Half life
Naked gambles
Carole Morin
Aistair the student moved to Brighton after graduating because of its reputation as a love and drugs capital. Five days later, he wrote to complain of boredom, Nothing's happened yet. The beach might be turning me into a voyeur.' You don't have to go to a beach these days to see half-naked bodies, but you are supposed to have a good time at the seaside which makes it all the more trag- ic when you don't. 'Brighton,' as Laurence Olivier said, 'makes you think of glamour and oysters.' And a pier that's seen better days, now littered with jessie biscuits stick- ing their tongues in each other's ears.
'I've taken a gamble,' Alistair's letter con- tinued, 'which so far hasn't paid off. Please visit me.' It will be a long time before I'm tempted to take a trip to the seaside, even to drink Car Crashes with Alistair the Voyeur. Staring at the sea too long makes me feel like drowning. Anyway, Maddie's drummed it into me for years, 'Never trust anyone called Alistair.' She was married to Alistair the Gambler before I was born — a really good-looking poker player who was never where he was supposed to be. Appar- ently, he looked a bit like Dangerous Don- ald — thin, blond, aggressive. (There's no proof — her wedding snaps were burned.) Ten years ago I spoke to the poker player and poet, Al Alvarez, on the phone, and he asked, 'Are you the daughter of the famous Mina Morin?' When I told him my mother's name's Maddie, he said, 'She was Mina when I knew her!' Reading his recent book, Night, reminded me of this. I sent Maddie a copy, after scribbling below the author's photograph, 'Is this Al the Gambler?' She telephoned me, outraged, 'Alistair the Gambler was young and sexy l"Maybe when you knew him.'
Gambling is sexy — when it's Graham Greene's Russian Roulette, or Grace Kelly's Monte Carlo, or asking a man you've just met in an elevator to marry you. Dangerous Donald was going to visit Grandmother Smellie (a traditional lavender scented grannie who ate violet creams) when I limped into the hospital elevator with my wallcing-stick. He said, 'you're the girl with the immaculate consumption!' I was famous in the hospital because my tuberculosis had passed straight to the bone in my toe with- out leaving a shadow on either lung.
Everyone — except Grandmother Smellie — advised him at least to wait until we'd been out on a date before marrying me, but Dangerous Donald accepted my proposal straight away. He hates people who audition girlfriends for years before making up their minds. There's nothing romantic about indecisive compromise.
Grandmother Smellie sent us to a pent- house suite in Brighton's Grand Hotel to celebrate our wedding anniversary. We had been married for two weeks and had to drive there straight from Heathrow after spending our wedding present money in Berlin. Grandmother Smellie died soon after and Dangerous Donald bought me a faded grandeur Georgian mansion on the Northumberland coast with his inheritance. All that sea air seemed like a good idea for the tubercular toe.
Every summer since, we've spent two months supervising builders who show their bums while fixing our crumbling roof; avoid- ing the neighbour who threatened legal action if we encourage her dog to avoid our garden ('Bobbie's been kakaing round her for years!); and having our car used in a ram-raiding hit and run. Out of respect for Grandmother Smellie, whose last words to me were, 'The sea is sinister but good for your soul,' we pretended to be having a great time. Now we've sold the place to Mr Hyde, a man who turned up to collect the keys with no shirt on, we can admit out loud that not every gamble is a lucky one. Next time we feel like buying a house on impulse, we'll think of Mark Fowler in EastEnders. Metaphor Mark's immune system is already flirting with death. Bringing him to the brink of financial ruin as well, really cheered up the schadenfreude audience. The bald bore won his bet this time, but he's ruined the sex appeal of poker.
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