Uncle Peter

Uncle Peter was now the last of our responsibilities. He was ninety, but a remarkable ninety-year-old. His mind was still as sharp as ever and his sense of humour just as ‘wicked’. Ever since he left the army, at forty-six he pursued his two great interests as part of his working life, skiing and tennis.

I don’t think there was any country in the world he and Carmen hadn’t visited. They did it their business to know, in detail, how every country worked and its place in history, its place on the map. Their minds were as sharp as each others and their sense of humour fitted as smoothly as perfectly timed machines. They were both outstandingly good-looking and unusually charming, so everywhere they went they made wonderful company. Carmen could speak every European language as fluently as her own tongue. They would seem to be a couple with everything and they knew that was how they came across. Instead of being pleased with themselves they were amused by the effect they had on others and they made many very good friends.

It was they who toured around England visiting school after school, deciding which one they felt would be the most suitable for me. Without meaning to misrepresent me, they gave all the schools a far greater expectation of my abilities than I could possibly deliver.

Innocently, unknowingly I arrived at their final choice of school, armed with a sports scholarship and an enviable ability in all subjects in the classroom! The reality could not have been further from the truth. I couldn’t be bothered to try to be good at anything, whether in the classroom or on the playing field. I was the archetypal lazy, useless schoolboy doing only just enough to get by.

It wasn’t financially viable to go home to Kenya more than once a year, so I tagged along with Peter and Carmen most of the time. When I told them how disappointing I seemed to be to the school, instead of taking it seriously and perhaps giving me some advice, they treated it as a huge source of amusement.

I suppose this is how it’s meant to work, the older generation look after the younger, then, in turn the younger look after the older. So here we were with Peter at ninety. He died suddenly three years later. I can honestly say there wasn’t a single day it wasn’t a pleasure to be with him. One day he drove down the hill from his cottage to the vineyard as usual, not looking very well, sallow. He flopped himself on to the sofa in the kitchen and said, ‘I’m feeling awful, I haven’t slept a wink all night.’ We were naturally concerned. He went on, ‘I’ve got too much money.’ This piece of information was quite a relief, but surprising in its delivery. He and Carmen were renowned for being very careful with their money, to say the least. ‘I could have done so much more for Carmen.’ He’d got that the wrong way round, it was Carmen who did the saving. All her life she’d set herself the task to doing everything for less money than anyone else. Whenever we stopped for the night on one of our many trips, she’d say to Peter and me, ‘How much do you think I can get off the cost of the room?’ She’d win every time. She prided herself the only cheque she’d ever written was when she bought herself a mink coat just before the war.

Now, Peter was to ‘set-about’ spending as much money he could before he died. He took us on our first ever cruise in the Mediterranean Sea. He bought us a new car so we could drive him for a wonderful trip to his beloved Switzerland, to be on the snow one more time before he died. He enjoyed it so much we did it again. He liked to organise everything to the last detail. He had a phenomenal memory. He loved to find places, the exact place he’d stood with Carmen on any one of hundreds of times he’d been skiing with her over the sixty years they’d been married. They’d always found each other amusing, so when we’d found an exact place, he’d chuckle at the memory of what Carmen had done or said. He’d never spent money so easily before, and he found it a liberating experience. Mind you, if he had spent money in the way he was doing at this point, he wouldn’t have it to spend now, Catch-22. He liked to be with us whenever we drove anywhere. On one occasion, we had to go to the funeral of a relative of my wife. He came along, stayed in the car with his newspaper while we were in the church, then we drove back home.

Another very successful thing he invested in, which he’d never have dreamt of doing before this new-found liberation was ‘Sky Sport’. I told you earlier, his other abiding interest was tennis. He’d follow all the top players, men and women, all around the world. He knew everything about each player. Not just their game, their lives off court as well. He liked to be alone in his cottage in the evenings. He’d pour himself two large whiskeys and cook himself his supper. Always the same, a fillet of grilled salmon reluctantly accompanied with boiled broccoli because it was good for him. One of the things he did after leaving the army was to be the Secretary of the Ski Club of Great Britain, Eaton Square in London. He was there for twelve years. Of course part of the job then was to go to Switzerland and Austria and France for three months of the year, to represent the Club and help members with whatever problems they might have. The remaining nine months he worked at the club itself. He wrote a book covering and rating every single ski resort in Switzerland, Austria and France by skiing and staying the night in every one.

I’ve told you how much he liked to organise. The Club suddenly found it started to make money. Not by putting up subscriptions or cutting down on staff, purely organisation. The Club ran an excellent little restaurant for members and one of the items on the menu was steak and kidney pie. Peter had his table reserved for lunch and every day, for nine months of the year, for twelve years he had steak and kidney pie.

Every Sunday he came to the vineyard for lunch, and of course I cooked him the same thing each time. Crispy streaky bacon with very thin slices of lamb’s liver. He didn’t like vegetables so we let him off as it was Sunday.

One Sunday he came in holding a large cardboard box under his arm. He said, ‘Read through all the files so you know where everything is, and you can get them to the solicitor quickly after I die.’ We knew he’d left everything to us because he’d brought his solicitor here to draw up his will. He excluded all other members of the family and left us his house and all his money. But we didn’t know how much money or where it was. When I did see how much money was coming our way, my Good little wife insisted he must include my two sisters and my brother. He reluctantly agreed, but wouldn’t write it in the will itself, because he couldn’t work out how much we’d have to pay in death duties. The value of the cottage would be added to the whole estate that would be taxed, and could vary significantly. So he said, ‘Only give away what think you can afford. It was a good thing for the others my wife was the executor. If it was left up to me, it’s unlikely I would have been able to afford to give the others as much as she did.

If you are a tennis enthusiast, you might remember the 2009 Australian Open. An incredibly exciting five-set final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. It was a Sunday so Peter was due to come to the vineyard for his usual lunch. He rang at about twelve o’clock to say he might be late because he couldn’t tear himself away from the match; if I wasn’t watching, turn it on immediately, it was fantastic tennis! I did, and it truly was beautiful tennis. Two world class players, ranked one and two, at the zenith of their abilities, battling point for point. Federer gliding about the court with perfect, effortless timing, opposite Nadal with his enormous strength, chasing the ball about the court with the speed of a cat and slamming it back at full reach. Each point was exhausting to watch. The games went on and on, tantalizingly close. Finally, Nadal made the break and won by a whisker. A tearful Roger Federer conceded defeat.

It was a cold, raw February day with snow in the air. Nevertheless, as a ritual, Peter liked to have a cold lager before his liver and bacon. The lager was on ice and the bacon crispy. The liver was waiting to be shown the foaming buttery pan at the last minute. Peter was never late for any event, a Major in the Cameron Highlanders to his fingertips.

Peter had an aneurysm, a permanent swelling of, in his case, the main artery from the heart. He could have had a huge operation and that part of the artery exchanged with a synthetic tube. But his platelet count was very low so any bleeding would be very difficult to stem. His friends told him at his age, ninety-three by now, and still with a relatively active life, an aneurysm was a merciful thing to have. When it burst, which it would do sooner rather than later there would be no pain and he’d die in thirty seconds.

He’d been with Carmen in her ‘home’ and my mother in hers. Although all the staff were kind and gentle, the whole idea of being ‘looked-after’ like that horrified him. Nevertheless to be told you’ll suddenly die sometime soon, at whatever age you are, is a strange sensation to take on-board. Early on, soon after his diagnosis, we talked about it quite a lot, and he was issued with a panic button he wore around his neck, and he had a stairlift installed.

I’ve told you how interested he was in everything so to wallow around being introspective was not his style at all. Doing as much as we did together, his diagnosis receded to the back of our minds.

However, today he was late, we looked at each other and it sprang to the fore. We rang. No reply. He might be on his way. We waited five minutes. How could five minutes take so long? We quickly climbed into the car. As an afterthought, my wife put my chair in the back of the car. On arrival, all around the garden was still and quiet, his car in the garage. My wife gingerly pressed the front doorbell, nothing. Sensing the stillness of the garden, she carefully crept around the little cottage to the glass garden door. She cupped her hands to her face against the glare and peered in. There, on the floor, between his armchair and the television, was a little grey head.

Gently, head bowed, she walked back to the car. Holding my hands, she whispered, ‘He’s dead.’ After a moment of stillness, she quickly hauled my chair out of the back of the car to my open driver’s door. I dragged myself in as fast as possible. It had always been difficult to get me into the cottage, as the front doorstep was much higher than average. Then the lip at the top of the step was difficult for even a man to achieve, let alone my poor little wife.

Only with my mother, had I been in a room with a dead person, and now Peter. Two people so close, so full of life, so valuable, and now lifeless, completely still, nothing, gone, a shell, an empty shell. I feel sure I had an awareness of an empty space they left within my own body.

I couldn’t get to the telephone so my wife rang 999 to report his death. The woman, immediately, very forcefully started barking instructions down the line. ‘Get him flat on his back.’ My wife said, ‘I can’t, I can’t, he’s dead.’ ‘How do you know he is dead? You’re not in a position to know he is dead. Pull him flat on his back and pump the area in the middle of his chest until the police arrive.’ ‘I’ll try, I’ll try.’ She couldn’t, his fixed arm, he’d lost his elbow in a car crash while a cadet, was jammed around the end of the arm of his easy chair. The police did arrive incredibly quickly. They immediately summed up the situation and unassertively but firmly, took charge, two excellent policemen.

It was a freezing, snowing Sunday evening. Our local surgery was not on duty. The death had to be certified before removing the body from the site. The nearest ambulance for the task was Eastbourne, miles away. The two young policemen had to remain there to sign Peter over to the ambulance.

The snow started to lie heavily on the ground. The ambulance was making slow progress. We might not get safely down our drive and back to the Barn. If we got stuck on the way home, there’d be no assistance. We couldn’t risk the possibility. We asked the two policemen if they could stay without us under these circumstances. ‘Of course, of course, no problem at all, we have to stay anyway. The body can be transferred to any undertaker you wish after it’s been to the morgue in Eastbourne.’ Thank goodness we left then. By the morning, the snow was so thick we couldn’t move anywhere for about a week.

My wife and the undertaker organised a beautiful funeral. A lot of people from all walks of Peter’s life came to the crematorium. Carmen’s godson gave the eulogy. My little sister’s eldest daughter Kate read out letters Peter had written to his commanding officer during a posting in Belgrade. They epitomised the sharpness of his character, the attention to detail and his wit in social encounters. The army sent him to Cambridge University for six months to learn to write and understand Russian. Only six months. It was with that ability he was sent to the Russian sector in Belgrade. The entertaining of the Russian officers’ wives, equally as important, was left up to Carmen. He and Carmen suited each other as a hand in a glove.

Peter would never have wanted a funeral exalting him in all the many diverse areas he found himself through the whole of his life. But that’s what he deserved. So it was particularly clever of my wife, to orchestrate a funeral that was understated yet had all the elements that made him such an outstanding individual. We have cause to think of him every day.