Low life
Comeback
Jeffrey Bernard
The comeback trail, as that unpreposs- essing would-be, Joe Bugner, could testify, is one hell of a slog pitted with pot- holes and boredom. I thought I'd retired and that the days of tight-rope walking and hustling were over. There I was, lying on my bed, sipping tea and watching the Em- bassy World Snooker Championship on television when my manager phoned up out of the blue. His old, familiar and horrible voice had my adrenalin pumping in seconds. 'What's the matter, have you given up or something?"No, Norman,' I said. 'In fact I'm feeling much better.' Well then, if you're not bleedin' dying why don't you look into the Coach? I mean, don't fucking give up, eh?' It was like hear- ing the bell for 'seconds out' again. I dropped my insulin into the waste- paper basket, opened a packet of digestive biscuits — the ones with plain chocolate on one side — and stared at the old-fashioned tumbler full of swizzle sticks that was gathering dust with other souvenirs like my typewriter on the desk. I got up and looked at myself closely in the mirror. Was I too old to drink again? Had the head, legs and pockets gone? Norman had said, 'You can always drink Perrier, you know,' before he'd rung off, but the sound of his voice had me suddenly longing for those 10- and 12-round bouts again. To hell with starting at the bottom again. The lure of the main event was as strong as ever. There I was, sit- ting on my stool in the corner, Norman bent over me flapping a tea-cloth in my face and pressing a £20 note to my jacket pocket and whispering urgently, 'You'll need 20 more stitches there later but you've got him now.' I eyed my opponent, a particularly successful friend, but he looked depressing- ly strong. True, I'd outfumbled him for eight rounds, but he was still there. Norman pushed me off my stool and out again and for one second, a split second, I dropped my guard and smiled. 1 never even heard the bell for last orders. I heard my voice feebly asking, 'Where am I?' and someone answered, 'It's all right champ, you're in the Colony Room Club.' You win some, you lose some.
I shook myself out of the daydream and took another close look at the old face. My eyes were quite white for the first time in eight weeks and the telltale angry red denoting liver damage had vanished from the palms of my hands. I was ready to spar if not fight. I got my kit out of the ward- robe — the old jeans and jersey that brought me luck — put them on and then stepped out into the roar of Great Portland Street. I bobbed and weaved my way down to Piccadilly avoiding the Stags Head, George and Woodcock — something told me I wasn't quite ready — and walked into the tea room of Fortnums.
Within 15 minutes, after a pot of tea and a scone, I realised I'd walked into a hornet's nest. Those crazy sessions in the Coach and all over
Soho palled beside Fort- nums. This was where the champions hung out. The hardest bunch of nuts I've ever found myself in the midst of. At the next table there sat six Iranian students sipping lemon tea and counting travellers' cheques. In a far corner the ex-film star, Terence Stamp, sat pretending to learn some lines and at the next table a varnished, lac- quered, dyed blonde sat yawning opposite her 70-year-old meal, clothes, rent and holi- day ticket. I was joined by an American tourist who ordered a peach melba and who then said, 'Sure is one hell of a place, your London.'
I threw in the towel and the waitress took nearly ten minutes to bring me the bill. For the same money I could have had a harmless vodka in the cosy comfort of the Coach with the added bonus of Norman propelling me from my corner at the sight of a new punter like a man saying 'bone' to a dog. Make no mistake, the Fortnums mob are like tempered steel. There's no Charlie there to press your head against the cool porcelain of the lavatory pan when you've been beaten. No Conan to tell you how to dodge the Tipstaff or Tom to tell you how to open a buff envelope. And I thought it was tough at the bottom. And what of the manageress of Fortnums? A Grenadier com- pared to Norman's Catering Corps NCO.
The comeback proper started in earnest yesterday. I had a glass of cider before lunch and went to my local instead of the corner shop for cigarettes, to drench myself in the atmosphere again. It stinks but it's the stink I know.
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