You Have Not a Leg to Stand On
Page 19
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.
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