Seedy flat’s ‘phantom lodger’ added an air of intrigue

The current debate about the future of the Approach Golf Course reminded me that I used to have a flat overlooking that lovely green space.

I say ‘flat’ but in those days greedy Bath landlords would take a handsome Georgian reception room and divide it up with chipboard partitions that didn’t quite reach the ceiling or construct an ugly mezzanine in the space in order to increase the number of socalled bedrooms on offer.

I’m talking 1970s here. There were no fire doors, no real security and the facades of such properties were invariably black with soot, whereas many Bath buildings were in the process of being scrubbed for the first time since Queen Victoria visited.

Ours was described as two bedroomed, which meant my pal slept in a sort of windowless wooden cave at the back of the main room.

My portion at the front enjoyed a wonderful panorama of the golf course viewed through vast floor to ceiling windows.

I also laid claim to the elaborate ceiling mouldings and a towering marble fireplace.

If I turned my back on my flatmate’s seedy sleep pod, I could be living in eighteenth century splendour. Provided I ignored the hideous sofa and the tacky coffee table which made up the ‘fully furnished’ part of the landlord’s description.

We had a little kitchen which was reached by a long corridor, off which was a bathroom and intriguingly, another room.

This room was let separately, most probably as ‘a compact pied a terre.’ A woman lived there but we never saw her. And when I say never, I mean never. At least not from the front.

Every morning we heard the big front door slam and we would see the back of her disappearing at a rate of knots over the ridge of aforementioned golf course, collar pulled up and hat pulled down.

Try as we might, we never saw her coming back in.

Sometimes there was a light under her door, and occasionally it was obvious someone was having a bath. There was no evidence of any use of the kitchen. We checked our cornflake packets regularly.

Why didn’t you do the social thing and introduce yourselves you ask?

Oft times we hesitated by her door, poised to knock and say hello, but then we’d decide that her actions suggested she was doing a Garbo and our attention might be unwelcome.

Besides, it was more fun to have a Phantom Lodger, around whom we could weave a spurious back story. And obviously we decided she was a spy, what with the MOD in town and all.

She probably had a short-wave radio transmitter hidden in the cheap wardrobe the landlord had inevitably provided.

Maybe she was from the drug squad? Anyone with long hair was fair game for suspicion in those days.

In fact, I got stopped so often going home in the small hours after a late session with my Arts Workshop buddies, I took to wearing a United Dairies cap. An innocent milkman off to his morning shift.

Worked a treat!