Low life
A walk on the wild side
Jeffrey Bernard
We set out in the rain, dangerously slip- pery, with the intention of my walking the one block to Berwick Street market. I was greeted there nicely by the stall-holders whom I hadn't seen for nearly four weeks, and we paused for the usual cockney badi- nage. After a while I told the physio that I thought 1 could make one more block and I hobbled and staggered to Wardour Street. It was then that I got the scent. I realised I was only a block and a half from the Grou- cho Club, and she looked at me with some- thing like admiration when I gamely suggested that we should press on still fur- ther. Outside the club I feigned exhaustion and said, 'How odd, I know this place. Let's stop for a rest.'
We sat down on a sofa, she concerned that I wouldn't be able to get up from it, and me thinking that if I couldn't it would not be for want of bone and muscle, and I got stuck into a large vodka while she sipped coffee. Of course, I have drink at home, but taking it alone is like swallowing medication. By the next time she calls I think I should be able to make another two blocks and have a rest at the Coach and Horses. Some members of the medical pro- fession are good at dangling carrots — they were pleased that I smoke in the hospital because it forced me to walk to the landing outside the ward — and I wouldn't be at all surprised if Theodore Dalrymple encour- ages his convict patients to jump over walls. Speaking of prisons, Patsy is on parole again. He is supposed to be coming to see me today and I hope he makes it via the lift and not the drainpipe. Last Friday, Sister Sally and a nurse called Mary who looked after me in hospital came to see me and we went out for supper. The girls seemed to enjoy being taken out and what they ate must have been a nice change from the hospital food. We even had a jolly chat about pain and death before they took this exhausted body home and put it to bed. Perhaps one day they will lay it out.
Meanwhile I await a postcard from Vera, who is languishing in St Raphael. That I would dearly like to see. She probably washes up the dishes after they have eaten in a restaurant, such is her habit. Her stand-in is not the harridan I had feared but a gentle Irish girl called Claire. What she makes of this place and Monica's tap- ping out a column God alone knows but she shies like a nervous horse. This morn- ing she poured a vodka down the sink sup- posing it to be an old glass of water. She stands corrected and I have told her to let me sniff, sip and test all waste matter in the future. She will return to headquarters and doubtless tell the council that I am 'diffi- cult'. The Middlesex Hospital had me down on their files as being difficult and I can only suppose that it must mean being slightly more lifelike than a cabbage. I once watched a nurse there put me on a dex- trose drip and not a saline one, pointed out to her that I was a diabetic and asked her then how many people she killed on aver- age every month. Vera knows exactly what to put in a drip and I hope she brings some of it back. And now Deborah is coming to take me walkies. My tail should be wagging but it isn't. Maybe it needs a titanium plate in it. Everything else seems to.
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