It’s never too late to grieve those who have a special place in our lives.
If I write this tribute somewhat belatedly to Cassandra Jardine it is because I have only just discovered on the web that she died just under two weeks ago while wondering how she was.
My search for some update news on her had been prompted by the discovery that an article in the Telegraph I had expected would have been just up her street on the celebration of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebration in Battersea Park, had been penned by someone else. When the truth hit home, it was not unexpected-although the sadness it provoked in me was no less.
It was in Battersea, in my favourite neighbourhood cafe, that we had last met almost exactly a year ago. ‘Cass’ for that is how I called her, had contacted me through facebook, after years during which our personal and professional lives had led us in different directions. A cousin of hers –an old male school chum-wanted to get in touch, she wrote. I wrote back and suggested she and I meet up as by then I had read about her illness and wanted to know more.
A couple of weeks later she emailed when the opportunity had come up. She was interviewing Harry Hill who lives in Battersea and looked forward to meeting me if her deadlines allowed. “Should be fine, unless work suppers it,” she wrote. Thankfully, on this occasion, it didn’t.
The first time I met Cass some 25 years ago she was also fussing about deadlines for she was always a conscientious journalist as well as an enduring friend. On the kind recommendation of Antony Beevor, she had generously agreed to take me in as a temporary lodger in a house in Wandsworth she lived in before her marriage. At the time, I was writing my first book-The Land that lost its Heroes- and the house I lived in was full of builders, two young children, a wife, and a nanny from Argentina where I had just ended a five year posting with the FT covering the Falklands war and its aftermath.
Cass offered me a necessary daytime haven while she went off to work at her then employers, Business magazine. We became friends during the chats we’d had at day’s end, over a late tea or drink, and she introduced me into part of her circle of talented writers, publishers, and actors , including her future husband.
I remember her humour, the interest she took in her subjects, and the energy she threw into researching and writing about them. Only once when I was her lodger did she flag-when she collapsed in bed for a couple of days with flu, and I tried my best to keep her spirits up with conversation and an array of drugs purchased at the nearest chemist.
At our last, more recent meeting, she was clearly struggling with a far more serious illness and yet she gave me no sense of submission or self-pity. She was disarmingly open and calm about her chances of survival, and talked courageously about how she intended to go on with her work and her commitments as a mother and wife. Far from being self-obsessed, she wanted to know about the latest book I had written. I felt humbled in her presence as I gave her a signed copy , in tribute to her friendship. She said she looked forward to reading it on her summer holiday, then checked her phone text, and said she had to dash back to the office but hoped to arrange supper at home soon- after the vacation. It was the last I saw of her.
A few weeks later, and with the promised supper yet to be arranged, I got in touch with her again by email with a story suggestion for an article I knew would interest her about Council plans to cut the Battersea Park police force. She wrote back saying she had just got out of hospital and was barely able to read “after a brush with pneumonia and septicaemia.” I replied immediately: “Dear Cass- Bad timing on my part-so sorry. take care. much love x j.”
I write this with a huge sense of loss for a courageous friend I should have found time and space to see more of. My prayers are with her husband and her children.
For those who haven’t read it- this is the link to a fitting tribute from her last employer, Telegraph Newspapers. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9298392/Cassandra-Jardine.html
