While in Cheltenham my eldest called to give me some very sad but not totally unexpected news: a dear friend of the family, Chantal Lau Kwen Wing, had passed away. We knew that her cancer of the lung had spread but her emails were positive and full of hope. She was under the care of a Maltese doctor in Surrey, where her small family had been living for at least 25 years. She was full of praise for him. Where there’s life there is hope, the cliché goes but at 63 Chantal left us after putting up a brave fight.

I knew, without their having to tell me, that the world of those closest to her, her husband Jacques and their daughter Julie had capsized and that the entire arrangement of their happy existence was more than just disrupted. That happy chapter of their life was now closed. Things would never be the same again. It certainly was not of their choosing. As they were fervent Catholics I hoped that they would find comfort in their faith in these very dark days, comfort which I had not found. There was one consolation: Chantal had seen Julie graduate in medicine and a few days before her death, her daughter was registered as a doctor.

Trying to digest this bad news I called her husband Jacques. Her last days were spent in their home together with their daughter Julie, with hope of a cure as each day passed, fast disappearing as Chantal faded away, he told me, obviously heart broken. There are certainly no words of comfort anyone can give on such occasions. I knew how close this couple were.

Chantal came to teach at the School of Administration, University of Mauritius, in the late ’70s. Her main subject was auditing. In Mauritius it was well known that if you wanted a good auditor you engaged a Chinese.  Her husband Jacques was CEO of Gilbey’s where they made copious amounts of gin and rum, sugar cane being one of the main exports of Mauritius. He was both an accountant and a chemical engineer having graduated in Britain and was very well qualified for this enormous undertaking.

 The Chinese make up three percent of the multicultural population of Mauritius but form the second wealthiest group on the island. Hardworking, diligent and intelligent there were some three of them lecturing at the School of Administration.The head of school at the time was Chinese. I got on with all of them. Today, Sino Mauritians are mainly businesspeople and hold a virtual monopoly on retail trade.

I remember taking Chantal round to meet members of staff at the School of Administration on her first day, almost 40 years ago. Our hearts were young and gay and the world lay at our feet.  There were just five women lecturing at the time and Chantal with her smiling face, warmth and friendliness was a very welcome addition. We immediately took to each other and she told me she had done her accountancy studies in Vancouver. After one year there she was awarded a scholarship and, her studies over, she returned to Mauritius to practice accountancy. Later on most of her numerous family was to emigrate to Vancouver where they live to this day. 

Our friendship and very quickly that of our respective husbands went from strength to strength. We often spent weekends together and days by the beach, renting homes where you could fish from your bedroom and where fresh fish was available at your door.

Back in town the men spent hours discussing the political situation and their respective jobs over the phone. Chantal and myself met almost everyday either at faculty board meetings, a variety of committees  or in our small canteen to hear the latest scandals.  Some of our colleagues gave us plenty to talk about. There was a handful who contested the general elections and there were a couple of MPs too, on the teaching staff. Raj, whose office was opposite mine, always had constituents waiting behind his door, asking for favours I suppose. ‘Crossing the floor’ or ‘switching,’ as it is called here, was not unusual. As one can imagine, their teaching suffered, as, if truth be told, it is almost impossible to do two demanding jobs well. It is their students who bore the consequences of their ambitions.

After our last meeting in London I knew Chantal was not well.  Her lung cancer had spread she told us.  My daughters and myself had last seen this lovely and loving couple two years back  when we had eaten a large quantity of delicious Dim Sum with them in London’s Chinatown.   Over email and the occasional telephone call she never grumbled. She remained optimistic, positive. She was only 63. How could we consider death in this age of cures and huge strides in medicine? 

Death of course, has become sanitized, brushed under the carpet. We rarely see a dead body except on television.  As the photographer Rudolph Schafer has pointed out, ‘Many people today don’t know what a dead person looks like. In modern society we are separated from the event of death… we are constantly bombarded with newspaper and television pictures of catastrophes and wars – violent and extreme pictures – but we diffuse one of the implications of those images – our own mortality – with the thought that nothing so extreme can happen to us.’ 

I caught the early coach from Cheltenham, on the day of my dear friend’s  funeral. I found it impossible to digest the fact that Chantal was no more; that we would never see her again. She had been present at the wedding of both my daughters. My girls childhood memories in Mauritius are strongly bound to this couple. We had land next to their lovely house with its huge garden. Our plot was exactly the same size and on it we were going to build our dream home. They kept on urging us to go ahead and build especially when we sat in their garden full of tropical trees and flowers. They were very fond of our two girls, and in turn, our girls of them.  Their Julie was born ten years into their marriage. In February 1987. My husband was to die in May of that year.

It rained on the day of Chantal’s funeral. This was appropriate. Some of us present at the church of St Gertrude were wearing a heavy heart. It was a beautiful and well organized ceremony. This little family are active in their parish and have never let go of their faith.

I found their daughter Julie’s eulogy about her mother very moving. I too, would have liked to go up and spontaneously say a few words about the Chantal that I had known but I was very tearful. For these friends belonged to what was probably the happiest chapter in my life and I felt, very strongly, that with the passing away of Chantal that chapter was now closed. Jacques told me later: ‘I feel that this is now the end of my life. I am no longer afraid of death either.’ I entirely share those feelings.

Jane Ng, a young family friend, played Schubert’s Ave Maria most movingly which brought the tears out from hiding once more.

Fr Gerard Bradley, said a few, thought provoking and well chosen words. I later told him I had fallen out of love with God. ‘Well, I hope you will fall in love with him again!’ he admonished, perhaps not quite believing that anyone, on the threshold of the church could possibly admit to that and say it aloud.

Jacques’s message was transmitted to us in the programme which was distributed to those present at church. He wrote from the heart: “I met Chantal when she was on holiday in Mauritius in August 1976. She is the sort of person who you cannot help loving. Within days we were in love, engaged by the end of the month and married three months later. She then returned to Vancouver to complete her studies to become an Accountant. During those six months I spent a fortune on daily phone calls and made three long visits to Canada. Chantal then followed me back to Mauritius without any question or qualm to support me in eventually achieving the ultimate goal in my professional ambitions. She has been a loyal companion for 37 years and in that time never picked up an argument and I mean never, always on my side. She was totally supportive and trusting in shaping our future and family and shared the same traditional values. Chantal is also a simple person. She is modest, thrifty and hates waste. She never felt the need to live it up or show off. Do not be fooled by her size. She can be as tough as they come. She has beaten cancer once and is known to have driven a car with a broken hip. In the last two years, she put up a courageous and fierce fight for her life against cancer yet again with great dignity while keeping a brave face with a smile, never complaining till the end when her last words were ‘I’m OK’. She looked peaceful, unscarred by the battle. Some remarkable lady. I wish we could have grown old together. My consolation is that I accompanied her along every step of her gruelling journey and was always there for her when she needed me.’

Allow me to quote that wonderful writer, Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim: ‘As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable characters upon the face of a rock.’ And perhaps yes, ‘There is more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of…’. Chantal – definitely one of life’s enhancers.