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6
T HE L ITTLE S ISTER
    B elgrave Square, as I said earlier, is a shadow of its former self as far as character and atmosphere go: uniform, sleek, bland. Inevitably it smells of wealth, but not of very interesting wealth. I was ten minutes early for my dinner with Marjorie Wycliffe, or Marjorie Knopfmeyer rather, so I paid off my taxi in the Square itself and walked around it in the twilight. Lady Thorrington’s house had now an opaque, ungiving presence, and I saw from a tiny plaque that it was the office of a finance company. Embassies abounded, prestige offices of this and that. Probably only the Duke of Westminster can afford to live there any longer. It is not, now, a square with much interest attached to it.
    Away from the Square itself there is still some style, however, and in the various little mews there is character and atmosphere aplenty. If I had not been remembering so intensely those encounters with Tim I might have had trouble finding Craven Court Mews, for I only went to his flat two or three times, but as it was I found my way there almost without thinking. It was now brightly painted, trim, almost jolly. I rang the bell of the street door and immediately heard steps clattering down the stairs.
    â€œHello, I’m Marjorie Knopfmeyer. Good of you to come.”
    She smiled, held out her hand, then led the way up the stairs.She was a big, untidy woman with no pretensions to fashion, in a purple dress with a shawl around her shoulders. What seized me as soon as we got into the light of the sitting room, however, was the realization that she had Tim’s charm—a version of it, rather: more feminine, perhaps less brilliant, but a charm that vividly brought Tim himself to my mind. It was there in the smile, the warmth, the informality, the effortless way I was made to feel wanted and welcome.
    â€œCould you be an angel and fix yourself a drink?” she said, waving towards a cabinet. “There are one or two things I have to do in the kitchen.”
    The bottles were not from a wine merchant’s: they were supermarket bottles, with the price labels still on. Where, I wondered, were the supermarkets for Belgravia? Victoria, perhaps? The King’s Road? I poured myself a sherry from a standard label bottle, good but not distinguished. Then I looked around the room.
    There were still things that I remembered: the glass-topped table edged in rosewood, the escritoire. Most of it, however, was new, and bore the imprint of a life in the art world. There were two largish pictures—a Paul Klee and a Lucien Freud (I did not recognise them, I should say, but looked at the signatures). There were also several watercolours. There was just one piece of sculpture, on a small table under the window: a long-legged bird, like a stork, bending forward and somehow surveying the world quizzically. It was rough, jagged, and gave an impression of human vitality.
    â€œDo you like it?”
    Marjorie was standing over by the cabinet, pouring herself a weak gin and tonic.
    â€œYes, very much.”
    â€œFerdy’s. I don’t surround myself with memories, it’s unhealthy, but I have that piece here and one or two others in Gloucestershire. He gave me that piece explicitly—didn’t just leave it to me—because I said it reminded me of him—I don’tknow why: a sort of humorous disengagement, perhaps. It’s all too easy to drown yourself in memories, isn’t it? . . . I suppose you remember this room?”
    â€œYes, though I wasn’t often here. I remember this table, and the escritoire . . .” I paused. “Oh yes, and I think I remember that vase. Delft, isn’t it?”
    I pointed to a small, delicate blue-and-white piece on the cabinet, and as I did so I noticed that Marjorie flinched.
    â€œYes, that was Tim’s.”
    â€œI seem to remember it from one of my later visits. I suppose he acquired it. I wouldn’t have