Gill is seated on the edge of the patio in the new morning air, in solitary contemplation.
I drag one of the wrought-iron chairs over to her and perch on it. After a few minutes she says, “It’s so strange. I can’t believe I’m moving out today. I’ve lived here all my life. Or it seems like all my life. We moved here when Annabelle and Nathan came to live with us. I’ve known this house and garden and the paddocks in every season, in every mood, at every time of day.”
The melancholy that was plaguing me all last night deepens. As she’s just said, Gill Owen has always been here, at Makuti Park. She went away for a little while once, but she came back. We’ve schooled and hacked our horses together, she’s been a sounding board for all my ideas and an unequalled instructor. After this day, me and the horses will be on our own, with Gill van Rooyen living more than thirty miles away.
For no clear reason, I’m prompted to tell her I’ve broken up with Danny. Her eyes widen in shock and I’m already mentally cringing from the inevitable questions that will aggravate the raw wound.
“Why didn’t you tell me before? I never knew you had a problem like that.”
Her voice is full of accusation. But mercifully, here comes Moira, stepping through the French doors and bearing a wicker bowl of fresh fruit. She sits next to us and starts oozing all her ideas on planning the morning.
The forecast is good; it promises to be clear and hot. The freelance hairdresser arrives just after ten with ribbons, flowers and heated curlers. The hours vanish from under us and lunchtime comes and goes, but none of us want to eat. Amai is offended, but she’s got to get herself ready anyway and we only get a couple of pointed sniffs from her.
An enthusiastic photographer in a floral shirt with a large collar materialises in our midst. He arranges bride, bridesmaids, bride’s parents and Amai in various permutations against a background of Cypress trees, chosen as a contrast to Gill’s ivory and the bronze of us bridesmaids. Earlier, the shadows from these trees were reaching out to touch the far side of the garden, seeking to meet the base of the hedge opposite, but by now they’ve all but disappeared into themselves. The bronze satin of my dress gleams alternately copper and silver in the sunshine and I spend some moments turning myself and shifting the skirt around to watch the colours. My posy of roses, marigolds and carnations – cream, orange and yellow – is dainty and light to carry. I’m starting to enjoy myself a little.
One o’clock. Moira is whisked away to the farm in her marigold-coloured dress by Sally’s parents. Their car vanishes from sight and simultaneously George pulls into the parking area next to the house in his olive green Peugeot 404 station wagon. Justice, Matthew and Lazarus are squeezed together in the back seat. The car’s been waxed and polished to within an inch of its life since I last saw it and they all look a treat in their suits. George stands to attention beside the car and watches Amai hugging Gill and dabbing at her eyes with her large white handkerchief for some minutes before deciding he’s had enough of these nattering, weeping women.
“Come now! Uyai! The car is waiting!”
Amai arranges her voluminous scarlet dress of frills and basques and puffed sleeves around her in the passenger seat and George gives us all a salute before sliding in behind the wheel.
“No picking up any stray passengers in this gleaming pirate-taxi of yours, eh?” Charles calls, winking at me and Gill. “I don’t care how much they pay you. There won’t be enough food for them.”
George can’t believe his ears.
“This car is not a pirate-taxi, Mr Owen. It is too good.”
Then he realises he’s having his leg pulled and drives away chuckling.
The four of us are left by the kitchen door.
“Well.” Gill readjusts her lace veil for the fiftieth time. “This is it. All we need now is our own set of wheels.”
There’s a dull thud in me and I’m brought back to my hollow reality. Piet is at the farm, and his partner – the bride – is about to set out to join him. Nathan is at the farm as well and his partner – Sherrie – is probably already there. I guess I should submit to the Fate that’s provided me with this opportunity to ask the burning question I’ve been unable to so far.
I pretend to readjust Gill’s veil for the fifty-first time, reassure her that they’ll be here soon I’m sure, and by the way, how is Sherrie getting to the farm?
It comes out all distressed and uptight. I’ve betrayed myself. But no, Gill has turned her attention to Sally’s dress now and appears to have taken it as a perfectly straightforward query.
“How is? Who? Oh, Sherrie? Miss Bossy-Boots? Oh no, she’s not coming. Nathan told me on Thursday she’d declined the invitation at short notice. Tessa, I was shocked I have to tell you. I don’t know what’s happened and he’s evaded all my questions. I’ll get it out of him eventually I guess. And Tammy’s in the States of course so I haven’t had a chance to really probe it with her. I feel so bad for him… Oh, look, Tess, Sally, Dad… Here it comes!”
It’s a wide, white Bentley and it’s purring up the driveway.
I’m not even that keen on Bentleys, but its appearance is simultaneous with a sensation in me that’s similar, I suspect, to that of having one’s veins drained of blood and refilled with champagne. Filled to the brim with the craziest sense of frenzied excitement, I shriek, “Come! Quickly! We’re going!”
I’m back in the wedding. Oh boy, am I back in the wedding!
Everything is beautiful. The whole world is the right way up. Colours are brighter and images are sharper than they were just ten minutes ago and I need to shout and wave at everyone in this amazing world – everyone we see along the way in a car or on a bicycle or on foot. I also need to sing I Can See Clearly Now, but I just sit in the back seat of the Bentley and grin so as not to ruin Gill’s day with the knowledge that her chief bridesmaid is a raving lunatic.
I’ve travelled this route out of Salisbury dozens of times but today I watch each scene go by in the grip of a fantasy that I’ve just arrived from a foreign land and am seeing it all for the first time, taking in every detail of every tree, rock, farm field and track. I don’t remember the van Rooyens’ garden being so fabulous, or such a riot of colour and of light and shade. In fact, thinking back to the day when I first rode Encore, I can picture only a typically drab farmstead garden with that slightly rebellious appearance that comes when the plant kingdom begins to overcome man’s feeble attempts at control. Now it’s thick with coloured blossoms, spewing over and around a neatly trimmed, brilliant green lawn that’s randomly studded with mature msasa trees. I genuinely don’t remember the msasa trees at all.
Morning glory and honeysuckle cover the long front verandah in purple and cream, while both gold and red bougainvillea have exploded over the roof ridge to meet them.
The area immediately inside the security gates resembles a second-hand car dealer’s yard on account of the twenty-odd vehicles parked haphazardly along the edges of the driveway and over part of the lawn. There’s not a soul to be seen anywhere. It’s a peaceful and charming setting and only the diamond mesh fence and the stout gates, although wide open, serve as an ugly memorial to the last bloody decade.
The Bentley rolls in through the gates on cue at twenty-nine minutes past two and halts some distance from the house. The floral photographer skips into view from wherever he’s been lurking and sets Charles and Gill up for a pose on the verandah steps, then gets a couple of shots of all four of us. There is no sound from within the house but I’m sure I can make out Amai’s red frills hovering in the comparative darkness near the doorway.
There’s a moment for me to smooth a few creases in the back panel of Gill’s dress before the first strains of the Bridal March start up to herald our arrival. It sounds like it’s live, so they did manage to squeeze an organ in there for Aunty Aileen to play. I’ve no idea who Aunty Aileen is, but she’s good. The verandah, garden flowers and even the doorway itself recede, detached and remote, while the aisle formed between the rows of seated guests in the long living room becomes sharply focussed; ranks of timber folding chairs have turned the farmhouse lounge into a temporary chapel. Beyond the figures of Gill and Charles is an Anglican vicar robed in white, smiling into his open Bible and facing him, a little to his left, is Piet. And you.
Piet’s back view is tense and exudes nervous anticipation. Beside him, and in contrast, your pose is relaxed, casually more on the left leg than the right. We process down the aisle to turned heads and eyes curious to appraise Gill in her layers of satin and lace. Last to turn, you give the bride a barely perceptible nod, like you’re acknowledging your own proud approval.
I’m adjusting to the dimmer light now. There’s Mum and Dad, and there’s Rosie, in her linen suit of cream and burgundy. She raises an elegantly gloved hand in greeting.
We’ve almost reached the vicar, who has his back to the stone fireplace. Piet shuffles sideways a little to line up with Gill and Charles. You take your eyes from Gill and we make contact. In that devastating smile I know I’m included in the same approval.
My world still remains sharper and clearer, like all my senses have been refined. Standing close to Gill, I feel the breath in her body as she recites her vows in a timid and wondering voice; the voices behind me raised in Morning Has Broken and Amazing Grace are rich and enveloping, if slightly out of tune. The bride’s delicate perfume mingles with mine and with Piet’s after-shave from the other side, I can nearly taste the prepared buffet food, even though the aromas have had to stray through a closed door and along a corridor and the rings that you pass across to the vicar are the brightest gold. And above all I feel you, so divinely handsome in your dark suit, as though neither Gill nor Piet are present.
It’s done. The vicar leads Man and Wife into the high-ceilinged dining room adjacent to sign the register and we, the entourage, follow. Moira holds Piet’s father’s arm to assist his walking; Charles and Piet’s mum, Maryna, are whispering together. Viewed through the open floor to ceiling window, the blue Hunyani range dominates the horizon like the back of some great serpent, basking in the warmth. Not a breath of wind stirs the msasas. In spite of the low murmur of the vicar’s voice and the scratching of the fountain pen, I feel the stillness out there in the garden. A dove coos sleepily from somewhere – that gentle, peaceful sound that can recreate the African Highveld in the mind whenever it’s heard.
“That’s all, folks!” calls the vicar and there’s a pitch invasion of guests to engulf the bride and groom like a tide. This tide sweeps all of us out over the verandah and onto the lawn. Mum’s arm is around me on one side and Rosie’s going on about heavenly dresses and gorgeous flowers from the other, and then Charles is grabbing my hand, “Tess, love – photos. Photos! Come, you’re needed over here sweetheart.”
I’m looking back over my shoulder at my sister as I trip after him. When did she get so grown up, so chic, with her new hat tipped at just the right angle over her dark curls, her short gloves, her heels and the pearls at her throat?
The photographing goes on a bit.
“My cheeks are aching from all this smiling,” Gill hisses at me through this same smile and we start giggling and then have to compose ourselves again. “Will this photographer never be satisfied? How many rolls of film did he bring?”
He finally lets us go after trying to get all fifty guests in one shot. Maybe he’s realised he’s competing with the buffet by now.
*
Apart from that one gin and tonic, I’ve avoided drinking any alcohol so far because I knew the champagne would start flowing soon enough, and when it did, it was in magnums, no less. I feel Charles’s South African business connections have been working behind the scenes here somewhere.
A surreptitious sip is necessary here, although Piet’s only just started on his speech, to try and take the level down slightly or I’ll spill it and look incompetent, or drunk. The waiters have clearly had no instructions to spare any. He was good though, the guy who filled my flute to the brim. He managed to leave only the merest ring of bubbles, despite having poured it all in one go. I wonder where Maryna hired them from?
Poor Piet’s not letting any time-honoured bridegroom tradition down and the vibe pulsing the room is painfully sympathetic. If he has a point he’s trying to get to it’s not obvious, but he’s made certain all here present know just what a lucky man he is etc, etc, around much throat clearing, repeated use of such fundamental words as um, er and ah and with an apparent fascination for the small card on the table bearing his name. In fact he’s picked this up, turned it over and replaced it five times during his ordeal. And naturally, in accordance with tradition, he gets heckled into silence by discordant strains of Why was he born so boo-tee-full?
Fire hydrant red, he yields to Charles and turns his attention to his wine glass and to cuddling Gill.
Charles, of course, has no such public speaking hang ups and immediately starts sending his audience up and down the emotional scale with his anecdotes of Gill’s childhood. Where we were all keen for Piet to finish, primarily to save him from further suffering, we now want Charles to carry on. He’s toasting all and sundry and the level in my flute is dropping satisfactorily. To applause and cheers he finally sits and the formalities are over. Or not. Charles is saying, “And now, dearly beloved, I hand you over to the best man of them all.”
You were the boy who once wouldn’t talk to anyone. Now you’ve taken off your jacket and tie and opened your ivory shirt at the neck and are standing up in front of an audience, eyes only occasionally flicking to the partly folded sheet of A5 paper you hold. No hesitation, no ums, no ahs. I watch you, loving the way you know you’ve got all the attention and that everyone wants to keep giving it to you.
Gill’s choice of husband, Piet’s friendship and the hospitality of the van Rooyens for holding the wedding at their farm all get praise. The vicar and the ceremony get a mention. You introduce yourself and say that those who know you will also know you’re Charles’s nephew.
“But he adopted me and I grew up in his care. I regard him and Moira as my father and mother and this gorgeous lady I’m so happy to share this day with is, to me, my sister. She has been for as long as I can remember and I hope with all my heart that she thinks of me as a brother. We’ve grown up together, and I honestly can’t imagine what I’d be or where I’d be if it wasn’t for her and the best parents in the world.”
They’re loving this – there’s much aaahing and nudging. Gill is seriously threatening her mascara with a paper serviette and Moira is rummaging in her clutch bag with some urgency. Charles doesn’t seem to be able to look anywhere except at the uplighter on the wall next to him. Megan once said of Charles, he just is, and here, now, so are you. You’re not showing off, you’re not imagining yourself superior to anyone else in this room, you just are you. You are Charles’s son.
“So while the bridegroom is obliged to thank guests and above all his new wife, and the bride’s father is obliged to tell embarrassing stories about his daughter, the best man is obliged to introduce and thank the bridesmaids. So here, next to me, we have the delightful Sally, who is Piet’s niece. Sally will be starting senior school next year at Oriel Girls’ School and she loves ballet and is very excited that she will soon be learning – what was it, Sally? Pointing?”
Sally giggles up at him, nearly as red as Piet. “Pointe work, silly!”
“Ah, pointe work. That’s standing on your toes to the rest of us. Sounds painful. Sally has also told me today that although she’s only twelve now she wants to have a dress just like Gill’s when she gets married. Seriously though, Sal, twelve or even thirteen is really a bit too young to get married so perhaps you’d better stand well clear of Gill when she hurls her bouquet into the throng later.”
You wait for the laughter to subside, now focussed on me.
“And over there, we have Gill’s chief bridesmaid. The very lovely Tessa is not only one of Gill’s best friends but is one of our family as well. Gill and Tessa have been such a part of my existence and a part of the fabric of Makuti Park for so long that I think of them as a single unit – ‘G&T’.”
More laughter. Gill is delighted and waves one hand at him, blows me a kiss with the other. I can’t respond. I just smile like I’m well composed or something and like I was fully expecting to hear this. G&T? You surprise me more every day. I wonder if I look as stupefied as I feel.
After a pause in which, for the first time, you appear to have lost your place in your notes, “Given that G&T is a creature that wears only jodhpurs and T-shirts and generally always has a couple of horses attached to it, I have to say they’ve both scrubbed up magnificently today. I’ve already said how stunning my sister is, and I have to admit that my lady Tessa is quite breath-taking in satin and flowers.”
Gill nearly drops her flute and my attention is snatched by her suddenly saucer-like eyes. I see them coming round to me in time and use one of Charles’s uplighters as an avoidance tactic. Another swig of champagne. Don’t choke, don’t spill it and above all, don’t giggle.
The audience is clapping again as you clear your throat and announce that you have a gift for each of us.
Sally is called upon. She leaps to her feet, has a brief altercation with her chair, and gives you a pretty bob curtsey. As she sits down clutching her small present, her little face is a picture of the agony of restraint as she resists the urge to tear the paper open immediately.
Now you’re beckoning to me and I’ve got to do something. I abandon the uplighter, extricate myself from behind the table with more grace than Sally, float across the front of it to face you and, recklessly, sweep into an extravagant curtsey that would surely be more than acceptable in a Viennese ballroom. Thank God I don’t fall over. You press a similar, paper-wrapped box into my hands. I don’t look at you. In fact I can barely get my thank-you out and think, fool, now you’ve ruined the moment and he’ll think you don’t care a toss.
Some guests applaud, but the collective attention has wandered and moved on. Most of these people have never seen me before and have never known this best man other than how he appears to them now. They enjoyed the speech but it was, after all, just a best man’s speech and they’ve cheerfully had enough of the talking. There’s a good deal of shuffling, chatting, laughing. No-one is paying me any attention. Back in my chair I start scratching at the wrapping paper under the table, peeling it back to reveal a white jeweller’s box. Inside is a small, oval, gold pendant, set with a deep blue stone and hung on a delicate gold chain. You startle me by saying over my shoulder, “It’s a sapphire. Do you like it?”
I smile up at you and I know that you chose it and why.
“My birthstone. It’s so pretty. I love it. Thank you.”
I touch the twisted plain gold rope necklace I’m wearing and then the neckline of my dress. It’s probably just about the right depth for the pendant.
“I’d like to put it on now, I guess.”
When you point at the back of my neck and incline your head in query, my brain spins around and gasps, yes, that’s exactly what I wanted you to do.
“Oh please. I can put this chain in the box.”
Your fingers move my hair aside to fiddle with the clasp and I have to seek out that bloody light fitting on the wall again because if I shut my eyes, which is what my tingling spine is telling me to do, I’ll topple off the chair. I really am having a moment and it’s almost unbearable. Your proximity as you reach forward to coil my plain gold chain into the cotton wool in the white box and take the sapphire pendant from my palm is sending my body into a frenzy.
“Perfect,” you say, and at that second someone sets In the Navy going on a record player outside and I spot Gill bearing down on us on a desperate mission. But she gets thwarted, intercepted by Piet and a rotund and jovial uncle of his and is compelled, very reluctantly, to change direction. Her head’s over her shoulder facing me but I pretend I haven’t seen her.
We follow, though, onto the verandah, which is big enough to be turned into a decent dance floor. Strings of multi-coloured bulbs I never noticed when we arrived are draped around the intricate patterns of the wrought-iron broekie lace eaves. Their spectrum of light pools is just beginning to be visible in the darkening evening.
“Wine?” you ask, and we do a co-ordinated about turn and head back to the kitchen where one of the hired waiters has assumed the role of bar tender. While we’re waiting for him to pour two glasses of Chardonnay, you roll up your sleeves to treat me to an overview of those forearms. It follows naturally that we remain side by side to wander back out into the warm, still night and over to the far end of the verandah and that you seem to assume I’ll do so. The frenzy’s subsided to a pleasurable buzz that I’m more than happy to keep stoked up. We both lean on the iron balustrade facing the darkening garden, wine glasses in hand.
“You are on your own today then? I couldn’t figure out if you weren’t sure yourself, or if you really knew he wouldn’t be here.”
No need to clarify who ‘he’ is. I sip at the wine and lick my lips. You must know I’ll have the same question for you very shortly.
“I won’t give up my horses for him and it’s become a source of conflict. I’m very sorry about it but not enough to make me try and resolve it.”
That’s what I’ve said to everyone so far and, as with everyone else, I stop short of asking if you think I’m being selfish.
The answer, of course, lies in my heart – or rather, where Danny sits in my heart.
It’s no surprise when you answer the very question I’ve just not asked you.
“I think we’re all capable of, and willing to, making sacrifices for people we love but at the same time we should have a right to expect sacrifices from them also. We’re all selfish to a point. The question is, do you mind that you’re looking after your own interests and not his?”
That is exactly it.
“I don’t love him, if that’s what you mean. Well, I love him in a way – we had a great time together and he’s a good person – but not like that.”
The relief of saying those words instead of thinking them is a physical thing. I have no need of excuses or explanations. I’ve simply fallen out of love and it doesn’t seem so awful now that I’ve made this admission. There’s no going back. It can’t have really been love in the first place then, can it?
Nothing is said for a while and we sip wine. I want to lift the mood, so I launch into a description of the day I came here with Gill and Rosie to try Encore, pointing out the direction of the stables, relating my first impressions of Piet.
“It was Rosie who noticed the apparent – I don’t know – vibes, I suppose, between him and Gill. I was so wrapped up with my thoughts about horses I was quite oblivious to everything else. Typical, really.”
“You and your sister are not alike then?”
“No! I love her to bits of course, but she’s so… so conventional. You know – make-up, fashion, pop charts, boys, nail varnish, hair styles. Following the flock with dedication. And it’s not that I don’t want to be like her. Sometimes I do. I just never think about it. I’m probably what’s classed as an eccentric.”
“Not at all. It’s you, and it’s what makes you interesting.”
Then you put in this wonderfully comical back-track, apologising for cheesiness, protesting that you didn’t mean it like that at all, flustered and mortified, urgently scanning me for signs of indignation or scorn, looking just as comically relieved when you realise there’s none.
“Interesting? What, like a previously undiscovered species or a collected sample of something?”
“Well yes, but far more so.”
The arm next to me is lifted from the balustrade and I’m ready for it when it goes around my shoulders, in serious danger of bursting into floods of tears with relief. I can sense your uncertainty, your desperate hope that I’m not going to react badly, pull away or slap you across the face. A desperate hope that you’ve done the right thing. And I feel you sigh as I put my head back against your arm, close my eyes and shift my weight into the warmth of your body.
“I’m not seeing Sherrie any more, if that’s what you’re thinking,” you say in a barely audible voice over the top of my head.
Of course that was my question. But I knew the answer. Because you wouldn’t be doing this if she was still in the frame.