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A tableau, a picture; it was as if everyone froze for a moment in a situation that had suddenly become dramatic. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and September sunshine was pouring out of the blue way beyond the flying glass, pouring all over the valley below us, stoking myriad shades of green to incandescence. Perhaps I was looking at the prettiest corner of the prettiest country in the world at the prettiest time of year. There was nothing in that far-reaching view that wasn’t beautiful to behold. Beyond giant Wellingtonias and ancient cedars of the formal parkland, the sheep, the steep impenetrable wooded valleys and a whiff of Wales somewhere on the horizon. It was captivating. Even before the introduction of flying objects I caught an instantaneous but cast-iron glimpse of forever in the brief seconds it took for that glass to reach the ground.
Why had he thrown the glass? I wondered about it for a long time afterwards. Being as he is an artist and his father was an artist, everything in the house is aesthetically pleasing, considered, treasured. It was a nice glass. Perhaps it is a compulsion for artists to throw things. I recall Damien Hirst once threw a large watermelon off the top of a skyscraper in Manhattan and the slime took out half a block. I’ll never know why he did that, and this time too I couldn’t tell whether my host knew what was going to happen; whether it was a gesture of rebellion, stupidity, playfulness or boredom.
Something happens with boats as they get bigger. The bigger and more expensive they get, the further away they take you from the sea. Boats aren’t really for going anywhere in but are all about the sea, and if you want to really feel the sea, it’s best to sit in a tiny boat. The biggest pleasure boats, no matter how fantastic they are, even the ones with a helicopter parked on one end and a submarine dangling from the other, are just like bad hotels: the rooms are smaller and move around uncomfortably. It would be better to arrive at the desert-island paradises that all ocean-going gin palaces promise in a little dingy and camp onshore in a tent than float around in a five-star bubble disconnected from the world, waiting for the next thing to happen.
It’s easy to get swallowed by luxury. It can be a bigger obstacle to seeing the world than poverty. That kind of thing happens with aeroplanes and caravans, as well. The bigger and more expensive they get, the further they remove their passengers from the elements. And I’m beginning to wonder whether that is what happens to any person who becomes successful or important, too; whether the isolation of the hero is implicit in any success story.
Anyway, we were standing in front of the nicest house I’ve ever been in. It’s a castle really, as nice a dwelling as anyone could possibly conceive. The glass plopped on to the circle of soft grass at the centre of the carriageway drive, bounced twice and came to rest unbroken. My friend said nothing, just raised his eyebrows and smiled a deep smile. ‘What did you do that for? How did you know it wouldn’t break?’ my wife asked, astonished. He just carried on grinning. It wasn’t just a good glass. It was the softest, lushest lawn I’d ever seen. He hadn’t just thrown a glass. He turned an immaculate formal garden and a beautiful glass into mere playthings: which is, of course, all they ever really are. There stood a man completely and carelessly in touch with the paradise at his fingertips.
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