Todd and Giulia visit

I was thinking as I turned my mind to this meeting with Todd who I’d first met in my 20’s, that he was the last remaining connection with this part of my life. Others have either died or fallen by the wayside. While I welcomed this unique element, I also felt nostalgic and sad to realise this time had gone, and like so many geographies now, would most probably not be seen again. St Paul de Vence, South of France. Billy Thune Larson, a remarkable eccentric Russian Norwegian woman, who lived in the medieval ramparts of this fortified town. I cannot remember how I met her but I can remember introducing her to John, who both got on well, being of similar age, similar rich back story, similar foreigners in this same geography. Probably with time on my hands, I used to drive up to St Paul and ‘do’ her rampart garden for her, creating steps so she could access it, I planted rosemary on the ledges, hoping their roots would keep the structure in place. (Enough digression, I must get to the point where I stood up Todd at Grand Central Station years later – i fact I had completely forgotten)

Billy introduced me to Todd, more around my age (20’s) than John (80’s) and who’d come to St Paul to visit his relation Toto, a friend of Billy, Italian and probably also eccentric. Todd had arrived foot loose, and somewhat board, he says now. From my photographs I see I must have driven down to the south of France, after staying a while with Jenny and Jean-Louis Gonnet in Bihac restoring a painting there. When it came time to leaving John, I must have suggested Todd drove back with me to England. This was our adventure. He took me through Bourgogne wine region, where we stayed either at Nuits St George or Gevrey-Chambertin, names which meant nothing to me then, that have a meaning now through that journey. He opened up that story.

I saw him intermittently in London, once I remember a jolly evening launching his Opera Kareoke, perhaps with Leslie, once or twice to his mothers creative poetry music soirees in her high ceiling flat in Victoria, once to hear Randal his brother conducting at St Martin in the Fields. I’d completely forgotten about meeting him in New York and standing him up. He’d migrated there, and eventually married there, but at the time he said now, he was lonely and had looked forward to our meeting. Why did I stand him up? He thought Bob was the reason. I’d gone out with Bob, perhaps on our way to walking the four corners, Bob who had a tendency towards jealousy.

Snape 2025. As Todd walked up to me this September day, I recognised him easily, so little physically changed, and as back then then felt the same ease with him, as we walked the dogs along the Snape Marshes towards Iken. Our conversation dodged in and out of our pasts, jig saw pieces gathering: edges and corners from our first meeting, tasting again that taste of being board, as only a 20 years old is, board and wanting life around a corner, not realising we were making our memories, now recalled along Suffolk fields, puffy clouds, boarder collie dogs running ahead. He was here in Snape with his sister, to see an exhibition of paintings, the Summer Contemporary 2025, containing work of their friend, x. The exhibition was displayed at over various locations in Snape, from the Hoffman, to the Wynch, to Gallery 21, where I dallied with friend Meryam, also exhibiting there. (Lawrence also had 2 drawings of trees, which I missed). In a music shop Todd played one of the harpsicords, reminding me that back then he played an organ in a French church we visited randomly.

I would never have come to this concert, just around the corner from me, were it not for Todd. Imogen Cooper, one woman on the stage, 90 minutes , no music score. Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas. (Bob had introduced me to these). Composed when Beethoven was stone deaf. It reminded me of the film 32 pieces when Glen Gould rehearsed in his head the prospective concert he was about to give, no piano being provided for a rehearsal. Extraordinary to listen to and I was full with admiration, felt very humble and grateful to Todd for this unexpected window.

‘You choose to sit not seeing the vista across the marshes’, I said to the man who asked to sit at a table I occupied, awaiting Todd and Julia. I see it every day, he said, intriguingly. Have a crisp, he added.

Giulia, Todds sister, immediately reminded me of her mother, naturally as she was probably the age her mother was when I met her 40 years ago. Giulia was at a fascinating turning point in her life, not only had her mother recently died in April this year, she had just sold her 25 year old business in Italy, had time on her hands and an unexpected lack of need to attend to a project. She was looking out.

They both came to visit for a lunch and walk around the land. In memory of our meeting all those years ago, Todd had found a bottle of Nuits St George in a posh Aldeburgh wine shop. Who cared, it was somewhat over-oxidized and opaque, it was delicious and a tender gift.