Low life
Eden without the apples
Jeffrey Bernard
Majorca This is the first time I have been abroad and on holiday since I went to Sydney three years ago to see Yeunis Waterman in the play and by so doing got the sack from the Sunday Mirror. It is a pity that the editor, Bridget Rowe, didn't take the plunge with Robert Maxwell and it cost me dear.
It is also the first time that I have been away since I lost my leg and, by God, I could do with it now. The stairs in this house are almost insurmountable and this island seems to me to be covered with steps. It isn't of course, but it is a struggle to cope even with two nurses. Sister Sally from the Middlesex Hospital brought me here and takes very good care of me, and the other nurse is my ex-wife, Jill, who is also our hostess. She has a lovely house here and I spend most of my time in the garden sipping, would you believe, lemon tea which is still a good drink if and when it gets cold. Yesterday, Sally washed my hair while I sat in the shade of two orange trees. This may be Eden without the apples. I close my eyes and women flit noiselessly across my mind and the nightmares have stopped. If I didn't know otherwise and hadn't listened to others I would call it peace and contentment.
Majorca is fast losing its reputation for being a haven for English football louts and it is now climbing slowly up-market. Mind you, a lot of Germans are climbing with it. While Sally went swimming yester- day I sat in a café fending off the mime of one old Hun, and I can't bear Marcel Marceau, puppets and circuses, and he was all three in one and brought out the Basil Pawky that screams within most of us. He insisted we were good friends but I wanted to ask him why he had tried to bomb me and my mum in the war. The Spanish flavour, though, thankfully took over again as we ate paella in a bar overlooking the harbour. It is a pity that it is almost impos- sible to get my favourite dish in London but even a lot of Spanish chefs fall short of making the real McCoy, and quite appropriately they do it best in Valencia, if memory serves.
What I have suddenly remembered is picking up an easy fight at some obscure boxing venue in Barcelona in 1950 when I was 18. I was paid about £10 and that was money then. A couple of dry sherries before the fight made my opponent's blows feel like feather dusters. And sadly, the thought of Spanish sportsmen, reminds me that so far I have failed to find Sally a rich matador as I promised her mother I would.
Meanwhile, if Jill drives us into the town, I find myself standing on the touchline of a soap opera and one that is a little more carbolic than the soft stuff manufactured by English television. Jill knows some good people here, but a lot of British ex-pats are a little heavy-handed when it comes to pouring the sour grape juice in the salons of their encounters. Ideally there should be more of them, so as to increase the amount of permutations possible for affairs and infidelities. Secrets are hard to keep and the whole business of it has become a spec- tator sport akin to watching English wick- ets tumbling. Depressing, especially if you can no longer play.
And now I am sitting beneath the orange trees again waiting for the nurses to serve lunch. The oranges are left to drop and Jill says they taste of soap, but it is pleasant to watch them pick lemons for their gin and my tea. I tried a couple of vodkas yesterday for the first time in an age, but I can no longer pull the wool over the tired old eyes of my pancreas.
Which reminds me that when I went through customs at Heathrow, the titanium that Mr Cobb put in my broken hip had all the bells ringing. I had taken the precau- tion of taking a print of the X-ray with me. At Bangkok, say, they would have cut me open to make sure. You would never think to look at a miserable chap like me that I could make bells ring. They didn't sound alarmed, but quite joyous.
Previous page
