Fire Across the Veldt

by John Wilcox

  Jenkins tugged at his moustache. ‘As a matter o’ fact, bach sir, ’e was a bit big for me, too. I’m gettin’ a bit old for this game, I reckon.’ Then he looked across shyly. ‘Glad I was able to ’elp, though. Thank God I can still be a bit useful to you, instead of drinkin’ meself silly during the night, like.’

  Simon nodded in mock severity. ‘So am I. So am I.’

  Reaching the lip of the hollow he called the troopers down from where they still trained their rifles on the kraal and farmhouse below. He nodded to the subaltern in command. ‘Good firing, Marlowe. Send an NCO down there with a couple of men to help Carter with the wounded and the prisoners. Then mount up with the rest and follow me to find Captain Cartwright. He may have bitten off more than he can chew.’

  Indeed, the firing that could be heard from the clump of willows seemed now to be more intense and Fonthill dug his heels into his pony’s side and urged him around in a wide sweep to seek Cartwright. He found him with his troopers spread around three sides of the willow clump, the men spreadeagled behind the little cover they could find, and firing sporadically at the Boers seemingly well entrenched in the coppice.

  ‘We’ve prevented ’em riding through us,’ reported Cartwright. ‘And they’re in there with their horses. But I haven’t enough men to charge ’em nor enough to encircle them completely. I am worried that they will burst out through there,’ he gestured, ‘where I can’t quite complete the circle.’

  ‘Any casualties yet?’

  ‘’Fraid so, sir. Two dead and three wounded. The Boers are shooting damned well.’

  ‘Damn! Well, we may have to try a bit of bluff. Have you got a white handkerchief?’

  ‘What? Oh, well. It’s a bit grubby. Will this do?’

  ‘That’s fine. Now, give me a rifle.’

  Fonthill tied the handkerchief to the end of the rifle and gestured to Marlowe who had now ridden up with his men. ‘Spread out along to the left here with your men.’ He indicated where the gap in the encirclement was evident. ‘Then, when I give the order, I want all of the men to blast off with about three minutes of rapid fire. I want bullets to crash through that copse there. It doesn’t matter particularly whether you hit anybody or not. It’s the effect that matters. Right. Go and give the order and then report back to me.’

  Puzzled, the two officers nodded and slipped away. They returned minutes later, their mission completed.

  ‘Right.’ Fonthill raised his voice. ‘RAPID FIRE!’ he screamed. Suddenly it seemed as though the clump of willows had been hit by a hailstorm. As the rifles crashed out, pieces of bark were plucked from the trees and fronds of spidery willow leaves floated down. It seemed as though all hell had been let loose on that coppice for a thunderous three minutes or so.

  Then: ‘CEASE FIRING!’ roared Simon. Slowly, he rose to his feet, waving the rifle with its flag. Then he began walking towards the willows.

  ‘Gawd,’ whispered Jenkins. ‘The fall from the ’orse ’as affected ’is thinkin’.’

  Fonthill halted about one hundred yards from the edge of the trees.

  ‘I’ve come to parley,’ he shouted. ‘Who is in charge here?’

  Slowly, the bushes parted and a tall, thin burgher stepped forward. His beard was black as night and cordite marks could be seen on his right cheek. He carried a British Lee Enfield and he was wearing what appeared to be a British army tunic. ‘What do you want, Khaki?’ he called.

  ‘I am Colonel Simon Fonthill, commanding Fonthill’s Horse,’ shouted Simon. ‘I have five hundred men with me and you are now completely surrounded, as that last burst of firing demonstrated. We have captured the farmhouse down below and the horses and the men in the kraal. If you don’t believe me, send one of your men to look down into the hollow. You are completely outnumbered and, if you wish to stay and fight it out, then I am happy to accommodate you, but it would be a worthless waste of life. If you do not surrender, then I shall call up artillery from our main column, which is only two miles away, and we shall have no alternative but to blast you to eternity. I am sorry, but you have fought well and it is pointless to continue. What do you say?’

  The tall man stood in silence for a moment. ‘Wait,’ he called and turned back and disappeared into the trees. Simon remained standing out in the open. He hoped that the Boer had sent someone to confirm that the farmhouse had been captured. If they still resisted it would be hard work to overcome them. Genuinely a stupid waste of life.

  It was five minutes before the burgher reappeared. ‘We will surrender, English,’ he said, ‘on one condition.’

  Fonthill’s heart sank. ‘What is that?’

  ‘We hear that you have started to shoot Boers that you find wearing British army uniforms. We have little clothing of our own left and have had to wear your miserable tunics. Will you give me your word that we won’t be shot for this, eh man?’

  Fonthill nodded. ‘Of course. We don’t shoot defenceless men. Come out with your rifles held above your heads. Give me three minutes to tell my men.’ He turned and walked back to the squadron.

  ‘They’re coming out,’ he told Cartwright. ‘Tell the men, no shooting.’

  ‘Will do, sir. Bloody well done.’

  Three minutes later, some thirty bedraggled Boers came reluctantly across the open ground, leading their horses and with their rifles held in the air. Fonthill, Cartwright and Jenkins walked to meet them. ‘Do you have wounded?’ asked Simon.

  ‘Ja.’ The Boers eyes were tired. ‘We have thirteen men in there who can’t walk. More dead. Do you have food we can have? We were about to go down to the farm to find food.’

  ‘Of course. Cartwright, see what you can do. Sarn’t Major.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Get back to the farmhouse. Send a rider to Major Hammond to say that we shall be bringing in prisoners. Oh, and see who is in the house. If there are women and children in there they will have been terrified by all the shooting. Then begin the business of bringing out the furniture etcetera. We shall have to burn the blasted place, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Fonthill’s head was now spinning and his shoulder hurting like hell, although a quick inspection showed that the wound had not reopened. Leaving Cartwright to look after the Boers from the coppice, he slowly allowed his horse to wander down the slope back to the farmhouse, a scene of great activity, with the Boer horses being taken by handlers, the rifles gathered from the ground in the kraal and the prisoners being ushered away. Simon studied the little house as he rode. It was certainly a cut above the usual Boer dwelling, with its freshly painted shutters and the neat curtains hanging inside the windows, and he sighed at the prospect of burning it. But there was no question of riding away and leaving it. It had harboured Boer fighters and his orders were clear on this point. It could not be left standing.

  Simon painfully swung down from the saddle and met Jenkins coming out of the farmhouse door. A strange-looking Jenkins, though, whose eyes were fiercely alive and his face agitated.

  ‘I think you’d better come inside, bach sir,’ he said. ‘There’s someone you should meet.’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Come inside. You’ll see.’

  Frowning, Fonthill removed his hat and strode into the interior of the house. It was dark after the sunshine outside, but Simon could see that the room was well furnished, with dark mahogany chairs and a large table gleaming dimly and chintz fabrics lending a cosy look.

  Crouching on a settee at the back of the room was a woman with her arms round two young girls, perhaps ten and twelve. The woman was attempting to comfort the girls who were sobbing and, as his eyes became accustomed to the light, Simon could see that she was strikingly beautiful. She was of mixed race for her skin was coffee-coloured and her hair, though streaked with grey, a glistening black. But her face was not Negroid: her nose was small and straight and not flared at the nostrils, her cheekbones were high and her lips not bulbous in the manner of Kaffir women, but sensuous
ly curved. Under dark, curved eyebrows her eyes were black. It was clear that the shooting, particularly as the Boers had rushed outside, firing as they went, had terrified all three, but now the girls’ sobbing had been reduced to snivelling as their mother comforted them. She looked up as Fonthill stood, gazing at them. Then she stood, urging her girls to do the same, and revealed a small, lissom figure with a full bosom.

  ‘Hello, Simon,’ she said, extending her hand.

  Fonthill lowered his head and peered at her, still frowning. Instinctively he took her hand, then his face lit up. ‘Nandi! Nandi, for goodness’ sake!’ And he pulled her to him and embraced her.

  Jenkins, his face beaming, stepped forward and indicated the girls, almost proprietarily. ‘An’ these are ’er daughters,’ he said. ‘Er … Simone and … er … Cyrilla, I think it is.’

  The two girls were of lighter complexion than their mother but shared her dark eyes. Wonder had replaced fear in their faces now as they stood and gave Simon a brief curtsey each.

  Solemnly, he reached out his hand and shook each of theirs. ‘I am very pleased – yes, very pleased indeed to meet you.’ Then he turned back to Nandi. ‘But, it must be nineteen, twenty years, since last we met. What are you doing here? Is this your house?’

  ‘Yes. I am sorry that you had to arrive here like this and cause all this killing and shooting.’ Her hand trembled as she raised it to replace a stray strand of hair and she gave a rueful smile. Simon remembered well how white and small her teeth were, but there was a tear in the corner of her eye now. ‘I would like to offer you food and drink, but those men took all I had. And there was precious little to start with.’ The tear welled and then slid down her cheek. ‘I wondered if I would ever see you and Mr Jenkins again. Now I have but I am sad that it is …’ she waved a plaintive hand ‘… like this. I am sorry.’

  ‘Oh, Nandi.’ Simon put his arm around her shoulder. ‘We don’t need anything. Come on. Let’s sit down. We must talk. Pull up a chair, 352.’ They all sat. ‘Now, I had not realised you had married. Where is your husband?’

  Nandi put the corner of a white lace handkerchief to her eye. ‘I married a Boer farmer. This is our home and, of course, these are our children.’ She smiled through the tears. ‘They are good girls.’

  Simon did not like to ask, but Jenkins leant forward. ‘An’ where is ’e now, then, love?’

  ‘He was killed at Ladysmith – what is it … well over a year ago now. We have been struggling to manage and I heard that the British were burning all the farms and I have been dreading your troops arriving, but these Boer commando men came instead. And now you have come…’ She burst into tears. ‘It is all too much for me.’

  Simon took her hand and his mind fled back twenty-three years, when he had first met this young, beautiful half-caste Zulu girl, the daughter of an Irishman named John Dunn and his second wife, herself the daughter of a Zulu induna, or chief, in the heart of Zululand, just before the outbreak of the Anglo-Zulu war. In attempting to gather intelligence for the British army about the warlike intentions of the Zulu king, Fonthill and Jenkins had been captured and imprisoned by King Cetshwayo. It was Nandi who had contrived their escape and, later, her evidence at a court martial after the battles of Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift that had led to his acquittal on a contrived charge of cowardice. Then, two years later, their paths had crossed again when he and Jenkins had answered her appeal for help when she had been abducted and held prisoner by Portuguese diamond smugglers in Kimberley. A couple of letters had been exchanged in the long years in between but the peripatetic lifestyles of Simon, Alice and Jenkins had ended any regular correspondence. For Simon, Nandi had become just a pleasant and rather erotic memory – for, although they had never been lovers, the half-caste girl had aroused the most tender emotions in him all those years ago.

  Now, as he sat listening to her story in her comfortable little house and looking at her children, he remembered that it was his duty to burn down that house …

  ‘And how is Alice?’ asked Nandi, desperately trying to remember the niceties and struggling to sound as though they were taking tea in a country garden in Norfolk. ‘I was so pleased that you had married her in the end.’

  Simon cleared his throat and attempted to go along with the formalities. ‘Thank you, Nandi. She is well and, indeed, she is here in South Africa, still writing for the Morning Post in London. She is now, I think, in Pretoria. You must meet her.’

  ‘Oh yes, please. Perhaps she can come here and meet my children. That would be nice. But you never married, Mr Jenkins?’

  ‘No, miss … er … missus. Call me 352. You always used to.’

  As the niceties were exchanged, Simon’s mind raced. How on earth could they throw out this beautiful woman, who years ago had done so much for him and Jenkins, and have her stand by as they set fire to her house? And she, still presumably grieving for her husband! He thought hard. There was no way round it. The prisoners were evidence of the fighting here and he would have to submit a report on it all, of course. If he refused to burn the house, there would be trouble and he would probably have to resign his commission. And after all that, the general would just send another patrol to torch it.

  He cleared his throat again. ‘Nandi, I hate to have to say this to you but I am afraid I must burn your house.’

  ‘Oh, blimey!’ said Jenkins.

  Nandi put a stricken hand to her face. ‘Oh no! Simon, not you. Not you, burning my house. Oh, how could you do that?’

  The two girls were now regarding him with equal horror, their eyes wide.

  Jenkins opened his mouth to speak but Fonthill held up his hand. ‘There is no way round it, my dear, I’m afraid. Any house which has harboured Boer fighters must be burnt …’

  ‘But I didn’t invite them. They just rode in.’

  ‘Yes, but those are my orders. If I do not obey them, then another British troop will just come and do the job. But listen. All is not lost. Do you have a good wagon with mules or oxen?’

  ‘Yes. In the barn at the back. No oxen now, but I have two mules.’

  ‘Good. Now, I want you to pack everything you can take with you and mark all the furniture that can go on the wagon. When you have done this, my men will load the wagon.’

  ‘But where shall I go? We have no money, I have no husband and nowhere to stay. The Boers took all our cattle ten months ago and they gave me an IOU for them, but I think it is worthless.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I … we – that is, Jenkins and I – intend to look after you.’

  Jenkins nodded eagerly. ‘Quite right, bach sir. Quite right. I ’ave some money saved up. I can—’

  Simon shook his head. ‘Thank you, 352, that won’t be necessary. The one thing I don’t lack is money. But you, my old friend, can help Nandi in a different way. You are hereby granted three weeks’ leave. When the wagon is loaded, I want you to sort out three of the captured Boer ponies for the three ladies here.’ He turned. ‘Can the girls ride, Nandi?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘Good. Then, 352, get one of the troopers to drive the wagon and you accompany the party to Pretoria to look after them. Go straight to Alice at her hotel at this address.’ He scribbled on a piece of paper from his notebook. ‘I hope to God she is still there but I think she is. Book Nandi and the girls into the hotel and tell Alice that the cost will go on my private account. Then – are you remembering all this?’

  ‘O’course.’

  ‘Good. Then put the furniture in store and then you go house-hunting with Nandi. Because of the war, there should be plenty of properties going quite cheaply. Find a good house, and install them in it. Ask Alice to draw money on our joint account and pay for it.’ He scribbled another note and gave it to Jenkins.

  ‘Give this to Alice and explain the background. She will understand and want to help. She always loved Nandi. This note is asking her to set up an account at a bank in Pretoria on which Nandi can draw.’

  Nandi had listened to all of
this with an open mouth. ‘No, Simon,’ she said, her voice betraying bitterness. ‘I do not understand why you must burn my home but I cannot accept all this from you.’

  Fonthill shook his head. ‘Nandi, no one hates the thought of destroying your house more than I, but I fear it must be done. Look, this war is not going to go on foever – in fact, I heard a rumour recently that Lord Kitchener and General Botha are getting together to talk of an armistice, although I will believe it only when it happens. I promise you that I will look after you and the girls until this stupid war is over. Then I will make sure that you come back here – I presume this is your land …?’

  ‘Yes. We have about two hundred hectares.’

  ‘Good. I promise that you will come back here and we will rebuild your house so that you can farm again. My dear, it is the least I can do. And don’t worry about the girls. We will see that they go to a good school.’

  Gradually, Nandi lowered her head and simply let the tears flow. Immediately Jenkins sprang up to sit beside her and take her hand, as Simon retained the other. And the three sat together for a while, the two children looking on with ashen faces. Then, eventually, Nandi straightened her back, extracted her hands and blew her nose.

  ‘Thank you both very much. I am really most grateful. You must excuse the tears because, you see, this is our home and we were all happy here.’ She sniffed hard. ‘But if we have to go, then we have to go. Come along, girls. Pack your toys and then help me mark the things we have to take.’

  The oldest girl looked anxious. ‘Can we take Freddy?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Nandi turned to Simon. ‘He’s our dog. We locked him in the outhouse when the commandos came.’

  ‘Oh, you must ’ave a dog,’ said Jenkins, his great moustache bending round in a grin. ‘I always ’ad a dog, look you, back ’ome on the farm in Wales. You can’t get by without a dog, now can you?’