I hope you will receive this letter. I realise you may have moved but perhaps it will be forwarded as your family is well known.
Please reply, even if it is to say no.
All my love,
David
I could hear the murmur of conversation from the young people; Sam’s local accent, Ella’s polished vowels. I sat on my bed for a while and reached for the two seashells and held them. I wept and wept, silently, painfully, as if my heart were being dragged out of my chest and squeezed of its essence.
I wept for the love, and I wept for the waste.
When there was nothing left, I blotted my eyes, brushed my hair, stood in front of the window for a while, and then rejoined Sam and Ella. I’d been gone for at least half an hour.
They were sitting side by side on the couch. He was describing his work to her.
‘Ma!’ Sam jumped up and led me to the table, supporting me gently. He poured tea for me.
I sat down opposite Ella.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘thank you for coming all this way to bring me your father’s letter.’
She gave a sad smile. She was indeed lovely, as both Sam and David, in his letter, had said. There was also a watchful quality about her, as if she’d learnt to wait before making a decision, holding back her opinion until she was sure she could trust you. Rather like the way I’d intended to watch and wait until I’d taken her measure.
They were looking at me, wondering about the letter.
‘How long do you plan to be here, Ella?’
I can’t tell her yet, I can’t tell Sam yet! I need to reread the letter and prepare my confession rather than blurt it out and risk overwhelming this first, tentative contact. We need to build on today before I reveal they are brother and sister.
‘I’d like to stay another week or two. Dad gave me a second letter for you. He said it was his final gift.’ She pointed to another envelope on the table between us that I hadn’t noticed.
I picked it up. This envelope had not been posted, and was marked only with my name. He must have written it when he was ill, when he realised he’d never see me again.
I felt my throat contract. What more was there to say?
Ella put down her cup.
‘I’m sure you’d like to be on your own, you and Sam. Can we meet again in a day or two? Will you talk to me a little more? There’s so much I don’t know,’ she stopped, and blushed, ‘only if it’s not an intrusion.’
I smiled at her. There it was, for a moment, a flash of what the young David must have been like, newly in the navy, eager to learn, avid for the sea.
‘Of course.’ It could be a gentle route towards revealing my secret.
She nodded and gathered her bag.
‘I’ll go back with you,’ Sam said. ‘Won’t be too long, Ma.’
He squeezed my hand, and opened the door for Ella.
She hesitated, then came back into the room and kissed me on both cheeks.
‘I’ve never seen Daddy as happy as when he spoke about you,’ she murmured. ‘You were his soulmate, right to the end.’
Chapter Seventy-One
Still shaken by the experience of meeting Louise – elegant, gracious, utterly out of place in the dank apartment – Ella wasn’t prepared for the challenge of the return journey. The sun had gone down and Ocean View now presented a sinister aspect. She and Sam were going the whole way by bus and she’d imagined it would be as straightforward as the train journey. She began to feel uneasy from the moment they arrived at the bus stop, despite his substantial presence beside her. As they waited, she realised he was attempting to shield her paleness from the view of youngsters hanging about under the few dim street lights. When the bus came, they closed in and seemed on the point of some kind of confrontation – Ella shrank against Sam – but then backed off.
She sank down into the front row.
Sam was directly behind her, as he’d been before. The remaining coloured and black passengers looked on them with suspicion and sat as far away as possible, meting out to her the kind of exclusion Sam presumably endured from whites every day.
‘I won’t be here for much longer,’ he muttered, leaning towards her.
‘What do you mean?’ She didn’t look round. She couldn’t face meeting the wall of accusing eyes. What is this white woman doing here, she could hear them wondering? Does she think she can share our alienation by taking a single bus trip?
‘Ma’s been saving for years to get me out of South Africa,’ he said, under cover of the rumbling engine. ‘There’s not enough work. And you’ve seen the way we’re treated.’
She turned to meet his eyes.
‘I don’t blame you. But what about Louise?’
Sam sighed.
The bus jerked to a halt to pick up more passengers. They stared at Ella. She smiled in what she hoped was a polite way, but no one smiled back.
‘Ma doesn’t want to leave because of my Grandpa,’ Sam said as soon as they moved off. ‘And she’d have to save more. But even if she did, I’m not sure she’d go, you know. This is her home. This is where her memories are.’
Living history, thought Ella.
‘So where will you go?’ she asked over her shoulder.
‘To England. There are craftsmen doing the kind of work I like. Restoration. Commissions.’
He’d shown her some of his pieces while they waited for his mother to read the letter. She’d been astonished. Beautiful carving, gleaming joinery of a quality that could grace the finest interiors.
The bus stopped. Old black men in frayed jackets got on, tired-looking coloured women bearing bulky parcels swayed down the aisle, sullen youths with averted eyes flung themselves onto the cracked seats. If it wasn’t so frightening being the lone white among them, Ella reflected, it would simply have been unbearably sad.
The numbers thinned after they left the environs of Fish Hoek, and most of the passengers had disembarked by the time the bus eventually reached St George’s Street.
Ella stumbled off with relief. Sam walked her across the road to the hotel.
She stopped at the steps and looked back at him. They were about the same age but he looked older, and sure of himself. Perhaps being deprived of your national identity made you more determined to nurture your own.
‘Thank you for taking me, Sam, and keeping me safe. I’m very grateful. Goodnight.’
He smiled, nodded, and turned away.
He was finally letting down his guard, she realised, allowing his eyes to rest on her when they spoke. She wanted to kiss him, like she’d kissed Louise, to say thank you but also to let him know … what, exactly?
Chapter Seventy-Two
My darling Louise,
If you’re reading this, I know that you’ve met my dear Ella. Apart from you, she has been the light of my life. You will also know that I’ve succumbed to cancer. It came suddenly, and my greatest regret is that it deprived us of the chance to be in touch, perhaps even to meet again.
I was unable to take care of you in my lifetime, my dearest L, but I’d like to make amends now, even if it is only in a material way. I’m leaving you twenty-five thousand pounds in my will, to be used as you see fit. I hope this money will help at home, or give you the chance to travel abroad to places where you’ll be treated with respect.
I often think of the walks we took, my darling, and the days you spent with me in Cape Town. I’ve never known such joy. Your warmth, your beauty, and the spark in your eyes have never left me. I first thought of you as a once-in-a-lifetime enchantment. I was wrong. The enchantment has been eternal.
Be happy. Please don’t mourn me. Rather, take a walk on the beautiful Simonsberg in my memory.
My love, always,
David
I went to sit on a bench in the hospital grounds in my lunch break, with the letter in my pocket. I wonder if David suspected that no marriage – other than to him – would satisfy me?
That I’d end up on my own.
&nbs
p; The breeze was picking up, stirring the flat surface of the bay. Soon the southeaster would unleash itself over the mountain. Perhaps he’d described our wind to Ella. Its hunger, its ability to drive fires, whip cloud, fill sails …
I felt my numb heart stir, then race with a matching eagerness.
Money may not be essential for happiness, but it does provide cushioning. David’s legacy would take care of Pa and me even if I lost my job, and help Sam get established overseas. And one day, if our country came to its senses, David might even help me reclaim what I’d lost. Simon’s Town. The soaring mountains. The irresistible sea.
A cottage to embrace them!
There’s no time to lose. I must meet the young folk soon. I must give Ella the brother she’s never known, and I must give Sam his sister. And then, when we’re alone, I’ll offer her my memories, the part of her father that I knew. That will be my gift to her.
But I’ll tell no one about the windfall.
Not Pa, or Sylvia here at the hospital, or nosy Vera in Grassy Park who will surely have heard about our white visitor by now.
Why should I?
I grinned to myself, and got up from the bench.
It will be my last, most unexpected, secret.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Ella waited with some nervousness on the Terrace wall, turning her back against the raging gale, and pondered her next move. She and Dad had planned to go up the Garden Route, see another part of the country. After all, her task was complete, she’d delivered the shell and the letters. She’d fulfilled all of Dad’s hopes.
What she hadn’t expected – despite Dad’s intuition – was the draw she now felt to Louise and Sam. And the tingling sense that she was on the cusp of something more.
Find what you love, El, and go after it.
Soon after her remarriage, Elizabeth Horrocks Parker had invited Ella to meet her stepsiblings in Scotland. Ella went, hoping for a connection, but they were absorbed in their own lives and politely disinterested in a newcomer. At Corbey, Ella had no particular alliance with the estate manager and his family, it was a business relationship. Great Uncle Martin and his wife never had children.
Ella was the sole surviving Horrocks. Unlikely as it sounded, Louise and Sam were now the closest approximation she had to a family.
A mighty gust almost propelled her from the wall.
She glanced around. It was too dangerous to take shelter in one of the ruins, they might come down about her head at any moment. The docile bay she’d first admired from the train window was now in a ferment, slashed with foam, mantled in spray. But it was the mountains that made her catch her breath. Cloud churned ceaselessly over the peaks, then dissolved into thin air halfway down their sides.
A silent avalanche, El. You won’t believe it ’til you see it.
Savage, ethereal beauty.
Dad had a way with words.
‘Hello,’ Sam appeared from above her.
‘Does this often happen?’ She spread her arms and shouted through the uproar.
‘Every summer!’ He laughed. ‘It’s a tourist attraction. We arrange it specially.’
She pulled her hair into a knot and bundled it under her hat.
‘Aren’t you ever afraid?’
‘No, I grew up with the wind. In a way,’ he paused, ‘it’s like an annoying friend. One you’d probably like to see the back of—’
‘But you’ll miss, when you go.’
‘Yes.’
She watched a massive wave pound against the column of Roman Rock Lighthouse.
‘A friend of mine has been in trouble.’ He grimaced. ‘The police believe in guilt by association. I need to leave as soon as my passport arrives.’
She stared out over the frenzied water. They’d met four times like this, each time more revealing than the last. Sometimes it was what he said, or what she said, but often it was about sitting side by side in a silence that was surprisingly easy. The broken palms shaded them, the gleaming bay watched. They didn’t judge her presence here, alongside a coloured man. But there was no denying the whiff of danger, the consequences of discovery. In South Africa, this kind of friendship was forbidden.
It had always been.
But it didn’t have to be so in the future.
‘Why don’t you come to Corbey?’ she turned to him, impulsively.
He stared at her in disbelief.
‘You could help me restore the Hall.’
Chapter Seventy-Four
Sam told me he and Ella continued to meet at the Terrace.
‘We can talk without being seen, Ma.’
Or judged. A coloured man and a white woman, alone.
The wind gusted fiercely. I held on to my cloak and climbed up Alfred Lane for the first time since we were evicted. The mosque sat quietly at its head, serving worshippers from the dockyard and the shopkeepers who’d been allowed to stay, but in dwindling numbers.
‘Fewer young people,’ lamented Mr Bennett’s son. ‘How can a mosque survive with only old men?’
I turned past the mosque and walked towards the Terrace.
Crumbling walls. Rampant weeds. The cracked step in front of our gaping doorway.
The bereftness of it.
Sam and Ella were sitting side by side on the wall, beneath the shade of the unkempt palms. There was no obvious resemblance – their hair and eyes were too different – but I could see the parallel in the way they held their heads, and in the line of their mouths when they smiled. I’d told Sam not to mention Ella to Pa yet, we’d introduce her in a while. Because Pa would know. Pa would see it.
‘Ma!’ Sam jumped up and ran down to me. ‘You never come this way!’
‘Yes, but I knew you’d be here with Ella.’
He led me up to where she was standing.
‘Mrs Philander,’ she said, reaching out a hand, once more a little shy.
‘Louise, please,’ I embraced her gently.
I sat down between them on the wall and gazed over the bay, then checked the docks automatically for ships I might recognise.
‘Shall we go somewhere else?’ Ella said, glancing at Sam. ‘If this is distressing?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s sit here for a while. I’ve something to tell you both.’
I watched the seagulls for a moment. They were swooping against the gale, searching for their air perch, and then hanging in the same spot until a random gust sent them diving away.
‘Your father’s last visit to Simon’s Town, Ella,’ I touched her arm, ‘was in the final months of the war. Germany was about to surrender, but HMS Cumberland was on her way to the Far East where everyone thought the war would go on for far longer. David said the Japanese would fight to the last rice bowl.’
‘Yes,’ Ella nodded. ‘I’ve been reading his war logs. But then it ended suddenly, with the atomic bombs. He came home soon after that.’
‘He did. But what David didn’t know, and what you and Sam have never known,’ I laid my hand on Sam’s arm and turned deliberately away from Ella to face him, ‘is that on that last visit we conceived you. Sammie, darling,’ my voice broke, ‘David is your father, not Piet!’
Shock, bewilderment and a kind of dawning recognition crowded Sam’s face. Next to me, I was dimly aware of Ella’s gasp, and that she’d leapt to her feet.
‘Sam, forgive me,’ the tears began to flow now, ‘I had to keep it a secret. I would’ve been disgraced − you would’ve been disgraced even before you were born − if it had got out.’
‘No one else knows,’ Sam said in a strangled voice. ‘Except Pa – Piet?’
‘Yes.’
‘Ella,’ I turned to where she was standing. ‘I know you must be upset. Please let me explain a little more.’
But she didn’t appear upset, in fact she was looking at Sam with growing delight.
‘We’re brother and sister,’ she shouted against the buffeting wind. ‘Brother and sister!’
‘Yes!’ I took her hand and his hand an
d joined them together. I could sense Sam was overwhelmed but he got up, opened his arms and gathered his sister to him and rocked her against his chest. I’ve always been proud of him but perhaps this will be my proudest moment.
We were all crying now, Ella in gasping, laughing sobs, Sam with silent emotion.
I found a handkerchief in my pocket and wiped my face. There was more to be said, not about our love affair because that will remain mine, but about the accommodation that both David and I had to make.
‘There was a fire,’ I said, pointing towards the old RNH and forcing myself to choose my words, not to give too much away. ‘We had to evacuate the hospital. I came back here to check on my parents but they were at the church making sandwiches for the firefighters. There was a letter on my bed, from David. I was going to go back on duty but I read it before I left. David said he couldn’t come back for me,’ my voice broke again and Ella clasped my hand in hers, ‘and he asked me to forgive him.’
‘Did he say why?’ she asked in a low voice. Her face was pale, apprehensive.
I can’t tell her, I can’t damage a child’s love for her mother.
‘He was needed at home, Ella. He had to put you and your mother first. I understood that.’
Ella stared at me, then glanced at Sam and I knew she’d already guessed the truth: Elizabeth’s ultimatum, the pitting of daughter against lover, David’s heartbreaking choice.
‘Your father didn’t know I was expecting Sam. I kept it a secret.’ I turned to Sam and leant against him, feeling the steady warmth of his body against mine. I was cold, for some reason.
‘I climbed up the mountain towards the quarry, but I got lost.’ I stopped for a moment. The glow of the fire was real, the rocks scuttling past my feet as the mountain slipped, the glitter of stars where the sky was clear of smoke, my desire to slip off the cliffs, to sink into the forgiving sea … I shook off the flashback.
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