So there we were, Jo, my ex-wife; Nat, our son; Alex, Jo's then boyfriend; I and the Dalai Lama (with whom I was holding hands), gathered in a small group outside the front door of His Holiness's home in Dharamsala, India, admiring one of Jo's new flower paintings. Jo, who had been living next door to His Holiness and working in his private garden for several months, appeared perfectly at ease, but I was in a state of mental turmoil. This was partly from the general strain of meeting someone I admire as much as I admire His Holiness and partly because I was racking my brain for a good question to ask him. Everyone I had told that I would be spending time with the Dalai Lama (and my life isn't so exciting that I didn't tell everyone) advised me to prepare at least one Big Philosophical Question beforehand, but, as usual, I had decided to wing it.
The one thing that did keep popping into my mind as I gazed at her canvas was an image of Jo, roughly a quarter of a century earlier, the day she "discovered" painting. The builders had just moved out of our house, a pretty little Georgian cottage in South London, and we had just moved in.
The renovation had taken a year and all our money, and I was obsessed with keeping it in order. Which is why, when I came back from work one night to find the floor, walls, furniture and even the baby covered in large splodges of brightly coloured oil paint, I became incandescent with rage.
"You should be pleased," Jo kept saying as I ranted on about the damage she had caused. "Look, I've produced a fantastic picture of a tree. Anyway, it's only paint." After that I used to mutter "It's only paint," in a sarcastic voice whenever I was irritated by something that Jo had done. I said it, for instance, when she put a dozen potted plants on our bed and watered them, and again when she threw out all our tableware and cutlery because she couldn't face washing it up.
When I met Jo she was a Bunny Girl at the Playboy Club. During her pregnancy she dubbed blue movies for a character called Dirty Book Shop Billy. As far as I know, she had barely visited an art gallery and had certainly never opened an art book in her life. In light of this, her sudden interest in becoming a professional artist - sparked off by a visit to a family friend with a superb collection - may appear surprising. I can only say that, when she told me it was what she wanted to do, it struck me as perfectly logical. This wasn't just because we were both still of an age - our early twenties - that made anything seem possible. When Jo devoted herself to painting she became a different person: calm, self-contained, confident and - above all else - fulfilled. As our short and unhappy marriage played itself out, she signed up for evening classes and then won a place at Wimbledon School of Art. Within weeks of producing her first picture, Jo left me. I believe the two events were directly connected. Once Jo had art she didn't really need anything else, certainly not someone as finicky as me.
After our separation we fought constantly about child access, money and Jo's boyfriends. Yet for all the conflict and acrimony there was one area of common ground: her painting. In the middle of a screaming match, she would say, "Come and see what I am working on", and we would break off hostilities to look at her latest efforts. She had already become an obsessive gardener, but the idea of painting flowers had not yet occurred to her. What she largely produced in those days were self-portraits. These were surreal compositions incorporating strange, floating elements such as a pig's head or a vegetable stall. Once we were freed from the angst of having to spend too much time with each other, we began to develop a rather unconventional partnership. I gave Jo encouragement, business advice and, when sales were slow, a certain amount of fiscal support. Jo gave me her loyalty, respect and the enormous pleasure of feeling that I was helping. I am inordinately proud of her, her work and my part in it. Together we have celebrated her achievements - academic honours, exhibitions, being taken on by an important dealer, becoming artist-in-residence at Kew Gardens, a book about her work and, recently, being invited to India. I was the first person she rang when she received the Dalai Lama's letter.
Quite how Jo became friendly with the Dalai Lama is something of a mystery.
I don't think His Holiness gets to Brixton very much, and Jo rarely leaves it. She isn't even a Buddhist. She has tried to explain to me how they happened to meet, but like many of her stories it is garbled and incomprehensible, even to someone who is used to making sense of her garbled and incomprehensible stories. "It is because of my Aunty Connie who looked exactly like the Dalai Lama. You remember she used to live in Whetstone. And my karma. Nina who first told me to paint. And the Dalai Lama's Mother in England, of course."
It is no clearer why she was invited to stay. It is the only time that any outsider has been granted such an honour. When I discussed this with Tenzin Geyche Tethong, the Dalai Lama's private secretary, he suggested there were two explanations: the simple answer, that, after Jo had attended the opening of the Peace Garden at the Imperial War Museum, Jo's art dealer had sent a formal request, and His Holiness had granted it; the more complicated answer, that it was preordained because Jo had been someone of considerable significance in a former life.
I found the idea that Jo - Jo, my ex-wife, who was once so angry with me that she hid all the towels while I was in the bath and then threw every single item of my clothing into the street, forcing me to retrieve them wearing only a bin liner - might have some sort of important cosmic role to perform a tad difficult to accept. At breakfast one morning during my visit, she announced that the night before she had dreamt that the Panchen Lama (next-in-line to the Dalai Lama and held by the Chinese at an unknown location for more than a decade) was being kept prisoner in a shopping centre. I have to admit, Nat, Alex and I treated this claim with a certain amount of scepticism.
Then, of course, there is her surprising friendship with the Dalai Lama himself. His Holiness The Dalai Lama lives in a relatively modest, Sixties house surrounded by a cottage garden perched on a ridge in the foothills of the Himalayas, although the mountains are largely hidden from view by trees. The effect is so English that if I had been transported there blindfolded and asked to guess where I was I would have said a leafy London suburb such as Highgate. The house and garden are located in a large, wooded compound, criss-crossed by paths and containing a variety of other buildings including His Holiness's office and several temples. The security is incredibly tight. It is the responsibility of the Indian Army to protect His Holiness from assassins, and they clearly don't believe in taking risks. Every few yards around the perimeter fence, and again within the compound, Indian soldiers stand, alert, machine guns in hand. The main entrance to the compound contains all the latest security equipment (disguised rather sweetly by curtains) and everyone entering - no matter how distinguished - is questioned, screened and searched. Photography is only possible by prior agreement and no shots of the buildings or their immediate surroundings are permissible. Despite the presence of so many armed soldiers, the atmosphere in the garden is peaceful. The loudest noise is of birdsong and something that one might take to be the drone of bees but which is, in fact, the sound of monks at prayer. The garden immediately next to the house consists of small lawns and grass paths interspersed with beds of roses, peonies, lilies, snapdragons, begonias and morning glory.
The air is heavy with the perfume of so many scented flowers.
Jo was given unfettered access to His Holiness's private compound. In fact, she followed the same routine every day. After breakfast she walked the few hundred yards from the guesthouse where those visiting His Holiness normally stay, past the huge Tsuglag Khang temple, to the compound's main entrance. During this short stroll she invariably picked up a small crowd of supplicants. "Jo, Jo, will you please tell His Holiness I am still here and hope to see him for just one minute?" "Jo, I am begging you, please try to get me in." She constantly explained that she was without influence, but to no avail. There was often a small scurry at the gatehouse when Jo arrived. People wanted to touch her because she had been touched by His Holiness.
