December 9th, Robert calls me, and reminds me it is my birthday. He does this every year. I imagine he has a calendar of birthdays, with people he has met throughout his life. It is a pleasure to hear from him, to be taken back to then.
I hear that voice. Once a continuity announcer on Radio 4. Remember, Could do better? A pitch at Desert Island Discs success of school reports of the now famous.
How’s the body? How’s the mind? How are the children? I ask
I am a grandfather, he says. Francesca is given birth to a baby girl. Mimi, she’s called. Ah like La Boheme, I say. He is pleased with that recognition. And Theo, I ask? He’s in Boston, I believe.
Are you in touch with others I ask. John Malony, he says, he has bad knees now, living near Cambridge.
I am taken back to 14 Earls Court Square. I was there in 1987, sleeping in Roberts bed where I often came in for a morning cuddle, (we did that in those days!) looking out at the aerial bending unusually. It was the October storm. I knew nothing of trees then, I was a city girl.
His kitchen, intimate, red, with a French feel, where we would sit on high chairs at a kitchen bar, with a glass of red wine, chewing the cud on the day. Returning late, I’d sometimes find Robert on the floor, fast asleep, listening to a taped version of the Archers. I was furious with him when I discovered he’d found my treasured Nuites St George bottles of wine (bought back from France) under my bed, and drank them all! Then Suzie arrived, sexy, giggling, lovely. They fell in love, became an item, and naturally I left the flat. They married, had two children. We went our separate ways. Suzie died, after years of MS, and it must have been after this that Robert started calling me on my birthday every year. And every year I’d say, I’m coming down to see you. And I never did.
Kalikellett 