Low life
Eva
Jeffrey Bernard
va Johansen died last week in a typically 1.--.1extravagant, sad and infuriating way; drunk in bed with a cigarette and, like what ever little money she ever had, up in smoke. It's unlike her to be so inconsiderate. Soon there'll be no one left at all to drink with. Melancholy is giving way to a sort of dull anger at being deprived of the pleasure of her company. She once wrote to me, 'It was good to see you the other day. I'd forgotten how much our rows meant to me.' And again last week after I'd tried to cheer her up, 'Thank you for looking after me; it's so nice to know that you're there between rows.' But it was she, in fact, who looked after me. No wonder I feel so selfish about her death. I too will miss our screaming matches as well as the blissful days.
In spite of having just the one foot on the ground — she was a bit of a romancer at times — she set great store on us both being Gemini and it appealed to her that Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland both were too. There's no need to remind you of what hap- pened to them. But if there was anyone famous whom Eva put me in mind of it must be Dorothy Parker. Sometimes her unconscious efforts to imitate that lady in- furiated me and I'd tell her not to try so hard. That would invariably lead to a slang- ing match -- invariably in a pub — and to an anxious and inquiring landlord. She'd stop swearing at me, smile and say, 'Oh, it's quite all right. This is a friend of mine and I'm simply trying to explain to him that he's a stupid bastard.' Exit puzzled landlord. Our longest-standing trivial row, which became eventually our longest-standing joke, was about the breakfast she demand- ed when she was staying with me in the country. I asked her what she wanted and she said, 'I'd like a slice of cold, rare, roast beef and a glass of Tio Pepe, preferably from the fridge.' 1 said, 'Why can't you have a fucking egg like anyone else, you flash cow?' and she replied, quite rightly, `Because I'm not anyone else.' And she wasn't.
She was also very deft at putting a man
down when she wanted to, although, in the end, they put her down with an almighty thump. I remember a creep of a travelling salesman — she picked up the phrase from one of her heroes, Auberon Waugh, and called the type 'these people' — approached her in our local with a view to picking her up and said, 'Good morning. Nice day.' She gave him a look of utter disdain and said, 'Your place or mine?' Exit frightened rabbit. But if there is anything to astrology and her obsession about Gemini then it is borne out by the two faces that were Eva. Inside the abrasive, tough, hard-drinking woman there was a frightened little girl try- ing desperately not to get out. Well, she got out last week.
1 shall miss the asides as well as her com- pany. A very good friend of hers was once foolhardy enough to tell her, 'You know, Eva, if I hadn't met you I think I would have taken up keeping bees.' He was ever after referred to as 'The Bee Keeper' and she said, 'The poor sod wanted to keep bees and he ended up with a hornet's next.' But let her finish this column with an excerpt from a typical letter she wrote three years ago.
`So I have no flat, no job, no lover, no income and — as far as I can see — no prospects. Even my cat has left me. I keep sitting around expecting fear and all I'm getting is exhilaration .... So here I am exulting in the clean dry air of absolute selfishness, secure in the knowledge that there is nothing more they can do to me. If it weren't so totally out of keeping with everything I've been told, I'd say it could only be described as happiness.'
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