1999 - Ladysmith by Giles Foden Read Free Book Online Page B

least he had a good pony. The horse which had brought him down the Helpmakaar Road, after his initial tour with Steevens and the other correspondents, had gone lame. He had had to get another. This would have cost him a sovereign, but he had brought several boxes of cigarettes with him and an officer of Hussars had been willing to exchange his polo pony for one.
    After the scene on the plain, the outskirts of Ladysmith itself seemed idyllic—cottages with rose gardens and honeysuckle about their shady verandas. One was the house commandeered by White, the commander-in-chief.
    Near by, with many a merry shout, a detachment of the Green Horse were pursuing a football. He saw Tom Barnes among them, and waved from his horse. Barnes, bare-chested, waved back, and then scrambled into a tackle. Like the gardens—some had trees bearing that buttery fruit, avocado, that he had tasted here for the first time—the football pitch was a calming sight, for all the world such as one might encounter in a village of Herefordshire or Worcestershire on a Sunday afternoon in the middle of summer.
    The impression didn’t last long. Entering the main street was to throw yourself into a chaos of steaming horses, pannier-laden mules and bellowing oxen, of stacked firewood, Lee Metford rifles, lances and cavalry sabres, bales of forage, soldiers in uniform, volunteers in riding boots and shirt-sleeves, and African drivers cracking their whips. Nevinson had to dismount and tether his pony. There was a general mood of fear and anticipation and want of confidence, a feeling that things would very soon change. Of all the evidence of people preparing for the worst, the most affecting was the sight of a large number of lady cyclists with their wicker baskets piled high with provisions bought in panic. One of these, a thin, ascetic-looking woman, with an abundance of grey hair and a long black gown, nearly ran into him as he watched, and in doing so, almost fell off her bicycle. Steadying her, he grabbed hold of the handlebars. Some of her goods fell to the ground.
    “Careful, young man,” she snapped, dismounting. “You should watch where you are walking.”
    “I’m sorry, madam,” said Nevinson, going down on his knees to pick up the provisions. “I was taking in the scene.”
    “Were you indeed?” She stood over him with one hand on the bicycle, the other on her hip—the very image of indomitable womanhood.
    He straightened, putting the paper bags and cartons back into the basket. “I am afraid one of these eggs seems to be broken.” He cupped the goo of the broken egg in his palm and flicked it on to the ground.
    “And so we shall all be cast down,” said the woman.
    “I’m sorry?” queried Nevinson, wiping his palm with a handkerchief.
    “This unspeakable war. It is a curse from the Lord, a judgement on the pride of the politicians and generals. On both sides! If they were nearer the light, this state of affairs would never have arisen.”
    “I am sure you are right,” said Nevinson. “To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
    “My name is Mrs Frinton. Now if you will excuse me, I must get to Star’s bakery before the bread runs out.”
    She remounted her bicycle and rode off. Nevinson watched her thread her way through the crowd, wobbling dangerously, and reflected that perhaps her premonition of disaster was right. Women had a sixth sense about such things, he believed. The laying in of essentials and home comforts by the ladies of Ladysmith seemed to him a certain sign that the greater comfort, the way in which the town had hitherto complacently risen and settled into itself each day, sun-up to sundown, could not persist. He retrieved his pony and led it back to the cottage he had taken with Steevens and MacDonald, wondering where it was all going to end. For if Ladysmith fell, why not Natal, the Cape, indeed why not, as subject peoples everywhere saw that it was possible, the Empire itself?
    It was a question that