Low life
What's it all about?
Jeffrey Bernard
Iam at home again in a haze of mor- phine, which I was told would take 48 hours to be metabolised, but it is 72 hours now and I am still not quite sure just what is going on. In spite of various drugs, I spent my last night in the hospital suffering insomnia and sitting in a corridor chain- smoking and talking with an engineer based in Bangkok who has had to return home because he has Aids.
I have met only one man with Aids before, to my knowledge, and now I can only reflect on how calm and yet how dev- astated sufferers must feel beneath a veneer of acceptance. On the other hand, I would be extremely grateful if nurses, ama- teur carers, well-wishers and cracker-barrel philosophers would stop telling me that there is always someone worse off than myself. It is no consolation to me to hear others sobbing or screaming and anyway I know more people to be worse off rather than better off than me.
I must, though, thank Peter O'Toole for having made my recent stays in hospital fractionally more bearable. Nurses who manage to connect the two of us, thanks to Keith Waterhouse, tend to pull their punches and treat me with kid gloves, and I shouldn't be surprised if they unconsciously feel that they are soothing the fevered brow of the star himself and not the idiot snoring in the stalls bar.
But there was some unusual unpleasant- ness during this last stay in hospital which involved my reporting some disgusting behaviour I witnessed there. The man in question threatened two ageing women in need of help one night at about 2 a.m. To one of them he actually raised a hand, and I was awake to see this. The two women were, of course, not only upset but fright- ened, and thank God that even supine or in a wheelchair I don't scare easily. There will probably be some sort of tribunal, and what worries me a little is the fact that the mem- ber of staff is black and it is an odds-on certainty that the word 'racist' will be heard during the proceedings. You can't win.
I can't, anyway. Two weeks ago, I had a substitute evening home help in the shape of a Nigerian woman. At one point, I knocked a glass of vodka over and, as is my wont, exclaimed 'fuck'. The silly woman thought I was swearing at her and said so. I told her no, I was swearing but not at her. She wouldn't have it. She went on and on and on, saying that I was a flicking bastard to use such fucking awful language to a fucking decent lady. And I knew it was coming. I sat there waiting for it. And eventually she said it: 'You're only swear- ing at me because I'm fucking black.' As she walked out in her huff, just before she slammed the door, I pointed out to her as calmly as I could that she didn't have to be black to be a stupid old ugly fucking cow.
When I moved into this flat, I had dreams of going on the wagon and turning it into an afternoon tea salon. Foiled again. But at least it keeps people like Paul John- son away. What is slightly disturbing about all this sort of thing is that, recently partic- ularly, I've thought myself to be a sort of latter-day Mr Darcy. Thank God we have seen the last of him. I was disappointed that at the end of the last episode the director had it played off even-handedly, as though Darcy and Elizabeth had come to an understanding or convenient arrange- ment. It wasn't romantic enough. I should have thought that Darcy might have swept an eager Elizabeth into his arms and that they would have kissed at the end of that walk across the fields. It didn't have to be obviously erotic but I don't think they were going off to sleep in separate bedrooms for the rest of their lives, like me and the angry home help.
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