'I've taken risks all my life. Some have been physical ones, others have been outwardly trivial. But some have been bolder and required more of myself.'
The first risk she takes is to climb too high into an oak tree and fall head first out of it while distracted by a showy woodpecker. She ends up in hospital but also discovers that the fall has given her a fresh perspective on life - a new sharpness - and even opened a window to an event that took place before she was born.
The product of a mild concussion? Perhaps...
'Had the world changed in my moment of collision with the earth, or was it only me?'
That early experience of risk and unexpected reward sets Frances up for a remarkable life. It encourages her to seize the chance to head to Africa and start a new life. It causes her to swim too far from the shore at a Cape Town beach and be dragged to safety by the young man who will become the love of her life. Yet it also makes her weigh up her prospects and opt for the risk of a quiet marriage to a man of whom she is only fond, and the resultant life in a remote and sometimes hostile community that will make demands she could never have imagined. And it propels her to paint what she sees: the stark landscape, the unique plants and animals of the Karoo semi-desert, the tragic or bountiful product of fire and flood, the portrait of a human face...
But it's one thing to take private and personal risks.
It's quite another to take a professional risk that could scupper hard-won success...
More next time!
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