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‘Every day was an adventure’: A widow whose husband died of meningitis at just 52 talks about their life together

Published: 19:03 EST, 14 November 2015 | Updated: 19:03 EST, 14 November 2015

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It’s five years since Helen Bromovsky’s ‘amazing, crazy love affair’ with her husband Francis was cut short when he lost his life to meningitis. But, as she tells Rachel Johnson, a fashion project inspired by their travels is helping to fund research into the illness – and keeping his memory very much alive

‘Our story is tragic, but we are determined to triumph,' said Helen Bromovsky of the death of her husband Francis, five years ago. He was aged only 52 (Helen pictured with her dog Tolstoy and cat Schubert)

Helen Bromovsky is beautiful, tanned and lithe, with cat-like blue eyes. She loves sailing and riding (she is also a widow, making it impossible not to make these words sound like a lonely hearts ad).

Helen, an interior and fashion designer, has warned me that when I arrive at Taunton railway station in Somerset – she lives 20 minutes away in a gorgeous light-filled Georgian rectory – daughter Kitty will pick me up as she can’t drive at the moment.

It is Helen who meets me at the barrier, though, blonde hair scrunched up in a ponytail, wearing a zigzag black-and-white ikat duster coat from her new collection (on which more later) and holding a warm cashmere wrap for me.

In the car, with Kitty at the wheel, she tells me she had a water-skiing accident in Turkey that led to a problem lump and, as I twist in my seat to talk to her in the back, she peels up her tight black legging to reveal a large dressing, and winces. It’s been just a week since she had what has clearly been a big operation.

This is Helen all over. On the surface, everything looks wonderful, Instagram ready, photo-shoot perfect.

So much so that I text a friend on an interiors magazine that she has to come and see the stone-floored house, painted in exotic Eastern shades, where whippets and cats nestle on window seats, modern art crowds the walls and large sash windows frame views of cows calmly chewing cud on lush green hills.

Helen with her late husband Francis and daughters Nollie, Kitty and Bella in 2000. ‘He found domesticity challenging. Anything could happen. If we went skiing I never knew if I’d be alive at the end of the day,' she said

The entire seven capsule collections from Helen’s new Ottoman fashion range, in gold silks, pure whites or zigzag stripes, hang on the walls in the dining room.

Her three beautiful daughters, Nollie (Anastasia), Bella and Kitty, ranging in age from 19 to 24, are padding about, along with at least four handsome student boys, who don’t seem to have any discernible purpose other than to eat a huge amount of lunch and contribute to the energy and life in the house.

There are ‘two and a half horses’ (ie, two horses and a mini shetland pony) in the stables outside. But beneath the gloss, despite all this bustle and industry, there are deep emotional wounds.

‘Our story is tragic, but we are determined to triumph,’ is one of the first things she says to me over coffee at the oak refectory table in the Aga-warmed kitchen.

Helen, 54, is talking about the death of her husband, five years ago, aged only 52.

It’s a story so shattering that I wonder how she is sitting next to me, sipping her sparkling water, and saying, ‘Am I mad to be telling you all this?’

But before we get to her tragedy – and her efforts to triumph over it with a collection that sums up her life divided between East and West – she wants to get something out of the way. And it is this.

Her husband, Francis Bromovsky, who grew up in Carinthia, Southern Austria, was quite a character.

They had, she admits – glossing over things that she would rather me not mention with a flash of those blue eyes – an interesting relationship, with its share of ups and downs.

When Alexander Waugh, son of Auberon, grandson of novelist Evelyn, gave the eulogy at Francis’s funeral, he hinted at this, saying their relationship could be tumultuous; an amazing, crazy love affair.

Helen admits – glossing over things that she would rather me not mention with a flash of those blue eyes – an interesting relationship with her husband Francis, with its share of ups and downs

Helen’s eyes fasten on a photograph on a table. It shows Francis hanging upside down like a bat in the schnapps cellar in his family home in Austria.

‘He found domesticity challenging,’ she points out. ‘Anything could happen. If we went skiing I never knew if I’d be alive at the end of the day. We would set off down a black run as dusk descended.

'Once we went on safari and ran out of petrol. It was New Year’s Eve and we were stuck in the bush in the dark with all these eyes around…’

He lived as if he knew his life was going to be half the length it should have been.

Helen and Francis met in 1984 at a play starring Daniel Day-Lewis at the Half Moon Theatre in London.

She was a designer, he was in business, but she was wild and so was he. They fell in love and married in Austria, overlooking the mysterious Karawanken mountains. Helen produced three girls in short order.

She always enjoyed playing shops and, after ten years as an interior designer, opened The Cube Collection in Kensington, which sold linens and contemporary furniture ‘based on the purity of the perfect cube’.

In the early 90s, when chintz and traditional interiors were in vogue, that little shop was notable and original. But Helen wanted to live the dream in the country.

She duly found the house in Somerset, and got what she’d always wanted – ‘horses, and wellies lined up in the hall’.

Francis with Kitty on a family holiday in 1997

The girls went to school locally and all three evented, throwing themselves into horse life. But she and Francis never stopped moving around.

‘We had our Turkish and Austrian life, too,’ she points out. ‘Francis was obsessed with Turkey and I jumped on to his magic carpet and went with him.’

Any mention of horses, and Francis’s eyes would glaze over; his passion was sailing on the Carian coast of Turkey.

‘He coerced me into his dreams of owning a boat,’ she says, and they ended up buying a 60ft crewed gulet.

When they were sailing beyond the bay of Gokova one day they saw a traditional stone house in the hills, next to the fishing port of Yalikavak.

‘It became our home,’ says Helen.

From that point on she became obsessed with Ottoman robes, and added linen kimonos and djellabas to the collection in her Kensington shop.

She wore them herself, collected antique textiles, and whatever she wore (she has impeccable taste) all her friends would ask where they could get one, too.

Fast forward to 2010. The couple were due to meet in Bodrum in Turkey – Francis was coming from Austria, via Vienna; Helen from London. He was very excited about the trip.

‘He was texting all the time,’ says Helen. ‘“Ten minutes away, five minutes away…” So sweet.’

The couple embarked for their romantic boat trip à deux, and chugged off down the Carian coast with their three crew.

Francis had driven through the night from Austria and was understandably tired, so Helen didn’t notice the danger signs. She is careful to mention them now, in the hope that it might make a difference to someone else’s life.

‘He didn’t swim, which was unusual,’ she recalls. ‘The crew went fishing, but he said, “Do you think they’d mind if I don’t have fish today?” He was beginning to feel unwell.’

Kitty, Nollie, Bella and Francis on a tram in Prague, 2010

At dinner, Francis didn’t have anything to drink and complained that the lights on the boat seemed very bright.

Afterwards, says Helen, ‘He said he was going to bed, which didn’t seem right as he was always so excited when we were on the boat. He took himself off to sleep in another cabin.

'He was tired and it was very hot – 40 degrees. I gave him water and kissed him goodnight. “I promise we’ll be back to normal tomorrow,” he said.

‘In the morning I woke up early and everything was really still. And quiet. Normally, Francis would bring me coffee early and leap into the sea. But he hadn’t.

'I put on my swimsuit and went to wake him to go for a swim, but he was dead.’

Helen had no idea what had killed her husband – she thought he must have had a heart attack or fallen and banged his head.

There were no signs of injury on his body. It was only after the completion of the autopsy that she learned that meningitis had killed him in just four hours.

That was the start of the nightmare. The crew panicked, and the boat started to go round in circles.

They rang the coastguard and, when they arrived in port, they found a welcome party of police with guns.

The police came on board and Helen was questioned ‘for hours’ and made to sign pages and pages of her statement. A friend, Yaman, drove over from their Turkish house to support her.

‘There are no questions and there are no answers,’ Yaman said to her. ‘It was Francis’s destiny.’

‘They drove us to the military morgue in Izmir. All I could think was, “I must call Francis and tell him,”’ says Helen.

I hardly dare ask about this part, but I do. The children. She closes her eyes and just says, ‘Agony. Agony.’

Helen and her three daughters have launched The Ottoman Collection. The project has filled her with hope and excitement, enabling her to live an ‘unplanned solo life, as well as fill an emotional and physical void'

It is now five years since Francis died, and this month Helen and her three daughters have launched The Ottoman Collection.

The wool for the cream and black capes comes from cloth makers Fox Brothers & Co in Wellington, Somerset, after Helen discovered that before he died, Francis had ordered a green waistcoat for her from the shop.

She drove there to pick it up and things went from there (Somerset has a long tradition of garment-making and Helen is determined that her fashion range uses local talent and suppliers wherever possible).

The project has filled her with hope and excitement, enabling her to live an ‘unplanned solo life, as well as fill an emotional and physical void,’ she says.

The collection is contemporary, ageless, androgynous, and she is donating a percentage of profits to Meningitis Now, to help fund research into the illness that killed her husband with such devastating speed one hot Turkish night.

As I leave, I remember to give the cashmere wrap back, but she insists I choose a soft silk scarf, which I haven’t taken off since I left Somerset. Helen comes into Taunton again, just for the ride.

As I wave goodbye I realise Helen Bromovsky doesn’t need any advertisement.

She is beautiful, brave and talented, and her clothes are just as desirable: it’s hard not to want them all, even if you don’t have her gorgeous houses in Somerset and Turkey to wear them in.

theottomancollection.com; meningitisnow.org