Low life
Home, sweet home
Jeffrey Bernard
From where I am sitting, facing south and from right to left, I can see the Regent Palace Hotel, the Swiss Centre, the Odeon Leicester Square and the clock on the tower of St Anne's Church, Soho. From the bedroom window I can see Centrepoint. Am I already dead and in heaven? I have seen the Rockies, steamed up the Missis- sippi, down the Nile, entered the temples of Thailand, the Hermitage in St Peters- burg, walked on the gallops by Lambourn
at dawn, seen storms at sea, sunsets in the West Indies, women who could break your heart from a hundred miles but never ever have I seen anything quite so stunningly beautiful as the rotting fruit and vegetables in Berwick Street Market just outside the front door of this block of flats. Home, sweet home. At last.
Not even Ulysses had to live out of carri- er bags for five years. Neither did he have to put up with the landlords, landladies, neighbours and household pets that I have had to endure. There was a dog in Kentish Town that used to evacuate its bowels every morning on the lupins in the garden. That was as painful as seeing a work of art destroyed. There was the woman in the basement in West Hampstead whose screams of ecstasy made my bedroom win- dows rattle. In Covent Garden I was cheat- ed out of £1,000. Then there was the Peeping Tom of Maida Vale and the land- lady who disappeared with my £650 deposit. After that there was the tower block in Westminster whose windows per- sistently beckoned me to jump.
As I have said before, it has only been the joint efforts of Keith Waterhouse and Peter O'Toole that have prevented me from going quite bananas. And what strange spin-offs there have been from the play. Yesterday, a company that makes films for television telephoned to ask me if I would be willing to recite, so to speak, my
obituary to camera. Since they pay properly I said I would be willing but I am horribly superstitious about it. One more trip down a staircase or off a pavement could do it for real.
I shall sit here and stare at the backside of the Regent Palace. My brother Oliver sent me a card yesterday saying, 'There's no place like home so don't go out for a few weeks'. He is very likely right but it is tempting and like a breath of fresh air to me to step outside into the squalor of Soho. No more taxis, thank God, and no more thanking me for not smoking.
The only cloud I can see on the horizon is the prospect of another six sittings for the portrait. I don't suppose it ever occurred to anybody that having your por- trait painted entails wearing the same clothes for every wretched sitting. And now the man who commissioned the picture wants my daughter to sit for the artist, Michael Corkrey. I am sure she will but the trick is to find her. I am damned if I can and I need her help to unpack some things that have been in store for an age and to open the champagne I have on ice. I shall never be able to open a bottle of fizz again thanks to the bust arm and elbow and I won't miss it much, but a flat in Soho needs a christening. So Isabel, if you are reading me loud and clear, for God's sake tele- phone me. Where? In the bloody Coach and Horses.
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