Low life
On with the show
Jeffrey Bernard
Imight as well be a football. I am being kicked and passed to and fro by landlords and landladies, and when I moved into this flat in Maida Vale I thought the final whistle had gone. Last week the woman who owns the flat arrived here to tell me that I must go because she is going to sell the place. She wants £80,000 for it and that is tuppence more than I have got or can get hold of. When and where will it all end? In a cardboard box, I suppose. I hope that it is under Richmond Bridge and not Waterloo Bridge. Wherever it is it will be a bridge of sighs.
But that is enough of moaning. I woke up this morning, the first day of Royal Ascot, to find £300 in readies in my pocket and I also have an account with the sainted Victor Chandler to say nothing of John Power in Ireland. I shall continue to kick against the pricks and I mean the horses and not the bookmakers.
And as if all that wasn't enough I now think I have caught mad cow disease. The said lunatic has taken to coming into the Coach and Horses every week with moun- tains of food for me. She either thinks I am starving or dying. So far she has seen the play at the Apollo six times. A mite excessive, that. But last week's food supply was almost too heavy for me to put into a taxi. There were six avocados, four grapefruit, wensleydale, brie and cheddar cheeses, four different blends of tea from Fortnums, three cartons of asparagus soup, some frozen prawns, a box of matzos (not suitable for Passover use), limes, bananas, sour cream and kiwi fruit. Although I am not a vegetarian I refrained from asking her the whereabouts of the fillet steak and I am touched and moved. She even buys her round of drinks and rich she ain't. All for a kiss on the cheek. I must leave her the forwarding address of the cardboard box I shall end up living in.
And now I hear that Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell is to come off at the end of July. One gravy train derailed. I have been told that Tom Conti is leaving to make a film and that there is fierce competition at the moment from the World Cup on television and more to come from Wimbledon. What bugs me not a little is that I am not informed of these things by those who should be doing the communicating but by a barman, a stagehand and a butcher in Brewer Street. But for these people I would be in the dark.
Norman, of course, thinks he is Reuter. If I didn't go into the Coach and Horses so frequently I wouldn't know whether it was Tuesday or Marble Arch. When my then estranged first wife died 35 years ago I was told of it by a newsagent. It made me sick.
I like to be let in on a secret if it concerns me. Anyway, what a good run we have had of it. Hopefully they will tell me when they are going to make it into an opera or stage it on ice at Wembley. This is not the end yet.
The bastards who are the best at keeping secrets are doctors. In some ways I am lucky to be such an experienced patient that I know pretty nearly exactly what is wrong with me. The fact that my ankles have recently swollen to such an extent that I struggle to put my shoes on will in no way hurry me to the Middlesex Hospital unless they turn black. Would it, I wonder, be poetic justice for a man who has been accused of being legless in his time to have his feet amputated? At least it would be a source of bad jokes about things like not having the leg-over ever again.
Years ago a Lord Rosebery shouted up to his coach driver, 'Is it raining?' The man shouted back, 'I would like to say, m'lord.' Rosebery said, 'Oh very well, keep it a secret then if you must.' That's show business.
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