Chapter Thirty-One
I didn’t reply to David’s letter immediately. I hid it inside a book beneath my shell collection and left it to brew. I wanted some time to go by. I wanted to be sure I wasn’t simply succumbing to the elation without an appreciation of the danger it carried, not to mention the practical barriers. I looked for distraction. I began to go out more. I swam every day at Seaforth, even though it was strange to be on my own in the water. In the evening, sitting alongside Vera at the Criterion bioscope, I watched Judy Garland fall in love and Hedy Lamarr smoulder, but I knew there was no connection between the silver screen and real life.
‘You’re mad!’ Vera declared during the interval. ‘You’ll lose everything if they find out.’
I said nothing.
She unwrapped a toffee and sucked it noisily and leant closer to me. ‘Listen, Lou, we all thought you were too cocky wanting to get ahead but it turns out you were right. You’re a nurse and we’re cleaners or nothing at all. But this is different.’ She glanced around at the upper floor with its single-colour audience. ‘This is dangerous.’
‘I know,’ I whispered. ‘Now hush.’
‘I won’t hush,’ Vera’s voice rose and several people looked around, ‘because now it’s about more than you. Don’t you see?’
‘What do you mean?’
Vera rolled her eyes. ‘People look up to you. Kids want to be like you, with a career and all. If you’re disgraced, you set them back. You set us all back because the whites think there’s a girl we gave a chance to, and look how she repays us?’ Vera jiggled her feet. ‘Dipping her toes in places where she shouldn’t be!’
‘Ssh!’ I glanced around.
‘Don’t do it, Lou! Don’t touch him and,’ she pinched my arm, ‘don’t let him touch you.’
‘Even if I love him?’ the words slipped out.
‘Oh dear Lord, especially if you love him,’ Vera spluttered under her breath as the lights dimmed. ‘For a clever girl you’re not showing much brain any more.’
Later in the week, I asked for an interview with Matron at the RNH. She received me in her office overlooking a tranquil slice of the bay.
‘I’m grateful, Matron, for my theatre training.’
Matron inclined her head. She was younger than my Victoria matron, and spoke with a strong Scottish accent like some of my patients. My file lay open on the desk in front of her.
‘You’ll be fully qualified by the end of the year, Staff Nurse Ahrendts. We’re very pleased with your progress. Now, is there anything else?’
I glanced over her shoulder and out of the window. A light rain began to fall, smudging the horizon.
‘With your permission, Matron, may I speak candidly?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Can you advise me what my prospects might be after the war? As a local nurse, will I be able to stay at the RNH or will I have to leave?’
She smiled, revealing neat teeth. Matrons don’t often smile, so you rarely get to see their teeth.
‘I think that you have an excellent chance of staying. Your background is of no consequence in that decision. Given that most of our staff will return home, we’ll need experience to cover the transition and you’ve proved yourself to be outstanding. By that time, Nurse, you’ll be well on your way to Sister registration. Any hospital would be keen to recruit you.’
‘Thank you, Matron.’
She put on her glasses and looked down at my file. ‘I see the surgeon commander has recommended you for two days of advanced theatre training at the Victoria. We will try to accommodate that in the next few weeks.’
‘Thank you, Matron.’ I rose to my feet, trying to suppress a smile.
‘Just one thing, Staff Nurse,’ she looked at me carefully.
‘Sister Graham believes you allow too much familiarity with your patients. I don’t happen to agree, having observed you on the ward. But it’s worth being on your guard.’
‘Yes, Matron. I understand.’
But what about outside the ward, I wanted to ask.
Have I built up sufficient credit to be kept on if you find out I’ve crossed that particular line?
Later that night, after Ma and Pa had gone to bed, I took the letter out of its hiding place and read it through once more, tracing the angular strokes with my finger, imagining him sitting in his cabin, deciding which words to use, or even whether to write at all.
When one finds love – however unexpectedly – one should cherish it.
What should we do?
I picked up my hand mirror and looked at my face.
I’d taken risks to break free, to claw my way up the pyramid.
But there was still something missing.
It demanded the biggest risk of all.
I put down the mirror and took a piece of paper and a pen.
When you come back, I wrote,
We should be together.
But not in Simon’s Town.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Even in wartime, there are days in early spring when the Cape shrugs off the raw north wind and reaches for quiet, limpid sunshine and peace seems close enough to touch. The mountains abandon their clouds and scratch sharp outlines against the sky, and the guinea fowl start to kek hopefully for a mate. In St Francis Church in the spring of 1941, the pews were glowing yellow beneath the stained glass windows. I glanced about while the minister exhorted us to pray for the triumph of Allied good over Axis fascism, and wondered how God managed to support the devout on both sides of a war. Today there were fewer worshippers. Perhaps it was war-weariness or perhaps folk preferred to petition their God outdoors when the weather was fine. For me, that was true all year round.
‘Louise?’ Ma linked her arm through mine as we left the service. Pa was working an emergency shift. ‘Let’s take a walk. It’s such a lovely morning.’
She patted Mrs Hewson, who was shouting with one of the Phillips daughters, pointed up the mountain and cupped her hand to Mrs H’s ear. ‘We’re going the long way!’
We climbed up Victoria Lane and onto one of the elevated paths towards the Terrace.
‘There’s no getting away from it, Lou,’ Ma picked her way between the rocks, trying not to scuff her shoes, ‘you’re working too hard. You need to get out and about more.’
I smiled, perhaps the sermon had failed to hold her attention as well. There was no doubt where this conversation was heading. Also, in the months since the sinking of Bismarck, David had written me several letters, addressed to Ricketts Terrace. Ma noticed one, and gave it to me with a questioning look; the rest I managed to pick up before she got home from work.
There will be no memorials for Bismarck, or for HMS Hood, he wrote.
Just the longitude and latitude of where they went down. We picked up as many German survivors as we could, but there was a U-boat alert and we had to leave some behind. It’s not a sight I’ll forget, men tossed off the scrambling nets and left to die. Will we find humanity again at the end of this?
On a more cheerful note, I have a confession. I saw you once before on a previous visit by Dorsetshire, just after Dunkirk. You were in uniform, with your young man downtown. You didn’t see me but I couldn’t help noticing you. Your extraordinary eyes. Your graceful beauty. There’s a strange postscript to this. When I was ill with appendicitis before we put in to Simon’s Town, I imagined you again in my feverish moments. And when I woke up in hospital after the operation, you were there.
I wonder if you received my letter after Seaforth? The post takes months, I know. Perhaps I’ve been getting ahead of myself with the recollection above, please forgive me if I have.
I told myself I owed Ma no explanation.
I was doing nothing wrong, correspondence was not a sin. But I’m not a natural dissembler like Piet. Or Vera, who can lie without a qualm if it suits her, or choose to tell the truth in the most unvarnished way. Vera, though, was being kind and discreet, inviting me out to the cinema or to tea in the cafe near Sartorial
House, as if keeping me close by her side would reduce the opportunity for me to stray in the direction of my white admirer. She hated the colour bar as much as I did, but whereas I’d discovered it was bendable to an extent, she saw it as implacable at best, destructive at worst. Vera worried I’d be broken and never recover.
‘Will you please slow down, Louise?’
‘Sorry, Ma!’ I waited for her to catch up. ‘The only new men I meet are my patients.’
‘Exactly! And they’re no good for anything,’ Ma snorted, ‘except writing nice thank you notes! It’s a shame you don’t have any of our Cape Corps servicemen at the RNH.’
A pair of sugarbirds alighted on a protea. I pointed them out to David the first time we walked here.
‘Nothing will happen till after the war, Ma.’
‘That’s what everyone says, especially your pa.’ She mimicked his gravelly voice. ‘Wait for the war to be over, Sheila, then this will happen, or that might happen.’ A strand of wiry hair escaped from beneath her battered straw hat.
‘He’s right,’ I said gently, putting my arm around her and trying to lighten the moment. ‘And I’m too tired for a romance right now.’
‘Nonsense,’ Ma retorted, giving me a brisk nudge. ‘It’s only marriage that needs stamina.’
I laughed and looked about for a level rock and the distraction of a view. ‘Let’s stop here for a bit.’
Ma gathered her skirt and sat down gingerly. I perched beside her.
‘I’m serious, Louise. You must get out more. You won’t meet anyone new until you go out and try.’ A tugboat curved out of the harbour and slowed in the approaches, pitching in its creamy wash. ‘Is there something bothering you, child? Something you want to talk about?’
As I said, I’m not a good liar. Like Vera, Ma knew me too well not to suspect something was amiss. But the questions I’d like to have asked were too revealing.
Had Ma ever done anything she knew was wrong?
Does God reserve a special punishment for those who contemplate their sin with the kind of longing that gripped me every time I reread David’s letters?
‘Ma, when you fell in love, did you know it straightaway?’
‘Of course!’ She chuckled. ‘I took one look at your pa and knew he was the one. And so will you, when the time comes.’ She paused and shot me a quick glance. ‘Or perhaps it has and you’re not telling.’
My heart lurched. I stared at the sea.
‘I’m heart sore about Piet, though,’ Ma went on, motioning vaguely toward the Philander place, ‘all the times we fed him and trusted him, when he was just a common thief.’
Ma, I reflected, would be horrified to know that Piet and I were not all that different.
Stealing is stealing, whether it’s property or a husband.
‘You mustn’t worry about me,’ I said with a show of firmness. ‘I’m doing fine.’
Away to the east, where Cape Hangklip marked the far entrance to the bay, a vessel poked above the sea horizon. With a puff of smoke, the tug got underway again. We watched it sweep past the lighthouse towards the distant ship.
‘You’re twenty-three,’ Ma said crisply, swatting away a persistent bee. ‘Make an effort! The war can’t stop you going to Cape Town. Or visit Lola and her husband in Mitchell’s Plain. Mrs Phillips says there are heaps of decent young men in Mitchell’s Plain. We’d have to find out about their families, of course—’
‘Maybe I will. Shall we carry on, Ma? Pa will be home soon.’
I helped her to her feet.
She held on to my hand.
‘I couldn’t be more proud of you, Lou. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again. You’re making a mistake if you think you can manage on your own for ever.’ She gripped my hand more tightly. ‘This is a hard place to be brown and female and alone, even if you’re the prettiest and cleverest in the room.’
4th December, 1941
Dear Louise,
I’m writing this hurriedly in the hope of catching the last collection.
We docked in Cape Town this morning, and there’s a week’s leave for all but a skeleton crew. Thanks to your wonderful South African hospitality, some of my shipmates are going upcountry to stay with farming families and I’ve received the offer of a garden cottage in Oranjezicht, below Table Mountain. It’s fully equipped and the owners will be away.
I know this is sudden, but can you spend a few hours, a day – or more – with me? I long to see you.
From tomorrow, I will wait every day at noon in the Dutch East India Company Gardens, next to St George’s Cathedral. Please come.
In haste, with love,
David
I’ve lied in the past to bolster Piet’s self-esteem, and to convince Ma I was acceptable to my white peers. And I’ve concealed dreams, letters of application, David …
But I’ve never lied outright for my own benefit. My own pleasure.
‘This is most inconvenient, Staff Nurse,’ Sister Graham frowned. The VAD clattered pans in the sluice. ‘Could you not have given more warning?’
‘I’m sorry, Sister. It’s a friend who’s taken ill.’
‘Do you have sufficient leave?’
‘Yes, Sister,’ I replied, making respectful eye contact. ‘I’ve taken no leave since I was assigned to the RNH.’
She gave me a sharp look. She herself was not averse to the odd day off.
‘Can’t you fit this – extracurricular – nursing around your existing shifts?’
‘My friend lives in Cape Town, Sister. I will need to go by train.’
My dual role as both ward and theatre nurse gave me useful leverage over Sister. I’d taken care to get the approval of the surgeon commander in advance, an approval that I could cite if she chose to refuse.
Sister pursed her lips. ‘Very well. Two days, taken from tomorrow. And in future, kindly avoid commitments that will interfere with the smooth running of this ward.’
‘Yes, Sister.’
I turned around smartly and walked back to my post, astonished at how easy it was. Maybe this was why lying could become addictive: if the first time is simple, you want to test your ability again, even increase the stakes.
And so I did.
‘I’ve planned a little trip,’ I said later that day, darting a glance at Ma, who beamed. ‘I’m going to see Lola and then I’ll spend the night at the nurses’ home at the Victoria. I’ve got theatre training the next day. Like last time.’
‘Well that’s kind, Lou,’ Pa said heartily. ‘Lola must be miserable, stuck so far from her friends.’
‘She should have been more careful who she ran about with,’ Ma observed tartly, ‘but it’ll be a good break for Lou. Won’t it be lovely if the weather holds?’
And that was the end of it, although Ma popped her head into my bedroom while I was gathering myself and said she was pleased I’d taken her advice to heart, and reminded me to include a long-sleeved jersey in case the December heat were suddenly to vanish.
What do you pack when you’re going to meet a man who may – will? – become your lover? I had no smart clothing, in fact my nurse’s uniform was probably the smartest outfit I possessed. And there was no time to buy anything new. But I had a sleeveless blue dress, made by Mrs Hewson, the one I was wearing when we met on the street. I saw how he noticed it, how his eyes approved. That could be my day dress. There was also a deception to maintain, so I packed a uniform for the mythical day’s work at the Victoria, praying that no twist of fate intervened to reveal the lie.
Then a nightgown, a brush, the best of my simple underwear …
In fact, the preparations stopped me from dwelling on what might actually happen. The touch of skin on skin, the thrill I could hardly bear to imagine.
I’ve never lied like this before. And I’ve never done anything so shameless.
But, if I look into my heart, I was committed from the moment I gave him the seashell.
Beautiful, he said, as he ran his finger over its sh
arp ridges. Fierce, but beautiful.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I examined each one of my fellow passengers on the train to Cape Town. An elderly couple, a labourer, a mother with a child in school uniform, and a pair of teenage girls who got off at Fish Hoek. No one recognised me. I hardly recognised myself, caught up in such deliberate deceit. And yet, as we passed each station, my heart raced with the possibility of a successful escape – and the simple thrill of a journey beyond Simon’s Town. The summit of Devil’s Peak posed above wispy cloud just for me, the massive rampart of Table Mountain leant protectively over the train as we drew into the city.
When does a lie become the right thing to do?
December heat shimmered. I hurried up Adderley Street, longing to peer about at the lively crowds, but keeping my head down. I was wearing a scarf that matched my blue dress and covered my forehead. Hopefully just another nondescript coloured woman heading to work.
He was waiting for me on a bench beneath the line of trees that flanked the main walk through the Gardens. I glanced around. It was midday but the office crowds had yet to arrive. There was no one about. I’d stayed close to the shrubbery, so he didn’t spot me at first. He was gazing up at the Cathedral.
He turned.
‘Louise!’ he leapt up and hurried over. He put his hands on my shoulders but we didn’t embrace. We could never embrace in public. He glanced down at my suitcase. I felt myself flush.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
He picked up my case.
‘Shall we go?’
The cottage David had been lent lay off a side road in a garden thick with proteas, and shadowed by the face of the mountain. It took us about twenty minutes to get there, but we didn’t hurry. He talked quietly, about rejoining his ship in Scotland, about being presented to the King while His Majesty was inspecting the fleet, about the purple heather that coloured the mountains like our ericas did here … gentle conversation, designed to set me at ease, and requiring no particular response. He was in uniform – if anything more elegantly handsome than I remembered – and he was careful not to walk too close to me. To an outsider, we could have been simply friends or perhaps, if I’d been white and less scarved, a brother and sister meeting after a long absence.
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