War Serenade E-Book

Jill Wallace

• Herausgeber: WS
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 591

Beschreibung

DIVIDED BY WAR. UNITED BY MUSIC. ENDANGERED BY PASSION.
When bon vivant Italian opera star-turned-pilot Pietro is shot down during World War II, he nearly loses his life. Worse, he's lost his passion for music and is close to losing his sanity in a soul-crushing prisoner-of-war camp in South Africa when he meets Iris. He has a vision of a love worth dying for-worth living for-and realizes he must find his voice if he ever hopes to find her again.
Iris's dreams are at stake when she meets Pietro. All she wants is for her brother to come home alive from the war and to fulfill her destiny as a costume designer in Hollywood. But this spirited redhead's life turns upside down as her eyes meet Pietro's through the cage of his prison. The world may be at stake, but so is her heart.
Their secretive and daring courtship raises the suspicions of the bully who runs the camp, a scarred and damaged tyrant who once dated Iris. Consummating the couple's almost mystical connection will mean crossing the barbed wire, risking the deadly charge of treason and confronting their worst fears.
Inspired by a true story, War Serenade is compelling, heart-wrenching, sometimes funny and always dramatic as it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit, the evolution of rich friendships, and love's triumph against impossible odds.
"Jill Wallace has penned a love story for the ages, rich with detail and well-drawn characters. Fans of World War II romance are going to fall in love with this author."
- Roxanne St. Claire, New York Times bestselling author
"I feel like I just lost my best friends now that I finished reading this incredible story of World War II history and romance. This book reminded me of The Thorn Birds, one of my all-time favorite novels, and I know this fast-paced, moving story will soon be a blockbuster movie. ... Author Jill Wallace writes prose as poetry."
- Journalist Debra Shannon

Leseprobe

War Serenade

Inspired by a True Story

Jill Wallace

WAR SERENADE

by Jill Wallace

Copyright © 2018 by Jill Wallace

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

Print ISBN: 978-0-9997768-0-3

Ebook ISBN: 978-0-9997768-1-0

First edition

Cover by Sky Diary Productions

Published by Tsotsi Publications

www.jillwallace.com

Contents

Epilogue, Part I

1. I See You

2. The Girly Hots

3. Boots

4. Roses

5. Cursed Memories

6. What If?

7. Open The Floodgates

8. Armed

9. Heebee-Jeebies and Confessions

10. Spilling the Beans

11. New Beginnings

12. Quid Pro Quo

13. ‘Let Me Call You Sweetheart‘

14. ‘Yours, MAF’

15. Hot and Cold

16. Opening Night

17. Finally!

18. Love at Second Sight

19. Flustered and Fearless, Chained and Charming

20. Ally

21. Face to Face

22. Fourfeet

23. Worthwhile Consequences

24. Dye For You

25. Practice, Practice, Practice

26. Getting There

27. Together At Last

28. Nothing in Common?

29. The Sex Song

30. Piccolo and Axle Grease

31. Sibling Report and Hammock Sandwich

32. Lust or Anger; Anger or Lust?

33. Satisfaction

34. Piccolo’s Performance

35. Second Rendezvous?

36. Thorns

37. English Tea, One Cricket and Two Swans

38. Little White Dots

39. Zulu Truths

40. Speaking Costumes

41. Next Thursday: Same Time

42. Hello Again

43. African Surprises

44. Caught

45. The Morning After

46. The Letter

47. Headlights

48. Manneken Pis

49. Via Con Dio

50. Cover-Up

51. Tea For Two

52. The Hole

53. Celebrations and Commiserations

54. Surprise After Surprise

55. Going, Going, Gone

56. A Dog’s Tail/Tale

57. A Blessing and a Curse

Epilogue, Part II

Coming soon: Zebra

Afterword

Acknowledgments

About the Author

For my husband, Athol Wallace.

Every once in a great while, you make eye contact with someone you have never seen before, and it’s as if you see into the other’s soul. The connection between you is so deep and so strong, you blindly accept with all that is true, although it’s beyond all logic and reason, that the person before you is as necessary to your existence as the very air you breathe.

You are everything my Dad could have wished for me.

Epilogue, Part I

The Shoebox

Durban, South Africa

1960

The girl was more excited than she’d ever been in her life. She’d never waited so long for anything. She finally understood why her dad said, “Anticipation is the greatest part of life.”

It had been three hundred and sixty-five days, two hours and eleven minutes since she’d found the shoebox when the garage stuff was moved around, so her dad could lay out the train set he gave her for her eighth birthday.

She’d been a whole lot more excited about the shoebox than the train set, which was similar to the model planes and antique cars of past years. She suspected her father had wished for a boy, but he adored her, and as long as he was happy, she was perfectly content. He was her hero, you see, and she’d never disappoint him.

The shoebox.

When she’d accidently bumped into the old bookshelf during the train set-up session, soft crocheted blankets tumbled on top of her head, bringing down the box.

She’d held the well-sealed rectangle in her hands and immediately felt its ounces of weight become pounds, with all the secrets within.

It was covered in brown paper, double-tied with string, and everywhere the string entwined, a dark red blob of sealing wax pulsed. Not molded in a crest or a coat of arms like in the days of spies and kings, but hasty, hot-melting wax, creating urgent blobs the color of congealed blood, throbbing with danger.

For a magical instant, she saw an outline of shimmering yellow around the box, like a halo. Blood and sunshine. She shivered and smiled at the same time.

“Daddy, can I open this box?” Her words were breathy.

“Ask your mother.” He wasn’t paying attention to her at all. He was too busy with the train set.

Inside, when the girl asked innocent permission, holding the box, her mother’s face was tinged with crimson. The girl knew trouble was coming.

“That box is only to be opened when you are old enough. Do you hear?” The girl was taken aback by her mother’s seldom-used harsh delivery.

“Why is it so secret, Mommy?” the girl asked logically.

“It belongs to your uncle and aunt. We are keeping it for them until it’s safe.”

“Safe from what, Mommy?”

“From authorit— from people who could make it difficult for them,” her mother said, her accent thicker than usual.

“But when I am old enough, I can open it?” the girl asked, holding her breath.

“When you’re old enough, you can tell their story, but only then. Do you understand me?” The girl nodded, understanding completely that nothing would change her mom’s mind.

But from that day forth, she wondered how old “old enough” could be. She figured that if she didn’t ask, she could make her own decision as to when that time had come.

Now she was nine.

Since she was much older and wiser, to celebrate her birthday, she decided she would open the box. Her gift to herself. And her first decision.

Though it was they who encouraged her independent spirit, she doubted her parents would approve of her first undertaking.

It was all she could think of during the weeks before her big day of turning nine.

At last. She pretended to be really excited by the gleaming plastic blow-up globe she unwrapped that morning. It was her father’s wish that she have a keen sense of the world outside the little dot of Durban on which they lived. In truth, Charlie the rabbit, who was revealed in a cage in the back yard, would have been enough to set her nine-year-old-world on fire, but she held back for the ultimate pleasure her birthday could bring. The gift she’d promised herself.

Her mother’s head bobbed around her bedroom door. “You be good. I’m going to tennis with Aunty Wendy. Take off your school uniform. Do your homework. Maid’s in her room if you need her. When I come home, I’m going to make you the best dinner ever in the history of the world, with Christmas crackers in November and chocolate cake! Then you can play with Charlie.” Her mother’s words rolled with the rich, musical lilt she loved so well.

The girl smiled at her mom, not because she loved her, though she did, but because she couldn’t wait for her mother’s car to pull out of the garage so she could get in.

She felt like a criminal as she snuck into the garage. To calm her nerves, she sang, “Happy birthday to me ... ”

She pulled a small table in place and, balancing preciously, managed to access the box her father had strategically placed out of her reach after her mother’s reaction. She swore she could feel her hand get hotter and hotter as it got closer to the shoebox. Her fingers found the box, and joy filled her.

“Happy birthday to me … ”

Balancing on her perch, she carefully brought down the box and stood silently just holding the secret cardboard vault. She sat down on the concrete floor and traced the string slowly with her finger, from one smooth, blood-red blob to the next. Once the seals are broken, there is no going back.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, but when she knew it was time, she picked up the small knife and sliced through the string. The twine sprang back.

She sat looking at the delicious keeper of secrets in her lap. Her fingers tingled. Open the bloody box. Instinctively, her hands covered her mouth to stop more bad words coming out.

She gave in, eased off the string and, denied too long, quickly ripped off the brown paper.

She tried to justify her actions. “If I’m to tell their story, I need to understand their secrets,” she thought with solid logic and felt even better about her first decision as a nine-year-old.

As she gingerly lifted the lid, she smelled flowers and earth and paper. But not just any paper, papyrus perhaps, from the ancient Egyptians in her history book, such was the richness of it all.

She gently laid down the lid and began the ultimate treasure hunt ...

1

I See You

“Every once in a great while, you make eye contact with someone you have never seen before, and it’s as if you see into the other’s soul. The connection between you is so deep and so strong, you blindly accept with all that is true, although it’s beyond all logic and reason, that the person before you is as necessary to your existence as the very air you breathe.”

— Dad, 1960

* * *

Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

27 July 1943

Her city of Pietermaritzburg was but a speck on the horizon as they bumped along toward the prisoner of war camp in the rugged two-seater jeep.

Iris shivered as she thought of tales of unspeakable horrors that caused the locals to give the square mile of flatlands a wide berth. They feared being haunted by the Boer War atrocities against the women and children who died in the concentration camp thirty-five years ago, before the Geneva Convention. At least now it was referred to as a “Prisoner of War” camp, which had less hideous connotations.

Iris swore the roads had not been tended since and thanked the lord that she sported a well-padded behind. But just this once. She didn’t want him to get carried away and add an inch or two for further comfort. She thought of Lena, her beloved Zulu surrogate mother, whose voluptuous ebony folds had given Iris comfort all her life, and though she wouldn’t change her for the world, she certainly didn’t want to inherit Lena’s large bum by osmosis.

She thought of Lena and her determination to teach Fourfeet, the gardener next door, how to read. The Sunday Times was Lena’s curriculum. She’d insisted he attend her school of one while she cleaned the kitchen. She’d patiently enunciate each word in preparation for Fourfeet’s lesson, and when she didn’t understand, she’d quiz Iris or her mother for explanation and pronunciation. Frankly, it kept them all on their toes and up to date on war news. Iris admired Lena’s inquisitive mind. What better way to learn yourself than to teach another? This morning the lesson read: “Palermo Falls! Allied Invasion of Sicily Inspires Coup d’etat Against Mussolini. RAF Bombs Kiel: Heaviest RAF Raid of War.” It was a hell of a mouthful for a Zulu who only learned English when she was twenty-five, and then just by paying attention.

When Iris reported for duty at the hospital that morning, she was mentally redesigning the dull volunteer uniform she wore—a dab of color here, a simple dart there—when she was cornered by a cheerless nurse who brought no softness to her hard profession.

“Doctor de Kleyn needs help at the POW camp today.”

“Can you ask somebody else?”

“You’re a volunteer, girly. You’ll do what you’re told.” She snorted. Iris was fascinated by the nurse’s thin nostrils flaring. “A real nurse should go, if you ask me,” the nurse grumbled.

Iris jumped at the chance, her eyes never leaving the nurse’s nose. “Good idea. You go.”

“He asked for you. Specifically.” The nostrils were now flapping faster than a Venus flytrap.

“Can’t they come here?” How hard could it be to bring them over, for gosh sakes? Who was in charge of logistics? And while she was making her suggestions, perhaps she’d also mention the simple little changes that would give their uniforms a little va-va-va-voom!

The disgusted look the nurse shot Iris required no verbal response. She whipped around, throwing words over her shoulder: “To nurse’s station so I can educate you. Someone has to.”

Hmm. This is your penance.Suck it up, Iris! Go to the bloody prisoner of war camp. Oh God, imagine if Gregg was in one of those? Then she relaxed. Knowing her brother, no matter where he was, he would be making them all laugh, planning game nights and tennis matches. She fathomed the war regardless of Lena’s headlines. Still, it felt so very far away.

Two hours later, she was in the jeep bound for the camp. Iris stood up, locking her hands around the bar on the dashboard. The doctor beside her was pleasant and easy on the eye, but she’d sworn off men. Since, well ... she didn’t want to see Julian today. Ever again, really.

She lifted her face to the early sun and felt its gentle morning rays warming her wind-brushed cheeks. If she was any smarter, she would have worn a hat to stop her blooming freckles from multiplying, which they were apt to do. She smelled wet grass and the dark, dank tang of thick, seldom trodden foliage. Every now and then she inhaled the pungent whiff of animal droppings. Not unpleasant, just African.

A long, curly, copper tendril slapped wildly at her cheek.

How she hated her hair! She’d painstakingly tamed and pinned the thick waves that hung to her waist to conform to the shoulder-length bob that was so fashionable in the grainy, black and white photographs from abroad.

The Sunday Times’ women’s section was her weekly and only reliable source of fashion information now that the smaller towns were off the fashion grid for runway shows. The pictures confirmed London’s elite were, luckily for Iris, exempt from the ravages of war. They continued to push fashion boundaries, and Iris lapped it up like milk to a rescued kitten. She pored over the cut, flow, patterns and nuances of hem length until her pencil came alive with her own whimsical designs. Grainy pictures transformed magically into a vivid color palette in her mind, then under her sharp pencil, taffeta, chiffon and silk were ruched, gathered and twisted, evolving into her unique and stunning creations.

She smiled as she thought of Lena and her friend Sofie’s disappointment when she began designing clothes for herself. Though she still made them each a dress every month with money she saved, she wore the most daring creations herself.

She caught the doctor smiling back as if her flash of teeth had been for his benefit. Men! They were by far the vainer sex.

“This bloody hair!” she complained as another thick tendril covered her eyes for a second, but the feeling of fast wheels, wind and freedom outweighed the need to tame her wild tresses for the sake of fashion. Well, just for a moment.

Too soon, the jeep pulled up outside the brick building on her left, the hub for the army staff managing the camp, Iris surmised.

The smell on the opposite side of the road was overwhelming. She felt her face pucker in disgust as mud and feces fought for first place in her delicate nostrils. Two high fences were separated by a walkway, where a pair of soldiers holding dogs on tight leashes patrolled in opposite directions.

She looked from left to right and was jarred by the contrast. Neat, solid, brick normalcy on the left and make-do depravity on the right.

A four-foot coil of razor wire at the base and peak, both sides of each fence, made sure anybody trying to climb over would be cut to pieces after their first three-story hurdle. However, if they escaped that, dismemberment, courtesy of the Dobermans on the walkway, was a dead certainty. And if, by some miracle, they escaped those jaws, the second lethal fence would ensure they bled out before they landed outside the perimeter.

She shivered in the warmth. Her cursed imagination! She always had to take a vague thought to completion, like a design dreamed up, penciled, patterned, cut, sewn and debuted.

And what if they had protective clothing? That was absurd! The few men she saw inside the camp were in rags, and it was the middle of winter. Poor buggers must be freezing.

So, hypothetically, what if they made it out, then wanted to trek the fifty-odd miles to the port in Durban where they could miraculously stow away on a warship for four thousand nautical miles, back to Italy?

Thick foliage between Pietermaritzburg and Durban hid seven deadly South African snakes, killer bees, hungry lions, protective leopards, lethal spiders, charging rhino, angry elephant, crocodiles in excess of twenty feet, and Africa’s biggest killer, the hippopotamus. They all had a stake in the land between, and humans were the enemy. No! Armor couldn’t save the poor buggers. She sighed. So this giant, hellish cage Julian, the-man-in-charge, had constructed for them, might not be so bad after all.

She sniffed. Surely this stink hole, filled with khaki tents surrounded by moats—for the rain, she supposed—was in violation of the newly set Geneva standards? Perhaps there were so few captives, they could make do until the onslaught arrived and more modern latrines could be installed. Maybe the wind was just blowing the wrong way.

Oh, hell, what did she know about such things? Her stomach clenched, and she purposely looked at the “normal” side. Hmm. Pity one could never un-see human depravity.

She swallowed hard. I’ll be strong for you, Gregg. Please God, don’t let my brother be in one of these inhumane waste pits. She saw Gregg’s right eyebrow rise as it did when he was either amused or annoyed with his only sibling. Conjuring up his face was becoming harder, but here he was now, clear as the day he’d left them, and her heart calmed. But not for long. She remembered Lena’s lesson: “RAF Bombs Kiel: Heaviest RAF Raid of War.” Her brother and the likes of these prisoners were trying to kill each other, and her brother’s side was winning. Thank God. The war was closer, all of a sudden.

As the jeep’s engine cut off, she busied herself rearranging untamed hair and straightening her dull blue uniform.

A commotion beyond the razor fence erupted. A gaggle of ragged men emerged from the hundred or so tents. No wonder Venus-Flytrap-Nose thought Iris dumb as a shoe for wanting to bring the mountain to Mohammed. There were literally hundreds of them surging en masse toward her.

Her heart pounded a million miles a minute, and she was about to run away as fast as her legs could carry her, when she realized the charging masses weren’t even looking her way. She felt ever so slightly disappointed. See? She knew the volunteer’s uniform was dull, dull, dull!

She blushed deeply as she saw their deplorable state of neglect, and she was abysmally ashamed of how vain she was, to imagine these deprived ragamuffins would cause a stampede to get a better look at her!

She followed the men’s eyes upward. A shoeless prisoner climbed up the inside wire fence. His feet were bleeding. Not surprising. The deathly-sharp barbs wound around the thick wire and poked out at different angles, like haphazard one-inch nails.

The guy was by no means surefooted, so she guessed this was not a daily occurrence.

The tattered prisoners shouted from the ground. Iris imagined it was some sort of Italian encouragement as the man climbed higher. He seemed oblivious to the goings-on below.

A beefy guard shouted: “Get down now, man. You want us to shoot you?”

Several guards pointed guns at the prisoner, but the guy on the wire was either stupid, brave, blindly determined, or didn’t give a damn. Something important drove him ever upward.

As he reached the top, she wondered why the guards didn’t stop warning and start shooting, and she covered her ears in anticipation of the blasts.

She found she’d inched unwittingly nearer the perimeter and was close enough to see the face of the climber. There were lines on his cheeks where, in happier times, there might have been dimples.

His angular face changed from detachment to tenderness, and the ragged chorus of onlookers cried out.

She was aware the doctor was next to her when he shouted the interpretation in her ear: “Get the bird!” She was too absorbed to be impressed by his linguistic skills.

Then she saw it. A fat pigeon was caught in the barbed wire at the top of the high fence. By the scant frames of the malnourished prisoners, a plump pigeon over a hot fire would not go amiss. But a look of tenderness? The man must be starving!

A city girl through and through, Iris refused to think of the sweet little lamb or the cow with kind eyes, as she enjoyed the sumptuous dinner before her. “It’s just meat” often became her mealtime mantra. She refused to think about the living creatures sacrificed for her palate’s pleasure. Who, then, was she to judge this starving man bringing down a portly pigeon to roast over a fire?

The crowd roared with delicious anticipation.

She was amazed by the prisoner’s gentleness as he reached for the bird while he clung to the wire for dear life with his other hand. Blood oozed from new lacerations as he manipulated the pigeon slowly through the razor edges, his own hand taking the pain, while gentle fingers encased the bird protectively.

Goodness! No wasted drop. They were hungry. She couldn’t watch the poor bird’s imminent demise, yet she couldn’t look away.

He manipulated the pigeon from its lethal trap and held it above the fence while his other hand still gripped the wire, stopping him from falling three stories to a razor-sharp death.

She winced at the taste of blood and realized she’d bitten the inside of her cheek.

The man still held the bird firmly in one big hand. What a showman.

“Get it over with!” she wanted to shout. She’d learned to nip torture in the bud the hard way. Don’t be dramatic, Iris. She heard her mother’s voice but managed to ignore it as the fascinated guards lowered their guns, and the gleeful crowd was quiet. All eyes were raised up to the man on the wire.

He held up his hand as high as he dared without losing his balance.

“A sacrifice?” wondered Iris.

His tapered fingers opened. The pigeon froze. The prisoners were still and silent.

The bird took flight. Wobbly at first, likely overcome by its unexpected freedom, but mercifully, it caught the wind and soared away.

Free.

And then she understood: He freed the pigeon because he couldn’t free himself.

Wild, angry “Boos” broke the silence. That was Italian she understood.

The man’s face remained expressionless. He simply started his downward climb, and as he dropped his chin for a good look at where to secure his next footing … 

He found her eyes instead. His bleeding, bare foot remained suspended in midair.

And the world stopped, as did her heart, suspended in her chest. Then the blooming thing somersaulted. A great, big, double Boswell & Wilkie Circus high-wire dismount kind of somersault. Breathing wasn’t important as his eyes penetrated her hidden, most private core, and seeing into his deepest self, she felt at once immediate recognition and the ache of long separation. Then joyous relief at the reunion, unfathomable understanding, and above all, deep, satisfying, all-consuming emotion she didn’t understand. It pierced her heart like a long pin into a well-stuffed cushion.

“Get down now, or we shoot.” Guns were cocked again, but the sound was far away, in another world. Another time.

From far away, she heard Dr. de Kleyn’s insistent voice: “Let’s go where it’s safe. It’s dangerous out here.”

She blinked, breaking the connection and jolting her senses. She inhaled her first breath in what seemed like two days.

Before she turned away, Iris tried to find the bird savior’s eyes again, but he was close to the barbed wire, so his concentration was on the careful placement of his naked foot. She felt empty. The doctor’s last words echoed in her head, and the most profound thought hit her like a hammer: “Dangerous? I’ve never felt safer than I did just then,” but she followed his white coat into the brick building.

She had jelly legs, a new, awfully odd sensitivity, but as they were ushered into Julian’s office, she lost all sensations other than distaste.

The bird savior had made her forget how much she was dreading this ordeal.

Julian bounced on the balls of his feet, and his thin smile was as wide as she’d ever seen it as he led them to the mess hall. He was gloved as usual, and the bunched hand held his whip, which tapped against his leg. A kind of out-of-sync metronome. “So effens skeef,” came into Iris’s mind unbidden. She rarely spoke Afrikaans because she was English through and through, and that mattered when the Boers and the English were still smarting over their vicious war. But sometimes the Boers’ Afrikaans language truly captured a situation as no other could. Julian was indeed “a little bit off-center.”

“I didn’t dare hope you’d come, though I requested you.” His cloying presence was the perfect antidote for her still fast-beating heart.

Iris feigned indifference. “Here to do a job, Julian. Trust you’re doing well?” A rhetorical question. She didn’t care how he was.

Doctor de Kleyn had no time for small talk with the acting head of this dismally run camp. “Get the prisoners in so we can get this over and done with, Colonel.” The disdain that tainted the undeserved title was clear to Iris and lost on Julian.

As she worked, Iris was acutely aware of Julian’s eyes on her, no doubt waiting with bated breath for her reaction to his new lofty title. She refused to curtsy to his ego. She busied herself for the onslaught of the growing line of prisoners by placing the heap of cotton balls in a sterilized bowl, filling the malaria pill dispenser and prepping the vicious-looking needles for the penicillin shots.

The single line of ragged men wove in and out of the hall, through the doors and down the long passage.

The first emaciated prisoner was in front of her. She went to give him his malaria pill, and he put his hands behind his back and stuck out his tongue. The stench of his open mouth made her recoil in horror. Doc was quick to intervene. “This is not a communion wafer, my friend. Put out your hand.” Julian appeared like a demonic genie, his whip raised ominously. The man’s tongue disappeared like a lizard who’d missed a fly.

Iris was startled by the naked fear she saw on the prisoner’s face as Julian’s whip was raised. She shivered. Shame on you, Iris, for dreaming up the whip!

The line kept coming, and a pattern was established: hands out for their malaria pill; turn sideways to have a couple of inches of upper arm cleaned by Iris; turn sideways to Doc for the penicillin shot. She was grateful for their dirt-encrusted bodies, because the mud trapped their odor underneath. When she caught the odd whiff of dank flesh the alcohol couldn’t mask, it made her stomach clench.

After a couple of dozen administrations, she turned her head away from the masses, waved her hand in front of her nose and whispered to the doctor, “Noxious!”

“No showers. They have to wait for the rain to bathe.”

“Oh my gosh, I didn’t think past the smell. I feel so bad now. Who could do this to human beings? Or animals, for that matter?”

For an answer, de Kleyn jutted his jaw at the hovering Colonel Julian.

How would Gregg handle stinking to high heaven like this?

She vowed not to show these likely once-proud men that their stench was beyond endurance. It was quite a feat, but she did it. For Gregg. Just in case.

And still they streamed in. Though very few spoke English, they seemed not enemies at all, just skinny, neglected men in rags, many without anything on their dirty feet. Like pigs in manure. Don’t be unkind, Iris.

Now and then she caught a glimpse of the vital men they might have been before the war. A flirty wink. A kind smile. A wicked grin. She knew the interest in their eyes wasn’t for her particularly, but rather any change was a welcome break in their mundane, pitiful existence.

As she cleaned spots on muddied deltoids and revealed sun-bronzed skin, she wondered if this was how her brother looked. Dirty and disheveled. Just a face in a long line. Oh, Gregg.

Thoughts of him overshadowed the sympathy she felt toward these neglected men. The likes of them were aiming guns, bombs, and heaven only knew what else at her brother. Trying to kill him, but please God, not succeeding. Last she heard, Gregg was flying his Spitfire over Italy. Life was fraught with ironies, she’d discovered.

Her ludicrous thoughts of Gregg in a POW camp making up games and arranging tennis matches now shamed her. These neglected men in front of her were the realities of war. Oh, please, God. Protect him from this horror.

He’d left them brokenhearted on the platform the day he went off to war. She, Mom, Lena, Sofie and Buffer feared they would never see him again. Not even Buffer’s doggie kisses could make her feel better.

Recently, her department store, the fanciest in all of southern Africa, made volunteering for the war effort compulsory for all staff. They were paid for two days out of their work week to offer their services where needed. But Iris knew she had to over-achieve in order to pay her dues to keep her brother safe. She doubled her hospital duty, working dozens of hours without pay in her own time. She had the time since she’d sworn off … well, since Julian.

But sure as hell, she hadn’t anticipated cleaning off the grimy arms of Gregg’s enemy so they wouldn’t die in her own country. Not from malaria or diseases cured by penicillin, at least. Malnutrition under Julian’s neglect was another matter.

How ironic, too, that she assisted in protecting her country’s enemies from the very disease that had so cruelly taken her father. Life was full of disparity between what actually happens and what, by all accounts, should.

Too often she dreamed Gregg was faceless. Her own screams, and faithful Buffer’s wet nose nudging her, mercifully woke her and she’d force his familiar face into perspective, or if all else failed, looked at the photo next to her bed. She shivered. It had been a long month since his last letter.

She felt herself applying unnecessary pressure to the man’s arm as she prepped for his injection. She apologized softly to the prisoner. She was grateful he seemed oblivious.

And then he was in front of her.

The pigeon savior.

Her legs buckled again. What the hell? Since when had she become the fainting sort?

His eyes were dark blue, and his hair was jet black, but there was nothing dark about his spirit. She felt at once warm and safe and hot and flustered as his eyes captured hers again. Close up this time. She was transfixed.

They opened their mouths at the same time. To speak? No. They were more like flowers opening to receive the sun or rain or some necessary sustenance to survive. She breathed him in through her nose and still open mouth, inhaling him, consuming him. She saw tiny little scars around his mouth, and she longed to kiss them softly, to take away their cause, if not the scars themselves, because they saved him from being just too good-looking.

“Keep the line moving, Iris.” The command made her jump.

How close had they been standing? How close had their open mouths come to being connected by magnetic force, or whatever the hell it was that pulled them together?

The doctor’s voice brought her back from wherever the mystifying swim in those dark blue pools had taken her, and she placed the malaria pill in his hand.

They both jumped as her two fingers touched the inside of his palm. A current. An actual electricity sparked between them. Their eyes were locked when he smiled. Afterward, when she could think, she realized she was right about the dimples.

Guilt surged through her, and she busied herself with applying alcohol to cotton balls.

He was the enemy. Gregg’s enemy.

She could feel his eyes burning into her skin, a warm, delicious burn like sunshine after a violent storm.

As she rubbed his bicep with alcohol, she tried to calm her breathing by thinking of ... who was she kidding? She couldn’t focus on anything but the color of his skin. Namib sand. Smooth and fine like that sandy coast where precious diamonds were found. Don’t look up, Iris! Where’s it going to get you? Eyes DOWN.

Her mind dictated, but her heart ignored. She raised her eyes slowly, fearful the connection would be different this time, but his eyes waited and, if anything, the magic intensified to hot and all-consuming.

Her bliss was short-lived, as Doc pulled her savior’s shoulder around so he could jab in the needle, followed by a gentle push to move him along.

Iris felt a deep sense of loss as soon as her savior was gone. Emptiness had replaced the languid, warm place he’d taken her with just the depth of his eyes and the sight of his skin.

“Her” savior? Emptiness? She had touched him clinically once. Don’t be ridiculous, Iris. Her mother again!

But those eyes. Interesting. Magnetic. Looking into her very soul.

The Savior dominated her mind throughout the afternoon as Julian hovered in her peripheral vision. As she and the doctor were leaving, Julian called to her.

She heard her voice, clipped with irritation. “Julian, I can’t chat. We have to get the balance of the medicine to the lab for refrigeration.” She thought that sounded impressive, though she made it up on the spot.

“Iris. Give me another chance. I can make you happy.”

“Please, Julian. We’ve talked this to death.” Then she felt bad. She didn’t want to be unkind. Iris turned toward him. “There are many girls who would love your attention. I just don’t have time for a relationship right now. Go well.” She hated being false, but she suspected his vindictiveness ran deep, and she wanted no part of it.

And why on earth had she suggested the gloves and the bloody whip? She’d created a monster. She shook her head hard to free her mind of the guilt and resolved not to think about it again. She turned and left the room in a hurry, feeling Julian’s eyes drilling into her arched back.

The prisoners must have been in their tents because none were to be seen, and there was a guard with a gun posted ominously outside every fourth V-shaped canvas.

She wished she’d seen him again. Rags, bare feet, and all. He’d somehow cleaned the blood off his hands and feet before he’d come to the makeshift clinic. She remembered, too, that his arm was just a wee bit dusty and not encrusted with mud. He hadn’t even smelt like the others. She was pathetically touched by the effort he’d made when running water was not a benefit they enjoyed.

As the jeep careened back to town, she pushed hard on the outside of her thick cotton uniform and felt the sharp angles of the folded paper inside her pocket. A tangible reminder of the adventure that lay ahead. Her delicious secret. Her salvation. Her future.

But today she needed more. Her hand found its way into her pocket, and she clenched the piece of paper. It wasn’t the original. She’d gone through four replicas since she got the letter two weeks ago. Desperate clutching had blurred the content.

His blue eyes were all she could think of. The balled paper felt prickly in her hand as she squeezed tighter. Ridiculous! Why was she fantasizing about the impossible when a dream come true literally lay in the palm of her hand?

Out of the blue, she began humming a tune. She didn’t know the words, just the title and the tune. How odd.

“O Sole Mio,” she sang softly, well-disguised by the jeep’s noise. As she la-la-la’d the rest of the tune, she was infused with calm, and she loosened her grip on her paper talisman.

2

The Girly Hots

Pietermaritzburg, South Africa

28 July 1943—next day

Lena and Sofie sat on the steps of the stoep, the South Africanism for back porch, leading from kitchen to backyard of the one-story brick home owned by the Fuller Family. These slate steps were their morning meeting place after the most essential housework was done.

This slightly elevated vantage point was perfect from which to observe the comings and goings. The women enjoyed the smell of the lush, wild banana and mango trees within easy reach, were they so inclined.

Many debates had ensued on these steps, and this day was no exception. “Ibhubesi has a spring in her step today,” said the robust Lena.

“Ibhubesi,” the Zulu word for lioness, was their name for the vibrant youngest of the Fuller household, whom both had known for nearly all of the girl’s twenty years.

Others knew her as Iris.

“I am telling you, Lena. Every day she is more like a cheetah with her long legs and her spotted face.” Sofie was in her own world as usual.

“A cheetah? Eikona, Sofie. You have forgotten the wild animals from the hills. A cheetah may be agile and solitary, but it’s timid and shy and it doesn’t roar. Does that sound like our Ibhubesi?” Her large body wobbled with mirth and exposed a dark gap where recently a front tooth had gleamed. Ibhubesi had paid the dentist to extract the offender with her own money. The healing herbs Lena would have used were not to be found in town where buildings and roads replaced nature.

Sofie was determined to be contrary. “A leopard then, still spotted, eating its prey in a tree, like our girl who spends her life suspended above the ground, drawing dresses.”

Lena was adamant. “Why do we not agree? For nineteen years and more, we see her legs grow longer, her eyes get more catlike, and her red mane get wilder.”

“But a lioness with a mane?” Sofie won the argument with that. Sort of.

“Perhaps a Big Cat with the spots of a leopard and the legs of a springbok, her favorite prey,” Lena sniffed. Compromise was the only way the two women remained friends.

Sofie’s face and demeanor softened. “But she is our Ibhubesi in fearlessness, I will grant you that, you old cow.” She giggled to lighten her insult.

But Lena had other things on her mind. “And I am telling you, Sofie, since yesterday she carries the fire down there. She has the girly hots.”

“How can you see this heat through her clothes?” Sofie was confused.

“A mother knows her child, even if she was birthed by another. And Sofie, our girl became a woman yesterday. I know this.”

Sofie spun to face her friend, shocked out of her quarrelsome mood. “No! A woman?”

“Eikona. Not that kind of woman. Not yet. Just one who has found what she wants.” Sofie relaxed. She thought she’d missed something mammoth.

“Today Ibhubesi looks like me when I see Philemon from the petrol station,” Lena said.

“Those girly hots are clear on your face when you see him. Does Philemon know he makes your isibunu full of juice?”

“Are you crazy, Sofie? I am a married woman.” Lena looked at her friend with disdain.

“Married to a usually impotent man in the hills who smokes the dagga and does nothing.” Sofie’s filter had long ago collapsed.

“Married is married, but it doesn’t prevent the girly hots. I look at him. I feel tingles. Juice flows. I am happy. It is Philemon who is responsible for my pleasure when my husband is not impotent.”

Sofie snorted. “Well! Praise the ancestors for the girly hots then!”

“I wish you a Philemon from the petrol station, Sofie. Then perhaps the carrot you have lodged up your bum would fall out, and you would not be so bad tempered.”

“Carrots have good nutrition,” Sofie said, straight-faced.

Lena started to giggle, then she laughed until her whole body wobbled and Sofie joined in. As they laughed together, Lena put out a big arm and squashed the thin Sofie to her in a bear hug. All was right in their world. For a minute.

The women came to town from their separate kraals, beyond the Pietermaritzburg hills, a score of years before. Their daily grind in the kraals as young, married women was to toil and chat together with the other wives, making sure food was gathered and prepared, chickens, cows and goats fed, and young girls properly guided to womanhood.

Perhaps the developments down the hill would not have held the same attractions had their husbands remained virile and fighting-fit, rather than lazy and dulled by the wild weed that inflated memories of their own importance.

Once great warriors, claiming their corner of the South African continent, in the recent peace they became puffed-up and useless, filling their days by outdoing each other with tales of great battles, their heroism growing monumentally with each retelling.

At night they barked orders at their wives and drank too much Kefir beer. They could seldom fulfill their own urges in the darkened huts, let alone those of their ripe women.

True, there were no surprises and life was mostly peaceful, but “Town” below the kraal grew with settlers and industry. The air was filled with strange languages, odd music, moving machines, interesting smells, new noises and bright colors of every hue. A longing to be immersed in the madness tugged at these unfulfilled women, like hungry puppies yearning for ripe teats.

“Town” was where they could work for a little money (they’d never bartered with coins before) and live in the servants’ quarters attached to white men’s homes and relish life in the thick of all the change.

The young Lena and Sofie came from two different kraals, though they arrived in town on the same day, drawn by the same lust for life. But, on arrival, they found themselves lost and overwhelmed in the new chaos.

Recognizing the bewilderment in the other, they immediately linked hands and set off together, knocking on doors, in search of any white families needing “a girl.”

It was pure luck that the Fuller family was socially on the way up and needed help with their redheaded newborn and five-year-old boy with the lightest of spirits and the darkest of hair; at the same time, the van Niekerks next door lost their last maid to a leopard attack on her way up the hill to her kraal.

The ladies were snapped up and had been neighbors and friends ever since.

Usually the outside of the servants’ quarters looked as handsome as the large manicured brick homes they were attached to, but inside they were nothing more than rough-plastered caves with no amenities.

But not for long. Lena and Sofie soon had cozy nests, courtesy of their new families’ castoffs. It was all they needed to rekindle their pride and allow them to experiment with their newfound individualism.

But, like all the other Zulus who gave up their traditional life for servitude to the white man in the colonies, they quickly learned their place. They were servants.

As heady as town was, all Zulus were pulled home to their roots in the hills on occasion. An invented relative’s funeral was the perfect remedy for homesickness. It began with loud keening and high-pitched wailing traditionally used for Zulu ceremonies. The ear-piercing, mournful sounds, along with the threat that if forbidden to go, their ancestors might retaliate, were enough to convince the most hardened Christian employer to allow their servants time off.

They labored most of the day up the steep hills to their kraals, excited to see old friends. They spent the next two days satisfying their homesickness and their husbands, then with wings on their heels, they came back to the action and the lessons in humility.

Their visit sustained them for some time. A powerful reminder of where they no longer wanted to be.

Town had its own problems, and the white man took some getting used to with his vanity and his need for social prowess. The saving grace was that the town Zulus still had their language, their keen sense of humor and each other.

No white folks were remotely interested in understanding or talking Zulu, so their native tongue allowed them to openly criticize and make fun of the world around them. Their employers were none the wiser. In fact, such was their white self-importance, they simply presumed, because the Zulus beamed through their gibberish-sounding exchanges with each other, that their servants were always jolly.

Their delicious comedy buffered them from feeling downtrodden; it was their outlet for pent-up anger and their bonus for putting up with the whites they served.

Zulus were keen observers, and Lena and Sofie were no exception.

Ibhubesi’s mother, well, her birth mother, had no patience or softness toward the girl child. Lena understood then why, as she grew, the child sought her own company, her older brother’s or that of Lena and Sofie’s, rather than her mother’s. But when her father came home, he was the child’s focus, and she, her father’s delight.

Lena was always there when real mother gallivanted off to tennis or teas or galas with other upper-class white women. She watched Ibhubesi living mostly in her own world, perfectly happy with paper and pencil, drawing everything her eyes fell upon.

Brother held his little sister’s heart very gently in the palm of his hand. He was every bit his father’s son. Like the sun, he emitted warmth, and people and animals alike basked in his healing rays.

The Zulu friends often reminisced about the huge event in Ibhubesi’s life that had so enormously affected their own. All because of the mister’s thoughtfulness, the ladies became celebrities amongst their peers.

Sofie loved her mister. On this remarkable evening, Ibhubesi’s seventh birthday, he’d struggled out of his driving machine with a big box that the ladies helped him carry inside.

The child was overcome when she saw her father’s beaming face and the big box. She tore at the paper like a hungry hunter ripping open the belly of a fat rabbit.

The ecstasy that came from her little voice box was a special something the ladies would always remember. Little white arms hugged her father so tight, they caused water to spout from the elder’s eyes. They were baffled by the cause of the unbridled excitement: the heavy black machine, with a little wheel and a sharp needle, didn’t look worthy. Ibhubesi’s cry, “A sewing machine!” shed no light on its prowess at all.

But in the months that followed, they learned what magic the “Whirr Whirr” had in store for them.

Lena and Sofie became the black fashion icons of Pietermaritzburg courtesy of that crazy little black buzzing machine. Their status had taken some trial and error as the child experimented with her adult toy: Their hems came undone while strutting their stuff, sleeves were at odd angles, and wrongly positioned darts cut their breasts in half, but their garments were brand-new and tailor-made. No make-do castoffs for these ladies. They wore the finest of fabrics. Well, certainly in the first few Whirr Whirr years.

The three spent hours in Lena’s modest quarters, the youngster on a box to reach their strong naked shoulders, draping them in exotic cloth that felt cool and opulent against their ebony skin. They felt like queens in the making.

Like statues they stood, thoughts of dazzling their peers was their end goal, as Ibhubesi pinned and pricked, tilting her copper head the same way as the fabric she’d just draped, likely imagining the finished creation. The ladies’ status improved at the same remarkable pace as did Ibhubesi’s expertise.

It was true the men in her house adored Ibhubesi, but to Lena’s eye, the more she enthralled them, the colder the birth-mother became toward her girl child.

And then, out of the bluest skies, the darkest raincloud gathered without warning and beat down mercilessly on the Fuller household.

Lena and Sofie couldn’t laugh for months, so broken were their hearts when the mister died. He had thrashed and sweated in his bed, delirious with fever, as the miesies wrung her hands in the bedroom doorway. Lena wiped his sweating face and shoulders with cloths soaked in vinegar-water to take down his fever, while Ibhubesi held her father’s hand and said softly, “It’s all right, Daddy. I am here. I will never leave you. It’s going to be all right.”

But it wasn’t all right.

The fever took him early one morning, and Miesies’ wail brought Lena charging in to find Ibhubesi curled in a fetal position, next to her dead father, her head and her knees touching his cold body, soundlessly weeping and still holding his hand.

Brother held mother’s head against his shoulder as she wept, and at that moment he was the older, the stronger and she, the younger, the weaker.

Once the mister’s soulless body had been removed, and Lena aired and freshened the dark space, Miesies announced that she was not to be disturbed and disappeared into the room where she had last seen her husband.

And didn’t come out.

Ibhubesi was lost. She wouldn’t go outside. She wouldn’t be tempted to lie like a leopard, above the ground, on what they called “the hammock” that she so loved. She wouldn’t go to school. She wouldn’t eat. She wouldn’t stop wandering around aimlessly. She wouldn’t even draw and, worst of all, the Whirr Whirr was silent.

Friends came by with food and concern, but either Lena or Brother made excuses as to why the Miesies and the child could not visit with them that day.

People stopped coming.

Lena and Sofie’s eagle eyes followed their lost nine-year-old cub as she wandered around, sad and confused. Though she hardly noticed them, the ladies stepped in. They took turns holding her tight and stroking her wild, un-brushed hair. Often tears streamed silently down her white cheeks. So many days indoors had rendered all her leopard spots, which the mother called “freckles,” nearly invisible.

The ladies had to be cruel to be kind and bathed her, albeit kicking and screaming, plaited her hair neatly, even cooked her favorite meals, which went mostly untouched. They weren’t sure they were helping at all. It was not their comfort she needed. Not their love she longed for.

And still their girl-child’s mother hid from the world.

Their concern over Ibhubesi’s emotional survival was genuine, but they confessed after a month of nothing to show off that the lack of new outfits also affected their deep sorrow.

Their little redhead resembled a prairie dog going deep into the bush looking for a place to die, except it was her spirit that wanted to die, not her body.

No amount of cajoling could convince Ibhubesi to use the two ladies as her models anymore. The child’s keen sense of humor disappeared, too. Lena strutted to the opposite side of the kitchen with her “front business” leading the way, then turned her buxom frame ever so slowly and pushed her bum out on the way back. But the performance produced no upward movement of the little mouth.

To console themselves, Lena and Sofie made some tea and added six heaped spoons of sugar (because Miesies wasn’t there to scold them) and reminisced about happier times just a few short months before: An excited Ibhubesi had pulled them by the hands to watch skinny white girls from Durban walk the same way Lena just demonstrated, up and down a wooden plank at the town hall. The ladies weren’t allowed inside—it was, of course, whites only—but their budding lioness presented a strong case that these ladies were her guardians.

The only nonwhite faces in the cavernous hall, the ladies got dirty looks from the women packing the space for this rarest of fashion events, but they didn’t care. If filthy glances paid the price to be on sacred white ground, they paid happily. Looks couldn’t kill, and stories they would later share with their Zulu friends would be worth every disapproving scowl.

As long-legged, hungry-looking ladies walked awkwardly hither and thither in various garments, the child squiggled in her drawing book and, within a week, Lena and Sofie were sporting variations of the dresses they’d seen that very day.

But the inventive fashions had proved too much for their usually envious peers, who made fun of their fussy ruffles and encouraged them to join the traveling circus.

They sighed. Even those ruffles would be better now than this new dress-starvation.

For two months, which seemed like two years, Miesies hid from life in her dark room. Twice a day Lena quietly slipped into the blackness with her tray laden with tempting newly dried rusks and steaming rooibos tea, with just a hint of milk, covered by a crocheted doily to keep off the flies. Three hours later she’d take out the tray, untouched but for a nibble and a sip.

Lena made Miesies’ bed with her in it, and when Lena couldn’t stand the odor in the room anymore, she opened the windows while Miesies, lying face down, beat her hand on the bed like a spoiled child having a silent tantrum, until the room was restored to its black cocoon.

Lena found Ibhubesi lying curled up outside her mother’s room, a stray cat left out in the cold, waiting on the off chance it would be let in and stroked, before it was tossed out again. Wondering how long she’d been there, the Zulu tried to pick her up, but young heels dug in, and her resistance was so strong, the child magically became too heavy to lift, her young face determined and angry. So, Lena left her there, checking on her every twenty minutes.

Only Brother could coax her away from the doorway when he came home from school. He’d shout, “Where’s my Sunshine?” and for just an instant, the child’s eyes lit up.

The fourth time Lena found her curled up—the lonely cat lying outside the bedroom door—her heart broke, and she crept up stealthily and scooped up the child before she could resist. Little hands beat at Lena as Ibhubesi screamed bloody murder, but the Zulu held her tight, rocking her and making the baby sounds that brought her quiet. Tears ran down both ebony and ivory cheeks until all the child’s resistance ebbed, and she sobbed, hardly able to draw breath.

Lena’s tears reflected her inadequacy as a surrogate mother. She couldn’t heal the child, nor did she have the audacity to interrupt the mother’s grief, even if she knew that would ease the anguish and fear and sadness of this abandoned soul.

Though Brother visited the darkened chamber briefly morning and night, not even he had the guts to tell his mother what she needed to hear.

But he alone could make Ibhubesi smile during that dark time. He eventually made her laugh again and invented clever games to make her brush her teeth, eat and go to school.

Buffer was Brother’s idea. He’d asked around the black locations on the outskirts of town. It was an obvious place to find a stray dog. Sure enough, an emaciated Alsatian had delivered three puppies that freezing winter morning but was too weak to survive their births. Only the puppy who had instinctively found his way underneath his mother’s body to pull at unyielding teats was shielded from the icy sleet and spared.

Lena and Sofie well remembered the day Brother presented Buffer to the child. That little helpless puppy made Ibhubesi come alive again. She nursed it, like Sofie showed her, with a baby’s bottle, teasing the little closed-eyed puppy with the pretend nipple. With every ounce of fresh warm milk he suckled hungrily, Buffer and Ibhubesi both grew stronger.

They saved each other.

The two women marveled at how the puppy realized their prophecy of this child becoming Ibhubesi, the lioness. The little runt gave back the courage that loss had stripped away.

Three long months after the mother went into hibernation, Ibhubesi tucked Buffer under her arm and, not bothering to knock, marched into the dark master bedroom.

“Get up, Mom. Get out of bed and meet Buffer.”

Nothing.

“Buffer was alone. He was so sad. He needed a mom.”

Not a twitch from the outline in the bed, Lena noticed from the open doorway.

“I am alone and sad, too.” Still nothing.

“I need a mom.” Child and dog were still as can be. Waiting. Refusing to move.

“Will you be my mom again?”

An eternity passed. Finally, the mother lifted her head.

It was enough. The nine-year-old with the tousled red hair held the puppy tighter still, kissed the top of his head and then left the room, deliberately leaving the door wide open.

Much to Lena and Sofia’s great surprise, Miesies appeared in the kitchen within the hour, groomed and dressed, and as if she hadn’t missed a beat, resumed her position as bossy mistress of her home.

Buffer became the first puppy-model in Pietermaritzburg, but he hated every minute of being paraded in colorful outfits. It was not dignified for a boy dog, so Ibhubesi reverted to her more experienced and willing models. Lena and Sofie were enormously relieved. The Whirr Whirr was back in business.

If Buffer brought back Ibhubesi’s spirit, then Brother (who became a tall, handsome man) continued to make her shine like the brightest star in the heavens.

But, just two summers ago, the word “war” rounded lips on white faces. Since then, young, white men, all dressed the same, kept disappearing in flying machines or steamelas (as trains were called in Zulu).

When The Brother came home, wearing that war outfit, they knew hearts would be broken again. Their seventeen-year-old Ibhubesi’s mournful wail when she saw him was heard all the way from the servants’ quarters. The sound hurt their hearts and damaged their souls.

Miesies’ screams were louder but not nearly as heartbreaking. It was understandable the women were distraught at the thought of losing the only man of the house. He was the umbilical cord connecting the cub with her mother, long before they were both damaged by loss. But the glory of war was stronger than the needs of his family. Even the adoration of his little sister couldn’t keep Brother uninvolved in what they called “bigger issues.”

The day he left was a black day as Lena, Miesies and Ibhubesi sat sobbing together on a “whites only” wooden bench on the platform, long after the train puffed over the horizon.

Buffer paced back and forth in front of the bench protectively, stopping only to jump up, paws on either side of his mistress, and shower her with sloppy kisses. In spite of herself, Ibhubesi smiled, perhaps only because she wanted to give him the comfort he was giving her.

When they returned home, Sofie was waiting to help the heartbroken women, and it was then that both ladies witnessed their cub become a lioness.

The grief-stricken birth mother ran toward her room to hide from the world. But Ibhubesi was prepared and ran ahead, blocking the master bedroom doorway with splayed arms and legs so her mother couldn’t cross the threshold.

She shouted: “Mother, stop! Don’t you dare hide away from this pain we share. Not again.” Her anger was like a rumbling mountain before it shed big boulders.