Low life
Vegetable love
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihad lunch with an ex-wife last week and she told me that our daughter, Isabel, is
working in a patisserie in Sydney. I find the idea of there being such a thing as a patisserie in Sydney rather extraordinary. Perhaps Don Bradman used to knit in the dressing-room while he was waiting to go in to bat. They are really very lovable deep down, the Aussies.
But how strange to sit at a table opposite someone and reflect on what happened 20 Years ago. While she was looking at the menu I thought of fights and rows and the sunshine days of lying in the grass and tickling each other under the ears with daisies. A strange mix. The waiter brought me back to 1989 when he asked me did I want the usual large one. Then the ex told me a strange thing. A neighbour of ours, a gnome called Dick Williams who was once a BBC reporter, used to try and seduce her by coming to our cottage when I was out and making her presents of little bags of baby marrows and mangetouts. A man who thinks that a baby marrow can narrow the age gap between 26 and 63 must be either out of his skull, very mean or skint ---- or all three.
Fool that I was, I didn't realise that the entire village was lusting after her. And a
pretty ugly and repressed bunch they were. There were three brothers who were farm labourers who lived with their old father opposite and looked like the Clanton gang who were shot down in the gunfight at the OK Corral. I think of them sometimes when I see that daft phrase written up in pubs: Ploughman's Lunch. These plough- men ate Mars Bars in their lunch breaks and drank fizzy lemonade until opening time. Sickening. The other end of the village was quite different. It was the posh end. There was an awful bore of a man who was after the
i ex and I knew about him. He had planted I rubber in Malaya. Came the war and he Joined up but he never made more than sergeant. It wasn't that so much that made him chippy, what killed him was that after the war he couldn't get into Raffles Hotel. Sad, that. I am glad I haven't let the fact that I was barred from the Bricklayers Arms in 1951 fester too much. His wife was the only other woman in the village I could Possibly fancy but his ideas had rubbed off on her which made her very silly. She thought she was out of Vogue but she was strictly Woman's Own.
So now I suppose all the ex's suitors are dead. But old Dick has got me thinking. If I can find the energy and the slightest tingle of desire I think I shall pop down to Rupert Street market, buy a few bags of baby marrows and attempt to woo the delightful-looking female staff of the Grouch() Club. Incidentally, I have noticed something quite unique about the Groucho. It is the only club I have ever been to in which the staff are nicer than the customers. And now the French House has folded to all intents and purposes. Soho won't be quite the same without Gaston. I shall miss the old boy. I feel quite sorry for the man who has taken over, though. I haven't met him yet because I no longer use the place much but Gaston is going to be one hell of a hard act to follow.
What does worry me is will the worst of Gaston's old customers try to invade the Coach and Horses? Some of them are extremely squalid and I don't even like looking at them never mind drinking with them. But I shall guess that Gaston will make a comeback in some other guise and it is said he may open a wine bar. He will get bored at home and although he is a very keen gardener I can't see him being content to spend the rest of his life growing baby marrows.
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