The Girl from Simon's Bay

by Barbara Mutch

  The guard shrugged and picked up a clipboard with a list attached. He glanced vaguely over the packed carriage, then pulled a pencil from behind his ear and ticked off the list. ‘All the same to me. I can always use some help.’

  ‘My pleasure,’ grinned Piet. ‘Don’t worry, now. If you’ve got other stuff to do, I’ll look after the goods.’ He clapped the fellow on the back and settled himself on the floor alongside the fish as if it was as comfortable as a seat in first class.

  The guard nodded, and jumped down onto the platform.

  Fifteen minutes later, the train jerked out of the station. Piet leant out of the window, sniffing the briny air. An hour or so of boredom and then the meeting with the Cape Town guards and the play-acting over the fish and how cold were they and making sure they were going to the right place and why do you need to bother counting the crates? Where would they be if they weren’t here? And the joking that next time he would quietly slip them all a fish – why, he actually had one to spare, look …

  And then the trip back.

  Again in the guard’s van but with a different guard that he’d help to load the crates going back to Simon’s Town because of course he would help even if he had no need to check on the empties or get a numb backside on the hard floor. They were all in this together, weren’t they?

  Like taking sweets from a baby, the flash man had once said to Piet.

  Not quite.

  This time he was being much more careful. And he wouldn’t take the rap alone. He would bring them all down with him, even the admiral who regularly enjoyed a special gift of fish from Piet, delivered in person, and lovingly prepared by his navy chef.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  ‘Where are the Yanks?’ groused Pa, as we listened to Churchill on the radio talking about fighting in the fields and never giving up, ‘Don’t they care? Or are they just after our gold?’

  With the war going so badly, gossip was a bracing diversion. Luckily, the whispers centred on the cargo loaded onto the American ship – and not the deployment to that same ship of a British officer who’d been foolish enough to talk to a local nurse in the centre of town. Gold, they speculated, or maybe diamonds from the mines at Kimberley, although you wouldn’t need trucks to deliver a load of tiny stones, would you?

  I was lucky.

  No one saw me in the lane downtown.

  I prepared an answer just in case. He was my patient, he wanted to thank me – though anyone seeing us together would be suspicious. After all, I had form in this kind of rebellion: I applied to be a nurse without telling my parents, and it was now common knowledge that I’d rejected a man who’d come good despite a difficult patch. Folk were proud of me but it wouldn’t take much to reignite gossip.

  Too slim, too crafty, again.

  Meanwhile, our enemy came closer, fighting our troops in the deserts around Tobruk, and threatening Egypt. Wounded men from hotter battles began to populate my ward.

  ‘Nurse?’ Petty Officer Talbot, wounded off East Africa, stood in front of the ward table in his naval rig and turned his cap in his hand.

  ‘Yes, Petty Officer Talbot? Are you all set?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Nurse, can’t wait to go … begging your pardon, Ma’am. But I wanted to say thank you before I left.’ He blushed all the way up to his ear tips.

  ‘Good luck, Petty Officer,’ I offered my hand. ‘Take care of yourself and come and see us when you pass through again.’

  ‘Certainly will, Ma’am.’

  ‘Staff Nurse Ahrendts!’ Sister Graham’s voice rang down the passage. ‘Petty Officer Talbot will be late if you continue to detain him.’

  Talbot, his back to Sister, winked at me before executing a sharp about turn.

  ‘I would have thought, Staff Nurse,’ remarked Sister, bearing down as Talbot disappeared, ‘that you had sufficient duties to keep you busy without gossiping with discharged patients.’

  ‘I was wishing Petty Officer Talbot good luck, Sister.’

  Sister Graham regarded Louise coldly. ‘Too much empathising with patients is unprofessional, Nurse.’ The girl’s beauty was a distraction, making patients more likely to linger. ‘Discharge should be treated in the same way as admission: efficiently and, most importantly, swiftly.’

  ‘Yes, Sister.’

  ‘Do not turn patients into pets, Staff Nurse.’

  I gritted my teeth. Sister Graham would have been better suited to theatre work where patients were usually comatose.

  ‘And this came for you.’ She slapped an envelope addressed to me on the ward table. ‘Kindly don’t use this hospital as a post office.’

  Dear Nurse Ahrendts, I read by candlelight later.

  Forgive me for writing to you via the hospital, but I have no other address for you.

  I realised, after we met on St George’s Street, that you may have found my behaviour improper. That was not my intention. I would not wish to repay your kindness by embarrassing you in any way. Please accept my apologies.

  I cannot tell you where we are, other than to say that we are steaming off the coast of Africa. There is a strange mist clinging to the coastal hills. It reminds me of the cloud that used to pour over your mountains whenever the wind was in the right direction and cold sea air rose up over the land. Less about science, I always felt, and more about an extraordinary, riotous beauty.

  I expect to rejoin my ship at some stage. Thank you, again, for everything you’ve done for me. I send you my very best wishes.

  Yours sincerely,

  David Horrocks

  I was walking on the mountain when I saw him.

  It was six months since he’d left, and four months since the letter which seemed to say he wouldn’t seek me out for another walk. And here he was, alone, sitting on the ledge by the aerial ropeway, staring at the thicket of warships clustered within the dockyard. Although his back was to me, I recognised the angle of his head, the fair hair. I was about a hundred feet above him, on a path I often followed below Grandpa Ahrendts’s quarry. If he didn’t turn, he wouldn’t see me. If I turned and went back the way I’d come, he wouldn’t see me either.

  I waited, one moment willing him to turn, the next willing myself to be sensible and go back …

  ‘Lieutenant Commander?’

  He swung round, breaking into a smile, and climbed quickly up to me with no sign of the limp.

  ‘Nurse Ahrendts! How good to see you!’ We shook hands. He was in uniform, and his face had lost the pinched look from the hospital. I became aware that the tail of my white shirt had pulled out of the waistband of my shorts and that my hair had partly fallen out of its ponytail. The last time, it was his casual clothes that had unnerved me. If he noticed my untidiness, or felt disconcerted by it, he gave no sign.

  ‘When did you arrive?’

  ‘Last night. We hit a storm off Madagascar and were diverted here for repairs.’

  A baboon barked further up the mountain.

  ‘Aren’t you worried,’ he said, gesturing upwards, ‘walking on your own?’

  ‘No, they don’t bother you if you leave them alone. Are you well?’ I glanced down at his waist.

  ‘Yes, thank you, fully healed. And sleeping better,’ he shot me a quick grin, ‘when the war allows.’

  ‘Did you deliver your gold safely?’

  His eyes sparked but he didn’t reply. I laughed.

  ‘It’s hard to keep a secret when we see everything that goes on from our front door!’

  ‘You do have a ringside seat,’ he acknowledged, glancing down at the Terrace row.

  I sat on the ledge and lifted my face to the sun. He remained standing, staring out to sea. He was silent, and I wondered if I’d somehow disappointed him, perhaps he was comparing me to a more sophisticated companion, a wife he’d seen in the interim …

  ‘Thank you for your letter,’ I said. ‘It wasn’t necessary, but it was good to hear that you were alive and well.’

  ‘I’ve been very lucky. Some of my friends less so.
’

  ‘Enough of the war!’ I said lightly, not wanting to stir his memories. ‘Will you tell me about your home, Lieutenant Commander?’

  He turned to me with a smile and sat down by my side.

  ‘Corbey has been in my family for almost two hundred years,’ he began. ‘It’s beautiful but in a smaller, gentler way than this,’ he swept an arm to encompass the bay and the mountains.

  I glanced at him, the uniform, the ribbon of his medal.

  ‘And one day it will be yours?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘If I survive the war I will become the earl, as my father is now.’

  Earl of Corbey. A titled gentleman. If he survived the war? I shivered, wondering if his healing was, in fact, complete. The losses on Achilles, the losses still to come … And if it ever could be complete, for any of my patients.

  ‘But you don’t want to?’

  ‘You must think me very odd,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t mean to be ungrateful. But I love the navy. And I’ve found life at sea much more rewarding. I suspect,’ he gave me a sideways glance, ‘you feel the same way about nursing.’

  A jackal buzzard glided by, its charcoal wingtips splayed to catch the updraft. I watched its graceful upwards spiral until it disappeared over the ridge of the mountain.

  ‘What would you do about Corbey, if you stayed at sea?’

  He turned to me eagerly. ‘I’d consolidate it with the neighbouring farm, bring in a manager with modern ideas to run it. If the Hall itself became too expensive to restore, I’d let it become a ruined monument. We could preserve the lawns, the oaks. It would be striking,’ he paused, ‘but in a different way. And then I’d build a small farmhouse further off.’

  A silence built between us. But not an awkward one, nor one I felt the need to break.

  ‘What does the land look like, over there?’ I asked after a while, glancing around at the lively proteas, the green limbs of the Simonsberg running down to the sea.

  ‘Ah,’ he touched my arm, ‘it’s lovely. Rolling hills, a stream in a small wood where I used to fish as a boy, oak trees that are lime green in the spring. My mother used to show me the bare branches swelling at the nodes, how the buds would wait until a warm moment and then burst open, and we could declare spring.’

  ‘But I thought you hated it! When you were on the ward, you always talked of escaping!’ I covered my mouth. ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve no right—’

  ‘Please don’t apologise,’ he broke in. His eyes met mine. ‘I love the land, it’s the commitment I’ve tried to escape.’ He looked away, then added lightly, ‘You must have found me a confusing patient. I don’t know how you managed.’

  I giggled. He grinned. A striped lizard darted onto a rock near our feet, basked for a moment, then scuttled away. One of the warships in the bay hauled up its anchor and began to manoeuvre to enter the docks.

  ‘I know some of the ships that’ve been sunk,’ I murmured, ‘I’ve seen their crests on the dry dock wall. It’s like losing a friend.’

  He touched his hand briefly on mine, then withdrew it.

  The warship glided through the dockyard entrance and nudged into its mooring. Faint shouts from the docking party floated up the mountain.

  ‘I feel a little ashamed,’ I admitted, ‘this war has ruined so many lives but it’s helped me.’

  ‘You’ve more than repaid your promotion,’ he said warmly.

  I felt myself blushing. I straightened my shoulders and stood up.

  ‘I must say goodbye, Lieutenant Commander. And good luck wherever you’re going.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘And please call me David.’

  I hesitated, then put out my hand. ‘David.’

  We shook, and I began to head down the uneven path, aware of him watching me from behind. How long would I remember his face? That quiet, measured voice? Already he was being replaced by other patients, other young men needing to be healed. But David Horrocks was different. There was something special about him, and about the ease I felt with him. Yet this was surely the end. We’d had our second walk on the mountain, as he’d hoped. Using his name for the first time was a poignant kind of farewell.

  ‘When can we meet again?’

  I turned around. His white uniform was stark against the fynbos, his eyes challenged mine across the few yards that separated us. Didn’t he understand? Friendship between a brown girl and an earl’s son was madness! It could destroy our careers, risk the marriage he’d yet to acknowledge.

  ‘If there’s one thing this war has taught me,’ he came a few steps closer, ‘it’s that our lives are shockingly temporary. What we are, what we’ve built, can be easily swept away.’

  He glanced at the far mountains, then gave me a surprisingly tender smile.

  ‘Only the natural elements – sea, land, the human spirit – will survive.’

  And love, I told myself. Don’t forget love.

  The pines rustled behind us.

  ‘If you’re still here,’ I said as I turned down the path, ‘I walk at Seaforth on Thursday mornings.’

  I felt his gaze on me as I descended. The ground blurred in front of my feet and I found that I was crying. Was it about him, or was it a delayed reaction to the break-up with Piet? Or the cheerfulness required to buoy up my patients, the resilience required to withstand Sister Graham, the grim roll of war dead …

  I fought not to lift my hand and wipe away the tears.

  Perhaps it was simply the sun in my eyes.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Piet crouched in the undergrowth beside a eucalyptus tree, his heart thudding with a savagery that was making him feel sicker than the first time he’d burgled a house. He strained through the leaves, up the hill, to see the man she’d been talking to. An officer, judging by the uniform. They sat side by side as if they knew each other, as if they were friends.

  What the hell was she playing at?

  He, Piet, had just come off a hard morning’s fishing when he spotted her coming down the path below the quarry. But then she stopped for several minutes. Why was she waiting? Admiring the view? Views were always big for Lou.

  He was just about to turn away – but then she called out to someone he hadn’t noticed, an officer sitting on the ledge by the ropeway. The man jumped up, and took her hand. Then they sat down on the ledge and talked for far longer than if he was just an old patient and she was just being polite.

  He touched her arm. She didn’t stop him. They laughed together.

  The train with Piet’s fish left the station in a squeal of metal.

  He watched through the leaves as Louise stood up, stepped down the track, then onto the road and headed towards the Terrace. The officer got up, watched her disappear, then walked briskly down the path past the hospital, turned in the opposite direction, and made for St George’s Street. He was tall and looked more than thirty, with light hair and the badges and braid of a lieutenant commander. He had a scar on the side of his face but even so he carried himself with the confidence that rich folk seemed to drink with their mother’s milk. He passed quite close by. Piet parted the branches and watched him walk away.

  It must have been planned.

  Maybe this was what her rejection had been about. Not him, but some white bastard!

  God help her if she fancied him. And God help the officer. The Royal Navy didn’t like its heroes messing with the local talent. He realised that he was clenching his fists. He’d clenched his fists a lot lately.

  Amos had hit him once, with an open palm across the face. In front of Louise.

  Piet had learnt to use his fists very effectively in the reformatory but so far, apart from some near misses when he saw people leering at Lou, and the odd time when he’d needed to defend his catch, he’d held back.

  He climbed out of his hiding place and turned to look down at the dockyard.

  It wouldn’t be difficult to find out what ship he was on.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The good weather co
ntinued for the rest of the week – no mist and a molten-sapphire bay – making the erratic movements of Dorsetshire all the more obvious as I watched her on my way to and from the hospital.

  ‘Trials,’ Pa explained. ‘They’ve had an engine problem. They fix it in port and then they go out to test it, then they come back and tighten it up some more. Fiddly stuff.’

  ‘You know that one?’ Ma came up behind me on Wednesday morning and stroked my hair. Any relief she felt over my split with Piet had been quickly overwhelmed by the question of what to do about a defiant, newly single daughter. I overheard her badgering Pa. ‘We need to find someone soon!’ she urged. ‘Lou’s almost twenty-three!’ Poor Pa found himself caught between her insistence and my resolve to make my own choice.

  Why must marriage be such a relentless business for girls?

  ‘Yes, Dorsetshire. One of my old patients is on her.’

  ‘He even wrote her a letter,’ Pa called from the table. ‘To say thank you. Now that’s good manners, don’t you think?’

  Ma arched an eyebrow at him and patted my shoulder.

  I fought to keep my expression neutral as I took my place at the table.

  ‘Is the Dorsetshire fixed, now, Pa?’

  ‘Maybe.’ Pa shrugged. ‘They were in a hurry to get it done. The captain was standing over us in the engine room. She’s needed for convoy duty.’

  An hour later I stopped on the path to the hospital.

  The cruiser sketched a tiny outline on the horizon.

  For the last few nights, I’d lain awake and imagined the worst outcome of my latest invitation to David Horrocks. He’d probably get away with a rebuke and a discreet reassignment, but my punishment would be far harsher. I’d abused my unofficial acceptance by the hospital and compounded the sin by making friends with a patient from a higher tier of the pyramid. I’d be swiftly removed from the RNH and sent in disgrace to somewhere obscure where I’d never come into contact with a decorated, white officer again. ‘Totally unacceptable!’ I could hear Sister Graham snap. ‘A mistake to bring her here. She’s better off amongst her own.’