“Sporting events? Are you telling me the men were doing the one-hundred-yard dash while Kimberley waited for your attention?” Redfyre asked in disbelief. “Fifty thousand townsfolk and troops trapped there, starving, being bombed by six-inch field guns every few seconds, women and children confined to the depths of the gold mines for safety days on end, and the Relief Force sits down and unwraps its Christmas presents!”

“I see you read the Manchester Guardian reports. I would paint quite a different picture. But . . . ‘Ours not to reason why, ours just to march and die!’ In any case, the besieged of Kimberley were having a much easier time of it than the relieving army. They’d had supplies laid in with such forethought by Cecil Rhodes, who—what an irony!—found himself besieged in his own town. Others had fled the Transvaal while they could, clanking their jewellery, flashing their guilders and their pounds sterling and buying up first-class cabins on the ships back to Europe. Why was he still there? He wasn’t saying. But he was keeping a close eye on his assets, that much was obvious. Every day a signal or an exhausted, often wounded, messenger got through from Cecil. Always the same message. More bellyaching about his relief. ‘Methuen, where the hell are you? How much longer must I wait?’ Every day his gold mines were out of action was a day’s trading lost and a pain to him.

“They did still have their uses, though. Cecil made the grand gesture of opening the company mines for the use of women and children to hide in when the Boer cannons began to fire. The civilian death rate was minuscule—about twenty souls, they said, from start to finish. However, their military saviours—the British Army—were losing thousands every day. So we weren’t too bothered on Cecil’s account. By that time, a pontoon bridge had been established on the Modder and our tents and supplies were coming over freely. The Top Brass were established in the Grand Hotel that they’d cleared of Boer. Cronje had apparently been watching the fight from behind the French windows. He’d bunked off, leaving his meerschaum smoking in the ashtray.

“So my little band was preparing to go off into the wilderness while the rest of the regiment relaxed, with the promise of organised sports to pass the time. Besides a chance to shine in the running races, the football and the boxing, the men were being given a presentation tin of chocolates from Queen Victoria herself. They’d come out on the same troop carrier, thoughtfully labelled with the new year’s date, 1900. Natty little things! We were glad to have them. You may have seen one? They are much collected, I understand. Red with a gold medallion of the queen’s head. Inside, six bars of the best Fry’s milk chocolate—”