weeks heartened them more than the ending of water rationing. Yet, only for drinking, mind you, there was not enough for washing themselves, let alone their clothes.
They must put on their clean, salt-water-washed uniforms, and all other clothing must be piled again to be washed in Cape Town. Again the heaps of dirty, sweaty, sick-soaked, urine-soaked uniforms mounted high.
The order came that now the sea was calm - was it? Really! Was this what they called calm! - to eat what they could of a light supper. Fresh eggs taken on at Freetown had mostly succumbed to the storm, but there was chicken and bread, which they tried to eat.
That last night on board, except for those in the sickbays, except for the poor madmen who were being kept doped in what was once the Second Class Writing Room, everyone was on deck, watching for the first sight of land, blessed land, as sailors and sea travellers have done for centuries after a bad voyage, longing for the fair Cape of Good Hope.
It was dangerous, all knew, approaching port, for where else would U-boats be lurking if not here? The two destroyers were everywhere, behind, in front, taking off apparently at random, and back again, and then it was light, and the seas around them were tumbling and running but not heaving up into the monstrous mountains that had seemed ready to engulf the ship. They were ordered to eat breakfast. ‘Get to it, lads,’ ordered Sergeant Perkins who remained solid flesh, unlike his thin and haggard charges. Tea and bread and jam was not what shrunken stomachs wanted.
Back on deck, they saw that a low line of cloud on the horizon marked land: that was Table Mountain they were seeing. So it really was over … no, not yet, the rumour went around that a U-boat was known to be in the area.
Sergeant Perkins stood in front of his hundred men with their corporals, and said to them, ‘Right, lads. It’s over. Time and the hour rims through the roughest day. Yes. Nothing was ever better said than that, eh, lads?’
Of the men there looking at him perhaps two or three knew how to attribute the quotation, but every face showed how the words described what they had been through. As for Sergeant Perkins, he had seen them on a calendar, long ago, and they had so perfectly said what he needed at a bad time in an unsafe adolescence that he had used the philosophy offered to him, and indeed, on many occasions since.
Now, as they watched, he reflated himself with the stuff of command and shouted, ‘Right, that’s it. Playtime over. No more fun and games. Private Payne, your belt’s askew. God, what a load of shirkers. Attention. Now, take your turn behind A Platoon for disembarkation.’
Two young women reclined on deckchairs on a verandah high on a slope of Table Mountain where they could overlook that part of the sea where the troopship would arrive, today or tomorrow. They were positioned so that the pillars of the stoep did not obstruct their view: ships when they appeared could be mistaken for a mote in the eye, a whale, even a seabird. They knew the troopship was coming because their husbands, both at the base in Simonstown, had told them. They had not been told the name of the ship or its destination. They had not passed on the enticing information. But surely the maids and the men who looked after their gardens would have noticed food arriving, not to mention the wine and the beer?
Both women were hostesses, known for their parties and their largesse. This would not be their first troopship, nor, it ‘was certain, the last. Cape Town, for the period the troops were on leave while the ship was refuelled and restocked with food and clean water, was not itself, was transformed into a city of soldiery in search of food, drink, and girls. Of course black or brown flesh was out of bounds, but this is not to say that the rules were kept.
The women, Daphne Wright and Betty Stubbs, had plans for festive days, at the very least two, with luck four or even five.
Under a tree in the garden the Coloured nanny sat with a pretty child of about eighteen months, who began to grizzle. ‘Okay, bring her to me,’ called Betty, and the nanny, a big brown girl in a pink dress and a white apron, came to deposit the child on her mother’s body, where she lay sprawled, and at once fell asleep. The nanny returned to her place under the tree, where she could watch for when she would next he needed. She began to knit.
Daphne watched the scene from under the hand that shielded her eyes from the glare, and said, ‘I’m getting as broody as hell, Bets.’ She stroked her flat stomach. She was wearing a scarlet skirt and white shirt and with her yellow hair looked like a girl on an advertising poster for a happy holiday.
“Hell, give me a break, eighteen months is too soon. We’ll start together and keep each other company.’
‘Joe doesn’t want us to start until after the war.’
‘That could be years.’
‘He says he doesn’t want me to he a widow with a kid. I say I’d like something to remember him by.’
Both husbands went off on hush-hush trips to various bits of Africa, and the wives suffered till they got back.
‘Bertie told me that Henry …’ - her husband - ‘had to make a forced landing in the bush last month. They nearly pranged. It was a close thing,’ remarked Betty.
‘Henry didn’t tell you?’ Daphne knew, because her husband had told her, hut not knowing if Betty had been told, was careful not to mention it.
‘No, he didn’t. I always say it’s a lot worse, when he doesn’t tell me.’
‘There’s a lot they don’t tell us.’
Betty was stroking her little child’s soft back, exposed by a scrap of white shirt, and Daphne said again, ‘But I am broody, I’m broody as hell. I think I’ll get pregnant and then he’ll have to like it.’
‘Of course he’ll like it.’
They resumed their watch on the innocent-seeming sea, where submarines might he lurking at that moment. No sign of the troopship, not a ship in sight, only the blue plains of the sea.
‘If it’s three nights, we’ll be broke for months,’ said Betty.
‘And if there’s a fourth we’ll urn out of food and everything.’
‘We can drive out and see what we can get from the farms.’
