New York and Colorado

We returned to Marriot’s little haven, but we still had no idea what we were going to do. One day my Brother-in-law Douglas, my little wife’s elder brother, of whom Marriot was very fond, breezily walked into our little house. He threw a newspaper on to my lap, and said, ‘There you are, you can go and do that.’ He’d circled an advert for the sale of a 2000 acre wheat ranch in the mountains of Colorado in America, for 2,000,000 dollars.

Just by chance, on a visit back to Stoke Mandeville, we’d met a flirty French girl called Anne-Marie, who’d also been paralysed in a car accident a few years before. Her boyfriend, a very wealthy Iranian I think, had said to us, ‘If ever you think of something you’d like to do, that needs financing, I’ll look into it if you like.’ So I rang him. He said ‘As it happens I’m going to San Francisco next week, so I’ll fly to Colorado with my lawyer. We’ll meet the agents and go and see the place, then take it from there,’ True to his word, he did all that and when he came back, he said ‘You must go and see it for yourself, because you’ll have to run it.’

A relatively major problem we had was that we didn’t have any money, other than the value of our house in Clapham, which was presently let. Well, not enough money, even for the flights there and back. So we flew from London to New York on stand-by. We couldn’t book the flight back because you obviously can’t book a stand-by. At Kennedy Airport we were met by the brother of a very dear friend in Kenya. He gave us the most outstanding few days in New York anyone could ever dream of having. So unexpected, out of the blue, and with no money.

Peter was a huge, all-enveloping character, full of merriment and a zest for living. Every part of every day was to be lived to the full. From the first cup of coffee in the morning to the last double vodka at midnight, whether at work or play, was to be packed with humorous activity, innovation and generosity. All this didn’t exactly make for a peaceful existence, but for a visitor to New York, for the first time, it was the most exciting time anyone could ever wish for. We stayed with Peter for only about a week, but the amount we packed into that week made it seem more like a month. I’d always understood New York was a city like no other. How right it proved. ‘New York never sleeps.’ You could feel the thrum of that city, from the walls, on the pavements, high up in the sky, deep down in the basements, the whole city was alive. So it was very apt that, by profession, Peter was an indoor and outdoor garden designer. He ran his own little nursery right in the middle of the city, and when I wheeled into that small shop, we really did feel we were magically being pulled into another world. His three bubbling girls working for him were all slightly different. You couldn’t put your finger on it, wacky, quirky, not ‘off-the-wall’ but nearly. Great fun to be with for a while, but living in ‘Wonderland’ I think would be too exhausting for the average person. I do wonder what happened to them, what would they be doing now? Peter took us to the early morning flower market, the famous fish market, the vegetable market, the unbelievable meat market. The sheer amount of food consumed by one city in one day, admittedly an extraordinary city, was for me, coming from East Africa, where all food is a precious commodity, somehow seemed to highlight the difference between the third world and the developed world. He took us to New York Central Station where we swallowed the biggest, juiciest oysters I’d ever tasted. Being inside a building like that, and watching all the thousands of people scurrying around all knowing where they were going, on the whole not bumping into each other, reminded me so much, of huge flocks of little birds. They glide about the evening sky, painting great patterns, shapes and waves before settling on their roosting trees or grasses. Apparently they do bump into each other when forming all those lovely arching waves, but it happens so quickly, we humans can’t pick it up.

Peter took us to nightclubs high up in the sky, I’d always imagined nightclubs were in basements. Sitting at a table so high up, drinking an enormous dry martini, where all single helpings of food and drink were enough for six Africans, I temporally became quite overwhelmed, a sensation I don’t remember having had before. Looking out over the city at midnight, was simply stunning, mesmeric.

This man-made view is now very similar to many modern cities; Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Bahrain, Muscat, Shanghai and of course closer to home, Chicago and Detroit. However often I visit one, I never cease to marvel at the sheer engineering feat, the complexity of bringing together all the different trades we use every day, and now take for granted, to build these fantastical structures.

Peter, with his exuberant, imaginative personality was well suited to creating little garden havens throughout the city. Once he’d created a garden it had to be maintained, and as it grew it changed character, and so on. He had access to so many apartments he said he felt like Dick Whittington, being given keys to the city. He’d also built himself a most unusual, beautiful octagonal house, in the country about three hours north of New York. It was on a cliff top overlooking the forests of New England; you can imagine the spectacular golden rolling views in the Autumn. He had, of course, taken charge of the wheelchair for once, my little wife, who never takes her eye off me, ever, was able to relax in the knowledge, with his great strength, nothing untoward would happen to me.

But life is so cruel, a few years later Peter was diagnosed with cancer. After only a year, a man of such character, generosity and a love of life, and so many friends who loved him, was reduced to nothing. He died a bitter, miserable, agonising death in his beautiful home, looked after by his sisters.

The full, colourful, wonderful, joyful week flashed by, and so it was back to work, waiting in the standby queue to Colorado Springs, where we were met by two very baffled land agents. However, they were very polite and dutifully drove us to our motel for the night. The following day was to be the beginning of a very strange experience, from which we only just emerged by the skin of our teeth.

The highway dived south-west into the first range of the Rockies. Up and up we climbed, looking back over huge expansive blue mountains. The drive took about four hours, owing to the nationwide 50 mph speed limit in America at the time. We started to descend, ears popping, and soon, there, laid out before us, was a dead flat plain, edged all around in the far distance by a thin line of more blue mountains. In the centre of the picture, which somehow seemed familiar, was a small township consisting of a few shops either side of the highway, a petrol station and a motel. We stopped the car. All was silent. ‘And there,’ said the agent proudly, ‘is Alamosa,’ he paused, then said, ‘And there, to the left, is your ranch.’ We looked in silence. ‘Gosh,’ I said. I turned to look at my little wife. The look on her face was a mixture of horror and terror. She was speechless, motionless, her deep brown eyes staring at the scene in front of us. They began to fill with water. The agent awkwardly broke the silence, ‘I guess we’d better check-in first, then we’ll go see Jim.’

Jim Hunter was the owner of the ranch, and as luck would have it, the Mayor of Alamosa. The enormous production of wheat per acre relied upon vast quantities of water sprayed on to the crop, night and day, through boomed roundels, covering a hundred acres each. The water came from deep wells, or boreholes for which only he seemed to have the rights. We were taken to his house, a typical modern American house which also came with the property, and introduced to his wife. I asked for and was shown, the spreadsheets showing the enormous profitability, so we asked why they’d decided to sell. The wife’s eyes filled with tears. It turned out, the previous winter when the whole plain was covered in deep snow, their son had crash-landed his small aeroplane when trying to land in front of the house and was killed.

The comprehensive meeting lasted about a couple of hours, then the Mayor suggested a tour of the ranch. This was man’s business so the wives were left together to chat. The only thing of any note was a large metal hanger full of beautiful farm machinery. I love farm machinery, it takes me back to when I was a boy on my father’s ranch. Inside the hanger were two enormous four-wheel drive tractors with air-conditioned cabs. Along the sides were all manner of attachments, ploughs, harrows, seed drillers. By now, the younger of the two agents had, completely unselfconsciously, taken charge of me and the chair, We stopped in front of two attachments I’d never seen before. They were quite simple, each had an enormous thick hook, more than 3-foot long. The Mayor said, in his broad southern drawl, ‘See these, these are responsible for the enormous tonnage we get per acre. The whole plain has very deep topsoil, but it’s packed like concrete. These hooks break it up. Then I put the ploughs in to turn it over, then the harrows. Then,’ he paused for effect, ‘I drill twice, first time deep, and the second just above the first.’ He paused again, ‘Double drilling, double tonnage.’ The three of us just looked at him and nodded. It made sense, why hadn’t anyone thought of it before. Maybe they had, but I’d never heard of it.

That evening we were taken by the agents to a motel in Alamosa where we’d spend the night. I went to the room to rest a bit. I was still retching and retching every morning and still felt sick at the thought of eating, so I got tired very quickly. I don’t know why, but I felt I had to insist on buying supper for the two agents. I suppose it must have been because I felt so insecure. My wife meanwhile, had gone to the shop attached to the motel where she had a very strange experience. While she was looking around, the little Chinese woman in charge, sidled up to her, and whispered, ‘What are you doing here?’ My wife was obviously a bit taken aback, she said, ‘We’re thinking of buying The Hunter Ranch. ‘She looked shocked and very frightened and said, in a, fearful whisper, ‘No, no you mustn’t, you must go, he is a very bad man, we live in fear of our lives,’ She scuttled away.

The following morning we were driven back to Colorado to meet the younger agent’s family. I always had a very high regard for Americans, as they were the nicest, most outgoing groups of all the nationalities who came to visit us on the farm. But still I was surprised by their daughter who was no more than twelve. On hearing we were invited to a barbecue on Saturday said, ‘You’ll have a nice time, they’re very charming people, so you’ll have a lot in common.’ Can you imagine an English girl of twelve saying that? Indeed, we did have a nice time and they were very charming. A couple of days later, after waiting for more stand-by flights, we were back with Marriott, shattered and wondering what on earth we’d done. I hadn’t noticed my poor little wife had come out in a rash all over her body, with the awful prospect of going to live in Alamosa Colorado. I’ve asked her now why didn’t she say anything at the time, and she says, ‘I couldn’t, you were suicidal.’ She also says I wouldn’t have understood her feelings, because all men are autistic, in just varying degrees.

A few weeks later, during negotiations with Jim Hunter, our backer, our financier, our whole reason for doing all this, suddenly died of a heart attack. All negotiations immediately ceased and my wife’s rash disappeared overnight.