Low life
Good old days
Jeffrey Bernard
There's something about the country. I've begun to notice, that lends sex a terribly serious, almost dramatic aspect. Perhaps it's the acute shortage of bodies that intensifies most relationships. Victims just aren't as available as they are in the wine bars and drawing rooms of London; so that when two people start an affair in a rural setting they tend to cling to each other through thick and thin (and it's usually thin). The commonly held mind's eye picture — that we while away our summers tumbling in ditches and haystacks with rosy-cheeked maidens or pass our winters snugly cuddling in the inglenook waiting for the first drip of the thaw — is nostalgic wishful thinking that comes from reading too many reprints that follow hard on the heels of the television series.
I wouldn't say that life and love on the Berkshire Downs is as thunder-laden as Thomas Hardy, but it certainly isn't anything much like Rebecca or William Barnes. Unfortunately, 'An' zoo zummer wull always have maidens avore Ther doors, var to chatty an' zee vo'ke goo by is an age and a million miles away. The ghastly reality might well be written by a cross between a court reporter and a Woman's Own short-story writer. Pastoral pornography is pretty charmless.
It's sad, I think, that most people here are deterred from going over the top, not by the boring hideousness of the enemy, but because it's a well-known fact that you can't do anything in a village without everybody knowing about it. So, those who don't take the plunge into dreadful liaisons just fester away under the thatch. What they should do is try to come to terms with celibacy — but that's asking a lot of both ends of the age scale. If the youthful prostate gland isn't being teased by continually jogging up and down on the backs of racehorses then it's being infuriated by the large ginand-tonics that are the refuge of the man whose last memory is Call Boy's Derby.
The women, of course, are even sadder. When the shopping's been done in Hungerford, after the obligatory weekly treat of a hair-do in Wantage, and the Mini's been safely put away in the garage, it's back to the log fire, out with the gin and away into the past. These ladies' have for me an appearance that merges into one and the lines of their stories that you have to read between run very nearly parallel. They are invariably steel-grey women who sport a suggestion of blue rinse. They dress in twin-sets but with slacks and, as goes with a subscription to Country Life, they arc usually attached to walking sticks. For openers, they usually lead with the same line. 'You didn't know my husband, did you?'
'No.' You would have liked him. Of course, he was a frightful shit, but we had some marvellous times together.'
'Really?'
'Yes. Drank like a fish, of course, but then who didn't in those days? I suppose you could say he was an alcoholic. That's what this place does for you. Before we moved here — we used to live in Gloucestershire, he was an MFH you know — yes, before we moved here he was perfectly all right. Then there was this girl who rode work for one of the Hartigans. George had a couple of fillies in training over there — that's how he met her — she lived in a caravan. Help yourself to more gin, by the way. I mean he really went to pieces. Then, when he got cancer, well I mean, it was just pathetic. They're a frightfully bitchy lot round here, but I expect you've discovered that for yourself. Oh, George drank all right and he liked a pretty face, I can tell you. More gin? Thank God I'm too old for all that anyway. Mind you, I wouldn't move from my little cottage for all the tea in China.'
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