This Much Is True

‘Well, in that case, I’m going to buy it now,’ I replied. The estate agent was a bit taken aback and said, ‘But you haven’t had a survey done!’ I said, ‘I don’t care. I can tell it’s OK, because my mother used to buy houses.’ I knew the things that you look for, cracks and all that, and it looked sound to me. He said, ‘But you haven’t checked!’ I told him that I was buying it. Luckily, Halifax gave me a mortgage, and the sale went through. I gave him the 10 per cent deposit cheque there and then.

The house was in quite a bad state: the basement (where I’m living now) had been condemned by Lambeth Council, but I didn’t have the money to do it up. I installed five or six friends in the house, all happily paying £2 a week. Every Friday, I would go and collect the rent in cash, which I put into a pot to save up for the building work.

In the basement flat next door were Mr and Mrs Smith, a couple who’d lived there since the war. One day, when I was collecting the rent, Mrs Smith was in her garden. She called out, ‘Mirian [she never could say ‘Miriam’], I want to talk to you, come over here.’ I went over to her side of the wall, ‘Listen, this is a nice road. We don’t have rubbish on this street, Mirian.’ ‘No. I’m well aware of that,’ I replied. ‘Well, those friends of yours. ’ and she paused for effect.

‘Well, let me tell you something,’ she said, ‘cos I don’t think you know this! The other day I was out doing the weeding ’ere in the front garden, and I ’appened to look across into your front windows there — the big bay window up there.’ She pointed up at my house. ‘You’d never guess what I saw… well, it was them two in there [pause], stark naked [pause], eatin’ marmalade.’ I gasped with horror, as I realised that that was expected. I don’t know if it was straight out of the jar, but Mrs Smith must have had a very good look to know it was marmalade and not jam. ‘Well, we can’t have that in this street. I mean, people in the nood? I don’t want to see nothing like that again,’ she concluded, folding her arms in outrage. ‘I quite agree, Mrs Smith. I’m so sorry, and I will tell them about it,’ I said, reassuringly.

I told my friends, ‘Please don’t eat marmalade naked in the front window, because Mrs Smith doesn’t like it.’ And they never did it again.

After two years I’d saved up enough money, and everybody moved out so I could get the place fixed up. At the time, I was doing a lot of voice-overs. One day, in the studio voicing the Manikin cigar ad, I was talking to Terry Donovan. ‘I’ve bought a house but it’s in a rough old state. I’m going to need a lot of building work.’

‘Oh, I’m a builder,’ Terry said.

‘What do you mean, you’re a builder? You’re a famous photographer and a director of commercials!’

‘I’ve got a firm with all me old mates,’ he said. ‘I’ll do your place up for you. We’re good, we are.’

It was a funny linking of the two worlds. Terry had a Rolls-Royce, so he gave me a lift over to Clapham in his Roller, which now, of course, are commonplace in the street, but they weren’t then. Terry had a good look over the property and he said, ‘Yeah, it’s a nice house. You done well there, Miriam. I’ll sort it out for you, no worry’. He added, ‘I’ll get my man Slim to come over. Slim does all the estimates for me.’

A few days later, Slim turned up. He was devastatingly handsome, charismatic, a gorgeous bit of rough, probably a crim. If I’d been straight I’d have sucked him off like a shot. Slim carefully inspected the house from top to bottom and agreed that it needed a lot of work. New staircase, complete central heating and rewiring and replumbing. He named a figure and we shook hands on it there and then. Terry and his team did a fantastic job — they were honourable, decent, hard-working and reasonable.

I kept in touch with Slim over the years. Once, when I hadn’t been paid for a voice-over job and was owed several thousand pounds, I asked Slim if he would come round to see this advertising chap with me and encourage him to cough up.

He said, ‘Yeah, that’s meat and drink to me. That’s easy.’

So, flanked by Slim, I marched into the man’s Soho office.

‘Hello, Adrian,’ I said.

‘Oh, Miriam, how lovely to see you.’

‘Well, I don’t know if it’s that lovely to see you. I’m a bit pissed off because you haven’t paid me yet.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll send you a cheque, Miriam. I’m sorry it’s taken so long, sometimes these things get a bit delayed,’ he said. ‘I’ll do it, honestly. I’ll send you a cheque, it’ll be coming soon.’

‘Do you know what? It’s going to come even sooner than that. It’s actually going to come now, right now,’ I said, rather masterfully.

‘I can’t do it absolutely right now because—’ He stopped.

‘Oh, yes, you can. Do you know how I know you can? Because Slim here…’ I turned to Slim, and continued: ‘He wants you to give it to me now, don’t you, Slim?’

‘Oh, yeah, if you owe somebody money, you have to pay it, don’t ya?’ Slim said, menacingly.