Remembering Aileen

I knew her a half century ago. We were all in our 20’s.  I have only ever known her by that name – AILEEN. But she told me when we finally talked once again, forty years later, that she had changed her name. It was in a new hemisphere, in a new country, in a new century.  She was now Virginia.  The name “expressed who she had become and better reflected her roots and her family”. The artist had become a counsellor and woven a new life in London.  Because I knew her so long ago, please forgive me for not calling her by her preferred name. I mean no disrespect. It’s just that, who she was then, the artist (still finding herself), screening her silks, weaving her textiles and sketching her visions, way back in Melbourne in the 1970s, is how I remember her best.

Aileen, like me, had left Australia on the eve of the new millennium, although I didn’t know that then.   And, like me, she was not running from something, but she was rather running towards something – a new start, a new adventure, a new self, in a more comfortable skin. The irony of all this, is that I did not know until 2024, two weeks before her death, that she was here in London; that we walked the same streets, perhaps sat in the same chair in the same restaurants (at different times), or even across from each other. Neither of us would ever recognise each other’s aged eyes – if ever we glanced around a café as we had a coffee – it would be too unexpected.

On the day of the news of her death, I struggled with the thought of me walking these same streets and not knowing that she had walked here, left her footprints and gone. The realisation that I hadn’t known, made me cry. I cried for us both; I cried for old age, disease and ageing and life and its relentless move forwards.  It stirred in me then, as it does now, the value of thoughtful remembrance and celebrating those who have enriched our lives.   We are such tiny specs of existence, here for a blink of time.  We should pause and remember.

It is ironic that our 40-year eventual catch-up happened because of AI and WhatsApp. A technological synchronicity occurred in the cosmos at that point in time.  It brought not two, but three people together. It is the closest that I have come to believing in fate and the power of life and happenstance to right perceived wrongs and to correct the balance, if we open ourselves to it.

How modern and changed we have all become.  Yet how connected we still seem to be on other more human levels, even though we don’t necessarily see it sometimes, or perhaps even want it.  But we need it.  Invisible threads bind us. 

The extraordinary nature of how ordinary events unfolded made me want to write and share this at her memorial. In remembering Aileen, one year after her death, I want to reflect on who Aileen was to me at two points in time, for that is all I have, and I want to honour that.  I am sad that I did not have more. 

I first met Aileen somewhere in Carlton in the 1970s. I don’t remember where. It was most certainly with Steven, and it might have been in Shakahari Restaurant, or in some noisy Italian restaurant in Lygon Street. I was drawn to Carlton. I was born there. Inner city Melbourne and especially Lygon Street was always my centre of gravity and my home growing up. Aileen loved it too. We were both always attracted to period houses, good food, good conversations and strong coffee.

I remember shared houses in Carlton – “Prue Acton once lived here!”  I was impressed.  Victorian Iron lacework on period houses, wrought iron gates and fences, kilim rugs and antiques – the smell of furniture polish.  It was important. 

I remember the smoking, the social and good-natured drinking and the laughter – but above all, the sophistication and gentle care.  On one occasion, I woke up at 4.00am to meditate and Aileen and Steven passed me going up the stairs as I went down.  Aileen stopped and said, “you shame us all”. But not true.  She had been talking and doing what she loved to do – staying up, chatting, and enjoying life.  Very late nights happened quite often.   

Stir fries and restaurant leftovers, brought home. Garlic, ginger – perfectly chopped – and chilli filling the air; the clatter of a wok; the perfume of fried rice; the warmth of good company.  The guilty pleasure of Tim Tams!

These were the days of Keith Jarrett’s Köln Concert – the notes hanging in the air, like the smoke of the Nag Champa incense, that often seemed to accompany it – drifting, suspended and caught by the light. Aileen loved the music so much, that she asked that it be played during her funeral service.

Edinburgh Gardens, Fitzroy – Aileen and Steven Celebration (with me on the far left)

I remember (me) laughing when shelves of collected Spode china tableware fell to the floor in an explosive collapse.  We all thought that a plane had hit the house, and when we ran into the kitchen, a single teacup was circling on the tiled floor.  There we no survivors from the three-shelf collapse, apart from this cup.  My laughter at this point was shocking.  To this day I regret it.  I was young and stupid, and had no idea how much Steven and Aillen valued this treasure, that they had carefully brought back from England.  After more than 40 years, I apologised to Aileen for my laughter.  She said, “I don’t remember but thank you for your apology anyway!”   So kind, even at the end of her life. 

I remember the books being read; the feel of 1920s art deco, 1930s art nouveau, Pre-Raphaelites and romantic art, and William Morris – things that moved her.    Sylvia Plath and Anaïs Nin being discovered and read aloud, along with Sherlock Holmes readings from Steven.  They were discovering themselves during these years.  I was the interloper. 

At odd times, Steven would get out his violin and I had started playing the recorder and we improvised an Irish-type ditty that started out as fun but quickly turned into an earworm that Aileen couldn’t get out of her head.  It was slowly driving her mad.  We were eventually banned from playing it!  I can still remember how it went.  It was dangerous, ever to even talk about it…

Over the years, I came and went.  I was a yogic, itinerant, transient hippy.  They were both exceedingly tolerant.   I slept on their floors in houses and flats – I remember that flat above the tailors in Nicholson Street (or maybe it was Rathdowne Street), where the washing machine flooded the fabric store below.  Aileen’s shock and guilt!  There were always other visitors, arriving unannounced.  I remember the meals and the conversations, which were sometimes intense, but always important to Aileen. 

Memories of early morning breakfasts in Tiamo Carlton – eggs on toast.  Aileen’s glee.  Two pieces of 1” thick, crusty Italian white bread, slathered in butter.  It had to be the white fluffy, crusty stuff!  Always!   All of us had to have it.  Tiamo – the smoke, the smokers, the clatter of dishes, the jabber of people, our voices strained to be heard over the din.   Simple moments of great meaning.  And as it turns out, still vibrant in my mind over forty years later.  Meaningful, formative times.

Her paintings, her jewellery, her beautiful silk scarfs and textiles were all hints of a talent being fed and developed.  I remember it most in that upstairs flat.  I also remember those conversations, about self-doubt.  She was her own worst critic.  Her modest and self-deprecating thoughts about herself were always on the surface.  She needed reassurance.  Always open, she would happily discuss it.  

When I talked to her about her art in 2024, she was dismissive about it and I asked her to send me pictures of her work and when I said that I loved it, and that she was so talented, she was so grateful to hear my praise.  It surprised me.  I said, “When you feel better, we must get together!”   I didn’t know the extent of her illness.  She said, “I would LOVE THAT!”

She told me last year that of all things, she found her greatest love in textiles – patterns, shapes and giving them expression were her superpower I think – one that probably eventually manifested in her expression as a therapist.  She always wanted to see the pattern and understand the thought and emotion in the people around her.   

Looking back at that point in her life, in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, I think that she needed more than just her art.  We talked about that a few times.  In the same way, I wanted and needed more from my own life.  I empathised.  But when you don’t know what is missing, it’s hard to find it.

Aileen – early days.  Smoking, social drinking and in deep conversation with someone – sometimes intense but never confronting.  I can see her face now.  Things that mattered.  Long conversations, that went to what she saw as the heart of things, deep into the night.  She wanted to get under the hood and had endless patience   Perhaps training to be a counsellor in London was what finally cemented things together for her.  It’s just a thought.   I know virtually nothing of that part of her life.  There is an airgap of over 40 years of contact for me.  I lost touch with her in the 1980s.  I also lost touch with Steven.

Friends come in many shapes and sizes.  There are those that you keep for life; they become like the musical score to a movie, always there and supportive. There are those that you have fights with and never speak to again.  There are those that you “outgrow”, and you just see less and less of, until it’s no longer there.  And there those that you leave behind because you become a warrior on a mission and you just lose focus on the friendship, and they fall to the wayside – it’s an accidental loss.

My loss of contact with both Aileen and Steven is in the latter category – we were just doing other (intense) things and email, and social media was not really a thing.  I was told by someone that Aileen was in Ireland.  I tried to track her down a few years back, without much success.  I have a terrible (some would say annoying) habit of trying to find those people that I have lost touch with over time – just the important ones.   The internet has made it easier to do that, but people don’t always want to be “found”.  I accept that, so I have learnt to proceed with some caution.

Just a little over a year ago, I contacted Steven on WhatsApp.  I didn’t know what he would do, but I thought it worth the risk of being “annoying”. We started a conversation about what we had been doing for the last 40 years and that conversation continues almost daily still.  I asked about Aileen and where she was and he said that she had changed her first and last name, which explained why I had trouble finding her.  I used AI to do a search and found her mobile phone number and took a punt that she was also on WhatsApp.  I messaged her.

She came back with the message “Who is this and how did you get my number?”  I had to quickly explain, because she thought it was a scam.  I told her things about me and finally there was, “OMG!  RALPH!  RALPH!!” There she was, the Aileen that I knew.

Over the next week, we exchanged messages on the days that she could.  She told me that she had previously been treated for breast cancer, and that it had returned; that she was hoping to see a Harley Street doctor the following week.  She didn’t really tell me just how advanced things were.

“I’m not ready to leave yet!” That was the only thing she said. It implied just how serious things were. We went on to talk about how great it would be to talk, face to face. 

Our messages went on sporadically throughout the day.  She apologized, saying that she was “very tired and had to nap between messages, but it was so good to catch up”.  We swapped stories.  She sent pictures.  I told her that I had lived in France for 10 years and was now moving back to Central London.  We talked about where she lived and her walks along the canal.

How do you condense 40 years into a bunch of WhatsApp messages?  We tried.

I asked her about Steven, and I asked if he knew about her cancer.  She said that she hadn’t told him.  I said that I thought that he would really want to know and could I tell him.  She gave me permission.  They started a conversation.

I can’t put into words what that contact over that week meant to me.  It was all too short, and she tragically died within the next 2 weeks.  Something quite profound happened to me.  Some of it has to do with her being the first of that group of friends of mine, from that era, who have died.  Some of it has to do with seeing someone in their youth and then again just before death and not seeing the middle parts.  It is like collapsing a life; like scanning the beginning of a movie and skipping to the end.  It all seems so short and so fragile and precious.  

Most days, I think of her.

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