Low life
Downhill racer
Jeffrey Bernard
This body, doomed it seems to wander London for ever, has temporarily come to rest in Chiswick where I am staying with my daughter Isabel. The idea was that I look after her for two weeks while her mother is away and before we set off up the Nile. Tell me, how do you look after a girl who is in a disco most nights until 3 a.m.? The first night I was here she actually cooked me dinner and then made me endless cups of tea. Then, when I went to bed, she sent me off with a hot-water bottle saying, 'You look as though you could do with it.' It was touching and at once rather depressing and a bloody cheek. Her part- ing shot was, 'You've only had one drink tonight. I'm really proud of you.' I think she means well but didn't Hitler?
Last night we took a walk along the Mall and stopped at a pub for a drink — cider is the thin end of her wedge at the moment and when I was halfway through my drink she said, '1 think we ought to go back and put the potatoes on.' It's too much and rather like being married to her mother again. This morning, while she was super- vising breakfast, I told her that if I got another peep out of her on the subject of what is good for me and what isn't then I would cancel her holiday and find myself another Cleopatra. Wrong. The eyes brim- med with tears and now I am feeling like a complete shit.
And now she has just left to sit for the last exam she will ever take. That makes me feel like crying too. The subject is maths and she is innumerate. The agonies of embarrassment and humiliation she goes through because of it are heart-rending and I don't really know what to do to help her. Also I have to help her find a job and she wants to work in a racing stable. I shall be in touch with my Newmarket connections but I fear she isn't tough enough in the head for that life. I can see arriving at a big yard in Newmarket and living with those hard-faced boys and girls as being as frightening as arriving at a public school for one's first term 40 years ago. But we're still here, I suppose. It is good, though, to be together again after 15 years. Yesterday, I wandered along the road to Hammersmith to see if there were any good food shops in the area and I came across something rather extraordinary. I saw a tramp sitting on the pavement and leaning against a wall outside the tube station. He was drinking from a dark green bottle. Saliva and what was probably sur- gical spirit cascaded out of his mouth, over his flabby bottom lip and down his filthy shin-front. His eyes were glazed and you could see he wasn't going to beat the count. So far, so bad. A common sight. But here's the odd thing. In his right hand he was holding a pair of remarkably expensive-looking skis. Steel-sharp and sPeedY. A downhill racer if ever I saw one. I was tempted to ask him the secret of his success but you mustn't mock. I met some oddballs in the bin in Ealing Years ago but I don't recollect any alcoho- lics referring to St Moritz or expressing the desire to attempt the Cresta Run. Many souls were bared during group therapy but nobody claimed to have been driven to drink in a troika. I keep wondering now how he came by these skis and just what is he going to do with them. In the bad old days I bartered watches and a typewriter with publicans but never rackets, cricket bats orgolf clubs. A ping-pong bat would h, aye been about my mark but this tramp Looked oddly magnificent in his way. At first I thought the defiant look in the glazed eyes indicated that he didn't want a hand- out. Now I believe it was resentment at having to wait in Hammersmith and not Heathrow for a stand-by flight to Geneva. But I am glad for winos that the weather has taken a slight turn for the better. It's a tough business, and sleeping over the pavement grille of a bakery in the winter must be awful and also mouth-watering for winos. The surprise is that considering Royal Ascot began on Tuesday I haven't seen any tramps sporting binoculars. There was a man in Ealing with us who slept on the Common and who somehow had con- trived to open an account with a local newsagent who delivered him the Sporting Life every morning to his bench. There was a bit of style in that. Where is he now? In Gstaad with Taki most likely.
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