The Girl from Simon's Bay

by Barbara Mutch

  When he tried to persuade Louise to change her mind, promising that they would take precautions to avoid a baby until she finished her training, the first thing she asked was where they would live.

  ‘In my room, Lou, at the back of the house. Pa and Uncle Den won’t mind.’

  ‘But we can’t see the sea from there!’ The Philander place was blind, hidden behind a series of dwellings that led down to the shore in jumbled disarray.

  ‘What difference does a view make when we’re together?’ Piet had countered, desperate for her, desperate for her body.

  But it seemed it did. And when Louise tried to explain that their lives would be confined to the cramped back room, while in her parents’ home the whole household had the run of the sitting room from where the door and the windows gave onto the shining bay below – Piet had been mystified.

  And angry.

  Maybe it wasn’t about the view, or the reality of sharing with Amos and Uncle Den, or the risk of a baby interrupting her training. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to be his wife, full stop, and didn’t know how to say so without upsetting him.

  But he wouldn’t let her go without a fight.

  She was his.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I pulled my nurse’s cloak tightly about me. The town had been covered in a chilly sea fog all morning, deepened by the sound of the foghorn wailing across the bay and echoing off the hidden Simonsberg like a dirge.

  Fittingly so, given the news.

  False Bay Matron swiftly called us together to say that regulations would be put in place declaring Simon’s Town a closed port; staff would have to show identity papers and a valid permit before being allowed onto the train at Fish Hoek. There would be no exceptions. Already, blackout shutters were being hammered into place at Admiralty House.

  I stopped on my way to the nurses’ home and peered through the murk. The tumbled shacks of Seaforth were hidden but Ricketts Terrace hovered between ribbons of mist, like a ghostly frieze propped against the mountain, waiting for its first blacked-out night. The mosque was extra crowded as I set off for work this morning, and Ma spoke of a well-attended prayer vigil at St Francis Church last evening where the minister prayed for a short war. Pa had been saying for weeks that the word in the dockyard was it was only a matter of time. He also said that confidence was strangely muted.

  ‘Why? They’re the greatest navy in the world – they should strike first. Imagine that! HMS Hood could donner Hitler’s fleet before he gets the covers off his guns!’

  Yet no impending war – or the spider-like tendrils of fog – could dampen my mood.

  The change happened slowly at first, then gathered pace. A word here, a glance there.

  ‘We’re very pleased you’ve joined us, Nurse,’ Senior Sister pulled me aside a few weeks after I arrived. ‘I hope you’re being made to feel welcome.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sister.’ I hesitated. ‘More than I expected.’

  She raised an eyebrow, but smiled. ‘Excellent.’

  ‘Lou!’ Vera shouted from behind me. ‘Are you going to listen?’ Her normally teased hair trailed against her neck from the damp.

  ‘Yes. Why don’t you come with me?’

  ‘Maybe it’s only for nurses, not for cleaners –’ she sniffed, fiddling with her skirt. Vera had forgiven me my ambition when she saw where it led and the rewards it delivered. A smart uniform. Far more money than a cleaner’s wage. Respect, even.

  ‘It’s war, Vee. They’ll never ask you to leave.’

  ‘Will our boys have to fight?’ Vera asked, trying to fluff up her hair. ‘How will we go out at night if there’s a blackout?’

  ‘I think we’ll all be fighting, in our own way.’

  I pushed open the door to the nurses’ home. She adjusted her apron and strutted in behind me. The common room was packed. Nurses sat two to a chair, aproned cleaners like Vera hovered on the margins, cooks in their white overalls perched on the window sills. Black porters leant against the walls or sat, cross-legged, on the floor in front of the radio. War was already shaking the traditional pyramid. A group of off-duty doctors, uncertain in this female bastion, crowded on the sagging sofa.

  The radio crackled. From many thousands of miles away came a man’s voice, hesitant at first, then growing in conviction.

  In this grave hour …

  Everyone leant forward, as if there might be a last-minute reprieve.

  For the second time in the lives of most of us, we are at war …

  I felt a sharp intake of breath around me, a collective lift of shoulders, as if that previous war was still lurking, still exacting its price. I was born at the end of the Great War. Pa said it should have been the war to end all wars. One of the older nurses stifled a sob. A doctor rested his head in his hands.

  Stand calm and firm and united …

  I put my arm around Vera’s shoulders. She leant against me. A pair of red-winged starlings competed noisily for worms on the soaked grass outside the window.

  With God’s help, we shall prevail …

  For a moment, no one moved or spoke. The foghorn swelled and faded off the encircling mountains. The starlings continued their private battle, unaware that the world had changed in the time it took them to root out another worm. Then one of the doctors rose, glanced around, nodded as if in thanks, and walked to the door.

  ‘You should marry Piet now,’ Vera announced, as we made our way out. ‘With more ships calling, they’ll need plenty more fish. He’ll make stacks of money!’ She nudged me. ‘Do it quickly before some other girl gets her claws into him!’

  I fought down a wild desire to laugh. Vera, for all her flightiness, had a ruthless practicality: if war meant money, then it should be treated as a springboard for marriage. But I didn’t need a man to support me. Ma regularly gasped at the novelty of this – and the danger inherent in an independent daughter. Who would take such a girl on? Especially one already approaching her twenty-first birthday.

  ‘Lou?’ Vera linked an arm with me and adopted an arch tone. ‘You still want him, don’t you, Lou?’

  And the war would only extend my independence! I pulled myself up short. I was no better than Vera, with her calculations.

  ‘Lou!’

  I might even save enough to buy my own cottage …

  Vera stopped and eyed me irritably, hands on hips.

  ‘He’s served his time. You should say if you’ve gone off him.’ She shrugged. ‘There are always others in line. I’ve got my eye on Abie.’

  ‘I want him to do well, to have some success,’ I raised my voice over the rushing of Admiral’s Waterfall. I’d promised to wait, but surely I’d exhausted that. Yet I couldn’t take the decisive step. The guilt lingered. I hadn’t saved him back then, so I ought to give him more time to save himself now.

  ‘Don’t wait too long! He might decide to throw you over!’ Vera laughed, then wagged a finger above her head and swung off in the direction of the kitchens, hips undulating beneath the shorter-than-regulation skirt.

  I watched her go, and turned down the path.

  ‘Nurse Ahrendts?’ Sister Roberts beckoned from the side entrance to the lower wards. In the distance a rain shower was advancing along the coast from Fish Hoek, blotting out the boundary between mountain and sky. I picked my way across the grass, my shoes squelching. A pair of rotund guinea fowl scuttled past, red crops quivering, spotted flanks glistening with beads of moisture.

  ‘Yes, Sister?’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Nurse, I know you’re going off duty, but I wonder if you can help one of our VADs with a jaw bandage?’

  ‘Of course, Sister.’

  I hid a smile. Matron from the Victoria had indeed done me a favour. Slowly, one person at a time, False Bay Hospital was learning to value my ability rather than scorning my background.

  ‘Splendid. Ward Two. Then you may leave, naturally,’ Sister Roberts eyes flickered over me, ‘I’m sure you wish to get home—’

  Her voice
struggled with the word home, as if the outbreak of war was already threatening its walls, invading its hearth, sharpening its worth. As if home – however humble – would never be quite as safe again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Before you knew it, Piet thought exultantly as he loped along St George’s Street, the dockyard was a war zone patrolled by military police and crackling with an urgency Piet was eager to share. Scores of ships – too many names for Lou to remember, even if they weren’t supposed to be secret – arrived and departed in a rush of refuelling and repair. Solly Ahrendts’s machine shop went on extended shifts. And now, in a stroke, Piet himself was going to benefit. Never mind the thieving, the reformatory, the disgrace.

  Their Lordships didn’t seem to care!

  War wiped the slate clean.

  ‘Lou!’ he dashed up to the Victoria Gate where Louise was waiting for her father in the waning afternoon sun, and bent down to kiss her. She blushed and edged away. ‘I’m in uniform, Piet!’

  He looked down at himself. He should have smartened up. He was still in his fishing clothes, a sagging red jersey over baggy trousers. His feet were bare. Like hers used to be, once upon a time.

  ‘I was looking for you – I’ve got some news, Lou!’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘I’ve got a proper job!’ He rumpled his fingers excitedly through his hair, then grabbed her shoulders. She shifted under his grasp.

  ‘What sort of job?’

  ‘It’s the war!’ he shouted. The guards at the gate turned and frowned. ‘Our boat’s being taken over – requisitioned they call it – I’m going to fish for the navy, they’ll help fix the boat and,’ he lowered his voice because the deal might be withdrawn if he yelled too loudly about it, ‘they’re going to pay me even if the fish don’t bite!’

  ‘That’s wonderful!’ Louise reached for his hand and squeezed it. But,’ she pulled back and examined him, ‘you still hate fishing, don’t you?’

  ‘Not as much as I hate being poor!’ Piet grinned. If only he could close his arms around her properly, rest his cheek against the cotton material of her nurse’s cap, feel her body pulse against his despite the starchy uniform covering it so rigidly from neck to knee. Let’s swim, he felt like saying. Let’s go swim at Seaforth and I’ll dive for sea urchin shells like I haven’t done for so long, and your hair will escape from this silly cap and spread out on the water like silk and everything will be like it used to be—

  ‘What’s this, now?’ Solly bustled through the gate.

  ‘I’ve got a proper job, Mr Ahrendts,’ Piet said triumphantly. ‘Supplying fish to the navy.’

  ‘Well,’ Solly slapped him on the back. ‘That’s certainly good news. Just you stick to it!’

  He glanced at his daughter, her face flushed beneath her cap. ‘You must be proud of Piet!’

  ‘Of course!’ she smiled up at him, the triangle of her nurse’s cap bobbing against her neck. ‘And I’ve also got some news. I’m being seconded from False Bay Hospital.’

  ‘Where to?’ Piet blurted out.

  Not somewhere in Cape Town!

  Not that!

  Lou would meet all sorts of smarter people, he’d never be able to keep her, even with extra money from the war—

  ‘There!’ She pointed in the direction of the old aerial ropeway and a cluster of buildings against the mountain. ‘The Royal Naval Hospital!’

  Piet gaped. British staff served at the RNH. Locals only got to make the deliveries or do the ironing.

  ‘Now, that’s my girl!’ Solly shouted and opened his arms to envelop Louise with swelling pride.

  Piet’s mood plunged. Just when he thought he might catch up with her, she leapt forward again. Like a klipspringer one bound ahead of him. It wasn’t right.

  Louise freed herself from her father and turned to him.

  Piet forced a smile as she let him hug her. She wore her hair up these days, beneath her cap in a sort of bun that left her neck slender and exposed. Men looked at her with greed, as they’d always done. She didn’t know it, but he’d had to reach out and grab one or two of them by the throat when they looked too long and hard. Just as a warning. Even though they were already walking away, still panting for Lou, and didn’t see him coming …

  ‘It’s a day for celebration!’ Solly bellowed, ignoring the curious glances levelled at him by sailors coming and going through the Queen Victoria gate. ‘Let’s go tell your ma, Lou!’

  He grabbed his daughter’s arm and turned to cross St George’s Street.

  ‘Come along, Piet!’ he flung over his shoulder.

  ‘Sure?’

  Like Amos, Mrs Ahrendts had never forgiven him.

  She might still feed him, but it was with lang tande – grudgingly.

  This job, though, would change everything.

  Now he could show he was good enough! He could insist that Louise marry him, because with two salaries they could look for their own place with a view, far away from his father’s grumbling. Then, once they were settled, she could give up work and have his babies while the war raged and the fishing money rolled in. They might not manage it straightaway, of course, they’d have to move in with Amos for a while until they found the right cottage—

  ‘Absolutely!’ Solly piloted his daughter triumphantly across the road as a convoy of rumbling trucks approached. ‘It’s not every day life hands out a bonus. For both of you!’

  ‘That’s for sure,’ Piet laughed.

  ‘Don’t waste it!’ Solly shot Piet a glance over the top of Louise’s head.

  Why would he waste it, Piet chuckled to himself as he darted across the road after them.

  This was easy money.

  When the Royal Navy sought him out, he hadn’t hesitated.

  Without telling Amos, he signed to say that the boat was his. That he would fish for the navy for the length of the war, and that he, Piet, was the official skipper. The navy promised to fix the leaks and provide fresh ropes. He got to earn regular wages however much fish he chose to catch – Their Lordships seemed uncommonly ignorant about the size of local catches and Piet was in no hurry to enlighten them – and at the end of the war he’d have a boat that was seaworthy and could be sold if he fancied doing something different. Or just having a rest.

  Amos and his complaints and his reluctance to transfer ownership had been sidestepped thanks to the war. If there were questions, Piet could say he’d had no choice. The requisitioning had been imposed.

  It was the chance – and the recognition – he’d been denied for too long.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ‘Nurse! Staff Nurse Ahrendts!’

  I put down the sheet I’d been folding and hurried out of the linen room. Sister Graham did not like to be kept waiting. Response time, for Sister, was calibrated in seconds.

  ‘Tidy up number four; Doctor will be here on his round shortly and we can’t have an unmade bed. I expect hospital corners on the sheets, Staff Nurse, hospital corners—’

  Kek, kek, kek, kek, kaaaa, ka, ka, ka! came the competing squawk of guinea fowl from outside.

  Sister halted in mid-flow. I battled to keep a straight face. Most of the British staff had never been to Africa before and, to their horror, our peninsula was rife with alien species. The hairy baboons that traipsed down from the upper slopes of the mountain were the worst offenders. They sometimes chased one another friskily across the ward roofs or tried to bathe in the hospital’s water supply. ‘Scram!’ the orderlies would yell and clap their hands at the beasts while the foreign nurses cowered, ‘Scram!’

  I glanced around for the VAD whose job it was to deal with the beds, but she was nowhere to be seen. Very well, then. No point in antagonising Sister, especially as she still regarded me as an outsider – not, in this case, for my lack of paleness but because I was not British-trained.

  ‘Surely,’ I overheard her hissing at our matron, ‘this girl won’t be good enough!’

  I contrived deafness.

  ‘Ye
s, Sister.’

  Would I ever be in a place where I was completely acceptable?

  Don’t count on it, I told myself, keeping my gaze respectfully aimed at Sister’s collar.

  ‘Number eight needs his dressing changed,’ she went on, after the guinea fowl gave up. Patients, for Sister, never achieved human status; they were identified only by bed numbers.

  ‘Yes, Sister,’ to her departing, well-starched back.

  The severity of Sister’s discipline was quickly matched by the grim nature of my work at the Royal Naval Hospital. This was no civilian establishment with a routine quota of tonsils and broken legs. This was nursing on the edge.

  ‘Miss?’ Seaman Wills croaked from bed three. His ship had been sunk by a German pocket battleship in the Indian Ocean. Globules of oil continued to leach, pungently, from his skin and hair even though he’d been rescued from the burning sea weeks before.

  ‘Could I have some water, Nurse?’

  I leant over and held the cup to his ravaged face. There seemed to be no limit to the way flesh could be cleaved by shell splinters, sometimes jaggedly, but more often as cleanly as a knife through watermelon. This was the side of war not reported in the newspapers, the battles fought out of the light. And there was no time for sympathy: if our patients didn’t die, they were expected to cope with their torn flesh and return to duty. Despite the horror on display and Sister’s doubts about my training, this was the calling I’d dreamt of as a child, fulfilled and expanded by the tragedy of war – and a shortage of qualified staff. I wasn’t naive. The opportunity wouldn’t last for ever. I’d be moved out when the war ended.

  ‘Staff Nurse Ahrendts?’

  I snapped to attention beside the unmade bed. The surgeon commander strode up, white coat flapping, a stethoscope dangling from his side pocket. ‘I’ll be operating on Signalman Jamieson shortly. When he comes out of theatre he’ll require someone to sit with him until he wakens. I don’t want him left on his own.’ He leant forward. ‘Sister will frighten the poor young man to death, I’ve suggested you keep an eye on him.’