One night, an elderly white porter came to help us with a restless patient in our ward. The patient kept getting up and trying to run away. We needed someone strong to help handcuff him to the bed, for his own good. We had managed to secure the handcuff around the patient’s wrist when he pulled free and ran down the passage. The porter ran after him, yelling incomprehensibly.

What we didn’t realise until later was that the patient had used the handcuffs to chain himself to the porter, who was actually being dragged along. His incomprehensible shouts were actually cries for help. No one understood what was happening until some white ambulance drivers stopped the patient near the entrance. The porter had to be treated for shock and we nurses had to write statements about the incident to explain our “carelessness”.

A few months after I started training at Frere, I received the news that Mama’s health was failing. She had a painful lump in her breast and grew tired easily. That Easter, Mrs Robertson sent her home to Cala to rest. I was distressed at the news but thankful that my life had brought me closer to home. Cala was just a few hours away by bus. I would be able to visit her often.

Meanwhile, life went on. I immersed myself in my studies and, in my spare time, took ballroom dancing lessons at the community hall in Duncan Village. Ballroom dancing was very popular at the time, and many nurses took it up. Some even danced professionally. My first few lessons I watched the other dancers, fascinated. The more I watched, the more I realised that I really liked dancing. I started understanding the moves. Soon I was as absorbed in dancing as I was in my studies, devoting all my spare time to perfecting my steps. My height, the curse of my school years, made it easier for me to master the intricate and graceful moves.

There was this one tall dancing instructor, Sol, who grew up in Butterworth. We always spoke about him back at the nurses’ residence – how handsome and graceful he was, what a catch he would be, each girl competing with the next to prove that she knew him better. He was a good-looking man, no doubt. Elegant on the dance floor. When he took my hand to instruct me, I could never resist smelling his shaven skin. He reminded me so much of my father, always clean and smelling like bath soap. And when we danced together, it was like our bodies had been built to fit into each other. We were both tall and slim. Sol would hold me very close and murmur in my ear. I felt at ease with him. He was so warm. We both loved the foxtrot. Together, we were a work of art, swishing and swaying across the dance floor.

Sol worked as a postal clerk, which might explain why the local post office was always a hive of activity, with nurses posting letters and sending money orders home. I was among those who enjoyed these postal errands.

When Sol found out I had also grown up in Butterworth, he showed a great deal of interest in me. One day, he asked me to meet him at the post office during lunchtime. He would also be free. I was so excited. It felt as though there were butterflies in my stomach. Eventually the day came. I went to the hospital kiosk to buy a sandwich and a drink to take with. I did not know what Sol had in mind for us at the post office, but I knew the shops were far from his office.

I got to the post office before it closed for lunch. Eventually the last customers left and the door clicked behind me, locking us in together. We sat in his office, away from the counters. When I was growing up, the girls at school would joke about what we would say if we ever found out that a man liked us. “Tell him to bring me a goat because I am a cabbage,” we would laugh. On that day, it happened to me – only Sol was the goat, and he could spare no cabbage.

Soon it was 2 pm. Sol had to open the doors for the customers and I had to get back to the hospital. I forgot all about my sandwich when I left. From that day on I was a regular customer at the post office, but only during lunchtime. I realised I was falling in love with my instructor. I asked around and was delighted to learn that he was not in a relationship.

From time to time different dance groups would gather at the community hall to compete and demonstrate their ballroom-dancing skills. During these events, beginners were only given the chance to dance during the jive sessions, when the formal rhythms of the waltz and cha-cha gave way to the modern rhythm of jive songs, to which professionals and amateurs alike could dance. Everyone loved these sessions, and most people took the opportunity to dance to them. It created the most wonderful feeling of togetherness.

As soon as the dance music started, Sol would be the first to take to the floor, dancing smoothly alone for some minutes before the other professionals would pick their partners and join him. This was always a nerve-wracking moment for the best female dancers, who would sit anxiously, wondering whether they would be chosen. Sol, the dancing instructor, would be the last to pick. He would take my hand and say, a smile in his voice, “May I please have this dance, Miss Beginner?”

By now it was clear to everyone who cared to know that the friendship between us had developed into something more. Some of the nurses that I stayed with took it upon themselves to warn me about this professional dancer of mine. They suspected he was not a serious-minded man. “He’s nothing more than a charmer,” they said. “He makes the ladies fall in love with him and then he drops them, just like that.”

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Tell us: What do you think of Sol?