Blunted Lance (7 page)

‘Hello, George,’ General Goff said briskly. ‘How’s the leg?’

‘All right for everything except running away.’ White ran his hand over his bald head and gestured at the men with him. ‘You know Hely-Hutchinson, of course. This is Symons.’

General Symons had a curiously-shaped skull with an elongated jaw and soft cheeks. With his hair plastered down across his head and a looping moustache that didn’t quite manage to curl up at the ends, he looked a little like a grocer. Colby half-expected him to wring his hands and ask ‘What can I do for you, sir?’

Hely-Hutchinson led off with the comment that Milner was very uneasy.

‘So he ought to be,’ General Goff growled unforgivingly. ‘He’s done enough to stir up trouble.’

Hely-Hutchinson gave him a sour look. ‘He finds it hard to believe that two small republics will take on the British Empire.’

‘He obviously doesn’t know the Boers,’ the General said. ‘I remember them for their independence, mobility and marksmanship.’

‘
And
corruption,’ Symons observed.

The General ignored the remark. He didn’t seem to like Symons much, and Dabney remembered that, while Wolseley had been calling for ten thousand more men for South Africa, Symons had been saying five thousand were more than enough to defend the whole of Natal.

White gestured towards the maps spread on the table. ‘What’s your view, Coll?’

General Goff stepped across to the map. ‘I think they’ll invade,’ he said bluntly. ‘What’s more, they think they’ll win.’

‘They couldn’t possibly,’ Symons said.

‘No,’ the General agreed. ‘I don’t think they could. But by God, they’ll probably give us the fright of our lives.’

‘It’s a worrying situation,’ Hely-Hutchinson admitted. ‘We can hardly retreat from the north-west corner of Natal and leave it to them.’

‘It might save a lot of trouble,’ the General pointed out.

‘And leave the Colonists to the Boers?’

‘They’re not savages,’ the General said coldly. ‘They’re a God-fearing people who believe in the sanctity of the family and, despite what the newspapers try to make us believe, they aren’t given to atrocities. It wouldn’t be for long. We should get it back.’

‘We can’t let go a part of the Empire.’

‘It’s big enough. We shouldn’t miss it.’

‘A retreat would disgust the loyalists in Natal.’

‘The most belligerent of whom aren’t Natalians at all,’ the General snapped. ‘They’re Outlanders who’ve bolted from the trouble they’ve stirred up in Jo’burg.’

White hurried to change the subject, and one of Hely-Hutchinson’s young men, a sprig of aristocracy with a high stiff collar and a tight suit despite the heat of the day, gave Dabney a sidelong look and winked.

‘If they invade,’ White was saying, ‘they’ll probably be able to muster about thirty-five thousand men. With the reinforcements that are arriving, we shall have about thirteen. Of course, there’s an army corps expected by the end of the year.’

‘Who’s got it?’ Hely-Hutchinson asked.

‘Buller.’

‘Well, he’s all right. He’s got a good reputation and he knows the Boers.’

‘He’s also sick of South Africa,’ General Goff said sharply. ‘He told Lansdowne, the Secretary for War, that if he were ordered to the Cape he’d come back as soon as he could.’

Hely-Hutchinson gave him a startled look. ‘Buller?’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘I do.’ Dabney recognised the stubborn tone in his father’s voice. ‘I’ve known him a long time. Buller backs away from responsibility and he’ll be handling more men than he’s ever been called on to handle before.’

‘Buller’s one of our best men.’ Hely-Hutchinson seemed to think he was having his leg pulled. ‘And surely we can hold Natal until he arrives? Where are your people, George?’

‘Two main groups,’ White said. ‘Eight thousand at Ladysmith and four thousand at Glencoe, guarding the branch line to the coalfields at Dundee. I’d like to hold the Biggarsberg Mountains but water’s scarce up there and I feel we’d be exposed to flank attacks from the Orange Free State in the west and the Transvaal in the east – let alone head-on attacks from both. We’d be wide open to a giant pincer movement.’

‘Not sure the Boers are that sophisticated,’ General Goff observed. ‘Nor are they fools, however. In 1881, our Regulars didn’t know whether they were on their arse or their elbow.’

Symons gave him a sharp glance, vaguely contemptuous, as if he regarded him as a has-been. ‘From Glencoe my four thousand can strike at any gathering of Boers – particularly with the support of the eight thousand in Ladysmith.’

There was a great deal more argument but the words of Symons and the political weight of Hely-Hutchinson swayed White and he finally agreed uneasily to allow Symons to make his stand in the northern corner of the province. As the meeting broke up, Dabney saw that his father’s face was grim.

‘Symons is an ass,’ he growled. ‘He has only two ideas in his head – his bloody duty and doing it like a gentleman. The Boers don’t think that way. He’ll make a mess of things. He looks like a ferret, anyway.’

Dabney kept his face straight with difficulty. His father’s comments often sounded unthinking but the old man had a habit of being surprisingly shrewd.

Symons’ troops seemed in good shape, however, and, with polo for the officers and drill for the men, he considered he’d got them fit for anything the Boers might try. Putting on a field day for General Goff, he smiled as the artillery galloped up, unlimbered and fired blanks and the infantry moved forward in four waves.

‘A la Gravelotte,’ General Goff growled. ‘He must be mad.’

There were a few brighter men of the same opinion, and Rawlinson, of the Rifles, a tall balding young man, had no doubts about the danger of pushing north. ‘I’d shorten the line, sir,’ he said when asked his views. ‘Hold the Tugela and withdraw from Ladysmith. The position has no flanks and the Boers will simply ride round it.’

Ian Hamilton, of the Gordons, sensitive, intelligent, and with a withered arm he’d collected at Majuba in 1881 to bear witness to his knowledge of the Boers, held the same view. ‘There’s still too much of the old contempt for them about,’ he said. ‘People are even inclined to be boastful, and that’s bad.’

Because Baden-Powell, who was at Mafeking in Bech-uanaland, had detachments of mounted infantry, they took the train to Durban, picked up a ship to East London, and headed back to De Aar and up north, following the Orange Free State and Transvaal borders. The sky was still full of heavy storm clouds that took the brightness out of the day, and the surface of the veldt was veined and puddled with water among the rocks. As the train clattered over an iron bridge, the river was in flood, a swirling brown torrent far different from the dusty ditch that had been there when they had last seen it. The earth was flushed with green now and stripes of daisies had appeared alongside the track.

‘What the Boers have been waiting for,’ the General observed, staring through the rain-spotted window. ‘Grazing for their ponies.’

As the train followed the shimmering lines north, they could see groups of bearded men in slouch hats riding shaggy ponies in the direction of Johannesburg and Pretoria. They carried rifles and bandoleers, their saddlebags were bulging, and they had strips of biltong and bags of flour tied to the saddlebow.

‘Boer commandos,’ the general said shortly.

At Kimberley, they found the place under the command of a colonel of the North Lancashires-called Kekewich who was facing the prospect of having to handle Cecil Rhodes, the founder of Rhodesia and one of the most powerful men in Africa. Rhodes himself called on the General at his hotel and invited him to dine. He was a tall man with a high-pitched voice who seemed petulant and spoiled, and to Dabney, he seemed too used to running a country to wish to be ordered about by a mere colonel.

‘I could raise you a whole army of mounted men if I wished,’ he said sharply.

‘Better, I trust, sir,’ the General observed dryly, ‘than Dr Jameson’s raiders.’

It was while they were in Mafeking that they heard the Boers had presented an ultimatum to the British government.

‘Points out that voting in the Transvaal’s no business of anybody but the Transvaal,’ Baden-Powell said. ‘Demands arbitration on all points of difference, and insists we remove all reinforcements that have landed since the end of May and that those now on their way here should be turned back. Gives two days’ notice.’

War was clearly only hours away as they caught the train south. It was not unexpected, and the Outlanders, who had been the cause of so much resentment in the Transvaal, had been fleeing for some time from the Boers’ wrath. The train was crowded with men and women as the exodus became a panic. Every carriage was packed and open trucks had been hitched on the rear, tight-jammed with families heading for the Cape, expecting no comfort in the heat of the day and only bitter cold during the night. As they headed across the veldt the groups of mounted men moving east grew larger, and Dabney was in a state of acute apprehension because he was afraid the line would be cut before they reached safety. The idea of captivity for himself didn’t even occur to him in his concern with the disgrace such an event might bring his father.

The General remained unperturbed and even settled himself to sleep. ‘Nobody would miss
me
,’ he said.

As they steamed into Kimberley, Kekewich met them with confirmation of the news of the ultimatum. ‘The telegraph to Mafeking’s gone dead already,’ he said. ‘There’s been some incident with their armoured train and some of the track’s been torn up. I never thought they’d do it.’

Back in Cape Town, they headed straight for the Mount Nelson Hotel where Lady Goff was staying. Lord Ellesmere met them, still looking unwell.

‘The Government’s rejected the ultimatum,’ he announced.

‘Thought they would.’ The General frowned. ‘There’s only one advantage, Ned. It might just be the making of us. The Germans are becoming too much of a menace in Europe and I’d rather discover our failings here than outside Paris against
them
.’

Cape Town had been filling up for some time with wives and girl friends who were finding more excitement there than in a dozen London seasons, and the Mount Nelson was already so crowded with wealthy Outlanders who had refugeed from the Transvaal and the Orange Free State it had been dubbed The Helots’ Rest.

General Goff loathed it and stared round hostilely. ‘These buggers,’ he observed, ‘seem to think the blasted war’s a circus got up for their special benefit.’

As Dabney had expected, his mother showed not the slightest inclination to bolt for home. She kissed her husband and son and announced her intention of helping the war effort just where she was.

‘They’ll need help with the wounded,’ she said.

Almost at once there was news of Boer burghers heading for the front. It caused a certain amount of ribald merriment among the younger officers, because they were known to carry umbrellas and parasols against the sun, and their only military insignia was on their slouch hats which were adorned with the colours of their flags or miniature photographs of President Kruger.

The General’s guess about them waiting until the weather broke had been right, however, because they were moving south in downpours which brought on the much-needed grass for their ponies. A police post was the first to fall to them and within a few days they were heading towards Dundee where Symons waited. Almost immediately news arrived that Symons had been killed and White was about to be besieged in Ladysmith.

As Dabney waited with his father on the quayside for the
Dunottar Castle,
which was bringing Redvers Buller and his staff from England, to dock, he noticed that the old man’s face was grave and for the first time it occurred to him that his father didn’t like war.

With the loom of Table Mountain behind him, shutting off the rest of Africa like a stone curtain, the General didn’t seem to be looking forward to the meeting with Buller. The rest of Cape Town was wild with war fever, however, which wasn’t in the slightest tempered by the latest news from Natal. The city was gay with flags and bunting, and Adderley Street and the route from the docks were lined with dense crowds.

Dabney knew Buller well. He had stayed more than once at Braxby and he looked stolid and robust with his round red Devonshire farmer’s face and large stature. He seemed worried and uncertain and Dabney noticed that his big frame had been allowed to run to fat. Despite what was said about him, despite the confidence that everybody had in him, he didn’t have the look of a commander-in-chief.

‘Hello, Coll,’ he said as he shook hands with the General. ‘They told me there have been three battles and that Penn Symons is dead.’

‘I’m afraid it’s right.’

Buller looked gloomy. ‘South Africa living up to its record as the grave of military reputations,’ he said.

They drove in an open landau through the hysterical crowds, to see Milner at Government House. Buller shook hands gravely with all the officials lined up to meet him, faintly irritable at the fuss and impatient to get on with the job. Milner, his face pale, handed him the coded telegrams from Natal giving further details of the disasters. He seemed to be terrified of a rising among the Afrikaners of the Cape. He had always believed that the Boers could be frightened into accepting everything he asked of them and now that they hadn’t he seemed afraid of losing the war. General Goff didn’t feel much sympathy for him. It was Milner’s war and he ought to be able to bear the consequences.

‘It would be disastrous if the diamond mines were lost,’ Milner said. ‘Rhodes, too, because he’s in Kimberley. We’ve just had another message from him. He says the place is on the verge of surrendering.’

‘Rhodes may be a brilliant financier,’ General Goff said, ‘but as a soldier he’s about as useful as a hysterical nanny.’

‘We can’t let the diamond fields go.’

‘Are you suggesting then that we should let Ladysmith go?’

Milner hummed and hahed. ‘We’re in a tight spot,’ he said bitterly. ‘I think we’ll have to break up the army corps.’