Low life
Haunted by the past
Jeffrey Bernard
Iwent back to Lambourn last weekend and approaching it from the top of the Downs I got that haunted feeling again as I always do when I go back to anywhere I have been very happy or very unhappy. In the case of Lambourn, it was both. When I split up there with my last wife and moved back to London, it was something of an emotional nightmare, and seeing it now In my mind's eye it smacked a bit of a Bruegel painting, what with being moved by the local dustman, an alcoholic farmer and a very small stable-lad. We drank what little there was left in my house, packed all illY furniture and possessions into a well- manured horse box, and drove to my new flat in ghastly Kentish Town. We unloaded the horse box and then parked it in Dean Street, where I took my three almost deformed-looking removal men to lunch at the Trattoria Terrazza. The waiters looked as though they thought they were serving Martians.
Last Sunday, though, was a delightful and civilised affair — lunch with the Wal- wYns. We had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, and it was the sort of meal that N!gella Lawson would pay £180 for. Sadly, Big Pete was upstairs in bed with flu, which was very disappointing, particularly since I had explained to one of the women who drove me there why I used to call him Basil Fawlty in my Private Eye racing column. I wanted to be pushed around the two yards to look at the horses after lunch but it was too cold, and watching the lads doing evening stables in the dark with just the horse box lights on was the scene and set- ting of a hard life and at the same time a picture pretty enough for a Christmas card. With the passing of time and what with liv- ing in Soho, a Sunday with Peter and Bonk Walwyn is something of a treat, and my heart always sinks to return to Soho at the weekend, particularly since seemingly every Chinaman, his wife and children descend on Soho on Sundays. Report me to the Race Relations Board if you like, but these people are the rudest and most aggressive I have ever come across, and I wonder what on earth it is in their culture or ours that makes them so. I once asked Christine, the delightful woman who owns the Ming, why it was that I get the feeling that the Chi- nese loathe us. She said, 'Because we do.' She said it with a smile, but she was talking for the other billion. Incidentally, since I know the Chinese to be very prudish about sex as a rule, how come there are a billion of them?
All is not what it seems, which reminds me that on Sunday the talk at one point got around to mean owners, and Bonk said that one of them, who shall be nameless, gave them a gold cup after the spectacular victory of one of his colts, and that when she went to clean it for the first time it turned out to be brass. And there are own- ers who have been known to give the lad that 'does' a winner a mere ten shillings.
But I must go down to Lambourn myself sometime to see if I can find any traces of the boys and girls in that Bruegel that I keep in my head. I must try to find dear old Flo, the part-time barmaid who worked in the Red Lion, and who, memorably reflect- ing on the past and good old days, rather sadly said to me one day, 'Even the bees don't buzz like they used to.' That phrase has stuck in my mind and somehow sweetly ties up a parcel of regret and longing. As sad as that, I was told that the new grand- stand at Newbury racecourse — once my favourite course in England — is now an impersonal lump of concrete and that near- ly all the old faces have disappeared. And now, clutching at straws, this is where I came M. Next week, I am taking Vera to the dogs, and I expect they don't bark any more like they used to.
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