Green Wyvern Yachting Club
Henry writes of his last meeting with Cecil.
In mid-October this year, Polly and I visited Cecil for tea on our way to the river for a weekend of sailing. For a number of years now, we have only visited him once or twice a year, so we always approached Lilburne Avenue with a certain feeling of trepidation. Would he have visibly deteriorated? After all he vas growing old.
Upon this occasion we were very happy with what we found. Although Cecil vas noticeably more frail in a physical sense, there vas no change of spirit at all. He bustled around brewing tea and carefully presenting the buns which, on such visits, he always insisted in buying from the shop on the corner. He talked of his health briefly, then brushed it aside as a morbid topic unworthy of the visit; I talked of my health and various encounters with the surgeons, which seemed to amuse him greatly. He listened with interest as we related our activities in China. He asked about the McCann and offered advice about its uncertain future.
Then it seemed, both to Cecil and myself, that such drawing room niceties had gone on too long. decided to break the ice and proceeded to ask innocuous questions about the welfare of mutual friends. There followed fifteen minutes of vintage sneering, derogatory Cecil which reduced Polly and myself to almost helpless mirth. Cecil couldn’t see what vas funny so he decided to make another pot of tea. Boyhood photographs of Fakenham were wheeled out, there vas much laughter and mutual teasing and we took our departure. We left in good spirits and he promised to join us for a Sunday lunchtime drink in the Top House at Reedham if he felt up to it.
He must not have felt up to it, for he did not join us at Reedham. Indeed for the next few days, it seems, he did not feel up to much at all. He felt more and more weak and eventually he felt it necessary to contact the hospital and he asked Chris Way to take him in for examination. As he entered hospital, he died. So, by a curious quirk of fate, we were the last people to see Cecil as we all remember him.
At the funeral, this fact vas to me a sense of great sadness. I was unable to stem the flow of tears and Tony’s marvellous oration made things even worse. Yet the funeral did the job. At the wake, my very recent meeting turned into a source of joy and pleasure. It has been wisely said that funerals are not for the deceased but for the benefit of those left behind. In this respect Cecil’s was a great success, and he would surely have been pleased.
HI, 1990