Vivien
I met Vivien for the first time on a Spanish beach. She was in her mid-fifties, still hopelessly elegant, reclining on a beach bed under a circular grass canopy in a tiny bikini with a jet-set tan. As an Englishwoman, it was the kind of tan you could only maintain if you got out of England a lot, and indeed, Vivien and her husband Nigel were constantly traveling. They also owned an apartment in Southern Spain near that beach Vivien was lying on. Flying to Southern Spain from the UK is like flying to Florida from the American Northeast. A few hours on the morning flight, and you’re there for lunch.
Initially, because I only ever saw Vivien on the shores of the Mediterranean, I associated her with the lapping of waves, long lunches in the local beach bars, and late dinners after the crushing daytime heat had finally subsided. She was unrelentingly fashionable no matter where she was. The first evening the four of us dined together, Vivien appeared in a beaded azure spaghetti-strap cocktail dress with sandals to match. She wore this ensemble with smoky eyeshadow and a shrug, as if it were completely unremarkable. Even now, nearly thirty years later, some of the nicest dresses I own are purchases from local Spanish boutiques as I tried to hold my own on the nights we went out to dinner with Vivien and Nigel.
As the years passed, I came to know Vivien in England as well, in the house she shared with her husband in Marlborough. Neither Vivien nor her husband had come from money, but over the course of their lives, they’d made it, and their homes were full of the things that money could buy. Never anything crass or showy, however, always something finely done, quirky, or intriguing. They were interested in and respected originality, in people who created unique things: in music, art, and writing.
The house they owned in Marlborough was a local landmark. William Golding, of Lord of the Flies fame, had lived there as a boy when his father was a teacher at the local college. Their sixteenth-century home, with a list of its inhabitants since the 1500’s mounted under the front door portico, stood on the local village green. Its hidden jewel-like garden abutted an ancient church whose bells would wake you on the mornings you lay in the spare room under the eaves, jetlagged from the New York flight, or a little fuzzy from the previous evening in the wine bar. The sound of its bells tumbled over you as you peered up at the pigeons alighting on the church’s stone cross. The bells welcomed you to England, or they welcomed me.
Vivien and Nigel’s house was full of paintings, sculptures, fine furniture, and books. The books were about architects, artists, dancers, opera singers, textiles, with a good deal of fiction mixed in: classics, bestsellers, but also slim little volumes like Country of the Pointed Firs by the American writer Sarah Orne Jewett.
Where did you get this? I asked Vivien.
Oh, I picked it up when we were in Maine, she said, offhand, as if every tourist to Maine would purchase this obscure but finely crafted nineteenth-century novel.
Vivien proceeded to tell me what she’d liked about the book. She didn’t have a university degree in literature, or any university degree, but she was an intelligent and serious reader. There were no books on her shelves that she hadn’t read.
One of the most remarkable things Vivien ever did, in my opinion, was to complete an A-level in Spanish as an adult. (An A-level is a subject-specific two-year course leading to an exam that is necessary for UK university entrance.)
Spotty British teenagers do A-levels. Well-to-do local matrons generally don’t. But Vivien presented herself at the doors of Marlborough College, the private school located at the other end of Marlborough High Street. Many a well-known Brit received their education there: John Betjeman, Bruce Chatwin, Kate Middleton. If the admissions department was surprised at Vivien’s desire to do an A-level, possibly even stunned, they also allowed it. She and her husband were prominent local citizens, sought after donors. Though this very prominence might have deterred a less assured person from embracing the vulnerability that comes with learning, Vivien was undaunted. She rose every morning in term time to walk up the street with her bag of texts, notebooks, and pencils and sat with startled sixteen-and-seventeen-year-olds as they studied Cervantes and Lorca.
We used to joke about it in Spain where Vivian would sit in her apartment reading Hola! (the Spanish version of Hello! magazine) and bring me up to date on the affairs and scandals of the European aristocracy.
You know I appreciated the time I spent on that A-level, she said to me, on all the Spanish history and literature I learned, but a lot of the language wasn’t up-to-date. It certainly didn’t help me read Hola!
Less Cervantes and more Hola!, I said, while we puzzled over why the great Spanish language, with its rich history and cultural heritage, had to borrow the English word “peep-toe” to describe the shoes that Queen Letizia of Spain was wearing at her latest public engagement.
The years passed. Vivien’s husband Nigel died, but Vivien went on, a force of nature, in Spain, in England, and on several visits here to the States. The last time we saw her; however, we could both tell that something was amiss. It was in England, in her kitchen in the house on the green, as she told us that since we’d last seen her, she’d gone blind in one eye and could no longer drive. She didn’t offer us anything, which was odd, and she repeated things a lot. When my husband peppered her with questions about mutual friends and acquaintances, Vivien deflected.
Is this a test? she asked.
Am I going to get a bad report if I don’t answer correctly?
The three of us decided to go to lunch, and we walked up the High Street to a pub whose facade was dripping with summer flowers. We sat inside where the room was nearly empty except for us and the owner’s English Bulldogs who came over for a nuzzle. We didn’t order much, drinks, sandwiches. The idea wasn’t to have a leisurely lunch like the ones we used to have in Spain, but to extend our time together just a little longer. For us, visiting Vivien that day was a stop on the way back to Heathrow. We were booked on the evening flight to New York.
When my husband finally looked at his watch and said we had to go, Vivien had barely taken two bites of her chicken sandwich.
We’ll walk you back to your house, we said.
No, I’ll stay here, she said, looking vague, but determined.
We didn’t feel comfortable leaving her there, but we honored her wish to remain. This was our last image of Vivien. Sitting by herself in a pub off Marlborough High Street, holding a chicken sandwich that I know she didn’t finish.
Not long after that, Vivien was moved from her house in Marlborough to a nearby nursing home run by a friend of hers. Though this institution was totally landlocked, it bore the marvelous name of Seahorses. Vivien had a stroke, grew vaguer, and lived there for several years in increasingly poor health before she passed last month at the age of eighty-five.
But that isn’t the way I choose to remember her. I choose to remember her in that shimmering azure cocktail dress in Spain, and at our wedding in Connecticut wearing a hot-pink suit and a thimble-like black top hat. I choose to remember the day she drove me to Avebury to see the ancient dolmens, and the dinners with her husband and mine at Robbie’s in Spain. I choose to remember a fiercely independent woman who made her own way, lived her own life, and appreciated art, music, and literature. I choose to remember a traveler, a reader, and a lover of languages, a woman who liked to laugh, to take risks, and was scornful of complaint. Her presence in this world will be missed by her friends and family, but also by people who perhaps knew her only fleetingly, in and around Marlborough, in Spain, or in any of the other places Vivien passed through on her travels, people who came away from their chance encounter with her feeling a bit wistful, yet also hopeful that they too might one day have some portion of the style and originality that Vivien possessed, that they might be themselves in the way Vivien was Vivien.
This is a superb evocation of a remarkable woman and friend. You are fortunate for having known her.
She was remarkable!
You bring this fascinating woman to life. Beautifully written, as always.
She sounds like a wonderful person, just lovely.