A Short Walk from Harrods (31 page)

So I refused a great many invitations to things which might have alleviated the solitariness of life, too scared that I'd one day fall over (visions of past falls flew before my eyes). I didn't want that, and even though I'd put my name and address in my wallet I was terrified that one day I'd end up in casualty somewhere with a line of curious walking wounded asking for autographs. Because, even though I'd
been away for so many years and had only made one unremarked and unre-markable film for television in the UK in twenty years, I was, to my consternation, recognized continually in the street. It was flattering but unnerving. In France I had never been accosted, except with a slight salute, a smile, a nod.

Limping about in a grubby anorak, in cheap trainers, and Marks and Spencer's jeans ('You don't have to try them on in the shop! They'll change them. Just keep the receipt,' said Elizabeth), was not the way I truthfully wanted audiences to remember me. Especially with a beer gut, a plum-pudding face and Dolly Parton's bust. I simply didn't feel up to close scrutiny. Or distant, come to that. Vanity is a killer, but it didn't stop me drinking beer. The new suits, of course, were extremely useful now that I had to accompany Bernard Walsh on our visits to try to find a suitable flat. I couldn't go around the area in which I wished to spend the next year or two left to me dressed like a derelict (I'd decided that about
two
years would be as much as I could cope with: if I reached seventy that would see me out). I had kept Mr Walsh to a strict area bounded by the Kings Road, Brompton Road, Pont Street and Eaton Terrace. Anything beyond those confines was out. Unless there was something ravishing on the river. I was told that unless I was extremely rich I hadn't a hope. But he'd keep looking, and he did.

I was becoming absolutely desperate now to leave the Doll's House. I'd clear out and go to an hotel rather than stay there after the summer. I couldn't face a long dark English winter there on my own, so I began to make cautious arrangements once more to store the furniture and clear off. Room service would be more attractive than these continual heat-ups in the kitchen.

Bernard called one day to say that he had had an offer for the house, but could I be out by the end of July? I could. Shaking with excitement every time the telephone rang, I found it hard to contain my impatience. The house was sold, at a profit: a great deal of work had been done to it by Frank and George. The paperwork and contracts took ages to settle – there was a Bank Holiday – but finally all was well except that I had nowhere to go. An hotel seemed inevitable until the indefatigable Mr Walsh proffered a glossy bunch of ‘final possibilities', one of which, with only two modest bedrooms, did seem possible
except
there was no room for an office in which to set up a desk and typewriter. Now that my living had to be by writing (I now had a contract with the
Daily Telegraph,
much to my surprise), it was essential that I had a workplace. The possible flat was almost exactly what I wanted, and located where I wished to live. As I had given myself a lifespan of about, give or take a month or so, two years, I reckoned I could splash out a bit financially: I wouldn't be around to worry for long.

But the lack of one bedroom for an office did bother me idiotically until Molly (Lady Daubeny) telephoned on the very evening of the day on which I'd seen the place. We were old friends: I'd first met her when she had just arrived from South Africa, bright and starry-eyed, in 1947. She married Sir Peter Daubeny, the impresario who had had the brilliant foresight to bring a play in which I was appearing in Notting Hill Gate into a West End theatre. The sad fact that
Oklahoma!
opened in the same week, at the Theatre Royal opposite in Drury Lane, made us a certain disaster area, and we closed within a month. But Molly and I remained friends.

Now, so many years later, and widowed, she was the
‘friend in need', a meal, a drink, a shoulder to weep on. This time we were talking flats; she had just moved into one herself, and I found her extremely useful to check prices, leases, freeholds and things.

She asked, suddenly, if I knew the works of Saki? I said yes, years ago, hadn't read him in yonks. Well, did I know that on November the 17th it would be the seventy-fifth anniversary of his death in action? In the First War? No, I did not. What, I wondered, was she talking about? Why Saki? Well, she had a perfectly thrilling idea that they should do some kind of concert thing on that date to commemorate his life. And death. Some readings of his works. Did I follow?

Uneasily, with a gradual build of inner panic, I did begin to follow. I was, somehow or another, going to be dragged in and involved in this Saki business. She came quickly to the point. Would I consider reading some of his stories? Perhaps just five or six. The funniest ones? I could choose them myself. At the National Theatre? Perhaps the Olivier, or the Lyttleton? Terribly thrilling, she thought. She felt almost certain that she could get one of the theatres for a platform performance. A frightfully nice person, Amanda Saunders, would perhaps help. Would I do it? They'd be certain to agree if
I
would agree? I said that the idea simply appalled me. I hadn't been on a stage for thirty years, I had a severe limp, as she knew, and couldn't walk far, let alone stand about on a stage reading. I'd never read before in my life. The very thought of being
near
a stage, at the National of all places, filled me with terror and I had no desire whatsoever to attract the press, who filled me with equal terror. I was, I said, hand on heart, terribly sorry but
no.
So she said that she was sorry too. It would have been thrilling, but anyway it
was such a
long
time ahead. Perhaps I'd just think about it? Keep it in my mind? She thought I had
exactly
the right voice for reading Saki. Would I think about it? November?

So I said yes. To shut her up really, for I was far more exercised by my own immediate problems. My house was sold, I told her, I was technically homeless, the only flat which was exactly what I wanted was too small – no room for an office – and, in any case, I only had until noon of the next day to decide because after noon it would be put on the open market.

Molly's voice, on the telephone, was as light, high, and joyous as that of a lark ascending. ‘Darling! If it's
exactly
what you want, just put a desk in the second bedroom and have that as your office! Simple!'

‘But there might be people staying. My sister. Thomas. The children. Someone …'

‘A desk, with a bed. Why not? It would be only for a night or two presumably, and if it's family they wouldn't mind a scrap. I mean, darling! You aren't
entertaining
now, are you? Your office is far more important. You'd be mad to let it go if you like it, just because it's one room short of perfection.'

Of course, she was right. The flat was exactly that. Perfection, but one room short. It had everything I needed: a terrace – I suppose you might call it a roof garden in estate agent speak – or correctly a wide balcony, a sitting-room of good size, two bedrooms, very small, two bathrooms to go with them, and a kitchen which was of such modest proportions that, should you stand dead-centre and spread your arms wide, you could, with a slight list to either side, touch the walls. A place to boil an egg rather than roast a sheep. The
whole would have fitted into the Long Room. From the terrace (which I shall call it), great trees and green leaves; distant roofs, chimney stacks, more trees. Above all, the wide, cathedral-high canopy of the sky. Most important, perhaps, it was all on one floor, one level: no stairs. If I had another stroke I could, just possibly, drag myself to the telephone. Things like that had now to be seriously considered.

Bernard Walsh and I had, once again, trailed from one unsuitable place to another, he always brimming with optimism, I awash with sickening apprehension. I had never lived in a flat in my life. Never had neighbours above, below and all around. I really found it difficult to believe that people could actually exist in some of the fearful places into which we had to venture to see, simply, if they'd ‘do': Adam-green walls, pale watercolours in huge mounts and thin gold frames, brass chandeliers too high on the ceiling, kitchens sticky with frying-fat, bedrooms sagging with candlewick bedspreads and oval mirrors, bathrooms clogged with hair-combings and stained Kleenex tissues, views across dark wells into other people's rooms, dingy through the filtered light from dusty net curtains. Some places, of course, were much better than that: but this was the average. The next morning, very early, Mr Walsh collected me for another viewing.

‘Now, this is a
marvellous
block. I think you'll like this one. Princess Diana had a flat here once …'

We were driving wearily to yet another address; at least, I was. ‘Does that make it so different from the other places?'

‘Well, she's a Princess. You know, Spencers, wonderful family …'

Bernard was determined to see hope in everything, even in a hideous block of apartments, one of which had once been
occupied by the Princess and a slew of chalet girls and Knightsbridge au pairs. But it had a pub on one corner, so that settled that. I insisted we drive on without even entering the place. He looked crestfallen, so I suggested that we might return, immediately, to the flat on the roof short of one bedroom.

‘You
did
say it was too small, Dirk?'

But we got there and he produced the keys again and we went up. He tactfully wandered out on to the terrace, left me to look round once more, without distraction. I could easily get a small desk, and a bed, into the little bedroom. It faced north through a tiny attic window. A view of a gable and racks of chimney pots. Writers must work in peace with no visual distractions. I was told. In the little hall the lift opened directly into a sort of closet. A shaft of brilliant August sunlight flooded straight into the sitting-room. Mr Walsh stepped in from the terrace, a last glossy brochure in one hand, jingling keys in the other.

‘We really
ought
to be moving on to Pont Street? I said ten-thirty and it's nearly eleven-fifteen after this diversion.'

I said, don't let's bother with Pont Street. I'll settle for this place. It was really all I needed. He started to remind me of its faults: only two small bedrooms, right up on the roof, very exposed, a school playground just below.

‘Would that matter?' I was looking at the awfulness of white wrought iron and glass-topped tables which surrounded us. Far worse than school playgrounds.

He shrugged. ‘Children screaming? Little ones. Difficult to control, all that energy to let loose. Of course they
do
have
tremendously
long holidays … And you are entitled to the use of the private gardens below. I know you are a country boy
at heart … Near the shops, of course: chemist, grocer … And the balcony would be a temptation for you. In summer?'

In summer. Pots and tubs, nicotianas, hostas, aquilegias, foxgloves, a rose or two? Why not? I was leaning over the low brick wall of the terrace, looking down on trees, smooth lawns, a pair of magpies strutting arrogantly.

‘We really ought to be moving, Dirk. The car is on a yellow line …'

I rolled a gob of spittle on to my tongue, let it fall with a silent splatter into the cherry tree below. ‘Don't let's bother, Bernard. I'll settle for this. What's the lease again?'

‘Sixty-two years.'

‘Lud! That'll see me out. The telephone, I think, is in the hall. Would you call and clinch things?'

Standing on the cliff top looking out over the immensity of the ocean, it is perfectly apparent that the tide has turned, come racing in, and swirled all your petty endeavours away. The sea frills, swells, surges and scallops along the edge of the cliff far below. Gulls mew and wheel against the sky, dipping low in great swooping glides across the sparkling water. The waves, or wavelets in truth, suck and smack against the rocks, claw graspingly across the pebbles, and then, almost as you watch, they begin to ebb and turn, the tide pulls away, swirling, moon-dragged, towards the distant line which marks infinity or just the usual old horizon. Once again, lying there before you, stretched wide and glistening in the sunlight is that enormous expanse of sea-washed sand. Corrugations of ripples and little ridges, shallow puddles of left-behind water, sparkling shards of broken mirror, trapping tiny crabs, darting shrimp, ribbons of torn weed. All new, pristine, waiting for bare feet to come down and plash and splash, for the little red spade, and work to start on the foundations of another fort.

No matter that the tide will turn once again and destroy all that you will build (and that in the depths of your soul you know that this will happen), you thrust the spade in the hard-packed rippled sand, outline the beginning of a moat. Soon a fort will arise, decorated all about, once again, with shells and weed, with towers and turrets, arches and a drawbridge, each turret capped with a conical limpet shell. As glorious as the first one ever was, probably even better from the experience gained by its destruction, and every bit as impermanent.

The flat was my new fort. I preferred to consider my three rooms and balcony as a house, for no other reason than that I had never before lived in a flat, and the word ‘house' came more readily to my lips. The small lift compounded my illusion by opening not into a hallway and a row of numbered doors, but immediately into my own hall so that when it whispered down I felt that I was inhabiting a wholly secret and private place high on the roof. There were neighbours, of course, but only below me. No one above or to left or right, so it was, almost, a house. Anyway, I preferred the name, and the fact that I could smell what everyone was cooking in each apartment in the block didn't, after a time, trouble me. The scents of roasting meats, over-garlicked stews and fried fish which spewed up from the central well were almost constant reminders of the life around me, but apart from two apparently maniacal sisters who once practised on grand pianos for twelve hours at a stretch, and the greasy odours, I might just as well have been back on the hill, as far as silence and peace were concerned.