Years later, when I was no longer Mervyn Frost but Maurice Yates, I was confronted by Sarge, long since retired from Gladbury.
Noreen’s father had died, after a long and savage illness, and for a while we had attempted to run the farm ourselves. But Noreen really wanted only to paint and I, a recluse, terrified that my true identity would be discovered, was totally without any aptitude for the life of a gentleman farmer. There had been a bitter conflict between father and daughter when she had announced that she would marry me; but eventually he had come to accept me, not because of my love for her but because of my love for the antiques with which the rambling farmhouse, part Jacobean, part Queen Anne, part Victorian, was crammed. He, too, loved these pieces – not, like me, for their beauty, but because of what they represented in the long history of his family. It pleased him when I would spend hours on end repairing a Sheraton-style beech chair with a tattered cane-work back, found in the attic, or carefully polished the tambour shutter of a writing-table stuffed almost to bursting point with old receipted bills. From the Brighton public library, to which I never ventured, Noreen would bring me back books on antiques; but I learned more from the emaciated old boy, his voice faintly droning on about how that fold-over pedestal rosewood table had been inherited from his Aunt Flora, and how that porter’s chair in panelled mahogany over there had been bought for a song, an absolute song, at an auction sale up at the Old Rectory in the middle of the War.
It was natural therefore that, when the old man had died – Noreen found him lying out by the pond in the garden, his elderly golden retriever seated beside him, as though patiently waiting for him to wake up and get on with the painfully slow walk on which he was taking her – and when we had at last succeeded in selling the house and the farm to a Canadian businessman who had made his fortune in scrap during the War, we should decide to move to London. What place was more likely to assure my anonymity?
At first we stayed in a Bayswater hotel, from the bedroom window of which I could look out on the Park. As the winter evening closed in prematurely, I could also look out on the prostitutes who, at that period, would wait along the railings, in serried rank as though on guard, for their randy, shifty customers. Once, catching me there, Noreen asked me ‘Tempted?’ ‘No, only curious.’ That was the truth. I was fascinated by the furtive and perilous lives of those shadowy women out there in the cold; but I had no wish to go out and speak to any of them, much less to accompany any of them back to her room. I never wanted anyone but Noreen.
Noreen was now teaching art at a small private girls’ school, as well as painting those pictures, with their cramped brush-work and over-attention to detail, which in later years would, like the prostitutes before them, line the railing separating Bayswater Road from the Park to tempt reluctant buyers. I would spend most of the day in our high-ceilinged double bedroom, reading about antiques or the history of crime. Of the crime, perhaps with good reason, Noreen disapproved – wasn’t it a little morbid (she repeatedly used that word) to be interested in it? Sometimes, restlessness suddenly blowing through me like a breeze unexpectedly shifting the sluggish air of a thunderous afternoon, I would wander out, to mooch along the Portobello Road or Kensington Church Street, staring in at the windows of antique shops and junk shops. Occasionally I would buy something small, a brooch or a necklace for Noreen, some cuff-links for myself, a single Vincennes cup and saucer, a Venetian glass tazza, a baccarat-spaced millefiori. ‘Where are you going to put that?’ Noreen would ask. The answer was in a drawer, or at the bottom of the wardrobe, or in one of the suitcases gathering dust on top of the wardrobe, or under our double bed.
After some months, we decided to look for a flat, largely because there was no room left for these sporadic acquisitions. We could certainly afford one; and in a flat there would be adequate space not merely for the antiques but for Noreen’s painting.
Our flat-hunting took us to a vast Edwardian block, its ornate façade presenting a liver-coloured, much-pitted cliff to a dark, narrow street off Westbourne Grove. Craning our necks upwards to its small, blind windows, we both knew at once that we could never bear to live there. But none the less we entered. The hall was shabby but clean. The house agents had told us to make contact with the porter and so, after some hesitation, we descended to the basement. After we had rung at the bell with ‘Porter’ inscribed in its highly polished brass, there was a long pause. Then a small, elderly, stiffly upright man, with a coxcomb of white hair sticking straight up from above his forehead, opened the door. His face had the congested look of the hard drinker, his breath smelled of whisky. ‘Yes?’
With terror I recognised him as Sarge. The left forefinger, with its missing top joint, was unmistakable. Would he recognise me, despite my moustache and beard, despite the way in which my hair was now parted not at the side but in the middle, despite my paunch and my premature wrinkles and stoop?
We explained why we had come, and Sarge, who was wearing an open-necked shirt and baggy flannels, then said crossly: ‘One moment, please’ and shut the door on us. Eventually he reappeared, now in a fawn uniform, with a black tie. ‘Sorry,’ he said, jangling some keys.
The flat was desolate, its narrow corridors doubling through a labyrinth of small, damp rooms. Noreen was fascinated by an ancient refrigerator, a yellowing funnel sticking out of its top and its door ajar on its rusty interior – ‘My Sanders grandmother had one just like that. It used to remind me of a ship.’
‘Of course it needs a lot of doing over,’ Sarge said dolefully. ‘The old couple lived here for nigh on fifty years. Then they went and died within a week of each other. Lucky for them! Neither could have managed alone.’
There were relics of the old couple everywhere: scattered copies of Reader’s Digest on the hearth of a bedroom; a butcher’s apron, hanging behind a door; a wardrobe which tottered and all but fell on top of Noreen when, out of perverse curiosity, she tugged to open it.
‘I have a feeling this isn’t the one for you,’ Sarge eventually said, in a voice which implied: ‘ Why the hell are you wasting my time?’
Noreen sighed. ‘There’s something about it … the atmosphere …’
‘That’s what they all say. But redecoration would soon make the atmosphere okay. It usually does.’
Perhaps he was right. Perhaps we could have made something of it. The price was cheap enough. But eventually Noreen said: ‘There’s no point in wasting any more of our time,’ and Sarge answered sourly: ‘Or in wasting mine.’
I had a ten-shilling note (worth a good sum in those days) ready to tip him. In the hall I drew it out of my trouser pocket and held it out. ‘Thank you for your trouble,’ I said.
Suddenly Sarge was squinting at me, his mouth open under the small, bristly white moustache. ‘You know … I have the strangest feeling … I’ve met you before. Wasn’t you – wasn’t you at Gladbury?’
‘Gladbury? The school, you mean?’ Could he apprehend my terror, behind my attempted nonchalance? ‘ No, as a matter of fact, I was at Harrow.’
Again he squinted at me. Then his face neared mine, I could smell his whisky-laden breath. He looked malevolent, accusatory. ‘I could have sworn… You remind me so much …’
Noreen hastened to the front door and I strolled after her (don’t hurry, don’t hurry). I turned: ‘ I’m sorry to have troubled you for nothing. Thank you so much.’
‘The chap you remind me of – it’s an interesting story … Maybe you read about it in the papers at the time.’
But Noreen had pushed the swing door open and gone through it. Hurrying now, I followed her.