Diary of a Lone Twin

by David Loftus

  It’s so quiet today in the White City, softly warm and pinkish. I watch as the swallows swoop over the pool taking their tiny sips of water from the surface at speed. I seem to be the only person awake in the City and their company is heartwarming and uplifting. I hope that Father is sitting upon his cloud, smiling gently down as I gain such pleasure from my ornithological companions, a love affair that has lasted over forty years.

  Sunday 29 April

  Tel Aviv

  Finished my shoot with Barak today, visiting his spice supplier in Old Jaffa. Five brothers and their father, Yemeni by origin, proudly running their business through a hard-to-find green tin door, graffitied and faded in the endless sunshine. The smell inside is an extraordinary concoction, a heady mix of herbs and spices. It’s such an Aladdin’s cave of sacks and boxes it is hard to know where to look.

  Back at The Norman Hotel, hot, sweaty and smelling of everything from cinnamon to za’atar, I shower and pack for the journey back to London. I have a thing for traditional men’s fragrances and love that an old-school tonic from Jamaica can just smell of limes or a Provençal l’eau-de-vie smell solely of lavender. No mixing with bergamot and juniper, just limes or lavender. I love their smells but I also love their labels, their boxes and typefaces and packaging. Recently I saw a small bottle of 4711 and bought it for my travels, keeping it in the front pocket of my camera bag. To me and to John it’s the fragrance of our father. He kept one bottle in his armoire and another on his mantelpiece and the rediscovery of it has been a delight. It still sports the same aqua-gold label and simple aroma and it brings back such evocative memories of Father dressing, shaving and smartening up for Mother’s return from surgery.

  Sitting on my flight, smelling of 4711, I gaze out of the window. Brief glimpses of Aegean blue and then a break in the haze reveals an island whose outline I vaguely recognize. I switch on the airmap on the seat-back screen and realize it is Naxos in the Cyclades. I can see Thira and Santorini to our west so know that we must be about to fly over Paros. And there she is, haloed by whisky clouds, but clear as day. I can see Parikia, the mountain that son Paros has promised to plant a flag on when we visit in summer. I can see the bay of Nassau and the spot where Johnny’s boatyard should still be. I can see the bay of Agios Folkas and the towns of Lefkes with its pottery and Aliki. And then all is gone, shrouded in cloud as if it was never there. I took a photo of the airmap on the screen to commemorate such a special sighting and to distract myself from the tears that were running down my cheeks.

  Monday 30 April

  Dinner with Ange and Tim, who talked fondly of his time at the Dragon School, mucking about with his twin, Nick. I talked about me and John at St Hilda’s preschool. We must have been about four or five, and I cried almost every morning, much like Paros did when he first went to school. I can’t think why I cried so much while John always seemed calm and dandy. Maybe I just wanted to be different. It broke my heart walking Paros to school, seemingly in good spirits until we reached the playground where he would hold tightly onto my hand. At Hill House, when he was a year or two older, he was even worse. The tears streaming down his little face reminded me so much of my own reluctance to leave my father. I’d even hold onto John’s hand.

  And then our first days at Wallington, standing side by side with John, aged eleven, identical in every way, watching the singletons, almost like a slow-motion dance of young manhood, the sporty types bonding over the thwacking of a football, the bullies asserting themselves in the physical hierarchy of the playground, the nerdy kids fearful and still, always remaining on the periphery. There were a few friendly faces, some boys we knew, but all seemed to be fending for themselves, trying to understand their place in the maelstrom of youth. We were the lucky ones, the only identical twins, the only twins, pre-ordained best buddies, watching the theatre before us, the screams and cries and shouts and the utter chaos, watching as if in our own bubble. Leaving Paros at school on his own is, in hindsight, one of the more haunting memories of my life as a father.

  Wednesday 2 May

  The Mews, shooting Prue Leith

  For technical reasons I must return to Israel this weekend. I am determined that if I have to return to Tel Aviv I make it a trip to remember. Last trip I bought Volume 6 of The Complete Adventures of Tintin.

  Thomson: ‘It’s as clear as day to us, eh Thompson?’

  Thompson: ‘To be precise: dear as clay. That’s my opinion and I’m stuck with it.’

  Thompson and Thomson, ‘Thompson with a “p” like in philosophy and Thomson without a “p” as in Venezuela’. Probably the first identical twins John and I bonded with. From the moment we were born Tintin was part of our life, from Father’s loo-time readings and bedtime stories to undercover late-night torchlit sharings. We had our own faves; mine was The Calculus Affair, John’s was The Red Sea Sharks. Thompson and Thomson were a pair of completely inept Scotland Yard detectives, identical, but distinguishable by their heavy moustaches, Thompson’s being straight while Thomson’s fashionably turned up at the ends. They are experts in pleonasms, their phrases use more words than are necessary to get points across.

  Tintin books, like Goscinny and Uderzo’s Asterix books, were to us as much a part of growing up as banana custard and jam tarts at teatime around the round table. I can’t think of any other journal or books that would take so many repeated readings.

  Thursday 3 May

  The Mews

  Day four in a row shooting Prue Leith’s book. Like her, the days are filled with character, colour and vivacity, whether she is with us or not.

  Later I visit Mother, who sits in her reading chair, pained and frail but, as usual, uncomplaining. In half an hour she talks of the ancient temples she visited outside Jerusalem, her inability to grasp why the critics loved Bernie Gunther, the hero of Philip Kerr’s novels, Blue Peter badges, bluebirds and love birds, and the Loftus males’ obsession with Tintin and Asterix. Sometimes I can’t take my eyes away from Mother’s hands. At eighty-seven her skin is so soft and clear with little sun damage. Unlike the Loftus men, her hands and fingers are long, thin and elegant. John’s and my hands were different to Mother’s and Father’s. ‘Sausage fingers’ we called them, small hands and short, stumpy digits. Occasionally I Instagram black and white images of her hands, always with the tag line ‘The hands of my beloved Mama, Dr Loftus, hands that have saved so very many lives, including those of her own husband, daughter and granddaughter.’

  As I’m about to leave she rises from her chair and is reluctant for me to go.

  ‘Dear boy, do you remember 4711?’ What a strange coincidence! It seems Bernie Gunther wears 4711 and it reminds dear Mother of our father, Eric, and his bottles of eau-de-cologne on the mantelpiece. I chuckle and tell her about the little bottle I’ve added to my camera bag to remind me of Papa. ‘Old fine tweed and 4711, that was the smell of Eric,’ she says with tears in her eyes.

  Friday 4 May

  Flight from London to Tel Aviv

  As I left Mother’s last night she tentatively handed me a satchel of files. She explained that they were notes and correspondences from the months following John’s death, including transcripts of the coroner’s court inquest, letters to and from the hospital and the General Medical Council and even John’s last bank statements and death certificate. I’ve not seen any of these before and am slightly startled by their appearance. It seems that my sister Jean-Marian has had them and has decided it’s time I saw them. Mother had removed one document which she doesn’t want me to read, the surgical notes relating to John’s initial operation. I can understand her reluctance, to a layman that operation seemed almost barbaric and John was terrified when it was outlined to him, as I was when it was later described to me.

  One letter stands out:

  24 November 1987

  Copy, Jean Loftus, The Beeches

  Dear Peter

  Thank you for writing to me. What a disastrous experience we have had – from beginning to tragic
ending.

  We have suffered from an appalling lack of communication among medical, nursing staff, an alarming and distressing absence of an accessible and caring medical presence, and the anxiety, as well as that of John, his condition, of having to monitor and correct his treatment. Having made every effort to ensure that his intrathecal injections were given correctly – the first time one was given by the staff, in the absence of Samantha or myself – it was catastrophic.

  My dear courageous, talented and gentle son, so well matched by his devoted Samantha.

  And there the page ends. I think I know why the second page is missing. My mother’s beautiful hands could never, ever, have made such a terrible and disastrous mistake.

  Saturday 5 May

  The Norman Hotel, Tel Aviv 29°C

  In the Jewish faith, Saturday is Shabbat, the day of rest, running from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset. So all was very quiet as I climbed to the rooftop of The Norman to watch the sun rise and the birds soar. My friendly laughing doves were there, chuckling to themselves, and the swallows now outnumbered all others. At one point I spotted an enormous blackbird on a neighbouring art deco façade, and realized afterwards that it was the shadow of a jackdaw passing between the rising sun and the building.

  I’ve always had an obsession with shadows and it even influenced my choice of subject for my degree thesis, the role of the femme fatale in film noir, the chiaroscuro highlighting style of deep and harsh shadows fitting in with my creative bent. For a long time I shot almost exclusively in black and white and almost all of my early-career commissions as an illustrator were black and white.

  I couldn’t quite believe the moment I first picked up the phone to an illustration job, from the Radio Times, to illustrate a Book at Bedtime murder mystery on Radio 4. In the play a woman in an old wicker wheelchair is pushed by a stranger to her death and I struggled with the face of the protagonist. John, who was chuffed that I had received my first stab at success, stepped in as he could see I was struggling and, easy as pie, drew her half-turned face for me.

  Sunday 6 May

  Often when I am abroad I feel the need to be at one with the birds, to fly at their height and speed. I’ve travelled to Tel Aviv four times in the past year and somehow there is never enough time to relax and explore. So realizing I had a few hours to spare yesterday, I chartered a small Robinson R44 helicopter and a pilot, dragging a semi-reluctant Barak with me. As we met our pilot I remembered my chum Jeff, a most accomplished pilot, saying it wasn’t the pilots with cowboy hats and boots and unbuttoned lumberjack shirts you should be worried about but the clean-cut aviator ones with their monogrammed captain’s uniforms.

  I read the name of our pilot, Meer, on his perfectly creased, monogrammed shirt, as I gazed at our reflections in his unmarked aviators. Meer, of course, turned out to be a great pilot, with thirty years’ flying experience, a true gentleman with complete respect for his surroundings, including the bird life that shared our skies.

  We headed out, low, over the carob and almond orchards, over the ‘green line’ where the forests of cypress and olive end and barren rock begins, where the old border with Jordan ends, over the kibbutzim and experimental villages where Arab, Jew, Christian and Muslim all live side by side but on remote hillsides, away from the influences and eyes of the big cities.

  I can’t explain the excitement I felt, despite my lack of religious belief, as I saw the hills around Jerusalem on the horizon. Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world, the Holy City for Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

  So here we were, the walls of Old Jerusalem in our sights, a hundred feet or so above the ground. We gained height as we crossed the outskirts of the city, more for good manners than regulations, Meer pointing out the Tower of David, the Mount of Olives, Temple Mount, the City of David, and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. A hazy light blanketed Jerusalem in an almost ethereal mistiness, the old city appearing almost totally uniform but for the blue and gold of the old mosque’s dome. I was glad I had Barak sitting behind me; these moments are so special, so moving, and without John I feel an even greater need than most to share them.

  Five minutes later we crossed the outskirts of north Jerusalem and immediately saw the desert, and Bethlehem in the haze to the south of us. We flew very low and fast past Bedouin encampments, past camel trains along the dune crescents, witnessing a landscape historically unchanged for centuries, the Judean desert, dry riverbeds and gorges, wadis and dunes, almost naked of vegetation and empty of all but the odd shepherd and his goats. Low and fast, beneath the level of the highest dunes, Meer cleverly suddenly tipped us over the edge of the desert. dropping us down thousands of feet to the banks of the Dead Sea, 400 metres below sea level and the lowest point on dry land. The temperature scale in the helicopter rose quickly, from 20°C to nearly 40°C.

  I often wonder if John would have loved to fly as much as me.

  Our drop from the desert thousands of feet to the lowest point on earth will remain with me as one of the Great Wonders of my life. A seminal moment, dropping into the abyss, forever etched upon my memory. All in a two-hour period. Unforgettable and extraordinary.

  Monday 7 and Tuesday 8 May

  The Mews, shooting Prue Leith’s recipes

  A simple day of simple shoots, relaxing in its way after Tel Aviv, uneventful and calm. A few weeks ago I did an interview with the Telegraph and it was published today, introducing the idea of the book and the demons I am confronting.

  Start of the article in the Telegraph, written by Peter Stanford, 8 May 2018:

  ‘I didn’t kill John, but I was part of the process that killed him, and I live with that every day.’ David Loftus says this very calmly, but his words still make the room stand still.

  Ange went into hospital on Wednesday for an operation on her wrist, which meant taking the cab over to Parkside in Wimbledon Common. Being beside the Common made me feel terribly gloomy, remembering the late cab journeys I took to sit by Johnny’s bedside.

  Ange’s arm had been opened up, ligaments unmangled and reattached, pinned together, stitched and plastered, leaving her in pain and gasping for oxygen. I sat with her for the first couple of hours, adjusting the tubes in her nose, watching her oxygen levels return to normal and her blood pressure settle, before returning for a restless sleep at the Mews.

  Friday 11 May

  Back in Lewes in Sussex for another day shooting with the bearded brothers of Hunter Gather Cook in their treehouse in the forest. Barney from Blue Peter joined me as observer, assistant and sidekick. Earlier in the week he had surprised me with a letter from Peter Purves, one of the Blue Peter presenters of our youth, talking about badges and twinhood.

  Today’s shoot was all about rabbits and pigeons. Photographing the how-tos of skinning and gutting the rabbits and deer is both fascinating and repulsive, but as both had been hung, relatively bloodless. I’ve shot in a halal butchers in New York and the deserts of Arizona with the Navajo and have had to photograph the throats of sheep and goats being cut while the animals are either held up by chains or held to the ground. All are seared on my memory as moments of horror and barbarity that I wish I had never witnessed. As a photographer of every stage of the food chain, it’s important to report every link in that chain, but occasionally it’s hard not to want to look away. In Wyoming I photographed the capture of the young cattle out on the Prairie, as tough an environment as I have been in. I saw the young cowboys lassoing the young bucks, slicing off their testicles with a pair of pliers and a quick spray of disinfectant. Then the poor calf has the ignominy of watching on while the cowboys drop their freshly chopped-off ballies into a pan, fry them in oil, and down them as a ‘prairie oyster’ with a beer and a cheer.

  The bearded brothers spent the day goading and teasing each other, slapping each other’s arses with wet, rolled tea towels and attempting to set fire to each other’s beards with sparks from their firelighters. Between frolic and misbehaviour and shots of gin flavoured with their own mix
ture of foraged botanicals, they managed to cook up an array of surprisingly delicate, ethical, sustainable and hearty, tasty plates of food. It’s fabulous to watch, an education for the palate.

  Sunday 13 May

  A morning with Mother in Cheam. She has made the tough decision to have her breast cancer removed in an operation this coming Friday. She has taken advice from the hospital, the tipping point in her decision being that if they remove the lump then she can come off the chemo drugs that are causing so much pain in her legs. Do I trust their judgement? No, I do not, but Ian and Jean-Marian believe it’s the right thing to do. Bitter experience, of course, dictates the opposite.

  When Johnny was in the oncology unit he was housed in a small ward of three young men. All three died, but what was particularly tragic about the chap in the next bed was that he had come to there specifically because his company, an American conglomerate, had insisted he, as part of his insurance policy, have what they called an ‘executive profiling’, a sort of all-over body and mind check to see if you had any underlying medical anomalies. He came out with a relatively clean bill of health, except for a genetic propensity towards a certain type of cancer. He entered hospital cancer-free, for a blood-cleansing technique too complicated to remember and hootingly expensive, in the hope that his vague chance of a future cancer would become vaguer still. It was essentially akin to a type of chemo and it made him terribly sick. A virile, bright and gregarious young man reduced to a vomiting wreck within days of admission, he never recovered and died soon after John. I remember Mother telling me that it was a scandal that he was ever there in the first place.

  Tuesday 15 May

  The Mews

  Yesterday was the last day of shooting Prue Leith’s book at the Mews. What a delightful project it’s been, the joy of working with a small, hardworking and dedicated team. Today I’m doing a shoot today for Fischer’s restaurant in Marylebone High Street.