When James Runcie recalls his late wife Marilyn Imrie, the much-loved drama director, he does so in colour. First there is the extraordinary skin, pale as milk, which he noticed the first time he set eyes on her at a BBC meeting in the early 80s. Later, in the course of their 35-year marriage, he learns to relish her vibrant fashion palette: “She generally wore clothes as boldly as those old Soviet posters in red, black and white, with accents of silver, pink and blue.” He knows – and cares – enough to itemise her favourite pieces: a deep-purple blouse from Issey Miyake, a jacket bought from Biba in the late 60s, an antique Japanese kimono. The impression Runcie paints is of a bird of paradise flashing across the muddy pond of conventional good taste.
Sound is part of Imrie’s extraordinary call to her broken-hearted widower, too. “I had always thought she had the most beautiful voice in the world,” he recalls, explaining how Imrie had started her career as a folk singer and spent their years together belting out Joni Mitchell or Strauss in the shower. When the neurologist writes in his notes that Imrie is now “unable to sing”, it is clear something terrible has happened. “Instead of Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera.” says Runcie grimly, “we were faced with Terminal Illness in the Time of Covid 19.”
