by David Loftus
I lay on my back, looking up at the ceiling with a creeping blackness, as desperately sad as I could imagine ever being, completely destroyed, like someone had sucked me dry, like half of me had died. As I lay there, I willed my other half to die. It was like falling deeper and deeper into a black hole, the ceiling getting further and further away, my breath shallower and shallower and then I was aware of myself above, watching the real me, lying there, still and peaceful . . . and I awoke with an almighty intake of breath. I was frightened and terribly confused, but I had realized what I was doing, what so many with a newly broken heart do, what one in two identical twins when losing their twin does: I had given up. Fourteen hours after John had passed away I had decided to die too. I was furious, furious with myself, furious with S and his cronies, and determined, determined that I wouldn’t let John down, that I would care for Mother, that I would prove his faith in me correct.
That I would live.
CODA
‘Twee Gezusters’ Chelsea Reach
My dearest Timmy,
I’m sitting in an uncomfortable corner of the deck, between the mast with its peeling varnish and my old Alaskan canoe, on an even older Moroccan pouffe, a childhood gift from a distant nomadic godparent. I’m sheltered, just, from the early-spring wind off the water, warmed by a small patch of sun caught between two buildings rising from the shore.
You always knew where to find me when I hid from everyone, knowing it was ‘my way’, the far corner of the terrace at Villa Marco in France, where the sun fell behind the house, under the casuarina trees on West Beach in Eleuthera, or the garden bench out the front of Strathcarron or Georgie’s place. Sometimes reading, often just at one with my thoughts, face tilted to the setting sun, the one person determined to see the sun set, finding solace in that fading moment, you were the one who always loved to see it rise.
Being born eleven months apart, I’m older and wiser, by the way. Both with our identical others, both in Knightsbridge, you the last-borns, us the firstborns. I like to think that we met as babies, Molly pushing us along in our pushchair in Kensington Garden, bumping into your nanny, sharing a cup of tea over their common bond! I wonder sometimes if we would have met if our twins hadn’t been so cruelly taken. Maybe, but I wouldn’t have been the same person now if I hadn’t met you thirty years ago, back home in Knightsbridge. Windmills of Your Mind.
As you know, I quickly came to know your parents like surrogate godparents and we shared so many laughs, tears and tears of laughter. I miss your father like a favourite uncle, like a dear friend.
As your best man, standing proudly by your side, I described to your family and friends, us, with Jeff and Simon, running through the waves at sunset on Atlantic beach in the Bahamas, and it being the happiest I had felt since my youth, it was a moment of time stopped, all else forgotten, indescribably magical, tragically happy.
It’s been a tough year for both of us, and I know that my writing this memoir has not been easy for you, and I have edited out much that I could easily and joyfully have sung from the rafters, but I appreciate that, amazing though so many of those memories are, many of them are extraordinary because they are private, shared but with a few not the many. Shared between two of the closest friends, lone twins, ‘identical twins, just not each other’s.’ I love and adore you, Timmy, more than most can comprehend and more than I can share, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for all that you have done, all that you have shared with me, and all that we are yet to share and do together.
As aye, David
Saturday 17 November
My dearest Johny,
I’ve spelt it like you do, not like we all do. I’ve just wandered, not ‘as lonely as a cloud’ but with Ange, up Miterdale to Burnmoor Tarn on the clearest, warmest November day that I can remember. You’d have loved it, the little Mitre in full flood, peaty and moss-bound, all the waterfalls like elven heavens, the constant company of finches and the sounds of bubble and brook. So many damming possibilities, and now, sitting with Ange beside Burnmoor Tarn, mirroring the most perfect palettes of orange, blue and green, I’ll hunt down a perfect skimmer and skim a few for you under the clear blue sky.
I started to write this book for you, but also for Paros and Pascale, a love letter to you, but also to help them know you a little better, understand what made me who I am, why our shared DNA was so important to us, why deep down I’d never be a singleton but always an identical twin.
I miss you more than the sea misses the rain. I was lost without you, but sitting here, held in the arms of my Ange, I’ve found a degree of peace that I never felt I could discover. You never really agreed with my girlfriend choices but I know you would have loved Ange like a sister. When I first met her she found a patch on my upper back that gave out such an extraordinary energy that when we need comfort she rests her palm on it, night and day, even when I am asleep, and we are almost immediately calmed. She’s resting her head on my shoulder now, left hand pressed to the spot. The only sound is the tiny stream bubbling up next to us; it’s an extraordinarily peaceful spot and where I always intended to write to you.
I think the energy patch on my back is part of you. I think it’s where you soothed me in the womb and where Ange spoons me now, and it makes me happy that she is the only one that can feel it. The water is so flat now it’s begging for a skimmer. There was a time when we would have loaded our rucksacks with skimmers on Wastwater and walked them all the way up Mitredale with them.
When I asked Ian and Jean-Marian (Mushroom and yellow pants girl) if they’d write a word or two for the book, they both spoke fondly of the Lake District and our youth there, the damming of streams, playing of pooh sticks; they even miss that we used to drop rocks on cowpats next to them and splatter them in fresh green dung – you sailing off has romanticized even that to the youngers. Both mentioned the time we dug up a farmer’s potato field and launched a barrage of tennis racket-propelled missiles over the farmhouse, hundreds and hundreds of them, raining down on them in the courtyard beyond. Led by Cousin Sarah they responded in kind and the hour-long ‘Battle of the Lakes’ that ensued has gone down in Loftus folklore as a classic ‘boys will be boys’ moment. I miss the beachcombing in Greece most of all; I’d have loved to have taken you to the Bahamas, we would never have stopped! Collecting St Cuthbert’s beads in Lindisfarne, cowries in Orkney, urchins in Paros, Thomas clay pipes, shiny crystals in the mountains of Austria (and edelweiss for your flower press), fossils in the Lake District’s fellsides. I think of you every time I comb the shores and these are still some of my happiest times.
The rest, I think, is here in this book. Paros, Pascale, Ange and Tim, those who never knew you but those who have made me live my life to the fullest and have brought me a happiness that I hadn’t felt since the moment you cracked your head at the cricket field. (I checked The Independent this morning, Joe Root – you’d like him, a Gower/Robin Smith kind of chap – hit a century against Sri Lanka in Galle.)
I’ll never forgive myself, whatever anyone tells me, for letting Dr S perform that final injection as we unwrapped our presents. I know if Mother or Samantha had been there, he wouldn’t have been allowed, and I’ve gone over that moment millions of times, day and night. I was scared, scared to say ‘No, you can’t do it’ and I am so terribly, terribly sorry. If our roles had been reversed I know you would have stood up to him. I know it, but I did not.
My dear, dear Johnny, what can I say? I miss you all night, I miss you when I look in the mirror to contemplate whether or not to shave, I miss you every time I close my eyes, but, and it’s a big but, I am happy. This little fellowship keeps me happy and on track. I can’t change what happened, but I can try to make you proud. You were my biggest champion, as I was yours. My heart is so full of you, but it’s also full of Mother and Ange, Pascale and Paros, Tim and my Musketeers, and luckily my post-traumatically stressed heart is a big one, one with space for you all.
Love, David x
Papa
: ‘No meal is complete without cheese.’
John: ‘No, no meal is complete without baked beans.’
I overwrote by 75,000 words – I guess that’s the nature of writing a diary, there is day-to-day waffle of interest to no one but a few. Daily moans and gripes that are easily lost in an edit. I wrote several lists of goals, many of which remain unaccomplished, but I did take Strawbod and myself flying over Iceland with Volcano Pilot and after two days of constant flying I felt like I’d been to heaven and back. I took the last photo album with me and on a sub-zero ice field I browsed and mulled over our final years, rarely shot together forging forth, trying our best to be singletons. I did also give up Solpadeine on 1 January 2019.
The object of writing this memoir was firstly to write a love letter to dear Johnny. I called him John, but he called himself Johny, others spelt it with two ‘n’s, he spelt it with just one. I gave myself days to weeks to write it but as the time passed and with the words flowing, unforced, in ink, so unedited, no crossings-out, the weeks turned to months and what had begun as a love letter to Johnny morphed into a lettre d’amour to all those that I have loved, but especially to our parents Jean and Eric, my brother Ian and sister Jean-Marian, to Tim my best chum, to my children Paros and Pascale, and to my darling wife Ange.
Acknowledgements
Ange, what can I say, my bunny, my one and only, my love. I am sure you quietly dread the moment in Marrakech, every year, when I turn to you and say . . . ‘I have a plan . . .’ This is one of many of my life projects that I couldn’t have done without you gently whispering lovingly in my ear, or holding my hand from near and afar. I love you to the moon and back.
What shall we do next . . . I have a plan . . . xx
My darling Mother, my best friend, we share so much love and so much pain together, we both feel we are partially to blame, that we failed John somehow, but you were and are the most extraordinary and the most loving Mother I can imagine, and John and I were the happiest boys alive with you and Papa. I so adore our time together now. You have devoted your life to the care of others, saved countless lives, including the lives of your own husband and daughter and grandchild. My super hero.
Paros and Pascale, my two ‘Ps’, loves of my life, my ‘raison d’être’, all I am is you and this book is for you.
My brother and sister, Ian and Jean-Marian, I know it’s not been easy having a lone twin as an elder brother, but I love you both unconditionally. Your letters this year have meant so much.
Nicola Brooksbank my master and gatekeeper, what would I have done without you the last few years?
Posthumously, my dear Father, Eric John, the kindest, most gentle of gentlemen, if I am half the man that you were then I would feel whole. I have missed you more than ever writing this book. The only positive in loosing you is that you didn’t, two years later, have to witness the cruel loss of your first born.
My old best chum Harry Dagnall, the first person to say to me ‘you should write all this down’, during our long nights at the Reform Club, me your Passepartout to your Phileas Fogg. So many secrets shared and kept.
Lord and Lady Brabourne, I miss you both, JB, you were a colossal rock to me at such a seminal part of my life and were as much a friend as a surrogate Godfather. So many laughs shared.
Trevor Hopkins, Marrakech feels empty without you.
John ‘Hammy’ Hamilton. Twenty years of making books together, and you were beside me in Mumbai as I struggled to find my voice amongst the mayhem. You were in New Orleans when I was attacked, in Wyoming eating Prairie oysters, LA with the Bloods, and cruising the avenues and alleyways of the Cote d’Azur. So many adventures, so many bottles, so many memories.
TJ Mathews, for being so very loving to John, for giving me Clio, and for, as you were dying, promising to ‘scare the shit’ out of Dr S by adding him to your ‘haunting list’.
Carole Tonkinson is what every writer embarking on such a perilous literary journey needs, a calm commander but with enormous stores of empathy, patience and kindness, I feel blessed and lucky to have met you and to have you in my life, as a friend for life. Hockley, as second in command you have held the tiller through both calm and rough waters, your calm and considered messages to me have meant more than you can imagine. All those at Bluebird, Zainab Dawood worked tirelessly on transcribing my diaries, which, having not realised that ‘authors’ wrote on computers these days, I wrote by hand, then Jess Duffy my PR, Jodie Mullish my marketing director. James Annal and Lindsay Nash, my designers and Sarah Badhan who kept it all under control as it headed off to print.
Samantha Connolly and your dear father Tim, I miss you both in my life.
The Musketeers, Timothy Knatchbull, Jeff Bennett, Simon ‘Farmer’ Jones, Andy Harris and Peter Hornsey. I’m so happy to have you all in my life. Rosie Scott, if Musketeers were ladies, you’d be one!
Peter Matthews, for everything and beyond, and for entrusting John’s ‘godfatherhood’ of my darling Clio to me. To Clio, and Sophie your dear beloved wife.
My culinary ambassadors, Jamie Oliver and Gennaro Contaldo, we’ve climbed some mountains and taken a few tumbles together.
Bart von Olphen, so many adventures my friend and so many more to come!
I’m so lucky to count as best chums and supporters when I need them, Nick ‘the’ Pope and Sammie Bell, Rebecca Frayn, Jack and Finn Harries, Jason Flemyng, Dexter Fletcher and Dahlia, Jonah and Jeremy King, cousins Sarah and Edward, Leila and Marten Lindholm, Rachel Khoo and her Swedes, Meera Sodha, David Flint Wood and India, Christian Stephenson, Charlie and Liz Berman, Charlie Boorman, Ian Bickerton, Pete Winterbottom, Sir Johnny Scott, Nicklas Ekstedt, Guy and Dorothy, Nathan Outlaw, Johnny Yeo, Barney Harwood, Isabella and Amber Knatchbull, Janet and Theo Hornsey, Ben and Katie, Ed and Jen Henderson, Liz Cocozza, the Foxes of the Mews, Karin Grainger, Charlie Forté, the Zambelettis, the Cloakeys, Colette and Bradley. Kevin at ChaChaCha, and all my lovely boys at Riad El Fenn. Richards, Sinclair, Clatworthy and Eaton and Eleanora Galasso.
My lovely Danish crew, led by Anne and Ditte. Soren, you are in my prayers.
To Dr Debbie Street for keeping my oversized heart ticking along.
To Timmy Cooke and Codie Proud for joining us on our Parosian adventure to find our Shirley Valentine, Jane Apostopolous, with flowers in her hair.
And to all who I work and play with of whom, luckily for me, there are many.
About the Author
David Loftus is an internationally acclaimed photographer. His images have brought recipes to life in more than 150 cookbooks and he has been named one of the most influential photographers of all time. David grew up as the joint eldest of four siblings in Carshalton Beeches in South London. He lives with his wife in London, when not travelling and photographing the world. You can find him on Instagram @davidloftus where he shares imagery and art from his adventures.
First published 2019 by Bluebird
This electronic edition published 2019 by Bluebird
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5290-1130-2
Copyright © David Loftus 2019
All images copyright © David Loftus 2019
Photographs © David Loftus
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