The Girl from Simon's Bay

by Barbara Mutch

  Reverse discrimination! Sam chuckled. He’d be judged for the skills of his hands – but their colour might very well turn out to be an advantage!

  His real fear was the prospect of leaving Ma behind. God knows what further restrictions the government had in store for non-whites. But he knew she was right to push him: this might be the only chance he got to make something of himself. If he’d been the parent, and Ma his daughter, he’d have done the same thing.

  He squinted up at the Simonsberg. Clear. And no wind at all. If they’d still been at Ricketts Terrace, he’d have persuaded Ma to come with him to Seaforth for an early evening swim. Ma adored the sea, and could surf the waves like a teenager.

  He kept up a good pace along St George’s Street.

  The police were quick to suspect you of loitering if you didn’t look sharp.

  He reached Alfred Lane and glanced up at the mosque.

  Why not?

  Ma and his Grandpa never came back, but he liked to see the old place, even if it was in ruins. It reminded him of the happy times when Pa was sober, and Ma used to laugh more, and Grandpa Solly first told him he had a talent for woodworking.

  The palms were still there, but their trunks were no longer trimmed and old fronds dragged on the ground like broken bones. A pair of starlings burst from a tangle of undergrowth and shot over his head. The end cottages were in the best shape, but the Phillipses was completely derelict. A clump of prickly pears was gaining a foothold where Ma’s washing line used to be. But the view—

  Sam stopped.

  There was a girl sitting on the wall.

  Ella hadn’t gone to Ricketts Terrace – or what remained of it – straightaway. She’d wanted to absorb the atmosphere of the town and try to recreate the British naval base in her mind via Dad’s words, before turning to more recent events. The abandoned Terrace would be a depressing sight, and one she’d have preferred to deal with only after finding Louise alive and well.

  But it was now over a week into her stay and Louise was still elusive.

  She couldn’t put it off any longer.

  The Terrace had to be faced.

  Listen for the muezzin’s call when the wind blows in your direction.

  The mosque will still be there, El.

  Places of worship are the only structures exempt from demolition.

  On a glorious afternoon – were there ever afternoons in this part of the world that weren’t? – she walked along St George’s Street past the string of family-run stores – Runciman’s, Sartorial House – until she found Alfred Lane. A small, elegant mosque sat at its head. She climbed up the lane and turned right. Unkempt palm trees drooped over a row of broken-down cottages that had once been painted white. She stepped over a small stream and picked her way along a dirt path. Even though it was only a hundred yards or so above the town centre, the place was silent. Eerily so. Weeds sprouted at the base of the tumbledown walls. Several of the roofs had collapsed and were cantilevered at odd angles to the rest. A fallen washing line poked from scrappy vegetation. A pair of greasy-looking black birds squawked in a doorway. The mountain rose steeply behind.

  Ricketts Terrace.

  The words on her father’s returned letter sprang at Ella.

  ‘Gone. Address unknown’.

  ‘Who do you know in South Africa, Dad?’ Ella remembered her casual query as she looked over his shoulder.

  There was a pole in the ground, but the street name had been removed.

  Grief, deep and painful, rose up in Ella’s throat.

  Would he know, if she failed in her mission?

  She sat down on a crumbling wall below the end cottage and gazed at the stupendous view. The stone buildings of the dockyard spread in an orderly pattern. Beyond the harbour wall, the sea laid a satin quilt to distant mountains. As she watched, an eddy of wind flickered across its surface like the casual brush of a hand.

  How could anyone survive the loss of this?

  He should go.

  She was white.

  He didn’t need some kind of accusation so close to his escape.

  ‘Wait!’ the girl called as he was about to turn away. ‘Please, wait!’

  He turned back. She wasn’t South African, her accent was British. She was fair and very pretty under a floppy sunhat. She came towards him. She wore a white dress that showed off her small frame.

  ‘Excuse me, do you know this place? Do you know the people who lived here?’

  He hesitated. Some kind of activist? That wouldn’t help him either. Any questionable contacts, and they’d refuse his passport. Or serve him with a banning order like what had happened recently to Benji and several of the Communists. Confined to home. No contact with anyone, let alone meeting friends outdoors. That was considered by the law as a ‘riotous assembly’.

  ‘Please,’ the girl was wringing her hands, now. ‘I’m trying to trace a family who lived here. My father knew them in the war. I don’t know where they’ve gone.’

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  She sighed, and looked out over the bay. ‘My father loved a woman here. He wanted to come back to find her, but he died before it was possible.’ She looked at Sam, and there were tears in her eyes.

  He stared at her.

  ‘What was her name?’

  ‘It was Ahrendts. Louise Ahrendts.’

  Sam sat down on the wall, thrust his hands through his hair, and tried to order his churning thoughts. His father, in a moment of self-pity, had once shouted that Louise had never stopped loving an officer and how could anyone compete with that? Grandma, hearing the commotion, had quickly hustled Sam out of the room. When he asked Ma, she would say only that she’d met someone briefly in the war but it wasn’t meant to be and she’d returned to Piet. It never occurred to Sam that the officer might be white, and British …

  ‘Are you alright?’ she bent down to him. ‘It’s very hot—’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m fine.’

  She sat down next to him. A tug released a plume of smoke and began to edge from its mooring, a vee of wake rippling behind it.

  ‘It’s more beautiful than I ever imagined,’ she breathed.

  He looked at her. He didn’t often sit next to pretty white girls – or rather, pretty white girls didn’t often choose to sit next to him.

  ‘You should see it at night,’ he said. ‘The mountain and the sea turn different shades of silver. Sometimes you see dolphins jumping along the path of the moon in the water.’

  She looked at him with delight, and smiled. She was different, too. More natural than the girls he knew like Sandra Meintjies, with her poses. A small fishing boat was putting out from Long Beach. He watched it pitch through the breakers, waiting for a sense of whether to be honest or not. Pa used to row out from that very same spot, cast his net and then haul in the catch from shore. Pa, who knew about this girl’s father.

  ‘Can you help me find Louise Ahrendts? My father wrote to her but his letters were returned.’ She gestured about her at the collapsed cottages.

  ‘Why do you want to find her?’

  ‘I’d like to honour his memory,’ she swallowed, then lifted her chin, ‘and give her the letters. But no one can help. There are no forwarding addresses.’

  The boat was stationary, now. Sam could just make out the lattice disturbance on the surface of the water as the net sank into the sea.

  ‘They wanted us to disappear. They wanted to erase every sign of us.’

  ‘Us? You lived here?’ Her eyes bored into his.

  The boat began to pull back to shore. He remembered the strain of the oars against his palms when his father took him out as a boy.

  ‘Yes. And Louise Ahrendts is my mother.’

  The girl put her hands over her mouth and turned away to look over the bay. She said nothing. He sneaked a glance at her. She was crying silently, the tears pouring down her pale cheeks.

  ‘Please,’ he touched her tentatively on the arm, ‘don’t cry—’

&nbs
p; She wiped her face and managed a smile.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She dug into a fabric shoulder bag and pulled out a tissue and blew her nose.

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Ella. Ella Horrocks.’

  ‘I’m Sam Philander.’

  She stared at him, searching his face, then reached into her bag again. ‘I also have this. It comes from my father’s desk.’

  She held out a beautiful, ribbed shell. A Pink Lady.

  The same as the one Ma kept on her bedside table.

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  Ella took her dinner alone at a corner table. She’d asked Sam Philander if he’d like to join her, but he looked at her oddly and said that it was against the law for him to eat with her in the hotel. The place only served whites. She realised, then, that it was just as well they’d met and talked on the deserted Terrace. No one could see them breaking whatever law applied between whites and coloureds outdoors, food or no food.

  As the sun sank towards the western flanks, Sam explained that his father was dead, and he and his mother and grandfather lived in adjoining flats in Ocean View, some miles from Simon’s Town. Even though they were clearly alone, Sam seemed nervous about addressing her directly, preferring to talk towards the sea or the mountain.

  ‘I’m a carpenter,’ he said. ‘I restore furniture and do wood carving.’

  She glanced at his hands, broad, strong-fingered, golden-skinned.

  ‘I’m sorry about your father, Sam. And about the eviction.’

  When he did manage to look at her, she was struck by his eyes. Dad said Louise had almond eyes. Sam Philander’s were a deep steel blue. Not unfriendly but cautious. With his dark hair, they gave him a faintly intimidating look. The sort of man you’d want on your side.

  ‘My father died two months ago, of cancer. But somehow,’ she paused, ‘it was as if the disease liberated him in the final weeks. He never spoke before, but then he began to tell me about the war, the part he played in the Bismarck action, the sinking of his ship off Ceylon.’

  One sip of water and half a biscuit per man.

  Rescue came late on the second day, just as hope – and water – were almost spent.

  ‘I learnt about his early life, too. How he battled my grandfather for the chance to go to sea. How a picture, amazingly’ – she laughed shakily and pointed at the dockyard – ‘of HMS Hood in Simon’s Town, spurred him on.’

  ‘A picture?’

  ‘Yes. It was in the Illustrated London News. Dad was fifteen at the time. “Flagship to show colours on world tour”, the caption said. There were flags and bunting and cheering crowds. And your mountains,’ she waved an arm towards them. ‘He was so captivated he found himself crushing the magazine in his hands. And so was I, actually, when he showed me the photos. I wanted to come here and see for myself.’

  A light breeze stirred in the overgrown palms.

  Sam seemed distracted, watching the train edge slowly out of the station.

  Perhaps she’d said too much, too soon.

  But even so, maybe he would understand?

  ‘Sam,’ she risked touching his arm briefly, ‘I know it sounds crazy, but I think their romance was somehow ordained.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He shifted around to face her.

  ‘He knew about Simon’s Town long before he ever visited, from that photo. He noticed your mother, too, on an early trip, before he’d even met her.’

  Slender, with that twist of the exotic so unmistakeable in the local girls.

  ‘And when he got appendicitis,’ she rushed on, ‘this was where he was brought. She nursed him. After the Dorsetshire sank, he came back here with his captain and they met again.’

  ‘But what about her race?’

  ‘It didn’t matter. He said …’ She stopped and recalled her father’s actual words. ‘“Her colour was of no consequence to me.” They were the love of each other’s lives. Race, background, marital status … all faded.’

  ‘But not enough for them to marry,’ he said shortly, after a moment.

  ‘No,’ Ella murmured.

  It was getting dark. A troop of noisy grouse-like birds flapped to their roosts. Streetlights began to wink along the margin of the bay, picking out the towns and leaving the mountains to recede into the night. Sam got up. His face was hard to read in the lowering light but Ella thought she saw anger.

  ‘It’s not what you think!’ She jumped up and dashed a hand to her eyes where the pesky tears were beginning to well again. ‘I’m to blame, Sam. It’s my fault.’

  ‘How is that?’ His eyes met hers coolly.

  ‘They couldn’t marry because of me.’

  Chapter Sixty-Six

  Sometimes significant moments announce themselves with a fanfare. Other times they don’t announce themselves at all, they just arrive. After supper, say, once the dishes have been done.

  ‘Goodnight all,’ Pa hugged me and patted Sam. ‘Bobotie just like your ma’s, Lou.’ He shuffled off to his one-roomed flat next door.

  ‘Night, Pa. Sleep well.’

  ‘I went to the Terrace today,’ Sam said.

  I undid my hair. After a whole day of it being pinned beneath my cap, my scalp ached.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s still the same. Broken down but not demolished yet.’

  I sighed. ‘The authorities don’t know what to do, it’s controversial ground. Whites don’t want to build there.’

  ‘The starlings are nesting in the sitting room.’

  ‘Don’t go back, Sam, it’s too upsetting.’

  Opportunistic starlings, black-and-white butcher birds, the view from the doorway …

  ‘I met someone there.’

  ‘A vagrant? I knew there’d be problems if the cottages were left vacant.’

  ‘No, it was a young woman. She’s from England.’

  I stiffened, put a hand out for my tea, then withdrew it.

  ‘You need to be brave, Ma,’ Sam said gently and shifted his chair closer. ‘She gave me this.’ He felt in his pocket and pulled out a seashell and placed it on the table between us.

  A Pink Lady.

  Still lustrous, still fierce, but smoother than when it was newly found.

  For a while I just sat and stared at it. Then I reached out to touch it, but my hand was shaking so much he picked up the shell and put it in my palm and closed my fingers gently around it. Ella Horrocks, here in Simon’s Town? Sam’s sister! And David? I opened my mouth to confess, to ask forgiveness, but most of all to ask where he was – but Sam spoke first.

  ‘She said her father loved Louise Ahrendts during the war and wanted to come back and find her.’

  ‘He’s here?’ I felt the familiar leap in my heart.

  Sam knelt in front of my chair and reached up to embrace me, gently guide my head to his shoulder. ‘No, he’s not. Only his daughter. I’m afraid he passed away three months ago.’

  The shards of magic that once exploded about me at Seaforth and hovered in my wake for so many years, folded their wings for good and slipped away. I became aware of peripheral things, the dripping of water from our leaky tap, the creak of the stairs, the oppressive weight of silence broken only by my erratic breathing.

  I can’t say when I’ll be back, he’d said, taking my hand as we walked on Table Mountain with the bustling city at our feet.

  I know, I replied. We’ll have to wait for a favourable wind.

  Ella Horrocks had told Sam that her parents were divorced earlier in the year. David was planning to come to Simon’s Town to find me when he fell ill. He confided in Ella about our love affair and asked her to go in his place.

  ‘She’s been searching for you, Ma. All over! The RNH, the navy, the post office. She was about to try False Bay Hospital when I met her.’

  Sam found her by chance at Ricketts Terrace, sitting on the wall in front of our broken cottage. Ella wept, Sam said, when she discovered that he was Louise’s son, and gave him the seashell that had been on h
er father’s desk since the war.

  ‘She wants to meet you, Ma.’

  Yes, I thought, and I need to meet her – but not yet. I must first mourn what I’ve lost. Sam’s sister must wait until I’ve been alone with David.

  Sam sat with me for a while, stroking my hand where it held the Pink Lady. I didn’t cry, not then. ‘We’ll talk more tomorrow, Sammie. You go to bed, now.’

  ‘Will you be okay, Ma? Will you think about meeting Ella?’

  ‘Of course,’ I smiled at him and touched his cheek. ‘Don’t say anything to Grandpa yet.’

  What will she carry of David? His fair hair? The warmth beneath the initial reserve? I searched Sam’s worried face as he got up. Had he seen anything of himself in her?

  He must be told, of course, but only after I’ve met Ella and taken her measure. I need to be sure she has room in her life and her heart for a brother.

  The secret has to remain mine for a little longer.

  I’m still a good actress and prepared to lie if necessary, so no one noticed any difference in my work or my mood the following Monday.

  ‘Very well, thank you, Matron. And yourself? The family?’

  I assisted in two operations, checked on the patients in intensive care, and then went home on the bus and made a late lunch for Pa.

  ‘I’m going out for a while, Pa. I just need a walk to clear my head. It’s been a busy day.’

  ‘You work too hard, Lou,’ Pa grumbled as he gathered our plates. ‘They take advantage. You get on then, I’ll wash up.’

  I knew I had to be near the sea to think about David, with the cries of seagulls in my ears.

  Seaforth would have been more fitting, but it was too intimate and, these days, off-limits to me as a woman of colour. An impersonal beach would be better. And Noordhoek was vast, miles of hard-packed sand bordering a fierce ocean too dangerous for swimming. No one would spot me amid its sweep and tell me I was trespassing. It took me three quarters of an hour to reach the beach over rough terrain but I found the sea at the end of it. Cross-currents and backwash ripped through the water, turning it into a mess of half-formed breakers and torn foam. I sat down by the high-tide mark. The spoor of seabirds crossed the sand like delicate train tracks. On this side of the peninsula, the sun sets directly into the Atlantic rather than slipping behind Red Hill as it used to from our vantage point in Simon’s Town. I watched its fiery descent, the way the sky flared and then faded in its wake. Slowly, and then with increasing speed, the brilliant circle shrank below the horizon. I felt David reaching for me, his strong hands gentle on my skin, his eyes resting on me warmly, the words we both believed filling my heart.