Book of Obituaries

by Ann Wroe

  He is now a child in the land of Christmas:

  Watching, amazed, the white tumbling bears

  And the diving seal.

  The iron wind clangs round the ice-caps,

  The five-pointed Dog-star

  Burns over the silent sea,

  And the three ships

  Come sailing in.

  Because such writing looks easy, and because the common man understands and likes it, Mr Causley was often scorned as simplistic and old-fashioned. His insistent rhymes and metres got on the nerves of those who thought only free verse or broken rhythms could express the modern muse. Yet the best poets – Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes – knew how deep simplicity could go, and admired him.

  His natural shyness did not help him. He was brought up poor, and remained keenly aware of his working-class roots. His mother took in washing, but also sawthat her son learned piano, where he encountered the bitter songs of the first world war. His own experiences in the next war, he always said, made him decide to be a poet. Before that he had worked as a clerk for a builder’s firm and an electrical company. Though he travelled widely, he kept returning to the slate-and-stone town of Launceston in Cornwall, where he was born. Like most good poets, he thought the voyages of his imagination more important than travels round the world.

  In that sense, too, he was true to his balladeer’s calling. The old songs are rooted in local earth and feeling, and so, too, were his: not in England, properly speaking, but in Cornwall, that misty Celtic promontory running out into the Atlantic. Though he wrote of many other places, the core of his work was set in Marazion, Porth Veor, Lezant or Bodmin, on granite moors or under hawthorn hedges, and constantly within sight or hearing of the “long salt fingers” of the sea. Many Cornishmen wanted him for their official Poet Laureate, cocking a deliberate snub at their long-felt colonisation by Anglo-Saxons.

  This is also a land peopled with giants, devils and saints, as Mr Causley saw them. Giant Winter lies over Wilsey Down, “the snow flossing his blue coat and his buckles/Drifting his lip and his eye.” A demon is shot down by St Michael, the “silver bowman”, over Helston, and Judas Iscariot returns as Jack O’Lent, running across the moors in search of redemption. All this, too, is in the style of ancient carols, which translated the Christian mysteries to local places and contemporary dress. But it is hard to think of any modern caroller who could pick up Mr Causley’s pen.

  Régine Cavagnoud

  Régine Cavagnoud, France’s brightest sporting star, died on October 31st 2001, aged 31

  One way to look at the short life of Régine Cavagnoud is that it was thrown away recklessly and needlessly. She died after colliding with a ski coach who was on the slopes. The collision seems not to have been her fault. Indeed, no one has been blamed. In Europe it is difficult to find high-quality skiing sites to practise on this early in the season, and the one used by Miss Cavagnoud may have been crowded. That said, there seemed to be an inevitability about the tragedy. Many times previously Miss Cavagnoud had been badly injured on the slopes while pushing herself to her natural limits, and probably beyond, in her drive to become a world champion.

  Since her death, there have been cautionary words generally about the need for more regulation, and some observers have expressed surprise that she was on the slopes at all so soon after being injured in a skiing accident in Chile in August. But no such adverse comment has been heard in her native France. There she is, quite simply, a national heroine.

  The French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, said Régine Cavagnoud had come “to embody” France’s passion for skiing. Mr Jospin, not by nature an emotional man, used the verb incarner, with its religious overtone. At her funeral last week, much covered on television, there were similar sentiments. The French do take their sport seriously; and Miss Cavagnoud, with her red hair and blue eyes and her blazing courage, was seen as a goddess by sports writers and their readers. She was only 31 and looked younger. She could become a candidate for the popular immortality that is sometimes, and mysteriously, bestowed on those who die young. James Dean, who made only three films before crashing his sports car at the age of 24, is one of the youthful pantheon. Buddy Holly, who died in an air crash at 22, is another. Some would be happy to beatify Princess Diana. Like her, Régine Cavagnoud died with her promise unfulfilled.

  Her earliest recollection of skiing was when she was three. Her father was a carpenter at La Clusaz, a town in the French Alps where she was brought up. But when winter came he helped out at the local ski lifts, and Régine went with him. In the snowy places of the world children soon learn to ski, but Régine showed enough talent to be spotted when she was a teenager by scouts for the French national team. She joined the junior section at 16. A year later she had the first of the injuries that were to mark her career for the next 15 years. She tore the ligaments in her left knee. A little later she hurt her right knee. She broke a shoulder bone and several times hurt her back. Once she skied while wearing a surgical collar. Still, between injuries she became a regular with the French team. “After every injury”, she said, “I told myself that it was not over. My passion for skiing just carried me through.”

  Her talent was slow to show results. In Japan in 1993, seven years into her skiing career, she could only manage 11th place in a downhill event. Medals were rare in the next few years. Still, the French had faith in her. She took part in three Olympics and would have been a probable choice for the Olympics at Salt Lake City next year. She became a world champion in February at

  St Anton in Austria, winning the coveted title known as the super-G. The G stands for giant slalom, the winding course that takes its name from the Norwegian word for a sloping track. Miss Cavagnoud was the first Frenchwoman to win a world skiing title for 17 years.

  Hurtling down a mountain on skis is the fastest a human being can travel on land without a mechanical aid. The record is 248km per hour (154mph). When slaloming in the super-G you go at less than half that speed, but it is still a heart-stopping way to travel as you manoeuvre the twists and turns. Unlike recreational skiers, who tend to slither at turns, class skiers seek to check the slide to keep up their speed. On her last fatal run Miss Cavagnoud was travelling at such a speed that she just could not avoid a crash. There was something in her make-up that demanded speed. When she wasn’t on the slopesshe was roaring along mountain roads on her powerful motor-bike. “Twice I have given myself a fright,” she recalled, but she would not give up biking. Hunter Thompson, an American writer, put the urge like this:

  Faster, faster, until the thrill of speed overcomes the fear of death.

  Miss Cavagnoud did feel fear. Considering the risks involved, there have been relatively few deaths on the slopes: 11 in first-class skiing over the past 30 years. Ulrike Maier of Austria was the previous woman skier to die on the slopes: she broke her neck in 1994 when she hit a post. But many skiers are badly injured. Miss Cavagnoud dreaded ending up in a wheelchair. But even more, she said, she dreaded doing badly. As some actors do, she had psychiatric help to relax her for her next performance. If there was something of an actor in Régine Cavagnoud, she saw the admiring people of La Clusaz as her audience. They elected her to the local council. When she won her world title they wanted her to give up competing. She said she thought she would soon. “I really want to have children,” she said.

  Eddie Chapman

  Arnold Edward Chapman, a patriotic crook, died on December 15th 1997, aged 83

  The film, called “Triple Cross”, was made in 1966 but it was a lively yarn and turns up occasionally on late-night television. A crook, Eddie Chapman, becomes a spy in the second world war, pretending to work for the Germans but really employed by the British. The Germans award him the Iron Cross and the British acclaim him as a hero, happily pardoning him for his crimes.

  The film was almost true. But the real-life tale of Mr Chapman was even better, for those who like real life. Christopher Plummer, who played Mr Chapman, made him a Bond-like character, shrewd,
attractive to women, handy with his fists. But Eddie Chapman was, at least in his early life, far from being an elegant figure. He grew up in Sunderland, in the industrial north of England, and for a time worked in the shipyards. But when work became scarce in the 1930s, he joined the army. He was not considered a good soldier and, after several spells in army prisons, he was thrown out. He took up crime; at first smashing shop windows and grabbing what he could, and then learning the more profitable trade of safe-breaking.

  In 1940, when the Germans occupied the British-owned Channel Islands, Eddie Chapman was in a local jail. The Germans took an interest in him. Here was a man who appeared to have a grudge against Britain. Would he like to work for the fatherland? Mr Chapman said he would, very much. He was sent to France to be trained as a spy, and one night in December 1942 he parachuted out of a German aircraft over eastern England. He was equipped with a radio transmitter, a pistol, a bottle of invisible ink, a wallet full of British money and, just in case things got desperate, a cyanide pill.

  The British were waiting for him. For all the Germans’ much-vaunted efficiency in other enterprises, their wartime spy organisation, the Abwehr, was a dud. The Germans’ codes had been broken. British intelligence already knew a great deal about the man the Germans called, not very originally, Fritzchen (Little Fritz). As German agents arrived in Britain they were arrested and given a choice: work for the British or be hanged. Did Mr Chapman want to work for the British? He did, very much. In any case, he told Sir John Masterman, an intelligence chief, his whole purpose in pretending to collaborate with the Germans was to get to Britain to fight for king and country.

  The task Fritzchen had been given by the Germans was to blow up a factory which was making an aircraft called the Mosquito. This was one of the war’s most revolutionary aircraft, made of wood for lightness and the fastest thing in the air. Using the services of Jasper Maskelyne, who in civilian life had been a conjuror, the British faked extensive damage at the Mosquito factory. Newspapers were allowed to report the “explosion”, and aerial photographs taken by a German aircraft convinced the Abwehr that Fritz had done extraordinarily well. They had no reason to doubt the truth of subsequent messages that flowed from Mr Chapman’s radio, compiled by the creative minds of the intelligence service.

  The Abwehr told him to return to Germany to be briefed for further missions, and offered to fetch him in a U-boat. The British preferred to allow him to return via Portugal, formally a neutral country but under the thumb of Germany. In Lisbon Mr Chapman picked up his German salary and a bonus for good work, went on a long holiday in Norway and then to Berlin to get his Iron Cross.

  In 1944 he was again dropped on to England. The Germans wanted to know whether their missiles – the forerunners of the space rockets – were reaching the cities they were aimed at. The misleading information Mr Chapman sent them probably saved many civilian lives. The British were grateful and, within the confines of wartime, Mr Chapman lived a comfortable life. He received a pardon for any crimes committed before the war. But as an agent he had one great drawback. He could not keep a secret. To his old cronies he would hint of his daring exploits. Whether they believed him or not, a talkative agent was a menace to the intelligence service. Mr Chapman was retired. In any case, Germany was almost beaten.

  After the war he wrote about his experiences. An account was published in a French newspaper, but Mr Chapman found himself in a court of law when he sold his story to a British newspaper. He was accused of disclosing official secrets and fined. He was again in trouble for a currency offence, but a government official softened the heart of the judge by stating that Mr Chapman was “one of the bravest men who served in the war”. He was in the news again when he was deported from Tangier for smuggling. And in 1966 he had his moment ofglory in the Christopher Plummer film. In a war that has produced many extraordinary stories, Mr Chapman’s was among the oddest. Just how much glory there was is a matter of conjecture. But this is the season of goodwill.

  Eugenia Charles

  Dame Mary Eugenia Charles, prime minister of Dominica, died on September 6th 2005, aged 86

  THE press photographs did no justice to how Eugenia Charles felt as she stood beside Ronald Reagan, at the White House, in October 1983. They showed a rather grim and melancholy woman, in a white cravat and executive striped suit. Only a vestigial twinkle in Reagan’s eye suggested the truth: that Miss Charles was having the time of her life. “Mr President,” she told him afterwards in her lilting basso profundo, “you have big balls!”

  She had just invited him to invade Grenada, and he had done so secretly, at once. That island, in the same chain as her own state of Dominica in the eastern Caribbean, had been taken over by Cuban-backed thugs and the moderate prime minister murdered. Miss Charles had raised the spectre of Cuban infiltration all over the region; Reagan, ever ready to wage clandestine war against Commies, had gallantly responded. A navy flotilla with marines had been diverted from its voyage to Lebanon to carry out her wishes and liberate the island. This was power.

  Grenada was a member of the British Commonwealth; but even Margaret Thatcher was not told, a matter of some satisfaction. Miss Charles became impatient with the endless comparisons that were made between them. True, they were both hard-working daughters of the bourgeoisie, Red-haters and pioneers in male-dominated worlds. Both liked to let their hair down, at the end of a hard day of governing, by kicking off their shoes and indulging in something rather vulgar (Lady Thatcher swigging a large whisky, Dame Eugenia gnawing on a stick of sugar cane). Both made their opinions absolutely plain and were fearless in argument. The Iron Lady and the Iron Lady of the Caribbean met, and admired each other. But Miss Charles thought Mrs Thatcher had got too fancy in her years in power.

  She herself, though she ruled Dominica for 15 years, from 1980 to 1995, had little chance of hubris. Dominica was a tiny, troubled place, covered in volcanic jungle and short of everything but drug-runners and bananas. It was famous mostly for the slowness of its post, much of it being redirected from the Dominican Republic.

  The year before Miss Charles became prime minister, Hurricane David wrecked the island. Whatever grand schemes she had for health care or education took a back seat to simple restoration of roads and power: “concrete and current”, in her phrase. Eventually, by dint of IMF loans, eco-tourism, economic reforms and favourable terms for Caribbean bananas, for which she haggled tirelessly, the island stabilised somewhat. It remained, like all its neighbours, vulnerable to everything.

  Her enemies said she governed like a headmistress, and there was something in that. In her second term, all the big portfolios – finance, the economy, foreign affairs, defence – were in her capable hands. She banned casinos, night clubs and duty-free shops from Dominica, convinced that they brought bad elements in, and championed banana-growers because, if “yellow gold” failed, they would just grow ganja instead. The island’s minute defence force was summarily disbanded in 1981 for disloyalty, reluctance to wield a shovel after the hurricane, and selling marijuana to Rastafarians. Miss Charles weathered two coups with withering disdain, once quietly leaving by the back door while soldiers piled in at the front.

  At first she was a reluctant politician. Her training was in law, which she studied in Toronto and London. Back in Dominica in 1949, the first woman ever to set up a legal practice there, her energies were engaged in that for almost two decades.But government corruption increasingly outraged her. When, in 1968, a left-wing government brought in the Seditious and Undesirable Publications Act (the “Shut-Your-Mouth Bill”, as she called it) to suppress dissent, she led the opposition to it, got it withdrawn and was made the leader of the Dominica Freedom Party.

  Miss Charles was never, however, the party type. She was the aunt type: a true Caribbean matriarch (though unmarried and childless), ruling the roost and dispensing wisdom with no feckless male around to steal the limelight. The men could bum in the sun; she would “look after the things that need looking after”.
This was the extent of her ideology. Though she did various free-market things, to America’s delight, she was no free-trader, and approved of co-operative ventures at every level. Her favourite reading was not Hayek, but Mills & Boon.

  Her greatest political influence was probably her father, “J-B”, with whom she lived until he died at the age of 107. It was he who encouraged her to argue at the dinner table (conduct frowned on at the Convent of the Faithful Virgin, where she went to school). He also suggested she should take a secretarial course and practise her shorthand in the magistrate’s court, which led to her career in law. J-B Charles was many things: a planter, a fruit-exporter, a land-speculator, a politician and, in the fishing village of Pointe Michel where the family lived, the founder of a “penny bank” to encourage poor farmers to save. Thrift, debate, self-reliance, self-improvement: it all sounds very like the moral and political training of a certain grocer’s daughter from Grantham.

  Ray Charles

  Ray Charles Robinson, music-maker, died on June 10th 2004, aged 73

  IN THE small town of Greenville in northern Florida, round the corner from Western Avenue, Wylie Pittman used to run a joint called the Red Wing Café. With its upright piano and its juke box, this was Greenville’s answer to a night club in the 1930s. There was nothing much else round about but the railway, poor blacks and pine forests.

  A black boy called “RC” haunted the café. His deserted mother took in washing for a living. His sight was failing, and by the age of six he was blind from glaucoma. But Pittman let him play the juke box: Nat King Cole, Count Basie, blues from Tampa Red, and the whole of the Classical Selection. After that, plumping him down on a stack of soda crates, he would take his small hands and let him loose on the piano, encouraging him when the boy hit on something good.