Treason if You Lose by Peter Rimmer

Author:Peter Rimmer
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Kamba Publishing
Published: 2019-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

6

On the other side of the Indian Ocean, close to where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet, Anthony Brigandshaw was sitting on Clifton Beach looking at the girls. He had finished writing his matric at the Diocesan College, better known as Bishops, and had nothing better to do with his day now the hard work was over, cramming night after night in his determination to obtain a good enough pass to get himself into Cape Town University where he wanted to study medicine. Groote Schuur was close to the university and the medical faculty. Anthony wished to become a surgeon.

Having worked on his tan every day for a week, his skin was a golden brown, his hair almost white, bleached by the sun. Playing beach bats on the sand had made him fit, running all over the place to hit the tennis ball with a wooden bat the same size but heavier than a ping-pong bat. Anthony was Third Beach champion, the subject of many looks from the girls he had been too busy to notice while still studying at school.

With the burden of guilt lifted from his shoulders, sitting around on the beach was a pleasure. The sun was hot, the cool breeze off the Atlantic welcome, the sea icy cold when he went every half hour for a dip to cool down from the burning African sun. Each time he came out of the water, Anthony covered himself in baby oil, the schoolboys’ cheapest suntan lotion. On his nose and cheekbones he layered a white cream that was meant to stop the skin peeling. By the time Christmas came in two months’ time, the sun would be too hot to sit in for long at lunchtime; for now it was bearable for Anthony right through the day with the help of his dips in the sea.

Some of the lads were out on the waves, surfing their long boards, making Anthony jealous of their seemingly easy skill. Both the beach bats and the surfing were new to Cape Town’s beaches. Some of the girls had learnt to surf, mostly the same girls who hung around the life savers’ hut on First Beach. Even though he thought of Tinus Oosthuizen, Anthony doubted anyone on the beach was thinking about the war. The worst of their worries were the sharks lurking out in the sea off the five beaches, demarcated by giant granite boulders that dominated the sweet curve of white sand in the bay, where the sea was blue, the ozone pure, and black-backed gulls noisily scavenged the high line of the tide.

Higher, much higher, marched the Twelve Apostles from the east side of Table Mountain. For Anthony it never mattered which way he looked. Out at the ocean, up at the mountains, wherever he looked in Cape Town it was always beautiful. His days were perfect but for two things that he missed: his father’s company and the chance to fly John Woodall’s Tiger Moth.

That morning, before leaving the

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