A Short Walk from Harrods (15 page)

I agreed. Forwood looked acutely alarmed but said nothing – after all it was
my
picture – and Theo eventually bounced cheerfully down the track in his shooting brake, the Schiele repacked in its brown paper and Sellotape, and, for this important voyage, wrapped up in a good linen sheet. He promised to write, or call, as soon as he had any news. Forwood pointed out, pleasantly enough, that he thought this was most unlikely. ‘You have just let the chap cart the thing away. You don't really know if he is who he says he is. If he works for whom he says … Total, idiot trust! Sometimes I do wonder for your sanity. After over thirty years of your company I begin to seriously consider you to be barmy.' The ant poison was strapped on and he strode off with his spray-gun held high, the dogs at his heels.

But some months later, when we sat surrounded by splendid white chairs and sofas tightly covered in expensive
Cogolin cotton, he nodded wisely and almost claimed it all as his idea. Anyway, he conceded, it
was
better to look at the splendour of the sparkling Long Room than at Egon Schiele's
Reclining Woman
wrapped up in a vault. Theo had managed to get me a glorious five-figure sum from his contact in Geneva, and in spite of his own commission and the French tax (less venal by far than the British), I still had enough to spend as I had never done since arriving in France. I even agreed, albeit reluctantly, to a tiny Sony TV set, which was hidden on the lower shelf of one of the bookcases so that Forwood could watch Yvonne Printemps, Josephine Baker, Jean Gabin, Mistinguette and others in the old black and white films which flickered about on Sunday. It was only about ten inches by eight, so it didn't really show, and I never watched it anyway. Beds were bought for the guest room, new chintzes brought roses-and-lilac-on-trellis to the lives of the
invités,
a new oven and rotisserie arrived, and more cypress trees were stuck across the land, and, at some expense, Next Door were completely hidden from sight by a long line of flourishing golden bamboo which marched down the length of the boundary fence and caused faint, but protesting, whimpers that it was ‘unsuitable' for the landscape and cut off their view of something or other. But it, and I, prevailed. And in time (a couple of years) a veritable jungle, ready to hide lurking tigers, raced down the chestnut paling fence under the apple trees. I was secured in my acres.

Beginning the
porte d'entrée,
1973

Finished. Autumn 1973

November 1968

September 1977

The first time I saw the house after the conversion, July 1968

The Long Room, 1985

The chimneyplace, 1968

The chimneyplace, 1985

Starting the kitchen extension. Self, Monsieur Danté, Monsieur Rémy. 1974

Finished. May 1980

Le Pigconnier, August 1979