My Music Goes Silent
July 1974 proved to be yet another threshold. The well-known Andy Warhol image of the can of Campbell’s tomato soup accompanied a short invitation to celebrate a wedding, promising a cup of broth for all. Now we are all assembled in the dining-living room of the double storey terrace house in Avoca villas, Gardens. A table of refreshments with pots of the promised soup on hand to honour this event. My marriage to someone calling himself C A. This is not his real name. It is Stanley. Stanley William is who I married that afternoon at the Magistrate’s Office in Simonstown, and the details are entered in the Register of important events, like marriages and deaths.
I am twenty-three and I am married. I glance across at my father… he had been quite nervous but jovial driving me down to Simonstown in my old VW Beetle – our last road trip together in our father-daughter roles. Now I am a married woman and he has acquired a son-in-law; not his choice, not his idea.. Perhaps the reason I have done this?… I actually asked this man, eight years my senior, to marry me. It was my suggestion. Why have I done this?
He is charming. Witty, cruelly witty, sharp, which comes from his own low self-esteem and sense of self-worth. But I don’t know this yet. Except that he did change his name, and when I fell in love with him. He was an architect, or so he told me. And for some reason I longed to be in a partnership with an architect. I had followed my father’s path becoming an architect and envied my friends Vivienne and Derek, Hilary and Derek, Kate and Mark. I was elated when I thought I had found my ideal type in a partner. But C was a draughtsman. He had come from Natal, having reinvented himself along the way with a new name, leaving Stanley with his early disappointments and had introduced himself to me as an architect. It was some time later when the physical relationship had begun that I found this was not the case. Too late. And now having been enchanted, I find myself married.
I look across the room past my father – more relaxed now with a few whiskies under his belt, and see my mother sitting near my piano. She has sent it down to me from Port Elizabeth now that I have a home and have settled into my new phase. This day is also my parents’ silver wedding anniversary. I felt it auspicious to choose the same day twenty-five years later, for my own. From my perspective my parents have had a warm and loving relationship. I am very close to my father and know that I seek out moments of complicity with him when we discuss ideas which we share.
Now I look past my parents to where the man I have just married is seated, his long strong legs outstretched in his brown denim suit. The bell-bottomed trousers are tight across his crotch as he leans back in his chair. The wide lapels of the broad-shouldered jacket, so fashionable at this time, hiding his cream shirt. I notice that the shirt collar is untidily crushed under the jacket collar. It looks unruly, and as I am observing this detail, suddenly from across the room I see B moving towards him. She is his attractive graphics assistant, arriving every morning to work with him in the upstairs studio next to our bedroom.
I am riveted, watching something unfold. I know then with a deep inner knowing that I have today made a huge mistake as I witness B-anne lean forward towards him and gently take his shirt collar out from under his jacket and pat it slowly down over the lapels. It is almost a caress, and I see the glance he gives her in thanks.
The next morning after a sleepless and tormented night, I drove his little mother who had come down from Durban for the wedding, around the peninsular in my new role as ‘daughter-in-law, while my new husband went about his business.
And then, what…? My memories are painful and blurred. I withdrew into my fragile inner life, acutely aware of the need to nurture and protect myself. My beautiful Bechstein 1901 piano stood muted in that unhappy house, a silenced witness to my wounded heart as the next few years unfolded, and I grappled with the enormity of betrayal.
Betrayal is a huge word.