Why I’m getting married at 76 by Prue Leith
It’s the last thing she expected, but the cookery legend feels like a love-struck teen
At 76, I’m getting married, and I am giddy with the joy of it. It’s deeply embarrassing for my children, but they have been great, professing delight (or perhaps relief?).
I’m not sure my son’s reaction of ‘Well done, Mum!’ as though I’d caught a prize fish, was quite what I was expecting. But he’s right. John Playfair is indeed a catch. John describes himself as a short, greyhaired, knock-kneed coffin-dodger, but, to me, he’s a dream come true. Except that I never dreamed I’d fall in love again.
the first time I married — to the writer Rayne Kruger — 42 years ago, it was in the Harrow Road Register Office in London and the lift wasn’t working. I was 34 years old and nine months pregnant and had put on 64lb (the baby only weighed 6lb 4oz, so that was
90 per cent extra me). I puffed my way up to the third floor to be greeted by the registrar: ‘Don’t worry, dearie,’ she said, ‘I’m also a midwife.’
Our three-minute film of the event went off to kodak for processing. When it came back, it was some pensioner’s reel of a day- trip to Skegness: old people climbing into the coach and gulls mewling in the rain. God knows what the pensioner thought of our nuptials.
this time will be in a register office, too — in Edinburgh, where John comes from. there’ll be no family, no wedding reception, no meringue, no fuss, and I’m trying to be suitably cool.
But I can’t stem mounting excitement. I’ve bought a mighty expensive jacket by designer Beatrice von tresckow, which I am wearing on the previous page, booked a pre-wedding lunch in an oyster bar and dinner the night before at tom kitchin’s Michelin-star place in Leith. So no nonsense about not being seen before we say ‘I do’.
I cannot believe John wants to spend the rest of his life (or, let’s be realistic, the rest of mine) with me. At parties, he’s surrounded by a wall of adoring fiftysomething women.
And no wonder. A retired clothes designer, he’s funny, generous, wellread, interesting, practical (last winter he built an adventure playground for all our five grandchildren) and mighty attractive. ‘Does he have a brother?’ is a frequent question from my single girlfriends. It’s hard not to look smug.
there is a downside. At 69, he’s younger than me, something I’m not used to. Rayne was 20 years my senior, and thought of me as a spring chicken. now I’m more an old duck with a turkey neck, forever trying to disguise my age.
THE first time we went for a walk with friends, we yomped up a muddy hill with me trying not to puff and pant or get left behind. then, crossing a main road, I stepped on an undone boot-lace and went flat on my face.
I had three distinct thoughts before I hit the deck: thank God there isn’t a car coming; Oh hell, I’m going to take the skin off my hands; and Oh no, John is going to think I fell over because I’m old.
I do fall over a lot. he’s had to pick me up after I hit the deck on a main road while holidaying in Buenos Aires. And when I pitched head-first down the stairs at our local Cotswolds station.
Once, I sat on a rustic bench at the Asthall Sculpture Open Day in Oxfordshire, and it exploded into sticks.
he’s mad to take me on. I’m definitely a liability. In our first two years together, I had two new knees and an operation on my back and he’s cheerfully pushed me in a wheelchair to far-flung gates at heathrow, and sailed us through Customs all over the world.
After eight years of widowhood, I’d got used to looking after myself and making the decisions. to me, occasional patches of loneliness were a fair price to pay for the freedom to eat yoghurt for supper, to be in control of the tV remote, to have a crumb-free bed.
I was working hard and, I thought, one day I’ll spend my old age reading all those books, listening to opera and teaching my grandchildren to cook.
though I did sometimes think a walker would be good — someone to fix the boiler, do the driving, empty the bins — the last thing I wanted was a husband.
So love did come as a bolt from the blue. Five years ago, sharing a car back from Yorkshire with a friend, she insisted the driver drop her off first because she was late for a dinner party at her sister’s. She invited me in for a drink, and I realised at once that I was a gooseberry.
there were two men in the room and in the corner was a candlelit table for four.
I chatted to one of the men, who said he lived near me, and we politely agreed that maybe, when I got back from a trip to the toronto literature festival, we’d go for a walk.
I thought nothing more of it. But a couple of days later, as I was leaving the house with my assistant Francisca and the dog, John arrived on a motorbike to leave me a note with his phone number, suggesting that walk. he thought I was in Canada. ‘Why not come with us now?’ I said.
So we tramped round a couple of fields, Francisca tactfully deciding she had urgent business elsewhere, while we talked non-stop. I remember thinking, if I ask him in for a drink, will he take fright?
he didn’t, and back at the house time flew. I remember sitting on the sofa, glass of wine in hand, watching John walking about, talking nineteen to the dozen, mostly, I think, about Alexander the Great. I was barely listening. I was thinking thoughts unsuitable for a septuagenarian.
I had two weeks in toronto, and not a day went by that I didn’t think of him. I was like a teenager, hoping for that call. nothing. But at last, at last, a text: ‘When will you be back?’
Our first date was for an avant-garde play I had tickets for. I was nervous he’d hate it.
Love feels the same at 70 as at 17. Same anxiety, same longing, same excitement
But he loved it, and I sat next to him wondering if the pressure on my thigh was deliberate or just because the chairs were narrow and I was too fat.
Johnknew what he was about. he proceeded to woo me with homecooked suppers. I was mighty impressed by the food but also by his bravery. Most people are terrified to cook for me lest I give them marks out of ten.
First he gave me fillet steak from a local Dexter beef farm, and second, haggis and neeps. how could I resist? (Footnote: he’s not cooked for me since. Why is that?)
I do feel wonderfully looked after. When I’m a so-called ‘celebrity speaker’ somewhere, he’ll drive me there, lie to me about how good my talk was, and get me a drink as soon as I’m off stage. When I’m writing with a looming deadline, he stays away. he’s taken on the maintenance of everything from tractor mower to coffee maker. The truth is he’s as happy as Larry in overalls and wellies, chain- saw or hedgetrimmer in hand. As I write this, I can see him through the window and the rain, digging a drain with a hired mini-digger.
We both feel we have a new lease of life, stimulating each other to do things we’d neither of us do alone. John is always up for anything: he says he’d go to the opening of an envelope.
We travel a lot, driving all over the UK, generally to literature or food festivals, with a few days tagged on to see the local sights.
Abroad, we stay a couple of nights in a posh hotel paid for by whoever I’m working for, then hire the cheapest possible car and wing it. We like long road trips best, ideally three weeks or so, staying in B&Bs and visiting the remotest villages we can find.
We both think it’s a sin to be bored. Which does sometimes mean exhaustion, getting lost, and nowhere half-decent to stay.
It’s a miracle we’ve not had a quarrel, not even in Brazil when we ended up in the wrong town at midnight, staying in a motel I can only think doubled as a very functional brothel: disposable linen, white-tiled walls, ceiling and floors perfect for hosing down.
I’m sure our contentment is a lot to do with our age. he’d have found me intolerable at 25 — with my driving ambition, bossiness and obsession with food.
And I’d never have put up with the walls of books on the floor, his need for a daily gelato, his insistence on visiting every single museum he encounters, even though it’s sure to be stuffed with more bits of pots, arrowheads and lumps of quartz.
For the first few years with John, I had not thought of marriage. But then, strangely, I began to want it, to need to tell the world, make a public declaration. I didn’t dare suggest it. Rejection would have been unbearable. I never thought he’d suggest it either. But one day he did.
I’d like to say he got down on one knee, with ‘Will you marry me, darling?’ But, no. We were in the wilds of namibia, laughing at a baby elephant trying to shove his way to water through the legs of his family, when John said: ‘Do you think we’ll still have this much fun when we’re married?’
I confess my heart missed a beat. I thought he didn’t mean it. Just a slip of the tongue. So I didn’t react beyond a ‘hope so’.
It was several days before I had the courage to ask: ‘Did you mean it about getting married?’
‘of course. But let’s not have a big wedding. We could disappear somewhere and tell everyone afterwards.’
Love is the strangest thing, and it’s hemmed round with misconceptions. All the world loves a lover, that’s true, but we assume those lovers to be young and beautiful. Geriatric love is embarrassing; geriatric sex unthinkable. And I agree. I’m embarrassed by it. But also thrilled to bits and ridiculously happy.
AnDwhy shouldn’t we oldies be happy, fall in love, feel that rush of unadulterated happiness again? There’s nothing in the world like it — and it’s the same at 70 as it was at 17. Same anxiety, same longing, feeling sick, excitement, same everything.
There’s one question I can’t quite answer. Why are we getting married? nothing is going to change, we’re not setting up house together. We already have the perfect life: he lives a mile away, so sometimes I have sleepovers with him but mostly he stays with me.
I don’t have to put up with his clutter (he files everything on the floor) and he doesn’t have to suffer my bossy tidiness.
If we are not on holiday or out on a jaunt, we seldom spend the day together. he disappears before I’m up and might reappear for a quick lunch, after which I don’t see him until it’s time for a drink and supper.
I take trouble over these, often inventing a cocktail (I’m trying to empty that wretched cupboard full of strange bottles accumulated over the years), and then, according to him, I open the fridge and make magic with left-overs.
The knowledge that he’ll be there at seven punctuates my day with frequent shafts of pleasurable anticipation. That’s love I guess. Which is also, I realise, the banal answer to the question, Why get married?
We just want to be Mr and Mrs. It’s about happiness and commitment, to have and to hold, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health. Somehow, for all the trashy novels and soppy films, those words still do the business.
PRUE LEITH’S seventh novel, The Prodigal Daughter (Quercus £19.99) is out now. HAVE you found love later in life? Write to inspire@dailymail.co.uk to tell us your story.