by David Loftus
Back home now at the Mews, I’m sitting in my little ship’s bunk room, what I call my ‘Cabinet of Curiosities’. It’s a deeply personal room that I share only with Ange, my darling wife of just over a year, and Paros and Pascale, my children – now young adults. It’s an unconsciously curated jumble of memories and tokens and mementos of my life, and particularly of my life with John.
Obviously there are photos from childhood to adulthood. Plus paintings, drawings, beachcombed shells, rocks, cards, clay pipes, statuettes, sketchbooks and all manner of eclectic things, somehow fitting together in a visual tableau of our lives. What is lovely now is adding in the ‘new’ trinkets. A Koran pencil from Morocco, a metal blue tit from a midsummer walk in Kew, drawings by Paros and Pascale. My love of Ange has somehow broken the ‘spell’ that this was an untouchable shrine, and now it feels so much brighter and more positive. As does the Mews. A breath of fresh air has wafted through, brightening every nook and corner and cranny.
Monday 22 January
The Mews
I finished my shoot early today and hopped in a taxi to visit my mother. She was frail and tired but chirpy as I held her by the shoulders to kiss each paper-thin cheek. She seems so petite, her body bending backwards as if being pushed forward, then back and then forward again, the fragile ‘S’ shape. She’s been sitting up in her library, sorting and collating old family photographs to make a collage of memories for my little brother’s fiftieth birthday. She’s frustrated she can’t find his graduation photos, but he’s graduated so many times I find a back-up shot that works. She smiles at the memories, so proud of Ian and his medical achievements; like mother, like son. Ian was a medical student of twenty-one when John died and the circumstances of John’s death nearly made him abandon his studies. John, the doctor’s son, was killed by a medical error. In hindsight, it is extraordinary that Ian carried on.
Ian called me one Sunday night and we spoke for hours about taking each day as it comes, slowly but surely. He is living proof of what my mother also demonstrated over and over again, that there are some truly wonderful and caring doctors out there for whom the Hippocratic oath is solemn and binding, standards that seemed to have been forgotten in the careless treatment of John.
I’m going to sit in the library over the weekend and look again at some of her albums. There were a few images of John and me that I hadn’t seen before, particularly through our early teens, when ‘being different’ seemed so desperately important to us both. And such lovely pictures, square and black and white, shot on an old twin Yashica by Father. Some are with the camera turned on himself, and these are mostly slightly out of focus; it was a beast to focus. He looks so suave, beautifully dressed, the same age as I am now, but in the blurriness of time seeming somehow younger and yet more mature. Wedding pictures of him and Mother in his old Aston Martin outside Carlisle Cathedral; early pictures of him, chuffed to bits, with a twin on each knee; us in our cots on our balcony in Knightsbridge; the ‘leaving hospital’ shots of Mother and Father and two little boys, first with Jean-Marian and then Ian. Fifty years ago this coming weekend. In among the pile was a tiny contact shot of Ian laughing, age six or seven, head thrown back, black t-shirt against a pure white sandy beach. I remember this shot so well, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it in over forty years. It was the first picture I ever took with my new Olympus Trip, the one my father gave me to pique my interest in photography. Thankfully it worked.
Tuesday 23 January
The Ponds
Miserable January day, wet, windy and foul, photographing food and interior at Patron, a cool French bistro and bar in Kentish Town with a wonderfully upbeat and excitable team of Frenchies from Brittany or Provence. My spirits are lifted – got nearly 1,500 shots, always a good sign.
As I was coming back from Mother’s in Cheam last night I passed Carshalton Beeches, close to our old home. I asked the cabbie, a local chap, not to go past The Beeches itself. (I haven’t passed it since John died.) I did, though, pass the Ponds for the first time in over twenty years.
The Ponds, along with Nonsuch Palace, were one of our early playgrounds. I don’t really remember moving down from London, but I do remember John and me paddling around the Ponds in our baggy pants, waving our nets through the lavender to try to catch red admirals, or poking them under the lily pads to catch sticklebacks and tadpoles to hurry to an early airless grave in our jam jars. There is a grainy but beautiful film of John and I feeding the ducks on Carshalton Ponds, shot on my father’s Super 8 camera. Channel 4 used the film in a documentary called Identical Twins that filmmaker Rebecca Frayn made a while ago and, though painful to watch, it was as fascinating as it was heartbreaking. In films and pictures, before we were eight or nine, I have no idea which one of us is which.
Wednesday 24 January
The Mews
Missing my father today. He died several years before John. It’s hard to admit, but it was possibly best he didn’t witness the terrible suffering John went through. My father was so different, so sensitive – his firstborns were his raison d’être, his life. He had been a happy enough bachelor at forty-nine, living a life of fast cars, parties and fine wines in Knightsbridge, but he had missed out on love. He worked hard as a stockbroker and raced his Aston Martin at the weekend, but while his brother Patrick and cousin Derek married young model beauties, he was shy among women.
At a party one night in Knightsbridge he spied a beautiful and enigmatic young doctor, Jean, on her first trip to London from Carlisle. She was so shy that she spent the evening playing the baby grand rather than talking to the glamorous Chelsea folk. My father was smitten at first sight and, no doubt bolstered by a champagne or two, he slipped a note into her music, proposing to her, asking for her hand in marriage. My mother was far too shy and shocked to even acknowledge the presence of what was, to her, obviously a joke.
But it wasn’t. He was in love, and the following Friday he jumped into his car and sped up north to Carlisle. Through my godmother Jane he discovered that my mother was a doctor covering the Northern Lakes in Brampton, and she lived, oh so romantically, in a tiny wing of Naworth Castle. Father drove to the house, slept fitfully in the car, and waited for her to rise. When she came down in the morning to fetch her milk, there he was, milk in hand, leaning against his little Aston. I can’t imagine how nervous he must have been. They married several months later in Carlisle Cathedral, only the hundredth couple to ever do so. My mother, to ‘prove her virtue’, had to live in the Cathedral close with the Dean’s family for a month before the big day.
We were born soon after, identical twins, one for each of his knees. As he would have said, he was ‘chuffed’.
* * *
Today, going through the papers, I came across an old copy of the News of the World. Ironic that the paper John so hated would be the only one brave enough to state the truth. The headline reads:
DOC’S BLUNDER KILLS BOY CURED OF CANCER
followed in bold type by
Brave John is injected with massive overdose
I know, I was there.
* * *
In my work diary I see I have a meeting at 2p.m. at Nucleus Design in Thames Ditton. John was a graphic designer at Nucleus, under his boss and mentor Peter Matthews, and I worked as an illustrator under the watchful eye of my twin. The building is now named after him: John Loftus House.
Arriving at Nucleus, I see not a lot has changed in twenty years. John’s signature is still etched into the glass at the building’s entrance: John Loftus House. The silver birch planted in his memory looks out over the graveyard of the beautiful Norman church, nearly thirty feet high, bare of leaves but strong and tall. My legs felt heavy on the steps and I spent a few minutes walking through the graveyard, round to the Thames. John was so happy at Nucleus. He attended Kingston Art College and studied Graphic Design and was offered several great jobs at his degree show, but it was Nucleus that won him over. His boss, Peter Matthews, became one of his dearest frie
nds.
For lone identical twins there is often a complex feeling of deep loneliness, but also an air of unease and unsettlement. It’s akin to a feeling of being watched, but not in a comforting way. I felt it here by the water. Today I felt uneasy and in need of home.
From Twins, Triplets and More, a book by Dr Elizabeth Bryan – a consultant paediatrician known as the ‘pioneer of twin studies’. She’s also the person who introduced me to my best friend, Tim. Here she is describing my experience:
For an identical twin the constant reminder in himself of his twin may be deeply painful. One young man [me] whose identical twin had died, described the agony of his daily shave – ‘looking at my twin’. Three years [since we spoke] and it was still the most painful part of the day.
Early adulthood seems to be a particularly difficult time to lose a twin. Many such twins will not have yet embarked on independent lives. Some may be starting careers. One identical twin in his early twenties had shared an art and design studio [John’s bedroom] with his brother. Although their styles differed, they were in harmony with each other and had sometimes done joint designs. More importantly, they had a constant source of companionship, understanding, stimulation and encouragement. For this young man, as for many, his twin was not only his closest relative but also his best friend, and the bereavement doubly hard to bear.
Thursday 25 January
The Mews
Yesterday’s trip down to Johnny’s old office was a more profoundly moving experience than I had expected. His office was unchanged; the same pictures on the wall, even a couple of the same staff members sitting at the same desks. I spotted their heads nervously peering around at me as I sat awaiting Peter. Some of the wine labels John and I had worked on still adorned the shelves; illustrations by me, typography hand-painted by John.
I found a postcard yesterday, dated 27 May 1981, Parikia, Paros. John wishes our mother a happy birthday, then goes on:
It’s so nice to see Greece without all the tourists, when the sun isn’t as hot as when the islands are greener. All the wild flowers are out on the hills. Wamfi’s [his girlfriend Samantha] leg looks like the Battle of the Somme (mozzies?) and my back looks like the Russian Flag. (Sun?) Jane’s giving us the room on the cheap and is very jolly as usual, looks forward to seeing David and Peter [Hornsey]. David, I hope working for Nucleus is just as good and easy as when I am there. Give my love to the Crates [my sister’s married name] and the dustbins, hee hee, and Ian and anyone else. Lots of love to Mum, see you all soon, xx John and Wamfi
P.S. David, you can buy ‘The Independent’! Good news about the cricket!!
It’s strange to think how worried he was about me working at Nucleus without him. We always worried about each other. Separation anxiety; I guess mine is somehow a permanent form of that now. He knew that without him there to watch over me at my drawing board I wouldn’t be doing as good a job as if he was there, and he was right, I wasn’t. It’s good to read Wamfi’s name again, I think about her often, but haven’t seen her for over a decade. Now married with children and living in the Kent countryside with the loving husband she met a couple of years after John died, she was for a long time a shadow of her former self, like a bird with broken wings. She eventually learned to fly again, thank goodness. Wamfi used to paint letters to look a bit like wood-block printing, but in watercolour, with little hearts and kisses painted inside the letters. She and John were the masters of illuminated letters to each other, and if you were lucky, to yourself. Sweet Samantha, they were perfectly suited and I am glad she is settled now and happy. When I saw her last she said she found it hard to remember great tracts of time, particularly towards the end. I found it rather upsetting to hear, but ultimately maybe it’s a good thing. One of my most heartbreaking memories is of her holding John’s hands at his bedside when he was no longer breathing, talking to him as if he was still alive, refusing to believe he was no longer with us. It’s impossible to describe the gut-wrenching wretchedness of that moment. For the first time I understood the expression ‘it’s like having your heart ripped out.’ Truly awful and heartbreaking.
Saturday 27 January
The Mews
I think it was around our fifteenth year that John and me began to dress differently. It coincided with my interest in punk music. John was listening to Simon and Garfunkel and I’d started listening to Siouxsie and the Banshees and it suddenly became very important to both of us that we had differences; not small ones but distinct, polar opposites. This remained so for all of the rest of our short lives together.
I’m looking at a photo now of Johnny wearing a vintage American short-sleeved shirt, bought from Kensington Market in the vintage surplus store where all the punks used to buy their old army uniforms. It cost £8. I know, it was mine. He’s wearing it on holiday in southern Ireland, with Samantha. I would have been furious if I had known, but I was probably wearing the greyish-blue handmade shirt he bought in Camden Market, and he would have been a lot angrier than me! Funny now, thinking back. We were convinced that we were so different but then kept nicking each other’s clothes whenever we could.
When filmmaker Rebecca Frayn was making her Channel 4 documentary about identical twins, she asked me several times if I would agree to appear. Rebecca was mum to identical twin babies, Jack and Finn, and was fascinated by the unbreakable bond of identical twins. After some gentle cajoling I agreed, because I was persuaded that appearing could potentially help other sole surviving twins. And to this day she has become one of my dearest friends.
I can barely remember what I said or what the team filmed, and I couldn’t finish watching it. It felt like I was watching not me, but John’s ghost. I had had no idea that while I was concentrating on our differences in taste, in clothing and art and music, everything else – our mannerisms, our turns of phrase, our gesticulations, the minutiae of facial expressions, a faint lisp here, a slight slope of the shoulders there – was identical. Until I saw the programme, I had absolutely no idea how truly alike we were.
Monday 28 January
On the train to Bodmin Parkway, Cornwall
Contemplating over the last few days, I’m sad to admit that I have, in recent years, distanced myself somewhat from my brother and sister and nieces. I can’t, at the moment, fully explain why, but there does seem to be a yawning gap between us, a gap that shows no sign of narrowing. My bond to my mother is still strong, lovingly intense and unbreakable, but since John died, Jean-Marian and Ian and me seem to have drifted further and further apart. Deep down something feels gravely wrong. I think it may come from an unaired belief that the wrong twin died. It might sound extreme, but during the hours and days following John’s death, when emotions were running so high, I was very aware that some of John’s friends thought this way. John was the elder, John was the more talented, John didn’t really drink. John was the more studious, and John took fewer risks.
Tuesday 30 January
Bodmin, Cornwall
Bodmin Parkway station is wonderfully caught in a time warp, with old signal box houses, The Signal Box Café and posters advertising coastal steam-train services and ‘love-ins’ at the local owl sanctuary. The express leaves Bodmin, trundles over coastal inlets and rolling hills to Plymouth and, after twenty minutes of four seasons’ worth of sunshine, showers, rainstorms and hailstorms, enters a long tunnel to emerge moments later bathed in blinding sunshine, wind-smoothed and bulbous cloud formations and a turbulent, aqua-blue sea crashing against rocky beaches. I always try to snatch a pic on my phone, but that fraction of a second delay between pressing the button and capturing the picture means that I never ‘get the pic’. Nowadays I don’t even try, I just sit back and enjoy the ever-changing spectacle.
John loved trains and had a really beautiful Hornby train set in his youth. He’d make trees and hills out of moss, and paint every detail from station master to signal box. His locomotive was lovely, of ‘OO’ gauge I seem to remember, much akin to the Flying Scotsman. We once tr
avelled together up to Scotland on a sleeper and he brought his trainspotters’ handbook with him. I refused to allow him to get his i-SPY on a Train Journey book out, I was so embarrassed. I think I was probably quite mean. Later that night, unable to sleep in our juddering bunks, we took turns to stick our heads out the window into the cold and inky darkness, daring each other to keep them out longer and longer. The game ended when someone further up ahead flushed the loo. If you’ve never been hit by a lukewarm mixture of someone else’s high-speed urine and poop in the mouth and nose and eyes, I promise you that it’s something that comes back to haunt you in later life. John thought it was the most hilarious thing he had ever witnessed! He named the train The Flying Shitstorm. My pyjamas never recovered; I sealed them tightly in a plastic bag, left them in the bottom of my rucksack and promptly forgot about them. It was my poor mother who released them from their fermented and foul-stinking wrapping, crusty and mouldy, three weeks later, on our return home.
Wednesday 31 January
The Mews
I’m at home with my dear wife Ange, flu-bound and feverish, and as someone who is rarely ill, frustrated and bored. ‘Windmills of Your Mind’ is playing on Spotify, the Terry Hall’s The Colourfield version that John loved so much and that Ange and I played at our wedding. John chose it as a song to animate while studying design at Kingston School of Art. He sat up all night at his trestle table, painting what were then called ‘cells’ – painted layers on clear acetate that are then layered over each other to create a subtle moving image. It took over a month to create a couple of minutes of film of a little boy in a hot-air balloon, sailing over a toytown scene of bubbles and clocks and balloons and waterwheels. I haven’t been able to watch Johnny’s film, but I can listen to the song now because I can relate it to much happier memories. I still have all of the original cells, beautifully painted in block colour gouache, meticulously precise. I now realize that the boy in the balloon, sailing across the dreamscape, is John. He painted himself. I know it’s him and not me because he’s wearing the red cap, not the blue.