‘I’ll go straight. This won’t happen again—’
I drew back and touched a finger to my lips.
I don’t know why I did that. Was it to remember the imprint of where his mouth crushed mine? Or was it to stop him saying anything more, making promises I couldn’t trust.
I got up and opened his brown school suitcase and began to pack a few clothes into it.
‘Wait for me!’ he pleaded, wringing his confined hands.
‘Wait for me!’
Chapter Ten
Winter arrived soon after Piet’s departure for the reformatory. The southeasters that had whipped the sea into the kind of waves he loved to surf disappeared, replaced by north winds that deadened the bay and drove sharp squalls across its moody surface.
In town, another kind of squall caused mothers with young children to hurry away from me in the street. On the Terrace, our neighbours avoided my eye.
Piet’s disgrace settled on me.
‘I’ve done nothing wrong!’ I cried to Ma.
‘It’s the way it is,’ she shrugged. ‘With Piet gone, you’re the closest target.’
I hadn’t known this about the world: that crime is catching, even if you’re innocent.
‘Louise!’ Mr Bennett shouted out of the doorway of Sartorial House one soggy afternoon as I headed home from school. He wasn’t in his usual apron, and the shop was dark behind him.
‘I won’t be late, sir, I’m going home to change,’ I called, hurrying towards him. My shift was due to start shortly. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
He shook his head and gestured up to the Simonsberg with a resigned flap of his hand.
‘No, you better stay at home—’
He went back inside, shut the door, and hung up the ‘Closed’ sign. I stared at him, then out past the dockyard. The beam of Roman Rock Lighthouse rotated palely through the rain and fell on a warship slicing towards the harbour, its outline barely visible against the flecked pewter of the sea.
I began to run. Maybe he didn’t want me any more. Maybe he thought I was a thief, too.
An angry torrent was racing down the side of Alfred Lane. I took the steps two at a time, my school shoes skidding on the wet stone, bitter tears choking my throat. The mountainside had slipped in several places the day before, heaping wet soil and rock against the back of the Terrace, and causing an extra call to prayers from the mosque. Mr Phillips’ cottage, missing foundations, was pushed forward until it stuck out like a ship’s prow over the slope. Perhaps – I swiped my face to get rid of the rain, the tears – our Terrace guardians Jesus and Allah were too busy elsewhere, the mountain had slipped again, swept into our sitting room, found Ma at her sewing machine—
Mr Bennett knew.
This wasn’t about Piet or thieving.
It was God’s punishment for my reckless ambition: to take Ma, to destroy our home, the one place in the world where we truly belonged.
Brown water eddied around the Hewsons’ front door, eating away at the soil beneath the steps and carrying it off to darken the torrent pouring down Alfred Lane. I leapt across. My feet slipped and I put out a hand to stop myself falling. Wet stone sliced my skin.
‘Ma?’ I screamed, scrabbling away from the rushing water.
I should have listened to her, recognised my place in the world, been grateful …
Mrs Hewson poked her head out of the doorway. The hem of her dress dragged wetly.
‘Go home!’ She swept a broom across her flooded floor. ‘I heard your pa just now—’
I recovered my balance and slithered the final yards to our front door. The water was exposing the roots of the palm trees where Piet and his friends had played hide-and-seek on my seventh birthday, and where Ma used to lay me down to sleep when I was a baby.
Ma—
‘Thank God!’ Pa reached down to scoop me out of the wet and tried to make a joke. ‘I thought I’d have to go back out with a search party and a fishing rod!’
‘Where’s Ma?’ I clung to him. ‘Has there been a landslide through the back?’
‘One of these days the whole Terrace will go down the mountain and into the sea!’ Pa set me down and stamped his wet shoes on the mat.
‘Ma?’ I cried.
‘Don’t frighten her, Solly! We’re fine,’ Ma bustled in, reaching for my raincoat. ‘Hewsons’ is flooded, but nothing that can’t be dried out. Now get out of those muddy shoes. I’m making strong tea.’
My legs buckled and I sank onto the floor, pressing my hand where the blood welled.
‘If we think we’ve had it bad,’ Pa shouted over the drumming rain, and pointed out of the doorway, ‘there’s a ship just arrived that’s been in the thick of it for days! Gale-force winds, huge seas!’
Ma was safe. Our home was upright. If the mountain fell, at least it would fall on us together. And maybe I was not bad or ungrateful.
‘HMS Durban,’ Pa leant across to kiss Ma and squeezed her shoulder. ‘One of our regulars. Tea asseblief, Sheila. Then I’ll check on the Phillipses, and see what I can do for Mrs H.’
I stared out at the rain and the hungry sea that I loved and feared.
‘Come, Louise,’ Ma laid a gentle hand on my shoulder, ‘let’s dry your hair. And put a plaster on that nasty cut. Why do you run when there’s no need?’
‘HMS Durban,’ my voice shook, ‘I saw its crest on the dry dock wall when I was seven.’
I keep seeing signs. But I must be brave. Not all of them are warnings.
Chapter Eleven
The thing that haunted Piet most in the early days at the reformatory was that the flash man had warned him to use gloves.
Mostly he had, but not always. He’d got careless.
And now he risked losing Lou, his magnificent almond-eyed Lou, who’d stood up and defended him despite his guilt.
He gripped the bars on the window. The tiny view it allowed of the Hottentots Holland Mountains was a mean substitute for the sea. Piet had never been away from the sea for more than a day in his life. Not seeing it, not being able to swim through it, felt like losing an arm or a leg.
He stared out. It had been raining all day. There was nothing to be seen.
And soon they’d yell at him for being late.
Or for not being more grateful for what they were doing for him.
He wondered where she was, what she was doing.
He’d make it up to her, whatever it took.
She was his. He’d kill anybody that took her away from him.
Liewe Lou,
I hate this place. The cops said it would make me better but all they do is treat me like a prisoner. They call me by a number. Sometimes I want to hit them or run away but I know I can’t because then I’ll be in bigger trouble than I am already. Please don’t give up on me. When they let me out I’ll go back to school and then get a proper job like you said. The only thing that keeps me going here is you. I love you, Lou, and I want to marry you and look after you all our lives and make a family with you. Nothing will change that. Tell your parents I’m sorry.
All my love,
Piet
Chapter Twelve
Our cottage survived the landslide like it survived the black southeasters: only just.
Pa and the other Terrace men spent several arduous weekends shovelling soil, stabilising the slope, trying to push the Phillipses place back into the mountainside.
‘Until next time,’ Pa leant down to nuzzle Ma as he scrubbed his hands in the sink. ‘Then it’ll be kaput.’
While they laboured, I studied indoors at the kitchen table. There could be no slacking, especially as my formal letter of application to the Victoria had been acknowledged. I was now, officially, a candidate. But there was no softening in Matron’s reply. She repeated her warning almost word for word from her previous letter: no coloured Simon’s Town girl had ever been accepted, I would be well advised to have other work waiting. If she’d wanted to toy with me, there was no crueller way than this: to give me hope but
then prepare to dash it. Ma and Pa shook their heads at the wickedness of it.
Beyond our cottage, the gossip converged into its own landslide.
‘She must have known!’
‘Maybe she took money from Piet? For this nursing idea? Solly and Sheila never knew—’
‘Have the police searched the cottage?’
‘Too fancy to apply to a coloured hospital?’
‘But Piet deceived me,’ I protested, forcing back the tears that threatened to spill over. ‘I’m innocent! And why shouldn’t I train at the Victoria?’
But people – even those who’ve known me since childhood – prefer conspiracy. It’s more interesting than honesty. Why should we believe you? they said with a shrug. After all, you didn’t tell your parents what you were up to.
Vera was clear on what had to be done to restore my reputation.
‘You should find someone else,’ she ordered. ‘People will feel better about you with a new boy.’
‘Otherwise they’ll know I’m still keen on a thief?’
The sea languished.
I watched it from the living room between study sessions.
Grey, choppy, flecked with white horses from an erratic wind.
The reformatory allowed one visit per month.
Amos was still too angry to waste money on the train ticket, and Den’s bad back didn’t allow him to sit on the train for several hours, so Ma, Pa and I were Piet’s only visitors. None of our school friends went, or the adults who knew Amos and should have felt some responsibility to the errant boy. It wasn’t the cost of the fare that kept them away. It was what I’d discovered: the risk of guilt by association. Better to stay away. Avoid giving the rampant police any fresh meat.
‘I hope Piet appreciates us visiting,’ sniffed Ma on one of our trips.
‘Come on, everyone deserves a second chance,’ Pa protested, ‘he’s not a bad boy—’
But I knew Pa was equally upset. He’d encouraged Piet, hoping he’d break free of the Philander dependence on leaky boats and drink. When we sat in the plain visitors’ lounge and Pa saw how Piet’s eyes followed me, I could tell he was torn between what he’d said out loud and the private fear of me promising myself to a damaged boy.
‘I fed him,’ Ma retorted when she thought I wasn’t listening. ‘And we trusted him. How could he lie to Lou? She must end this …’
I was frightened, too. So far in my life, I’d mostly been scared of outside things like mist sneaking over the Simonsberg, or wily butcher birds, or landslides that might snatch Ma from me before I could rescue her. But this was different. I was afraid because there was no forgiveness in my heart.
Only coldness.
To cover it up, I forced myself to smile and say I still loved Piet – how could I abandon him like the others? – and that he could make a fresh start once he came out.
Was it right to lie? Yet it wasn’t lying in the way he’d lied to me.
I lied out of kindness.
And guilt for not confronting him, for not saving him when I had the chance.
The reformatory lay across False Bay, and required two trains and several hours to reach. First, a trundle around the bay and across the Constantia Valley to vibrant Cape Town; then a trek across the Cape Flats towards Somerset West. I secretly loved the journey, especially when I turned eighteen and Ma and Pa reluctantly allowed me to go on my own in order to save money. Free from supervision, I could lean out of the window and feel the sea spray on my face, and laugh at the seagulls screaming narrowly over the carriage roof. On the inland leg, I stared at emerald vines wandering across the Constantia hills, and arum lilies lifting cream trumpets to the sun, and imagined – with a hunger that seemed to rise up in my throat of its own accord – another journey that might take me much further.
There’d been a letter.
Out of the blue, and not in response to one of mine.
It said, once again, that I was unlikely to win a place. But it also said I was being offered an interview.
To assess your fitness, Miss Ahrendts, for nursing training.
I must remind you that attendance at an interview is not a guarantee of success.
‘Now don’t go getting your hopes up,’ warned Ma, touching my carefully plaited hair and fussing over my blazer as she saw me onto the train. White-tipped waves thrashed the shore below the railway line. None of the fishing boats were out. ‘It’s probably just for show.’
‘For show?’
‘Ja. To pretend they’re open to all, even though they aren’t.’ Ma shrugged and slipped a hard-earned shilling into my pocket for emergencies. ‘It makes them feel better.’
‘Or maybe they really want me, Ma!’
She tried to smile. I hugged her. Poor Ma hated when I was out of her protective range. Mr Venter, on the other hand, was cautiously optimistic. He told me to sit straight in my chair, meet the interviewer’s eyes and speak clearly.
‘They want to be sure you’ll complete your training,’ he said. ‘They don’t want to waste time and money on girls who give up halfway.’ It was a reference to Lola and Susan, both of whom had left school to have unexpected but, I suspect, secretly contrived babies.
‘I won’t get caught so easily,’ Vera scoffed, pouting into the mirror in her mother’s tiny bathroom. ‘I want to try out lots of boyfriends first, and so should you. My ma says there’s ways to avoid a baby until you want one.’
The interview was frightening at first – the cold windowless room, the sceptical eyes of Matron – but I remembered Mr Venter’s advice and gave my answers clearly and respectfully, and perhaps surprised her with my Simon’s Town brand of moral rectitude. Luckily Matron couldn’t divine the lustiness of Vera and wonder if I was the same, nor could she see the disgrace that Piet’s crime had pinned on me.
‘We will await your results, Miss Ahrendts,’ she announced after it was done, looking me over from my well-polished shoes to my least-darned school uniform and my bolt-upright posture. ‘But I must warn you that there is no guarantee that you will win a place.’
‘Thank you, Matron,’ I replied, holding her gaze. Her iron-grey hair glinted beneath the overhead light. ‘If I’m beaten to a place, then I know the other girls are more deserving than me.’
Her eyes flickered away from mine.
The conductor came through the carriage and shouted out the reformatory station. I got up, ignoring the suspicious glances of the other passengers – more guilt by association – and stepped off the train. It was a half-mile walk to the entrance along a dirt road flanked by peeling gums. Despite Piet’s loathing, it wasn’t a bad place. There was plenty of food. The teachers were strict, so Piet was learning something in class. And his bed was near a window in the dormitory so he could look out. But even when he tried to be positive, there was no spark. Piet was a boy made for the outdoors, for the tumbling sea, for the howling gale. Caging him in took away the part that made him who he was.
‘Louise Ahrendts,’ I said for the guard at the entrance. ‘Coming to see Piet Philander.’
The gate clanged open.
‘Lou!’ Piet grasped my hands, and looked past me for Pa and Ma. ‘On your own?’
‘Yes,’ I reached up and kissed him on the cheek.
He was wearing the standard uniform, even though it was a Saturday: a grey shirt and striped tie, and grey shorts. His wild black hair was closely cropped. His hands, once noticeable for their scarred palms, were now rough all over from the manual labour that was part of the curriculum: gardening, digging, chopping wood, bricklaying.
‘Was it high tide when you left?’ His restless eyes swept away from me.
‘Almost. Breaking well up the sand,’ I said, pretending I’d run down to Seaforth in advance of catching the train. I’d hardly swum since Piet left. It seemed selfish to enjoy the sea while he was locked up; to float on my back and feel the swells lift me while he yearned for even a glimpse of it. I now went to the beach early in the morning when no one else was abou
t, to comb for fragments of the shells he used to collect for me, or sit on the grass and stare out at the breakers we used to surf.
‘Was the lighthouse flashing when you woke up this morning?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think I see the light coming through my window. I count the seconds until it should flash again—’
I reached into my bag. ‘I brought you some books.’
He fingered them, then laid them aside.
‘Do you still love me?’
The lines on his face were permanent, now, branded into his forehead and cheeks like the scars that criss-crossed his palms. I felt my throat contract. All that was left – all he clung to from one visit to the next – was not his own self-worth, but the thin veneer of whether I said I loved him or not.
‘Yes, I love you, Piet.’
He leant forward, urgently, and grabbed my arms. ‘Then let’s get engaged! They’ll let us see each other privately! We can start making a baby, Lou!’
I stared at him, aghast.
‘Please, Lou, it would give me something to fight for. And we’d be a family when I come out …’ He kept hold of my arms and motioned with his head around the room where other boys were huddled with their visitors.
‘But I’m going to be a nurse,’ I broke free. ‘I’ve worked so hard, I’ve been interviewed!’
If the Victoria didn’t want me, somewhere else would. I was on my way, how could I let up now?
He jumped up, retaking my hands, crushing them in his grip. ‘You can start a year later.’
‘No!’
How could he expect me to give up before I’d even started? And what of forgiveness?
A bell rang. It was the signal that there was fifteen minutes of visiting time left.
‘Please, Lou! If you love me, you’ll do this for me.’
The heat rushed into my cheeks.
How dare he imply that if I refused it meant I didn’t love him! How dare he set a test?
The Girl from Simon's Bay Page 6
