I don't recall ever having a one-to-one conversation with Jeremy. Born in 1953 at the local Nursing Home on Bonfire Night, he was ten years younger than me. I was married and away from home when Jeremy began at secondary school, St Ambrose College, Hale Barns, which he often missed due to transport difficulties from the hill farm Father had moved to - where Jeremy acquired the skills of horse-bareback-riding, tug-of-war with the local farm lads and heavy drinking. My knowledge of him is largely from our sister Stephanie, with whom he wrote plays and pantomimes for schools and old peoples' homes, and from Mother, who lamented Jeremy's drinking and lack of discipline. Father, I imagine, approved of and indulged Jeremy's hill-billy life on the 1,500 foot high moors above Macclesfield.
Mother was correct, as it happens, it was the demon drink that killed Jeremy, who was the youngest of us and the first to die. Last in - first out.
He appears in my book "The Haunting of a Favourite Son" in the chapter, The Last Family Christmas; which relates that aged 15, not licensed, drunk and six-feet-four tall, he drove the farm Land Rover in a blizzard across country, at night, abandoning it miles from home, and, wearing jeans and a white shirt, walked home across the hills, very drunk - triggering a police hunt. He was a worry to his parents. But Jeremy survived that adventure.
From riding his horse, Jonty, and from getting superbly fit by often loping several miles on foot from the main road, up the hills to the farm, he somehow met a wandering troupe of stuntmen and women who earned a living giving displays of Jousting and mock battles as Knights of the Round Table. Thus, as a young under-educated man he wrote plays, sometimes scripts for TV, and learned to be a stunt-man. I guess it was a precarious life. Throughout, he drank heavily. His Catholic religion had no place in his world.
My only near contact with Jeremy, after that Family Christmas in 1967 was a time when brother Martin, who was an AA Rescuer, kidnapped Jeremy in 1980, from his flat in Cambridge, and dumped him in a rehab clinic, somewhere in Oxfordshire. Jeremy escaped the kind and well intended ministrations of his guards - hiked and hitched lifts to my house (we were abroad on holiday), got our house key from our next-door neighbour, lived in the house for a couple of weeks - and made off with my wife's car. He was however a gentleman not a rogue, and a few weeks later he returned and abandoned the car, unharmed, a few miles from our home - complete with the keys. I think he was essentially a kind, creative, considerate soul. We didn't meet or talk of his raid on our home.
Technically and medically, it was not the alcohol that killed Jeremy, but the lack of alcohol at a crucial time. He lived in Cambridge with his wife /partner, who was a nurse and an alcoholic. Martin said that he lived a life very close to being a derelict - but not quite in the gutter. They were not homeless. One weekend, his wife went to see her parents, leaving Jeremy alone. He drank himself into a stupor and when he came round, in desperate need of refueling with strong drink - there was none. Jeremy had lost the ability to care for himself - he had a seizure or a fit, and died alone - in 1995, just 43 years old. What a tragic waste of a good-looking, basically intelligent, super-fit, talented man.
Martin organized the funeral in Stoke-on-Trent, with the help of a business friend, who owned an undertakers. There were few mourners - but we did learn that Jeremy probably had a son - somewhere in Canada. Jeremy's legacy to the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment