The Girl from Simon's Bay

by Barbara Mutch

  He put my suitcase in a small bedroom that led off the sitting room. I don’t know if it was where he was sleeping and I didn’t ask, just nodded when he offered to make tea and wandered out into the secluded garden.

  He brought a tray with tea and buttered bread, and set it down on a table.

  ‘It’s a year since we first met,’ he said, raising his cup to me. ‘You came to me when I had a nightmare after the operation.’

  ‘But I thought you didn’t know me!’

  He smiled. ‘Ah, but I did, even though I was hallucinating. And the next day, when you changed my dressing, I closed my eyes and recognised your voice.’

  I looked at the lush garden and the pretty cottage with its shuttered windows. A white-browed robin hopped amongst the foliage, piping a call more delicate than the birds I was used to in Simon’s Town.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting it to lead here.’

  ‘Neither was I,’ he leant forward and touched my arm. He hadn’t touched me on the way here and our fingers only briefly brushed as he gave me my tea. ‘So let’s live for this moment, for however long we have together, however long you’d like to stay.’ His eyes never left mine and I saw his need, but also a readiness for me to set the limits of our togetherness. As he had on the beach, he was giving me the chance to leave whenever I chose.

  ‘I have two days!’ I felt the unexpected prick of tears. ‘We have two days!’

  He reached forward and took my hands in his.

  We didn’t kiss at first. He untied my scarf at the nape of my neck and let it fall onto the chair. My hair tumbled forward and he ran his fingers through it and lifted it away and behind my ears, and cupped my face between his palms.

  ‘We have now,’ he murmured.

  I have mostly been kissed by Piet. And those kisses tended to be quick, pressured, greedy.

  David kissed me slowly, lips meeting and parting, our breath mingling, his skin cool and sharp against my cheek. I felt the tears again and let them flow, and I laughed and he laughed and we kissed through their saltiness.

  We didn’t make love straightaway. The sun sank behind the mountain and a violet shade invaded the garden. The robin fell silent. Below us, the city receded into the pitch-darkness of the blackout. A fragrance of lilies from a nearby garden drifted on the cooling air.

  He sat me down, went inside and brought out a blanket to tuck round me.

  ‘I’m going to make us some supper. You stay here. Watch for the stars to come out.’

  We ate scrambled eggs – he said he’d learnt to make it as a child with his mother – and drank a tart white wine. We finished the buttered bread from teatime, and then he brought out grapes and peaches he’d bought from the Parade downtown.

  And we talked.

  As if – now the decision had been made and we knew we would soon be lovers – we were free to discover one another afresh in words, gestures, and laughter.

  The sky became sequinned velvet. Table Mountain hovered, palely lit by a half-moon. He brought out another blanket and we sat side by side, wrapped up. After a time he reached under the blanket, drew out my hand, kissed it.

  ‘I’m going to clear up. Would you like to take a bath?’

  I nodded and we bundled up the blankets and went inside. He showed me the bathroom, gave me a candle, and disappeared into the kitchen to wash up.

  After bathing, I stepped out onto the terrace in my white dressing gown. The paving stones still held the day’s heat and were warm beneath my bare feet. The Southern Cross had already sunk behind the mountain but Sirius was up, directly overhead. Towards the eastern horizon shone the hard, unwavering disc of a planet, probably Mars. Soon, before the stars turned much further—

  I felt David’s arms go around me from behind. I leant back against him.

  ‘Are you worried about a baby?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘No, it’s not the right time.’

  He turned me around and held me at arm’s length. He touched my hair, its ends damp from the bath. ‘And if it had been?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have stayed,’ I said simply. ‘We would have had to wait.’

  He hugged me close. ‘You go in. I’ll lock up, then have a quick shower.’

  I was waiting by the open window when he came into the bedroom in his pyjama trousers. The candle flickered on the bedside table. He lifted the curtain of my hair and kissed my neck. I touched the livid scar on his hip, then turned away from him and undid my dressing gown and stepped out of it. He rested his hands on my shoulders, not rushing me. After a moment, I lifted my sleeveless nightdress and pulled it over my head and turned around to face him. My hair fell forward across one breast.

  He gathered me carefully into his arms. I was trembling, and he whispered to me until I relaxed against his bare chest. Presently I held myself away from him and said, with a glint, ‘You’re a little overdressed.’

  He smiled, led me over to the bed, and took off his pyjama trousers. I stretched out, and he ran a finger from my throat, around my breasts, to my waist and flanks. Then traced the same path with his lips.

  I began to tremble again.

  ‘Shall I stop?’

  ‘No,’ I breathed, ‘please don’t stop—’

  But he waited, kissed my lips, then the swell of my breasts, the contraction of my stomach.

  I felt the urgency begin to build within us both.

  ‘Don’t let me hurt you.’

  ‘You won’t hurt me.’

  A faint breeze rustled the garden beyond the window. The candlelight danced across our moulded bodies, played on my legs, brightened the contrast between my skin and his as we moved, catching us in a transience of light and shade, heat and chill, advance and retreat.

  He stopped for a moment, searching my eyes, wanting to see deeper than he had before, but I didn’t want him to stop and I grasped his shoulders and together we moved again.

  When it was over, it wasn’t just I who wept but David as well.

  I folded him in my arms. The candle, burnt down to a stump, gave a final flare and died. The night expanded about us. A dog barked in the distance.

  David’s pounding heart began to ease.

  After a while he moved, lay on his side and pulled me close.

  ‘I didn’t know I’d cry,’ I whispered. Or that tears could be like this. Warm. Unbidden.

  He kissed me on the forehead. ‘The best tears, my darling.’

  I closed my eyes. He stroked my hair, rested a hand on my waist.

  ‘I love you, Louise.’

  We slept.

  The first streaks of dawn were just probing the darkness when I woke.

  For a moment, I was disorientated. A soft, broad bed. No clatter of Pa and Ma. Beside me, and around me, warmth. I turned carefully. David lay on his side, the lower half of his body swathed in a sheet, the upper half naked and pressed against me. He’d slung one arm across my waist. He was breathing deeply and evenly. I lay and watched the rise and fall of his chest. After a while, his breathing changed and I lifted the sheet to cover him against the morning chill. From the garden came the first notes of a different dawn chorus from Simon’s Town.

  He stirred, opened his eyes, registered me with an intimacy I’d never seen before.

  ‘Good morning, my love.’

  ‘And to you.’ I leant over him, traced the scar on his temple with my fingers, then touched my lips along its length. ‘You slept well.’

  ‘Yes, I think I’m over my wounds.’ He touched a hand to the scar. ‘And I was tired,’ he grinned.

  I lay back beside him. ‘Can I close my eyes, just for a little longer?’

  ‘Of course.’ He lifted his arm and drew me close. I rested my hand on his chest.

  ‘Tell me about a different ocean from mine.’

  And so he described the calm shallows of the Adriatic; the mean waves of the South China Sea; the ice-swollen swells of the Arctic …

  And presently, my body began to spark against his and he stopped talking and we ma
de love in the fragile clasp of a new day.

  I borrowed a shirt of his and tucked it into the shorts I’d packed along with my walking shoes, and we headed up the mountain on a deserted path. He walked ahead, striding out, turning every so often to catch me in his arms and kiss me. Above us, the sun struck Table Mountain squarely, picking out the rocky ledges and pinnacles jutting from its face. Different pincushion proteas from our yellow ones clung to the slopes. They’d mostly finished flowering but here and there a conical bloom opened stiff petals to the light.

  It was a golden morning.

  We reached the gravel road that traversed the mountain and sat down in the shade of a pine tree. The city glittered below, diffusing a muted clamour of car horns, clanking machinery and sirens. But we were elevated, adrift in our own precious space, not of the city and not of the mountain.

  ‘I can’t say when I’ll be back,’ he said, taking my hand.

  Across Table Bay, Robben Island floated like a rough-cut jewel.

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

  He smiled. I leant against him.

  ‘Shall we head down?’

  We retraced our steps, stopping for him to point out the familiar grey lines of the Dorsetshire tied up among a huddle of warships.

  ‘I love you, David.’

  And, once back in the cottage, he undressed me and led me back to bed while the butterflies flickered outside our window in the tawny sunshine.

  We walked slowly through the Gardens, David carrying my suitcase. I was wearing the same blue dress I’d arrived in, and I’d tied my hair into the scarf.

  I sensed he was struggling not to touch my hand, take my arm, kiss me.

  ‘The first time I saw you,’ he said as we walked through the dappled shade, ‘I thought of it as a once-in-a-lifetime enchantment. A fleeting glimpse that would never be repeated.’

  I darted a glance at him and smiled.

  ‘You look so beautiful, your parents will guess something has happened.’

  The solitude of the Gardens gave way to the bustle of Adderley Street, then the station, the press of crowds, the shunting of trains beneath balloons of steam. And the newspaper boys, yelling ‘Read all about it! Pearl Harbour bombed! America in the War!’

  He dropped my suitcase, abandoned caution, seized me.

  ‘This is it, my darling! We can’t lose! Not now!’

  He rifled in his pocket for change and bought us papers. My train was already working up steam as we rushed to the platform. He went on board, lifted my suitcase into the rack despite the stares of other passengers.

  ‘I could come with you as far as Fish Hoek,’ he’d offered earlier, but we both knew that would be crazy. Our luck couldn’t last. Someone would see us, recognise me.

  I went with him to the carriage door.

  The whistle blew.

  ‘I love you,’ he whispered against my cheek. ‘I’ll find a way. Please wait for me.’

  He jumped down, slammed the door closed. The train began to move.

  I lifted my hand, kissed the tips of my fingers.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  My darling,

  It’s hard to know where to start, in writing to you!

  Thank you, first of all, for coming to me, for giving yourself in the way you did. I know that the fact of my marriage means we have to conduct our love in the shadows, but the war will end eventually and I’ll find a way to obtain my freedom while protecting the interests of Elizabeth. I know this period of limbo is difficult for you but please believe me when I say I’ll return. The miracle of war and illness that brought us together is far from fulfilled.

  I can’t say where we are, except that it’s hot and humid.

  I love you,

  David

  His touch, his voice, stayed with me.

  No one discovered my lie – or, rather, no one expressed any suspicions. With Ma and Pa, I pretended my visit to Lola had been brief but happy, and my training at the Victoria had gone well. To Sister Graham, I said that my friend was doing better since my visit. I avoided Vera, who would have guessed straightaway. But Ma suspected something, as David thought she might. When I stared into the mirror as I brushed my hair, I could see why. I tried to damp it down, but my eyes glistened with a restless joy that was plain to see.

  Less obvious was the guilt.

  If you loved a man and he happened to be married, was that a sin?

  And if David hadn’t been honest with me about being married, was I less of a sinner?

  In the weeks that followed, I often went to Seaforth to swim and to run my fingers through the sand and listen for His verdict – damnation, forgiveness – but I heard only the rush of the tide.

  Wait, he said. I will find a way.

  And so I waited.

  Piet once asked me to wait … I pushed the memory aside.

  1941 became 1942.

  I threw myself into work and completed my training as a theatre nurse.

  ‘Well done,’ said Matron with a brisk handshake and a formal smile. ‘But your duties will continue to be divided between the ward and the theatre, Staff Nurse.’

  Sister looked on with barely hidden irritation.

  In the dockyard, the unsettling buzz grew that although the Americans were building ships faster than they could train sailors to crew them, their efforts might not come in time.

  ‘It’s bad,’ Pa said darkly. ‘Those Japs will take as much beating as Hitler. Remember how they sank Prince of Wales and Repulse – great big ships – with aeroplanes only?’

  They’re on the march, David wrote.

  You’ll have read of our losses. I’m devastated about the fall of Singapore, I went there before the war. No one expected the Japanese to come down through the jungle. It was brilliant tactics and it’s no secret we were caught napping.

  It’s very hot where I am. Flat, greasy, unappetising sea. Sharks.

  I long for the fresh waves of the Cape.

  As I long for you, my darling.

  ‘Lou?’ Pa waved to me from the path as I came off duty. Pa still liked to meet me on the mountain when our shifts coincided, especially if it was calm and he could point out the vessels in dock and tell me their wounds. Today was just such a day, and the seagulls cawed in disappointment at the lack of a breeze.

  ‘Let’s sit down for a bit.’

  ‘You should get your knee looked at, Pa.’

  He flapped a hand impatiently.

  ‘My knee isn’t the bother. It’s this war.’

  ‘What now?’

  Pa shouldn’t have been telling me, of course, but I know it helped him to talk, so I listened and never passed on anything he said, especially to Ma.

  ‘There’s been another disaster. Japs caught some of our ships off Ceylon. At least two bombed.’

  ‘What ships?’ I grabbed his arm.

  He sighed. ‘I probably shouldn’t say. It’s not official.’

  ‘What ships, Pa?’

  He glanced at me, patted my leg. ‘One of ours. That gunnery officer you nursed was on her. The Dorsetshire.’

  I fell against him.

  ‘Lou?’ he struggled to hold me up. ‘What’s this now?’

  The mountain bore down on me, the sea that I loved began to rise up towards me.

  ‘It’s sad, child, but lots of your patients have got hit. Come now …’

  The seagulls were crying. I covered my ears to block out their hard, sharp wails.

  Pa hugged me to him.

  ‘Let’s get you home, it’s been a long day.’

  I stared at his kind, worried face and then down at the tiny ants scurrying along the dirt track. A grasshopper whirred past.

  He pulled me to my feet.

  ‘Come. Not far to go.’

  We stumbled down the mountain.

  I could see the path clearly, and which rocks to avoid, but my feet didn’t want to obey my brain. Pa began to breathe heavily as he battled to keep me upright.
It wasn’t fair on Pa, the strain on him and his knee. The Phillips’ grandchildren were playing behind the Terrace as we went by. The oldest called out to me, offered to help but Pa waved him away.

  Mrs Hewson spotted us from her step.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she shouted. ‘Have you turned your ankle?’

  ‘Ja,’ Pa gasped. ‘Sheila can look at it.’

  ‘They’re working you too hard,’ Mrs H snorted. ‘Nothing good’s come of this war.’

  ‘What in heaven’s name?’ Ma ran to help me inside. Pa wiped his forehead and fell into a chair. Ma led me into my bedroom, sat me on the bed, drew off my shoes, unpinned my cap, eased me lengthways. She felt my ankle, stroked the hair away from my face.

  ‘I’ll make tea. Then you can tell me what’s the matter.’

  Ma tapped on my door a little later and came in with cups for us both. I’d taken off my uniform, hung it up and changed into a skirt and shirt. I was sitting on the bed. Ma handed me a cup and sat down beside me.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with your ankle, Louise. Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?’

  There was no point in lying. Dry, hacking sobs broke inside me. Not tears, just recurring, lung-deep shudders. Ma stroked my arm and sipped her tea and waited.

  ‘I’ve fallen in love with a British naval officer. His ship’s been sunk.’

  Shock leapt in her eyes, followed by a dawning recognition. She drew me to her, rocked me gently but I knew I’d gone too far this time. Reaching for a career had been narrowly possible, but loving someone foreign, way above my station, someone white to my coloured, was out of the question. And inexcusable. You should know that by now.