In my 16th year living at Belfiore Lodge, a Victorian house in Highbury converted into eight self-contained one-bedroom flats, it got sold to property developers.
The landlord and landlady had become too old to look after themselves. I’d looked after them for almost a year, unpaid, popping down every two hours from my flat above theirs, seven days a week, morning to bedtime. Long story short: the son found out and decided to move them to an old folks’ home near him in Devon.
Belfiore Lodge looked like it’d come out of a Dracula film set: turrets and a wind vane on the roof; Virginia creeper across the whole of the front wall with sparrows constantly flying in and out of the foliage where they’d built their nests; honeysuckle and sweet peas all over the side wall (giving off intoxicating fragrances on a summer’s evening).
I’d stop just outside the gate whenever I came home, to stand and admire the house first, and say to it, “House, House, I love you!” A boyfriend in the 80s in a long-distance relationship said, “When we’re not with each other during the gaps, I know that I can trust you where other men are concerned, but I know that in your heart, your house comes first, I come second!” Whenever I told this story to my students, those who’d been to my house (for my two annual parties) would immediately say they agreed with him.
So, when the landlord and landlady did eventually move out and the place got sold, I was heartbroken.
The property developers said that the place needed work done on it (true), that they could move us to another property of theirs while the renovations were being carried out, then we could move back in. Well, at the market rate for our rents, of course — which was the bit they didn’t say. We tenants had been living there at something like a third of the market rate, which was why we were happy about the run-down state of the place.
To me, it added to the charm of it: a time-frozen house with a payphone on the wall in the ground floor foyer, and the flats furnished with items from the 60s, if not earlier. The basement flat was a fairly typical layout of a Victorian manor house kitchen, similar in spirit to Upstairs Downstairs (a British TV series aired 1971–75).
It was my spiritual haven — to the point of being a rival to my then-boyfriend, poor man, as I wouldn’t up sticks and move to Switzerland.
It was a devastating time for me. A student was giving me hell at work. I had my savings account totally drained by a scam (someone creating a sister account and transferring everything across).
Legal advice sought said that we didn’t have tenants’ rights as we shared the same main entrance as the landlord and landlady (I’m putting it simplistically for this blog). I couldn’t afford market-rate rents anywhere, unless / even if I moved out of London — not an option really as I was an evening programme teacher, finishing at 9pm; train fares would also eat up what little I earned as a part-time teacher paid by the hour (if I had any money left after the market-rate rent, that is). Panic, panic.
With a very heavy heart, I started to pack up (to go where??), taking rucksack loads of possessions (mostly books accumulated over the years) to the charity shop on Highbury Corner. Back and forth, back and forth, heavy load on my back, heavy load in my heart.
One day, just after midday, as I was returning from having dropped off yet another load at the charity shop, I saw a man in his 60s standing on the pavement a few yards from the gate to Belfiore Lodge, two bags of beer sitting on the ground by his feet, resting his fingers from carrying the eight cans of beer bought from the off licence in the high street about 200 yards away.
I mention his age only because people of that age group don’t usually buy alcohol at that time of day — or such was my experience at the time anyway. This is significant because it weaves into the uncanny timing that makes him a guardian angel chosen to turn up in my life at that point.
As I walked past him, I said, nodding towards the beer cans, “Hard work, isn’t it?” I don’t usually talk to strangers, yet I did to him on that occasion. Another significant contribution to this story.
As I went up to the gate of Belfiore Lodge, he called out, “Do you live here? What’s happened to the old couple who live here?” This man turned out to be a retired electrician who’d done the wiring of the house.
We got talking about the latest developments. I said we had to move out. He then gave me two telephone numbers to ring for accommodation. So it came about that through talking to this stranger in the street, I found a roof over my head four streets away, where I was to spend three very happy years.
The final uncanny thing is: this retired electrician, George the Cypriot, had been living one street away from Belfiore Lodge, for something like 14 years of the 16 that I’d lived there, yet never once had I ever run into him at any time of day.
He had to be a guardian angel sent along to save me.
Thank you, George. You’d saved me from a huge panic. Rest in peace. I’m eternally grateful to you.
(London, 2003)
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