On March 17, 1966, while working at St Andrew’s College, Grahamstown in South Africa, thanks to absurd serendipity, I was invited to make up a 4 for Bridge by a kind colleague, who was taking pity on this stray Englishman who’d just arrived.  There I met this beautiful girl, a student at Rhodes University, called Alice Lochner.  She remembers I was wearing a pink shirt, and was puzzled (in fact, it had once been a white shirt, put accidentally in a wash with various red items); also that we partnered each other, scoring several grand slams. My focus was only on how lovely this Alice Lochner was.
 
Soon afterwards, I was passing 139 High Street, where Alice was living with a fellow final-year student, Ruth Prentice, and we greeted one another.  I won’t bore you with more details, only to say I proposed exactly two months later on May 17th, on Sir Lowry’s Pass. 
It’s somewhere one can see now from our Simon’s Bay holiday home.  We were married in December at All Saints church in Marlow, by my father, who’d used to be vicar there.  
Alice just transformed my life.
 
I cannot attempt to cover all aspects of my Alice. I shall be leaning on the eloquence of so many friends and family members, who have been expressing passionate accounts of what has always been her essence.  One wrote, “I think even as a very small child I knew warmth, acceptance and love when I came across it …” “Alice … you seemed to adore humans indiscriminately and be always sort of surprised and delighted by them.  You truly lit up a room …”  “she knew what JOY meant. When you entered the Wilkes house you could feel the warmth in every sense - even if you did get a welcoming head butt from Ollie in his nappy.”  “Vibrant, unrelenting positivity, creativity, her innate goodness that just shone through; her fascination with all that was around her”.  “Hearing that Alice is no longer with us, did not douse the flame she always lit in my mind, but made it glow even brighter …”  Suzi, her beloved niece, expresses it all so well:  “Alice, you always brought so much joy to our lives.  You have left your indelible, creative mark on the world - a constant artist who sketched, mosaiced, decoupaged, sewed, decorated, gardened and lived life full colour.  Your zest for adventure and love of family was boundless. You and Peter lived life to the fullest, and did not waste a moment of precious time.  I'll miss your sense of fun and humour, your joyous laugh, zany style moments and Aunty wisdom so much.  Hamba kahle, Tannie.”
 
Many comment on her beauty.  I don’t just see this in terms of how beautiful she was till the very last day - indeed her beauty seemed to develop and deepen through last week.  
Her beauty shone through her personality, and informed everything she did.  Our home and garden here in Steyning is perhaps the perfect illustration of how she took a prosaic space, just 10 years ago, and transformed it into a varied, changing series of complementary colours and textures.  Even now, as winter approaches, there is so much to love there.  And each room in our home - not just her study, which she has decorated so marvellously with pages from her sketch-books, but everywhere; the quilts she has made for our beds, the choice of Persian carpets, kilims and artefacts, everything everywhere balanced and right.   
 
Her artistic inspirations stemmed from her family.  Her sister Christine is an outstanding and endlessly creative artist, Alice always modestly rejecting her own talents as being in any way comparable.  
She was an inspired teacher throughout our marriage, in schools, colleges, even prisons, while developing wondrous skill in sketching and mosaics.  
 
Alice had an instinctive ability to make and keep friends from every period of our crazy lives.  She loved her two siblings, cherishing Christine above all others in the quartet of ‘wise women’ from South Africa, and loving regular contact with her brother Ludi, rejoicing that after his tragic loss of lovely Eleanor, he found new love with Susan. The letters and messages we have been receiving since last Thursday are so moving;  Alice loved you all, only seeing the best in people.  As for her children, grandchildren, niece Suzi and nephew Andrew, they all knew with certainty that their shared love was, as Amy put it, ‘infinite’! And how marvellously they have repaid it.  
Sybella, Giles and Ollie have sheltered, comforted and sustained me in their own individual ways; even before the worst thing possible burst upon us; CV their own children, also such contrasting people, have offered unique kindness and love.  Thank you, dear Susan, for reminding me of Alice’s whatsapp status as: “proud grandmother of 10 amazing grandchildren” - Casper is never forgotten in that number.
 
Alice was always so kind and patient with me.  She embraced and supported my restless, often crazy, peripatetic life, with never a complaint. We lived in 19 different homes in 14 different places and 6 countries - and when did we decide to have our first child, Sybella? when I was a penniless student, set on a teaching career abroad.  And our second, Giles?  
While Nikukari hospital in Tabriz, Iran, looked swish enough, it didn’t seem to be connected to any water supply.   Then Ollie arrived, to our delighted surprise, when we were living in a house at Rugby so damp that one friend commented that the living-room seemed to have a deep end and a shallow end.    
 
Even when she knew her time was becoming shorter, she always wanted to know that I was OK, comforting me as I would struggle to comfort her.  As summer faded into autumn, and she was obviously becoming more vulnerable, we would dwell on other happy periods in our lives, but she would always emphasise that we were still living rich and fulfilling lives, still in love with each other, even if our days were increasingly subject to constraint.  
 
I shall adapt some words from a dear friend, who was writing from her own experience of bereavement: from the very beginning, I have known that the most important thing is not that I have lost her, but that I ever had her at all, a great and unanticipated gift.
 
Every night for about the last six months, as we lay together in bed, and started to get sleepy, I would say these words: “my precious darling Alice, I will love you for ever,” and she would say those same words back to me.  Even on Tuesday night, 10 days ago, we exchanged them so tenderly.  But though I could say them to her on Wednesday night, by then she was drifting, and beyond words. 
 
And so I bid farewell to you now, my love, with these same words: “my precious darling Alice, I will love you for ever.”