take advantage of her.
My fears were well founded. They soon returned home, John brimming with the story of how a young man had grabbed my mother’s small purse as they left a shop. My mother could be quite an anxious person in many ways but in a crisis she was amazing; clear, level-headed and in no doubt about what needed to be done.
‘I let the bag go because I didn’t want to lose my finger,’ she said very matter-of-factly with no trace of trauma. ‘John went with the police to track the lad down but they couldn’t find him. When he came back from chasing the chap, he said to me: “I find him, I kill him, I fuck him.’’’
My mother’s instinct for understatement, a very English trait, came to the fore.
‘I said to him, “I don’t think you want to do that, dear.”’
•••
The wedding day was memorable but perhaps not for all the reasons I’d anticipated. Unbeknown to me, I had contracted malaria, and I spent the entire day before the late-afternoon ceremony drifting in and out of sleep, wondering if my blinding headache was a sign that I was having second thoughts.
That morning, ML had organised a raiding party to steal branches of bougainvillea from various hotspots around the city with my mother and another friend from Australia, Steph Clark. When I arrived at the cathedral in the late afternoon,dosed up on paracetamol in order to loosen the large vice of pain squeezing my forehead, I walked into the service through a glorious arch of vivid, tropical flowers. Even in my happy daze I could see it was hard on Edward and Henry. They were polite and friendly, but this was a very uncomfortable, painful and confronting occasion for them.
Our vows seemed imbued with the age-old spirit of the tribal cultures that we lived among. ‘With my body I honour you. I share with you all that I have. Where you go I will go. Where you stay I will stay. Your people shall be my people.’
‘I take you as my husband to have you and to hold you from now on; for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. To love you and take care of you until death separates us.’
At the time, I did not realise that this was not just a promise I was making to Julian – it was a much deeper declaration about the kind of woman I wanted to become. I had no idea, of course, how hard these promises would be to live up to, or how much I would come to rely on them in later days, when so much of our marriage dissolved into darkness.
•••
In my mind I trace back over those early, heady days, searching for missed clues. Were there any signs, even then, that Julian’s health might be compromised in some way?
I certainly thought he drank a lot, but it was no more than many did. It was just a normal part of being an expatriate and living in constant oppressive heat. At least, I reasoned, he did a lot of exercise. I knew his mother had died of cancer but I dismissed that as not being a particular cause for alarm – rather, I had focused on his father, who reached nearly ninety before his death in the accident.
To me, Julian seemed invincible. His life force was so strong that it was impossible for me to imagine him in any other way. So I was surprised when he casually mentioned one day that he was going to hospital to have a blood test which had been organised by an old friend of his, haematologist Dr John White. He’d been having them regularly for years because of a permanently swollen left calf, the result of a botched operation several years before.
Julian was a little vague about why he was being asked to do this, but he had a huge respect for the medical profession and was content to follow instructions. I certainly had no concerns at all. I felt that Julian’s zest for life and passion for sport would keep him active for many years. There was nothing to suggest that anything but a long and robust life stretched before him.
8 December 1995
Christmas greetings and tidings of good cheer. Life
My fears were well founded. They soon returned home, John brimming with the story of how a young man had grabbed my mother’s small purse as they left a shop. My mother could be quite an anxious person in many ways but in a crisis she was amazing; clear, level-headed and in no doubt about what needed to be done.
‘I let the bag go because I didn’t want to lose my finger,’ she said very matter-of-factly with no trace of trauma. ‘John went with the police to track the lad down but they couldn’t find him. When he came back from chasing the chap, he said to me: “I find him, I kill him, I fuck him.’’’
My mother’s instinct for understatement, a very English trait, came to the fore.
‘I said to him, “I don’t think you want to do that, dear.”’
•••
The wedding day was memorable but perhaps not for all the reasons I’d anticipated. Unbeknown to me, I had contracted malaria, and I spent the entire day before the late-afternoon ceremony drifting in and out of sleep, wondering if my blinding headache was a sign that I was having second thoughts.
That morning, ML had organised a raiding party to steal branches of bougainvillea from various hotspots around the city with my mother and another friend from Australia, Steph Clark. When I arrived at the cathedral in the late afternoon,dosed up on paracetamol in order to loosen the large vice of pain squeezing my forehead, I walked into the service through a glorious arch of vivid, tropical flowers. Even in my happy daze I could see it was hard on Edward and Henry. They were polite and friendly, but this was a very uncomfortable, painful and confronting occasion for them.
Our vows seemed imbued with the age-old spirit of the tribal cultures that we lived among. ‘With my body I honour you. I share with you all that I have. Where you go I will go. Where you stay I will stay. Your people shall be my people.’
‘I take you as my husband to have you and to hold you from now on; for better for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. To love you and take care of you until death separates us.’
At the time, I did not realise that this was not just a promise I was making to Julian – it was a much deeper declaration about the kind of woman I wanted to become. I had no idea, of course, how hard these promises would be to live up to, or how much I would come to rely on them in later days, when so much of our marriage dissolved into darkness.
•••
In my mind I trace back over those early, heady days, searching for missed clues. Were there any signs, even then, that Julian’s health might be compromised in some way?
I certainly thought he drank a lot, but it was no more than many did. It was just a normal part of being an expatriate and living in constant oppressive heat. At least, I reasoned, he did a lot of exercise. I knew his mother had died of cancer but I dismissed that as not being a particular cause for alarm – rather, I had focused on his father, who reached nearly ninety before his death in the accident.
To me, Julian seemed invincible. His life force was so strong that it was impossible for me to imagine him in any other way. So I was surprised when he casually mentioned one day that he was going to hospital to have a blood test which had been organised by an old friend of his, haematologist Dr John White. He’d been having them regularly for years because of a permanently swollen left calf, the result of a botched operation several years before.
Julian was a little vague about why he was being asked to do this, but he had a huge respect for the medical profession and was content to follow instructions. I certainly had no concerns at all. I felt that Julian’s zest for life and passion for sport would keep him active for many years. There was nothing to suggest that anything but a long and robust life stretched before him.
8 December 1995
Christmas greetings and tidings of good cheer. Life
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