The Saga of the Purple Gravy

Some friends of mine and I were chatting about dating in Toronto the other day, and various opinions were expressed as to why we were all single. I can't remember what was said exactly, but I do remember thinking about it for the rest of the afternoon, and being bothered about not being able to come up with a concrete answer. I then remembered a conversation I had with my father not two Christmases before, about this very same subject.

It became infamously known among my family as Why Is Trev Still Single, or the Saga of the Purple Gravy. It was Christmas Eve a few years ago, and it was just the two of us, and I was making a roast. Now, I had no idea of how to make gravy. This is important to remember. I’d seen my mother do it countless times, but could never remember just what it was exactly that she did. I knew she used the juices from the roast, wine and bit of flour. Hmmm. I had flour, and God knows, we had enough wine to sink the Bismarck. I was sipping mine because I’d read that all the great French chefs sip vermouth when they cook, but I, not being French, and loathing the taste of vermouth, opted for a glass of Pinot Grigio instead.

But the juice? The roast wasn’t tough, but it wasn’t exactly swimming in juices. SO. I put rubber gloves on, washed them thoroughly, picked up the roast, and squeezed into the gravy pan as much juice as I could. Which wasn’t much. So I cut a slash down the middle of the roast and squeezed again. A little more this time. My father was in the living room with his wine and a copy of TIME magazine and had no idea of the I LOVE LUCY cooking shenanigans going on in his kitchen. So I poured in some red wine, and I added the flour, and I went at it with a few flicks of the whisk and...oh, crap. This is all I could remember, and I prayed that it was enough. It probably would have been fine, and I would have just kept at it, except that my father chose at that moment to call out a completely unseen, out of left field question from the living room; “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”

At this point, gentle reader, I choked on my wine.

“Whaaaat?” I gasped (my voice rising about two octaves as I said it) while squeezing the roast for the last time. “What kind of question is THAT?” I snapped, (I have a habit of falling into a staccato Bette Davis kind of machine gun firing way of speaking when faced with uncomfortable conversations) sticking my head out of the kitchen, with the roast in my hands.

“Well, your Mother and I have been talking...what the hell are you doing with that roast?” he asked, shocked.

“Never mind. What kind of question is that to ask while I’m trying to make gravy?” I glared at him. He ignored my question, the roast obviously had all of his attention.

“THAT’S how you make gravy? By playing football with a roast?” he asked incredulously. He shook his and sighed, and went back to his magazine. "I hope you WASHED those gloves."

I turned my back on him as haughtily as I could, and stomped back into the kitchen and added some more wine and flour to the mix, forgetting how much I'd already added. I wasn’t really paying attention at this point, as my mind was too rattled by the direction this conversation had taken.

I finished whisking the gravy and went back out and glared at him again, my arms akimbo. “SO. Talk. What kind of a question was that?”

He smiled and snickered at my obvious discomfort. My father, since I was small, took great delight in my hair trigger temper and screaming furies since he alone knew that they never ran very deep. Although they upset many other people, they never did him, since he knew that for me, this was a way of venting, the way my brother played hockey or my mother played tennis, or he played golf. My release was always verbal and usually directed at him, rascal that he was and is.

Warming up to his topic again, he sipped his wine and said, “Well son, frankly, we’re worried that you’re coming up on forty and you’re still alone.”

(I should interject at this point and mention that my father is an Anglophile and one of the last of the Great Victorians. I suspect he and Lytton Strachey would loathe each other on sight, as Strachey was far more modern. My father has referred to my brother and I as "son" since were babies. I don't know if this stems from watching too many Ralph Richardson movies as a youngster, but it has given his speech a curiously affected and archaic aspect in character ever since. Most everybody else I know finds it charming, and it is, really, but I, being an unappreciative child, found it irritating and pompous. At times growing up, I wanted to quiz him to see if he even remembered our names, but then I remembered that he must, as he'd written enough cheques with my name on them to validate that.)

“So what?” I asked, shrugging, playing the belligerent child, “I’ve always been alone. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s not normal.” He shook his head, obviously irritated at my wilfull obtuseness.

“Says who? I think it’s normal. Why should I be shacked up with somebody I don’t love just to satisfy everybody else’s notions of normal?” I challenged. I could feel myself growing tense.

“Everybody else has somebody.” He said smoothly.

“Bully for them. Besides, what are you talking about? You don’t have anybody, and you seem alright to me.” I snapped.

“I was married for forty years.”

I mercifully resisted the obvious rejoinder, “And look how well that turned out.” As that was a little too disrespectful, and unfair, even for me. I knew full well, that my parents’ marriage, although over, was, by all intents and purposes, a very successful marriage, for a very long time. 40 years is nothing to sneeze at. I honestly could attest to that. But, it died, like even the best things do. Attention must be paid, Arthur Miller once wrote, and in this case, it wasn’t paid after awhile, and small cracks became big cracks, until finally the whole thing fell apart. It was a good lesson for me as far as lessons went. It taught me that you cannot take anyone for granted ever in a relationship if you want that relationship to stay healthy, much less survive.

But I hadn’t even ever got that far with anyone, and this was part of what he was addressing. I could tell it concerned him.

I took a breath and tried to give a reasonable answer. “I haven’t met anyone who loved me back the way I loved them. Or I met people who loved me and I didn’t love them. I’m always on the wrong track it seems.” I told him, thinking about it. In a way, it was true too. I was.

“Well, you know if you do meet someone, they’re always welcome here. Your Mother’s too, we’ve discussed that.”

My heart warmed suddenly towards him, as this was lovely to hear, and of course, I knew that already, but it’s always nice to be told. I realized, that this conversation between us would be a very rare occurrence among my friends and their fathers. A lot of them would all be quite jealous I knew. I felt very lucky all of a sudden to have him as my Dad, because I knew I WAS lucky. So many friends of mine I knew, weren’t so fortunate with their fathers, those that still had them.

“Now, let’s say you bring your fella home...” he began, sounding like Jimmy Stewart.

“FELLA?” I interrupted, wondering if he thought I was going to bring home some pipe smoking, Brooks Brothers type with Brill Creemed hair in a double breasted suit and a copy of the New York Times under his arm. On second thought, that didn't sound quite so bad.

“Quit interrupting.” He frowned at me, and up I shut. “Now say you bring SOMEONE home, let’s call him, oh, I don’t know, let's say, Dick.”

“WHAT?” I gasped.

“Dick. You know, short for Richard.” He looked at me, and shook his head. Would I just let him please finish talking, just once?

“Yes, I KNOW what the short form is, but I wouldn’t do that.” I protested.

“Do what?” he looked at me blankly.

“Bring anyone home named Dick.”

“Why not?”

“I just wouldn’t.”

“OK, but just for the sake of argument here, let’s just say you did, and...”

“Dad! Read my lips! I would not date a Dick!”

He paused, and looked at me steadily for a beat. “Are you sure you don’t want to rephrase that?”

I took a deep breath. "Fine. So I'm dating RICHARD and I bring RICHARD home. Then what?"

"That's my point. You haven't brought Richard or ANYBODY home. Ever."

"Well, that's because I obviously haven't met him yet, have I? Waitaminute, who the hell IS this Richard anyway?" I was losing it.

Only my father could do that to me, with his slow, lilting, halting speech, usually reserved for the mentally defective and most of his own relatives. This voice he'd used with me all of my life, all but guaranteed me having a screaming tantrum within two minutes. He never used this tone of voice on my brother or mother, if only because my brother spoke the exact same way he did, so it wasn't necessary, and my mother was a a quick-tempered intuitive genius, so he didn't dare try it with her. With me though, it was easy and irresistible.

"Never mind Richard," he sighed, "Lord, but you're literal. My point is, you're too picky."

"What? What do you mean?" I asked incredulously. "Do you want me to just shack up with some oaf who hasn't the brains God gave cheese? What? Just because according to you, I'm evidently approaching my best before date, I'd better grab some witless gob, so I don't end up alone? Why didn't you tell me this in my twenties instead of letting me go on about independence and freedom of movement and the like if you just thought it was all crap?" I was getting really irate.

"You wouldn't have listened then. You're hardly listening now." he said reasonably.

"I AM TOO LISTENING!!!" I shrieked, not listening. He looked at me, pityingly.

I sat down and took another deep breath. "Fine. So I'm picky. So what?"

He put down his wine and looked at me hard, for a minute. He sighed. "I'm being serious now. Are you listening?"

I shook my head miserably, feeling the way I did when I was eleven and about to be lectured for driving the lawn tractor in the front yard, and breaking the tractor's axel on the only tree in a two acre radius.

He sighed again. "You have a very large chip on your shoulder, and you have a superiority complex that will lead you to ruin if you're not careful. I know you're very well read, and you know a lot, but you don't know everything. You're critical, judgemental, sarcastic and it's next to impossible to get you to listen to anyone else's opinion but your own. You think you can read people at a glance the way your mother can, but you can't. She is....gifted, and while you're very perceptive, you're nowhere near in her league. And I'm telling you now, that if you don't alter yourself before it's too late, it WILL be too late, and you'll end up alone. You're too much like I was, thought I knew everything, and nobody could tell me anything. Well, I didn't listen to your Mother, and look what happened. Oh, it's probably my fault, she begged me to get you out there working as a teenager, being more responsible and less lazy and Lord knows, I probably should have pushed you more. I blew smoke up your ass for years, and told you how smart you were, but I thought I was being supportive, the way my parents never were. I think I pushed you too far the wrong way, and spoiled you rotten as a result, and now it may have made you unbearable for anyone else to deal with."

At that point, something Nora Ephron said in Heartburn flew into my head, "Princes aren't born, they're made."

"Thanks so much." I said. My eyes were stinging. "How nice to know I'm a complete failure in your eyes."

He rolled his eyes as he usually did at my melodramatic speeches.

"Don't be such a melodramatic ass, of course you're not. You're honest, intelligent, generous, responsible, caring, artistically gifted, and you have lots of friends. You're shitty with money, but what the hell, you can't have everything. I'm just saying this because it's all I can see getting in the way of your being happy with somebody. Don't be alone if you can help it. Don't settle for just anyone God knows, but don't let pride get in the way of you being happy either." He laughed suddenly, "You don't want to turn into that old lady with the wedding cake, do you?"

I laughed aloud through my tears at the image. He was referring to Miss Havisham (as played by the great Margaret Leighton) in Great Expectations, the Michael York version we had watched on television years ago, when I was a kid. Burning wedding dresses and screaming old ladies and ruined wedding cakes had given me nightmares for weeks afterwards. I suddenly realized, that no, while I probably wouldn't turn into Miss Havisham, I was acting almost exactly like that hateful Estella, and for no good reason either, except that I thought of myself as being too good for most of the people I met. Pip saved Estella from her own pride in the end, but who was there to save me? Handsome, shaggy blond unselfish British boys were rare if not impossible to find in Toronto. I had a vague feeling that I would have to haul my own white satined ass out of this fix myself. It was a lot to think about.

Screw it. I'd think about it tomorrow, in the words of another doomed literary pain in the ass bitch.

I got up silently and walked back into the kitchen, lost in thought. I poured the gravy into a gravy boat, set the roast onto the carving rack, mashed the potatoes into a large bowl, and set it all down on the lovely dining room table (awash with Christmas decorations all over it) with a huge bowl of green beans, freshly buttered. I went back to the kitchen and emptied the wine bottle into my glass. I then turned towards the living room and bellowed, "DINNER!!"

My father nonchalantly drifted into the dining room, admired the table, gave me his warmest smile and said, “This looks excellent. Fine job, son.” He sat down, and loaded his plate up, and said, “Now don’t get steamed because your mother and I were talking about your love life, or lack thereof. We’re just concerned. It’s what parents do...I could never have had...” and at this he paused, staring at the gravy boat, or rather, INTO the gravy boat.

“Son?” he asked calmly. Too calmly?

“Yeah?” I snarled, chomping on a roll and sounding like Edward G. Robinson with a toothache.

“Why is the gravy purple?” he asked, smiling.

"What?" I asked, unbelieving. I took the gravy boat and looked down into it. It was purple. Or more accurately, bright lavender. I was so preoccupied by what my father had told me that I hadn't even noticed it. Shit. Too much wine and flour had produced a colour they would kill for in an old ladies’ beauty parlour. Margaret Leighton would have LOVED this. This evening was one for the books. Even Chuck D wouldn't have believed it. My father was lecturing me on dating Dicks and Dickens novels and now my gravy had turned purple.

I downed my wine in one gulp, looked over at him and shrugged. "Don't look at me. It's Dick's fault."

ONLY CONNECT

It isn’t often you get to meet your heroes. I don’t anyway, for the simple fact that most of mine are dead. It doesn’t mean I don’t adore them however, for as Harvey Fierstein so memorably put it, “It’s easy to love dead people; they make so few mistakes.”

From the moment I first read NOT WANTED ON THE VOYAGE as a callow teen, I immediately, all-out admired, and recklessly adored Timothy Irving Frederick Findley, as so many did and have done since.

Unlike the rest of my idols (and I have a lot) I did meet him once, however briefly, and the impression he made has been permanent and everlasting.

If you’re like me, and you have a reverence for the past bordering on the obsessional, you’ll find that most of your heroes are defunct, which of course, makes meeting them rather difficult. This time however, I got lucky, for when all of this occurred, Findley was still very much alive and at the height of his creative powers, with two more novels and another play left to write.

I wrote about this once before. Years ago in fact, and I sent it to a famous conservative Canadian newspaper, which sometimes printed essays of this and that, but they didn’t print mine, although at the time I thought it was quite printable. So I sent the article to Findley, to see what he thought, and he was as sweet and encouraging as ever, saying, “Oh, don’t worry about it, they’ve never liked my stuff.” I should mention at this point, that I had already written him an unabashed fan letter, stating somewhat brashly that a lot of my heroes had unfortunately passed on, and that I was damned if I was going let another minute go by without writing one of my favourite writers to tell him what his work had meant to me. He in turn, was kind enough to write back a wonderful reply, (which I still have, it’s among my most treasured possessions) saying that it wasn’t often that writers received such a “stunning” explanation of a reader’s enthusiasm for their work.

I was thrilled and I’m sure I went around with a smile glued to my face for days. Timothy Findley thought I was stunning!

It was only some years later I realized that he might have meant “stunning” in a, “Were you hit in the head with a brick, kid?” kind of way, since the original letter I wrote, ran I think, some nineteen pages and contained probably only four commas and two periods. I don’t think I had even been formally introduced to semi-colons or their ilk back in those days. In that light, “stunning” could be seen in an entirely different context. But looking back, I don’t think so. It may have been the world’s most ramblingly incoherent letter, but it was heartfelt, and if Findley had a gift for anything, it was seeing through to the heart’s truth. He knew genuine appreciation when he saw it, as he saw so much else.

I wrote him two more letters, and then laid off, as I realized he was swamped with work, and I didn’t want to irritate him with near-pathological fawning if I could help it. I thought, “Oh, I’ll write him later, when he’s done his next book.” Sadly, by the time I got around to writing that letter, he was gone. I just had the impression he would last forever, but alas...anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

It was the summer of 2000, and I was working part-time in one of the city of Toronto’s heritage building/museums, at their reception desk. This job was interesting, the people were quite sweet, and part of my job was to read newspapers, all three Toronto dailies every day to see if I could find any references to the City of Toronto’s Heritage and Museum sites. I was scrolling through the Star (it’s amazing how depressing the same news can get day after day, even told with three different political biases) and one day, I noticed this little squib in the Arts section, that Timothy Findley, along with the actress Allegra Fulton, was going to give a reading, and do a book signing of his new play “Elizabeth Rex” at Theatre Books later that afternoon. I realized that being finished at 5:00 p.m., I could run uptown and actually catch a sight of the Great Man, (although I’m sure he would have scatologically rejected such a description) and maybe, hope of hopes, actually get to meet him! I'm never impetuous or impulsive that way, and being generally lazy besides, I don't usually act so impulsively on anything. But I had a sense in the back of my mind that I HAD to do this, I couldn't tell you why. So I closed up shop at five on the dot, and was out the door by five-oh-two and dashed uptown. I don’t think I have ever moved so fast across Toronto, before or since.

I got to the store, and it was already packed with people. The play’s original director, Martha Henry was there, with a graceful beauty and charm Grace Kelly might have envied, as was Veronica Tennant, radiant in violet I seem to remember, and with a beautiful smile, and a host of other famous friends who were there to see a rare Findley performance.

Fortunately, I was a film and theatre junkie, an ex-actor and a wannabe writer, so I had no problem looking innocuous and indifferent, and stood there aside, looking fixedly blasé and bored, as befits all pretentious insecure gits when surrounded by their gods. That is, I looked that way until I saw HIM walk into the room. Forget blasé, I practically melted and turned into a gibbering mass of goo right there on the spot.

His thick head of hair was silver, matched by his beard, and he was dressed all in black, with black slacks and a black jacket, under which he wore a black knit turtleneck. He looked so effortlessly chic, that he made everyone else in the room seem quite drab and provincial. He was so dapper, so elegant, and, I realized to my surprise, at that moment, evidently highly displeased. If the word saturnine ever needs a pictorial definition, I can think of no better image than that of Timothy Findley that afternoon in Theatrebooks. He was glowering. More than that, he was obviously furious about something. He was polite, charming and gracious with the people around him, but at a distance, I could see, clear as daylight, that this lion was as ferocious as they came. I edged closer towards the counter where I heard some muttering in a small claque nearby. Oh, the books that he was to sign hadn’t arrived yet. They were in Winnipeg. Ack. For a writer at a booksigning there could not be a worse happening. His ire was therefore, perfectly understandable.

I watched him, fascinated, from behind a copy of Lillian Hellman (another angry writer)’s plays, and it dawned on me that this was where the fury in so many of his novels secretly lay. It was there under the skin. It was as much a part of him as his wit and graciousness, and his legendary generosity was. As I had only seen him on televised interviews, I had never seen it before live, and it shocked and fascinated me at the same time. Onscreen, he had always carried himself as your favourite benign and witty uncle, the one who always twinkled, and whom you immediately worshipped, even as a small child. Now there was another side to him you never dreamed existed, but you realized was as much a part of him as his voice or his laugh, and it suddenly made him dangerous, which was as thrilling a realization as it was frightening. But you remembered suddenly, that he was in fact, a very good actor before he became a writer, and that he had spent many years in the interim playing Timothy Findley for the public. He knew how this game was played to perfection. And now the books weren’t here. If this were the court of Elizabeth Tudor, (and possibly Windsor) heads would no doubt roll.

There was a sudden flurry of activity, and suddenly Bill Whitehead was in the room, dressed in a bright orange sweater, and light beige jacket, as sunny and bright as Findley was dark and glowering. He was laughing and chatting with everyone and effortlessly dispersed the tension in the air with an airy wave of his hand. He led someone over to Findley and suddenly, there was merciful laughter. Quickly, the owner of the store came rushing in to announce that the books had been held up at the airport shipping department, and were on their way, and should be there any minute. Relief and perhaps even mild applause greeted the announcement, and we were all directed upstairs, where the author and the actress Allegra Fulton were ready to give their reading.

I stood at the very back of the room, far out of sight, standing, but I didn’t mind at all. I had a perfect view, and I could see Allegra Fulton, (who reminded me of Judy Davis crossed with an eagle, with a dash of Leslie Caron thrown in for good measure) standing in a white blouse, a wide black skirt, facing Findley, smiling expectantly, her dark curly hair loose about her shoulders. Findley made a small, but charming speech, which cracked the audience up, and he explained that he was to play three parts; Ned Lowenscroft, an actor, William Shakespeare, a playwright, and a bear. Ms. Fulton was to play Elizabeth Tudor, a Queen of England.

The performances were rollicking good fun, and as enjoyable as they were, I wondered if the audience realized what a rare treat they were watching; that this now famous Canadian writer, an ex-actor who once acted with Ruth Gordon, Alec Guinness and Vivien Leigh among others, was now acting again, for perhaps the first time in decades, a role that wasn’t just a variation on himself. Acting a role is not the same as giving a reading, and even though this reading was comprised of only a few scenes, it was evident that this again was an actor at work, not just a writer. I wondered, watching him play so expertly with Ms.Fulton, if he missed this, and I marvelled at how well he played each part, so delicately and with such confidence, especially and including, the bear. I suddenly wanted to haul him away and ask him all sorts of questions, “Do you miss this?” “Do you regret giving it up?” “Does writing make you as happy as this seems to?” but of course, I didn’t, although I secretly wanted to. Especially this last question, for he did indeed, seem so happy up there, on that makeshift proscenium. For I knew something about his demons, the same as you do. I’ve read about them, and he told us about them, and I wondered, endlessly wondered, if he found the secret, the secret that every artist wonders about, along with those other agonizing questions of being good enough, of being happy in such an agonizingly alone place, of even deserving to be happy about being an artist, where so much of the self goes into making something that may or may not succeed. How does one survive that inferno, I wanted to ask. How did he, Timothy Irving Frederick Findley survive it? For he had survived it, survived years of demons and self-destructive behavior to give us so many novels, plays, essays and another beautiful play of haunting brilliance (it was to win the Governor General’s Award that year) and another two books and one more play in the two years before his death.

The performance was over, much applause ensued, and we were told that the books were downstairs waiting for us. I slipped downstairs quickly, and grabbed a copy. It was a beautiful hardcover play, and its touch was a delight. I never fail to marvel at the touch of new books and I know I cannot wait to read it, for I have missed seeing the play, having neither the funds nor wherewithal that summer to get to Stratford to see it. A lifelong regret, as the cast had some of my favourite actors in it, including Brent Carver.

Findley was seated now, surrounded by books and well-wishers. Amazingly enough, lots of people brought a lot of his older books to sign. For some reason, I thought this rather presumptious and rude. But, he signed them graciously, smiling and talking to each person. All of a sudden, I realized, I was next in line.

Oh my God, I thought, I’m going to have to talk to him. Then a weird thing happened; like stagefright, only in reverse. I was starstruck. I literally could not move my legs. It never happened before. I’ve met famous people in my life and never been bothered by the fact that they were famous. I once spent forty-five minutes yakking away with Mia Farrow about Charles Dickens and never even broke into a sweat. But there I was, in front of a man I revered, rooted to the floor and my tongue evidently had turned into a twenty pound flounder. He looked at me and smiled kindly, and asked me my name. I looked at him dumbstruck, for he had the bluest eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen. I think these eyes, (or eyes like them) are what Toni Morrison must have had in mind when she wrote The Bluest Eye. They were like cobalt. I suddenly realized he was waiting, and my face burned red with embarrassment, and I could no more than whisper, “Trevor.” He signed the book with a message (still indecipherable to me all these years later, and I think one day, I am going to meet Bill Whitehead, and have him translate it for me) and as he handed me the book, he reached across the table, and took my hand suddenly and held it for a second. He looked me right in the eye (and I swear, I heard my heart literally skid to a thudding stop at that point) and smiling, said, “Thank you SO much for coming down here this afternoon.” I could feel my face flushing still further, but I nodded, and I barely managed to get out, “Thank you.” I slipped away to the side and hid by some shelves dedicated to modern dance, as he turned to the next person.

Garson Kanin wrote that Edith Evans once said that when you leave a theatre after seeing a play, if you don’t walk several blocks in the wrong direction, then the performance has been a failure. Now I’m quite certain that a reading and a book signing in all fairness can hardly be held up to the standards of say, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, but as I left the store with people milling about on the sidewalk in the late afternoon sunshine, I stepped absentmindedly off the curb, and was nearly run down by a speeding grey Lada. It barely missed me, and didn’t even slow down, but I didn’t mind it at all, in fact, I barely noticed it until afterwards, even as strangers were rushing around me, asking me if I was alright. My mind was still back in the store, listening to that mellifluous voice saying, “Thank you so much for coming down here this afternoon.”

When Timothy Findley passed on, barely two years later, I was bitterly shocked, as so many Canadians were. He was only seventy-one years old. He seemed so dynamic and strong to me that day at the book launch. Surely someone with that much fire couldn’t burn out in less than two years? But then a strange thing happened to me about two years after he died. I saw a picture taken of him that afternoon at the reading. He was seated and Bill Whitehead was with him, as were several others. Findley was smiling and jovial, and looked quite happy, as he should have been, as the reading had (after the books arrived) turned out to be a great success. But he looked fragile and small in that photo, not at all like the vigorous and powerful character I remembered seeing that afternoon. As ridiculous and melodramatic as it sounds, I remember thinking that there was a sheen of death around him in that photograph. Maybe it was because he was dressed in black, I don’t know, but there was something disturbing about the picture. The camera had caught a mortality there, a fragility that the naked eye hadn’t seen, or perhaps couldn’t, or wouldn’t see. It shook me, that photograph, and I wondered if he was aware of it at the time, this Merlin of so many lives. I wondered if perhaps THAT was the reason for his earlier displeasure, because he sensed that time, for him anyway, was not to be frittered away and wasted.

Still, when all was said and done, I was grateful that I got to meet him, and that I got to write him. I told him in one of my last letters about one of my favourite mottos in life and he wrote back something that summed up the whole experience of the reading for me; “I cheered when you quoted a phrase that is central to my own lexicon of encapsulated philosophies: Forster’s only connect.”

And thank God, (and doubtless, TIFF) I did.