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LOVE is as much absence as presence, we all know that. And in the end love must deal with the greatest absence. Arthur Kay, this place’s guru in matters concerning the Coconut Eating Crab (the malevolent deity who rules our lives on this lump of rock), was called to the clawed court last week. Arthur was 85, his ashtray was full, his bottle was empty and he keeled over on his own sofa. What better way to go?

But those of us left with the great absence love can become?

Myself, I’ll not walk so much as a pace in this life without him. There may be an empty space beside me, but that’s the thing about love: it can fill a space beyond time, beyond presence, beyond the vulgar constraints of tedious physics; love is in the spaces around you and in your head; love is what you choose to fill them with.

I will always say, as a reflex, our goodbye: ‘Be careful out there, love….’ After a particularly vituperative rant, I will always hear Arthur saying ‘Next on Radio 4, we’ll be discussing…’ When cross, for ever I shall threaten to write a stiffly-worded letter to the BBC. When disaster strikes, I will always hear Arthur’s flat, calm but so beautifully expressive ‘oh fuck’. Above me now as I type is a card he sent me with four severed heads on spikes, perched above a castle’s ramparts. One bloodied head is saying to the other the words Art so often uttered: ‘Well, so much for Plan A…’

There are roads I’ll never take without remembering the fantasies we constructed upon them: a stately home in a Cornish valley in which Jenny Agutter will for ever be playing snooker, a café on the Barbican where the coffee will always be fresh and the bacon sandwiches toasted to perfection, a greasy spoon near Buckfastleigh where Table 12 will always be free, a snooker table in Totnes awaiting our attention.

There’ll never be a rugby match after which I won’t want to pick up the phone and call Art. In my head I will spend days, as we used to in tens of thousands of miles of journalism on the roads of the West Country, in the role of Watson to Art’s Holmes, built on the foundations of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

As a journalist, I will never forget the feeling of covering a job with Arthur, one of absolute security. His skill was so consummate, so intuitive, that he could spot the instant when my shorthand was struggling to keep up with what the interviewee was saying. He’d slow things down with a question while I caught up and somehow, without looking at my pen, know when to hand back to me. And then…

He took some of the finest photographs I have ever seen in all my life.

I can see so many of them now. The haunted face, in extreme close-up, of a First World War soldier. The Leaf, hanging in our living room – a solitary maple adrift on a sea of bare autumnal branches but clinging on. Isabel’s bird on the wire in the setting sun. Neil Kinnock, hair flying, tension oozing from every pore of his rictus of a face before the 92 election. Princess Diana, so acutely aware of the fish-blood stain on her once immaculate dress. The churchyard on the front of my book, in which Arthur saw light as hope. French President Francois Mitterand, hand in coat in Napoleonic pose. Donald Sutherland, his face a picture of hatred at being photographed on set without the protection of his PR minders. The joyful golden wedding couple in front of their home of 50 years, still with no running water or inside loo. I could go on. And on. My God, he was a great photographer.

You’ll never know the whole of it, because he was also a lazy, contrary, stubborn bastard. He never filed negatives. He always said that as soon as he clicked the shutter on what he knew was a good photograph, that was enough for him. He didn’t care, really didn’t care, what happened afterwards. But take it from me: he was a great photographer. Great with a capital ‘G’.

Brother Pictures illustrated the point this week: Arthur was sent to take a photograph of a centenarian on the anniversary of some battle or other. He returned with an image of startling brilliance: gnarled, 100-year-old hands folded around the gentleman’s campaign medals. The editor howled in protest: ‘I’m not printing this! I want a picture of the man’s face!’ Arthur drew deeply on his cigarette, then addressed the editor: ‘Then you’re going to have a hole in your newspaper’.

His integrity was absolute. For example, doorsteps. Doorsteps: knocking on the door of a family stricken by disaster and asking how they felt and if they’d mind handing over a couple of photos of the disasteree. Mostly, Art was pragmatic. When asked to doorstep, he’d nod. He and I would then repair to a convenient cafe for a round or 8 of toast, and return several hours later with the sad news that the victims weren’t interested. But once, an editor asked him to knock on a particularly tragic door. A baby was involved. The editor summarised the situation and asked Art: ‘Why don’t you try and doorstep them?’ Arthur, calmly but forcefully, replied: ‘Why don’t you go and fuck yourself?’

But enough of work. It was never work to Art, anyway.

He made me laugh longer, louder and more painfully than anybody else I have ever met. Pissed, flagging down a bolting horse with his overcoat; missing his front door key; flinging open the curtains stark naked in front of a tour party; falling drunk through the window of the marital home and collapsing bloodied on the stairs as his wife said ‘is that you, my prince?’; flooding a city pub; asking a waitress for a 3/8^ths Whitworth so he could open a window in a hot restaurant; clicking the doorlocks shut on me and laughing as I tried to flee an armed farmer during the escape attempt of the Mars Bar Kid; sheltering, pint in hand, beneath the bar from a gentleman who had urgent matters he wished to discuss. I could go on. And on. Suffice to say that on days when I was at my lowest and blackest, Kathy would snap at me: ‘For God’s sake ring Arthur and cheer yourself up’. If only I could, now.

And then…

One day he pressed a cassette – remember them? – into the car stereo and said: ‘Listen to this.’

It was Paul Desmond.

Well. I’m listening to Paul now (he’s best known to the world as the writer of Take 5, the alto saxophonist who played with the Dave Brubeck Quartet for many years). For me, no week in 32 years has passed without Paul’s joyful melodic invention, his supreme artistry, his elegant beauty. And after more than three decades, more than a lifetime in Arthur’s case, we could still find things to talk about in his music. Art was moved to tears when I found some YouTube footage and passed it on. That shared love will be with me til the end.

Arthur followed the chaos of my life with love that mattered so much. A man who was completely at comfort with himself – and given his many appalling misdemeanours, that rationality took consummate skill – he wanted, so passionately, his loved ones to be at comfort too. Life’s not like that and life’s not all neat and tucked up, which he knew better than anybody, but Art tried his flawed best for those around him. Caroline’s just reminded me of his favourite line from his favourite film, The Lion in Winter: ‘What family doesn’t have its little ups and downs…?’ No, his great friend the late Tom Marsh described Arthur as ‘a vendor of joy’, and so he was.

He was also a rogue, a wastrel, a scoundrel, a lover, a drunk. But in the best ways. And whatever despicable deeds he perpetrated, you won’t find much hate.

He will now be facing the court of the Coconut Eating Crab, but without fear or recrimination. Years ago, when faced with life-threatening bypass surgery, he said to me: ‘Stu, if I don’t come round, after all these years of smoking, drinking and fornication I can have no complaints’.

He always expected The Crab to exact cosmic revenge: ‘You and me, Stu, it’s sea cucumber time. We’ve had a fucking good time, which is what the Crab hates most of all, so there’ll be judgment on us. I reckon he’s going to send us back as sea cucumbers, we’re going to have to spend the next life in the dark on the bottom of the sea doing nothing but ingesting and excreting.’

So keep an eye out on the wildlife programmes. If you see a – what? A herd? A flock? – no, a crab of sea cucumbers, Arthur will be the one off to one side, on his own, at an angle to the world, watching.

Look closely and you’ll see that this particular sea cucumber is shaking with laughter. Wait, and you’ll see that over the years, it’s joined by other sea cucumbers who all make sure they get very, very close together, waiting for the Crab to spring us. And one fine day, the Crab will. With a mighty ‘ta-daaaah!’ and a puff of smoke, a group of people will appear round a dinner table, cluttered with empty bottles and full ashtrays, laughing. We’ll all have another go, and tear the place up just as royally, just as joyously.

What a great man Arthur was. Now there’s a space where he used to be. You might think it’s an empty space, but it’s not. It’s a space absolutely packed, jam-packed, overflowing with love.

Be careful out there, love.

Footnote:

More formal obituaries can be found in this week’s Sunday Independent (www.sundayindependent.co.uk ) and on the Western Morning News site today at http://www.westernmorningnews.co.uk/Tributes-Westcountry-journalist-Arthur-Kay/story-27966963-detail/story  with a couple of Art’s pictures. The NUJ’s going to publish it online (www.nuj.org.uk ) and in the trade magazine The Journalist.

Much better is the piece by Art’s friend Guy Henderson, known to this place as Brother Reg Skoda. Guy, Art and I exchanged the brigadier letters for many years. Guy has written a beautiful piece – ‘long days having as much fun as it was humanly possible to have while remaining gainfully employed’ – which will be in his column in the Torbay Herald Express on Wednesday, online at www.torquayheraldexpress.co.uk