autumn of that year, I flew to New York and met up with Saul himself – a man of such significant girth that you might journey for several seasons to encircle his waist once.
And it is Saul who saves me still. Since then, my commissions have come from the heart of art-loving America, where he is thick as thieves with that little band of insightful millionaires, who consider that the best gift they can give their satiated friends is an original manuscript copy of something beautiful. For these people, I am truly grateful. But I owe Saul the most. He was responsible for securing me my current work – the most interesting and extended job to date: thirty poems taken from the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne.
Busy old fool, unruly sun,
Why dost thou thus,
Through windows, and through curtains call on us?
‘So, what is for my breakfast?’
‘What would you like?’
‘Something nice.’
‘OK. Something nice it is.’
I rose and stepped silently into my pyjamas. Always a good way to begin the day.
‘Strawberries. And coffee. Not tea.’ She lifted her head from the pillow to open one eye a challenging fraction.
It was the morning of Saturday, 16 March, seven days on from my birthday, and the sun was indeed insinuating its way through the gap in my carelessly drawn curtains. Give the old fool three hours, I thought, and the brazen slice of light now lying across the chest of drawers by the window would find its way across the room to where she lay in bed. But by then, she would probably be gone.
Between you and me, I find it almost impossible to guess breakfast requirements in advance for women like Cécile. As with so many children of the ecological revolution, you would presume that she prefers fruit – cleansing, nutritious, zestful. And yet no doubt she sometimes wakes to find herself craving the immoderate satisfaction of a chocolate croissant or even, on occasion, the wanton candour of bacon and eggs. In the end, I’m afraid, I don’t think there is any way round it: you just have to accept life as an uncertain business and make provision for all circumstances.
Even here there is danger. The talented amateur, for example, will stride merrily out to the shops on the eve of an assignation and buy everything his forthright imagination can conceive of – muesli, muffins, marmalade, a range of mushrooms, perhaps even some maple syrup. Thus laden, he will return to stuff his shelves, fill his fridge and generally clutter his kitchen with produce. But this will not do. Not only will his unwieldy efforts be noticed by even the most blasé of guests – as he offers her first one menu then another – but worse, the elegance and effect of seeming only to have exactly what she wants is utterly lost, drowned out in a deluge of les petits déjeuners.
No – the professional must take a very different approach. He will, of course, have all the same victuals as the amateur but – and here’s the rub – he will have hidden them. All eventualities will have been provided for, and yet it will appear as though he has made provision for none. Except – magically – the right one.
Anyway, thank fuck I got the strawberries.
‘It’s OK if I use your toothbrush?’ she called from my bathroom.
‘Yes, of course. You can have a bath or a shower if you like. There are clean towels in there.’
‘After, maybe.’
I listened to her moving about. She was light on her feet.
I live in this attic flat, at the top of what was once a smart stucco-fronted Georgian house on Bristol Gardens, near Warwick Avenue, London. What with all the eaves and so on, I’m afraid it’s not exactly roomy: OK-ish size lounge, small studio, bedroom, en suite bathroom, and a so-called hall with a kitchenette at one end and the stairs down to my internal front door at the other. But at least the relative cramp prohibits dinner parties – a real mercy in these blighted days of celebrity chefs and self-assembly furniture.
When I moved in, there were two bedrooms; as I only needed one, I was able to switch things around and have my studio at the back. This arrangement ensures that I get street noise when I am asleep and not when I am working; additionally, it has the great benefit of allowing me to have my draughtsman’s board by the north-facing window, which overlooks the beautiful garden below – a retreat surrounded on four sides by old buildings similar to my own and which is for the communal use of all the residents. North – because calligraphers prefer an even light.
My studio is not half as spacious as I would like but I have set it up to be as perfect a place to earn a living as possible. It contains everything I need – my reference books, magnifying glasses, knives for cutting and shaping my quills, and the quills themselves: swan for general writing, goose for colour work because it’s softer and, for the finest details, crow feather. The light is not perfect because my window actually faces slightly west of north. But the finest results are always achieved in natural conditions, so, unless I am on a serious deadline, I try to avoid working with the spotlights.
‘You’ve got a very clean place. I like it.’ Cécile was now standing in the doorway to my bedroom, naked except for my toothbrush, which she had now returned to her mouth and was rather lazily employing across her teeth.
‘You think?’
Out came the brush. ‘Tidy and clean for a man, I mean.’ She didn’t seem to be using very much toothpaste. Either that or she had swallowed it.
‘Thanks. Do you inspect a lot of men’s flats?’
‘Yes.’ A quick brush. ‘I have many brothers and they ask me to come over and see if their places are good for’ – she raised her eyebrows – ‘pulling the chicks.’
I brought down two bowls from the cupboard.
She frowned. ‘But my brothers – they never actually get any chicks back. They say: “Cécile, it is a terrible nightmare, there are no chicks in Dijon.”’ She came over and put her chin over my shoulder. ‘You really have strawberries!’
‘Yes.’
‘I was only making fun.’
‘Too late. We’re having them now. I haven’t got anything else. You want cream?’
‘Of course.’
‘OK.’
She stood back and watched me grind the coffee beans.
Ordinarily, I would have preferred to bring my trusty Brasilia to life, firing it up in all its shimmering glory and producing some coffee we could all have been proud of. (The true espresso, I submit, is modern Italy’s gift to the world – their great and most eloquent apologia. Meanwhile, here in England we seem to have traded our inheritance for a jamboree of high-street chains, peddling lukewarm coffee-flavoured milk shakes and lactescent silt.) However, not only is an espresso machine a little ostentatious, especially when still (in effect and despite the intervening night) on a first date, but also – crucially – its use results in single cups which, in turn, result in significantly shorter breakfasts-in-bed. So cafetière it had to be.
‘Shall I carry something?’
‘Sure.’
Cécile returned my brush to her teeth and turned on her heel with a bowl in each hand.
I have to say that I love the mornings almost as much as the nights. Best of all, you get to wake up and be the first person that day to see the true untroubled beauty of a woman’s face – brow clear, hair unfussed. (‘She is all states, and all princes, I,/Nothing else is …’) But almost as enjoyable, in different ways, is the awkward choreography of the bathroom sequence, the