One Hundred Summers

by Vanessa Branson

  From the day of Robert’s return, we were clearly living on parallel tracks. I was yearning to rebuild trust, security and love, while he was agitated and looking for any reason not to spend time at home. If I had been wiser back then, I would have responded differently, but he still felt the need to justify leaving his young family five years previously, which began to chip away at my confidence. Looking back now, the answer to our conflict was right in front of our eyes. Since 1990 and Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, we’d witnessed the power of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee to relieve the suffering of perpetrators and victims, enabling them to live in harmony after the most dreadful atrocities. Clearly our impasse was on a different scale altogether, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu understood that compassion, apology and forgiveness are required to heal and free the soul.

  Robert seemed unable to acknowledge the suffering that his actions had inflicted on us, and I in turn was too scared to ask him how he felt. He seemed to translate all the emotions that had been thrown up over the previous five years – shame, disappointment, entrapment and frustration – into resentment. At times it felt like he’d returned home to torture me with his unhappiness, for to live with someone you are unable to love is an act of indescribable cruelty.

  And of course, the elephant in the room was Becky. The mere thought of her would make my head swim and adrenalin would pump through my veins, the lioness in me protecting my cubs from outside predators. I feared that by mentioning her name I would be making her real and inviting her to enter our lives once more. But the truth was that by not addressing that elephant, it grew larger by the day.

  I believed that I could tough it out, but instead of confronting our misery I stuck to my mantra, ‘accept and be free.’ Robert was unable to hold me close and offer any intimate kindness or say anything that would boost my self-esteem. He knew in his heart why he’d left home, and seeing myself reflected in those cold eyes dragged me even lower. He kept asking me to give him time, but as the weeks passed, I became even more hurt, depressed and insecure.

  The boys seemed to be in their own worlds and were able to take it in their stride; but Flo was angry. ‘Daddy can’t just leave home when I’m seven and return when I’m eleven without saying a word!’ she said.

  ‘Just give him time, Flo,’ I replied weakly. Our friends and family were overjoyed to see us living as a family, so we had little option but to play along.

  ***

  In the mid-nineties, Richard had attempted to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon – an audacious plan requiring a vast technical team and optimal weather conditions. The experts selected Marrakech as the perfect launch site because it had still air at ground level and a powerful jet stream in the atmosphere above. For three years running, Richard, his two co-pilots, technical team and an entourage of about two hundred friends, family and press went there for a launch. These were the days before mass tourism arrived in Morocco, and the government saw to it that we were all treated like gods. The heady mix of the mystery of Marrakech and the excitement around the project was intoxicating, and I formed lasting friendships with people who opened up their incredible city to me. Richard’s balloon failed to make it around the globe in the end, but I’d been introduced to a world of new opportunities.

  The city that had so captivated my heart back in 1983 was about to take over my soul. In 2002, while Robert was running the Marathon des Sables through the Sahara Desert, Howell and I organised a riding expedition to the Atlas Mountains with the de Klees and the Bannisters. Mum and Dad joined us in the evenings as we sat around our campfires.

  ‘Oh my goodness, I feel good in this country,’ I said, quaffing a glass of surprisingly good Saharan rose as we lay on the rug-strewn ground after a long day in the saddle.

  ‘We should buy a riad together,’ suggested Howell, out of the blue. ‘Just a little two-bedroomed lock up somewhere in the medina,’ he added hastily, managing my expectations. I said nothing, but the following day, while riding over the grassy plains, I began dreaming about Howell’s idea. I wanted to reinforce our friendship, but there was another, deeper reason for investing in Morocco: since 9/11 and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, there had been a small but noticeable change in Western attitudes towards the Arab world and I felt an urge to swim against that ugly tide.

  The following day, we were having lunch with our Moroccan friend Abel Damoussi when Howell asked him if he knew of any small riads that might be available to buy. Abel’s eyes lit up – of course he did. With our fantasy suddenly becoming a possibility, I began to get cold feet, while Mum poured me another glass of wine. ‘Nessie, how many times have I told you? Don’t be such a spoilsport!’ And with that, we traipsed off to check out what Abel had up his sleeve.

  None of the riads we saw felt quite right. A month later, Howell returned to Marrakech for a friend’s birthday party and spent a happy afternoon speeding down alleys on a scooter with his arms around the waist of a young estate agent, and we both returned a few weeks later to view his shortlist. But again, none of the riads felt quite right. The light was dimming and. Adil Inti, the agent, was looking nervous; we’d only flown out for the day and were due to leave the next morning.

  ‘There is one more,’ he said. ‘It’s a little beyond your budget, I’m afraid, but it may be worth a look.’

  ‘Nothing ventured,’ said Howell, as he dodged an ageing donkey plodding its way home.

  Crouching through a battered door-within-a-door, we groped our way down a long, dark corridor, through arches and over numerous thresholds to a dimly lit courtyard. There, before us, was a sight to behold: an orange tree surrounded by elegant colonnades and original mashrabiya windows. The ancient building was dissolving into dust. I shot a hand to my mouth to stop myself screaming in excitement.

  ‘I love it, Howell,’ I whispered, grabbing him by the arm. ‘It’s the one.’

  Adil took us up a crumbling staircase to the terrace. Lit only by his cigarette lighter, there were sheer drops where steps were missing, but the scene once we reached the top was worth risking our lives for. The sun had dropped behind the Atlas Mountains, throwing them into silhouette and there, just a hundred metres away, was the Koutoubia, the thirteenth-century minaret and symbol of Moroccan spirituality, lit up in all its glory. The muezzin’s call to prayer was echoing over the rooftops and the moon was rising.

  It was now too dark to see the size of the riad and the proportions of the rooms we could see indicated that it was considerably larger than what we’d set out to buy. But buying it was not a rational decision – this was love. We offered the owners the asking price there and then; they agreed and we shook hands.

  We asked Adil if he thought refurbishment was feasible. ‘It is important to remember one thing about Morocco,’ he said, his eyes twinkling. ‘In Morocco, anything is possible.’ He paused for a while, as we sighed in relief before adding, ‘But nothing is certain.’ This was a sentiment that has made us laugh and grind our teeth in frustration in equal measure over the last two decades.

  On 25 July 2002, we found ourselves in the office of a notaire and surrounded by three professional men and their weeping wives, illiterate women who signed the papers with their thumbprints. It was while we were signing the papers that the notaire read from the deeds: ‘Here we have the clean title deeds for number five, Derb Moulay Ben Hessian Cinq.’ Howell and I nodded. The notaire then took a deep breath and went on, ‘and numbers six, seven and eight.’

  Only then did we learn that, rather than just buying the one house, we had also bought a fair proportion of the street. That night we celebrated our folly at Le Comptoir with fellow Marrakech adventurers Sarah and Christopher Hodsoll, drinking freely while we watched belly dancers, their hips trembling and fleshy tummies rolling. Before weaving our way back through the medina, we stopped outside our new front door and took a mound of wonky photos of ourselves, looking a little surprised.

  There’s magic in the air in Marrakech and if th
e energy is right, everything you need is dropped before you. Before we left the following day, nursing thumping heads and asking ourselves ‘What on earth have we done?’, ‘How on earth are we going to restore this old palace?’ and ‘Are we insane?’, Abel told us to go to the La Renaissance cafe in Gueliz, the city’s new town, to meet Said Jabaoui, the former driver of the mayor of Marrakech, who agreed to become our caretaker while we pondered our predicament. An hour later we were on a flight back to London.

  ***

  That Marrakech magic followed me everywhere I went – exceptional people appeared in my life, regardless of what country I was in. I was grumpy with Robert for agreeing to fly us all to Kenya for the October half-term, feeling that we needed some time at home to try and knit our family back into shape. To compound my irritation, Eric, a parent from school who had organised the trip, cried off at the last minute and we ended up staying on our own in Hippo Point, a grand mock-Tudor mansion on the banks of Lake Naivasha. But joy of joys, it turned out that the elegant and talented couple who ran the estate were looking for a new challenge.

  ‘Do you fancy a year in Marrakech?’ I asked, on hearing that they had just handed in their notice.

  ‘Yes,’ they said, without skipping a beat. Frederic and Viviana never asked what their salary would be, and we never checked their references – we simply trusted the gods of the project, and they smiled down on us.

  Frederic, with his Gallic shrug and athletic presence, arrived in Marrakech in February 2003, three weeks before the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. He set to work immediately and hired a team of builders to strip the building down before we started on the rebuild. At every opportunity, Howell and I would fly out to see what was happening.

  And thus began the most rewarding creative partnership I have ever experienced. Howell, Frederic and I, often joined by Viviana, complemented each other’s strengths, encouraged each other’s more outlandish design ideas and trusted each other’s instincts entirely. During the first part of the restoration, I learned an enormous amount about design and, this being Morocco, about decoration too. We trusted Frederic implicitly as he set to work, bracing the thick exterior walls, digging an underground water catchment chamber, insulating, wiring and plumbing. We sent out money on a monthly basis, never doubting that it was being well spent. By the end of 2003, just ten months later, it was time to decorate the six bedrooms and buy furniture for the dining room, sofas for the mini cinema and books for the library. Compensating for my loveless existence at home, I poured my heart and soul into El Fenn and, as an act of faith in the project, shipped out seven paintings from my collection, including a sensual, two-metre-high masterpiece by William Kentridge, a large Terry Frost canvas of rich oranges and reds and a geometric painting by Bridget Riley that Robert had given me many Valentine’s Days ago.

  Moroccan artisans are famous for the quality of their work. Plaster was chiselled into decorative friezes and tiny ceramic briquettes known as zellige formed intricate patterns around doorways and over fireplaces. The walls were finished in tadelakt, a lime plaster mixed with pigments and then polished with stones, and the ceilings were made of stucco or hand-carved wood. Frederic inlaid camel bone in the walls in one room and brass-coloured balls in another. We designed the suites with romance in mind, with a bath next to a fireplace, rough-stitched leather floors, double showers, candles and incense.

  Over our years of travelling together, we’d stayed in a number of hotels and loved playing the ‘imagine this was your hotel’ game. ‘Deary me,’ Howell would say, ‘just look at that wallpaper.’

  ‘What would you do if this was your hotel?’ I’d reply. And then we’d be off.

  At every stage of the refurbishment, when we came to decide whether we should we get the best-quality showers, kitchen or whatever else, our decision was always ‘yes’. It was only as the expenses began ratcheting up that we realised that rather than offering the entire riad as a holiday let, we would have to rent the rooms out individually. Howell and I had become accidental hoteliers.

  During El Fenn’s refurbishment, we pored over books, taking inspiration from St Paul’s Cathedral, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, and closer to home, from the Jardin Majorelle in Marrakech and the Berber dwellings in the Atlas Mountains. In principle, we only used natural materials and, to support the local economy, employed local craftsmen.

  Frederic was also a genius, and the excitement of waiting for his weekly crop of photos to appear on my computer screen – agonisingly slowly, in the days of dial-up Internet – was intoxicating.

  On 15 March 2003, we welcomed guests to Howell’s fiftieth birthday party at El Fenn just as our builders were sweeping the rubble out through the tradesman’s entrance. His ninety expectant friends, in blissful ignorance of the previous twenty-four-hour panic, were entertained by fire eaters, snake charmers and Nor, a transgender belly dancer, on our terrace under the Katoubia. I raised a glass to Howell and he raised a glass to us. We’d done it, though we had no idea how ambitious the project was yet to become.

  We were indebted to the many people who made El Fenn come to life: to Frederic, but also to our architect Amine Kabbaj, who was to play a key role in the next chapter of my life; to Abel Damoussi, who encouraged us to go for it in the first place; and to the open-hearted Moroccans who welcomed us at every turn.

  Our expat friends were always there for us with words of caution and encouragement: the filmmakers Danny Moynihan and Katrine Boorman, and Trevor Hopkins, Kate Fenwick and her partner, the charismatic gangster-turned-sculptor Jimmy Boyle, the Hodsoll family, Stephen Skinner and Carinthia West, who wrote an article on El Fenn for Harpers & Queen soon after we opened.

  A few months later, while cooking the kids’ supper in London, I received a call from Mum, who was staying at El Fenn. ‘Nessie, the king is coming to visit,’ she said. ‘There are security men everywhere!’

  ‘Mum, slow down for a second,’ I said. ‘Which king are you talking about?’

  ‘The King of Pakistan,’ she replied.

  ‘Goodness – is Frederic around?’

  It transpired that President Musharraf had flown from Karachi to Marrakech via London for a state meeting, and having read the issue of Harpers that featured El Fenn on the way, he had asked the King of Morocco to organise a visit. When he toured El Fenn, Frederic said he took an interest in every detail. ‘One day Lahore will become a world-class tourist destination,’ he told Frederic, ‘and I want El Fenn to be our inspiration.’

  Condé Nast Traveller soon picked up on the Harpers story and put us on their list of the ten best new hotels in the world. El Fenn was launched.

  ***

  In mid-December 2004, I received a call from one of our old neighbours in Midhurst, who had found Humphrey slumped in his favourite armchair. It transpired that he had called his girlfriend Karen to wish her goodnight, taken a sip of tea and then had a heart attack. Along with the immediate family, Karen and a couple of neighbours, a few of our good friends came to the funeral to support Robert and Clare; they included Shelagh and Matthew. I noticed Shelagh staring at Humphrey’s coffin. Her fight was continuing, but her hideous disease was gaining on her. Robert’s Uncle Tim gave a remarkably honest address, which allowed each of Humphrey’s children to mourn him, knowing that their father’s demons and their own struggles had been acknowledged.

  A fortnight later, Matthew called us at 3 a.m. Shelagh had died, after an agonising ten days of semi-consciousness. I sat up for the rest of the night, relieved that her suffering was over but unable to believe that such a life force could come to an end. Matthew had made sure she died at home, surrounded by scented candles and with her children nearby, her emaciated figure dressed in a starched white nightie and lying between her soft Frette sheets.

  My one contribution to Shelagh’s funeral was to organise the flowers adorning her coffin. The florists I chose, Wild at Heart, understood exactly what she would have wanted – a cascading mass of creamy blossoms, as if nature had sprin
kled them over her. Ken Berry flew in from Los Angeles, Simon Draper from South Africa and Richard and Joan from Necker, and St Luke’s Church on Sydney Street in Chelsea was packed with her friends and colleagues. I watched in horror as the coffin was carried up the aisle: no one had thought to remove the cellophane wrapping from the flowers, giving it the look of a roadside car crash memorial. I fixated on those wretched flowers and to this day feel that I let her down. Navin gave a deeply felt, touching address and after the service we all walked across the King’s Road to Chelsea Old Town Hall, where we drank a glass or two of Cloudy Bay wine, Shelagh’s favourite tipple.

  As the day drew to a close, we laid Shelagh to rest in the heart of her beloved South Downs. The children had picked snowdrops on the way into the graveyard at Bignor. I noticed that Florence, not having time to gather her own posy, had picked up a terracotta flowerpot of snowdrops from the back of the hearse. Shelagh’s stoic Scottish mother, who was burying the second of her three daughters – for her eldest daughter Mog had also succumbed to this hideous disease – stood silent and tearless beside me. The vicar said a final prayer, wiped his hands on his cassock and nodded to the children, who threw their little posies into the grave.

  ‘Please don’t, Flo,’ I thought to myself, and I watched as the pot flew in slow motion from her hands, before hitting the wood six feet below with a resounding clunk. Shelagh’s sister Lorna and I remained behind to free the flowers of their cellophane at last, before joining the others for a cup of tea at Great Orchard.

  2

  MY ARAB SPRING

  ‘All my life I’ve felt on the side of good,’ said Dad, as we watched our country slide towards war with Iraq. ‘Now I’m not so sure.’

  Ever since his posting to Palestine as a young man, he’d had a heartfelt respect for the Arab world and his genuine love for Islamic culture meant that he was thrilled by my investment in Morocco. After watching the horrific images of the bombing of Baghdad in March 2003 and lamenting the likelihood of a successful outcome, he rarely mentioned the war again.