By Julian Felice

The countdown clock overlooking the stage had already been flashing at zero for a while. The egg timer on the table next to her had likewise gone off a few minutes earlier, and, backstage, the stage manager’s thumb hovered over the loud and ungraceful horn. I shot him a warning look and put my arm out to stop him. After all, this was not a woman to be silenced.

For Mary Chiappe was no ordinary person. The one-time politician (as Minister of Education in Sir Joshua Hassan’s 1964 Legislative Council she became the first woman to hold political office in Gibraltar), retired English teacher, and, more recently, prolific author and newspaper columnist, was just finishing giving a fascinating talk on the relationship between gender and neurons as part of the first ever edition of GibTalks. A well-researched analysis of the difficulties with defining gender amid the complexities of biology, Mary’s problem had been keeping her talk within the allocated fifteen minutes. She could have easily given an exhaustive and thorough two-hour lecture on the subject (indeed, we had explored the possibility of her doing so). Ending her talk – as I eventually had to do – had felt like a crime: Mary had completely enthralled the audience with her charming wit, intelligent insight, and vivacious bonhomie.

Those students privileged enough to have had her as a teacher will be more than familiar with this inimitable style. I was one of the fortunate, with Mrs Chiappe teaching me A-Level English shortly before her retirement. With her, we dissected The Duchess of Malfi, scrutinised A Streetcar Named Desire, tried to make sense of Blake’s Songs of Innocence and Experience, and formed a lifetime bond with Tess of the d’Urbervilles. She taught us to enjoy the treasures of language and to embrace theatricality with passion. Her lessons were more like Bohemian discussions, seventeen year-olds encouraged to share their responses and ideas and channel these into arguments. One of the many phrases we learnt from her – ‘psychological verisimilitude’ – is one I still regularly use in my own teaching. On the Easter break before our final exams, she invited the entire class to her home in Manilva for an intensive revision session. We sat in her patio, discussing Webster and Williams while eating Pollo Pronto. That I went on to study Drama and English at university was in no small part down to her.

I had not seen Mary for a long time until I started working in Bayside, over ten years later. She still regularly visited her old place of work, delivering life-affirming talks to Sixth Form students, inspiring a new generation of youngsters. She even instigated a new award in the school, one that rewarded ‘turning a new leaf’ in honour of a former student. It was during one of these contacts that she agreed to be one of the speakers at that first GibTalks. Her crowd-pleasing talk is still remembered fondly and should, hopefully, soon be made available online for everyone’s enjoyment.

But my most valued contact with Mary came when she consented to writing a foreword for my book Three Gibraltar Plays. I sent her all three scripts and we met in a local restaurant for her commentary. I suddenly felt like – and enjoyed being – her student again as she went through my plays, suggesting alterations and highlighting issues that I had overlooked. Her passion for the writing seemed genuine, and the kind and perceptive words that she wrote in her foreword were a cause of immense satisfaction to me. Her dignified willingness to grace the work of a former student in this way put me even further in her debt. Mary, of course, was a skilled writer herself, gripping many with the Bresciano mysteries that she co-wrote, whilst also entertaining us with her unique outlook, most evident in her recent book Shaking The Dandelions, as well as in the column she wrote for the Gibraltar Chronicle. Her evocative fiction, using the kind of language that she loved, is a rarity among local writers.

I had not seen Mary for a while and had been looking forward to seeing her at her daughter Gaby’s excellent talk at the last Gibraltar Literary Festival. Sadly, it was at that event that I discovered that she was very ill. But even this did not prepare me for the devastating news of her death only a few weeks later; I do not think anything could.

As coincidence would have it, Mary passed away on the 19^th anniversary of the death of my uncle, Robert Mor. Like her, he had also been a Government Minister, and that same Three Gibraltar Plays had been dedicated to him. Both made a huge contribution to Gibraltar’s political development, and, despite their sizeable legacies, will always be missed by a community that loved them.

Rest In Peace Mary Chiappe – “Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle.”