‘Of course, sir.’
‘Good.’ The doctor gave me a quick, tired smile. ‘Carry on.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
It wasn’t all grim.
My patients, mostly young lads, were unfailingly cheerful. I grew to love their banter, even if I couldn’t always make out the words they used – moother and bairns – when I wrote letters home for them, my hands substituting for their bandaged ones. And the hospital’s setting, high above the bay and prey to the antics of baboons, gave us all – patients and staff, although perhaps not Sister – a bracing lift whenever we happened to glance out of the window or cock an ear to the roof.
For a few moments, the war faded, the suffering eased.
‘Do many of your patients die?’ Ma ventured as we did the dishes one evening in the narrow, candlelit kitchen on Ricketts Terrace.
‘Sometimes,’ I touched her shoulder. ‘But our doctors are clever and we have the very best equipment from England. If anyone’s going to save them, we will.’
‘I don’t think I could do it, Lou,’ Ma shuddered. ‘See boys die.’
‘It’s my war, Ma.’ I put an arm around her and rested my cheek on her hair. ‘Pa fights for every ship, I fight for every sailor. I look past their wounds. I imagine how they’ll be when they’re healed.’
Ma nodded and blinked away unexpected tears. ‘And how do the staff treat you?’
‘Mostly fine.’ I hesitated. ‘Sister isn’t sure if I’m good enough but I’ll show her!’ I laughed, and passed Ma a dirty plate. ‘Luckily, the doctors trust me.’
‘And so they should,’ Ma said severely, bending over the sink. ‘War has no time for a colour bar. Just make sure you store up good references, Lou. The old ways will return in peacetime, you mark my words. Leopards don’t change their spots.’
‘Well, they offer sister training, so if I get in fast I could qualify before the war’s over and those spotty leopards come back!’ I teased Ma gently.
She pursed her lips and added more hot water.
‘And Piet? What does he think of your new job?’
I put away the glasses in the cupboard Pa had mounted above the sink. Piet was proud of me, and greedy for my earning power, but he blamed my work for my reluctance to commit.
‘He wants us to get married and move to Seaforth until we get our own place.’ I glanced at Ma. ‘He says I can keep on nursing.’
Lately, he’d taken to kissing me and whispering in my ear how much he needed me with a violence he’d never shown before.
‘Let’s do it now, Lou,’ he’d mutter, his lips crushing mine, his scarred hands gripping my waist. ‘I won’t get you pregnant.’ He pressed the length of his body against me.
‘No!’ I fought not to struggle out of his arms and sprint away, ‘you’re hurting me—’
It was a version of love that was hard to like. And if I agreed to sleep with him and found no tenderness but only the same hot demands, I wouldn’t be able to extricate myself as easily as Vera, say, who readily turfed her boyfriends out of her bed. I was respectable. Respectable girls who went into men’s rooms were expected to marry – or be for ever second-hand. Ma had taught me well.
‘And what do you say?’ Ma shot a quick glance at me.
I put a hand up to my flushed face.
‘I don’t want to move in with Amos and Den. Am I selfish, Ma?’
But it wasn’t about selfishness. Or guilt.
I caught my breath.
It was mostly, now, about who we’d become.
‘I don’t think you want to marry him at all. Wherever you might end up living.’
Ma’s words sliced through the close air of the cottage like the hot metal that had cut down Seaman Wills. From the docks came the resonating thud of hammers as Pa’s late shift completed repairs on HMS Dorsetshire. Boiler, Pa had said.
Ma patted my hand and left the kitchen.
I hung up the tea towels and checked the curtains were tightly drawn. German raiders were hunting in Cape waters, which meant that the Terrace had to be rigorous about blackout, especially when the wind was up. It’ll only take one stray light, Pa used to wag his finger at our neighbours, especially old Gamiel who was more devoted to his brandy than to the war, to guide the enemy to the rich pickings below.
Ma’s words refused to go away, even as I prepared the ward the next day for the surgeon commander’s round. Patients were to be medicated strictly according to their bed letters, able to respond to questions if awake, and freshly pyjama-ed.
I don’t think you want to marry him.
How had she known, how had she divined, my very thoughts? The moment when I cut loose from the guilt I felt for neglecting Piet, for not saving him …
I focused on changing Able Seaman Hill’s – number eight’s – dressings.
‘It’s healing well, Able Seaman.’ The ruthless path of shrapnel unfolded like braille beneath my fingers. ‘Just be patient and you’ll soon be as good as new.’
The young man tried to smile through swollen lips. He’d be scarred for life. I wondered if he was married, if his wife would recoil …
‘God bless you, Nurse,’ he struggled and I leant closer, ‘for everything.’
The ward radio crackled with the latest war reports. Our walking patients clustered around, avid for better news. I listened as I continued around the ward. England remained alone, threatened with invasion. Mr Churchill, his voice rumbling with defiance, confirmed more sinkings in the Atlantic. He gave no figures, but if, like Pa, you worked in the dockyard you soon found out. ‘Belfast, Courageous, Rawalpindi …’ Pa regularly recited the lost ships’ names in disbelief, ‘half a million tons in the first three months of the war, Lou, including the Royal Oak! Captain sneaked past the anti-submarine nets, picked his target cool as you like, torpedoed the Oak, and accepted a medal from Herr Hitler himself!’
Closer to home, on our north-western border, German South West Africa lurked, surely a springboard for further aggression. Every day, after maintenance was completed on our shore batteries, the guns were trained on the approaches. We had no other heavy defences apart from ships in port. Pa’s docks would be the first target, the naval buildings, the workshops.
‘Nurse?’ Signalman Jamieson winced as he shifted his weight. ‘Can I get up?’
I closed my mind to the possibility of treating people I loved.
‘Tomorrow, Signalman,’ I lifted his wrist to check his pulse. ‘You can sit on the verandah if the weather’s fine.’
‘Beautiful out there, I wish I was on the beach,’ the signalman said longingly as he subsided onto his pillow.
I glanced out of the ward window. Crystal sky, the southeaster muted behind the Simonsberg, the sea lightly ruffled, limpets and whelks and clam shells stippling the high tide mark. I felt the familiar tug of my first love.
I placed the signalman’s wrist back onto the covers. He held on to my hand.
‘Nurse? Is it true you can hear the sea if you hold a shell to your ear?’
‘Yes, I’ve heard it myself,’ I smiled, gently extricating my hand.
You could even pretend it was the whisper of someone who loved you.
I moved to the last bed. Petty Officer Forbes. Leg in traction. Awake, medicated. I wiped my forehead and straightened my skirt. The ward was ready. Sister might even go so far as to approve. And somehow, amid the dressing of wounds and the talk of worsening conflict and echoing seashells, I’d finally made a decision. I glanced out of the window once more and felt my spirits lift. We were at war, but the sun was climbing towards its zenith and the colour of the water was changing from turquoise to lapis.
There was no time to lose.
I once believed I was being kind by telling Piet I still loved him. But perhaps that sort of lie offers only a drawn-out cruelty. The truth was that the old Piet was gone, and I no longer loved the new, angry one. Gone, too, was the girl he taught to skip stones, the one who ran barefoot over scalding tarmac to meet him. Our Seaforth
childhood could never bridge the gap between us. And now that he had a proper job, he no longer needed sparing.
Chapter Nineteen
‘Lou!’ Pa called, as I came down the driveway of the RNH at the end of my duty. He got up stiffly from the rock he’d been resting on. The rating at the guardhouse poked his head out, raised his hand to Pa and saluted as I went by. ‘Goodnight, Ma’am.’
‘Goodnight! You don’t need to fetch me, Pa!’ I reached up and kissed his weather-beaten cheek. ‘Not up the mountain after your shift. I can walk back on my own.’
‘Ah, but then you don’t get to hear the latest news. I can’t tell you at home, it’d be around the Terrace in no time. You know how your ma can’t keep secrets. Here,’ Pa pretended to look around conspiratorially, ‘only the baboons are listening!’
‘What news?’
Not worse than I’d been hearing, surely?
We turned onto a path that cut diagonally across the mountain towards Ricketts Terrace. Sugarbirds, their long tails waving in the breeze like streamers, perched on the pincushion proteas that dotted the slope.
‘It’s the German battleship Graf Spee,’ Pa hissed with satisfaction. ‘She’s been sunk!’
‘What? The same one that attacked our ships in the Indian Ocean?’ The one that injured Seaman Wills, I wanted to add. The one that might slip into False Bay at night searching for more prey …
‘The same. And,’ Pa leant closer, ‘Exeter, Achilles and Ajax did it! At last, some revenge!’
‘Were many killed?’
‘Ja, so they say.’ Pa’s face sobered. ‘Terrible business. Exeter badly shelled, direct hits to her forward turrets. Achilles, too. They got the gun director tower. They’ve gone to the Falklands to repair. But don’t say anything till it’s official. Careless talk, as they say.’
‘I remember,’ I stared out over the bay. ‘Ajax and Achilles have called here before.’
‘We’ve repaired their engines, I’ve had their oil on my hands. We must paint a special mark on their crests to show they’ve knocked off a battleship!’ Pa chuckled. ‘Let’s raise a secret glass, Lou. Why don’t you invite Piet for supper? He’s doing better, now.’
I turned back down the path. Pa stumped after me.
‘You must decide soon, Lou-Lou. You can’t keep him on a string for ever. Come, sit down.’ Pa patted a convenient rock by the path. I lifted my cloak and sat down beside him. The sea’s glittering surface was roughening with whitecaps. Above the haze of sea spray, the Hottentots Holland Mountains were black against the clear, purple twilight.
‘I can’t forgive him, Pa,’ I said. ‘And I don’t love him. Not any more.’
‘Lou!’ Pa gaped. ‘He’s a sure thing! There aren’t many good boys left, not in Simon’s Town—’
‘Are you certain Piet’s good? How can I trust him?’
Pa passed a hand over his thinning hair. I knew what he was thinking. No local girl in her right mind would turn down a sure match, even one that had been through a rocky period. Perhaps girls from rich, leafy suburbs below Table Mountain, where family money would paper over any disappointment, but not girls from Simon’s Town where the wind blew everyone’s secrets into the open, and the pool of eligible bachelors was small and ever-shrinking. A whistle sounded and we watched the late afternoon train edge out of the station and crawl around the margin of the bay. Smoke puffed in fat ovals from its locomotive. If I’m honest – and this seems to be my time for honesty – I admit I was keener on the vivid journey to the reformatory than on seeing Piet at the other end.
‘You’re clever, Lou,’ Pa said finally, and rather sadly. ‘And beautiful. Clever, beautiful girls can often do what plainer, sillier girls can’t. But,’ his broad fingers twisted together, ‘if you’re too choosy, you’ll find yourself alone one of these days. Stuck on a narrow shelf, like Mrs Hewson says.’
I reached for his anxious hands and stilled them. Dear Pa! Like Ma, he can’t help being afraid of what lies ahead each time I step out of my place.
‘They say Graf Spee scuttled herself,’ Pa said, returning to the war. ‘Couldn’t break out past the British. Serves that Hitler right for starting the fight in the first place.’ He sighed and straightened his back. ‘Be careful, Lou. That’s all I’m going to say. Be careful you don’t throw away something you might regret. Once Piet’s gone, he’ll be gone for good. Now, we should get home. Your ma’ll be cross if we keep supper waiting.’
Around the bay, a swathe of cloud was piping itself above the distant Muizenberg Mountain like one of Ma’s crisp dessert meringues.
‘Wait!’ I reached out and stopped him. ‘There’s something else – I don’t need to get married, Pa. I can earn enough on my own. And when the war’s over, the world will be different. I’m sure of it! It’s happening already.’ I flung my arms wide, embracing the town at our feet and the country to the north as if I was the equal of anyone in it. If I worked hard, why shouldn’t I be?
Pa stared at me in dismay. I jumped up and hugged him close, feeling the bulky chest and the arms that had held me so lovingly all my life. Pa’s view was confined to Simon’s Town. I’d begun to see a wider, more generous world.
‘So I won’t marry anyone unless we can be partners, and love each other equally.’
Pa was silent.
I watched the train disappear around the lower flank of Elsie’s Peak. Its trailing smoke drifted and dissolved against the mountainside. I kept my arm linked with Pa’s, and nudged him down the path.
‘Please don’t worry about me, Pa. And don’t say anything yet to Ma.’
‘As you wish. What about Piet?’
‘He’ll have to find someone new.’ I glanced towards Seaforth. ‘Someone who will love him for who he is now.’
Chapter Twenty
For as long as he could remember, Piet and his fellow fishermen had always put to sea at Seaforth, but nowadays there was a navy inspection point close to his favourite fishing spot where all vessels approaching the harbour had to be checked because, with cheeky Germans off the Cape coast, Their Lordships were taking no chances. Even the massive Queen Mary, still unmistakeable despite her battleship grey and crammed with troops, had to stop. So Piet and his fellow fishermen moved around the bay and launched from Long Beach on the sea side of the railway station, beneath the severe, white-pillared gaze of Admiralty House.
It was the combination of the railway and a nearby admiral that got Piet thinking.
What if he could profit from his fish twice over?
Right under the admiral’s nose?
The navy was paying him to go out every day to where the sea floor shelved and the upwelling water drove not just ordinary stockfish and snoek into his nets, but the sweetest kabeljou and Cape salmon as well. Their Lordships in London did not seem to mind which fish Piet provided to the sailors in town or to the hungry troops that called in to Cape Town on their way to North Africa, or from Australia. And he was paid the same whatever the size or the content of his catch – Their Lordships clearly appreciated that fish did not always leap into your nets when you expected them to.
It turned out that the restaurants at the far end of the railway line in Cape Town were pickier than the navy. They only wanted top fish like Cape salmon or kingklip. The fishing boats going out from Cape Town harbour were heavily checked when they returned and so the eateries had to stand in line behind the navy and the army and any other military that got first choice.
A fair proportion of Simon’s Town fish travelled to Cape Town by train. Packed in ice, ready for the troopships. The admiral – and the admiral’s staff – would never dream that anyone could be so stupid as to try and divert some of the priciest vis from under their noses. But there had to be a plan, Piet warned himself, a means of escape if something went wrong. Like the pair of gloves he should have worn first time around.
The key would be to start with the quartermaster, slip him the odd fish, and then, if questions were asked, lay the blame elsewhere – like on
Abie Meintjies, or Trev Olifant, both fellow fishermen with supply contracts, even though Vera was now Abie’s girl and Lou would be cross on Vera’s behalf if Abie got the blame. Piet and Abie and Trev worked side by side, helped row the boats out, helped to pull the nets back in. It was easy to get fish mixed up. They were slippery, after all. They could fall into the wrong crate by themselves. Or out of it. And fingerprints would never be an issue.
Piet stowed his net inside the boat and stared up at the low buildings of the Royal Naval Hospital, where he was due to meet Louise when she came off duty, stepping down the stone path from the upper wards. She said she wanted to talk about something so maybe they could do that at Seaforth, before they swam. It was mid-tide, not too rough, Lou an eyeful in her bathing costume …
This time she must not find out, even if it went wrong.
He was being careful to play her game. She wanted freedom? He was giving her freedom. She didn’t want to get engaged or start a baby? He was keeping his trousers buttoned up. Just.
She said it was because of the war, and that she must play her part, especially now she was at the naval hospital. So he waited. But it couldn’t go on like this for ever. Not even Their Lordships would expect him to set aside marriage and a family for their sakes. Lou’s Matron would just have to find someone else. Lou would miss her salary when she gave up, but they’d have her savings, which, by now, must be a pretty pile.
He took a last look over the boat, then waded across the soft sand to the quartermaster’s store and stood in line with the other fisherman and labourers. On Friday nights they were always prompt.
‘Abie,’ he muttered to the man in front of him. ‘Good night for stockfish supper?’
Abie glanced around, gave Piet a wink, and casually patted his pocket. They all smelt of fish anyway, who was to know?
The queue moved closer to the quartermaster’s desk.
‘Piet Philander. Weekly fish, sir.’
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