Master of the Game

Jamie McGregor lived for exactly one year from the day he was taken ill, and it was the happiest time of Margaret’s life. Jamie was totally helpless. He could neither talk nor move. Margaret cared for her husband, tended to all his needs, and kept him at her side day and night. During the day, she propped him up in a wheelchair in the sewing room, and while she knitted sweaters and throw-robes for him, she talked to him. She discussed all the little household problems he had never had time to listen to before, and she told him how well little Kate was getting along. At night she carried Jamie’s skeletal body to her bedroom and gently lay him in bed next to her. Margaret tucked him in and they had their one-sided chat until Margaret was ready to go to sleep.

David Blackwell was running Kruger-Brent, Ltd. From time to time, David came to the house with papers for Margaret to sign, and it was painful for David to see the helpless condition Jamie was in. I owe this man everything, David thought.

“You chose well, Jamie,” Margaret told her husband. “David is a fine man.” She put down her knitting and smiled. “He reminds me of you a bit. Of course, there was never anyone as clever as you, my darling, and there never will be again. You were so fair to look at, Jamie, and so kind and strong. And you weren’t afraid to dream. Now all your dreams have come true. The company is getting bigger every day.” She picked up her knitting again. “Little Kate is beginning to talk. I’ll swear she said ‘mama’ this morning…”

Jamie sat there, propped up in his chair, one eye staring ahead.

“She has your eyes and your mouth. She’s going to grow up to be a beauty…”

The following morning when Margaret awakened, Jamie McGregor was dead. She took him in her arms and held him close to her.

“Rest, my darling, rest. I’ve always loved you so much, Jamie. I hope you know that. Good-bye, my own dear love.”

She was alone now. Her husband and her son had left her. There was only herself and her daughter. Margaret walked into the baby’s room and looked down at Kate, sleeping in her crib. Katherine. Kate. The name came from the Greek, and it meant clear or pure. It was a name given to saints and nuns and queens.

Margaret said aloud, “Which are you going to be, Kate?”

It was a time of great expansion in South Africa, but it was also a time of great strife. There was a long-standing Transvaal dispute between the Boers and the British, and it finally came to a head. On Thursday, October 12, 1899, on Kate’s seventh birthday, the British declared war on the Boers, and three days later the Orange Free State was under attack. David tried to persuade Margaret to take Kate and leave South Africa, but Margaret refused to go.

“My husband is here,” she said.

There was nothing David could do to dissuade her. “I’m going to join with the Boers,” David told her. “Will you be all right?”

“Yes, of course,” Margaret said. “I’ll try to keep the company going.”

The next morning David was gone.

The British had expected a quick and easy war, no more than a mopping-up operation, and they began with a confident, lighthearted holiday spirit. At the Hyde Park Barracks in London, a send-off supper was given, with a special menu showing a British soldier holding up the head of a boar on a tray. The menu read:

SEND-OFF SUPPER

To the CAPE SQUADRON, November 27, 1899

MENU

Oysters—Blue Points

Compo Soup

Toady in the Hole

Sandy Sole

Mafeking Mutton

Transvaal Turnips. Cape Sauce

Pretoria Pheasants

White Sauce

Tinker Taters

Peace Pudding. Massa Ices

Dutch Cheese

Dessert

(You are requested not to throw shells under the tables)

Boer Whines—Long Tom

Hollands-in-Skin

Orange Wine

The British were in for a surprise. The Boers were on their own home territory, and they were tough and determined. The first battle of the war took place in Mafeking, hardly more than a village, and for the first time, the British began to realize what they were up against. More troops were quickly sent over from England. They laid siege to Kimberley, and it was only after a fierce and bloody fight that they went on to take Ladysmith. The cannons of the Boers had a longer range than those of the British, so long-range guns were removed from British warships, moved inland and manned by sailors hundreds of miles from their ships.

In Klipdrift, Margaret listened eagerly for news of each battle, and she and those around her lived on rumors, their moods varying from elation to despair, depending on the news. And then one morning one of Margaret’s employees came running into her office and said, “I just heard a report that the British are advancing on Klipdrift. They’re going to kill us all!”

“Nonsense. They wouldn’t dare touch us.”

Five hours later, Margaret McGregor was a prisoner of war.

Margaret and Kate were taken to Paardeberg, one of the hundreds of prison camps that had sprung up all over South Africa. The prisoners were kept inside an enormous open field, ringed by barbed wire and guarded by armed British soldiers. The conditions were deplorable.

Margaret took Kate in her arms and said, “Don’t worry, darling, nothing’s going to happen to you.”

But neither of them believed it. Each day became a calendar of horrors. They watched those around them die by the tens and the hundreds and then by the thousands as fever swept through the camp. There were no doctors or medication for the wounded, and food was scarce. It was a constant nightmare that went on for almost three harrowing years. The worst of it was the feeling of utter helplessness. Margaret and Kate were at the complete mercy of their captors. They were dependent upon them for meals and shelter, for their very lives. Kate lived in terror. She watched the children around her die, and she was afraid that she would be next. She was powerless to protect her mother or herself, and it was a lesson she was never to forget. Power. If you had power, you had food. You had medicine. You had freedom. She saw those around her fall ill and die, and she equated power with life. One day, Kate thought, I’ll have power. No one will be able to do this to me again.

The violent battles went on—Belmont and Graspan and Stormberg and Spioenkop—but in the end, the brave Boers were no match for the might of the British Empire. In 1902, after nearly three years of bloody war, the Boers surrendered. Fifty-five thousand Boers fought, and thirty-four thousand of their soldiers, women and children died. But what filled the survivors with a deep savage bitterness was the knowledge that twenty-eight thousand of those died in British concentration camps.

On the day the gates of the camp were flung open, Margaret and Kate returned to Klipdrift. A few weeks later, on a quiet Sunday, David Blackwell arrived. The war had matured him, but he was still the same grave, thoughtful David Margaret had learned to rely upon. David had spent these hellish years fighting and worrying about whether Margaret and Kate were dead or alive. When he found them safe at home, he was filled with joy.

“I wish I could have protected you both,” David told Margaret.

“That’s all past, David. We must think only of the future.”

And the future was Kruger-Brent, Ltd.

For the world, the year 1900 was a clean slate on which history was going to be written, a new era that promised peace and limitless hope for everyone. A new century had begun, and it brought with it a series of astonishing inventions that reshaped life around the globe. Steam and electric automobiles were replaced by the combustion engine. There were submarines and airplanes. The world population exploded to a billion and a half people. It was a time to grow and expand, and during the next six years, Margaret and David took full advantage of every opportunity.

During those years, Kate grew up with almost no supervision. Her mother was too busy running the company with David to pay much attention to her. She was a wild child, stubborn and opinionated and intractable. One afternoon when Margaret came home from a business meeting, she saw her fourteen-year-old daughter in the muddy yard in a fistfight with two boys. Margaret stared in horrified disbelief.

“Bloody hell!” she said under her breath. “That’s the girl who one day is going to run Kruger-Brent, Limited! God help us all!”