Low life
Literary winners
Jeffrey Bernard
It now seems virtually certain that Miss Brenda Dean is to take over from Ms Joanna Lumley on this year's panel of Booker Prize judges. When told of the news a jubilant Brenda, born plain Brenda Dean, said, 'I'm over the sun.' Glasses were being raised in Fleet Street's Scribes Club last night as journalists thronged the packed cellars to offer their congratula- tions to the girl who came in from no- where. A beaming George Gale told me, 'I thought I'd seen it all from the Bikini Atoll bomb to Maggie Thatcher's first election triumph, but this is a night I shan't forget until the morning.' As the corks popped and the artillery of success became louder and louder Stan Smith, literary editor of the Star, was vainly trying to hold the front page. Telegrams of congratulation from Oxford, Cambridge and Hampstead laY piled on the door mat tripping over late- comers to the party. A euphoric Claire Tomalin, her eyes brimming with tears, told me, 'This isn't just a triumph for English literature as such, basically — and I'm using words as symbols here — it's a triumph for good sense.' Bernard Levin' clutching one of his ubiquitous Maison, Sagne chocolate eclairs, concurred. 'Yes, he told me, 'basically, this is it.' Later that evening, as I sat in a quiet, white-carpeted, spacious, candelabra-lit Belgrave Square flat waiting for Joanna Lumley to appear, I felt apprehensive, ugly, old and distinctly flaccid. So near yet so far. When she did appear, having poured herself into some gold satin jeans; she glided across the carpet with at least 1,1 paperbacks under one arm, a moving an', yet touching combination of majesty and girl-next-door je ne sail quoi. She extended her hand to me. It was ice-cold, exquisite. Her eyes said, 'You little fool.' Her month said, 'I suppose you want a drink.' She rang a bell and a minute later Dons Lessing, dressed in a maid's uniform, calve to ask us what we wanted. I ordered vodka and she asked Doris for a Lucozade With- out sugar. I felt very uncomfortable as gl" chatted in a desultory way about Or taigne and Propertius. As we got up to log to Cranks where I was taking her to dinner an old betting slip fell out of my pocket and she gave me a look that told me I was on yet another loser. At Cranks she had a brazil nut explaining to me that she was filming tomorrow and I struggled to cut an egg cutlet. 'It's all right,' she said, 'you can pick it up with your fingers if you like.' I grinned like a well-patted retriever. Later, at Ladbroke's, Cyril Stein stub- bed out a cigar on his secretary's handbag and barked down the telephone. 'No, she's running in the Booker Prize you twit, not the Oaks. Get me all the six to four you can about her. That's right the lesbian Cher- okee squaw from Lake Winnipeg. Don't worry. I'm telling you it's fixed. A geezer from the Arts Council just took five grand to two. Right. Ta ta.' He put down the Phone. 'Good one, Cyril?' I asked him. Stone-bonking certainty. Mind you, we've had a few nibbles at seven to two and three to one for this bird Emma Ponsonby. She's the social worker from Camden who mur- dered triplets then got elected to the Liverpool Council. Cor blimey, what a bleedin' business. You wouldn't believe how we started in this game. My great- great-grandfather bet his brother Maurice that George Eliot wouldn't finish The Mill on the Floss by the deadline of 1859. Thought she was unreliable, but she was a tenacious cow. Churned out winners like Piggott she did.' I had 20 quid on Emma r onsonby and walked out into the rain. I don't know quite why it was but my „steps took me back to Belgrave Square. l'or a minute or two I stood in the street looking up at the warm light of what I supposed must have been Joanna's bed- room. I imagined her lying there in a Janet Keger nightdress reading Pascal, a tame Lleopard purring gently at the foot of her 'ed. She was well out of the literary rat race. By now, somewhere in the East End, Brenda Dean was probably facing a dart hoard, a glass of light ale in one hand, reaming, 'Mugs away. Middle for dle.
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