A Short Walk from Harrods

by Dirk Bogarde

  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 a
nd clinch things?’

  Chapter 12

  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.

  To be fair, after a disgraceful effort on my part to break down the sisters’ front door with my feet and fists (I was hysterical, you might gather, after a twelve-hour session of ‘Breeee – brrrop – brungg!’ and lost my head completely), they kindly consented to stick foam-rubber under the keys and peace, more or less, returned. I was rebuked by another resident of the block for complaining. ‘After all,’ she said at a tenants’ meeting, ‘you are new here. No one else ever complained.’ I did not point out that I lived above, and that the sound of two grand pianos in full spate raged up the chimney. I just accepted my reprimand but never attended another tenants’ meeting. Best avoided at all costs. Very like a WI meeting in Blakes Cross or Lacey Magna without lottery tickets, jars of pickled beetroot, coffee and biscuits, or appeals for Bulgarian babies.

  Otherwise, amazingly, one almost never sees anyone at all. I never know quite how Fate, or whatever it is, arranges the timing. But whoever it was, or is, I am grateful.

  Elizabeth, Frank and George moved me from the Doll’s House one hot September morning. The van which brought my worldly goods was so modest that it almost took up no more room than a large Honda motorbike in the street below. A far cry from the twelve pallets at the XYZ depot. I kept only the things I needed: bed, chairs, particular pictures, chest of drawers and so on. All the rest was handed over to Maude’s impeccable friend, who valued it, carted it about, stored it, and, finally, sent it off to auction. What Alain and Christine did not buy, what I did not keep, Kensington, Knightsbridge, Fulham, and assorted dealers bid for. I later saw a painting which cost me five pounds in a junk shop in Cookham, and which had always hung in every house I’d owned (it was too large for the staircase at the Doll’s House), going for £85,000 in a shop in Walton Street. I got £2,000. My bad luck. But it would never have fitted into my new scheme of things.

  Life was altogether simpler, I saved only the bits and pieces with which I’d always lived, some from my early days in a rented house in Chester Row and the carved stone figure of Bacchus who had always guarded the front door of Le Pigeonnier and who now stands sentinel on the balcony, staring blindly into the trees. He proves a comforting link with what was. Once speckled by the shade from the vine, he burns in the thin London sun or dribbles sorrowfully in the grey rain, but is staunchly my friend and familiar.

  At first it was all a bit bewildering and difficult. I had given myself two years to continue, so it seemed wise to stop sitting on the balcony in the late sunshine (it was a wonderful summer that year) drinking whisky and watching the kestrel in the big plane tree and the silence of evening descend on my part of London. I had no incentive. Without that I knew that I would perish, to use the word the night nurse had used to me in the Hospital, rapidly. I’d just swig away at the whisky in the evenings – I was getting through a third of a bottle a night – and bash at the Heineken in the day. Otherwise, apart from a slightly hung-over drift to the grocer to get something cold (that is to say something that did not require cooking) to eat, or a visit to the chemist, or (very daring this) to look at the books in John Sandoe’s bookshop, I did nothing whatsoever. All day. I couldn’t possibly continue like this, even though I rather enjoyed it, because at the rate I was going I’d not last a year, let alone the two I had so generously allotted myself.

  So, I bought some pots and tubs, some sacks of compost, and began to make a modest garden on the roof. Then I bought a paperback cookery book and learned, painfully, how to make corned-beef hash. I was so impressed by my work that I cooked and ate it every day for a week. Then, wearying slightly, I tried a packet of spaghetti and a bottle of vicious acidic red sauce. Pretty awful, but far better than squashed sandwiches soggy with mayonnaise and old avocado dip, and better by far than boil-in-the-bags. I knew the taste of them all. And the unrelenting flavour of monosodium glutamate had practically taken the roof off my mouth and blunted any tastebuds I might once have had. But I had spent time cooking. The most important thing was that I was ‘creating’ something. Learning again. Even if it was something as humdrum as just cooking, it was a start. A reawakening from the immensity of loss.

  Pots full of compost and some instant-gardening plants like asters and geraniums on the balcony, a cookery book and saucepans in the kitchen and, very gradually, a return to the typewriter to fulfil my duty for Mr Shakespeare – it was a cautious return to life. The press had seen to it that old friends knew that I had come back to the UK. I was, at first, in demand as a spare pair of trousers at many a dinner party, but that pretty soon wore off. I had been away and out of touch for far too long and simply couldn’t hold my own at anyone’s supper, or luncheon, table. I was as entertaining and fascinating as a pair of wet gloves.

  Incentive gradually returned with Molly’s extraordinary idea about an evening event to celebrate Saki. With the help of Amanda Saunders of the National, and three splendid volunteers to help me, Tim Piggot-Smith, Barbara Leigh Hunt and Zoé Wannamaker, I once again found myself in rehearsal for a stage performance and, after thirty years, standing stage-right before a full house at the Olivier. Hideous fear dried my mouth to pumice dust, made tremble my ‘wonky’ leg, misted my glasses, and sent my voice ranging between basso profundo and high treble. But I did it. We were a success, and we all trolled off together to other dates.

  Suddenly I was modestly back in the stream again, confidence so badly dented and dulled began to gleam. I almost enjoyed myself, even managed to stan
d up straight and stop the apologetic stoop which I had adopted since I returned to the UK – a useless form of concealment which never worked anyway. There were offers to take the show on tour: to America, to Australia, around Britain. But I was not absolutely certain that trailing about doing exactly the same thing every night was really what I wanted to do with my life. But at least I was considering a future. It was a great deal better than sitting in stately solitude waiting for death, more or less. And the feeling of restlessness now engendered was rather exciting.

  I decided to extend my expectations of life a little bit longer; there were obviously things to do, and things which I could do. All that was necessary was to branch out and try something absolutely on my own. Just to see if I could?

  The chance came when Bea Gilbert, a friend of years, suddenly, literally out of the blue, telephoned to ask me for the private telephone number of Mr XYZ, an extremely famous actor. I refused: private is private. She found my pompous refusal irritating. Why, I asked, did she want this hallowed number? Well, Bertrand Tavernier, the French director, was about to make a new film and wanted to get hold of Mr XYZ. It was, she said, just in passing, a script which I had been offered years ago and turned down. What script? And when she told me I remembered instantly. I wasn’t mad about it and it had arrived on one of the wretched days at Le Pigeonnier when Patrick was looking worried and anxious. The script was about a dying man so I had rejected it out of hand. Now I rather cunningly suggested that if it was true that Tavernier was going to direct it (he had not been associated with it before), and if he would consider me, I’d like to do it now. Bea said crossly that she was ‘not a bloody agent, you know’ and three days later Tavernier, whom I so greatly admired, was sitting with a cup of coffee before me in my own sitting-room. He said he was ‘absolutely delighted’ that I would work for him. Shooting would commence in September.