One of the tapestries I’d seen as a girl had been a Don Quixote in Buckingham Palace. Tom had later purchased a painting of the same scene: the soldier on his horse, a windmill in the background and his trusty aide, Sancho Panchez. It dominated the wall in the living-room with its mystery and promise, the romance hinted at in purple and grey tones.
Tom had told me that the soldier was a nobleman who’d set off on adventures of chivalry. He’d told me that the writer, Cervantes, had written: ‘Arms, my only ornament–my only rest, the fight.’ I’d asked him what it meant, and he’d said that it means the fight must go on – there is never rest. I’d sensed the faithful concord that the two horsemen seemed to have, side-by-side in their quest of adventure and spirit, and guessed there would be a battle at the end of it. There always was, it seemed.
J March 