The Occasional Bookwitch

Today would have been my friend TT’s 88th birthday. But he died in penury aged 59, and I can’t really let go of the thought whether he realised what he was giving away. We met almost fifty years ago, through Mrs Hop, who had ‘adopted’ us at what was my favourite London restaurant. And if it hadn’t been for her, I’d not have known very many facts about TT. Hindsight tells me that this 80-something woman pulled them out of him, one by one.

It also tells me that he needed her friendship, and possibly also mine.

His father will have died around this time, but all I learned was that he didn’t like him, and that he’d given his house away. So far, perhaps not ‘so normal’, but I thought nothing of it. Mr T was successful at what he did, and I understand now that he had made a lot of money, but because of their relationship, TT wanted none of it. His beloved mother had died much earlier, and I suspect that TT resented having been sent to a well known public boarding school, ‘wasting’ many potentially happy years with her. Besides, I now realise that the school might have been painful for TT, considering what he was like, compared to some of the famous men I know attended this school.

So he gave the house away. To an organisation, who still own it. Having recently thought to investigate further, I have decided to visit next time I’m in London, as it’s open to the public. Makes you think, doesn’t it? But I’d like to see what kind of life the young TT might have had there. The house where his mother lived.

I ‘think’ that TT inherited some money, and that he used it to live off. I always imagined the interest might keep him going (because he didn’t do paid work). He lived frugally in a small room in ‘central’ west London, boarding with a kind landlady. There might have been breakfast, but dinners he ate out, like the restaurant I mentioned, where at the time you could have main and dessert and a pot of tea for £1. TT ran a – modest – car, and engaged in charity work. He often took Mrs Hop and me to places in the car.

After I married the Resident IT Consultant and moved to Brighton, they came to visit. After we moved to Stockport, he visited a couple of times, by train.

Another of our shared friends was Dulcie no.1 in Australia. Mrs Hop died, and Dulcie got a bit confused with age. But among the annual Christmas cards, she sent me an almost incomprehensible, panicky letter about TT being seriously ill. To this day, I don’t know how she found out. Having no phone number for TT, I wrote a letter to the landlady. Got a response from someone like a nephew who was now running the place, but promised me he’d look after TT.

Not long after, I had a phone call from someone in a London nursing home who had been told about me. He handed TT the phone and we spoke, and I found out the nephew had ditched him as fast as he could, which considering the property prices in that part of London wasn’t surprising. So there TT was, presumably fast going through any money he had left. But at least I could write to him again.

The next phone call I had was from a man – I assumed a proper friend – to tell me TT had died and when his funeral would be. I think a proper friend, in that he had put the news in the Telegraph, which of course I didn’t read. But I suspect he was a friendly, dutiful person who had met TT through some shared charity, and that he didn’t really know him, judging by his surprise at what he’d found among TT’s papers, like ‘the posh school’ background. And there were my letters, with phone number.

I suspect that was all. The other friends were dead, or never really friends.

I couldn’t make the funeral, what with small children and a petrol strike. I should have tried harder.

The surprised friend wrote to me afterwards, telling me about the funeral. I think they were three mourners.

TT was never sentimental, so possibly he wouldn’t have minded the difference between how his life began and how it ended. That the money wouldn’t last with rising living costs. And quite how valuable his childhood home was, and would become.