You Have Not a Leg to Stand On (17 page)

Home Alone

Peter's solicitor attended the funeral, so I was able to give her all his files he'd put together for me, on one of the Sunday's he'd come for lunch. With his efficiency, she was able to complete probate in three months. She surprised even herself.

After all the organisation of the funeral and the house full of family (we have three spare bedrooms) we were shattered. We needed to be alone. Nevertheless, it was a strange sensation. Peter was the last of his generation for whom we were responsible. Not only the last of mine, my wife had no one left on her side either. All of us, at our age, are just one stage away from being a problem to the generation below us, our children or our nephews and nieces. Somebody is going to have to decide what to do with us. Each of us, one by one, will drop off our perches. I think most of us might be quite relieved not to have the responsibility of running a house or a business, but the expense of keeping us all alive for no effect or use to society, I can't help thinking is a terrible waste of resources. I realise the industry set up to keep us all alive is worth billions, but who do we benefit? What use are we? We serve no purpose. We have nothing to offer. I realise Peter benefited us hugely, but that's very unusual, and what use am I? I serve no purpose and haven't done so for years. Jokingly I say, at the age of eighty, or before if necessary, I'd like the vet to come to my house and put me down. In fact, I'm not really joking at all. I don't see why I shouldn't die at a time of my own choosing. My life is my own.

The next undertaking was Peter's little cottage. He'd said you must do with it whatever you think is best. We didn't want to sell it. It was too valuable to sell. But we had to clear it out and bring it up to date. Although he'd maintained the essentials, basically, it was exactly the same as when they first moved in, forty years before.

He told us what there was of any value, so to go through everything else would have taken forever, and inevitably been very depressing. We asked the auctioneer who came to value the contents for death duty, to recommend a house clearing firm he'd dealt with himself.

There are times in your life when you have a feeling you're making the wrong decision, but you can't quite figure why? This was one of those times. When we first met this man, I thought he was someone we could trust. My wife was hesitant. I should have listened to her and put a stop to him before he started, so simple. Interview someone else.

He and his team served their purpose in that they cleared out the house completely, over a weekend, with no exchange of money. We told him the deal did not include a set of very treasured china plates Peter had always told us about. He'd kept them hidden in a particular place which we couldn't reach. We told him where they were and he agreed he'd give them to us when he got there. You'll probably say I was naive, but I trusted him. My wife didn't, although she couldn't put her finger on it exactly, but she didn't think she liked him. Feminine intuition is a very complicated process for a mere man to follow, however hard you try. If she'd said, ‘I definitely don't trust him,' I would, of course, have accepted her verdict. But she wasn't definite until the beginning of the second day.

At the end of the first day, he blustered into the room and more or less threw a plate on the table at which we were sitting, saying in an unnecessarily aggressive manner, ‘There's your valuable china for you.'

My wife made up her mind overnight to confront him first thing on the Sunday morning. You can imagine the indignation it caused. He stormed out of the room in high dudgeon. It wasn't only him who'd effectively been accused of theft, it was his whole team two women and a man. The two women burst into tears and threatened to leave the site. No one had ever treated them in such an atrocious manner. I find it very difficult to believe he actually stole a set of china so blatantly and he would have had to have the cooperation of his whole team. It wouldn't have been worth their while. But why would Uncle Peter always have told us so precisely where the set was hidden, and why would the house clearer have given us just one plate? We also had the photographs Uncle Peter had taken off the whole set in case of theft. In this extraordinary confrontation, somebody had to give way. He couldn't, because he'd have to admit to theft. It was up to us to either follow it up or to give way. It made sense we should take the course of the latter, to get the job done.

Apart from that unfortunate start to owning it, the cottage has brought nothing but happiness to all those who have tenanted it. So much so, they all have assumed they had the right to buy it.

One day it will be sold with our whole estate, but meanwhile it serves us very well as it is. It's a very strange awareness that in ten years I'll be eighty-two and my wife will be eighty. All old people look like old people, and we will be just the same. Strangely though, my little wife, looks exactly the same as she did when her friend Camilla brought her to the Kedong valley in nineteen sixty-five. She still has an hourglass figure and her skin is flawless and she hasn't a grey hair on her head. How is it everyone else looks their age when my wife looks exactly the same as she ever did? It must be because of the quiet, uneventful, trouble free life we've led!

On one occasion when my mother-in-law was still alive we, and my wife's brother and children, were staying with her for the weekend. Natasha, my brother-in-law's daughter, who must have about ten years old said, completely un-maliciously, quietly, as her grandmother slowly crept into the room, ‘Here comes Crumple.' She'd never called her that before and I'm not aware she ever did so again. But that little anecdote only serves to emphasise how all elderly people are regarded by the younger generation. I don't think my mother-in-law was any older than I am now

On our ‘round the world' trip in our beautiful little ship the Saga Ruby, we stopped at the small South Korean island of Jeju. We're both fascinated by the intricacy of bonsai trees. The work entailed in the tending of the aged trees, however old they may be, will have had to be tended by someone practically every day of their lives. They can't be left to look after themselves in the way our ordinary everyday trees are. You could have a bonsai oak or beech or any of our English trees, but they can't be left to look after themselves all the year round. In winter, during their dormancy, they won't need everyday care, but if you have more than a few, there'll be a cycle of work that'll be called for on a regular basis. Every two or three years they need to be taken out of their pots to have their roots pruned. In the summer, they must be watered twice every day.

One of the trips organised by the Ship was a visit to a bonsai garden. It was very cold weather so we were the only people on this expedition. The solitude and quietness of these ancient trees gave an immense gravity to the whole garden. It instantly swept us back more than fifty years to that old, old orchard in which we pitched our tent in northern Greece. This was on our trip back to England, before we were married, being chaperoned by Honey through the Middle East. All the trees were set about glittering, clear, wandering waterways, teeming with huge, lazily swimming, golden koi carp. We could only smile with deep warmth as we slowly moved about the breathtaking beauty of these ancient trees.

The couple who looked after our house while we were away for all that time, Chris and Gilly, are aficionados for finding the best places to eat fish and chips. This time they recommended a pub near Bodiam Castle. They were right. The fish and chips were delicious. It was a lovely day, so after lunch we thought we'd do what we've come to love doing at this late onset of our lives, slowly driving around English country lanes trying to get lost. Fairly soon we passed a little sign, simply saying, ‘Bodiam bonsai'. We stopped. That ‘stop' has turned out to be the most expensive ‘stop' we've made since spotting the advert for sailing around the world!

Our collection has outgrown the courtyard garden. Every pillar has its own tree. All the other trees, I'm not quite sure how many, have created their own garden, leading on from the rose garden, which my wife planted in memory of my mother.

These trees are sitting on their own half ton, uncut, rough, natural slate, triangular rocks, from a slate quarry in Cornwall. The appearance and age of the rocks enhance the age and beauty of the trees. The rocks are the waste product at the top of a new quarry, rusty brown slate, before getting to the clear grey slate we all know. The rocks are set out at random, about six to eight feet apart, in a high-fenced area about one hundred foot square. The fence has to be both rabbit proof and deer proof. The trees are irresistible to vegetarian nibblers. The rabbits are particularly destructive, because they climb up inside the tree, using it as a perch, and eat it from inside out.

Between all the rocks, will be planted wildflowers from all around the Wealden area. All the trees have their own drip feed watering system, controlled by clocks at the main source of the water. I have an electric wheelchair so I can easily visit each tree to work on it. As some of the trees are quite tall, which differs from tree to tree, the seat of the chair rises so I can reach the top of the taller trees for pruning. It takes quite a few years to ‘know' a tree well, so by the time I do, I'll be very close to the end of my borrowed time. That time so easily could have come to its conclusion, just outside the ramshackle little dry, dusty township of Rumaruti, in the north of Kenya, at five o'clock in the afternoon, on the twenty ninth of June, nineteen seventy six.

***

This must be the final chapter, as now there's a glimmer, still quite far away, at the end of a very long tunnel. It's a faint speck, a little dot in the distance, signifying the end. Not just the end of my story, I also see the end of me. Through years of despair and torment, I longed for the end, and now I can see it. I think we've achieved quite a lot, but without my little wife pushing, lifting, straining, nurturing, I wouldn't have achieved anything.

Now that I can see the end, I find I'm quite comforted by it, even liberated. Living so close to the endings of my mother, Carmen and Peter, I know the actual ‘death' itself isn't something of which I need to be fearful, but the run up to that moment is usually pretty awful. Peter's was very quick; he was never bed-bound by weakness or illness. He thought about stopping smoking occasionally, but as he'd never suffered anything, not even so much as a cough, he let the thought go. He never smoked while in our house, or in our car, even though he'd given it to us. We have a photograph of him and Carmen's godson, Tats, standing outside, in the dark, snow-covered courtyard, puffing away before being allowed back in! I think I might as well continue drinking slightly more than the recommended allowance of red wine per day, especially as I'm now the full-time chef. And as for taking a break once a week, forget it!

I'm told I should finish on an upbeat note, but I've tried to tell you, perhaps too graphically at times, how it actually is, leading the life of a paraplegic. Inevitably that must be ‘down' rather than ‘up'. But you can take it either way.

I lived a magical childhood that contrasted somewhat with my undeniably ‘wanting' education. However, it did lead me by a circuitous, contorted route to an acting career at the Donovan Maule theatre in Nairobi and meeting my beautiful little wife in the Kedong valley. This was a fortuitous and thrilling meeting for me, but a fateful, even disastrous meeting for her, in view of what has happened to me since.

I've told you how lucky we've been meeting so many incredibly kind and generous people everywhere we've been. It's hard to believe the enormity of help, encouragement and love we've received from friends and family. I can only thank them all from the bottom of my heart.

We're now settled and satisfied with our life, as I was in my magical childhood home in the Kedong Valley. I can still take myself back there in a moment, standing on the moss covered rocks among all the ferns and the huge shiny, broadleaf water lilies in the shade of enormous wild fig trees, warm water rising up out of the ground and tumbling through the rocks to the long natural pool full of freshwater fish. But I have no yearning to do so any more. We've created a beauty and peace from a derelict old wooden barn, with bluebell woods, gardens and streams, just as my father and my mother did in 1945 at the source of the Kedong River.

I can't end my story without reiterating my love and gratitude to my wonderful little wife, without whom my life would be impossible. Her guidance and love have given me an inner strength to find my way through the darkest of times. She is in my heart and soul.

Thank you for bearing with me through the telling of this rather tortuous tale, and goodbye for now.

Acknowledgements

Hugely, unreservedly I thank Trevor, who quite suddenly popped up out of nowhere to become a close and trusted friend I seem to have known forever. Without him, this book would remain a pile of jumbled-up stories somewhere in my docs file! To begin with he persuaded my uncooperative computer to behave in a reasonable manner towards its distraught owner. Once a week Trevor visited us morning or afternoon and we'd chat about anything and everything. Then, more recently, the three of us would sit around the kitchen table making corrections to my previous week's work but no alterations to sentiment or story was allowed.

This book isn't the only project we've undertaken. The first project was to build a 1 to 7 scale model of a Tiger Moth biplane. Every detail was exact. After three months work, I held the completed craft tightly aloft for Trevor to start the engine. It powered into life the first time. Everything else worked perfectly with the remote control. The rudder, the wing flaps, the power of the engine, everything. We were ready for our maiden flight. But that's as far as we dared go. All that work for a crash landing in minutes. No, no, no. It now hangs from a beam high up in our barn sitting room looking as though it were in midflight. Without Trevor, it wouldn't be there. As with this book, without Trevor it would not be here.