farmhouse into which the women moved was situated just below the home of John Russell, the Marquess of Tavistock and future 13th Duke of Bedford, who had arrived there to farm a year or two earlier. (On succeeding his father as Duke of Bedford, he would later court much controversy by opening Woburn Abbey, the Bedford family seat, to the public, and introducing a safari park to its grounds.) The water supply, piped downhill from a dam above the Russells’ home, was shared by both households; the Russells’ needs taking priority because they were higher up the hillside.
There was no proper sanitation, and the lavatory was a simple hole in the ground in an out-house. There was no mains electricity – just oil lamps. Farming was a new world to these women, but within a few months some simple houses had been built for black farmworkers and servants, and a manager appointed. The orchards grew figs, apricots and guavas, while buchu, a herbal tea introduced to South Africa by the Dutch colonists, grew on the hillside. In addition there was a vineyard. The household kept a cow, a mule, and also Susie, another Alsatian, but no dog could really replace Carlo.
There was consternation one day when the cow became bloated and lay down in her stall, distressed in her breathing. Frances sat down beside her, and supported the recumbent cow’s head in her lap as they waited for the vet to arrive, uncertain whether the cow would survive. In due course the vet arrived, treated the cow, and the cow rapidly recovered. This story was to endear Frances to Rose McIlrath, a veterinary surgeon, whom she met a few years later, and who was to become a lifelong friend.
Frances helped in the orchards when the fruit was ripe, and drove crates of fruit into Cape Town each week to sell in the market. In due course she came to the point where she wanted a job away from home. Soon, to her own surprise, she found herself living in Constantia, on the north side of Table Mountain, helping to look after five small children, including a four-month-old baby. Never having held a baby before, she was not a natural nanny. Frances made friends with fellow nannies in the area as they took children for walks, and she enjoyed going on holiday with the family; but she longed for greater purpose.
Back in Paarl, she sat one day in the vineyard, weeping. She was conscious of civil unrest in South Africa, and the injustice of apartheid, issues from which she had been shielded in Devon and in Malvern. She was concerned by the political climate and the supremacy of the whites in the apartheid regime. Over these years she began to develop a social conscience. But there were deeper issues, ones which she could not define. Why was she so unhappy in such a beautiful place?
She felt she was simply marking time. The countryside was stunning and yet she could not appreciate it. She felt lonely, unsettled, and struggled to make sense of life. There was nothing to aim for. In school she had worked hard for exams, and worked to get into the first sports teams. Her father had always urged her on. But here she sensed no goal in her life, and there was no one to help her find direction.
In 1951, Frances’s grandmother came out to stay. When it was time for Beatrice Eastley to return home, Frances was asked to accompany her back to Devon, to save her travelling alone. She was glad to do this, and as she boarded the ship, she wondered whether or not she would ever return to the Western Cape. Edgar, Frances’s boyfriend from her days in Switzerland, had written to say he hoped to marry her, but Frances was less certain and wrote to decline. Perhaps she would stay in the UK; she wasn’t sure.
The boat journey from Cape Town to Southampton took three weeks. On board ship Frances got to know Ian, a Rhodes scholar who was returning to Balliol College, Oxford for post-doctoral research. Ian had been raised a Roman Catholic but had no personal commitment to Catholicism or to Christ. As the days went by, the friendship turned to romance. In God’s economy, while the relationship did not last, it was to have a special bearing on Frances’s coming to faith in Christ.
CHAPTER SIX
London, the BBC, and a new-found faith: 1951–56
Britain in 1951 was a very different Britain from the one Frances had left in 1947.The much-heralded Festival of Britain would run throughout the summer, to mark the centenary of Prince Albert’s 1851 Great Exhibition. It was hoped that this would add a further spur to redevelopment and boost morale after the end of the Second World War. The Festival would capture the mood of the post-war nation, with millions now settling down in their new homes and new jobs. After all the wartime restrictions, and now with a little money to spend, people were planning visits to relatives, and days out.
For Frances, the thought of returning to the loneliness of life in South Africa, where she had wept on the hillside with a sense of purposelessness, held no attraction; she resolved that she would remain back in England, for the time being. Having made her decision to stay, at least through The Festival of Britain, she wrote to her mother. Evelyn knew how much Frances enjoyed the arts, and that life on the fruit farm did not provide much opportunity for aesthetic pursuits; she replied to Frances’s letter to say she understood. After a few weeks spent in Devon with her grandmother, Frances was drawn back to life in London.
Frances needed to find a job. So, travelling up from Devon to London by train, to visit her friend Doreen from Malvern days, she scanned the columns in The Times. Here she saw an advertisement for a temporary secretary at the BBC, to work for a talks producer in the overseas service. This would provide a foothold for her without long-term commitment. She applied and was duly appointed. Her department was based at 200 Oxford Street, close to the tube station at Oxford Circus. From London it would be easy to see more of Ian in Oxford, with the frequent and easy train service from Paddington. In God’s providence, she never returned to South Africa. London would become home for the next sixty years.
Frances was able to share digs with her schoolfriend at 66 Princes Square in Bayswater. Doreen, a gifted pianist and ’cellist some years her senior, was teaching music at a private school close to the Royal Albert Hall. They had become friends at Malvern when Doreen had helped Frances with her piano playing. London offered rich cultural pursuits for the two women with their common love of music.
In due course, Frances was invited to apply for a permanent appointment at the BBC, working for a talks producer in the West Africa service who held a dual role. As well as creating educational programmes, she also produced talks in the Overseas Service (now the BBC World Service) for programmes on culture, with slots for book reviewers, concert critics and theatre critics. The interview for this dual role was with the formidable feminist Mary Treadgold, literary editor and Carnegie medal winner. Here Frances fielded a completely unexpected question. ‘You’re not an evangelical, are you?’ Frances, not yet a committed Christian, was unfamiliar with the term. She could have betrayed her puzzlement, but the tone of the producer’s voice gave away her sheer distaste for evangelicals. ‘Oh no!’ said Frances. Obviously competent in all aspects the roles would require, she was appointed.
Frances discovers All Souls
A few months after she arrived at the BBC, news came that her department would be moved to new offices in the Langham Hotel, at the top of Upper Regent Street. She and a fellow secretary decided to walk up there one lunchtime, to look at their new quarters. Frances noticed that the doors were open at All Souls Church, which stands opposite the Langham Hotel and adjacent to Broadcasting House, the main BBC building, and she felt strangely drawn to look inside. This church, designed by John Nash and opened in 1824, is situated at the bend of the road, as Upper Regent Street turns into Portland Place. The building looks not unlike a rocket on its launching pad. With its curving steps and Ionic pillars, it remains a well-known West End landmark. In December 1940, a landmine exploded in Portland Place, which brought down much of the church ceiling. The restoration work after the war took until April 1951, when the congregation was able to return. She found a light, modern church, so unlike those in Bovey or Lustleigh. A commanding painting by Richard Westall, Ecce Homo (‘Behold the Man’), depicting Christ, bound and on trial, hung in the east end. This painting, clearly visible from the pavement, with spotlights shining on it, immediately drew Frances’s
