This is Peter
Record’s Eulogy. It is a celebration. Every event to
him was a story. He loved stories so I will tell it as a story
and the story I will tell begins on 19th March 1970, the day
of his birth.
An account of his first days, his first weeks is not relevant
here, but his birth parents didn’t want him for whatever
reasons of their own, and he was taken in by the Crusade of
Rescue, an orphanage on Ladbroke Grove in West London. He
was rescued from there later in 1970 by Bob and Pam Record,
and chosen by Jennifer Joy who had herself been adopted a
year earlier. His first proper home was in Fulham, South West
London.
Pam talks of a thin and rather nervous little waif. When Jenny
and all her friends were gorging themselves on cakes and chocolate
in front of the television, his adoring mother would put a
plate in front of him with three or four crisps tastefully
arranged and she would be delighted if he finished even that.
He loved food as he loved so many things – primarily
for the social aspect. He loved the presence and the warmth
of others. Never really ate very much, though.
The family home, where Pete grew up, was a very great part
of him, a part he carried everywhere at all times. It is an
institution. No guest, however briefly they stayed, has ever
forgotten their first visit. No understanding of Pete would
be possible without a description of that house, so it is
worth a brief sketch for those who haven’t been there.
It is a large enough house, tall and narrow. It feels very
lived-in and there is too much furniture – there are
chairs and sofas for people to sit on, and it is cluttered
with coffee tables and dining tables for eating and drinking,
and each bedroom has a spare bed in case the guest bedrooms
are full, which often they are. On the floor in the middle
of the sitting room there was a brown cushion, and it was
that, rather than his bedroom, which was his place within
the house. He would sit there for hours on end, chatting,
reading, and watching television, while his adoring mother
wheeled her little food trolley to and from the kitchen, in
the hope of fattening up her little master enthroned upon
his brown cushion. He was always very popular, and his friends
were always round at his, knowing they could get a good old
feed there. It got so much use, that food trolley, that one
of the wheels fell off, but his mother still made that journey
to and from the kitchen for many years afterwards, with the
trolley lurching a little on its bad wheel, but still piled
with good things to eat and drink. The house is roamed by
cats and by dogs who arrive as puppies and grow old in their
home, loved while they shed their hairs on the sofas and the
carpet, until they become deaf and blind, smelly or senile,
loved in short until the end of their days. The only shrill
note in this tall house is a message tacked to the door which
threatens catastrophe upon those who leave the door open and
allow the dogs to wander into the road. One of Pete’s
bad habits was feeding them under the table. He knew it was
bad for them. He just liked to see them happy, because he
was deeply sensitive, always very conscious of the great dark
void which lies beyond love, conscious of the redeeming power
of love. Some will tell you how to be happier, advise you
how to overcome your complexes, your problems. Pete’s
solution was different - he would accept you in the belief
that one day you would accept yourself. He could forgive traits
of character which to others might constitute insurmountable
barriers. All his friends were characters, which is to say
far from perfect, and equally far from boring. He would love
you until you did become happier. He would love persistently,
without question, sometimes he would love until it became
irritating, but all who knew him are happier simply for having
known him. Some have that gift, and Pete was one of those.
He went to prep school at St. John’s Beaumont near Windsor
then from the age of 13 he went to Stonyhurst College, the
Jesuit run boarding school in the North of England. Never
one to focus on things that didn’t interest him, he had
until the age of 16 a rather quiet academic life, and a great
deal of his time was spent on the rugby field, where I first
got to know him. He was very sociable and an avid television
watcher. From the moment the Australian soap opera Neighbours
began its never-ending run on British television, he was always
on the front row for the one o’clock start. One of his
greatest boasts was that the international popularity of the
show was forged in the television room at Stonyhurst. Witnessing
the delirium of his schoolmates at any banal detail in the
lives of the Australian suburbanites of the show, he told
his friend Ali who passed this onto her father who was then
at the BBC before becoming Controller of Channel 4. Soon it
received a second daily viewing at 5.30, when the dayschool
children came home, and the show is still running today. This
was a typical boast of Pete’s: sweet and humorous, tinged
with exaggeration, and giving credit to the group he was a
part of rather than to himself, individually.
His academic life picked up when he began studying for his
A’Levels since he could focus then on subjects that interested
him, and he did very well and ended up at the University of
Kent at Canterbury, studying anthropology.
He was tremendously proud of his father, Bob, who had served
in the Indian army during the war, and after school considered
joining the Gurkhas, but settled instead for an MA in South
East Asian studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies.
He loved the Far East and though he lived in London for 6
years after graduating, he spent long periods of time out
there, especially in Indonesia. The walls of the flat we shared
in South Kensington provided a showcase for his enormous collection
of learned books and his rather terrifying collection of Indonesian
masks. He once told me with great pride that he was statistically
more likely to fly to Asia than he was to travel anywhere
in Britain outside of London. I am not sure how seriously
we need to take this - Maths was not his strongest card –
but we get the point. He did a variety of jobs in London,
mostly providing regional knowledge and reporting on markets
and businesses within South East Asia.
Pete also did a great deal of work for charity. He helped
run holidays for handicapped children, including accompanying
them on pilgrimages to Lourdes, and he also did voluntary
work in South East Asia, using his knowledge of the area to
set up a cultural centre in Irian Jaya.
In 1997 he moved to Hong Kong, where he worked as a consultant,
providing market intelligence to big businesses. He lived
there 4 years and moved to Singapore in 2001 to take up another
job in the same sector, with a company called ISR, and he
was living in Singapore when he died. He moved in a large
social circle in Asia and he felt very much at home there.
So much at home that his family decided to travel out to Singapore
to receive the body, and to hold a requiem mass with his Asian
friends.
I had the honour of travelling out with them, and what I saw
confounded my expectations. Pete was not the greatest communicator,
and the little he told me about his life out there had painted
a misleading picture of the expatriate circles he moved in.
He talked a lot about money and about the boisterous rugby
culture; about the favourable climate; about his airconditioned,
taxi driven lifestyle. My own prejudices gave me a rather
unfavourable view of what he was experiencing out there. Indeed
I encouraged him repeatedly to come back to Europe. What he
had forgotten to tell me was that he had an amazing group
of friends in situ, all of whom valued him very highly indeed.
These are people who lost half of their number on one horrible
day just two weeks before we met them. Yet the reception we
received was almost ecstatic. Nothing was too much trouble.
The Secretaries of the Singapore Cricket Club and the Hong
Kong football club were always there for the family, providing
information and assistance. The staff at his workplace, ISR
organised the details of our daily lives in Singapore. Jamie
Murray of the Gurkhas took upon himself the very tricky repatriation
process; Vaughan Prentice of the Singapore Police, also an
ex-Gurkha, visited the bomb site in Bali so that – whatever
the trauma to himself of seeing the carnage amongst which
his friends had died – he could provide reliable and
up-to-date evidence when all else was distorted hearsay. Some
of them have even travelled out to be with us here today.
Nozomi from Hong Kong and Pete’s girlfriend Jasmin from
Singapore. We met other friends too. Friends who received
us into their homes and shared their grief with us as we shared
ours with them. These were not flighty expatriates living
the high life in an exotic playground but intelligent, articulate
people all too aware of their privileges and all of them contributing
above and beyond the call of duty. There are too many to name
here, and they know who they are. Suffice to say that it is
no wonder Pete was so pleased to be there. Suddenly all was
clear; I only regret that I could not have shared this with
him during his life. Those in Asia were surprised to see that
he had once had a full head of hair. We were surprised to
see that our friend had gone bald. But we recognise the same
Pete reflected in the love we felt for him. While he was in
Asia, rugby became a very important part of his life. In Hong
Kong he was a member of the Hong Kong Football Club, captaining
a team called the Vandals. As soon as he moved to Singapore
he joined up with the Singapore Cricket Club, and a number
of people have told me that it was Pete who persuaded them
to play, to join up. He played hard on the rugby field and
he played hard in the clubhouse and he genuinely liked the
game. It is a real team game, and it is not a game for individuals
or prima donnas, but for team players. The ball often bounces
strangely because of its shape and the players just have to
deal with that slightly random element. Rugby players do not
believe they can control destiny. They do not believe that
they are gods. They take the rough with the smooth. Pete I
know would have accepted what happened to him without question,
which is how he had enjoyed the good parts of his life. For
all his bravado, he remained a humble man with a deeply spiritual
side.Those who loved Pete can take comfort from the manner
of his death. First of all, we know that he died instantaneously.
He went off like a rocket, all colour and sparks, without
feeling anything. He would have been proud of the way he died,
of the place he died in, a place which he loved greatly. On
one of his first trips to Bali, he must have been in his early
twenties, he was invited to a Balinese cremation. He showed
me the photographs afterwards. The body was placed within
a large bonfire and when it had burned to nothing, there was
dancing and feasting. There were photographs of the feasting,
it was a joyous affair. Everyone in the photographs looked
puzzled and delighted by the presence of this pale and affable
foreigner. Pete enjoyed that day so much. "Isn’t
that cool?" he said, about the ceremony. "That’s
the way to go." So now is no time for sombre rituals
– let us dance around the embers of his life, and let
us remember him together and with joy.
There is so much about his own death which would have made
Pete laugh, so much frankly that he would have been proud
of. The boy who dreamed of spies and soldiers was killed in
a terrorist attack and promptly became forensic evidence.
The rugby player he was died with his comrades, surrounded
by them in Padi’s Bar, and he would be so proud to have
been the subject of many minutes of silence at national and
international rugby matches. He would have been proud of the
dignity shown by the survivors, of you all assembled here
today, you who have cancelled everything to be here, many
of whom have flown in from abroad - from America, from Africa,
from Asia, from Continental Europe. Of Adrian Shaw and his
cohorts who are as I speak celebrating these moments with
us in Australia. Pete would have been both proud and amused
by the beautiful Memorial Service held in St Paul’s cathedral
in London. As the evening drew in and the light faded, candles
were lit by Buddhists and Sikhs in their fine ceremonial garb.
The Queen was there, the Duke of Edinburgh. Margaret Thatcher
was there – he would have laughed at that, I promise
you. He would have laughed like a drain.
He is with us today, and he wants us to be happy for him.
His parting gesture was to bring all his friends and family
together for a big party. He would have been so pleased. Let
us leave this place in a moment and celebrate him in the RAF
Club, the love he gave and the love he received, and the great
happiness of his life. Because we all so nearly did not meet
him. That we did comes down to a fateful moment, a lucky bounce
of the ball, in 1970. When Pam and Bob attended the Crusade
of Rescue in Ladbroke Grove it was another little boy they
had come to see, but before they ever had a chance to meet
him, Jenny saw Pete, and Pam and Bob approved her choice.
To Jenny he was Peter Pumpkin. To Pam and Bob he was the Beloved
Pete. They will never regret Jenny’s choice, whatever
has happened and whatever will happen, however much heartache
they suffer. He was a good egg. They are happy to have loved
him, and they loved him amazingly.
The end of the story came abruptly, in Bali, on 12th October
2002. It is not for us gathered here but for history to decide
who killed him with his friends, and so many others. In Bali,
they have taken a bulldozer to Padi’s bar and pushed
it into the sea in an act of cleansing. Nothing remains of
the place where he died but what remains of our friend, our
son, our brother will outlive us all. He is dust now, and
myth, and the sound of laughter. He is an example to us in
his qualities and his imperfections, hidden from none. He
is part of the cement which lies in the cracks between us.
He is a warm feeling forever in our hearts. He will be there
whenever we care to reach for him. Let us reach for him often.
He is not going away anymore. He is home.
Peter was 32 years old.
Rory Unsworth, December 2002
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