Low life
A game of patience
Jeffrey Bernard
Ireceived some bad and discouraging news last week. Well, not discouraging, it is too late for that, but I wish I had been told it in my youth. One of my young female stringers (wonlen who keep me in touch with what is going on in the real world) told me that very nearly all females make up their minds almost instantly when they meet a man whether or not they are going to go to bed with him. If it is true this makes any sort of courtship unnecessary, unless you like the chase to end up with the cunning vixen going to earth. From now on dried flowers will suffice and the only doors I shall ever again hold open for women shall be oven doors. Yes, I feel a little choked and if I didn't know that God is in fact a Mother Superior then I would ask him for a rebate.
The thing is, or at least one of the trou- bles was, that when I first came to Soho as a green but enthusiastic teenager the smart thing to do — if you had the loot — was to take girls aimed for the bed to Wheeler's in Old Compton Street as automatically as you would prod a pawn forward for the first move at chess. For the benefit of young readers, you may find it hard to believe, but there was a time in the early 50s when Wheeler's was quite smart and something of a club where the likes of Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Alan Raw- sthorne, Constant Lambert, Cyril Connolly would let their hair down between lobsters. Anyway, right from the beginning I had a fixed idea and a naïve conviction that any female fed with a Dover sole would almost immediately remove what my mother-in- law called 'her restrictive clothing'.
Sadly, a branch of Wheeler's has been turned into a prawn cocktail place for American tourists. So, if it is true about women making up their minds during eye contact preliminaries I should change my presentation and packaging, although its too late now. No longer the jeans, jersey, hiccup, the struggle to keep the eyes open, a two day growth, a pocketful of dirty tissues and old betting slips and a rumbling stomach. Bob doesn't dress like that and most of them — my enemies and detractors — are called Bob. Bobs wear sensible walking shoes, sports jackets with leather elbow patches and cuffs, drink pints of bitter, can enjoy country walks with no pub on the route, smoke pipes and are built by British Safety Standards and are almost of no interest to psychoanalysts or muck-spreaders. They worship from afar and from the wings where they wait for the likes of me to behave badly just once too often; so wily and patient are they that they could join in any numbing women's idle chat about curtain material and listen on the edge of their seats as though they were hearing Homeric legends. Bob would have me banned from his memorial service should luck have it he should die before me.
And speaking of memorial services, John Osborne's was sad for me because he will be missed and not just dismissed as an unmemorable book is after the end title. Helen Osborne's Diary in last week's Spectator, was memorable too. I only wish I could have seen the memorial service out but I couldn't because my bladder couldn't, and I had to be wheeled away and so then reflect on Osborne's sweet acidity and thank God that he did me the kindness of writing the introduction to the book Low Life. It is to be hoped that Osborne will continue to turn people in there droves from his new vantage point.
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