We opened another bottle of wine – and immediately started to annoy each other: In his heart-warming new book, HUNTER DAVIES talks with disarming candour about finding love in old age. Here, he tells how he hoped his new romance would last for ever
- Hunter Davies talks about finding love in old age in his new book with lover Claire
- Love In Old Age: My Year In The Wight House is released on September 1
- Claire and Hunter aren’t together now but their relationship is honestly explored
One of our simpler pleasures since we arrived in Ryde is taking a ride on a Southern Vectis double-decker bus.
Anywhere, really. I like standing at the little bus station at the end of the pier, looking at all the buses lined up, ready to shoot off to all parts of the island.
When our bus eventually arrives, Claire and I always rush to get on first, then clamber upstairs to sit at the front, just like kids.
We each have our over-60s Freedom Pass from London, which amazingly works on the Isle of Wight. Oh, I do love anything free.
On this particular bus journey, we were heading for Bembridge, at the easternmost point of the island.
We got off before the village and walked along the coast, heading for the other side of Bembridge.
Since September 2020 we had been trying to walk the whole coast, but at the rate we go it will probably take us ten years, if we live that long.
Well, it’ll certainly take us that long at the rate I go.
When the tide is in and you have to clamber over the stones and rocks, it’s hellish for my poorly knee. It’s OK for Claire, of course. She is a fit young woman.
I began to tire and was dying for a coffee but could see only an empty beach ahead, as if we had been shipwrecked.
Even looking out to sea, it was all empty, no boats on the horizon.
It’s strange how, on a small island, you can sometimes feel totally alone in the world, as if you were on a desert island; but you know that up there, over the cliffs, there is life going on inland.
Illustration: Love In Old Age: My Year In The Wight House, by Hunter Davies, to be published by Head of Zeus on September 1
We then spotted in the distance, right on the shore, what looked like a beach hut — or might it just be some bits of colourful driftwood piled up on the beach?
When we got nearer, we saw it was a wooden beach cafe, full of people, with wooden chairs and tables, and little areas with flowers and plants and overgrown grass, all very natural and artistic.
It could have been somewhere posh in Cornwall. It was simply called The Beach Hut.
It specialised in lobster, crab and seafood platters. Such a shame it was too early in the day to have lunch, but we ordered coffee.
We then cut inland and walked through Bembridge, which has a pretty upmarket main street, then down the hill to the Harbour View Cafe, a place we love.
We managed to get a table outside and immediately ordered a bottle of Pinot Grigio. Claire ordered half a lobster — she knows how to live, and also how to use the nutcracker thing to crack the shell and get the goodness out.
I don’t like lobster. No, it’s not just the price. Lobster seems all texture and no taste to me.
So I had a hamburger, which I had forgotten I don’t like either, but the menu said the meat was locally sourced. We stayed quite late to finish the bottle and caught the bus home.
It had been a grand day out. So I don’t quite know what happened next.
We got home feeling thoroughly pleased with ourselves, opened another bottle of wine and immediately started annoying each other.
We had been bickering on and off about two subjects in particular over the past few weeks and now, before I could stop myself, I brought one of them up again.
Claire often repeats what her mother often repeated to her, that there are two main reasons couples have rows — money and sex.
I always say this is far too simplistic. And anyway, the two arguments we had that evening were nothing to do with sex or money.
Going over the delights of the day, raving about The Beach Hut, I said we must take my daughter Flora and her family there when they visit. They will love it.
‘No, you won’t,’ Claire said. ‘We won’t be here.’
Pictured: Hunter Davies who has written candidly on love in old age with his former partner Claire
She thought that when our children visit we should make ourselves scarce and let them have the place to themselves.
But why could I not enjoy the pleasure of being at home here with the family? If Claire was adamant she was going back to her place in London before they arrived, why couldn’t I stay for one night, to welcome them?
Flora was collecting her two girls straight from school on the Friday, catching a train and then the hovercraft.
I would meet them off the hovercraft, take them briefly to our house, where they could have showers and a drink, then take them all for a slap-up meal at The Duck restaurant, just five minutes away. What’s wrong with that?
‘You always think of yourself,’ she said.
‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘What about you?’ I then stupidly moved on to the subject of a set of new folding doors that she was desperate to have in the kitchen and had been researching for weeks.
‘The folding doors are not for my pleasure,’ I said. ‘I don’t want them. I know we decided you were in charge of the decor and furnishings of this house — but didn’t we agree that if one person was violently against something, the other would give in and we wouldn’t do it? Anyway, I don’t want the folding doors.’
We had inherited double glass doors into the courtyard but only one of them would open. This seemed fine to me, as the door that opened, the left-hand one, provided enough room for people to walk though or carry chairs out.
But Claire had got it into her head that it was vital to have modern folding doors, so the whole doorway could be opened up.
I said it was just a trendy fad and there was no need for them, what with the expense and the upheaval. Having the damp-proofing done was expensive enough, but that was vital. Folding doors are just cosmetic.
‘It will turn the courtyard into another room,’ she explained, ‘and while I am in the kitchen cooking or getting drinks, I will be able hear all the chat outside, which I can’t at the moment. It will increase the value of the house.’
‘B*******,’ I said. ‘You know what happens with all houses. New owners rip out everything and start again, following the latest fashions and follies.
‘I remember, when we bought our London house in 1963, Margaret and I ripped out all the fireplaces because we were putting in central heating.
‘Ten years later, we put all the fireplaces back. Folding windows, however trendy now, will not be the major selling-point when this house gets sold. Anyway, I am not selling. Ever.’
So on we went, arguing away. Claire says I get argumentative after a few drinks, which I deny.
Anyway, I had ruined a lovely day by raising two topics that had already been a source of discord between us.
My fault, of course. It usually is the man’s fault — not wanting anything changed, can’t see the need, can’t see what is worn, what is wrong and, of course, not wishing to spend more money, being a mean bastard. Which I am. I know that now.
This row was typical of most marital-style arguments. They are usually about trivial things but escalate into slanging matches.
And these piddling, annoying little things can grow bigger, fester longer.
I had rows like this with my wife, especially in the early days; and I am sure Claire had them with her past boyfriends.
Before bed, with us both still in a bit of a huff, I said, ‘OK, then, I won’t be here when Flora comes.
As for the doors, let’s wait another year. We haven’t had a full summer here yet.
A property with folding doors (file image) like the ones Hunter and Claire argued over
We don’t know what the courtyard will be like at the height of summer or even if we will see any summer, with all the overhanging trees from next door.’
So we went to bed, each of us still annoyed with the other, but I did manage to utter our mantra which Claire eventually echoed: ‘We are so lucky’.
ONE of the things about living with a new person is that you suddenly become aware that your self-image is not always how the other person sees you.
With age, you have become set in your ways, until you believe that how you behave is normal and sensible and socially acceptable.
But Claire has got it into her head that I can be bossy. She says my children probably think the same, as probably Margaret did. ‘Rubbish,’ I always say.
But, alas, I am beginning to think Claire might be right. I have become a Bossy Betty, as we used to say in Carlisle, which I never thought I would.
One of the things that rather upset me after Margaret died was reading something in her diaries.
She wrote a diary throughout her life — it amounted to about two million words. I have passed them all over to the British Library.
In her 1986 diary, she suddenly says, out of the blue, something that totally surprised me: ‘I wonder when it was that Hunter became a hustler.’
The word ‘hustler’ upset me. It makes me sound so dodgy, as if I’m a con man. If she had said I was ‘pushy’ I might have found it more acceptable.
I thought about it a lot. I had changed so much over the years since we first met at school, when I was a nervous, hesitant, self-conscious, shy little weedy boy, with so many chips on my shoulder — whereas she seemed born confident and middle class, even though we were from exactly the same background: council estates in Carlisle.
Over the years, I picked up some of her confidence and perhaps overdid it. Margaret believed in luck being something that happened to you — both good luck and bad luck.
I believe you make your own luck — keep putting up ideas and one of them might stick; keep the balls in the air, some might land the right way.
She maintained that when bad luck came, you could do nothing about it. Just prepare your mind and accept, be stoical. Which is what happened when she got cancer. From which she died in 2016.
We also had the trivial rows, the domestic squabbles, which Claire and I are experiencing now we are living together.
In the early stages of my relationship with Margaret, when we were courting, both still living in Carlisle, with me as a student and Margaret still at school in the upper sixth, trying the Oxbridge entrance exams, we had the most appalling rows.
‘It’ll never work,’ she used to say. ‘I will just make you unhappy. I am not good for you. We had better split now. Goodbye.’
This often happened out of the blue, when we were walking and talking, apparently happily, then it would all pour out.
She said we were just too different. I was outgoing and optimistic and sociable, thought the best of everyone, whereas she was clinical and pessimistic and antisocial, saw things far too clearly and darkly.
‘Don’t be daft, lass,’ I would say. ‘I love you, that’s all that matters, so stop twining on.’
Then she would take me through the sort of person she really was, analyse herself so coldly and realistically that I half began to think it was true, that we were totally unsuited.
She said she never wanted to get married and never wanted children.
‘The world is a horrible enough place as it is, without bringing more children into it.’
‘Who’s asking you, lass?’ I would reply.
But after a few years, when we knew without saying it that we were together for ever, her outbursts lessened.
Marriage and children calmed her, deflected her demons. She also found success in her career and seemed content in the end — with me and with life.
Those early rows worried me at the time, her shouting at me for being stupid and not understanding her.
But just as quickly they faded and after a few days, I forgot she had ever thought or said such things. That is how I always cope.
Put nasty things to the back of my mind, tell myself they never occurred. That’s what happened after she had her first operation for cancer — a double mastectomy, when she was young, aged around 40.
This is a single mastectomy but Claire had a double mastectomy which was her first operation for cancer (file image)
Once she recovered, I wiped it from my mind. We never talked about it.
In the last decades of our marriage, I don’t remember any rows at all. I know I annoyed her by doing various little things.
I irritated her at breakfast by loudly scraping every last morsel from my muesli bowl, then wiping the bowl with my fingers and licking them.
She went mad, saying it was disgusting. I was never even aware I was doing it.
I am sure Claire would be equally furious if I did that today. But I cured myself. Thank goodness . . .
Love in old age, eh? It is bound to be fraught with health scares and the weaknesses and problems the years bring, but I tend not to think or worry about them.
I know and appreciate that Claire has been a brick, an angel, a godsend. She has looked after me so well in my times of need, seeing me through all sorts of health problems.
I first had heart trouble when we were in Portugal. I collapsed on a walk, suddenly could not breathe, had to sit down.
There were no pains so I thought it would pass, which it did, and I managed to walk back to where we were staying.
I remained fine for several weeks, then I had another mini-attack, feeling dizzy and out of breath while I was cutting the grass at home.
After a third incident, I went to A&E near my home in London and ended up having a triple heart bypass.
Three arteries were blocked, one of them by 90 per cent. Claire was with me all the time. She drove me to hospital and then visited me. My children all visited as well, but it was Claire who brought me home.
The Isle of Wight where Hunter moved to with his partner after finding himself besotted by the island
Later, I had a hernia operation. Again, Claire drove me there and back. Am I not a lucky feller to have fallen on my feet?
So, 12 months in, what were the highlights? It is ten out of ten for the house. And top marks for the island, as well. But what about the third new project we blithely embarked upon just a year ago?
Us. Me and Claire. We have been properly living together at last. How did that go? It was a bit late in life for two mature people — one of them very set in his ways — to attempt to live together full-time. And, well, there were some bumps and hiccups along the way.
Love at any age, old or young, is never without tensions, misunderstandings, annoyances, huffs and puffs.
You can behave like a teenager, however ancient you are. And it was hard on Claire for me to expect her suddenly to accommodate my desires and demands, whims and wishes.
We have gone back to London more often than we had planned, to check on our respective houses, both of which have a tenant in them.
Mostly we wanted to see our families and our grandchildren, catch up on family and local affairs and, in my case, return for work-related reasons.
And coming back again to each other and to our ‘love nest’ — a phrase Claire does not like but which amuses me — confirmed just how much we had missed each other.
Which, it seems to me, is a very good sign indeed. We hope our relationship will last for ever.
Adapted from Love In Old Age: My Year In The Wight House, by Hunter Davies, to be published by Head of Zeus on September 1 at £21.99. © Hunter Davies 2022. To order a copy for £19.79 (offer valid to 04/09/22; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
Postscript:
Alas, Hunter and Claire have now parted, since the book was completed a few months ago. The experiment of living together has not worked, but they love the island and the house dearly and hope to remain friends.
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