Forty-Nine

Sitting up in bed, Juliet pondered all that she knew about Frederick Jacobs and tried to surmise what had happened to him. Frederick had assumed the veneer of a gentleman – Juliet guessed he was the first of his family to aspire to that condition – but all the evidence suggested that he was a weak, base man. She imagined him sniggering like a schoolboy during his smutty-minded exchanges with Rhodes. She suspected that his proclivities predisposed him to fawn on certain members of his own sex, not only because he found them attractive, but because he was drawn towards the power they could command: true power, not just the passive deference that he was able to require of an unsophisticated agricultural community because of his social position. Cecil Rhodes exuded power. He was an important figure on the international stage: a colossus, a man who bestrode the last unconquered continent, a man whose talents even Queen Victoria herself had acknowledged, and at whose flattery and fine compliments she had smiled and allowed herself to unbend.

Although Frederick was evidently indifferent to women, he did not appear to find them repulsive. His wishy-washy character probably wasn’t capable of any strong feelings of repugnance. He had not, therefore, put up much of a protest when his mother had pushed him into marriage; in fact, he might have recognised that a marriage to a woman who was not his social equal could offer him some very positive benefits. Ostensibly, he had accepted his mother’s argument that it was his duty to marry and produce a son who could then inherit his considerable fortune. Privately, he had colluded with her when she’d chosen his future bride. There was a tacit understanding between them that Florence was too uneducated and too stupid to realise where Frederick’s sexual orientation lay and that, if she had her suspicions, she’d be so bowled over by her great good luck in having been liberated from a servant’s life of drudgery that she wouldn’t dare to protest about or draw attention to his prolonged absences and close male friendships. Correction, Juliet told herself: single close male friendship.

They had mostly been correct in their surmises: Florence was never anything other than dutiful and cheerful; she always supported him demurely when they were together; always made herself look pretty and neat. Nevertheless, he had known that attempting to plan out Florence’s life for her was risky, but, if he’d thought that he might get his comeuppance, he had never imagined that it would proceed from such an unexpected quarter. He could never have predicted the intensity of the love that his mother had grown to feel for Florence. She might herself have been caught unawares by it. From pressing him to marry in order to continue his line and, probably (though of course she would not say so), to avert scandal, Lucinda had gradually moved to treating Florence as if she were indeed her own daughter. She had come to resent fiercely any perceived slights to or neglect of Florence on his part.

Frederick had found his formidable mother difficult to deal with even when she had been on his side. When she had ceased to put him first, his life became both complicated and uncomfortable. It might have been to alleviate this discomfort, or it might have been something he could not help, but over time he, too, had developed a fondness for Florence. It would never be a grand passion: he did not thrill to the sound of her voice or shiver when she touched him, but he came to admire her resilience and her unfaltering but not undignified wish to please.