For the Time Being (8 page)

I left Mae-Ellen's a little earlier than she had intended. But enough was enough. I pleaded the walk home and having to take it easy, and some shopping I'd remembered I had to do before the shop closed. I got out exhausted and grateful for the air outside.

The King's Road was still the King's Road. By that I mean that I first walked it in wonderment at seventeen and now, at seventy, it still has the same effect. In some strange way, it still
feels
the same. I still
feel
seventeen. I am surrounded by familiars, altered but recognizable. I said, earlier on, that I walked with ghosts. And so I do. Not all of whom I knew, or even met, but they must still be about. Oscar Wilde coming from Tite Street, Lillie Langtry going up to the Cadogans', Carlyle hurrying to his tobacconist, Augustus John in sagging dressing gown off to the Five Bells.

My parents were here too; when they were young and I just born. Walking down to the Good Intent, or to the Blue Cockatoo on the Embankment. Henry Moore bought his packets of vine-charcoal from the shop on the corner; and Graham and Kathleen Sutherland, elegance far beyond anything I had ever seen before. And Danuta must bounce along somewhere. I can see her now, heavy Polish breasts jiggling under her loose shirt, broad feet in flat sandals striding to the squalid little studio she had in a crumbling terrace of Regency houses where the fire station stands today. But
I very well remember her removing my virginity there, on the rug before her plopping gas-fire, and casting it, and finally me, aside as contemptuously as an old jacket. In 1939 she went home to Warsaw for the summer recess. And that was that.

So I am not unfamiliar with my area. It fits me, and even though the players have altered out of all recognition, the game, as it were, remains the same. There are black faces now among the white. Bedraggled girls in black tights and Doc Martens, shaven-headed youths crashing the kick-starts of their motor-bikes. There is a stink of greasy food, of cheap coffee, the beat of heavy metal thumping in the air. All, really, familiar. Different from the people we were at their age. But, remember, at their age I was making birdcages for a linnet.

The shop is still open. I take a wire basket and wander in, wondering what to eat for my supper. A fraught business. A tin of soup? Easy. No mess. One dish to wash. Perhaps some ham? Cold ham and boiled potatoes. Perhaps with a bit of chutney. I was, I realized, muttering aloud to myself. I tripped over one of those blasted shopping trolleys, usually tartan, which elderly ladies drag behind them in supermarkets. The woman, in a plum-cloth coat and pudding-basin hat, glared at me as if I had attempted to snatch her bag, shrugged off my apology and turned back to her companion, a thin woman in a knitted beret. ‘You was sayin'?' she said to plum-cloth. ‘Well. I said to ‘im, well then I said. What's that lump doing there? Wasn't there lunchtime. Very nasty it looks. Very nasty. You watch your bleedin' mouth, ‘e says to me. Don't meddle! Well, I says, you go to Boots cash chemist and get something to put on it. Get lorst! ‘e says. Silly old cat. My own child! Own flesh and blood. Flabbergarsted, I was.' Considering ham or pie at the counter, listening with curiosity to the conversation behind me, I was all unaware of mounting irritation from the woman next to me. She started to push hard at my wire basket with her own.

‘Do you frightfully mind?' Her voice icy with disdain. We had crossed the Great Divide, there would be no democratic encounter here between her mushroom hat, well-cut silk dress and tight grey
hair, and my aged anorak, dirty jeans and trainers. I was ready for the sacrifice and, armed with this reassurance, she pressed forward. I did not budge. Not a millimetre. I willed her to have another bash at my basket and this she did, swinging at mine like a demolition ball and chain.

‘I did ask you to move. I
am
trying to shop.'

‘And I, madam.'

‘Here before you. And I know exactly what I want. So.'

‘And I do. Exactly.'

A youth hovered about behind the glass counter. She raised a jewelled fist to summon him.

‘Young man! Smoked salmon. Scottish, not farmed. Eight ounces.'

She turned to me once again and demanded that I move. I said that I would.

When I had been served.

This trivial and unseemly squabble had reached the point where I thought she might see fit to swing her basket at my head, her eyes burned with such dislike and contempt, but at that instant Mr Collinson, crisp in white apron, eyes sparking with mischief, was quite suddenly in attendance.

‘Ah! M'Lord! There you are. What can we do for you today? Pie?'

The mushroom hat and the silk dress moved swiftly away. She stared at me, white with hostility.

Mr Collinson, beaming at a minor victory, clasped his hands.

‘The ham, m'Lord? Of course. Can I tempt you to three slices?'

Behind me in the queue a woman's voice said: ‘Oh my dear … Gerald and I had to dine with them on Tuesday. They really won't do, you know. I mean, Christmas cards from Kensington Palace stuck all over the room. In June! Quite impossible.'

Takes all sorts in my manor. A goodly mix, as my father would say. At the check-out, plum-coat had beaten me to it.

‘My own flesh and blood, Chrissie. Did you ever?'

Walk up to my square: sunlight freckling through the plane trees. But no dogs leaping in idiot welcome, no scent of freshly cut hay,
no scuttering lizards on the stone walls. No voice from the terrace calling: ‘Were the London papers in yet?'

Emptiness sings. Perfectly all right. No problem.

How the hell did I get here?

Independent on Sunday,
30 September 1990

To the Editor of
The Times

Sir: I was happy to see a ‘singing cricket' hopping about among some weeds in a greenhouse last Tuesday ('Last stand for “singing cricket” depleted by the fickle summers', 4 September). He is a member of a small colony which gives endless delight to various nieces and nephews.

It, the colony, has been in the gardens for ages … and it is a good way from Petworth, but still in West Sussex. So that is another ‘sighting'. All is not lost. Yet.

Sincerely

DIRK BOGARADE

London

The Times,
4 December 1992

I really can't remember when I first went into John Sandoe's shop in those squashed little cottages in Blacklands Terrace. I only know that it was years ago and that I was not, as I now am, a regular client.

I wandered in from time to time looking, usually, for something which was out of print or which no other bookseller had come around to stocking. I also went there when I had only the vaguest knowledge of what I wanted. ‘It's got “Earth” in the title, it's not about hunting but there is a fox, and I can't remember the publisher.' That sort of idiocy. But I got my copy of
Gone to Earth
by Mary Webb (that's how long ago it was).

I believe that the shop in those days belonged to a Mr Chatto, who was youngish and obliging and who seemed permanently to be pushing through an avalanche of books. Just, indeed, as the present owners do today. I remember first seeing the shop when I was a student up the road at Chelsea Polytechnic. I was ambling down a calm King's Road to my bus stop outside Peter Jones, almost opposite the flat where Percy Grainger lived, and bought a packet of five Player's cigarettes from what was then a seedy little newsagent and tobacconist.

Later, much later, after the war, Mr Chatto was installed, and after him John Sandoe came along, in 1957, and that is when I first really took notice of what was soon to become a ‘singular bookshop', as opposed to just a bookseller. There is, as we know today, a marked difference between them.

Living, as I did then, in the country and seldom coming into London, I made only rare visits to the crammed and cramped little shop, and sought, as always, something that was out of print, lost, or published the year before. Something, anyway, difficult to get.

Sandoe catered for those oddities wonderfully well, just as today his successors, Rubio, Johnny, Sean, Stewart and the engaging, encyclopedic Perina (whose name I never can remember and in consequence just call ‘Lady'), do with undiminished fervour and flair.

The absolute love of books which this shop engenders is hugely joyous. One feels that two hours spent in one or other of the jammed little rooms – there are four as far as I remember at this instance: two down, one up, and one in the cellar – will be rewarding, refreshing and never questioned by the owners. Indeed, they will often join you in your quest, because, frankly, up in the paperback room the wealth of works, the sliding panels concealing book upon book, the spinning towers stacked with glossy pocket editions bewilder the most ardent browser.

But the staff seem to know, with uncanny skill, just exactly where Molly Keane, Belloc and Brontë hide, where the erudite tomes on whatever theme are to be found.

A bookshop should be a familiar place, somewhere one goes for the sheer love of books, for the smell and the feel of them, for the companionship of others who share the joy of touching, holding, reading and learning. In the supermarket booksellers with their dizzying displays, their pyramids of bestsellers, one is intimidated, constantly lost in the wealth of glittering titles, bemused by a request answered by a computer which indicates the number of copies held of the title one has asked for, the price, position on the shelf, shelf position in the shop. Tills ring, green lights flash, and buying a book becomes as simple and as uninvolving as buying a packet of envelopes.

John Sandoe's is not like this at all. I well remember starting out to learn how to cook, after sixty years of inertia, and asking ‘Lady' for help. She instantly strode across the shop and took a book from among thousands and assured me that it contained all I would ever need to know about cooking for
ever.
She was right. I have used it until it has powdered. She knew instantly, among the bewildering wall of cookery books, the precise one for me.

Bookseller,
8 January 1993

To the Editor of the
Daily Telegraph

Sir: I am well aware that I endeavour to live as privately and quietly as possible in this now over-intrusive country of ours, but I am not dead, or unaware of the gangrenous erosion and decay to the standards and qualities of our life which are presently taking place with appalling rapidity.

However, I confess that I did miss out on the disastrous suggestion that Radio 4 should come off long wave, there to be replaced by an all-news network.

After spending over one-third of my life abroad, I am only too well aware of the urgent need we have for Radio 4. It was a lifeline for so many people who had no other immediate access to their own language.

It was vastly important to our local friends, neighbours and companions, who listened to it as avidly as we ourselves. I remember well the awfulness of the Heysel football disaster, when – for the first time ever – I saw that we were in all the headlines as
les hooligans anglais.
But even the impact of this dreadful action was mitigated to some degree by Radio 4. With the knowledge of this programme it was felt that something so shocking must surely be a terrible aberration.

After all, didn't we invent fair play? We were a cultured and civilized race. Our current affairs discussions, our idiosyncrasies, our humour, the elegance and perfection of our spoken word, our points of view most sensibly and calmly argued were always of immense value abroad.

I agree absolutely with Sir Roger de Grey that Radio 4 is perhaps the greatest public relations programme for Britain, the true Britain, that we have.

God knows, there is precious little else left now that is fit for export. To axe its existence would be to amputate yet another healthy and flourishing limb of our dying reputation and honour abroad.

DIRK BOGARDE

London

Daily Telegraph,
18 August 1993

Thirty-four years ago, at Roy Plomley's invitation, I chose my ‘Desert Island Discs'for BBC Radio. At the end of 1989, I ill-advisedly agreed to appear on the programme again. Instead of a quiet, pleasant conversation, it had become a cross-examination. My manager had just died of cancer, and I was asked if I myself had fears of a slow and protracted death. I said no, I had taken care to sort that one out. Some days later, I was stopped in the street by a woman who asked if she had heard me right. I said, yes, she had. She then asked if I could assist her with her very ill husband. All I could do, alas, was to try to offer a few words of comfort.

The programme brought a great deal of mail, nearly all of it from people in distress requesting help. Among the letters was one from the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in London, asking if we could arrange a meeting. I agreed, and shortly afterwards found myself a vice-president of VES. It gradually got around that I was prepared to stand up and be counted.

About eighteen months later, the European Parliament debated a recommendation by a health and environmental sub-committee that ‘assisted death' for intolerably incapacitated patients should be a legal ‘last right'. In Britain a sixteen-strong all-party group of British MPs and peers met for the first time to discuss the issue. As they prepared for their inaugural session, I gave this interview to the
Daily Telegraph.

Desperate people write to me, slip notes under my door or stop me in the street. Never is it to say: ‘thank you for your book' or ‘you were funny in so and so', but to ask: ‘could you help?' They have a dying parent in shrieking pain, or daughter or relative who has been in a horrific traffic accident, and they are in despair.

It is extraordinary. Friends I have known for years now talk about how much they want to die peacefully and with dignity. They believe, as I do, that so long as we are
compos mentis,
we must
be allowed the right to decide – but only as a last resort – to be assisted to die peacefully. Before I spoke out they did not like to bring up the subject because in this country, I believe, euthanasia is still as much a taboo as talking about anti-Semitism.