Low life
Bernard, hand back the money
Jeffrey Bernard
One morning last week, I woke up and it was ominously dark. I hadn't woken too early, it was just a storm coming in from the west. I spent some time reading How We Die by the bedside light to review for the Telegraph. And so I was feeling a lit- tle gloomy by the time the district nurse, a flash of lightning and the first roll of thun- der arrived. The district nurse, Trudy, was her usual cheerful self — she comes every day to dress my so-called good leg — and although it looks fairly hideous to me she keeps saying it is getting better. Of course, in the back of my mind I fear that Mr Cobb will get his hands, saw and scalpel on it one of these days. The thunder rolled on and I began to feel as though I was playing a minor role in a Wagner epic.
Just as Trudy finished with my foot there was a knock on the door and a collector from the Inland Revenue presented him- self and asked me for £9,660 there and then. Lightning flashed appropriately at this crazy demand and I have earned no money to speak of since Peter O'Toole stopped playing me for the last time. Although a court judgment has been made already against me and the date for an appeal has gone by some time ago, the col- lector was nice enough to say that he would try and arrange for me to make an appeal rather late in the day. He spent quite a bit of time sitting at my table writing God knows what, and finally Trudy left without taking my foot with her.
As soon as she had gone, the phone rang and it was an agent from London Manage- ment answering a complaint I had made about not getting any money from the Dublin production of Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell. I remember the opening well although I wasn't there because it was on 8th February, the day I had my right leg off. Anyway, I said it had been a long time in coming, the money I mean, and she said, there isn't any coming. It seems that the Irishman who leased the play from Michael Redington who first put it on at the Apollo had gone broke, maybe bankrupt, and more or less done a bunk. The tax collector went on with his writing and the thunder, now in the east, continued to rumble. Then the agent told me the surname of the Irish- man who had absconded with the loot. It is Bernard. That came as no surprise, in fact it seemed quite appropriate and I would guess that, at this minute, that particular Mr Bernard is propping up a Dublin bar and laughing about having got away with not paying Keith Waterhouse and myself.
All the time this dreadful morning was unfolding, I had that book, How We Die at the back of my mind. By the time I got to the end of it, I found myself not giving a damn how I am going to die as long as it is without pain. At tea time my daughter tele- phoned. Then her mother telephoned from Spain, pleasantly enough as it happened, but it still felt like a Wagnerian day. It was all so absurd that I fell asleep laughing.
I was quite interested that the Inland Revenue collector told me that he got a fair amount of verbal abuse in the course of his duties but I was surprised to hear that he should have been hit a couple of times. What on earth for? You might as well hit the milkman on Saturday mornings when he gives you the week's bill. This could be another one of those days. The Estate Office has just telephoned to tell me that it will cost me £80 to have my entry- phone mended. I can't imagine what visi- tors I'm missing at the moment but they should pay for it themselves with the dis- ability allowance. Creeping bureaucracy is not only killing the National Health Service but also making the Westminster Council behave like lunatics. All I hope for now is that the Inland Revenue collectors should behave like a lot of lemmings.
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