donald sat up and looked around and could see nothing but the open and seemingly endless veld. She had gone. For a moment he let his thoughts dwell on the night that had passed and wondered if he had succeeded in giving her the child she wanted. He was never to know, for Nambi would leave the white man’s world and go back to her people. Then he thought of his children, and his mother in Kimberley. They would be all right; at least, as all right as they would be anywhere in South Africa.

  Then he recalled grimly the task which he had set himself. He tied up the blanket into a roll, put on the Boer’s slouch hat, checked his Mauser, and started, a predatory animal, stalking across the lonely veld.

  Chapter Five

  ‘The man is mad. Our esteemed General Hart seems to think that you can deal with this situation the way we handled the fuzzy-wuzzies at El Teb.’

  Ian Maclaren was talking to Hugh Grant in his tent. It was about ten o’clock at night on the fourteenth of December. The camp had quietened down and the men were huddling together in their bivouacs against the chill night air. The briefing was over and all was supposed to be ready for the dawn attack. The campfires which had flickered merrily a short time ago were now little glowing spots of red, dying embers. In the near silence and to the left of the Maclarens could be heard the occasional whinny or stamp of a horse coming from the cavalry lines. Under the velvet black of the sky, the stars shining bright and clear, it should have been an atmosphere of utter peace, but it was not. The tension within the thousands who lay there that night was an almost tangible thing which could be felt, real and potent, on the still night air.

  Hugh Grant sat looking at his old friend and comrade.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s simply this,’ said Ian. ‘You know that there is a big loop in the river just in front of us. Well, we are supposed to ford it and attack the Boer on the other side.’

  ‘It’ll be expensive, but it makes sense,’ said Grant.

  ‘But he wants us to march into that loop, it’s practically a bloody island, in column of eight ‒ “shoulder to shoulder,” he said.’

  ‘You’re not serious.’

  ‘I wish to God that I wasn’t.’

  ‘Is it as bad as you say?’

  ‘Frankly,’ replied Ian, ‘I don’t trust the scouts we’ve got. So I sent Frankie Gibson out to recce the lie of the land. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do the job, but I’m damned sure that we shouldn’t do it Hart’s way. We need to be in open order and grabbing eve
ry bit of cover that we can find until we’re across. Dammit, Hugh, there might be a thousand Boers on the other side and we can’t do a blasted thing about them until that river is behind us. Can you imagine what a thousand Mausers will do to what is in effect an old-fashioned square? It’ll be a bloody massacre.’

  ‘What did Frankie say?’

  ‘Apparently there’s a path. It goes right down to the river, and must lead to a ford. We ought to be crossing there at night. The rest of the river is running pretty quickly and Frankie says that he thinks that it’s quite deep.’

  ‘You mean that the only place that we can get across is at the ford?’

  ‘Exactly. We’ll be sitting ducks.’

  ‘Who goes in first?’ asked Hugh.

  ‘The Dubliners.’

  ‘Poor bastards. But thank God it’s not us.’

  ‘I tell you, Hugh, I’m damned if I’m going to let my men go in pressed tight against each other and offer the Boer the fastest and easiest target that he could possibly dream of. We’d be cut to pieces before we’re anywhere near the riverbank.’

  ‘You’re going to disobey orders?’

  ‘Stretch them, Hugh, stretch them,’ said Ian with a little smile. ‘Well, I suppose that we ought to get some sleep.’

  ‘What time’s reveille?’

  ‘Five thirty. I’ll have a think about it and talk to the officers just before we move out. You are married, aren’t you, Hugh?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Anyhow, why do you ask? You know that I’m married.’

  ‘Do me a favour. If anything happens to me tomorrow, go and see Victoria. I feel a bit guilty about her.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have reason. And if I should be wounded, ask them not to ship me to Pietermaritzburg.’

  ‘Why ever not? It’s the best hospital in the area.’

  ‘It’s part of the reason. Will you do it for me and not ask any questions?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ said Hugh. ‘But I don’t suppose anything I say will have much effect.’

  ‘Thanks. Well, good night, old boy, see you at dawn.’ Hugh Grant got up and left Ian’s bivouac. Just as he came out of the tent, an orderly hurried up to him.