Binia, Goodbye!

A farewell to Binia Tymieniecka King. On Friday 14th October, along with her nearest friends and relatives, her husband Bob organized an event at his house in Argyle Road in West Ealing to give a final salute to Binia . He had asked freinds to come in with something glitzy and colourful and sure enough some of them looked resplendent. Sarah had an absolutely gorgeous light, almost see through, kaftan and Alex wore the most sparkly trousers. There were many fascinating people there of all ages who had attended her events and had shared their lives with Binia's. This included her brother and his family, and her first husband with his new family, and Bob's own family too. There was a good spread of finger food and plenty of alcohol, although I stuck very much with just the red wine (5 glasses, or maybe more). However a little snort from some white powder did not go amiss. For the rest it was all hugs and sweet chat, as people swapped stories about Binia, some even claiming that her harsh no nonsense lectures had saved them from suicide. We also caught up on each other's past as close friends and lovers from a past forgotten period often do. I reminisced on how she had illustrated the front cover of my erotic novel with little amoretti flitting around the tower of Lambeth Town Hall displaying their wings and and their chubby bottoms. As the drinks continued we remembered the parties, the naughty games of charade, the raunchy poetry competitions, running naked around the garden. It all came back. Not to mention Binia's brother mark and his wife. Binia had normally found her brother somewhat pompous, no doubt reinforced by his military career. Still it was good to see him there.

Bob asked me to prepare a eulogyof her life, and so I did. That was a bit scary considering the mixed company involved and the possibility that Binia's daughter might be there. (She was not). I read the eulogy tremulously, stumbling eventually over the words. It took 10 minutes, I think. It was listened to in total silence, punctuated by the occasional laughter which was quite unnerving. at the end there was huge applause and later on in the evening, constant congratulations from those who attended. So here we go.

"Binia’s first arrival in England as an 8 year old orphaned girl must have resembled that of Paddington Bear. She had been born in the little town of Golczewo in North-Western Poland on 20^th March 1948. All she got from her father was a surname; she never met him. She was brought up by her mother Stasia, who was of aristocratic birth, but was left abandoned by her remaining family in Poland; nor was the Communist regime in Poland, ruled by Stalin, sympathetic to people of her class. When the terror eased in 1956 and the borders to the West became more open, her mother applied and received visas for herself and her daughter to visit her brother in London. But then, tragically, she developed a brain tumour and she died. Binia, still only 8 years old, was left isolated and alone in Poland. However, her uncle arranged for her to come to London after all, as her visa was still valid, and that’s how she found herself here, having to adapt herself at such a young age to a new family in a strange land, whose language she did not understand.

She lived with her uncle Bohdan Tymieniecki, a war hero and a born raconteur, and his wife Joanna, and their son Mark. Initially she was allocated to go to a Polish day school run by nuns, however her uncle changed his mind. He saved Binia from the nuns and, just as important, he saved the nuns from Binia. Eventually she went to Notting Hill School where her artistic talents and wide-eyed curiosity about the world began to shine. She turned up as well at Polish Saturday school in Ealing, and to us boys she was a revelation. Grinning from ear to ear, and with a sparkle in her eye, she had no problem settling in and becoming a class character. Unlike all of us, born in the UK, she had come from that mysterious country behind the Iron Curtain called Poland that we only knew from books and from our parents’ stories. She was the real thing and with a much higher standard of Polish than any of us. Soon she would get all the leading roles in school plays and Christmas shows, encouraged by her knowledge of Polish and her ebullient personality. She also joined the Polish girl guides, enjoying the camping, the adventures and the opportunity to impress the boys with her charm and her athleticism. Eventually Bogdan and Joanna adopted her in 1960 as their daughter and she took her new parents’ name Tymieniecka. Her new mother’s mother was Mrs Beck, widow of the last pre-war foreign minister of Poland, although their relationship was sometimes a little stormy. Her aunt in Canada, Theresa Tymieniecka, a university professor of philosophy, was famous for her clandestine platonic love relationship with Pope John Paul II. It was quite a family.

Of course, she was still brought up in all the Polish traditions. I particularly remember Easter Mondays when, as teenage boys, we roamed the streets of Ealing carrying buckets of water and attacking the homes of Polish families with daughters of our age. In accordance with Polish folk tradition, their fate was normally grim. We would wangle our way into their houses, often with a nod and a wink from one of the parents, and we would then rush upstairs to their bedrooms, drag them out and toss them into a bath of cold water. With the Tymieniecki family it was not so easy, so we laid siege to the house. Binia defended herself with buckets and a hose pipe from the front window, and in our attempt to get round the side of the house we would get drenched by Mark who was on guard on that side. We caused such a ruckus that the police were summoned by a worried neighbour. We were told to put down our weapons straight away, but Mark wasn’t having it. He kept tossing water at us blindly over the side gate, unaware that the water was landing on a police officer. In the end his father had to tell him to stop before we all got arrested. Bogdan explained to the police about this savage barbaric Polish custom and as soon as the puzzled policemen had left, we leaped inside and grabbed Binia kicking and screaming and tossed her into the bath.

She had her boyfriends of course, all of them handsome, and the pick of the brood. She was a tomboy too, loving adventure, as well as being beautiful and bright. She led a happy life honing her artistic talents as a painter, sculptor, and photographer by attending the Arts College in Coventry. She spent 2 years in the early 70s at the prestigious Royal Academy of Arts where she gained an M.A. in environmental media. More by luck than design, she landed the job of lecturer and headed the Film Department at Portsmouth Polytechnic for 3 years. She married Peter Smith, while still quite young, and they had a daughter Romana, bright and pretty and full of promise. Although Binia and Peter later split up and Peter was married again with Rebecca, yet, somehow, they retained a friendship that lasted to the end and both shared responsibility for their daughter.

Binia put her cinematographic experience to good use by doing film projects for television, starting with a ground-breaking new film about independent new artists in the Soviet Union. She contrasted the half-hidden clandestine world of the Moscow artistic underground with the official Soviet monumental art of propaganda, although to her both were equally exciting. A second film about Phil Spector, the eccentric and quite violent music composer and inventor of the wall of sound, was funded by Channel 4, and was particularly successful. It became hot property many years later when it was one of the few independent sources on Spector after he was put on trial for killing his girlfriend. There was a third film, also for Channel 4, about the music critic Albert Goldman, but she was let down at the last minute by Goldman refusing to be quoted, and she had to improvise around him but without his presence.

By then she had met and married the lovely Bob who had acted as her film cameraman for most of her film projects. Binia now had to take increasing care of her adopted parents through their final years and had to take a step back from her professional career. So, Bob was her financial support, driving minicabs when he had no film work. She still prepared screenplays and kept herself busy. They had a son, Sandro, a rosy cheeked little lollipop of a boy, placid and charming with his own artistic talents. He attended the liberal Bedales School in Hampshire. But one terrible day Sandro went down with what appeared to be flu but turned out to be meningitis. Within 24 hours he had died, before his parents had even been aware how serious his illness was. It was a terrible shock, a period of black despair for them both, though it was an unforgettable sight to see all those weeping bewildered schoolfriends turn up at Mortlake for the cremation, with their flowers and tributes and little poems of remembrance, as they then accompanied his ashes to a commemorative plaque by a tree in the school grounds.

In later years, Binia concentrated more on painting, especially her water colours. One characteristic of her paintings was her tendency to intersect the serenity of her seascapes with the threat of a storm cloud or her portraits of flowers with something ominous, like a rocket, or a slug, which implied the ephemeral nature of all beauty.

But she also enjoyed the company of younger visitors both at the Chelsea Arts Club and here at  Argyle Road. SAnd it was here that she held court, like a queen, tapping away on her tablet, refilling her whisky glass, scattering cigarette ash, and listening, advising, perorating, to the sound of Bulat Okudjava, or Chis Rea, or the Beach Boys or the Pet Shop Boys, as we, her courtiers, male and female or in transition, huddled around her, absorbing her pearls of wisdom, her artistic opinions on modern painters, or arthouse films, or classical music. She had her strong views on individual politicians too, but had short shrift with anyone supporting Brexit. We all shared with her our successes, our failures, our problems, our heartaches, our despair, and let her reassess our trials and tribulations in a proper, mostly, positive, perspective. Sometimes, as courtiers, we might fall out of favour with her, especially if we had not attended court for some time, only to be reinstated later, but her brilliant, funny, unconventional attitude to life, her rare, sometimes uncomfortable, honestly expressed opinions, as well as her broad tolerant attitude to life, was infectious. In her presence we often felt as liberated from the stifling conventions of everyday life, as she was. We were given free rein here to do whatever we wanted. If you wanted to sing here, or play an instrument, or tell a story, or play charades, or cast a magic spell, or run naked around her garden, it was all OK. And if you passed out you could sleep it off. She was also generous with her talents. For instance, she painted the front cover for my novel with cherubic amoretti flying around the tall tower of Lambeth Town Hall.  

She despaired of English winters and looked forward to her holidays in hot climates, especially in more recent years in Cuba or Mexico, where she and Bob, dressed like Adam and Eve, lapped up the sun, the tequilas and the flying kites. Finally, they chose to experiment with a more permanent move to Murcia in Southern Spain where they bought a sizeable villa and moved there with Boyo, their chunky chow-chow. Here they flew their kites on the beach to the bewilderment of local Spaniards, bought a boat, relished the local cuisine and, while Binia languished in the jacuzzi, Bob broke the stony ground and planted cacti in their extensive garden. We were all invited to travel there and to party with them, though only a few of us came, and later the dreaded covid played havoc with all our scheduled arrival plans. For most of last year there were difficulties in communication as she had lost the password to her phone, so nobody could connect with her.

Earlier this year, in May, after she collapsed into a temporary coma in Spain, she was diagnosed with cancer in nearly every organ of her body. Bob watched over her, first in the hospital, then at home, finally in a hospice, as she slowly sank into a form of semi-oblivion, but free of pain. She passed away finally from this restless life on the 21^st August, having given herself and us a master-class in how to live life to the full and to let imagination soar as high as her kite. Her ashes remain in Spain to be scattered later, in accordance with her wishes, over the sea.

Goodbye, sweet girl. You were unique. I still have your water colours in my flat to remind me of your talent, your humour, your vibrant life, your capacity to love your friends, but you will be in all our hearts and our memories for ever."