A Short Walk from Harrods (27 page)

The Kensington house began to take shape. Smaller by far than Le Pigeonnier, it required less furniture, which was just as well frankly, and most of the big pictures simply couldn't be got up the narrow staircase. So they had to be sent back to storage and the ones that fitted were the ones I had to accept. It was an imperative weeding out. Much of the furniture was equally restricted because it wouldn't go round the staircase bend. We couldn't go on banging holes in the walls and tearing out the windows to sling things in and out, even though Frank and George were willing and able.

So we settled for what would fit the Doll's House and then began the real unpacking. Elizabeth, Maude and Brock's wife, Kim, came to help unwrap pots and pans, cups and saucers, knives and forks, and various bits of china. The kitchen, in the basement with shadowy views of whitewashed walls on both sides, rang with happy cries of ‘Where does this go?' or ‘You'll never use this here!' or ‘If you don't want it I'll take it, willingly …' and ‘
Three
saucepans! With buttercups on them. Anyone found the lids?'

It was happy confusion and the dustbins filled with paper and straw and the women looted joyously, because I chucked everything away that I couldn't immediately think of placing
or, more important, using. As I could hardly crack an egg or boil water I didn't know what many things were for. I kept Forwood out of the way and made him fiddle about with his stereo equipment and Montserrat Caballé up in the sitting-room.

Eventually it all got sorted out, roughly, and the first month ended. We had a base at last, familiar things – those not being repaired, veneered, polished, screwed together – around us. Shirts, socks and vests were in most of our drawers. We were in.

I didn't hear the wind at first. Stuffed with sleeping-pills in my narrow bed up in the attic, I only really became aware of anything unusual when I opened doped eyes and saw, silhouetted against the landing light, the naked figure of Forwood holding his portable radio. The BBC news at three o'clock informed us, in a calm voice, that there was a hurricane blowing. I remember putting on a lamp, staggering towards the window which was slamming and crashing and trying to secure it with the belt of my dressing-gown. I got Forwood down the stairs back to his bed and we sat listening to the radio. No mistral this: a real, honest to God hurricane. And in three hours' time the car was due, and we were supposed to be in Pentonville Road, for the scanner.

I dressed and at four wandered out into the gusting dawn. Light was slowly leaking into the night. At the top of Church Street there was a double decker bus, all the lights blazing, abandoned in the street. Desolation. The canopy from the Indian corner shop bucketed and jigged down the hill, papers flew like demented gulls, bricks, slates, shards of chimney pots, slabs of shattered tile from somewhere formed a rockery of ruin all the way down the street. Only the traffic
lights seemed to have retained their normal function: endlessly red, amber, green … A branch, hysterical with twisting leaves, sailed frantically away, eddied upwards, crashed into the doorway of the Pâtisserie Française.

I got back to the house, holding on to the railings and crawling on my knees when they petered out.

‘It's pretty bad. I don't suppose the car will even get here. Wreckage all over the place.' Forwood had managed to dress, shaved himself, cut his face. A scrap of Kleenex wagged on his chin. ‘I'll
have
to get to the scan. It's the most important one.'

I had made some tea, and we sat in the kitchen among half-emptied packing-cases and assorted casseroles. The car arrived, amazingly, on time at six o'clock. It was not Ron, this morning, but Tony: young, bearded, determined. I was grateful to him for his calm. No problem, he said, we'll get there. And we did, by driving through the Park across the grass, swerving past giant trees, scattered tooth-picks on a billiard table, across the branch-strewn sand of Rotten Row, dodging flailing boughs, bumping and bouncing. Holding on, spinning, sticking, revving, bursting free, we finally reached the gates by Marble Arch. It was fully light by now. Tony, I noticed with interest, had never lost his cockaded cap. ‘I'll wait,' he said. ‘I have a book. I hope they've got power in there, lots of lines are down.'

They had. It took a little time to get everything together, but eventually they came for him and I sat looking through a battered copy of
Woman and Beauty.
Wasn't a good scan. I got a feeling that it wouldn't be when a bespectacled man in a white coat passed me on my way to the scanning chamber. He touched my arm and said, ‘
Very
good luck.' I said thank you. But I knew, by his compassionate smile and the hand
on my arm, that there was doubt. So does kindness betray us.

A pleasant Asian woman, crisp in white, a shining bun, smiling, arrived with Forwood. ‘I'm afraid I peed myself.' He was bleakly apologetic. She shook her head, earrings swung. ‘People nearly always do. We are quite used to that.' And to me she said, ‘Mr Wrigley has your telephone number of course? He'll be sure to call you in a day or two.'

He did, one late afternoon. I was putting summer shirts and things away in a drawer in my attic; Forwood was down in the kitchen making himself some tea. I picked up the telephone instantly, before he would even reach it. Mr Wrigley said it was not good news, he was afraid. It was not a shadow. A tumour. I heard myself saying, ‘Is it very big?', as if that would make any difference, and his reply, ‘I'm not talking about a pea. I'm talking about three bloody centimetres …' When he rang off, seconds later, I heard the kitchen extension hang up.

The cornflower blue carpet up to Wrigley's office was always so fresh and clean, a yellowing monstera deliciosa in the corner of the stairs – I always thought it was a silly name, always wondered how many anxious and frightened feet had gone down the blue flight to Harley Street. Or up, for that matter.

Forwood wanted to know if he would be in pain and was assured that he would not be. Cancer of the liver was not painful. He refused, there and then, any vague possibility of chemotherapy. ‘I'm too vain. I'm damned if I'm going to lose what hair I have; I've lost all my teeth already. Clackers. I'm not doing any more.'

Wrigley, a good man, accepted that, and said that there was a new pill on the market. Japanese. It had been unusually
successful in a large number of cases there. Would he like to try them? He had a supply he'd brought from Tokyo and was willing to share them with accepting patients who would take the risk. Forwood took it. As he said, ‘What else do I do?' It was agreed that the treatment would commence from the following Monday. I don't remember why.

Ron was driving that day. In the back we were both silent. When we turned into Oxford Street he began a long, jolly story about some competition in which he'd taken part on Tenerife: windsurfing. He'd won a cup and a free return first-class ticket on Iberian Airlines. Pretty good, wasn't it? At his age? After all, he pointed out with a deprecating cough, he was no chicken was he? At his age, pretty good, eh? Excellent.

Somehow, oddly enough, now that it had been spelled out, in large letters, now that the very worst was known, it felt not so bad. Apprehension, not being sure, the constant wear and tear of anxiety hidden, covered, fell away. There was no need to speak of the thing: it had been spoken of. There was always the chance that the Japanese pill might work, might, as Wrigley said, start to ‘demolish' the tumour. Still there was hope. Not all was black and lost, there was plenty yet to work for and to fight for. We'd just, we agreed, shut up about it. Even Gareth, his son, was not to be told. No one should know. What on earth was the point of dragging others into the affair? It would only make it worse all round. So that was it. It was rather as if we were two dogs who had successfully swum a flood-raged river. Safely across, after great effort, we stood on the bank, shivering, trembling. Now we must shake off the water, roll ourselves dry, and run off once more to seek new adventures. Something like that.

At any rate, Frank and George had finished building two desks in a little room next to mine, with shelves and drawers all about, and Forwood was soon occupied carting books and papers and files carefully. To start up the new ‘office'. I hung all the pictures which could be got to go up the staircase. It took quite a long time, clambering about with hammers, picture hooks and tape measures.

Forwood came down from his office to admire my efforts. ‘Don't overdo things. Remember we're no chickens,' he said, remembering Ron.

‘I've just finished. That's the last.
The Yellow Sea.
Like it there?'

‘Fine. I'll go down and do some rice. A bit of rice and prawns for supper? Okay for you?'

‘Okay. Need any help?'

‘May spill a little. I think I can manage. I'll call.'

He went down the stairs to the kitchen. I poured my first whisky of the day, picked up
Exchange and Mart,
which I bought to see if I could find a second-hand carpet for the downstairs room, and instantly found myself, face crushed against the banisters, inelegantly lying head first down the stairs. I still remember the smell of the carpet. And my surprise.

It was a bit jokey.

Lying there I couldn't understand anything. I hadn't had a drink. Not a sip. My legs were twisted through the banisters. That was clever of them. The carpet was rough on my face. Like being pressed into corn stubble. I couldn't move. But I
could
speak. I yelled down the stairs, ‘Stroke!', but Forwood was running water in the kitchen and didn't immediately hear. When he did he came up as quickly as he could, ashenfaced,
tried to lug me off the floor. Mercifully my left arm seemed to work, and I managed to drag myself into a huddle, slumped hard against the sitting-room door, which was open, thank God, otherwise I would have crashed into it and knocked myself silly. I remember all this part quite clearly. The new coal gas fire was flickering away deceitfully in its Regency basket, my whisky stood, absolutely untouched, where I had left it, the
Exchange and Mart
had spewed over the floor at my side. Mockingly almost. I leant back and tried to lift my right leg with my working hand but it was far too heavy. Ever carried a human leg? In your arms? I had to once in Normandy, with help. I'm always amazed that the body can maintain two of them.

‘A stroke, I fear,' I said.

Forwood sat in a chair by the fireplace. ‘Right side. But you can speak. Can you see all right?'

‘Yes. Listen, I'm not slurring, am I?'

He shook his head. We half laughed.

‘Golly!' I said. ‘We really
are
paying for those years on the hill, aren't we?'

‘We are. I'll call the firm.' The firm were the doctors who were in charge of him. Mainly. ‘I'll probably only get a recording. It's after office hours.'

‘Well, before you do, I'll have to have a pee. I can't just lie here and stream away. New carpet too. Empty that Evian bottle and bring it over.' I thought it was a pretty rum thing to do, but there was no alternative at that moment. Anyway I did it, and an hour later, or about that time, Jonathan Hunt was beside me full of apologies because he'd been called out to deal with a madman. Real, mark you, not a druggie, just violently mad. Yes, indeed, I'd had a stroke. Mild, as far as he
could see. He called an ambulance, a private firm. No lamps flashing, no sirens wailing. Discreet in the little ‘Montmartre' street.

I heard him speak to Edward VII, and heard him say, ‘He's on his way as soon as the ambulance arrives,' and sagged with relief. He'd got me in. The ambulance arrived about forty minutes later. I had Forwood's wallet in case tips were needed. And of course they were. Two pleasant men struggled me down the narrow staircase, the elegant banister wobbling and bending under their weight. I begged Forwood not to tell anyone except Maude, but to wait until morning to telephone the family. No point in screwing up their night. In the morning we'd know more about everything. Gave the two ambulance men twenty quid each – they had been very careful – and we drove away smoothly and silently. No one knew in Kensington. In the twilight of the ambulance they talked about someone who was playing someone at somewhere at football on the telly. They wondered who might have scored after they had had to leave to collect me? Through the windscreen ahead I saw the lights of a restaurant somewhere and two unaware people being shown to a table up on a balcony, a pink lamp on their table. They didn't know that I was watching them, stuck at traffic lights below, struck by a stroke. Lucky them.

This is the time when you find out that it is a bit too late to worry about the state of your underwear. Our nanny, Lally, always insisted that, as children, Elizabeth and I were immaculate in our garments whenever we went out. Lest we be hit by a motorcycle and sidecar or, worse even, an omnibus. She hadn't ever thought of a mild stroke. Anyway, it was too late to worry. I was almost there; and then
there.
By which time I had mentally let go … I don't remember much of the rest of the evening. I gave in and let others, better equipped, deal with me. I remember a room, a ceiling, a bed; people in blue and white, a chink of instruments, and being rapidly undressed and wrapped in a kind of shroud. It tied at the neck, and a young man in a white coat took out his key-ring and rasped his car key up my instep. I was mildly interested. He said did I feel it? I said no. And he did it again but roughly, and I still said no. He said goodnight, and I asked if I'd sleep. He said someone would make sure of that, don't worry.

And I don't remember anything else until I opened my eyes in the gloom and saw my sister, Elizabeth, sitting beside my bed. She looked as if she had just come in from the garden. Which, as it transpired, was almost what she had done.

‘Hullo,' I said. ‘I told Forwood
not
to say anything.'