3 days ago
I've rekindled my love affair with England
Late spring. Sitting in the armchair in the living room, I was chilly and disconsolate. My middle daughter was seven-and-a-half months pregnant and unwell. The pregnancy had triggered two serious autoimmune disorders. She'd been successfully treated for thyroid cancer a few years before, but this new disease was attacking her lower spine; she was exhausted and in almost constant pain. At times she couldn't pick up her two-year-old daughter. I could barely afford to fill up the car, never mind pay for parking and a flight back to England, and every night lay awake worrying.
Beside the chair to the left, a live rock wall, and in front, a wood-burner. To one side of the stove, on a table-easel, was a framed print; the last and most optimistic in a series of allegories I painted during my immediate post-marital separation years. The five works depict the same semi-naked woman turning away from a sparse and gloomy interior towards a bright landscape (hope) in the distance, but with each new work, the interior became lighter and more colourful, and the landscape moved closer. Next to the print, a painted concrete cast of Tintin's dog Snowy. On the other side of the fire, a plaster tortoise and a small copy in oils of the Victorian symbolist painter G.F. Watts's 'Delusive Hope'. Hope or, to the more pessimistic, 'delusive hope' was the last of the 'evils' to escape from Pandora's box. In Watts's painting, a blind girl sits on a rock trying to play a tune on a broken lyre.
An email appeared on my phone. Would I be interested in hosting one of the Spectator writers' dinners? I looked at the blind girl playing the single string on her lyre and re-read the message. It was definitely for me and, although doubtful anyone would turn up, I said yes. A date was set. I tried not to think about the prospect of no one coming and forgot about it until I was told it had sold out. Sixteen Spectator readers bought tickets. A couple of weeks later I learned from the Times's Diary the evening was also the one in which Sarah Vine was holding a launch party for her book about being married to the editor of this magazine, Michael Gove, and by chance – or not – Vine's ex-friend Emily Sheffield (Samantha Cameron's sister) was hosting a big party as well. And it was Boris Johnson's birthday. After some thought I couldn't decide which of these four events would be more terrifying.
I needn't have worried. The evening was jolly and there were a couple of familiar faces, Nicola and Woody, whom Jeremy and I met on the 2015 Spectator cruise from Venice to Athens. A bonus. Alasdair came down especially from Glasgow and I, sometimes mocked as a young nurse for reading the Times or the Glasgow Herald on lunch breaks, was particularly pleased to meet two Spectator-reading nurses, Siobhan and her friend Caroline. My only regret was to yield to the request from features editor Will to tell the dinner guests my entry to Jeremy's 2011 puerile and offensive joke competition. It was how Jeremy and I met; the winners were invited to his first book launch. The joke was bad enough 14 years ago. What kind of fool would recount a misogynist joke in public these days? Three glasses down I hoped the tide of wokery was, if not exactly ebbing, turning at least, and thought too that Spectator readers more than most, would laugh. They did. Being a woman helped. Imagine a bloke telling the one about the man who goes to the doctor worried that his wife is dead which ends with the punchline: 'Well, doctor, the sex is still the same but the ironing's piling up…'
The following day I headed to Oxfordshire to see my middle daughter and meet my grandson for the second time. Since he was born in the middle of May, he's almost doubled in size and is now smiling and cooing and holding his head up. My little granddaughter ran into my arms, and my daughter, although still tired and on fortnightly injections, is almost completely pain-free and 80 per cent more energetic than she was. We had an early dinner in the garden of The Fish in nearby Sutton Courtenay and another day went to a bougie family festival.
The sun shone and rekindled my love affair with England. As a child, because my father was dead and my mother worked full time and had a boyfriend I feared and loathed, I spent the summer holidays away from Scotland with my grandparents in Staffordshire. Between the ages of eight and 11, I stayed on an aunt's farm, helping with housework and stable duties and learning to ride on a palomino pony called Silver. Eventually I was proficient enough to be allowed out alone to explore the bridle paths on an old 16-hand chestnut mare called Monica. She was a gentle creature and allowed me some of the happiest moments of my childhood. Occasionally in my mind's eye I catch a glimpse of myself, aged ten, trotting along sun-dappled lanes on that big steady horse.
Back home in Provence the summer rentals I manage have begun. Although quieter than previous years, they'll provide a little income and I've received two, possibly three, new commissions for paintings. For now at least, the copy of 'Delusive Hope' is no longer the dominant image in the room.
