This morning I went out for a walk to the Brompton Cemetery, which is a favourite of mine for several reasons but we needn’t go into any of them now. On the way back, I happened to cross a couple of streets and walked by my previous digs, an absolutely magnificent maisonette over three floors, with high ceilings, a terrace overlooking the back gardens, three bathrooms in shimmering mosaic tesserae, an enormous kitchen with glossy white tiles and a vast window over the trees. The floors were gleaming dark wood, the walls a chic shade of taupe. The lounge was 36sqm with two massive windows either side. The cherry on the cake was the secondary double-glazing, which ensured sound and cold insulation. I moved out of that place nine years ago and I still mourn it greatly.
As I walked by this morning and glanced up at what once were my windows, I felt the familiar, acute stab of longing for a life, a past, that will never return. I almost walked up the stairs, considering whether to ring the bell. But Sharon and Niomi, who used to live below me, have long since moved out and sold. The former now has two children and is, if memory serves me, in Birmingham, whilst the latter sprogged in the summer of last year. I met her down the road around about this time a year ago. She had not aged at all.
I considered Alain’s bell, which would have been a ridiculous proposition. He bought my maisonette [how dare he!] but I only met him several months after I moved, as I had upped sticks before he even viewed the property. I did, however, met him when my builder reported back that he had been summoned to my old place in order to take the shelves down. I am sure that if you want them, he will be very glad to give them to you. We chucked them in the wardrobe in the second bedroom, he doesn’t know what he is doing. Robert was spot on. Alain did not know what he was doing because the shelves were none other than Vitsoe steel shelves and tracks, worth an absolute shocking fortune. Eventually, after a couple of aborted visits, he let me in one evening and I lugged the lot down to a waiting cab. That was the last time I visited my old home but even then, a scant six months since I had moved, the mere surreptitious glancing around had left me hurt and discombobulated. I missed it so much already.
I then considered ringing Monica’s bell, who had the tiniest flat, a one-bed better described as a studio on the raised ground floor. But Monica, who was from Florence and very, very rarely around, would probably not even recognise me. Or me her, I must say. I have no recollection of what she looked like but what I do recall is that the first time she met me in the hallway she screeched ODDIO UN DALMATA! at my darling beloved dog Victoria.
Every time I moved house in life, I was always happy to do so. My next house was always an improvement on the previous one. Except the above has not been bettered at all, quite the opposite, and in many ways it demonstrates that you can live in the gutter all your life and barely notice it, but when you get out of it, the only way is up. My current place is not an improvement on my previous one, quite the opposite, and by a few miles too. It costs more to boot. And it makes the longing for what once was all the more acute because just about every single element of my life was better then too. There is no doubt in my mind that this too is the reason why its ghosts speak to me so clearly, so loudly, and so enticingly every time I walk past.