Low life
Break a leg
Jeffrey Bernard
This coming Tuesday is crunch-time: the opening night of the play in Brighton. Since I have not seen anything of the rehearsals I am a little apprehensive, although when I meet anybody concerned with it they seem to be enjoying themselves and are full of enthusiasm. A good thing, enthusiasm. Yesterday, a member of the cast came up to me in Old Compton Street and introduced himself. You must have to be pretty hideous to be recognised by a stranger, I thought, as he walked off to the Apollo Theatre.
Later I had a drink with Keith Water- house and he too seemed to be enjoying life. After he left the Groucho Club I sat down on a sofa and had one of those ghastly semi-pissed reveries by myself on that ghastly subject of 'What does it all mean?' In the sober light of day and sitting here in agony thanks to drinking too strong tea all night it doesn't matter a hoot what it all means. But there is going to be a lot of activity in the next few days and I don't want to be laid up with gastritis again. They should put government health warn- ings on packets of tea.
There is a lunch in honour of Gaston Berlemont and tonight Dick Francis has invited me to the book launch of his latest thriller, Straight. Michael Joseph and Pan Books are throwing the party at the Ritz. When Pan Books launch More Low Life on 13 October I expect they will buy me a half of bitter in the Coach and Horses. Dick must make his publishers a fortune and I wouldn't think he is actually scratch- ing around for the rent himself. Very good. He is a nice bloke. I sometimes wonder if after all these years he has nightmares about losing the Grand National in the way he did. A man wouldn't forget a thing like that in a hurry.
The subject of what might have been does not bear contemplation. What might have been if I had been evacuated to America at the beginning of the war as my mother planned? Or worked harder at school? Or never been introduced to Soho and whisky years ago? I suppose I could be writing 'High life' from the reading-room of the New York Athletic Club. What an awful thought. Last night one of the chefs at the Groucho gave me a peeled onion because I told him I wanted to make some Lyonnaise potatoes when I got home and had run out of onions. They wouldn't do that in the NYAC or Boodles. It is such trivial touches that make the downhill journey more of a sleigh-ride than a free fall into the void. Norman gave me a steak and kidney pudding on Monday and a militant feminist smiled at me in the club. I looked at a dreadful dog on Sunday and it wagged its tail. Who cares what might have been?
My cup would run over if at Brighton, after the curtain down, Norman would open the floodgates of his eloquence and pronounce the play to be all right. He has backed it with £500 of his own money. He may not be the albatross he resembles, though. He had a small interest in Les Miserables and I suppose that will give him a tiny income for years to come. But do you know the shrewdest critics to consult after a first night? Stagehands. In my experience they have an uncanny knack of getting it right. They may, with regard to some plays, understand very little, but their instincts are uncannily on target.
My own instincts obviously do not coin- cide with the public's. When I was a stagehand I worked 65 performances of My Fair Lady and then jacked it in for fear of going mad. I don't quite know what it was about it that made me hate it. Maybe I thought it was a bit twee. Thank God the last thing O'Toole, Waterhouse and Sher- rin are is twee.
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