The Fire Portrait

by Barbara Mutch

  ‘Frances!’ Aunt Mary came to the door. ‘We have a visitor! Go and change, my dear! Goodness, you’re covered in sand! Thank you, Stephen!’ she called to Mr Phillips who raised a hand from the car. I sent up a silent prayer he wouldn’t tell Aunt of my recklessness.

  A tall, balding man rose from his chair when I entered the lounge later, my hair still damp from washing.

  ‘Hello, Frances.’ He held out his hand. ‘It’s been a while.’

  I had no idea who he was. Maybe it was still the shock, the boy, head lolling—

  ‘Julian McDonald,’ he said. ‘We met years ago at Southampton docks. When my ship was delayed.’

  ‘Of course. Good afternoon, Mr McDonald.’

  The nervous schoolteacher, injured in the Great War, whose parents died of the Spanish Flu.

  There was a pause. ‘I hope you’re settling in well, Frances?’ His gaze travelled over my slightly dishevelled state. ‘The Cape is renowned for its hospitality.’

  ‘I am, thank you. How did you know I was here, Mr McDonald?’

  He flushed slightly and glanced at Aunt Mary.

  ‘Your father wrote to Julian. Said you’d come to the Cape and to visit next time he was in town.’

  Dear Father. Rallying even his most remote contacts to watch over me.

  ‘That’s kind of you, sir.’

  ‘Julian, please.’ He flushed again, and clasped and unclasped his hands.

  ‘You’re rather pale, Frances,’ Aunt observed. ‘Was the water cold at Muizenberg? Frances is a seal, Julian,’ she leant towards him in a confidential manner, ‘when she’s not painting, she loves to swim.’

  ‘A boy nearly drowned, Aunt.’

  ‘How tragic! Yet he lived to tell the tale!’

  Perhaps Aunt feels that young death is more merciful. Less history to be lost.

  ‘He was revived in the first aid tent.’

  ‘Be careful of the sea, Frances,’ Julian McDonald admonished. ‘It’s more unpredictable than at home.’

  ‘Father taught me well, sir.’

  But even Father might have been overwhelmed by that wave.

  ‘Well said!’ cried Aunt. ‘More tea, Julian?’

  I glanced outside. A starling had landed on the bougainvillea. Jet-black feathers streaked with scarlet. I’ve embraced this place, these birds, even the violent sea.

  Yet I’m beginning to sense it will be harder to master the other parts of the country, the parts that hide from casual view or appear in people’s expressions or lie beneath the words they use. If I draw and paint, will they reveal themselves to me? What might I find beyond the genteel society to which I’ve been introduced? What other waves lie beneath its surface?

  Chapter Fourteen

  When I fell out of the oak it was my own fault. But at Muizenberg, Daphne could have died because of me. And so could that unknown boy, although Mr Phillips told me later that I wasn’t responsible. He says the boy’s parents were remiss for not watching him.

  I’m more careful these days. I look over my shoulder at who’s coming after me.

  Mark Charleson and I often swim together. It was hard the first time, but Mark encouraged me beyond the breakers and told me we all do things that might have unforeseen consequences.

  We talk a lot while we’re floating. Mark has graduated as an architect and he knows I want to be an artist. He’s handsome in a dark way and he kissed my hand once, when we were at a garden party and he found me alone beneath a jasmine pergola. I like him.

  I never told Aunt. Or Daph. Or Sue, in a letter, although she asks constantly if I’ve found a young man yet. And I definitely never wrote about him to Mother, who would leap into action on my behalf – from a distance – to ferret out the young man’s prospects.

  Sometimes I wake up early and climb out of my window – to avoid disturbing Aunt – and sit in a shell chair on the paving and watch the world shaking itself awake. If I stay completely still, the smaller birds forget I’m there and approach within touching distance. Dashing orange-breasted sunbirds, shy robins, assured wagtails. When the sun strikes the mountain, the flowers seem to stretch as they await relentless foraging. Nature is untamed here, not constrained by cold weather and encroaching humankind. Sometimes I take my sketchbook, but usually I simply sit and observe and let the place sink into my pores. And I think a bold thought: can I contrive to earn enough to afford a sliver of this paradise for myself?

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to a bespectacled lady assistant in the office at Kirstenbosch, ‘could you tell me if this gentleman still works here?’ I handed over the card.

  She looked at me curiously. ‘He does. Do you wish to make an appointment?’

  ‘An appointment?’

  ‘The director is a busy man. You’ll need an appointment. Could you tell me what it is concerning?’

  ‘He’s the director of the entire Gardens?’

  ‘Indeed he is! Director Compton has been in his post since 1919. What is this about?’

  Seize the moment! I could hear Mr Cadwaller shouting.

  I opened my portfolio and selected a recent painting. Erica multumbellifera, worthy for its name alone, if not for the abundance of purple, bead-like flowers. A type of heather, similar to those from the highlands of Scotland. And a challenge in fine brushwork.

  ‘Would you give this to the director when you next see him?’

  She frowned as she examined it. ‘The director doesn’t take unsolicited work.’

  I gave her my most emollient smile.

  ‘Please let me introduce myself. My name is Frances Whittington, from Protea Rise in Bishopscourt. I was on the Edinburgh Castle when the director gave me his card. He was interested in my paintings.’

  Was he? Perhaps he simply wanted to increase visitor numbers and handed out cards at random.

  ‘Very well. I shall pass it on. But I can’t promise you’ll get a response.’

  ‘I understand. The director is a busy man, as you said.’

  She looked at me closely, alert to the hint of sarcasm.

  ‘You’ve been most kind,’ I went on, with all the sincerity I could muster. ‘Thank you so much.’

  Daphne is set to marry Trevor Bell, to whom she’s been promised almost from birth, on her twenty-first birthday at St George’s Cathedral in the city centre. I’m not sure Daph is overly enamoured – Trevor is pleasantly bland – but I suspect her father is keen to have her settled so she’ll be less influenced by someone like me, for Daph has taken a shine to me even though I nearly drowned her.

  ‘Where shall we hold the engagement party?’ she mused. ‘I fancy the top of Table Mountain. Trevor says it can’t be done, but Father knows the cableway operator. We just have to hope for calm weather.’

  Back in Embury, Phyllis Carter’s engagement had been marked by tea at the local public house.

  And so I found myself riding the cableway up the face of the precipice I’d first seen a year previously from the Edinburgh Castle. Birds of prey hung in the air, the city slid into miniature below us and I laughed out loud at the audacity of it, and the incongruity of our clothing. The young women, including myself, wore tea dresses and heeled shoes as if we were once again at the Kelvin Grove. The young men, including Mark and Jonathan Pringle, were in suits. Daph wore a corsage on her wrist and a brimmed hat with a silk ribbon to match her frock.

  ‘Will you marry Mark Charleson?’ Penelope Chisholm whispered into my ear.

  ‘He hasn’t asked me. We’re friends.’

  ‘You’d better move fast!’ She glanced around to where Mark stood among a group of young men, some of whom were Bell cousins visiting from upcountry. ‘He’s a catch! Don’t let him get diverted!’

  ‘Why does everyone want to marry me off?’

  ‘Because you’re beautiful and unattached. Beautiful, unattached girls are dangerous!’

  The cable car slowed and lurched between the rails of the upper station. The doors opened and our party teetered out onto the plateau with shouts and
whoops, the engaged couple in the lead. Table Bay, foam-fringed, curved into the northern distance while the peaks of the Twelve Apostles rode imperiously above the Atlantic seaboard. The spine of the peninsula – which I’d first gasped at from the top of Skeleton Gorge – wound its sinuous way south to Cape Point.

  How is it possible for one place to be so extravagantly blessed? I later wrote in my diary. Is it fair on the plainer parts of the world?

  The plateau turned out to be mounded with sandstone outcrops and split by rocky crevices. I recalled my lessons with Mr Cadwaller on perspective, the deception created by distance.

  ‘Frances?’ Mark appeared at my side.

  ‘Is the rest of the country like this?’

  ‘You mean is it as magnificent?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He smiled and touched my hand. ‘Outward beauty always catches the eye, Frances. But don’t be deceived. The Africa beneath is not so easy to understand.’

  ‘I’m starting to realise that. Africans don’t have the vote,’ I said. ‘But neither did women, until recently.’

  He was silent for a moment. A finger of cloud slipped over the far edge of the precipice and dissolved against the cliff face. Mr Phillips says it’s due to the temperature gap between land and sea and whether the air will choose to hold its moisture invisibly or transform it into cloud.

  ‘Read all you can, Frances. Then talk to ordinary people, the gardener, the maid who works for your aunt, the local storekeeper. Find out what they think. You’ll discover that nothing,’ he spread his arms over the vista, ‘is quite as it seems.’

  Mark has never spoken this way before. If he’s right, painting its face may not reveal this country to me.

  It will require me to dig deeper, invest more of myself.

  Julian McDonald, calling occasionally when he’s in town, says the white man will never yield to the black. Mark took my arm and led me along the path to the tea room where I could hear the others laughing.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’ve submitted further watercolour sketches to Director Compton and posted two pencil drawings of Erica multumbellifera to Mr Cadwaller. I hope the connection to Scottish heathers will encourage Kew to ask for more, and to pay for the work. Aunt counsels patience.

  But without success as an artist, my small salary won’t be enough for an independent future. Yet perhaps I won’t need it? I’m on the edge of love with Mark Charleson, it just requires me to plunge. He already meets the condition I so brazenly announced to Mr Cadwaller: sufficient means to ensure any future family would be well looked after while I painted. If my Embury vicar could divine my thoughts from afar, he’d accuse me of the unseemly materialism he warned against. But I care for Mark, quite aside from his wealth. We’ve been courting for eight months.

  ‘May I take Frances for dinner at the Mount Nelson, Mrs Donnelly?’

  Aunt glanced at me. I nodded. She should, of course, have accompanied us, but she’d announced, when I was newly off the Edinburgh Castle, that she had no intention of policing me.

  ‘Of course. Enjoy yourselves, my dears.’

  ‘I made a reservation,’ Mark said, tucking my arm through his as we left Protea Rise. ‘For three.’

  ‘You were going to invite Aunt along?’

  ‘In case she chose to join us.’

  ‘Why didn’t you invite your parents as well?’

  He grinned. ‘Don’t tease. It’s almost impossible to get young ladies on their own.’

  ‘But you often get me on my own,’ I laughed. ‘In the sea. Unchaperoned.’

  ‘Ah, but that’s not the ideal place for serious discussion.’ He turned the car through the columned gateway towards the pink façade of the Mount Nelson. ‘If I said something dramatic you might take a gulp of water and I’d have to revive you.’

  He parked the motor car and came around to open my door.

  ‘So are we to be serious tonight?’ I asked lightly, taking his proffered hand.

  ‘Only over the main course. Over dessert, we can be as merry as you wish.’

  We sat at a window table from where the inky sky was visible, sprinkled with southern hemisphere stars that were still new to me. We ate fish prepared with a cream and parsley sauce, accompanied by carrots cut into pennies and beans grown in the hotel’s kitchen garden. I was relieved to note from the glances directed towards me that my dark blue low-waister was not out of place among the ladies present. My wardrobe, so agonised over by Mother for its relative paucity, has so far stood up to scrutiny.

  ‘You’re very quiet, Frances,’ Mark said as the waiter topped up my wine glass. A crisp Cape white.

  ‘What would you do, Mark, if you and your family lost everything?’

  I want to know if he’s aware of my father’s losses. I admit it’s a roundabout way of asking.

  ‘Is that what’s worrying you?’ He reached across the table and touched my hair. ‘If we lost everything, I’d take more basic work. It would be a challenge to do more with less. Frances,’ he took my hand and lifted it to his lips, ‘I’ve fallen in love with you.’

  ‘Would you still love me if I was poor?’

  ‘But you aren’t.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘And if you were it would make no difference.’

  I searched his face. ‘Truly? It would make no difference?’

  ‘Truly.’

  ‘Then you should know that my father lost his fortune in the Crash.’ I paused. ‘I came here to make a fresh start. To make my way as an artist and become independent. I didn’t expect to be loved.’

  The shock in his eyes gave way to something that was not pity. I think it was tenderness.

  ‘But you are loved, Frances.’

  He got up from his chair, came around the table and bent down and kissed me on the lips.

  A titter of amusement rose from fellow guests. I don’t remember anything about dessert.

  I told him I loved him too, I admitted later to my diary. We kissed again. But what about the freedom I first scented as the ship pulled away from England? Yet if I hesitate, I might lose him.

  This is different from last time. I love him.

  And he knows me. He knows I take chances, sometimes without realising. And he understands creativity. I copy from real life but Mark creates from his imagination. Together, we might achieve something special.

  He said my poverty would make no difference.

  But I’m wary. Time will tell if my revelation cools his ardour.

  In the meantime I will have time to reflect as well, while he’s occupied with his family’s American guests. We will telephone every day, he said.

  Dear Miss Whittington, began the letter propped up by my place at breakfast the following morning.

  Thank you for submitting your painting of Erica multumbellifera. Plus the further protea and succulent sketches. All have been properly identified and accurately depicted. If you are in agreement, I will place them in the appropriate portfolios for use as references. You may, of course, retrieve them if you wish.

  At Kirstenbosch, we collaborate with botanists who study Cape flora and publish in the scientific press. We are often asked to recommend illustrators. I was intrigued with your work on board ship and I am most impressed with this latest offering. There may be opportunities for you in this respect and I shall offer your work as an example.

  Kindly forward your full details, including the nature of any previous commissions, plus references of published work if appropriate.

  Yours faithfully

  A. R. J. Compton

  Director

  I took particular care with my appearance for the Governor General’s Ball at the Kelvin Grove: a fluid sea-green chiffon with a dropped waist and a scalloped hem that would float about my legs in the breeze, and marcelled hair that hugged my head in gleaming waves. My green-with-a-fleck-of-ginger eyes looked back at me from the mirror with a certain glint.

  ‘Charming!’ said Aunt, who was to be my chaperone. Mark was escorting his parents and th
eir guests whom he’d been required to guide around the peninsula.

  ‘I love your dress!’ Daphne exclaimed in the ladies’ powder room. ‘Will you dance with Mark the most?’

  She twirled in front of the mirror. ‘I wish I’d been able to choose my beau, like you.’

  ‘Be grateful,’ I whispered as we entered the ballroom, ‘it’s good to be spoken for.’

  Chandeliers cast prisms of light over the starched linen. Roses arched from a central vase.

  ‘May I have this dance?’ Jonathan Pringle leapt up from his table and held out his hand. Aunt smiled and motioned for us to go ahead. In a moment of candour between Shakespeare readings, she told me a man had to have three assets to succeed in life: honour, money and the ability to lead a lady on the dance floor. She didn’t say which was the most important.

  Jonathan and I joined the gliding couples in a carousel of whirling colour. Most ladies were wearing traditional long gowns rather than my below-the-knee flapper style. Was it a clever choice or a reckless ploy when discretion would’ve been safer? We circled slowly, and I tried to spot Mark without noticeably craning my neck. Local friends inclined their heads as we danced by: Penelope Chisholm, clinging a little too hard to her partner in case he might run away in the direction of an unattached girl, Mary Clough, newly married and already cradling a gentle bump beneath her flowing dress. The governor general waltzed past with his wife, who widened her eyes at my dress.

  ‘How lovely you are tonight, Frances,’ Jonathan grinned at me. He’s continued to call but he’s well aware I’m being courted by Mark.

  ‘Thank you!’ I managed lightly but I could hardly speak, for there, coming towards us, was Mark with an unknown dark-haired beauty in his arms.

  He will stop, I told myself. He has to stop.

  I edged Jonathan slightly, so as to be in their path.

  The violins swooned, Jonathan nodded proudly to acquaintances.

  Mark will see me and smile.