Francis Evans trudged wearily up the three flights of stairs that led to his poky flat just off Kensington Church Street. He struggled, as always, with the front door lock. He really should get a new lock installed, but at the moment every penny counted. It was the landlord’s responsibility really but he’d never get that old miser to do anything. Meanwhile, he now felt it had been rather stupid to lend Stewart his Turner book, if lend was what he had done. He’d left the terms of the transaction rather ambiguous, saying that he had another copy at home. One of his two great weaknesses was the delusion of or at least the pretension to grandeur. On consideration, pretension was probably worse – if one was deluded, at least one couldn’t help it. Anyway – he should have sold that book – sold all his books, in fact. He was, as usual, struggling to pay the month’s rent and he could get a modestly tidy sum from Sullivan, the bookseller round the corner. He still had some nice stuff. Remnants of his once soaring career in the halls of academe.
He made his way to the tiny bathroom of his bedsit and took a pillbox out of the cabinet above the sink. There were a couple of aspirin left and he threw them into his mouth and sucked thirstily on the cold tap. Glancing in the mirror at the few wisps of hair clinging valiantly to his scalp, he returned to the main room and rummaged around on his desk for the letter he’d received from his old Cambridge colleague the day before. They’d had a bit of a fling at Cambridge. Well, more than a fling really. A full-blown passionate affair. They’d been friends, lovers and colleagues together. Two young fellows setting ablaze the relatively undeveloped discipline of the history of art. They shared the same interests and outlook and had shared everything else for a while. All had been going swimmingly until that fateful trip to London in 1938. He was researching Poussin and an expert from the Sorbonne was visiting University College briefly to give a few lectures on that subject. He’d booked himself in to the Strand Palace and had an evening to kill before his appointment with the Frenchman the following morning. After a steak dinner, he’d had a few drinks in a pub off Leicester Square and then headed home. Caught short, he’d popped into the nearest public convenience. A young man had approached him at the urinal. A moment’s glance. A nod, then an instant of madness. His second great weakness. While they were in the cubicle they heard a loud banging on the door. The constable who confronted them was fat and red-faced. “Come on, you disgusting little perverts. You’re nicked.” And so ended his academic career. He got six months in Wormwood Scrubs and not a word from his lover. His hair fell out. Afterwards he had a series of menial jobs in the bookshops of Charing Cross. He didn’t suffer fools gladly, of course, so holding on to the jobs was not easy. Then the war had come along and thankfully brought some relief, with the challenge of the AFS. He liked most of the crew and Stewart in particular, who was no fool, despite his impoverished background and lack of formal education.
He found the letter written in an elegant hand. Elegance was a word that could always be applied to the writer, as once it would have been to Francis Evans.
He took the letter and flopped on the bed. Better get a good sleep because his next shift was only six hours away. He sniffed the envelope, which still had a faint whiff of their favoured eau de toilette. Too expensive for him now, of course. His reading spectacles had fallen from the bedside table to the floor and he stretched to retrieve them. “Now then,” he said aloud to himself. “Let’s have another look at what Mr Anthony Blunt has to say for himself.”
Chapter 10
Wednesday, September 11