The Fever Tree (10 page)

T
he fancy-dress ball took place three days before they were due to dock at Cape Town. As the girls left their cabins for the ball amidst a cloud of powder and musk, Mariella grabbed Frances by the hand and pulled her back. She slipped a bottle into her hand. The glass was cool and smooth in her palm. Mariella laughed, releasing a wave of alcohol, fiery and strong. She was dressed as a gypsy, with her glossy ringlets gathered into a brass headpiece decorated with miniature bells which tinkled when she turned her head.

“Where did you get it?” Frances asked, twisting out the cork with a squeak. Her father had drunk brandy at home, but it had never been offered to her. She took a sip. It was pure and clear, and slipped around her mouth like smoke.

“It’s French. Eau-de-vie. George won it from a man at cards.”

“You’re accepting gifts?”

Mariella raised the bottle to her lips and took a glug, then grinned at Frances. “He’s asked me to marry him.”

“Oh, Mariella, that’s wonderful! But when did all this happen?”

Her friend pressed the bottle into her hand again, and Frances took another sip, this time letting the liquid slide down her throat. It burnt a hot trail into her belly and rolled around her mouth, evaporating into cold vapor on her tongue.

“At St. Helena. We walked to the top of Jacob’s Ladder together.”

“He proposed at the top?”

Mariella nodded.

“How romantic!” Frances hugged her. “Are you very happy? No, I don’t need to ask that.” Mariella’s eyes were glowing. “Where will you live? In Kimberley?”

Mariella shook her head. “A passenger in first class has offered George work on his farm in Stellenbosch, not far from Cape Town. We’ll stay there for a while, then we plan to go to Kimberley. You’ll be there, Frances, and perhaps even Anne when the new hospital is finished. Here,” she said, pushing the bottle towards Frances, “take a proper glug. It’ll improve your dancing, and it’s better than the stuff they’ll be serving upstairs.”

Frances put the bottle to her lips and tilted back her head. She let the liquid run down into her insides until it lit up her stomach with a fiery heat and made her underarms prickle with damp. Should she tell Mariella about William? The openness of her friend’s excitement made her wish she could share her own. She wanted to make it real, to commit to the open world what had happened between them, but she held back. He had said almost enough to convince her that he cared about her, but she still wasn’t completely sure of him.

Mariella bent down to fix the buckle on her shoe, and Frances took a last look at herself in the glass. She was dressed as Boudica in a long russet gown borrowed from one of the girls, with brass bangles and a woven headpiece which caught up her red hair and sent it tumbling down again around her shoulders. Her face looked older than it had ever done before, and there was something hard and wanting in her eyes; a strange confidence which made her feel as though—for one night at least—she was perfectly in control and could bring about any outcome that she desired.

•   •   •

“L
OOK
!” A
NNE
POINTED
OUT
to sea, and the girls paused in their walk across the deck to watch the moon, a golden orb, rise dripping from the horizon. The water shimmered like a desert of black sand, and the moon cast shadows across its trembling surface.

“Aren’t we a motley crew!” Mariella laughed, linking arms with them both, and the girls looked at each other and grinned. Anne had come as Spring, in a green silk dress with a white muslin gauze trimmed with pink silk flowers which she had stitched herself.

“Doesn’t everything feel strange this evening?” Anne said, looking at the passengers crowding on deck in their costumes. Frances scanned the faces for William, but there was no sign of him. Robinson Crusoe, in furs and a parasol, got down on one knee and kissed the hand of a Swiss milkmaid. Laughter rippled through the hum of conversation. Stewards wielded clinking salvers of champagne glasses, and a Turk tweaked the mustaches of a cavalier. Peacock feathers swayed above the heads of Oriental ladies, and Cleopatra was kneeling to soothe the stamping rage of a little Russian tsar. It was as if the gods had cracked open history, plucking men, women, and children from every corner of the globe to entertain the heavens. The masts had been strung with candles, and their reflection glittered over the water. There was no wind, and the sea was so calm you could almost hear the heavens listening in.

“It’s rather like the last dance of the damned,” Frances said, thinking, Please God, let William dance with me this evening, and let us be married in Cape Town.

They took glasses of wine, and stood with their backs to the balustrade, watching the dancing. Then she saw him on the other side of the deck. He was dressed in full skirts, with a wig of dark curls which fell to his shoulders. She smiled. His skirts were too short and she could see his unstockinged ankles. He stood leaning back on his elbows, surveying the dancers. Was he trying to find her? She raised a hand to catch his attention but stopped when she saw his friend, Daniel Leger—dressed as a jockey and half his size—whispering something in his ear. William, laughing, swung himself forward. They strode across the deck and went below, and she hated to see him go.

“Why is ‘emigration’ such a dirty word?” Anne was asking.

“When you’re in England, you think living there is everything,” Mariella said. “You don’t realize that there are people who don’t care a bit that you’ve left to find work. For them, it’s the most normal thing in the world.”

“I didn’t like to tell people I was emigrating,” Anne admitted.

“How dare they judge us?” Frances asked, swallowing her disappointment. “What right do they have?”

“Give us five years and we’ll have forgotten all about England.” Anne smiled. “Just think where we’ll be.”

“Well, you’ll be a head nurse,” Frances replied. “Rather terrifying, I imagine, in your starched uniform.”

Anne laughed. “Our families won’t recognize us!”

“What do we care?” Mariella said.

“But we must stay in touch,” Anne said solemnly, and she grasped their hands and put them together, and for a second the girls held on to each other, hot palm grasping the back of hot hand, fingers intertwined with fingers. The sea rushed by below them, bringing them every second closer to South Africa, and they knew that once they got there, nothing would be the same.

The evening crept on, and there was no sign of William. Frances felt reckless. In a little over three days they would be in Cape Town. They wouldn’t have another chance. She drank a glass of wine, and then another, feeling more desperate after each one.

“Boudica,” William said later, coming up behind her. “Brilliant, burnished, beautiful. The
B
s would have been easier,” he said with a self-deprecating smile, taking her glass from her hand and putting it down somewhere behind him. He had trimmed his beard, and she could see the square angle of his jaw and his teeth gleaming from his sunburnt face. Somehow, even dressed as a woman, he seemed more masculine than any other man on the deck. When he laughed, his ringlets quivered, and he tossed them behind his shoulder. “I don’t know how you do it,” he said. “The damned things are always getting in the way. You should have seen me eating my soup.” He grimaced, and she broke into a smile, relieved that he was here at last.

“Is it terrible?” he asked with a look of concern, pinching at his red taffeta dress.

“Terrible?” She laughed. “Not at all. Where did you find it?”

“Mrs. Musgrave obliged.”

Her hand, she realized, was in his. He was leading her across the deck into the midst of the dancers. It was difficult to think. Her mind, thick with the wine and eau-de-vie, was slow to catch up with her body. He held her very gently around the waist, his fingertips barely making an imprint on the fabric of her dress. His body was warm and slightly damp. He smelled of cigarettes and pomade, a combination strangely at odds with the ribbons at his waist which brushed her fingertips and the soft collision of their two dresses as they danced. This was the heady concoction that he created, a subtle but beguiling mixture of humor and intensity which had her hopelessly enthralled. She didn’t feel sure of herself when she was with him. She didn’t know the rules of courtship. He was always one step ahead of her, and with this came the sharp but dangerous pleasure of being out of control, not unlike the game she used to play with her cousins where you shut your eyes and fell, trusting your partner would catch you.

“Frances,” he said, leaning forward to whisper in her ear. His breath ruffled her skin like feathers. “The small matter of you owing me your life. Don’t you think it’s about time that you repaid me?”

Her heart thudded. It occurred to her that he might propose right here as they danced. After a moment he said, “I want you to meet me by the stern deck door in five minutes.”

“But I can’t . . .”

“Can’t what?” He looked at her, eyes laughing.

She wanted to say, I need to know that I can trust you, but instead she said, “Not where we’re alone. Please.”

He looked disappointed in her, and she felt suddenly very ordinary. “Frances, you’re all grown up, not a child.” He smiled kindly. “I promise I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to do, but it must be your decision.”

He walked away, and she looked at his broad back pushing through the dancers and thought, He wants me. Of all the people he could have, he wants me.

“Miss Irvine, a dance?” It was George Fairley, holding out his hand to her. She squeezed it in congratulation and his cheeks dimpled, but she couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. All she could think about was William, whether he was waiting for her, and what he would say to her if he was. “I can’t dance now,” she said apologetically, leaving him, “but perhaps later?”

She picked her way through the gathered crowd to the stern door, opened it, and saw with a surge of relief that he was there, standing below her on the stairs.

“I thought you’d come,” he said, smiling.

She lurched a little down the stairs, but he gripped her hand tightly and marched her along the corridor. She had to run to keep up. There were cabins along one side, and they passed an open door. Daniel Leger was sitting on a bunk with a girl lying across his lap dressed as a ballerina. He looked up and winked at her as they swept past. William stopped outside the next cabin. He pulled her inside and shut the door smartly behind him.

“Yours?”

He nodded, leaning back against the door, watching her take in the room. There was just a single bunk against the wall, a few jackets hanging opposite, and a shotgun in a case above them. It was about the same size as a cabin sleeping three girls in second class. The room, lit by the soft glow of a gas lamp turned down low, smelt of leather and sandalwood. She caught sight of herself in the round mirror above the washbasin. Her hair spilled down the back of her russet gown, and her arms were bare.

The cabin was very still after the commotion of the dance, and the quiet roared loud in her ears. She put a hand on the wall to steady herself. Her heart was pounding. She wanted William to say something to put her at her ease, but instead he moved to a small mahogany rack on the wall which held a decanter and a tumbler. He took them down, poured out a little of the amber liquid, took a sip, and held it out to her. His breath had clouded the glass, leaving the moist imprint of his lips. She took it from him. The alcohol tasted dank and peaty, with a smokiness that numbed her mouth.

“Scotch,” he said, and she nodded. His physical presence, the height and bulk of him, intimidated her now that she was alone with him. He was at least a head taller than her, and had a contained, athletic energy which made him restless. He took back the glass, and it clinked against his teeth as he brought it to his lips. She could feel the heat of his hands, like coals, only inches from her body. Was he going to touch her? She shouldn’t want him to. In fact, she ought to leave the cabin now, but the alcohol had loosened something inside her.

“Second thoughts?” he asked, brushing her hand away from her neck so it fell still at her side.

She looked at him with wide eyes.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“Edwin? No.”

“And me?” he asked, with boyish petulance. It wasn’t what she had expected. He must have known that she did, and yet he looked for a second completely vulnerable in his flouncy dress, with the curls dropping to his shoulders and his dark arms thrust into pretty lace sleeves which were too short for him.

“William.” She said his name for the first time, reaching up to put a hand to his cheek. His beard crinkled under her fingertips. He took a sip from the tumbler and studied her face. She let her hand drop to her side, suddenly unsure of herself. When he stepped closer she instinctively edged backwards, feeling the door handle pressing into her back. He brought his hand up and ran his finger around the lip of her dress, across the shoulders, and along the top of the bodice, dragging it between the fabric and her skin.

“If we could only talk—” she said.

He interrupted her, his voice low and hoarse. “I’ve tried to tell myself I should leave you alone, Frances Irvine. Let you get on and marry your doctor. But I haven’t been able to sleep for days, thinking about you.” He dipped his head and brushed her mouth with his. In a sudden, instinctive movement, she raised her face to his, trying to keep hold of the touch of his lips, but he was already out of reach and she kissed instead his chin, clumsily, through his beard, feeling the bristle of hair with the tip of her outstretched tongue. He groaned as she did it, put down his tumbler, then turned his mouth on hers. She leant into him. His fingers were at the nape of her neck, tracing a line down her spine, and her skin burnt where he touched her.

It wasn’t until he began to lever her dress down over her shoulders that she realized he had undone the fastenings. Confused, she tried to pull it back up, but he caught her wrist and held it off and with his other hand tugged at the center of her corset so that her breasts, pale and heavy, fell free of the fabric. She drew in breath, leaning against him to cover herself up, but he stepped away from her, looking at her nakedness.