The Girl from Simon's Bay

by Barbara Mutch

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No,’ she drew herself up and smiled at Sam shakily and then around at the dispersing mourners, ‘but I didn’t save him, even when we were a family.’

  ‘And,’ Sam pressed on, ‘please don’t do so much overtime.’

  She opened her mouth to protest, then smiled and pointed across the darkening bay towards the north, as if there was a world out there beyond the mountains that she knew about but he didn’t. ‘There’s still a future to save for, Sam.’

  Then Grandpa and Grandma bustled over and said there was sherry and koeksusters for the funeral guests and that it would soon be dark so they should be getting back.

  Perhaps, Sam reflected as he stepped back to check the post was straight, when you were married to someone who was cleverer and more successful than you it was impossible to accept their advice – and especially their criticism – without getting upset. Ma tried to help Pa in the early days. She encouraged him. She bought new nets for the boat. She suggested alternative employment.

  ‘Help me, Piet! Be an example to Sam. If you don’t want to fish, grow vegetables! Or fix our roof!’

  But in the end it made no difference.

  In the noisy days before Pa left the cottage on Ricketts Terrace, he often shouted that Ma was being unfair to expect more from him and that she should be grateful he’d rescued her, which was a cheek considering that Ma had stayed faithful through the reformatory and the war until they could marry. Sometimes, though, he shouted other things that made no sense, about Ma being a cheat, about Ma betraying him and taking advantage. Once he was so enraged that Sam rushed at his father, who – oddly – collapsed on the sofa in laughter. Whenever Piet started shouting, Ma used to send Sam off to Grandma and Grandpa but Sam often waited just outside the front door, listening, in case Pa took a swing at Ma. If Ma hadn’t thrown Piet out, there would’ve been trouble one day between himself and his father. But now, to his great relief and only slight grief, there was no chance of that. No possibility that Pa might hit Ma and then Sam would kill him with his hammer before he could stop himself—

  The rain was starting to sift down harder, shrouding the distant Chapman’s Peak, their closest approximation to the Simonsberg.

  Sam quickly gathered his tools. Where would this self-help effort lead? Installing washing lines was a long way from working with wood to reveal its scars and striations, sanding and polishing until the finished item gleamed with both beauty and usefulness. It would help him to eat but it wouldn’t fill a lifetime.

  He glanced at the ugly buildings, and down at the barren earth.

  The only way to make his mark would be to leave. Abandon Ocean View and his family. Scrape together some money and go to Cape Town. Or further away, like Ma seemed to hint when she pointed north. There he’d find wealthy customers willing to commission bigger lecterns, more elaborate carvings …

  Ma would encourage him to leave.

  But then she’d be alone with old folks. There’d be no one to protect her.

  My campaign among the residents of Ocean View, while raising spirits and improving our spartan surroundings, didn’t manage to rouse Ma.

  She never saw the sea again, never dipped her toe in the water.

  She tried to like the new place, and was grateful for Pa and Sam’s fixing, but one day I got home and found she’d taken to her bed. Despite Pa’s tender care, and my conviction that she was still healthy, Ma never got up again.

  ‘It’s not what I know, child,’ she fretted as I brushed her hair and brought her tea and peeled an apple for her. ‘I’ve lost my place in the world.’ She pointed at the window that offered no view. ‘The palm outside our front door. The sea in the morning.’

  We buried Ma on a chilly winter’s day, with snow on the distant Hottentots Holland, and a weeping sky over Simon’s Town.

  She didn’t deserve this ending.

  She deserved it to come when she was sitting in the shade of the palm trees, shouting with Mrs Hewson and watching the sun set over the sea’s cambered swells while a succulent bobotie warmed in the oven.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Ella Horrocks stood at the rail of the Union-Castle liner in the hour before dawn and watched the bow wave carving off the front of the ship. She’d never been on the open ocean before. Strange, that. Dad had been in the navy for almost twenty years and yet she’d never had much to do with the sea other than the odd visit to Dartmouth and a day trip in her great-uncle’s yacht. Partly it was because Mum never cared for the sea and preferred to stay at Corbey. Leave your father to it, she’d say to Ella. He needs his annual fix.

  But this!

  Ella tilted her head back and gazed up at the dramatic red funnels etched against a slowly brightening sky. A stiff breeze lifted her hair. No wonder Dad couldn’t get enough of it!

  If only he could’ve been here …

  But Ella was determined this would not be a wake.

  Dad had said so himself.

  ‘You have a job to do for me,’ he whispered through the pain. ‘Potentially joyful. Potentially life-changing.’

  He levered himself up against the pillows. The illness had struck so suddenly, she was often at a loss for words, unable to comprehend her tall, healthy father so quickly diminished. First it was the tiredness, then the pallor to his skin, even though he said he was fine, nothing to worry about. He’d pick up once he was on board ship.

  ‘We could wait until you’re better, Dad,’ she suggested, as they sat together in the library. His hands, once so strong, now looked skeletal, over-veined.

  ‘No, we must go this year. I should have gone before …’

  But it was soon clear he’d never make the journey. They both knew it, even as they planned and talked, and read his war logs each afternoon in the creeping autumn light. The doctor said it happened like this, sometimes. Men in their prime cut down for no reason. There was the war, of course. The head wound. The trauma of seeing fellow officers die. Sometimes mental scars take a physical toll many years later. Mum, calling from Scotland, said she was sorry to hear of his illness, and that it was more likely to be bad luck than anything to do with the war. David had put all that behind him years ago. She’d visit the next time she was down south.

  ‘A job? What do you mean, Dad? What do you want me to do?’

  He winced, then breathed deeply.

  ‘Go to Simon’s Town and find Louise Ahrendts. Give her this letter – the second one that was returned – and,’ he pointed to the bedside table where another envelope sat, ‘that one as well, which I’ve just written.’

  Ella took his hand and stroked it. ‘How will I know her?’

  He smiled. His eyes were still a brilliant blue.

  ‘She’ll be the loveliest woman you meet.’

  Ella lifted his hand and held it against her cheek.

  ‘Can you tell me more? What she was like? I’d love to know, if it’s not too painful—’

  David stared at Ella. It was time.

  ‘She was a local girl, from a Malay family. What the South Africans call coloured.’

  Ella started.

  ‘Did Mummy know that?’

  ‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘I never told her about Louise’s race.’

  Ella searched his face. How intense their love must have been to even consider ignoring the conventions! He was married, she was brown. Nowadays, in England at least, mixed-race couples were almost accepted, but back then …

  ‘Was her colour going to be an issue? Was that one of the reasons you gave her up?’

  ‘No!’ David’s eyes flashed. He coughed, put a handkerchief to his mouth. ‘I wanted to marry Louise, bring her to England. Her colour was of no consequence. I asked her to wait for me.’

  Oh God, Ella thought, getting up and going to the window, I was born in the middle of it.

  She stared at the stars pricking between the bare branches of the oaks. Moonlight played on the gravel driveway. Long ago, a young couple hovered,
caught in illicit love.

  ‘But then,’ she turned, pushing a strand of fair hair behind her ear, ‘you did indeed give her up.’

  ‘Yes.’ David sank back on his pillows. ‘I decided a divorce would be too disruptive. I loved you and Corbey deeply. I couldn’t put that at risk. So I asked Louise to forgive me, and to make a life of her own.’

  Ella came to sit on the side of the bed.

  It wasn’t like that.

  Dad was bending the truth, to save her from realising he’d given up the woman he loved because his wife refused to set him free. Or – Ella stifled a gasp – because she threatened to take his infant daughter away from him? Surely not even Mum could be so harsh.

  ‘And you gave up the navy, as well?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said hoarsely.

  She reached for a glass of water and held it to his lips. He swallowed with difficulty. Dad was an admired, decorated officer. She’d heard from Great-Uncle Martin he’d been in line for a top job at the end of the war. Presumably the affair was still secret at the time. Mum probably used the potential for scandal to insist he leave the navy, too.

  ‘Do you know if Louise forgave you, Dad?’

  David gave a wry smile, and lifted a hand to touch his daughter’s cheek.

  ‘I hope you’ll find out.’

  Ella nodded. He closed his eyes. A tiny blue vein throbbed at his temple. Never once had she heard him say a mean word to her mother, despite Mum’s coldness to him. Never once had she seen him with a woman he truly loved.

  ‘El,’ he murmured, opening his eyes. ‘Please believe that I wasn’t looking to betray your mother. Louise knew I was married. Neither of us planned to fall in love. But what do you do when you find a true partner – a soulmate?’

  Separate bedrooms, Ella reflected bleakly. The formalities observed. A life of civility rather than love. A seashell in the library.

  ‘I’ll go to South Africa, Dad. I’ll find her.’

  David’s eyes roamed across her face.

  ‘Tell her the letters are my final gift. She mustn’t mourn. And neither,’ he felt for her hand, ‘must you.’

  It ended quickly, far more quickly than Ella was prepared for.

  She walked a lot in the days following his death. Into Corbey wood to sit next to the stream; up the ridge through the yellowing trees; along the driveway to catch the splendour of the approach. The emptiness that followed her mother’s departure seemed a minor dip compared to the chasm that now yawned. University friends phoned, some visited, but they were tied up in burgeoning careers and the bright lights of London. But at least the responsibility of being owner of Corbey helped. There were decisions to be made with the farm manager about planting cycles, there were tenant farmers to reassure that nothing would change under her ownership. And there was the funeral.

  She and the vicar chose rousing sea hymns to send her father on his way. The vicar suggested using the village church to accommodate the expected congregation, but Ella wanted the chapel, and so extra chairs were brought in behind the pews, and some folk stood. Pale sunshine filtered through the stained glass windows and alighted on the crystal vases she’d stuffed with Dad’s favourite cow parsley. The vicar, a new man, recited Dad’s war record with pride, and framed his life at Corbey thereafter as a longed-for return to his roots. A life, Ella thought with a touch of irreverence as she sat in the front row, free of the controversy that would have infected it if she, Ella, had not been born and David had taken a new wife. If the mourners only knew …

  Elizabeth Horrocks Parker attended with her husband, kissed Ella on the cheek, congratulated the vicar on his meticulous eulogy, and left straight after the service. Those who stayed included a large contingent of former naval officers whom Ella had never met, including one with a cane, who embraced Ella and told her that her father saved his life.

  Don’t weep, she told herself fiercely as she saw the last of them off.

  Honour his memory.

  Find Louise Ahrendts.

  Then come home and make Corbey your life’s work.

  And now here she was, three months later, armed with the war logs for company, sliding down the Skeleton Coast on what Dad called a potentially joyful, potentially life-changing quest.

  Life-changing for whom?

  She watched the vast dunes of the Namib undulate in ochre waves towards the interior.

  He once described this very clash of sea and sand, how the blue and brown faded into pastel and then into hazy monochrome as the day wore on. He’d convoyed down this coast, and chaperoned a shipment of gold in the opposite direction, across the Atlantic to New York, almost drawing neutral America into the war early, he said, when they came across a German oiler and the captain ordered him to lead a drill. They were in my sights, Ella …

  There was a strange intimacy in following his path across the ocean.

  And, she realised with leaping excitement, the journey was swiftly expanding beyond daughterly duty. There was something happening here that was more than a proxy mission. She could feel it in the throb of the engines taking her southwards, and in the plaintive cries of the seagulls that spoke of the approaching Cape. An odd sense that she was searching not only for Louise Ahrendts, but for an essential part of herself, too.

  Slowly, the Namib fell away.

  A day or so of unremarkable coastline passed, and then Table Mountain loomed on the horizon against a dawn sky streaked with powder blue and apricot. In the east, a fiery semicircle of sun poked above brown hills.

  South Africa.

  She gripped the railings. Passengers flocked on deck to watch the jagged peninsula reveal itself.

  ‘Why are you coming to Cape Town?’ asked one of the young men who’d tried his luck with her earlier in the voyage. He was nice enough, but all this talk of soulmates with Dad had concentrated Ella’s mind. Better to wait rather than dally with casual talent.

  ‘It’s a research project,’ Ella replied, on an impulse. And why not?

  ‘You’re a writer?’

  ‘No!’ she laughed and tossed her head.

  The young man pointed at the purple mountains growing in splendour as the ship approached Table Bay. ‘Well, there’s everything here. Beauty. Cruelty. Humanity. You won’t lack material.’

  Chapter Sixty

  Sam is all I ever hoped a son to be. Bright. Faithful. Keen. All the more reason not to chain him to me, or to this place. But I won’t tell him about his father, not yet.

  Perhaps before he leaves? But then he’ll know, and David will not, and surely that is too great a burden for any young man to shoulder on his own?

  I often look at my son and wonder if there’s some part of him that he can’t quite identify, some subtle leaning or quality that he hasn’t been able to trace to me or Piet or his grandparents, or the Cape he believes is his only home. Without my encouragement, he loves English architecture and carving. I often want to tell him that his attraction is not unexpected.

  ‘Sam,’ I said one night when the heat hung over Ocean View like a clammy eiderdown and the beetles screamed in the dry scrub, ‘I want to tell you something.’

  He came over and sat opposite me at the kitchen table. His dark hair – the only obvious similarity to Piet – flopped over his forehead. He’d just turned twenty-three. I’d already fallen in love by that age, but Sam was a loner. There’d been one or two girls, but they never lasted. Perhaps it was as well, given my hopes for him. He could make a cleaner break if he wasn’t looking backwards.

  ‘I’ve almost saved enough to buy you a ticket overseas. One way.’

  For a moment he said nothing, just gasped. But I saw a spark in his eyes. As a child, he brought home library books with pictures of canoes chiselled from the single trunk of a tree, or intricately worked panels from a hall in London. It was the same spark.

  ‘Ma—’ he began to protest.

  ‘No! Listen to me.’ I leant forward and gripped his hands in mine. ‘You must get out. I won’t see you ground down
, arrested for petty offences. Vera’s kids are forever in trouble in Grassy Park, it could happen to you, too.’

  ‘But what about you?’

  ‘I’ve got a job. I’ll manage. You’re the future, Sam, and,’ I gestured around our gloomy flat, ‘the future’s not here.’

  He stood up and went over to the window, searching for the view.

  ‘I can’t leave you.’ He turned to look at me, his dark eyes sombre. ‘You deserve to get out as well. Think, Ma,’ he strode back to the table, ‘you’re senior enough to find a good job abroad, you could come with me. We’ll save a little longer, for two tickets.’

  ‘I can’t leave,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s your grandpa.’

  And, I wanted to add, the sea. The mountains. Echoes of David. Even though I’ve been displaced, how can I leave the world that’s shaped me?

  He bent and put his arms around me. I sensed a wetness against my cheek, a shuddering in his chest.

  ‘My life is here, Sam.’ I disentangled myself and smiled at him through my own tears.

  He sat down on the chair next to me and wiped his eyes.

  I rested my hand on his arm and fought for control. He must not see me cry again.

  ‘You’ll need to be careful,’ I warned. ‘Say nothing to your friends, especially Benji and the Phillipses. Quietly apply for a passport. Tell the authorities you’ve saved up for a holiday abroad. Then think where you want to go, Sam, find out what country will allow you to work.’

  He nodded. I could sense his excitement building.

  ‘Prepare a résumé. Take photographs of your woodwork, write letters. You’ll only have one chance.’

  There would be enough money for perhaps two weeks’ simple accommodation and food.

  After that he’d be on his own.

  I didn’t tell Sam that if he chose England, I’d give him David’s address – but only to be used as a last resort. I’ll say David is a remote contact from the war. I don’t want Sam to be a burden, or a source of renewed tension with Elizabeth Horrocks. I cannot allow that, even after all this time.