The Girl from Simon's Bay

by Barbara Mutch

  I ran along the track to their cottage.

  ‘Piet!’ I rapped on the door and pushed it open. ‘Piet!’

  ‘Louise!’ Uncle Den roused himself from a chair by the stove. The interior was dark after the bright sunshine outside. ‘Come in, child, Piet’s not back from school yet.’

  I stood in the doorway, chest heaving. Piet hadn’t been at school all day.

  ‘Have a cup of tea,’ Uncle Den reached for a battered kettle. ‘Amos isn’t here. There was a good catch this morning. He said he had business in town.’ Den raised a resigned eyebrow.

  ‘I’m too hot for tea, Uncle Den. I’ll see Piet tomorrow.’

  ‘Sure,’ the old man grinned, and subsided into his chair. ‘Give my respects to your ma and pa. Fine folk, your parents.’

  I trailed back to the beach where a crowd was milling around the recently landed net. The familiar, pungent whiff of fish, sweat and wet rope drifted off the sand. Children splashed in the shallows, picking up fronds of seaweed and throwing them at one another like Piet and I used to do.

  I sat down on the grass.

  From the bush on the far side of the beach, in the patch of willow where I usually changed into my swimsuit, two figures emerged. One was a man. The other was Piet. I recognised his faded check shirt, one of his father’s, with its sleeves rolled up and its front hanging down over his shorts.

  The day brightened. I took a breath to shout out a joyful greeting but—

  What were they doing?

  Why were they hiding in the bush?

  The man was handing something to Piet. Piet was rolling it up and stuffing it into his shirt pocket. The man gave him a slap on the shoulder and disappeared back into the undergrowth.

  I waited with a kind of dread.

  Piet stood for a moment, staring out to sea. A vee of cormorants skimmed the silver water beyond the breakers, rising and falling in response to the swells. Then he ran down onto the sand, stripped off his shirt – how thin he was – weighted it pocket-side-down under a stone, sprinted into the surf and began swimming out through the incoming waves, his dark head pushing through the creamy foam. Soon he was past the egg rocks and into deeper water, his arms looping over his head in a powerful freestyle as if he was never going to stop until he reached the undulating cormorants, the lighthouse, the racing minesweepers, the far side of the bay.

  I stared at the small bundle on the beach: Piet’s shirt.

  And, in its pocket, whatever the man had given him.

  He was so far out he wouldn’t be able to see if I ran down onto the beach, and shook out his shirt. And felt in his pocket.

  Chapter Six

  But I never did.

  After several minutes of breathless uncertainty, I scrambled to my feet and sprinted home, my heart pounding harder than the distance and the heat merited. I told myself that doing the opposite would have been worse: if I’d run down and searched his shirt, it would have meant I no longer trusted him. That was an admission far worse than any brief dimming of our friendship.

  Or was I simply a coward?

  Calculating that what I didn’t know, couldn’t harm me. Couldn’t harm him?

  ‘What’s with you and Piet?’ Vera raised her eyebrows as I walked home alone from school. ‘Had a fight?’

  ‘He has to help his pa,’ I hedged.

  ‘So? Go to Seaforth,’ she retorted. ‘When you land a boy you’ve still got to work to keep him.’

  The heat of summer wilted, the black southeasters blew themselves out.

  I didn’t follow Vera’s advice and haunt the beach. I didn’t face up to Piet. Instead, I let a deep unease lurk in my heart for a time, then fade. I told myself there was time for things to get better on their own. The inviting months that stretched ahead would surely take care of what needed to happen. Forcing a confrontation might drive Piet away from me for good.

  At least that’s what I told myself.

  Into this lonely vacuum swept autumn’s sea fogs, creeping over the bay, inundating the town and swirling about me. A different pressure began to build. I avoided Vera and Lola by taking a different route home from school, rushing through the opaque air along minor lanes, scrabbling my key at the front door and rifling through the letters pushed underneath for one addressed to me. I didn’t want to set my sights lower. I wanted to shake the pyramid. If necessary I’d try another hospital, and then another, until someone said yes. When there was no immediate reply from the Victoria, I began to compose fresh letters of application while Ma and Pa were at work. I hid them face down in my bookcase, neatly addressed to other matrons at random Cape hospitals I’d found in the telephone directory at the post office.

  Then a letter arrived forty-one days later, on an afternoon when the fog draped like thickened cream over the dockyard and the foghorn bayed into the menacing gloom.

  I stood holding it with stiff fingers, then ripped it open.

  Dear Miss Ahrendts,

  Thank you for your letter.

  Applicants to the Victoria Hospital are assessed on examination results and on the outcome of a face-to-face interview. The more A grades a candidate achieves, the better her prospects will be. We also look for a positive demeanour, good health and deportment, a respect for discipline and a commitment to moral rectitude.

  For successful applicants, the hospital funds the cost of training other than for incidental expenses. There is a small monthly salary, which ought to cover these if your needs are modest. Lodging in the nurses’ home is also provided if required.

  We believe the Victoria Hospital is the premier training institution in the Union.

  Miss Ahrendts, while I commend your enthusiasm I must caution you that no coloured applicant from a Simon’s Town school has ever been accepted, so you would be well advised to have alternative employment plans in place.

  Yours faithfully,

  A. S. Winthrow (Matron)

  Matron’s signature blurred under my hot tears.

  I rushed into my bedroom, slammed the door and buried my head in my pillow. I shouldn’t bother to apply. I wasn’t rich enough or white enough. And perhaps they doubted my moral rectitude, whatever that was—

  ‘Louise?’ Ma burst through the door, ‘has someone hurt you? Where’s Piet – he’s supposed to walk you back!’

  ‘Why aren’t you at work, Ma?’ I choked.

  ‘Mrs H saw you running back from school. She thought something was wrong!’ Ma shook me vigorously. ‘I shouldn’t have trusted that Piet!’

  I fished out the letter and gave it to her.

  Ma’s reading is not as good as mine and it took her a while to get through it, especially some of the longer words like demeanour and incidental. Then she sighed and pulled out a handkerchief to dry my tears.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us about this, child?’

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t understand,’ I sobbed. ‘You want me to be a maid or a nanny. And get married straightaway.’

  Ma wrapped me in her arms and rocked me gently.

  ‘You’re a good girl, Lou, but why do you always want to swim before you can walk?’

  ‘I’ll work hard,’ I cried. ‘I can be as smart as any of the girls that apply!’

  ‘Ja,’ Ma kissed me on the top of my head, ‘that may be so. But they probably want only white girls at that hospital and not brown ones. This isn’t your pa’s British Navy, you know, where they treat everyone the same.’

  ‘Then why don’t they say so?’ I pulled out of her embrace. ‘Why hide the real reason?’

  Ma smiled grimly and reached for the brush and began to sweep it through my tangled hair. Ma often saved her most important words for when she was brushing my hair.

  ‘Because, my Lou, no one ever says so. Not outright.’ She wrestled with a knot. ‘Whites are always chosen first, coloureds second and blacks last. You should know that by now. You can’t push too far from where you’re supposed to be.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’

  Progress, Ma was
saying, had nothing to do with brains. It was only about the rules of colour.

  ‘Now be sensible, Louise,’ Ma frowned. ‘You’d have to pay for extra books to study, and for the train journey to the interview. Is it worth it if they’ve already decided you don’t fit?’

  ‘I want to apply,’ I said stubbornly. ‘They can’t stop me applying.’

  ‘No, they can’t. But you should take that fancy matron’s advice and have another job waiting. Your pa and I can help you.’ She stopped and considered me. I don’t think Ma could ever fathom where I got my ideas from. I didn’t know, either. They seemed to rise up inside me, sparked by the tumbling of seawater or the healing of ships …

  ‘There’s a place for all of us in this world, child. If you step outside of it, you get hurt. Like today.’

  I bit my lip. I’d never gone against Ma or Pa before. And I shouldn’t be worrying them, especially when the news on the radio talked of people losing their jobs, of Simon’s Town dockyard cutting back, and of the threat that cutback posed to our choppy sea route and the foreign powers who coveted it.

  ‘I want to try, Ma.’

  ‘Then you’d better keep quiet about it,’ she said shortly, getting off the bed and smoothing the cover. ‘Terrace girls with big ideas make others jealous. Don’t lose friends over something that may never happen.’

  I nodded.

  Ma stopped at the door and looked back at me.

  Mr Venter had looked at me with pity. Ma’s eyes showed the same – but laced with a disappointment she couldn’t quite mask. I was letting Ma down by daring to be different.

  Chapter Seven

  It took a year, but Piet finally said yes to the flashy man who haunted the boats at Seaforth beach. A year while Piet grew taller and – the man indicated with a knowing slide of his eyes over Piet’s frame – less useful for the job; a year in which Amos’s drinking worsened, the cottage sprang new leaks during the winter rains, and Piet increasingly missed school to take odd jobs.

  ‘It will give you a regular income,’ the flash man said, shrugging. ‘But don’t do it if you’ve got something else …’

  But Piet had nothing else. His father’s boat – promised to Piet one day – might not last much longer. He could have spoken to his teachers, but they were always angry at him and probably wouldn’t listen. Amos Philander had never bothered with religion of any sort so there was no Imam or minister that Piet could ask about the difference between right and wrong in an unjust world. And he was too ashamed to speak to Solly Ahrendts. As for Louise, he could still see the hurt on her face when he told her she could go and swim on her own if she liked.

  Luckily Mrs Ahrendts still occasionally invited him to eat with them – succulent bobotie, sometimes an apple pie – but those were his only proper meals and for the rest of the time he starved. The hunger made him edgy, made him lash out or be rude. If he could just eat more, Piet reckoned, his life would get back on track. And then he’d make up with Lou and they wouldn’t need to avoid each other’s eyes any longer.

  The flash man gave him a little cash up front, and promised one night job per week at an agreed rate. Piet told himself that this new job would only be for a while. Lots of people did this kind of thing when they were down on their luck.

  There was no moon that night, and the overhanging Simonsberg helped by blocking out the stars in half of the sky, including the Southern Cross and its watchful pointers. Piet and the flash man crept along a paved road in a smarter part of town than the crowded shanties of Seaforth. The flash man halted, looked about and then pressed down the sagging fence around a small, dark house. They stepped over. Piet examined the darting shadows for animals, then forced his eyes to pick a route through the garden even as his ears strained for the murmur of human talk.

  The flash man motioned him forward.

  An object, about a foot in height, erupted from a bush, its arched back bristling with black-and-white quills. Piet gasped and choked back a scream.

  The porcupine blundered away.

  He bent over, chest heaving. Was there a mate? Did they gather in groups? Would his first job be sunk by a troop of wild porcupines?

  The flash man shrugged and tapped his wrist to indicate he should get moving.

  Piet’s narrow body – one advantage of being hungry, he grimaced – twisted its way through the open fanlight with no difficulty. He landed lightly on carpet, stifling a gasp, and stared about him.

  A bed, empty.

  He sniffed for the possibility of cigarettes, or the gamey breath of a dog leaping from its basket, teeth bared …

  Nothing, just the pounding of his heart, loud enough to wake the neighbourhood.

  He tiptoed into the passageway.

  Wall-mounted pictures leant off their hooks towards him.

  He edged forward, off the carpet now, his bare feet feeling ahead for squeaks in the wooden floorboards that would give him away. Sweat was gathering in the crease of his neck and on his palms. He’d often smelt cloying fear on the bodies of his fellow fishermen when the waves were so huge they blotted out the sky. He wiped his hands on his shorts.

  Here, on his right, was a door. Ajar.

  He listened for breathing, but all that emerged was his own fevered panting. He put his head around the door, ready to flee, but the bed, like the first one, was empty.

  Across the passage was a bathroom.

  He leapt back as a mirror reflected a pinched, wide-eyed face back at him.

  But he was getting used to the darkness now. He stole through the well-furnished lounge with growing confidence, then through the kitchen with its gleaming fridge and an oven far smarter than the Ahrendts’s, checked the back door was locked, then bumped against a wicker washing basket and almost toppled it. He froze, bent over, hands squeezing the basket hard enough to crush it.

  No one shouted. No light was switched on.

  No footsteps ran to investigate.

  The place was empty.

  He breathed out, padded to the front door, ran his hands over it to check for chains or bolts, then unlatched it slowly. The garden leapt dark and forbidding towards him, the only light coming from the glow of a street lamp as it fell onto a stretch of pavement beyond the fence. In the distance, the sea he knew so well was a vast, mute pool of black punctured only by the sweeping beam from the lighthouse.

  A shape detached itself from the shrubbery. The flash man slipped inside.

  Between them, they emptied the place of jewellery found in the bedroom, a wad of banknotes left in a drawer, and several bottles of liquor from a kitchen cupboard – all of which was swiftly tucked away by the flash man into a sack.

  Then they left, closing the front door quietly behind them.

  The heavy cough of a baboon sounded from the mountaintop. Then several more coughs. Alarm calls – Piet forced himself to be calm – but not for him. There must be leopard about. He wrestled the sack across the fence, careful not to allow the bottles inside to chink against one another. A car drove along a nearby road, the engine fading into the night. Once they were concealed within the swaying tree shadows, the flash man counted out some notes to pay him.

  ‘Like taking sweets from a baby, hey?’ the man whispered, and slapped Piet on the back. ‘Wear gloves next time. Sleep tight.’

  He was back in bed in his tiny room well before sunrise, before the first raucous chants of the guinea fowl that might rouse a neighbour, who might spot Piet returning, who might tell his father …

  He stroked the notes under his blanket with trembling fingers. This was riches! But he mustn’t arouse suspicion by appearing flush. He would spend part of it on food, and the rest would be saved for a shirt or shoes from the second-hand store, bought gradually so as not to attract attention.

  Snores rose from his father and Uncle Den in the two front rooms.

  He held up his hands in front of his face, willing his guilty fingers to relax.

  He realised he was waiting for something: for the sound of a
whistle, for pounding footsteps, for barking police dogs. For discovery.

  But none came, only the regular thunder of the sea.

  Tomorrow – today – he was going back to school.

  Chapter Eight

  ‘Louise?’ Piet appeared at my side in the corridor, after class was dismissed. ‘Walk you home?’

  His black eyes held mine and didn’t slide away. I felt my heart lift. It must be part of growing up, this pulling away and coming together again. I’d been right to let him find his own way back, in his own time.

  But what of the unknown man on the beach?

  And the furtive exchange between them?

  Piet stood tall and keen in front of me, his narrow face alert. Here was the Piet I’d grown up with, the boy I’d shared my secret with, the boy who perhaps had the right to keep a secret from me.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ I said, on an impulse, linking my arm through his.

  He grinned, and reached down to hug me.

  His arms felt warm, true.

  ‘Me, too. I’m sorry for the way I’ve been. Let’s go for a swim?’

  Seaforth Beach was deserted when we arrived, the sand bare of any footprints apart from the delicate pockmarks of seagulls. A meandering line of shell fragments – periwinkles, purple turbans, ridged limpets – studded the high-water mark where Piet laid down our towels. The Simonsberg flew a ribbon of cloud. We swam out past the egg rocks, the swells lifting us up and bearing us along with the outgoing tide. The sun was lowering and amber shafts of light probed all the way to the seabed. Piet dived into the sun-dappled depths to bring up a pair of perlemoen shells, each hollowed lobe glistening with mother-of-pearl.