Shadows & Lies

by Marjorie Eccles

  The only other occupants of the compartment, besides myself and Mrs Winstanley, were two children and their mother, a large Dutch lady who regarded me and my attempts to make friends with her children with undisguised hostility. In the end Mrs Winstanley advised me in a low voice to have nothing more to do with her. “She’s the wife of a Boer, she’ll speak nothing but Afrikaans. Take no notice of her,” my friend advised. “Their old Kruger states quite openly that Kaffirs are mere creatures, with no more soul than a monkey, and I dare say she thinks the same of us.”

  After that we and the family travelled without further communication. The Boers, thankfully, disembarked at Kimberley, where Mrs Winstanley was also to leave me.

  A long stop was scheduled there to allow many of the passengers to leave the train and for the rest of us, those who were to continue, to seek refreshment – bodily refreshment that is. There was certainly nothing there for the soul, as far as I could see. Nothing but the depressing sight of yellow mine-dumps, mile after mile of huge mounds of residue from the diamond-quarrying or open-pit excavations which had made millionaires of men like Rhodes. Spoiled earth that was the real cost of extracting diamonds from what was being called the biggest hole in the world.

  Gritty dust hung like a miasma in the air when we alighted from the train. It was hot. I went to stretch my legs and to look for a drink, while Mrs Winstanley left her luggage with me and went in search of her husband, who had a motorcar waiting for her. Making my way through the crowds, I found a shack that called itself a refreshment room.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, but I shouldn’t risk eating any of that if I were you.”

  I turned to see a uniformed officer indicating the assortment of unappetising food laid out on the counter. “I assure you I’ve no intention of doing so,” I told him, averting my eyes from the obscene cloud of flies buzzing around it.

  “Very wise. The tea should be all right, though. May I order you some?”

  I hesitated, looking around the shanty – it was nothing more – that served as a refreshment room. I was very thirsty, but the idea of sitting at one of those filthy tables was abhorrent, the thought of drinking tea out of cups which looked as though they hadn’t been washed since the last person had used them even more so. Well, there was water to be had on the train, though it was always tepid.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he remarked, following my glance at the array of cups. “I say, why don’t we get back on to the train? If there happens to be a spare seat in your compartment, I’d appreciate the honour of sharing my breakfast with you. My mother always sees that I’m supplied with enough for twenty. I’ve some bottles of tea, too. Cold, but very refreshing.”

  His mother?

  I’d already had what passed for breakfast on the train, and I was none too sure about being in the company for the next five hundred miles of a strange young man, no matter how charming he might appear. He had thick fair hair bleached even fairer by the sun, and blue eyes in a tanned face, a clipped moustache and pleasing manners, altogether a very attractive combination, but that could be very deceptive. He might turn out to be the world’s most tedious bore.

  “I’m afraid my seat’s in a Ladies Only compartment.”

  “My own compartment’s confoundedly full, or I’d ask you to join me there.” He looked disappointed.

  “We-ell …” Ladies Only compartments were designated as such in order to protect the said ladies from cigarette or pipe smoke, or from gentlemen who might become too familiar. But the train was equipped with side corridors and after all, it would be simple enough to leave the door open while we chatted. He smiled as if he’d known what I was thinking, and said he was well known to all the railway people on this line, and that no difficulty would arise, and in the event none did. We’d barely introduced ourselves on the platform – he was Captain Hugh Osborne, of the Bechuanaland Rifles, an armed force which policed the borders and endeavoured to keep the peace, and he was travelling from here to re-join his unit which was garrisoned in Mafeking – when Mrs Winstanley came sailing towards us.

  She seemed delighted to see me talking to the young officer I’d just met and they shook hands warmly. “You know Captain Osborne?” I asked, somewhat taken aback.

  “Hugh? Why, I’ve known him from the cradle. Have I not, Hugh?”

  Before the train left again, under the guise of saying a final few private words of goodbye, she took the opportunity of telling me how pleased she was that Hugh Osborne and I had met. What a fine young man he was, from one of the best families in Kimberley. (Thus was his mother and his breakfast explained.) Though it was a pity, she added, he’d been so foolish as to join the army and not the family business – diamonds, of course – one of the richest in Kimberley, now part of Cecil Rhodes’ big de Beers company.

  Little as I’d known her, I had a sense of leaving part of the past behind me as I waved farewell to my companion of the last few weeks, but I soon settled down. When Captain Osborne and I had shared the bottled tea (he was quite right, it was deliciously refreshing) he didn’t impose his company on me further, although he came back along the corridor several times during the rest of the journey to make sure I wasn’t bored, or suffering any undue discomfort, a concern which I found both amusing and endearing. The further we journeyed from civilisation, the less I wanted to dwell on what lay before me. With Mrs Winstanley’s warnings ringing in my ears, at every turn of the wheels I was beginning to wonder if this enterprise might turn out to be not the adventure I had hoped for, but a folly – yet what was the point of an adventure if it wasn’t spiced with a little apprehension?

  It soon became apparent, however, that such thoughts were not possible in the company of Hugh Osborne. One would have been a chilly mortal indeed not to have been warmed by his obviously good intentions. He was amiable and willing to talk, and by the time we’d covered not many more miles, we were very well informed about each other.

  When he learned that the purpose of my journey to Mafeking was to visit Lyddie and her husband, he looked decidedly pleased. Yes, of course he knew Lyall Armitage, who had worked as a Scout for his unit many times …not much he didn’t know about the territory north of the Limpopo. Best of fellows. And Mrs Lyall is safe in Mafeking? Good. Not the best spot for women over the border at the moment. Still fighting all over the place and no organised opposition as yet in position. However, it seemed General Carrington’s chief staff officer was expected any day from England to lead a campaign against the rebels. That was the purpose of the troops on this train, who were being sent on ahead of his arrival.

  I sat opposite him and watched the sunlight through the train window on his smooth hair, bleached fair as the grasses of the veld outside, and decided I liked very much what I saw of this tall, well-brushed young officer. Despite what I’d said to Mrs Winstanley, my experience of military men had been extremely limited, based on one particular soldier, a friend of George Crowther’s whom I’d particularly detested. Captain Osborne could scarcely have been more different. Born in South Africa, he’d been sent away to school in England, where he seemed to have acquired all the upright attributes necessary for his chosen career: the determination to live an honourable and courageous life — prepared, if need be, to face death in the service of his country. He much admired Cecil Rhodes’ declared intention to extend the British Empire in Africa. I didn’t feel disposed to argue with him over this; he would, I felt, always be utterly loyal, once he had given his heart and mind to anything, to any cause. I didn’t see then, or even later, how deeply conventional, even rigid, this streak in him was.

  Naturally, I didn’t form all these opinions during our journey, but over the course of the next few months, by which time we were quite at ease with each other, although, right from the first, it was evident to me at least that we were destined to become friends.

  His father had come out to South Africa as a British mining engineer before succumbing to diamond-fever, buying up as many claims as he could and becoming ric
h in the process. He had died fairly recently, and left his mining interests to his children. The others were anxious to continue working in the business, but Hugh had no such ambitions. “Oh Lord, no. Not with two brothers already in it — and a sister. Very managing sort, Amelia. I don’t somehow see myself as an office boy.” The reason, in fact, that he’d obtained leave to go down to Kimberley had been to sign overall control of the management of the business to his siblings. He’d always been the restless sort, he added with his self-deprecating smile, cursed with a streak of adventure hitherto undetected in a family more inclined to the tendency of making money.

  I guessed this was a tongue-in-cheek way of saying that it wasn’ t in his nature to be idle, that he craved action. He had joined a fighting force because he believed in British justice, even if – or perhaps especially – upholding it meant a good scrap now and then. “The fighting over the border has actually been very sharp lately. The Kaffirs’ god – witch-doctor, high-priest, whatever you like to call him – has been stirring them up and they’ve decided they don’t care for being ruled by foreigners after all.”

  “Fancy.” I was taken back to the discussions in the schoolroom at home, when Rouncey had often pointed out that simply marching in and raising the flag of sovereignty did not obligate the natives to accept it, “Didn’t we just move in and declare their land henceforth belonged to Britain?”

  “Not at all! There were agreements, after all.” I seemed to have unwittingly touched a nerve. “Trouble is, don’t you see, the natives can’t quite see it like that. They’ve been accustomed all their lives to raiding and killing and stealing their neighbour’s land and cattle, and having theirs stolen. They think they can go to war with us and get their land back just as if we were another tribe who’d wrested it from them.”

  “How very unsporting of them!”

  To give him his due, he laughed. “Miss Jackson, it’s hardly a question of that. British policy, you know, is always to preserve the tribal system – and what the Kaffirs don’t realise is what being under our influence can do for them. If you saw the conditions in which they live, you’d see how much they need the benefits civilisation can bring.”

  My father had once brought home as a guest a missionary who had worked in Africa. He, too, had spoken of improving the lot of the heathen by the civilising influence of the British, especially in the matter of making them Christians. My father had been doubtful about this justification for imposing on the ‘heathen’ a religion they perhaps did not want or need. I supposed that the truth, as it usually does, lay somewhere between the two.

  “I’m afraid there’s going to be more bloodshed before it’s over. But at the moment, it looks as though we have the rebels nicely pincered between the columns we already have up there. Rhodes thinks the neck of the rebellion is broken.”

  “And what do you think, Captain Osborne?”

  “Oh, I’m just a soldier, doing what I’m told.” He smiled. “But you, Miss Jackson, I see you have a certain propensity for argument.”

  “Debate.” I smiled back, but thought perhaps it was time the conversation was steered in another direction. “Tell me about these black people. They sound very fierce.”

  “The Matabele? I should say so! They’re originally Zulus, you know, quite formidable warriors.” He laughed. “Which they’ve every need to be. If they return home after a failed attack, their womenfolk have an unfortunate tradition of breaking their necks.”

  “My goodness. Aren’t you afraid of them?”

  “Pretty damn scared, actually, begging your pardon. Anyone who said he wasn’t would be a fool or a liar. It’s a sight to put the fear of God in anyone, to see one of those coming at you, I can tell you. Barefoot, wearing nothing but a leopard skin and feathers and a big shield, armed to the teeth with spears and all that.” He broke off suddenly. “I say, I’m frightening you, and that’s unforgivable —”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what a family of boys I’ve grown up with.”

  “You, Miss Jackson? Do tell me about it.”

  And so, in my turn, I sketched the details of my own life, and though dull indeed in comparison with his, we went on from there. Whatever else, at that time we were never, Hugh Osborne and I, short of things to say to each other.

  On the last morning of the train journey, Mafeking appeared suddenly out of the blue. At first sight, it seemed that Mrs Winstanley’s gloomy predictions might prove to be correct. This couldn’t possibly be my destination, could it? This insignificant huddle on a baking plain in the middle of nowhere? A little, tin-roofed town set saucer-like in the midst of the great undulating veld, its rusty-red roofs and low, mud-brick buildings predominantly echoing the colours of the earth: the reddish sandy soil, the boulders, the dust, and the bare ochre rocks? But yes, there was the sign, boldly painted on a board on the platform: MAFEKING.

  Surrounding the station were corrugated iron railway sheds and workshops, freight wagons and a great locomotive in the sidings, piles of track and sleepers stacked in preparation for when the next leg of the line was laid. Not a very prepossessing sight.

  I felt dirty and gritty-eyed but, tired as I was, I stepped off the train with a smile in my heart, overjoyed at the prospect of reunion with Lyddie, and was quite disconcerted to find no one there to greet me. I stood amid the sea of khaki uniforms as the troopers poured out of the train and on to the platform, feeling very forlorn, craning my neck and hoping but failing to see Lyddie, with her cheerful smile and her arms wide, ready to throw around me. Perhaps it had been too much to expect her to stand about waiting for trains when she was expecting a child in less than four months.

  I tried to collect my wits and began to thread my way through the milling crowd of men, ducking only just in time to avoid being hit in the face by a kitbag which a large trooper was shouldering. Unaware of what he’d done, it was only when he heard my involuntary exclamation that he spun round. “Oh heck, sorry, miss! Didn’t see you standing there, like. You all right, love?”

  The soldier, a big strapping lad of no more than eighteen or nineteen, was looking down at me with concern. I heard the broad accents of the West Riding, of home. The men on the train were the mounted infantry of the West Riding, York and Lancaster Regiments, and I felt suddenly overcome with a feeling of homesickness, something I hadn’t experienced since leaving Bridge End. It must have been because I was very travel-weary that the familiar tones nearly brought tears to my eyes.

  “Yes, I thought someone would be here to meet me …”

  “Long way from home, aren’t you, then?” He smiled, pushing his hat to the back of his head and mopping his brow. My own accent was obviously as recognisable as his.

  “This is going to be my home for some time.” I blinked and hoped my dismay at the prospect wasn’t too apparent.

  “Oh? Well, mine an’ all, till they send us up-country, but I’ve seen worse places.” A whistle indicated that the commanding officer was endeavouring to bring some semblance of military order to the milling troops before marching them off to their quarters. “Best of luck, lass!” A cheerful grin and a smart salute, and he was gone.

  And all at once, there was Lyall, a little unfamiliar in his khaki bush jacket and a wide, slouch-brimmed hat. Browner than ever, his teeth very white under his bushy moustache. I noticed immediately that he looked tired, with a crease of worry between his brows, and older, but the warmth of his welcome almost made up for Lyddie’s absence. He apologised for not being there to help me from the train – he’d come on his bicycle and hadn’t been able to find anywhere to leave it, since army transport, waiting to unload supplies from the train, had blocked the station entrance. “Come, we must get you settled in, Hannah dear. Lyddie’s simply longing to see you.”

  Hardly had he spoken but we were hailed by Captain Osborne, threading his way along the platform between the marshalled troops. The two men smiled and shook hands, and on learning from me how kindly I’d been taken care of, Lyall thanked
the captain warmly.

  “Always a pleasure to assist a charming lady.”

  We spoke a little more before Hugh Osborne took his farewell and departed to report back to his headquarters. “May I come and visit you some time, Miss Jackson?”

  “Of course. That is —?” I gave Lyall an enquiring glance.

  “Our home is yours now, Hannah. You’d be very welcome, Osborne.”

  Lyall watched him go with a smile. “I see you’ve already made a conquest. Capital fellow!” He hesitated. “Shall we walk? The house isn’t far – not above a couple of hundred yards, and it’ll give you an opportunity to see something of the town, and to stretch your legs.”

  “Lyall, how is Lyddie?”

  He didn’t answer immediately, looking around for a native boy who could take my luggage and his bicycle to the house, nor did he afterwards, when he had found one. I felt the first small stab of unease.

  The morning was still cool and fresh, the air sharp and clear, and the small town was busy and purposeful, conducting its business before the sun reached its zenith. As we left the station and walked through the market square, we passed white women carrying homely shopping baskets, and black women gracefully walking with bundles balanced on their heads. Native children, mother-naked except for a small leather apron, ran about or played in the dust. A pack of thin and unnervingly silent yellow dogs followed us at a distance. There were bicycles everywhere. I breathed in wood smoke and metallic dust and the sweet, heavy perfume from some unidentified plant in a garden we passed, a combination that was to become so familiar to me: the smell of Africa. And everywhere, overpoweringly at times, was the sharp reek of horse.