Low life
Teeth on edge
Jeffrey Bernard
Lunch with Francis Bacon this week for the first time in quite a while. It used to be a weekly event but he has better things to do nowadays. I wish I had. We talked about the usual things, sex and death, over the salmon and reminisced about the Wheeler's of yesteryear when Bernard Walsh owned it. The refurbishing — dreadful word — of the place took the charm away. There was such a nice little bar in a back room where we used to congregate. Sometimes we even got as far as lunch.
Francis was on to death within two minutes of coming into the pub. I asked him what he was up to and he said, 'I'm working on something I want to finish before I die.' Never have I known a man so obsessed with death, not counting the one sitting at this typewriter. People's various sexual kinks were also discussed and we thought it might make an interesting book if 200 famous people could be persuaded to come forward and own up about theirs. He then went on to say that he was a little bit fed up with homosexuals. Only Peter Watson and Peter Lacey came out well, and I must say Lacey was one of the really good men to have passed this way. A gentleman who could play a good cocktail piano, he died of pancreatitis in Tangier. Poor sod. What a place to get that illness.
After we parted I went back to the Coach and Horses to watch a couple of races on the box. It is serious stuff now. Trainers start to bring out the big guns at the first Newmarket meeting of the year. It was a bit irritating to be perched on a bar stool next to a man staring gloomily at a losing betting slip and complaining. He had lost £2. I lost a week's money and shall cool it until the horse decides to open his mouth and talk. I bet too boldly after a good lunch. That could have been a week in Florence, which was what I had wanted, but the beast was running backwards as they came into the final furlong. Never mind. Next time. But, you see, I do mind. It will be on my mind for a few days like a nightmare always is.
Speaking of which, my nightmares are now very nearly every night and they are making me feel quite ill. Two friends told me that the way to cure myself of them is to resolve to turn myself into a hero in them. But how can a man clinging to a ledge 100 feet above the ground with no way up or down turn himself into a hero? I am not interested in the interpretation of dreams, I just want to get rid of anxiety. It is bad enough to have it in the daytime before the sun is over the yardarm. I am beginning to suspect that this frame of mind might be chemically induced just as madness can be. Dutch courage wears off during the early hours and I don't intend to start drinking in bed.
I am also cheated in dreams for never have I had an erotic dream with a happy ending. Is there anything left not to feel anxious about? And the daughter has just phoned from Sydney. What the hell is going on down under, I wonder. Now I feel even worse about my bet at Newmarket. Never mind about needing the money to have two wisdom teeth extracted, with what I lost she could have had the lot pulled out. And now, with her teeth on my mind, I suppose there will be another nightmare tonight. You can bet that my dentist will be doing his business on the ledge of a skyscraper.
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