Death

I’m sitting in my office and the place is still. The rest of the house is dark. Everyone’s out and I’m here writing about the death of a friend. I haven’t felt such gloom since my father died 28 years ago. The question why did he have to die is implicitly followed by another: how did he live his life? The answer to that one is easy: recklessly. Learning how to die, according to Montaigne, is unlearning how to be a slave. Nick Scott, who died last week in India, was no slave. Nick went to Eton. He was an army man and a very talented landscape artist and gardener, among the best-dressed men of his time, a clubman par excellence. He was a very good father to two boys and two girls, and probably the best unpublished writer of his generation.

Laikipia On Tristan Voorspuy’s hell-for-leather riding safaris across Kenya’s savannah, he cracked a bullwhip at predators that tried to eat his guests. One time a lion chased American actress Glenn Close on her horse and Tristan said, ‘We nearly lost her.’ They all joked about it that night around the campfire. Tristan was among the last of the stylishly mad people in Kenya. He once rode his horse into the bar at the Muthaiga Club during a stag party. From the saddle, he toasted the groom, his steed defecated on the parquet and off he trotted between astonished drinkers into Africa’s night. Tristan was a gentleman and well read.

Our friend Anthony was reportedly dying and a party of four drove over to the nursing home to say cheerio. The journey across deepest Provence was an hour and a half each way and we went in my old Mercedes. I fixed my attention on the badge and the twisting road beyond it, rhythmically chewing one square after another of 4mg fruit-flavoured nicotine gum. My morning dose of 75mg Venlafaxine filtered out extraneous thought, self-criticism and fantasy, leaving me feeling unusually self-possessed. The mental picture I keep of Anthony is just the eyes, which are a startling shade of light blue. I’ve never got used to them. Since I have known him he has usually worn a jacket of faded blue cotton that matches their colour exactly and doubles their disconcerting effect.

While American conservatives, including Donald Trump and the Cuban exiles in Florida, whooped with joy at the news of the death of Fidel Castro, and while millions of America-haters throughout the world extravagantly mourned his passing, Barack Obama was circumspect. ‘History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him,’ he said. This was a restrained comment by an American president about a foreign leader whose 47 years of dictatorship had been sustained almost entirely by stirring up hatred of the United States; and we won’t have to wait for history’s verdict on his impact on that particular country, for we know already how enormous it was. He not only humiliated JohnF.

Most people who die in Britain are now cremated — more than 70 per cent of them — but there is often uncertainty among the bereaved about what to do with the ashes. When dead bodies aren’t burnt, it is straightforward: they are buried in coffins. But the options for the ashes of the dead are various. They may be interred in a churchyard or a cemetery, they may be planted among the roots of a new tree, and they may be scattered in the countryside, in a river, or at sea. But these are just the conventional choices. Lots of exotic alternatives are also offered.

I was not on the winning side of the debate, despite giving it the old college try. Thank god for my South African friend Simon Reader, who coached me just before I went on. Mind you, my side felt a bit like Maxime Weygand, the French general who, in June 1940, was happily smoking his pipe back in Syria when he got the call to take over the French army. The Germans had already taken Holland and Belgium and had breached la Ligne Maginot, Gamelin had thrown in the towel, and Paul Reynaud had called for a fresh face to stop the mighty Wehrmacht. ‘Gee, thanks a bunch,’ said Weygand, but took it like a real Frenchman and surrendered to the German army a couple of weeks later.