I loosened my hand from Julian’s and lifted my palm to his cheek and leant in and kissed him. His lips were firm but there was no tender frenzy like I’d felt with Mark. I do not love him, and he knows it. But he was prepared to rescue me and give me a respectable future.
‘We’ll build a life together,’ I said with contrived conviction. ‘And a family, too.’
He grinned then, as if a great weight had been lifted – why did he doubt, when I had no choice? – and stood up and drew me into his arms. I felt the steady, slow beat of his heart. It would have to be enough.
You’ll be able to draw, wherever you go, Mother had said as we stood on the quayside in Southampton.
He released me. ‘Shall we marry at St John’s, Frances?’
There was no time to waste. ‘Yes, thank you.’
‘I will speak to the reverend. Arrange for the banns to be read.’
‘Miss Frances Whittington?’ the telegram boy asked a week later when I opened the door. ‘Sign here.’
Thrilled at news Stop Arriving Carnarvon Castle for wedding Stop Love Father
Chapter Twenty
Ever since Father told me our house would be mine one day, I’ve thought of my life as a circle. Like the plants I draw. Bloom, die, lie dormant, and then return. But Embury is gone, and Protea Rise, too.
And I am marrying Julian McDonald.
Firstly, because I cannot support myself. Secondly, because I don’t wish to be a continuing burden on my parents, given that all of Father’s assets have been drained from that single, toxic basket into which he placed them and show no sign of revival.
And thirdly, because I can no longer be sure that the young men I attract will propose. When it comes to it, they prefer to attach themselves to well-heeled girls.
I bought a second-hand white satin dress and had it altered by Violet’s sister, Sophie, who was a seamstress.
‘Tighter,’ I instructed, ‘no one must think the reason for marrying so quickly is because I’m expecting.’
Violet and her sister dissolved in giggles. ‘No chance of that, ma’am.’
‘It is rather revealing, Fran,’ chided Daph, looking at the nipped-in waist and scoop neckline.
‘I want Mark – if he’s back – and the others to see what they’ve missed.’
‘Fran!’
I might have no need of sea-green chiffon in my new life but I intend to leave this one with a flourish.
My parents, newly off the Carnarvon Castle, were in church to hear the final reading of the banns.
‘It will be a solid marriage, Frances,’ Mother murmured. ‘I knew you’d be sensible.’
Mother and Father have bought a small house in Newlands village from the proceeds of the sale of the Embury semi, and they’ve taken on Violet. Mother has met an amenable prayer group at St John’s and found a suitable hairdresser in Claremont. ‘Our future is with you, Fran,’ says Father, newly thin. It doesn’t suit his height or formerly cheerful untidiness. ‘We’re here to stay. There are bound to be business opportunities for accountants.’
Julian and I were married on a spring day with waterfalls tumbling off Fernwood Buttress and the magnolia at Protea Rise unfurling buds of the palest pink. I wore Mother’s bridal veil over my swept-up hair and carried a hand-tied posy of wild flowers picked on a walk in Newlands Forest.
‘Fran?’ Father stopped as we approached the church door. ‘I hope you can forgive me?’
‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ I said. ‘Not any more. Julian will make a fine husband.’
And I’m spreading the risk, as you taught me, Father.
Now I’m in Julian’s basket of assets.
His eyes roamed over my face beneath the veil, as if wanting to imprint how I looked at that moment.
‘You can still be the person you want to be,’ he murmured. ‘Marriage will not change that.’
I heard the opening notes of the wedding march.
‘Come,’ I said, straightening the carnation in his buttonhole. ‘Smile, please, Father.’
I took his arm and we paced down the aisle.
Faces turned towards us. Violet and her sister in their best dresses, alongside Alfius in a battered jacket and Samuel in his chauffeur’s uniform. Further forward, the Chisholms and the Cloughs sat side by side; Daphne in a frothy hat with her fiancé and her parents – Mr Phillips, if he’d discovered our family’s misfortune, likely calculating the cost of even a modest wedding to Father’s depleted balance sheet; Penelope and Mary, who’d seen my humiliation at the Kelvin Grove Ball; the Pringle family, including Jonathan, who chose to look at his order of service instead of at me. But no Mark, newly returned from America. He’d sent a note of regret and a glass fruit bowl. Mother hovered in the front row in a tasteful lemon suit and pillbox hat. She’d brought with her a card from Susan wishing me well and insisting that I never cut my hair regardless of the heat or the demands of family life.
My future husband stood at the end of the aisle in the same dark suit and tie he’d worn when he proposed. There was a nervous smile on his lips. The organ reached its climax and faded to a final chord. I turned and looked at Father for a moment and saw tears in his eyes. Later, at the simple reception in the church hall, the guests would recall with fond smiles that the bride’s father had been so overcome with joy at the wedding of his only daughter that he’d wept. But I knew differently. Father had cried for me, and for the marriage I’d been obliged to contract.
Did you ask Julian to marry me, Father?
I turned back and smiled at my soon-to-be husband.
With trembling hands, he lifted my veil and draped it behind me.
‘Dearly beloved,’ declared the reverend, with a surreptitious glance at my expertly fitted outfit, ‘we are gathered here today …’
Light from the stained-glass windows painted rainbow colours on the floor. Carmine, lapis …
‘I, Julian Thomas, take thee, Frances Grace,’ said Julian after a while, ‘to be my lawful wedded wife.’
A fluttering came from outside as doves settled on the roof and began to croon.
‘To have and to hold, for richer for poorer,’ I heard myself say.
The organ thundered into ‘Love Divine’, but I couldn’t sing.
‘In sickness and in health, until death us do part.’
Will God help me love this man I am pledging myself to?
‘I now pronounce you man and wife.’
The register is signed, although my hand is shaking so much that Julian needs to steady my fingers.
The organ rings out once more, Julian tucks my hand in the crook of his arm and we process down the aisle past smiling faces and into the confetti-strewn air.
Julian and I left from the reception for our honeymoon up the coast at the seaside town of Hermanus. From there we would travel to our home on the edge of the remote Karoo that I’d never seen.
‘Write to me!’ whispered Daphne, as I made my way through the crowd of well-wishers.
We hugged and I turned to embrace Mother and Father.
‘We’ll come to see you soon,’ Mother managed in a choked voice. ‘Take care of her, Julian.’ She reached up and kissed my husband on his cheek.
Father was beyond words and simply held on to me.
‘I’ll be fine,’ I murmured, freeing myself gently. ‘Just fine.’
I turned and saw Violet and her sister on the fringes, smiled at them and mouthed ‘thank you’ and patted my dress. I will miss Violet’s quiet influence. Like I miss Aunt’s unvarnished opinions. Everything that I’ve taken for granted, I realise with a catch in my throat, will have to be won again.
Then Julian was opening the door of his motor car and helping me in. My dress spilt over the seat and I tucked it about my ankles. There was no going-away outfit; I wanted to drive off in my satin. The crowd waved and cried ‘Good luck! Safe journey!’ The traditional tin cans attached to the back bumper clattered as we pulled away. In the rear-view mirror, Fernwood Buttress ros
e sharply against the afternoon sky.
Chapter Twenty-One
It wouldn’t be polite of me to write about my honeymoon other than to say that Julian proved to be a gentle and considerate lover. And, in truth, he was. But seeing as no one will ever read this entry, I will go further.
Let me start with myself. I had an approximate idea of what would take place on my wedding night but was largely ignorant of the mechanics. Mother had mentioned, after a zigzag from botany to zoology which left me mystified, that married life in the bedroom often required time in order to be successful.
If I’d been with a man who stirred me, I’ve no doubt I’d have been swept along on a wave of desire and my ignorance would have been of little consequence. The deed would have been done with passion. But instead I had a kind, nervous husband who was at pains not to embarrass me or himself.
But first, the drive to Hermanus.
It took us up the winding Sir Lowry’s Pass through the Hottentots Holland mountains, peaks that I’d looked at so often from my side of the peninsula. The heaving ocean soon disappeared and fresh, forested country spread before us. We talked but there was a strange tension which was, I suppose, only natural for two people who’d been acquaintances and now found themselves as man and wife. I allowed myself to be distracted by the stands of proteas crowding the lower slopes, until we finally wound out of the mountains and around the curve of a small bay. By the time we pulled into our hotel, it was already evening and neither of us felt inclined for a late supper.
I changed out of my satin, bathed, sprayed myself with perfume, examined my face in the mirror and pinched my pale cheeks, then put on a cream nightgown that Violet’s sister had embroidered with pink roses at the shoulder and hem. When I returned to the bedroom, Julian was waiting for me in bed, in his pyjamas. The room was dark, save for the light from a full moon over the sea, visible through the windows we’d left open to catch a breeze.
We’ll see each other, I thought, the moonlight will play over our bodies like a blessing …
My nerves began to subside.
He lifted the covers for me. We lay, facing each other, for some time. He stroked my face. The sound of the sea came through the window, waves breaking and retreating. He leant forward and kissed me and I moved my lips against his, waiting for the moment when he would, presumably, take the lead. But it didn’t happen and so I sat up and began to unbutton my nightgown.
‘You don’t have to,’ he whispered, alarm flaring in his eyes.
‘But we are man and wife,’ I murmured, reaching down to kiss him.
Yet it seemed he had no wish for that level of intimacy. He only went so far as to remove his pyjama trousers under the cover of the bed linen and lift my nightgown to my waist. With our top halves still clothed, he attempted to make love to me.
I cannot say that the first time was successful, because I was unsure of which position would best achieve that outcome but would not embarrass him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered, moving off me and hastily reclothing. ‘It will take a little while, my dear.’
‘Of course,’ I replied, slipping my nightgown down over my legs, when what I most longed to do was throw off the garment entirely – and his, too – and sink against his bare body and listen to the sea as we drifted to sleep. And then wake in the night, naked, to try again.
I shall now secrete this diary in the new hiding place I’ve prepared.
Chapter Twenty-Two
I’m not sure what other couples do on their honeymoons, but ours was, I suspect, overly prim. We walked on the cliff path above the churning waves every morning; we ate locally caught fish in the hotel dining room; we read books from the collection in the lounge in the evening while I waited for the sea air or the rolling surf or the golden sunsets to work their magic on my husband. Perhaps it was because we were clearly honeymooners – older guests smiled and nodded at us – or perhaps it was that he didn’t yet know how to handle a wife. A routine of sorts established itself. We spent the mornings together, and every afternoon, while Julian worked on his lessons for the coming term, I sketched the seagulls strutting on the sand, or the fleshy mats of succulents that clothed parts of the cliff, or the subtle layers of rock that gave it such dramatic form. The afternoons, I realised guiltily, were leaving me more uplifted – as fresh subject matter always did – than the nights with my new husband. As soon as we got to our new home, I’d add colour—
‘My,’ came a voice over my shoulder, ‘that really is very good.’
An elderly man tipped his hat at me.
On our outings, Julian and I talked of his school, our house that I had yet to see, the cost of living in the country versus the city, the rise of a toothbrush-moustached man in Germany … and in the evening I’d come into the bedroom with an extra button undone in the hope that it would spark his passion and we would consummate our marriage in a blaze of desire.
We did achieve the consummation, but it was not quite the union I’d expected.
He was flushed and spent, but I was left with a sense of incompleteness.
Yet I was happy for him. And when we left Hermanus, he hummed in the car and took his hand off the wheel and squeezed mine. ‘Thank you, my dear. A memorable honeymoon.’
Early morning mist was wreathing the valleys as we retraced our route towards Sir Lowry’s Pass.
‘Can we stop at the crest?’
He pulled off onto the gravel and we got out of the car. The peninsula spread before us, dominated by Table Mountain and the Fernwood Buttress massif. Twin bays – Table and False – cut scoops into the narrow strip of the Cape Flats in the foreground.
‘Why, it’s an isthmus,’ I turned to Julian in delighted surprise. ‘Can you see? The only piece of land that stops Cape Town floating off into the Atlantic!’
‘Such an imagination!’ He smiled. ‘Shall we go on? There’s much more to see on the way.’
But not this! I wanted to cry. Not this!
‘Come, Frances.’ He led me back to the car. ‘We’ll spend tonight in Wellington, then go over Bain’s Kloof to Worcester, and the following day onwards to the Hex River.’
Rows of emerald vines unfolded across the land, white iceberg roses tumbled riotously over farm gates, Cape Dutch homesteads glowed in the morning sun. We managed light conversation about the ordered landscape, rather like the talk that would have taken place if we were brother and sister. ‘They don’t need much water,’ Julian said, for example, motioning to the green expanse. ‘Vines are desert plants, my dear. They only need a little of it at the right time. Too much can dilute the juice.’ And so on …
The transformation into husband, I rebuked myself, required time and a generous heart. I must invest in Julian before there will be a return.
We stayed overnight at a hotel set in an orchard of fruit trees on the outskirts of Wellington town, a small community huddled beneath the shadow of the mountains we were to cross the following day. While Julian checked the oil and the level of water in the radiator, I wandered among the almost-ripe peaches, fingered their soft skins and rehearsed what I would write to Daph.
You will love married life! Will you come and visit me one day? Our new home is beautiful and I’ve met many interesting people …
He was extra solicitous that night, as if he knew my secret dread.
‘You’ll want a good breakfast,’ said Mrs Uys, our hostess, bringing out generous eggs, bacon and sausages the following morning. ‘It’s a long way. Have you travelled Bain’s Kloof Pass before?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Julian. ‘I come this way often.’
‘Take spare water,’ advised Mr Uys. ‘Check your tyres at the garage before you start.’
‘This pass,’ Julian changed gears as we headed upwards, ‘was built by a Scotsman eighty years ago.’
I clung to the door handle as the road snaked across the face of the mountains, sometimes revealing a precipice yawning to my left, sometimes forcing us hard by the rock wall. The motor car slo
wed with the gradient and I watched the temperature needle climb. Hot wind whipped through the windows; flags of cloud swirled over the heights. ‘Are we overheating?’ I shouted but Julian only shook his head, though his hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles showed white. Eventually, after more stomach-churning bends, we broke away from the green valley entirely and found ourselves in a landscape of shattered rocks and bushy proteas that were unfamiliar to me. A huge bird of prey sat in majestic stillness on a pole. Julian pulled into a lay-by and I stumbled out of the car. The bird extended massive wings and took off silently. The valley brooded some two thousand feet below us, farm dams glittering like shiny pennies.
‘A different world!’ He smiled at me.
I nodded and forced myself to breathe deeply. The mountains of the peninsula now scribbled a distant line, Protea Rise hidden somewhere among them. The twin bays were lost in the haze. On the edge of the gravel, a pair of flowers bloomed on an insignificant plant barely six inches high. I knelt down and picked one. Gentian-blue petals, a speck of black at their centre.
You’ll be able to draw wherever you go, Mother had said.
‘We must be on our way, my dear.’ Julian was holding open the car door. ‘It’s a long descent.’
‘Coming—’ I took one last look.
My life will circle back. It must. One day.
From the summit we plunged towards a hot valley. Barefoot children waved to us as we went by. The searing wind made my cheeks feel as if they were being steadily flayed. At the foot of the pass, Julian stopped at a farm stall with a petrol pump and bought us glasses of tart, cold lemonade. I gulped mine down in the shade of a pepper tree while he filled up.
‘New to this area?’ The farmer’s wife looked me over, noting my flimsy open-toed sandals. She wore velskoens, like her husband who was handling the petrol pump: sturdy lace-ups made of tanned hide, like the ones I’d saved from Aunt’s belongings.
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