To coincide with the American University in Cairo Press retrospective of the work of Margo Veillon (1907-2003), Penelope Bennet shares her memories of an artist, a photographer and a friend I met Margo in the early 1960s and apart from a couple of years, she came to London every year, staying for several months. The last time she came was in 1997, after which she could no longer travel alone. Although she was several decades older than me, she never let this deter her from doing anything. In her 80s she was bicycling in Greece, snorkelling in America, snow-shoeing in Switzerland and dancing in London and Cairo, her neat, almost mathematical little steps marking the ground. She would always plunge into what I happened to be involved in at the time she arrived, rushing out only minutes after unpacking to buy a Peruvian poncho or a miniature Pentax camera. I had just started potting and together we potted away into the night. I know few people who have squandered less of their life than Margo. We travelled together all over the place: England, Cyprus, Scotland, Ethiopia, Wales, America, Greece, France, Isle of Wight, Switzerland and Egypt, generally returning with photos, sketches and travel notes. One winter we drove from Chelsea to Maadi in a red Fiat 500. When this minute, ladybird-like car reached the St Gothard tunnel it was snowing. Four obliging soldiers lifted the Fiat with us inside it into the air before lowering it onto its snow chains. While driving round Cairo, occasionally we'd encounter the only other Fiat 500 in the city and would greet each other with waves and hoots. When we had the roof open, taller vehicles pretended we were a ta'tua (ashtray). Quite often pedestrians would stop, look at us and applaud. In London the Fiat was converted into a mobile studio. Two of Margo's main sources of urban inspiration were bus stops and supermarket entrances. I would leave her parked opposite a bus stop, which would supply her with an endless number of semi-still models. Supermarkets were the places where she refined her sketches of trolleys, filled with bizarre combinations of cabbages, babies and toilet rolls. In Cairo, many decades ago, Margo bought herself a bicycle that had a small motor. Thinking it would be wiser to try it out on a path rather than a road, off she set beside a canal. A group of fellahin, unaccustomed to the sight of a modern motorised bicycle, started chanting and clapping, " Ya sitti nylon! Ya sitti nylon!" which distracted Margo who crashed into a cactus narrowly escaping ending up in the canal. (At that time 'nylon' was synonymous with 'modern'). Margo had large, fierce blue eyes which seemed to swallow what they looked at. Sometimes her eyes reminded me of Boris Pasternak's. Her wide-palmed hands and agile fingers were excellent for drumming on a tabla -- or a dinner table, when bored. She specialised in being bored at dinner parties. Apart from the table finger-drumming, she would occupy herself with converting napkins into sketch pads, fingers into pencils and pens, and wine and coffee into ink. Some friends remind one vaguely of others. She reminded me of no one but herself. Margo would be impossible to Xerox. Margo was a delightful friend to laugh with. In two hotels where we stayed we found our fellow diners so hilarious that we were unable to return to the dining room. One of the hotels was on Lundy Island, where we had gone to see seals. Unfortunately we were obliged to sit at a large communal dining table. When I was seated I looked round and to my surprise found Margo had shrunk to gnome size proportions and was at least a foot lower than me. In her hand she brandished an outsize table knife. For some reason she had been given a child-size chair and a giant's knife to compensate. In London we often went early to St James Park to watch the birds. We also watched a female version of Saint Francis. This Saint Frances wore a duffle coat inside the hood of which almost tame sparrows sat while being transported and fed. Margo made endless sketches of her. Margo hoped, as I hope, that one day a book will be made of her English sketches. When we travelled in the tops of London buses, I would "commission" Margo to sketch the backs of women's heads just after they had been tightly permed. A dry-cleaner Margo went to in London used to call her 'Miss Villain'. No amount of tactful correction could alter this. We used to go to concert rehearsals sitting behind the orchestra in the front row almost inside the kettle drums. Ancient Herbert von Karajan would conduct with his mouth almost open, a dark, sinister cavern which I remember Margo sketching. There was also Benjamin Brittain's jubilant conducting of Purcell, which included a lot of "Happy, Happy" words in the libretto which she sprinkled over her sketch. On the rare occasions when she wasn't drawing, painting, engraving, making clay heads or mosaics, Margo read, listened to music or played patience: an odd game for such an impatient person to play. But as her decisive hands slapped the cards down on the table, the game seemed to gather her thoughts together and act as a calming balm. Very little in Margo's long life was left unrecorded by her pencil or brush. Everything she arranged -- from whisky glasses, water and a bowl of foul soudanis (peanuts) on a table to a bunch of flowers -- became a still life. Nothing was done haphazardly, without thought. On entering Margo's front door, as soon as you turn left there is a cabinet made of many slim drawers. Each drawer contains a bed of sand on which small desert stones, meticulously sorted, are displayed in their nest like hollows. She had brought the stones back from her desert trips with Dr Barlow. Sometimes they split the larger stones and polished them. Mysteriously, this often revealed a desert landscape hidden inside the ancient, secret stone. From these trips Margo would also return with her small, intense desert landscapes as well as different coloured and textured sands which she added to some of her pictures. She was a passionate gleaner. (When driving to Wales we saw some grey slate slabs at the side of the road; Margo leapt out of the car and collected the thinner slabs which she later used as canvases). Keeping an eye on Margo in her sitting room was a small portrait -- probably one of her best -- of her mother, an intimidating-looking woman whom Margo adored. Every time Margo came to London she was accompanied by a little cushion and a silver mug which had belonged to her mother. Margo was a fiery pianist and would sometimes thunder away on her little upright piano with the same intensity with which she would stab at her canvases. She had some explosive friendships. Part of these friendships often included rows, when books and other items were flung to and fro over her bamboo hedge in Maadi. Then came silence, which often endured for several months. But generally friendship won in the end, enduring longer than the silences or book missiles. She used to visit Maadi village where her cook Mohamed lived. She'd sit in his mud- brick house with him and his family and much to their delight and amusement would continue jotting down her already large collection of vivid baladi (peasant) swear words. How sad it was that those demons contained within the covers of her Divertimenti book would one day emerge to taunt her. Latterly, Margo suffered from several attacks of acute nervousness. On her last visit to London, although she was mainly confined to my flat this didn't stop her from continuing to sketch, photograph and paint her surroundings. Her chief inspiration was a rocking chair which I had inherited from my grandmother and then painted orange. Hanging a lime-green Egyptian waistcoat on the chair's back and using another chair as an easel, she stabbed away noisily at the unstable canvas transforming it into a still life. Although she was 90 at this time, she worked with more fervour and enthusiasm than a painter half her age. The somewhat van Gogh-ish painting of the rocking chair, fragile but sturdy and full of character -- one can almost hear it rocking -- strikes me as a most touching self portrait. The exhibition "1001 Margot Veillon paintings" is currently showing at Al-Hanager Arts Centre, Cairo Opera House grounds; closing date 24 February.
