A Scattering of Light

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sir Anthony's flat, at the top end of a square near Marble Arch, was dank and shabby. The carpet in the foyer was shockingly threadbare—the floorboards actually peeped through in a couple of spots—and the handsome striped Empire-style wallpaper hung in tatters. But as I removed my coat I saw at a glance that the place was haphazardly populated with marvelous things.

Directly opposite the front door stood a Boulle-style inlaid console behind which hung a massive Venetian mirror whose silvering was so deeply foxed it barely reflected light. A Picasso gouache listed at a drunken angle near the drawing room door. The faux-tent ceiling was illuminated by a pink Murano chandelier.

“Come in, come in, my dear,” Sir Anthony wheezed, gesturing vaguely towards the drawing room door. “How about some sherry? Or do you young fellows take something stronger?”

I weighed the odds of offending my host against the tedium of sipping a thimbleful of cheap sherry and decided I would take my chances.

“Gin would be great, Sir Anthony, if you have it.”

My host looked rather flummoxed. “First, let’s do away with this ‘Sir Anthony’ business. Call me Anthony. As for gin, I haven’t a clue. Let’s take a look.”

He led the way into the drawing room, which was chilly and uninviting. A single lamp shone faintly near the window, providing just enough light to betray the general dilapidation of the décor. A beautiful, crumb-strewn Aubusson carpet stretched across the creaking floorboards, and a suite of dusty Empire fauteuils, their light-colored upholstery blotched with brownish stains, loitered near the fireplace. “You Americans do love your spirits," Anthony remarked almost coquettishly, oblivious to my perusal of his tattered finery. "I remember those naughty GIs in the war, always guzzling whiskey.”

Unaccountably thrilled to be associated, however indirectly, with “naughty” soldiers, I moved towards the drinks cart as Anthony shifted dusty bottles back and forth, muttering to himself. “I’m absolutely certain I bought some gin for that horrible Roman boy I tutored last year.”

I pointed to a bottle of Gordon's on the bottom shelf.

“Oh well done,” Anthony murmured as he bent down to extract the bottle.

“Here, let me grab it,” I said as I noticed the old man straining to reach his quarry.

“You are kind,” he said as I handed him the half-full bottle. “Now, what shall we stir it up with?”

“Tonic would be wonderful, if you have it.”

“Oh my goodness, tonic water. Imagine such a thing,” he mused, as if I had requested some implausibly exotic elixir. “I’m skeptical, dear boy, but let’s take a reccy in the kitchen.”

I padded along in Anthony’s wake as we trailed back through the foyer and into a tiny, galley-style kitchen lit by a single light bulb suspended from a frayed wire overhead. He began opening and closing cupboards as if he had no clue what he might find behind their doors. I wondered if his cluelessness were an affectation or if he truly had no concept of the arrangement of his own kitchen.

Just then I heard a noise from the hall and turned to see a square-faced man with a gray buzz-cut loitering in the kitchen door. He wore a maroon turtleneck and pinstriped suit pants, topped by a tattered blue terrycloth bathrobe.

“Hello,” I said with surprise.

“Good evening,” the man said, looking past me towards Anthony, shaking his head in wonderment. “Anthony, darling, whatever are you looking for?”

Anthony turned back with a look of barely-concealed annoyance. “Tonic water, if you must know.”

“There’s a bottle in the fridge, but it’s probably lost its fizz. We’ve had it since about 1970.”

Anthony stood up straight and looked my way. "Meet my friend John,” he said, gesturing breezily towards the man. “He lives here. For now.”

“Hello,” I said, extending my hand. “Good to meet you.”

“American,” John remarked, pointedly staring at my outstretched hand without offering his own. “That’s a new one.” He spoke with a hint of a brogue, Scottish perhaps.

“Oh good god, Johnny, let’s not have any of that embarrassing business. Do give it up and go to bed,” Anthony said.

John glanced at me and smiled. “Okey dokey, Anthony. Don’t get your underpants in a predicament.”

“Et voilà,” exclaimed Anthony, having located the elusive bottle of tonic in the refrigerator. “Let’s see if there’s life in the old bugger yet,” he said, untwisting the cap. A barely perceptible hiss escaped. “You see there, it’s perfectly fresh.”

Resigned to a flat cocktail but not much caring so long as I got a dose of gin to mitigate my nerves, I said, “That’s perfect. Thanks so much. Shall I make it?”

“Oh dear boy, how kind you are. Please do.”

John still hung about in the shadow of the doorway. I moved forward and opened a cabinet in which I'd glimpsed some murky drinking glasses during my host’s haphazard search. “Are these okay?”

“Brilliant. Perhaps I’ll have one too. It’s been an age since I’ve tasted gin.”

“God help us,” John remarked.

“I believe it’s long past your bedtime,” Anthony said pointedly.

Without further comment John turned on his heel and disappeared. Soon a door across the apartment slammed.

Anthony looked at me conspiratorially. “He’s not a bad sort. I’ve known him for ages.”

It seemed a woefully inadequate explanation for the sad specter who had just appeared in our midst, but for now I focused on my need for alcohol. I measured out a double for myself and drank it straight down while my host dithered around with saucepans and wooden spoons. “We’ve got a lovely curry," Anthony said. "Do Americans eat Indian food? I seem to remember the GIs liking beef.”

“I’ll eat anything,” I said, handing him a weak gin and tonic.

“You are the beau idéal of guests.”

I laughed uncertainly. It was hard to judge how seriously to take these courtly pronouncements.

 A half hour later we sat down to a remarkably inexpert meal in the flat’s cramped dining room. Again, I was struck by the ramshackle splendor of my surroundings. The room was hung floor to ceiling, salon-style, with paintings in heavy gilt frames. Some of the pictures appeared, at first glance, to be quite good, including a School of Guardi lagoon-scape. Several frames, mysteriously, were empty. The massive gilt Russian-style chandelier overwhelmed the space, and the window treatments were oppressively formal.

On my third gin, I pushed my food around my plate and considered how best to draw out my host, who had proven remarkably adept at giving off an air of confidentiality without revealing the slightest information about himself.

“You mentioned the war,” I started. “Were you in London during the Blitz?”

He gazed at me quizzically over a forkful of tepid saffron-stained potato. “I was away in North Africa for a while,” he murmured, “but otherwise I was around, living on the top floor of the Courtauld. People ramble on about that time as though it were the end of civilization, but in many ways it was the most carefree period of my life. The sex, I must say, was sensational. We all thought we were going to die any minute so we didn’t really care. In between raids we copulated like farm animals.”

I felt a slight shiver as I imagined Anthony living the high life while London crumbled around him. “How did you get permission to live at the Institute?”

He looked at me as though I'd lost my mind. “Permission? I never thought of it in that light,” he laughed dryly. “I simply moved in when I was named director. It was wonderfully convenient. I would drag myself out of bed at 9:30 and slope downstairs for a lecture at 10:00. I’d always thought it surpassingly quaint for shopkeepers to live over their places of business, but once I had the chance to live that life I quickly saw its appeal.”

I longed for another shot of gin but didn’t dare ask. “It must have been amazing living in that place all alone.”

Anthony knocked back the last of his own innocuous cocktail. “I was hardly alone, dear fellow. Do you take me for a monk?”