Not very much to be found of the fair-haired, reserved, tremulous-lipped youth I had last seen some years ago. But, and it seemed to me strange, there appeared to be no suggestion, in the few canvases which I pulled out and examined, of the glory of the landscape in which they were painted. No suggestion that the sun, the air, the brilliant light, the great cliffs behind the house – for they dominated the place equally as firmly as they dominated the village four kilometres or so away – the old trees, the soft green of the grass under their shade, had had the least emotional effect on James at all. From the look of things he might just as well have been painting in prison – or Parsons Green. There was not the least impression of the land in which he had come to live.

I sat on a small wooden stool.

The thing, perhaps, which I found the most strange was the air of tidiness all over the house. James had never been a particularly tidy or neat person, I well remember: he was careless in his dress just as he was in his habits, eating rather coarsely at table, uncombed hair, a general air of deliberate, provoking casualness. But someone had done a very thorough job of clearing up the house after he went off to find his ‘sweet oblivion’, it seemed. Newspaper everywhere, blankets folded, the canvases perfectly stacked according to size. The kitchen and even the larder were not James at all. He would never have noticed muddle or mess. I was over-aware of things like that because, as I’ve said, I can’t stand clutter, and James, on the other hand, seemed to live in clutter, especially in his later years at home. And then, too, there were other little things which sparked vague curiosity: the red and green rubber ball on the chair upstairs, the bunk-bed like a cage, the tricycle lying out on the terrace.

Walking round the studio there was hardly a sign of dust, unless you looked closely, not an empty tube of oil paint, papers scattered, old pots for oil and turps. Nothing. Brushes immaculately cleaned, standing in wide-mouthed jugs. Even his painting-rags, old bits of shirt or tablecloth, were perfectly folded, lying on the stool before the easel.

This was a dead museum rather than a working artist’s studio.

Well, obviously someone had come in after he had left to clear up. Perhaps his landlady, Madame Prideaux? A feeling of – I don’t know really what it was, unease will do at the moment – came over me, and to break my concern I pulled out a couple more canvases which were all the same size but in a different part of the room. They stood against the wall quite apart from the rest.