by David Loftus
Monday 26 March
London to Stockholm
Day spent shooting Christmas turkeys ridiculously early. Now on a flight to Stockholm, 31,060 feet above the Hook of Holland.
John wasn’t a huge fan of flying and as I’m sitting in the cramped and noisy flight, soporifically overheated, I can understand why. Our father Eric loved anything with wheels or wings, the faster the better. The first flight I remember him taking us on was an old turboprop to Jersey to visit a wartime friend who delighted us by removing his false eye over tea, bouncing it on the table, failing to catch it and losing it at the bottom of his swimming pool. I remember John and me being driven around the island, visiting wartime tunnels and bunkers. That trip signalled the first time we learned to swim and the first time we both had a schoolboy crush on the same girl, something that amazingly would never happen again. We both showed her triumphantly that we could hold our breath and swim four or five strokes underwater with a limited amount of coughing and spluttering. She promptly back-flipped into the pool and swam four or five lengths without a ripple, let alone a splutter, so we told her there was an old man’s eye at the bottom of the pool and never spoke to her again.
John’s first girlfriend was called Liz, a non-identical twin who had an annoying twin brother called John. My first girlfriend was called Jayne and I thought she was the most beautiful girl on earth, far more beautiful than Liz, whom John thought even more beautiful than Jayne. We lost our virginities to Jayne and Liz, probably around the same time, but didn’t share the information with each other. However, we did tell our best chum Paul, who then told each of us the other’s story. Both were fairly disastrous and underwhelmingly brief! I went out with Jayne for about five years, John with Liz for about four, art college coming along to split us both up with our loved ones, both running to our parents with broken hearts, tears of woe and declarations that there would never be another Jayne or Liz ever, ever.
I barely saw Jayne after she dumped me, though she did come to John’s funeral wearing a leather jacket and sporting a fine mohawk. The only thing I recall her saying was ‘We should do this more often.’ I was sitting on the stairs of The Beeches at the time, a group of my old school friends bantering away with over-enthusiastic bonhomie. I remember feeling utter bleak disbelief, unable to cope with the alcohol-induced post-funeral euphoria and wishing them all gone, away from our home, knowing that my relationship with most of them would never be the same again.
Wednesday 28 March
Flight from Stockholm to London
Yet again I find myself on an overheated flight after an amazing two days shooting with Niklas Ekstedt at his two restaurants in Stockholm: Ekstedt and Tyge & Sessil. After over twenty years of shooting some of the most talented and inspiring people in the world, it’s great to spend time with someone so refreshingly inspirational, entertaining and passionate. He’s a remarkable chef, a wonderful ambassador for Sweden and now a great friend. It’s the fourth time we’ve worked together and every moment, regardless of tiredness, is a joy. I’m so excited that we are going to shoot two books this year, including a project recording some of the ancient hunting, fishing and cooking techniques of the Sami, the indigenous people of northern Sweden and Norway. I can’t wait!
But right now I’m flying home to shoot Prue Leith’s book cover. It’s a portrait, graphic and modern, with one of my favourite graphic designers, James Verity. So different in style from today’s shoot, which was full of bright and cold Stockholm sunshine, pitch-dark interiors, indoor fires of juniper wood, smoking Sami Arctic char and reindeer hearts, fermenting herrings and boiling vats of lingonberries.
Yesterday I snuck back to my bunk for a moment during the shoot to load and back up my images. Finding my eyes heavy, I set my alarm for all of twenty minutes’ rest. Just before the bell rang I fell asleep into a dream of eerie and biblical proportions. The sea and the skies were etched like the skies in our old family Bible, grand and thunderous. I could see every line of the drawings, layers of rough waves moving backwards and forwards and sideways like pantomime seas, though far more menacing and horrific. I sat with John on a filthy, tar-covered beach, the specks of dark oil sticking to our pale bodies like cancerous sores. I knew John was not alive and as the spots of oil merged he began to fade and disappear. I cried and cried but not a tear would come, for what seemed like an eternity. I remember telling John how, though in a dream, I could feel the wind in the air and he looked back at me, so sadly, and told me that, once dead, one could no longer feel the wind.
The alarm was ringing as I choked myself awake, leaping up, gasping for air, thwacking my head on the top bunk. Not the most restful of sleeps.
Friday 30 March
The Mews
What happened to the last few days?
Thursday was lovely, surrounded by a great team. So much in a photographer’s career relies, in fact lives or dies, on the team around them. We were shooting the cover of the new Prue Leith book, unbelievably her first in twenty-five years. She arrived quietly, but once in the Mews with my team she was smiley, charming to all, and bounding around the studio. James, the designer, had shown me some wonderfully bright geometric designs for the cover so we shot her in a vivid stripey dress with bold orange jewellery, her trademark funkily colourful spectacles, twirling a fork of the brightest green pasta against a summer-sky blue-coloured backdrop. All was jolly, she was happy, the new client was lovely and the sun shone when torrential rain was forecast. What could go wrong?
That evening, Ange and I marked my successful day with a meal at a brasserie we don’t normally frequent. There were just two other tables occupied and there was a quiet ominousness about the place. We were in high spirits, however, so rosé was quaffed and dinner ordered.
A few hours later – around 3a.m. – I awoke, much as usual, but this time I felt the room starting to spin, my stomach tight and cramped, shivering with cold and yet my forehead clammy to the touch. I fell asleep briefly and when I awoke with a start I was worse, so I crawled into the bathroom, then fainted upon reaching the relative cool of the toilet bowl. Waking with my lip stuck to the toilet seat I remembered my mother’s anti-vomiting mantra: ‘If you are still breathing deeply you cannot vomit.’ Taking deep breaths, I managed to run a cold tap on my fiery forehead. More deep breaths, then I crawled back to bed. Fitful sleep eventually returned, dreams of endless rooms, hundreds and hundreds of them, all decorated in minute detail with tiny abstract geometric drawings. I awoke again, cold and with painful head and stomach cramps. The world was a-spin and again I crawled to the bathroom. My mantra failed me in my toxic and delirious state and I vomited the entire contents of a very pricey dinner into the toilet bowl until there was nothing left. I felt truly awful.
When Dr S had administered his antibiotic overdose, within seconds John complained of sickness and nausea. I grabbed the nearest bin and held his delicate head, careful not to touch his intrathecal reservoir, which looked like a little upturned medicine cup strapped to the pate of his head. He looked me in the eyes and we both knew something bad had happened, but without the help of the doctor or his colleagues there was only panic in my eyes. He vomited violently, so much for someone who had eaten so little. He kept apologizing, to me and then to the nurses. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he kept repeating. I just held him as the nurses rushed around me. I called the doctor, but he ignored me, sitting at a desk in a room across the corridor from John’s room. I can still see him, head bowed, unmoving, reading a drug box. They never found that drug box and I was never asked to repeat what I saw.
Since that terrible, terrible day, I have not once vomited. Until now.
Poor dear John, vomiting on our birthday, into a wastepaper bin, endlessly apologizing. Little did we know that it was me who should have been apologizing to him; I had let him down at this final moment when he needed me to be his clear and lucid champion. Had Mother or Samantha been present they would have boldly stood their ground and said ‘no’ to Dr S. I had meekly co
mplied, allowing the unthinkable to unfold.
Afternoon, Saturday 31 March
The Mews
My body still aches, but all else feels stronger. All my plans of writing on board my little Dutch boat – called the Twee Gezusters and built in 1921, she’s a small reminder of my earlier years living on a houseboat – were scuppered by sickness. I’m hopeful that by Monday I shall feel like the walk to Imperial Wharf, where it is moored. When I was younger that whole area was unchanged since pre-Vietnam days – the huge bulk of Fulham Power Station and long empty skeletons of wharfside warehouses. I’d walk down to the bridge at the end of Lots Road and watch the herons catching fish at low tide, sustained by their ability to see through the thick brown silt of the ebbing and flowing Thames. The most I ever counted there was thirty-six. Like the buildings, most have now gone, though I still see one or two down by the boat, together with their friends the bean and Canada geese, endlessly dive-bombed by their enemies, the black-headed gulls.
John would have loved the boat and maybe that is why I keep it on, much against any sane financial advice. My son Paros sees it as a place of quiet contemplation, as do I. Pascale shares it with friends and they celebrate its uniqueness in a digital world, sharing its books, Polaroids, paints and its vinyl record player. I’ve contemplated hanging a bucket by the door where, once aboard, one pops one’s mobile phone, keeping it free from digital disturbances. At the moment there hang my father’s old binoculars, his ancient exposure meter, a most-important bottle opener and the cow bell that John used to ring from his room at the end of the corridor when he was in pain. I never want to hear that bell ring again, ever. Maybe I’ll take it to the old boatyard in Naousa in Paros where John used to sit and sketch the old caique fishing boat and hang it there so it can ring silently in the wind, unheard by my tone-deaf ears.
Sunday 1 April
The Mews
As John and I became teenagers we were given the choice to separate into two different classes. Year Two was the beginning of streaming and the ‘A’ stream was divided into two classes of thirty or so: one for Latin learners and one for German. There was no logic in the directions we took other than a not entirely convincing belief that maybe it was a good time to sit, not only not next to each other for the very first time, but in different classrooms. So John trotted off to Latin, a subject he grew to hate and fear, and me to study German, a language so hopelessly underused in modern life that the only time I’ve used it since was during a car accident in my twenties when I found an Austrian lady strapped into a recently tumbled car, in such a state of shock that she couldn’t speak her normally fluent English.
This second-year divide was initially painful as we’d never sat next to anyone but each other, but we would still meet at breaks, lunch, assemblies and games. Gradually these meetings became fewer and fewer as we began, tentatively, to make new friends, for the first time as individuals and not as identical twins. Many became friends to both of us, of course, but they were definitely known as John’s friend Marek, David’s friend Tim, John’s friend Steven, David’s friend Mark.
It was with a combined sigh of relief that we joined together again to complete our Sixth Form, both taking a foundation diploma in Art and Design, A-Level Art, and A-Level Biology. The foundation was fantastic, a two-year course in everything and anything design related, from woodwork and metalwork to pottery and painting. And it was a hoot to be sitting back next to John. We were on a course where rebellious thought was embraced, artist temperament was nurtured, and a sense of eliteness overcame us. I know that’s bad, but at the time it gave us, the un-sporty, sensitive, artistic types, a safe haven against the bullying staff and oppressors. We were a desperate bunch of artistic chumps really, all, except John and me, completely different, all fascinating in our own ways. But it was in those pre-fab outhouses of pottery kilns, workshops and studios that John and me grew, and over the happiest of two years the seeds were planted of who and what we would both become.
Monday 2 April
Shooting on Easter Saturday at the Mews, Friday’s delayed shoot
The relationships of identical twins with each other’s friends is often complicated. As I’ve said, all of John’s college friends, including his girlfriend, seemed to drift away from me after John’s death. It was, I assume, either my likeness to their fallen comrade or their inability to know what to say to me, and I did understand this, heartbreaking though it was at the time. Quite a few of my own friends also abandoned ship soon after John’s death. I know I became a much more needy friend and I think, as often happens in romantic relationships, the needier partner can be pushed away by the more independent one. In my relationship with John he was certainly the more independent and not just because of his ten-minute headstart in the world.
I think it’s why, for a long time, I made some terrible friendship choices and spent too much time making an effort where acquaintances probably found me overbearing. I remember organizing a stunning weekend party in an old hunting lodge in Loch Carron on the wild Scottish coast, facing out to the Isle of Skye. I couldn’t really afford it but I paid for flights, cabs, enough wine to support a small clan, hired a madarse cook, even sent out a diver to catch fresh langoustines and scallops. Celebrating my birthday in such an extravagant fashion, screaming out to all, ‘You’re my new friends and I’m bloody fine!’
As my clinical psychologist told me weeks later in one of our rare and unsatisfactory meetings, if a patient plonks himself on the couch and answers ‘How are you today?’ with ‘I’m fine’, it stands for F.I.N.E. (Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional). I rarely agreed with her, but in this there was more than a grain of truth.
Tuesday 3 April
The Mews
I’m in the Mews listening to ‘No Sound but the Wind’ by the Editors. Ange is half-asleep beside me; I’m post-bath, wearing my smartest PJs, feeling calm and content. It’s taken many years to find these quiet moments of contentment. For such a long time a feeling of guilt would overcome me. ‘Why should I be happy when John is dead?’ But life, normal life, is not sustainable in a permanent state of mourning, loss and guilt. Of course those feelings can knock me over, like every seventh wave among incoming breakers, but now maybe I just ride them a little better and a little longer. Ange looks so beautiful, gently purring. I always liken her to a mole, gently peeking through a sea of white linen, never letting go of the floppy ears of her little white bunny she cradles next to her overheated cheeks. I adore her and feel lucky to be alive and smiling beside her.
Wednesday 4 April
The Mews to a treehouse in Barcombe, Sussex
Ange has a writing exercise she completes every day at bedtime. She writes down a list of five things – it can be anything – that she feels gratitude for during the day. So Ange, so simple, beautiful and positive. What a great way to end the day. I had such a long shoot today, but I loved it, travelling down to Sussex with one of my best chums, Nick Pope, in his old Land Rover, to shoot the Hunter Gather Cook crew – five wonderfully bonkers and lushly bearded friends, cooking in the Lewes treehouse, foraging and carving and butchering and hunting and pickling and smoking.
So I thought I’d just write a list, in chronological order, of the things that made me happy today, from the moment I awoke spooned into Ange:
The smell of her hair and my milky tea.
The rising moon in a clear blue sky, the mist, a pair of fallow deer, a white windmill in Sussex, hedgerow after hedgerow of yellow primroses and daffodils.
A sign for the Bluebell Railway reminding me of a childhood trip with our father, flowering magnolias.
Nick and his dog BB, baby squirrels nesting in a barrel, the friendly welcomes and hugs from the bearded ones, and the treehouse.
Woodpeckers hammering in the ancient wood, moss-covered ash trees, whittling willow, garlic flowers, snowdrops, a babbling brook and memories of childhood dammings.
A glass of Malbec warmed by the wood oven in a cold afternoon, mo
re rabbits, a murder of crows in the ash trees.
‘Forest bathing’ appreciation, a round of hugs, laughter and home, to tea and toast and my darling wife.
The day as a list of moments of joy, what a wonderfully positive way to end it.
Friday 6 April
The Mews
5 August ’84, Parikia, Paros
Dear Mum, hope all is well at home and that the patients are behaving themselves. I’m sitting in the shade of a chapel which looks over the whole town and the sea on the other side. I got quite badly burnt yesterday while walking around the bay and that’s why I’m keeping in the shade today. Things have not gone quite to plan so far and I’ve had to sleep rough in just my bag, I did however have some drawings bought from me and they are being framed and put up on the walls of an Australian yacht. The weather isn’t too hot but the sun is terrifically strong and David will be pleased to hear that I haven’t seen any jellyfish! I shall try to ring tonight so long as there aren’t too many people. All’s well though.
John xx
19 August ’84, Paros
Dear Mum, just to say that I’m thinking of you at home and am hoping that all is well. Looking at the flowers around me and I think of the garden at 58 – I hope it is looking grand. I look forward to sitting in it having a nice cup of Earl Grey, having a good chin-wag with me mam. I’m with a couple of chaps from Manchester at the moment but shall probably head down to Crete at the end of the week and hopefully a day in Turkey. Have seen Delos, Naxos, Santorini, Antiparos, and of course Paros so far so I haven’t been doing too bad. Anyway I shall think of you all having Sunday lunch now!
All my love, John xx
21 August, Antiparos
Dear Mum, I hope all is well. Got a job painting signs at the boatyard today. It is only for a few days however. I look forward to seeing David tomorrow and finding him some decent accommodation. This weekend I’m off to Samos to catch another ferry to Patmos. Here I shall stay for a bit to see the great monasteries and to catch a ferry to Ephesus, Turkey, to see the ‘Home of Mercy’.