I did my bit, but mostly I left it to Carolyn or Charlotte. (Isabella would no doubt have chipped in, but she was on one of her visits to Mamma and Papa back in Milano.) It was in the nature of their respective upbringings that they would rise to occasions such as this, and between them they seemed to have worked out a subliminal rota system. Sometimes I would run into one of them on the stairs and we would exchange polite greetings, but even though we had spent entire evenings together in Sophie's company, I'm not sure they were able to recall exactly who I was.
I had the sense of brushing up against an exclusive little clique, but I didn't care. I'd finally arrived. I was where I'd always wanted to be, and, now I was there, the circle would just have to open up and let me in.
It was only a matter of time.
In the beginning, I have to admit, I was nervous about spending the night on my own — about spending it there, in that flat. I almost wished Marsha had kept her mouth shut about its history. But on the other hand, its history was one of the reasons it had been empty in the first place. In many respects, I owed it all to Robert Jamieson.
But that first Saturday, I stayed out until well after midnight, knocking back tequila in the Bar King with Dirk and Lemmy. They escorted me back to Hampshire Place, and I was tempted to ask them up for a nightcap, but that would have led to us staying up, drinking and talking, until daylight, which would have been postponing what I needed to do anyway, sooner or later, which was to make it all the way through the night on my own.
It was reassuring that the house didn't look the least bit ominous. The facade resembled a welcoming face, with windows in place of eyes. There were lights on in Sophie's flat (this was just before she'd been packed off to France), and lights on in Marsha's. And, quite unexpectedly, there were lights on in the basement as well.
So the mysterious Walter Cheeseman was at long last in residence. This was an excellent omen at the start of my new life. Not only could I now look forward to meeting another creative individual, but even his unseen presence boosted my confidence. Once I took my appointed place inside, it would be a full house, and I could relax in the knowledge that if anything horrible happened — and by now I was certain it wasn't going to — there would be plenty of neighbours on hand to provide me with protection and support.
Much as Robert Jamieson had provided protection and support for Sophie.
I waved that thought away. It was a bad one, and it gave me a bad moment. But I had good, strong, positive feelings about the flat. I couldn't say I was thrilled that a previous tenant had cut his throat there, but that was ancient history, and I had washed and scoured every room so thoroughly that every inch was now as familiar to me as parts of my own body. I knew there were no monsters lurking in the shadows, because there were no longer any shadows for them to lurk in. It was my territory. I had marked it with soap and water and paint. It was already beginning to feel like home.
Now I was feeling safe, I also allowed myself the luxury of feeling just a shade disappointed that the house was an ordinary house after all, a house like any other, with its history locked away where all history ought to be — in the past. It was obvious Sophie had been having a nervous breakdown, but I couldn't help wishing I were a little less well-balanced, a little more highly-strung, so that I too could hear music and see ghosts and people would bring me soup and force-feed me with Diazepam before arranging for me to fly off to their parents' holiday homes in the South of France.
Some people had all the luck.
And so I settled back on my mattress and watched something fuzzy and forgettable on my portable television (I had yet to find the best position for the indoor aerial) and started to read an article in Cosmopolitan titled Men and Violence: Is it them or is it their Hormones? and then, before I knew it, I was waking up with the morning light streaming on to my face. It was too early to get up, but I lay there gazing contentedly at my new surroundings. Today was the first day of the rest of my life.
Now was the time to establish a new routine — a brisk new schedule in which I would be up with the lark and get my daily quota of step-by-step drawings out of the way before lunch, so I could spend the afternoon immersed in non-commercial but artistically challenging projects suitable for display in galleries or on the pages of magazines. My works of art would impress people and make them want to know me. And I would cut down on carbohydrates and ask Carolyn and Charlotte how much it cost to join the health club they visited twice a week. I would even ask my optician once again about switching to contact lenses, though I'd never had much success with them in the past, because my eyes were too dry. That's what the optician said anyway, though they looked watery enough to me. But maybe it was time to try again.
But I'd done it. My sleep had been dreamless and sweet. I'd proved there was nothing to be frightened of. I'd glimpsed nothing in the darkness but giddy new heights of career excellence and an exhilarating social life stretching into a glorious future.
It was what I truly wanted to believe. You can make yourself believe anything if you try hard enough.
Chapter 4
For those first few weeks, I walked on air. I went swimming. I watched films at the Gate and the Coronet. When I wasn't slaving over a hot drawing-board, I wandered up and down Portobello Road, and though no one yelled hello to me the way they yelled hello to Dirk and Lemmy, I basked in the feeling of finally belonging. I did most of my food shopping at the market, and only got fobbed off with rotten fruit two or three times. I cut down on carbohydrates, and began to lose weight at a slow but steady rate.
During the long, light evenings, I sauntered up and down Kensington Park Road or Portland Road or Westbourne Grove, glancing furtively into Virginia's, or the Coppa Kettle, or the Bar None, all of them lit up like jazzy shop window displays and thronged with well-groomed people who had lovers to meet, money to spend, projects to discuss, esoteric brands of lager to drink.
And when I worked, I worked at the sort of desk I'd always dreamed about: an old oak table picked up for a song and hauled (with Dirk's help) up to my living-room, where it stood in front of the window, warmed by the afternoon sunlight, littered with bottles of ink and pencils and paints and sketchpads and jars full of brushes and rulers, and a cracked blue vase of tulips which had looked good while they were alive but which looked even better since they had drooped over the rim and gone crisp around the edges.
I felt positively inspired by my new surroundings. I attacked the step-by-steps with gusto, sensing that even my routine work was attaining a new depth. The table, and everything on top of it, offered irrefutable proof of artistic industry, but the most important quality, for me, was its location. Every few minutes I would glance up from the intricacies of jam roly-poly or spotted dick and out of the window on to Hampshire Place and the Victorian terrace on the other side of the street. The only eyesore was a Sixties block of flats a bit further down, but that was nearly obscured by the leafiness of the plane trees lining the street.
It wasn't heaven, but it was near enough.
The only blemish on my brand new life was a minor one, and I forced myself not to dwell on it. So long as I didn't dwell on it, it wouldn't be a problem.
The only blemish on my brand new life was neighbour noise, though I couldn't be certain which of my new neighbours was the culprit. Once or twice I had been woken up in the middle of the night by the tap tap tippy tap tap of distant typing. But it was very faint, and I soon learned to block it out.