Ah, St Ives! Its golden beaches, its turquoise seas, its bracing air, its picturesque harbour, its lambent skies, its sexually transmitted diseases… Yes, genteel St Ives, formerly known for its artists’ colony, this year gained the dubious distinction of being the only small town in Cornwall with its own STD clinic – and a queue of anxious customers – after an HIV “cluster” was discovered.
It was in May that Dr David Miles, director of public health at West Cornwall Primary Care Trust (PCT), announced that “up to 10” heterosexual residents of St Ives had unexpectedly tested HIV positive, and that it had proved impossible to trace all their sexual contacts. He appealed for anyone in the town between 20 and 50 who had had unprotected sex outside a stable relationship in the past eight years to come forward for testing. Since St Ives has a population of only 7,000, it might have been expected that the response would not be overwhelming. But over the next few weeks no fewer than 450 people called a confidential telephone helpline and around 300 were tested. No wonder some wag suggested renaming the town “St Hives”. Not all of those who worried that they might be infected availed themselves of the special temporary clinic in the town, even though its location was secret, only disclosed to those booking appointments. Many preferred the reassuring anonymity of the regular STD clinic in the nearest big town: Plymouth, where there is a large naval base.
After the PCT went public with the cluster, it was a matter of hours before Fleet Street’s finest descended on the resort to interrogate the inhabitants about their sexual proclivities. There followed a rash of lurid headlines – such as Nightmare on the Cornish Riviera – and stories about panic stalking the cobbled streets. Rumours flew that a single promiscuous individual was to blame. Who would have been surprised if the good folk of St Ives had, in despair, begun hurling themselves into the sea?
Well, the good folk of St Ives, for a start. Most took the view that the story was hyped beyond reason. “The media coverage was really over the top,” says Eric Ward, the former harbourmaster and coxswain of the St Ives lifeboat. “The subject was never an issue here. It was not a topic of conversation in the town, not even of gossip, and I never, ever, heard it mentioned in the pub.”
Ward was born in St Ives, loves the place and probably knows more people here than anyone. Since retiring five years ago he has turned himself into a modestly successful artist; in his studio overlooking the sea he produces charming oils, mostly of maritime scenes. He would like to exhibit at Tate St Ives, which is just down the road from his house, but doubts, probably correctly, that he will make it.
Almost everyone in St Ives seems, like Ward, to dismiss the scare as media hype. Yet the St Ives cluster is one of the biggest heterosexual HIV outbreaks in Britain for a decade. In 2004, the last year for which figures are available, there were only 49 new HIV cases reported throughout Devon and Cornwall; thus a cluster of “up to 10” new cases in one small town is significant.
Then there are the 450 people sufficiently worried to call the helpline. Assuming two-thirds of the population is sexually active, that means – blimey – over 10% have had unprotected sex outside a relationship in the past eight years. What nobody knows is how many people in St Ives are looking at their spouses and wondering – were they among those who quietly visited the clinic? Why did he take that morning off work? Why was she looking in her old diaries? Why did he put the phone down so fast the other day? Suspicion weaves a wicked web.
“I’ve been married for eight years, so it doesn’t affect me,” says the boat-builder Kirstan Gorvin. “But I can tell you some of my mates had to think quite hard.” Kirstan, 35, explains his unusual name with a shrug and two words: “Hippie parents.” In the summer he helms a restored lifeboat from St Ives harbour, taking trippers to see Atlantic grey seals on a rocky outcrop just along the coast. It is not a lucrative job – half the time the sea is so rough they cannot go out – but he enjoys it. Like almost everyone I met in St Ives, he seemed unconcerned by HIV. “I think,” he says, “most people would say the seagulls are a worse problem than HIV.”
St Ives’ international reputation as a faintly louche, bohemian artists’ colony undoubtedly contributed to the media excitement over the HIV outbreak. Artists have been attracted by the beauty of the scenery and the quality of the light since Victorian times. Turner, Whistler and Sickert were among early visitors. St Ives Arts Club still meets in the old fish-descaling factory where artists gathered in the 1890s. Paul Stayne, a former banker and amateur artist who is president of the club, denies that any members are worried. “I think most of them pooh-poohed the whole thing. The image of the degenerate artist is not my experience. Most of us are very well set up and don’t sleep around.”
The arrival of Barbara Hepworth and her husband, Ben Nicholson, in 1939 confirmed the town as an important centre for the avant-garde. After the second world war, it became home to many artists who had a decisive effect on the development of painting in the second half of the century, among them Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Peter Lanyon, John Wells, Terry Frost, Bryan Winter, Patrick Heron and Roger Hilton. Hepworth’s studio is now open to the public and many of her remarkable works are on display in the studio garden, which she bequeathed to the town on her death in 1975.
Today, St Ives boasts 40 art galleries, not all of which can legitimately claim to be selling art. Some, like the Tom Gower Studios, offer visitors the opportunity of seeing the artist at work. When I call in, the artist, Tom Gower’s son Walton, is not actually at work but is hunched grumpily over a sandwich at a desk by the door. “No, I’m not bothered about HIV,” he says. “It’s just another scare story. What does bother me is that there are too many galleries here competing for too little business.” Unlike his father, who likes to paint aeroplanes, Walton specialises in sunsets and seascapes, broad swathes of bright yellow and blue, many of which hang on the walls of the gallery. Some have a sad little note attached to them: “Order a painting just like this one for Christmas. Only £5 deposit.”
Gilly Wyatt Smith, owner of the Yew Tree Gallery, is incredulous that in the media blame for the HIV cluster seemed to be laid at the feet of the artistic community. “Knowing many of them as I do, it is quite ridiculous. Most are married or have partners. There is certainly no sense of promiscuity here. There is always lots of gossip, of course, but I’ve never heard the subject of HIV come up in conversation.”
If there is more than fudge and ice cream on offer in St Ives, it is not evident. Most visitors gravitate to the pretty little harbour, where Arthur Orum sits under an umbrella outside the Harbour Galleries offering charcoal portraits for £25 in black and white and £50 in colour. Orum, who sports a battered blue corduroy butcher’s-boy hat and wraparound sunglasses, hails from Wisconsin. I ask him how he came to Britain and he says he thinks it was on a Boeing 747. He claims the scare has not affected business at all; in fact, he has several children’s portraits to finish before Saturday, when their holidays end. He’d rather sell the oil landscapes – at around £350 each – that hang on rented wall space in the Harbour Galleries – but they might stay there for six months before finding a buyer, and portraits are where the money is. As we speak, a young family turn up. “Do you remember you drew our little boy two years ago?” the beaming father asks. “Well, now we’ve got another baby and we’d like you to do her.” Arthur picks up his charcoals with a barely perceptible sigh.
