Low life
Home and away
Jeffrey Bernard
She's really getting to be too much. She doesn't want to drown in my eyes any more, she wants to melt in my arms now. She also has an awful affectation of raising one eyebrow rather archly and has told me that she practised the habit when she was a convent schoolgirl. Last week, when I came back from Tunisia, we were sitting in a taxi and she announced that she only wore stockings and stiletto shoes twice a week because she didn't want to put me into a frenzy. I told her that I have been in a frenzy for 53 years. She then claimed that her ridiculous and libellous letter in this journal last week has made me 'famous'. She is becoming as impossible as Lady Caroline Lamb and since I am sadly the reincarnation of a dog and not Byron it is an utter waste of temperament. But it has all led to a rather nasty piece in the Guardian diary, which reported me as being the Spectator 'resident drunk'. It is quite true that, like thousands of other Englishmen, I get drunk — only once a day — but I do think that it was a little rude of that wretched paper to describe me so. Their diary man took a liberty. But enough of my ever so private life, suffice it to say that she is as undrownable and unmeltable as granite. But what really makes me prickly — and I collected prickly heat in Tunisia — is the betting situation. I had a £50 bet that the first Test would end in a draw — I was banking on rain — and now I just backed England to win the second Test. On top of that my Saturday book in the Coach and Horses came seriously unstuck last week when I laid one punter an 8-1 and then 10-1 winner. I paid up smiling and I have been smiling quite a lot recently out of sheer laziness ever since one reader was kind enough to point out to me that it takes 65 muscles to frown but only ten to smile. Which reminds me, there was a girl with us in Tunisia who smiled all the time. She smiled inwardly and to herself. I don't trust it. People smile all the time because they are like village idiots or they smile all the time because they are smug and deeply pleased with themselves. Come to think of it, they may simply be terrified. I knew a girl once called Angela — never trust an Angela — who was so frightened she couldn't stop pulling faces. But She who would drown and melt actually practises faces in front of her wretched mirror. Having married a Redgrave she can't stop acting now. It's catching. I've just taken a Peter Ackroyd will resume his column next week look at myself in the mirror and I am so deeply touched and moved by the sadness I have seen that! am going to take myself out for a couple of consoling drinks.
And speaking of drinks I nearly forgot to tell you that Norman has run away from home. What a funny thing to do when you're 58. We're not quite sure in Soho where he's run away to but I suspect he's shacked up with a wonderful little woman he met through the services of a Jewish escort agency and we wish him all the happiness in the world. Well, not all. The other day a customer in the Coach and Horses complained to him that his bitter was cloudy. Norman snapped back and told him that there was nothing wrong with the bitter and it was just that the glass was dirty. It reminds me of the time the health authorities asked the guvnor of the Swiss Tavern if there were any mice on the premises and were told, 'No, the rats have eaten them all.' But the thing that's so embarrassing about running away from home when you're 58 is that you have to bar your own mother from the pub. And, talking of leaving home, I have to run away for a few days while the landlords paint my pad. I shall be staying with Lady Caroline Lamb. I dread it. It makes such an awful mess when people melt in your arms. She never has any vodka or soda or orange juice on the premises but just an enormous pile of press cuttings written 30 or so years ago about how beautiful she was. What is truly terrifying is that I really believe we get what we deserve. What the hell did I do?
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