A Short Walk from Harrods (30 page)

Now, at the window watching a contented monk wandering about in prayer, I felt more alone than I had ever felt in my life before. As a child, at school, banished to Scotland, in the Army, I had never been
alone.
Solitary, yes, often. But not absolutely isolated, lost, bewildered and, suddenly, quite hopeless. The hermit crab shell-less. I felt exactly how it must be to appear without warning stark naked in some vast cathedral at Evensong, or High Mass. What on earth should I do? There was no possibility of returning to France. A dragging limp and the constant underlying fear that there could be another stroke lurking about put paid to that idea. ‘Be ill in your own language.' I'd had quite enough of doctors and clinics and things to last me a considerable time.

That morning I telephoned everyone who might have been able to help me. I suppose I could have made some sense? Anyway, things began to move, banks, solicitors, accountants, all slowly set things in motion. I would now remain in the UK. They would work out a plan for my future life.

The first essential was to get out of the Doll's House with
its panelled walls and pit-patio. I had always hated it, and now more than ever. Bernard Walsh was advised. As soon as possible you must find me a flat? One floor, no steps, or stairs, south-facing with a terrace or garden. Impossible he thought. Try, I suggested. Then money. What to do for money as I had none? My bank account was in Cannes and the Crédit Lyonnais in Le Pré. What to do? Sell the Ben Nicholson, bought as an investment: now was the time of greatest need. After the brutality of something called Capital Gains Tax and the giant commission paid to the gallery, there was not a great deal left. But enough to keep me solvent, in beer and sandwiches for a time. It was blindingly obvious that I would now have to start up again and try to earn a living. Books didn't make you a fortune, and they took a long time to write, but in my case they had supplemented the olive crop handsomely. Alas! It was cheaper,
by far,
living on the hill.

My solicitor, Lawrence Harbottle, who had looked after me from the start of my film career, loaned me a very brisk and competent lady called Barbara Peerless whose sole job now was to sit up in the new little office in the attic and destroy the contents of some thirty box files kept over the years by Forwood: paper upon paper, documents, statements, estimates, tax returns, contracts. He appeared to have kept a copy of every transaction he had ever made, going back to the dawn of mankind. It was a lengthy, tiring task.

One day, skipping through a bundle of photocopies which didn't seem to be related to anything else, she realized that perhaps they were mine, and should not be ‘shredded' without my agreement. The bundle was four chapters of an abandoned novel called
Jericho
and half a manuscript of an edited collection
of letters, untitled. Barbara didn't know it then, and neither did I, but my future was in those pages. How they came to be where they were I do not know. I was certain that Elizabeth and I had burned almost all my stuff by the pond on the hill. Obviously he had kept the copies. Madame Pasquini had long ago insisted that I copy everything I ever mailed to my publishers, which of course I did. Sometimes there would be a spare copy; these were they.

This was not the only stroke of good fortune. In the dark days, just when the nurses had first arrived and the future dared not be considered, a pleasant young man had arrived at the house for a drink one evening. Would I consider reviewing some books for him? He was presently the literary editor of the
Daily Telegraph.
The suggestion was so unexpected, the whole meeting in the unhappy house so bizarre, that I accepted. Why not? I
had
to pretend that life would continue. All was really quite normal, there was no one in the room above fighting for life. Nicholas Shakespeare didn't know it, but he was the person who chucked a plank across the ravine for me. I felt a mild glow of hope. I'd manage somehow. After all, you didn't need two legs to write. You could do it all sitting down.

A package of books arrived one morning as I was making some tea. About 750 words? By the 27th? Whichever book I preferred. I had a job to do! I didn't know if I
could
review a book. I hadn't written anything for three years. Had rather crash-stopped as soon as it was apparent that Le Pigeonnier had to be sold. I had tried to batter away up in the new little office, but it was hopeless. Worry intruded, my ear was constantly on alert for sounds other than the clacking of a typewriter or the mumbled whispers of an excruciatingly
reluctant muse. But now I had no real excuses. A book to review. Money had to be earned. Up in the little office, among the pillaged files, I sat down to write to Mr Shakespeare.

In a corner, filled with crumpled past efforts, lay the large cardboard box with ‘JAFFA ORANGES' on its side. We'd had desperate need of Madame Bruna's laundered sheets during the last few weeks. The fresh, familiar scent of them, unpacked for the first time since their arrival at the Lancaster, very nearly unmanned me. Red dust under bare feet. The scent of cut hay hot in the sun, of the cypress bleeding gum down its scaly bark, the twitter and cheep of budgerigars outside the Mandelli front door, the rustle and tremble of soft June air down by the pond, arum lilies bejewelled with pulsing emerald tree frogs – all came back, flicking visions, in a furious rush of memory. An ache of sadness in the barren, ship-tidy little office whose window looked blindly at the yellow brick wall opposite. I'd never feel, hear or see those things again, in the same way that I'd never say some of the silly phrases again. I doodled them on the paper before me: ‘Ratty! Where's Ratty! Seek Ratty!' and ‘Who wants dinners! Eh! Dinner time!' I'd never call that again, never see the tree rats. Never shout ‘Bendo!' ‘Labo!' or ‘Daisy!' Never yell, ‘Walk-ies?' No more baby language. Words of affection to dogs. Why do we? Talk to them like that? Anyone overhearing such idiocy would consider one pretty daft. One was, joyfully.

All quite pointless nostalgia, the elderly person's overt vice. There was no point in trying to indulge oneself in yesterday, for that was what it was. Past. Done. Over. The undertakers had driven discreetly, smoothly, away carrying off their
empty husk. Very soon afterwards, in the still, sunny, deserted street, the milk-float had purred up to the door. Clink of bottles. Snatch of some song whistled. Ring of the bell. ‘Morning!' Life, normal life, resumed. Familiar patterns, for a few hours scattered, reassembled like the twisting of a kaleidoscope.

Before me now on the hastily put-together desk in the little office was my old typewriter, paper inserted, waiting. Beside it two glossy books. Which one to choose? Both now read: so decide! A or B? Decisions,
decisions
! A pulse began. I started to type my letter with two hesitant fingers: ‘Dear Nicholas Shakespeare, I have decided on …'

Maria was singing a Spanish song down in the kitchen far away. The carousel was creaking, starting to move, inching round with a throb of its engine, shuddering into motion, beginning to turn. The horses, the pigs, striding ostriches, the symbols of up and down, joy or sadness, slowly shuddered into life once more. I had made a firm decision when I blundered on to the stage of the National Film Theatre, unaided, that I
could
do it.
Would
do it. By myself if need be. I
had
done it once, that day. It was a pleasant feeling. I wasn't altogether certain just how things would work out now, but I'd try. I was not about to cower on my backside, a can of beer in my hand, in this empty house listening to the cistern refill. Sod that.

In the grocer's shop which I knew very well, near the little rented Chelsea house before the days of sandwiches and boil-in-the-bag rubbish, Mrs Bott, the lady boss, plump, jolly, in glasses and a white blouse and skirt, called to me across a table stacked high with boxes of
marron glacé.

‘Hello, sir! Where did you come from? How lovely to see you.'

‘I've come shopping. Been for a haircut, and come to see you all.'

‘All the way from Kensington! Fancy! You're not supposed to be here, you know?'

‘Where am I supposed to be, then?'

‘Lying in a dark room, inconsolable, drinking four bottles of Scotch a day. Didn't you know?'

‘Who said?'

‘Oh. A Sunday paper. Big piece. Gone into seclusion, you have. A recluse. It says. The awful lies they tell.
And
get away with!'

‘Now where did you see this, Mrs Bott?'

For a second only Mrs Bott looked concerned, put a hand on my arm, lowered her voice. ‘Mr Forwood has died? Hasn't he?'

‘He has. Yes. The other side of the Park …'

‘I
am
sorry. Really. It said at St Stephen's. You should sue! Really you should.'

‘He died in his own bed. I was with him …'

‘Poor man, he did look so dreadfully poorly, didn't he? I am so sorry.'

‘What is St Stephen's?'

‘A hospital. Poor fellow. Don't you worry now. It's lovely to see you again …' She went off to attend to someone at the check-out. I think I got some cheese, a bit of cold something to eat, I can't remember now what. I do remember I got a baguette and some Coleman's mustard.

In the car I asked Ron if he'd seen any Sunday paper? Anything about Mr F. and a hospital? He said oh, yes. He had. What is St Stephen's Hospital? Should I know about it? Is it for cancer? A specialist place? Oh no, sir, said Ron, it's
not for cancer so much as for people with AIDS. We turned left and headed for the gates to the Park. Why didn't you tell me, Ron? If you saw it? I didn't know … Ron looked at me in the driving-mirror. Well, he said, it wasn't true, was it? Spiteful rubbish. No point in distressing you. Wicked. I thanked him, looked out in shaken disbelief at the Park. Ordinary things out there. People walking, laughing, sitting on the grass, running, rowing on the lake; alive.

After the years of anxiety, fear, apprehension, the slow and agonizing decline into gradual ruin and distress; the loss of pride, the utter humility of trembling hands, shaking legs, cruel falls, and the scan which showed not a pea but a three-centimetre tumour, the death knell overheard on the kitchen extension; Anna weeping silently – after all that, this then for an ‘obituary'? A journey of high courage rubbished by a cheap tabloid. Friends protested violently and traced the journalist, who admitted it was untrue, but they were told the paper had already gone to press and it was too late to stop.

‘You can't afford to take legal action,' Lawrence said. ‘It would take at least two years to bring them to court, and you just frankly haven't got the money to fight them. Let it die away.'

The anger never died. I remembered that Pa, a journalist all his life, had eventually removed ‘Occupation' from his passport, in the later years of his life, as a modest form of protest at the fouling, as he said, of his profession. I'd always wondered why, honestly. But not now.

There were some timid achievements in the weeks which followed. My typing got marginally better, I began to rejig the edited letters which Barbara had found, wrote an Author's Note and an Epilogue. It was really only half a book. It had
been chucked by Norah Smallwood. ‘You've done a lot of work. But no one wants to read letters. And
not
letters to an elderly woman in America. Get on with a novel.' So I did. But these seemed to have matured a little with time. I sent them off to Pat Kavanagh, and we had lunch. I think I must have taken her out to eat. I can't remember ever feeding her a packet of spaghetti bolognese in the underground kitchen. She said yes, with the little drawings, they make a modest book. A start. Viking agreed. I was accepted and I had work in hand. It was a good feeling.

One afternoon a letter arrived from Thomas, an important letter which he had taken time to compose. Would I, he asked, ‘take over' from his grandfather? Carry on as he would have done? He had one grandfather in France, he'd very much like to have one in England; after all, I had known him since before he was born. In Forwood's will, when it was released, it appeared that I was to be given power of attorney over the money which he had left to his grandson, but which Thomas could not touch until he was twenty-five. So it fitted extremely well, and I accepted Thomas's suggestion. It was exactly the responsibility, small as it was perhaps, that I needed at that moment. I had a book ready for publication, collected a grandson, and had put on a terrific amount of weight since giving up smoking. I had a face like a melon, a beer gut, from far too much beer, and tits like Dolly Parton. I was altogether disgusting. The beer was entirely my own fault. I started early now. There was no one to stop me. About ten-thirty seemed the right time of day to begin. Maude telephoned one day to ask me out to lunch.

‘Just opened my first beer of the day.'

‘At
this
time?'

‘Is there a selected time? For beer?'

‘No. Not if you need it. Up to you.'

But I knew there was disapproval in her voice. Unstated, but none the less there. I was drinking too much. Solitude. I made it the excuse. Beer dulled the dislike of the house, the long solitary hours. Especially in the evenings. That was the worst. The summer evening sunlight was not for me. It never actually got to the pit and there is something singularly depressing about sitting in the dark, as opposed to shade, in a brick-lined pit with a wide blue sky far above.

I had been assured that, after a couple of years, I'd return to my original weight. Meanwhile the clothes I possessed no longer fitted anywhere, and I didn't feel that I could hang on to them for two years more. So, a grey suit for lunch, a dark suit for supper, a sports jacket and flannels. That was my limit: off the peg and ‘all right', all supplied by the sale of the Ben Nicholson.

I was still under the concerned care of Mrs Pink: ‘You must not use a stick! Ever! You'll become dependent on it.' My limp was still quite a limp, and even though I was confident enough to get down to the High Street and push a trolley round Marks and Spencer (very early, to avoid the continual ‘
Weren't
you Dirk Bogarde? A long time ago?' questioning at the check-outs), I funked anything more taxing.