Footprints of Lion

by Beverley Harper

  ‘Welcome news, ’Lorna grumbled in the privacy of their bedroom, secure in the knowledge that with Will using the adjoining guest suite Gerda and Torben were out of earshot. ‘Sounds as if the damned woman is pregnant. What on earth made you invite the fashion parade?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘On your head be it. Whatever she wears, you’ll have to enthuse.’

  ‘I can do that. Watch me.’

  It wasn’t easy, pink not being one of Dallas’s favourite colours, and the explosion of green stars at the front and back of the skirt certainly didn’t help. Dallas tried his best. ‘Where did you find such a gown?’ The back of the dress trailed on the floor and he winced inwardly, knowing that Suza had just performed a vigorous flea-scratching routine on the very spot where the train was resting.

  Gerda draped herself on one end of the sofa. ‘Do you like it?’ She adjusted a strap with a none-too-gentle heave. Dallas waited in anticipation of disaster, but it held.

  Nobody noticed his lack of response. ‘You two said something about welcome news? Come on, out with it.’

  The interested twinkle in Dallas’s eyes dulled immediately Torben spoke. ‘Gerda is with child.’

  Everyone knew they’d been trying. Gerda glanced modestly at the floor. Torben, expecting immediate cigars and congratulations, frowned. ‘No-one has anything to say?’

  ‘Con ...gratulations, ’ Lorna managed, thinking only Torben could complicate matters by announcing an impending family in the very week war breaks out.

  ‘Hell’s teeth.’ Dallas strove to achieve a lighthearted atmosphere. ‘That’s wonderful news.’ He crossed to Torben, shook his hand firmly and thumped him on the shoulder. ‘Congratulations, son. Took a while but, I say, this is terrific news. Our first grandchild. Think of it, Lorna, our first grandchild.’

  Dallas’s posturing had given her time to recover. Gliding elegantly to Gerda, Lorna bent and kissed the girl’s cheeks. ‘Thank you for the news, darlings. I couldn’t be more pleased.’ She clapped her hands together. ‘Oh, what fun. A baby is just what this family needs.’

  Torben, looking a little happier, turned in expectation to Cameron, only to hear what they had all been thinking. ‘There’s a war on, Torben. We all knew it was coming. Couldn’t you have waited?’

  Gerda, buoyed by Dallas and Lorna’s reaction, responded for him. ‘A baby waits for no-one, Cam. It’s a blessing from God and should never be refused.’

  Cameron turned away, rolling his eyes at Virginia.

  ‘Duncan?’ Gerda asked.

  ‘Wonderful.’ He shrugged. ‘I look forward to being an uncle.’

  Meggie was enthusiastic and genuine. ‘Oh, Gerda, how thrilling. You must promise to visit us more often.’

  This was more to Torben’s liking. ‘Will you deliver the baby?’ he asked Ellie. ‘We’d prefer a woman doctor, wouldn’t we, darling?’

  ‘It would be my pleasure, ’ Ellie responded. ‘Though, please realise that family members are restricted with the medical help they can offer. If there’s any complication, someone else would have to take over.’

  ‘There’ll be no problem, ’Gerda promised. ‘I’m as healthy as anything.’

  Frazer was quietly happy for his older brother. Life had to go on despite the war. Tanith and Virginia also refrained from comment. A baby was good news. The timing certainly wasn’t. Still, it was on the way and nothing could be done about that.

  Will hadn’t joined the family that evening, as a more pressing matter demanded his attention. Late in August he had reluctantly allowed Dallas to send a message to his trading store in Swaziland. It said simply that Will had been very sick but would soon be well enough to return home. And that was how they had found him.

  When Will’s wives started turning up at Morningside they insisted on looking after him but refused to enter the main house. Dallas solved that problem by allowing them to construct two traditional beehive rondavels a short distance down the hillside. He also agreed with Will that no more than four family members would be present at any one time. It had worked well for a few short weeks but now Will had the unenviable task of telling whichever relatives were currently in residence that they would have to return home the following morning. He would not be returning with them, a decision taken in view of Will’s determination to play his part in the war, and Swaziland’s growing sympathy for the Boers.

  The following weeks passed quickly. Ellie and Lindsay joined the Natal Volunteer Medical Corps. A paperwork mix-up gave Cameron a commission in the South African Light Horse while Dallas, Duncan and Frazer found themselves destined for another newly formed group, the Fairfax Scouts. Both units comprised Natal volunteers as well as refugee Transvaal Uitlanders funded largely by Cecil Rhodes’s multi-millionaire business associate, Alfred Beit. They were part of a dozen or so divisions that made up the Natal Cavalry’s 3rd Mounted Brigade commanded by Dallas’s one-time schoolboy friend Douglas Cochrane, now a highly experienced and decorated Major-General and the Earl of Dundonald.

  Virginia, much to Cameron’s displeasure, opted to drive an ambulance wagon. ‘I’ll be closer to you, ’ she told her fiancé. ‘It’s not dangerous work. All I have to do is pick up wounded soldiers from whichever railway station they arrive at and transport them to the nearest hospital.’

  ‘And make a nice target for Boer snipers, ’ he pointed out.

  ‘Don’t be silly. We’ll be well away from any fighting.’

  Cameron knew she was right and realised he was probably being overprotective.

  Lorna, Meggie and Tanith signed on as hospital assistants in Empangeni.

  Before being posted – they were unable to say where – Ellie and Lindsay managed one more trip to Morningside, bringing with them a rather strange present.

  Dallas lifted down the heavy wooden crate, clearly marked ‘CASTOR OIL – MEDICINAL PURPOSES ONLY’.

  ‘Why on earth would we need this?’ he asked, puzzled by Ellie’s look of amusement.

  ‘Better be careful with that, Father.’

  ‘Here, let me give you a hand, ’Lindsay offered. ‘Where should I put it?’

  ‘Leave it on the verandah, there’s a dear, ’ said Lorna. ‘I’ll take it to the hospital tomorrow.’

  ‘Not a good idea, Mother. I suggest you open it.’

  Intrigued, Dallas levered off the lid and, with a look of astonishment on his face, extracted a magnum of French Champagne.

  ‘Two cases were delivered to Addington. We don’t know where they came from or who they were meant for.’ With a twinkle in her eye Ellie added, ‘And all of us were far too busy to try to find out.’

  Dallas laughed. ‘Then we’d better open it this evening – just to see how well it travelled.’

  The immediate British plan was to secure Natal, assemble the Army Corps in CapeTown, then push north to take the Boer capitals of Bloemfontein and Pretoria, relieving Kimberley and Mafeking along the way.

  Late in the third week of October mixed messages and rumours started coming through from the Natal front. There had been a victory, of sorts, at Talana Hill, near the British forward position in Dundee. Unfortunately, losses included the death of Major-General Sir William Penn Symons, garrison commander, and the ignominious surrender of cavalry sent out to cut off Boer retreat.

  The 2nd Gordon Highlanders, along with Dragoon Guard cavalry and the largely Uitlander-recruited Imperial Light Horse, had routed the enemy at Elandslaagte. Using bayonets and lances – weapons the Boers refused to adopt – they had all but annihilated an entire komando.

  The news was mixed. Under heavy artillery fire, British troops had evacuated Dundee and fallen back forty miles along the railway line to Ladysmith, leaving behind two field hospitals, all the wounded and provisions for a force of five thousand.

  On 30 October, a day that became known as ‘Mournful Monday’, at places hitherto unknown – Modderspruit and Nicholson’s Neck – over twelve hundred British soldiers were lost, killed or forced to surrend
er as a direct result of tactical inflexibility and Boer mobility. A new type of warfare was emerging. Three days later Boer forces cut railway and telegraph lines to the south of Ladysmith. The garrison, and almost all the troops who were supposed to defend Natal, found themselves under siege.

  Ellie and Lindsay had been posted to the rapidly reinforced British garrison at Estcourt in the Natal midlands where, quite coincidentally, they were introduced to a newspaper reporter by the name of Winston Churchill. He was the same age as Ellie and she had often heard of him, his mother being a cousin of her American mentor, Cecily Jerome. ‘Small world, ’ Ellie said later to Lindsay, little imagining what fate had in store for the young Englishman.

  On 15 November an armoured reconnaissance train set out north along the railway line towards Colenso and the Thukela River. On its return journey a Boer ambush derailed the three troop-carrying trucks, pinning down their occupants with artillery and rifle fire. Over seventy men were killed, wounded or captured – Winston being one of the latter – and a muzzle-loading ship’s gun lost to the enemy.

  Closer to home, Tanith and Meggie found themselves emptying hospital bedpans, spooning food to those too badly injured to feed themselves, applying dressings, mopping floors– in fact, anything to relieve pressure on the qualified nursing staff. Lorna helped too, as and when the running of Morningside would allow. All three women worked at home as well, turning out handcrafted cushion covers, quilted eiderdowns, crocheted blankets and the like, all donated as raffle prizes to raise money for vital medical supplies.

  With the situation in Natal looking far from encouraging, Sir Redvers Buller had been forced to split the Army Corps in Cape Town and send reinforcements by sea to Durban. Two weeks later he personally took command and established his headquarters at Frere, north of Estcourt, only twelve miles from where Boer forces had blown up the railway bridge at Colenso and dug into an elaborate network of trenches and gun emplacements along the Thukela River.

  The South African Light Horse, which Cameron had joined early in November, waited for Buller’s arrival. Will was also at Frere. Much to his disgust, the only duty offered – and this grudgingly – had been as a noncombatant to help with the horses, many of which were out of condition, still recovering after their long sea voyage from England and not yet acclimatised to the debilitating heat of an African summer.

  ‘At least you can keep an eye on your godson, ’ Dallas said, trying to cheer up his friend the day he and Cameron left the farm.

  ‘Ja, ’Will agreed. ‘I can make sure his horse has a leg at each corner too!’ He was not a happy man.

  Duncan, Frazer and Dallas, the latter’s leg now back to normal except for an occasional twinge, were finally called up just after the middle of November. They left Morningside on Frazer’s twentieth birthday.

  NINE

  Felton Fairfax had two hundred men under his command. Their task was to slip past the main Boer forces in Natal and move west, across the Orange Free State, gathering information on enemy troop movements and disrupting them where possible. This was of particular importance to Lieutenant-General Lord Methuen, who, with eight thousand regular soldiers, waited on the Orange River for a push north to relieve Kimberley. The lack of information on Boer deployment was Methuen’s greatest concern.

  Fairfax and his men were camped deep in enemy territory on the top of a small, flat-topped kopje near Lindley, some two hundred miles to the east of Kimberley. Dallas knew that the Reese farm was not far off and wondered if the family were still in residence. Unfortunately, now was not the time to find out.

  It was hot, what clouds there were bleached white by a relentless summer sun and offering little or no likelihood of rain. Even the airless nights brought scant relief. Felton Fairfax seemed oblivious of the conditions, not allowing the weather to affect him or his men.

  Dallas instinctively liked their leader. Fairfax wasn’t out to impress and was not too proud to seek advice. He was tall, almost stick-like in stature, with blond haystack hair, obvious cataract damage in his left eye and a mouth which once fell foul of a childhood game of cowboys and Indians. A wayward tomahawk had nearly removed his top lip, leaving a line so perfect that sometimes people blinked on meeting him, just to be certain they weren’t seeing double. Fairfax – for all his apparent frailness – had a deep, gravelly voice which had many wondering about the size of his testicles. The man positively growled when he spoke. In complete contrast, his almost feminine hands, with their long tapering fingers, looked like those of a concert pianist. Not so. Felton Fairfax was tone deaf – a fact that became painfully evident to any who heard his attempts at song. As for playing a musical instrument, he restricted his efforts to a mouth organ and only when others helped him hold the tune.

  As his name implied, he was a fair man, regularly displaying understanding and good humour. His oft-repeated motto, ‘Blaming others doesn’t help – we’re here to fix the problem’, made him popular with the men, who had been quick to give him the affectionate nickname ‘Fairy’.

  In the company of other commanders – men from military backgrounds, aristocrats or black sheep in search of adventure – FairyFairfax stuck out like dogs’ balls. Unashamedly. Once described as being ‘rough as a bear’s backside’, he wore no uniform or insignia of rank yet those he led carried out his orders without question. He had yet to prove himself in the field and once admitted to Dallas, ‘There’s too many would-be heroes running this show. I sometimes feel that I’m up to my arse in bloody crocodiles and the water level is rising.’

  Most of the volunteers were equally untried and so it was to those with experience – men like Dallas – that their leader would turn for company and occasional advice. At the end of a day, with sentries posted, the sounds and smells of the bush became more noticeable, reminding them all that while their circumstances might be different, the country for which they fought was unchanged.

  One evening Dallas relaxed with his back against a still-warm rock, watching a blood-red summer sun lose its glare in the dust-laden distance of an invisible horizon. It seemed to move more quickly, as if eager to be somewhere else, now that the day’s job was done. Even the light breeze held its breath in awe. The kopje was small, easily climbed and extended their view by a good ten miles in every direction. Rock, scrub and parched earth are rarely pretty but Dallas loved the African bush. Stunted acacias dotted the veld, their two-inch needle-like thorns stark white and clearly visible in the fast-fading light. Far to the east, a deep-purple mist seemed to be rolling towards them. Night was near. A lone jackal trotted busily away and disappeared into it. Otherwise, nothing stirred.

  Fairfax trudged wearily towards him, a bottle and two tin mugs in hand. Dallas moved over to allow the man a share of his backrest. ‘Dop?’ the younger of the two queried.

  ‘Please.’

  Fairy sat and poured generous helpings of warm brandy into each mug. ‘Pretend it’s crystal.’

  ‘This is fine.’

  ‘Would be nice, though.’

  ‘What?’ Dallas hadn’t really been listening.

  ‘Crystal. Drinking fine brandy from a glass which sparkles with elegance and fire.’

  Dallas glanced at him. ‘What’s got into you this evening?’

  ‘Ah! Don’t mind me, man. The Boers are watching us. Have you seen them?’

  ‘Yes. About three miles out. They’ll leave us alone.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’

  ‘They usually do. More than likely doing what we’re doing. Gathering information. It’s only a local komando. They won’t risk confrontation.’

  ‘Wish I had your confidence.’

  ‘You’re young.’ Dallas smiled. ‘Though, believe me, age has its drawbacks as well.’

  Fairfax smiled too and relaxed. He was thirty-eight, a farmer with no fighting experience. His main attribute was a natural ability to lead others, a competence that came from controlling his family’s business. They ran beef cattle, employing hundreds of African
s and a handful of Europeans on two farms, each of which was over five thousand acres, in the currently Boer-controlled Natal midlands.

  ‘You’re from around Colenso. Do you know a man there by the name of Wilcox?’ Dallas asked idly, not really caring if Fairy did or didn’t.

  ‘Who doesn’t? William’s a bloody pain in the arse.’ Fairfax turned his head quickly. ‘Hope you don’t take offence at that.’

  Dallas grinned. ‘I’d take offence at anything less.’

  ‘Ah, I see! Most seem to run up against him if they spend any time in our fine little town. How is it that you’ve had the pleasure?’

  ‘I was once married to his daughter. Not by choice, I hasten to add.’ That part of his life had come to an end many years ago and Dallas didn’t mind speaking of it.

  Fairfax blinked at his outspokenness. ‘Then why?’

  ‘Blackmail, ’ Dallas replied flatly. ‘Bloody man accused me of getting her pregnant.’

  The whole of Natal knew the scandal of Sarah, Dallas and Lorna. The fact that Fairfax didn’t was probably a result of his relative youth. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Sure you’re interested?’

  ‘It has to be better than sitting here discussing this damned war.’ He held up the brandy bottle and Dallas raised his mug for a refill, beginning to wish he’d said nothing.

  ‘I came out here as a remittance man, ’ he began. ‘Back in Scotland I’d been accused of a crime I didn’t commit. Wilcox found out and because of circumstances which I won’t bore you with he forced me to marry his pregnant daughter. When the truth finally emerged, he did everything possible to stop me from leaving.’

  ‘So how did you get out of it?’

  ‘Walked away. Simple as that. The baby wasn’t mine and I had no intention of remaining married to a girl I didn’t love, trust or even like.’

  ‘And the woman who is now your wife? She came out from Scotland, I believe. Lorna, isn’t it?’

  At the mention of her name Dallas’s face – although he wasn’t aware of it – softened. ‘From the moment she arrived, there was no decision to be made.’