by David Loftus
When Hak wet-shaved me a few months ago, it was the first time that I had been completely clean-shaven since John died. When our father died we had kept all of his shaving gear in the bathroom cabinet at The Beeches, old badger-hair brushes and deep wooden soap bowls, so much cooler than our crappy foam squirters and disposable razors. So I brought his razor, with new blades, one of his favourite brushes and his bottle of 4711 up to John’s bedside. Using a hand towel soaked in hot water and a few drops of the tonic, I shaved him as delicately as I could, warming and softening his whiskers, pulling his delicate skin this way and that with my fingertips, desperately afraid that at any moment I might snick him and cause him to bleed, painfully aware that if I did catch him, with the painkillers he was on, he would bleed and bleed. It was a slow process and as the soap dried on his face I would wash it off with the hot towel and re-lather him. I found under the nose particularly difficult and as I pulled at his top lip I realized that the area above his top row of teeth, where the surgeons had cut open his skull, was still sensitive. John pulled back against my touch and with abject horror I saw the aftermath of that incision, the wobbliness of his upper jaw. So many god-awful memories in such a short space of time, from the cricket match in Richmond Park to this tender moment.
He could sense my distraction and told me, quite cheerily, to ‘Get on with it. If you think I’m worried about the scratch of a razor after what I’ve been through . . .’ I could see his point. So I gently raised his chin and tackled the delicate neck area, checking each time for the grain, the way the hairs grow. He wanted a close shave as opposed to a smooth one. It took me a while, trimming his sideburns so they were the same length, trying to remember how I instinctively shaved myself, aware that if I did the exact opposite, the mirror image of my shaving self, then I should be able to move the blade without snicking the skin. Though a slow endeavour it was successful. I cleaned his skin, dabbed him with moisturizer and a splash of Father’s cologne. He told me it reminded him of Papa.
After I left his bed I cried for what seemed like an eternity, walking all the way back to The Beeches. Down Pine Walk, where his first girlfriend Liz lived with her twin brother John, its famous pine trees looking like a fallen Jurassic forest, tree upon tree upon tree felled by the storm, a sea of moulted pine needles to wade through. The world felt mad, bad and unfriendly. From that day on I have found it impossible to wet shave my own face, the few times I’ve tried I’ve nicked and cut myself. I’ve lost the instinctive feel that one gains from shaving again and again in the mirror, but I’ve ingrained the minutiae of John’s face to my memory, every tiny mole, freckle and chickenpox scar. His lack of fingernail scars, they were my unique markers of Johnny’s early presence; his crow’s feet and his smiling dimples. I learned, much later, that I had most of these too, but at the time they felt like the minute details that made his face different to mine.
Sunday 21 October
The Mews
Jean-Marian came to the Mews for brunch, served by Ange, sourdough toast with avocados and smoked salmon and scrambled eggs, another clear blue sky, crisp and stunning. She pointed out that it was the first time she’d been invited in over eight years, a fact, I told her, I am not proud of. Conversation was quiet and reserved, strained at times, but jolly enough until I told her that I had come to the conclusion that I had been a pretty lousy brother, a crap friend, an absentee sibling, uncle and godfather, rebellious, aloof, and at times downright arrogant. She cried into her hands where she sat at the dining table while Ange quietly cleared away around us. Barely revealing her face, gently sobbing as I held on to the heaving of her shoulders, my face pressed to her head. After a while she left for home, not disagreeing with my self-examination but with a ‘I guess none of us handled it particularly well’, before she left the table. I solemnly promise to be a better brother.
Last night I eventually fell asleep, on my front, holding my forehead with one hand, Ange’s bunny with the other, halfway through a relatively mild migraine, dreaming that I was pretending to be asleep so that I could sleep in John’s room as he worked beside me and he pretended to ignore me to allow me to sleep. Sleeping and dreaming of trying to sleep and then dreaming some more.
Monday 22 October
The King’s Road, Chelsea
22 October 1987. John’s condition continued to deteriorate, and the lumbar punctures continued to try to relieve the pressure on his poorly brain. Tim, Samantha’s caring father, had provided us with a mobile phone, basically a metal briefcase with a phone the size of a brick attached, the first of its kind, so that we could alternate the vigil at his bedside.
* * *
22 October 2018. I awake after another restless and dream-filled night to the call of a robin on the window sill, another clear London sky, chilled and blue, warmed by my hot-water bottle of a wife, snuggling closer to whisper a happy anniversary in her ear.
* * *
22 October 2016. I awoke early and alone, to a similarly clear blue sky. Stretching lazily, an English breakfast tea in bed, I stuck my head out of the window to check the morning temperature and to share the dawn chorus, with possibly the same robin chirping merrily. Beside the bed, white shirt, white trousers, blue velvet Nehru jacket, and a pair of unworn Preventi desert boots in dark green suede, designed for me, named after me, and with my signature embossed on their sole.
I joined my best man, Andy Harris, at Hak’s in the King’s Road. Hak and his able assistant Saf smilingly awaiting us. They massaged, coiffed, caressed, sprayed, washed, polished, buffed and trimmed the two of us, side by side, pressing Turkish coffees and delights into our newly manicured mitts.
Smelling like a pair of Turkish spice merchants we then wandered down the road of my youth to the small jamón bar next to Chelsea Town Hall, Casa Manolo, where we ordered iberico hams, anchovies and cold glasses of Albarino and awaited our chums and my wife-to-be.
Mother arrived, with my sister Jean-Marian, driven by one of our old drivers, Pepe, and a handful of other guests to make fourteen of us in total, enough to fill one of the smaller rooms at the registry office. The service was lovely. This was to be the official signing before the main event later in the week in Marrakech, but it was much more moving and special than I had expected. I carried Strawbod throughout, his head poking out through my jacket pocket, Johnny’s knitted scarf around his well-worn neck, his moth-eaten brown ears and well-sucked nose, one orange beady eye missing, the other shining like amber, my little bit of John with me through both weddings.
Tuesday 23 October
The Mews Cold, hazy sunshine
The afternoon of 22 October 2016 was spent being entertained with rosé and oysters and cake at the Colbert with our gang of fourteen, just missing Paros who was revising for medical exams and Ian who was on holiday, but with the knowledge that both would be with us in Marrakech. We followed our long lunch with snoozes and languid love-making inside Antony Gormley’s ROOM, the robotic sculpture perched on the outside of The Beaumont Hotel in Mayfair, more oysters, more rosé and a night of inseparable spooning, ‘one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight’.
* * *
The afternoon of 22 October 1987 was much like the afternoon before, no better but not obviously worse, a desperately tense waiting game. Intravenous antibiotics, monitors bleeping, wires, liquids and lumbar punctures, temperature constantly dangerously high while we shivered around him, Mother, Samantha and me, taking turns.
Wednesday 24 October
Shooting for Andy Harris at his Vinegar Shed
Over the years the number of people who remember John with a card or a text have of course lessened, particularly after the Ps were born, and now I’ve added two wedding anniversaries to the end-of-October mix I expect them to lessen even more. I’m aware also of my diary running its natural course, starting on 1 January and ending on the anniversary of John’s death. And I still have so many things left to do, intentions I had, at the beginning of writing, that I have failed to compl
ete . . . tick-tock, so little time left.
Yesterday I spent an hour tackling the folio of papers stuffed behind more papers, and frames, and broken glass. The A1 folio is there, the same one that either John or I would walk to school with between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, just too big to carry without scuffing the ground. The marks still there; heavy enough, over the space of two years, to leave us both with identical right-sloping shoulders. The smell of damp and mould was sneeze-inducingly strong but the squashed folder was so well rammed in that, luckily, it wasn’t in contact with the cold floor, saving it from eight years of weather and London filth swirling in under the heavy wooden doors.
After lots of my own crap, instantly binned, I struck gold. John’s screenprints of Sir John Soane’s Museum, sketches of some of the treasures in the sarcophagus room there, beautifully drawn in Caran d’Ache pencil, painted architectural details, a drawing of a grotesque, an ancient moulding of the devil, in gouache-painted line, creating an imaginary ‘identity’ for the museum. To find anything new to me of John’s gives me such a thrill, and this find is utterly priceless. ‘John’ is even there in his own signature, the same signature that adorns the front window at Nucleus in Thames Ditton. I sat there, cold-bottomed and sneezing in the dust, overjoyed with my find, bent double and contorted under Father’s desk as I continued my archaeological dig.
I know now that is possible to smile and to cry floods of tears at the same time. It’s a unique experience, probably preferably surrounded by loved ones, not rammed underneath a desk coughing up damp and dust, but I hugged my treasures close to my chest and wept for England.
Thursday 25 October
Endless clear blue skies, shooting in the City
On the thirty-sixth floor with endless views over Old Father Thames, bronzed and silty, flowing east as far as the eye can see, ‘like a rod of rippled jade . . .’
Letter from Ian, arrived yesterday.
My dear brother David,
It’s thirty years since John died, and you asked, in advance of finishing your book, if I would write something. I’m not sure whether you wanted me to write about my memories of John, my feelings about the events surrounding his death, or what happened since, so perhaps I will write a bit about all of it.
While I agreed readily to write to you, I cannot promise to be able to express everything that I feel. There are so many thoughts in my mind and contrasting feelings in my heart, that I am sure all of us in the family share, but have never been able to fully express.
Firstly I should say that there are many things that I regret. Many of my emotions, especially related to the profession I found myself in, are still difficult to rationalize and I find myself challenged on a regular basis. To the point where, on many occasions, I have questioned my ability to continue. One significant and lingering regret is the way we have all drifted apart. Tragedy should bring loved ones closer together, but it seems at times to have fractured our bond. Perhaps now is the time to try and heal those fractures? I have always felt that a better ability to share our feelings and our emotions would help.
Specific to John, I have much guilt, as I think we all do – for not being there enough before, but especially during his illness. For not being there to stop things happening. And for not pushing for more to be done afterwards. I will come back to that later.
But thinking then of the memories, each year with frustration I find that they become more blurred and hazy. Some of the overpowering memories though are the funny times. In particular, I think of the potato fight at the farm in Cumbria. Mum’s and Dad’s faces when, coming into the courtyard, they found the entire farm littered with potatoes that you, John, Edward and I had hurled across the roof at each other. I think we dug the entire garden up. It still makes me giggle. I also think of John dropping the hay bale on Tracey’s head. I know it shouldn’t be funny, but boy it makes me laugh. And lobbing huge rocks into cowpats, trying to splatter each other. That holiday for me was a defining moment in the family, all I remember is sheer joy and fun.
I know there were times when John found me an irritation, and we didn’t see eye to eye. I also remember that there were times when he could be a bit mean to me. I’m sure most youngest siblings have this, and I’m pretty sure I was a real pain at times, especially when any games of sporting activities were involved, I was never a good loser. John was usually pretty good at just letting me win, but I know I pushed his tolerance. This especially applied to car-hee. You will remember spending hours on the landing at The Beeches, chasing each other around with model cars. We must have done so much damage to the skirting boards. But John would always give me the benefit of the doubt as to whether we had made ‘contact’. And let me have better cars.
He also had a pretty low impression of my friends, especially my girlfriends. In retrospect he had a point about some of them, so I should have listened a bit more, and saved myself a bit of bother. Also my hair. I shall always be known as ‘Mushroom’. And he used to take the mickey out of me for being ‘Nana’s boy’, because I used to help with the washing-up after Sunday lunch. Little did he know that Nana used to slip me some sweetie money afterwards; I’ve always been a bit sneaky like that.
He was always the popular one at school, teachers, boys from other years and peers alike. And at art college and at work, when he joined Nucleus. He could be very sensitive and this attracted people to him. I recall how much Midnight Express affected him. It depicted graphically the harsh brutality of life, and the strength of the human spirit to overcome cruelty. He was able, so beautifully, to express this in his art and his animation – the stills of which hang next to me in my office. Art gave him that very different perspective of the world. I used to be jealous of the way he saw things and could express them in such a way.
There were certainly times, especially when he was a student, that we felt rather distant. But I will never forget an occasion when he started at Nucleus, when out of the blue, John invited me over to Thames Ditton to see his work, to meet the team and take me for lunch at the pub opposite. He was so gentle, so kind, and so thoughtful, and we felt like true brothers again.
I also remember with clarity taking John for his first outpatient appointment, not long after my visit to Nucleus. It was obvious as we walked from the car that something was very wrong. But he was so brave, he seemed to take the whole thing in his stride. While we fell apart, he looked ahead and was determined to get through it.
One of my last memories is looking down the corridor in Beeches Avenue, seeing him standing in his room, after his surgery, looking rather helpless, weak and battered. But still smiling. He was so positive – like Dad used to be – finding the best of things and managing a smile at the darkest of times.
I don’t need to document what happened after that, but perhaps I can share some of my perspectives, which I still reflect on regularly to this day.
The fact that the doctors involved left behind so many broken lives, so much pain and anger, and never saw it in their hearts to just say sorry is bewildering. I have had a number of very difficult experiences in the Coroner’s Court that have brought this back to me with renewed clarity. I have had to sit next to grieving families in court, aware of the multitude of emotions they face looking across at me. Distrust. Anger. Grief. Frustration. These patients and families never go away – they continue to shape my life, my career and the way I am, both at work and at home.
So while I think about these cases almost every day, and the multitude of conflicting emotions, what about the doctors in John’s case? Did they just move on? Was John just another patient, replaced by the next one that came through the door?
I like to think not, but without a recognition of the pain and anger, the loss, and the shattered lives left behind, without the slightest apparent sense of regret or reflection, we can only imagine how they feel. So many people were changed forever, fractured souls and broken hearts. We like to think that most people are rational and civilized but of course we expect
it more of the medical profession. It is a necessity. We expect a level of empathy that outweighs any personal introversion and inability to say sorry. What can have been justification for such an apparent lack of empathy?
Of course they did not set out to kill John. But they didn’t take the care and attention to detail required to protect John from harm. Accidents happen of course. But at best the doctors involved with John were careless, we might perceive as negligent, maybe worse. Nowadays there is a low threshold to charge doctors with manslaughter. It’s a very controversial area and one I fear as a practising surgeon who is not averse to taking on the high-risk patient and procedures. I have to perform at all times to the very highest level, not tolerate error or bad practice, and above all, put the patient, not me, first. They didn’t do this in my opinion. They didn’t follow the order and method we expect of members of the profession.
Who knows if they had, either at the time or subsequently, simply said ‘sorry’. Perhaps given us some assurance that it could never happen again. Would we all be in a different place now? We can never know. But one of my big regrets now is that, in the absence of an acceptance of error, an apology, and a reassurance, we should have taken it further. I should have taken it further.
It is an extraordinary thing that a moment in time changes a lifetime for so many people. Every death does this, every accident, every serious injury, and each one is different. For you, as a twin, it has been especially shattering and has painted your life’s path forever. But it changed us all beyond recognition. It is there, every day, every minute, affecting the way we see things, interpret things, feel about things, and respond to things. And so it will be, forever.