Patron saint
Jeffrey Bernard
Last week, the great barman in the sky called 'last orders' for Trevor Hughes. His death was fairly widely reported but it strikes me that Fleet Street in all its selfimportance and pomposity didn't accord the man his just obituary. I'd never even heard of him, never mind met him, but reading a few thin facts about him I now feel that it's possible that a great man has passed from among us.
The simple facts are these. Trevor Hughes was a sixty-six-year-old, homeless, alcoholic tramp who made no less than 113 appearances before the local magistrates at Cambridge where he enriched local life with his presence. His death was only reported because local idiots and Christians were disgusted by the Reverend James Owen conducting a memorial service for the chap. So much for God is love, charity and all the rest of the revolting hypocrisy displayed by people who arrange church flowers and who wouldn't give a light or a bowl of soup to one of God's creations. Be that as it may, a man who can appear 113 times in front of the bench for being drunk and incapable, let alone drunk and a bloody nuisance, has in some way to be considered. It's all set me thinking along my usual biased lines.
How could he have possibly been so hopeless? That great man, Oliver Cromwell, spent the large part of his first forty years in attempting to drain the Fens, but it apparently took Mr Hughes, 350 years later, to achieve it. Another possibility is that he might have been an utterly lost undergraduate who was driven to drink years ago by the boredom of the lectures. Perhaps he had that old cliche of an unhappy childhood — swings and roundabouts with E.M. Forster maybe — or perhaps he just didn't give a damn about that terrifying thing called tomorrow. At all events there are things to be read between the lines in the report of his death.
How, for example do you take the statement made by a local solicitor, Mr John Hales-Tooke, who said, 'Beneath everything, Trevor was a Christian, and he once gave me the most perfect definition of Christian life — unfortunately it was some years ago and I have mislaid the piece of paper it was written on. During the odd moments he was not in liquor I have had very deep and profound conversations with Trevor. What made him admirable was that he was always the underdog. He knew what it was to suffer. He was often mugged of the money he begged.'
Right. Two things here. The solicitor can't remember; can we hazard a guess at why he can't remember? I know why at times I can't remember various complicated things like my own name. Secondly, Mr Hughes actually got mugged of money he tapped. This, surely, must have been carrying nonchalance to extremes. I suppose we've all lent money we've borrowed in the first place, but to go to all the trouble of being robbed of money that's harder to come by than that which is earned, well, that's the dizzy limit.
The more I've looked at the newspaper story concerning the death of Hughes, the more I'm convinced that here lies a possible future canonisation. The patron saint of deadbeats. He has, or had, quite obviously, tremendous drawbacks. Apart from the obvious boredom involved with the man you must realise just how ghastly his 'very deep and profound conversations' must have been. I have been thinking about them over a few glasses of cries for help.
'Hallo, Trey, All right? How's it going then?"Well, mustn't grumble. I always say if you start grumbling then you're sunk.' 'You're dead right there. By the way, Trevor, seen anything of that Clive James in the Red Cow recently?"Nah, he's always watching the bleedin' box, ain't he? Just like that Cowling. Reading, writing, that's all those geezers ever think about. Thanks, I'll have the same again. Yes, a large scotch and a pint of bitter.' Here's looking at you Trevor. Take it easy. The way you knock that stuff back, it'll be the bleedin' death of you."Bollocks, I'll be going when I'm seventy-seven.'
Yes, well, I think I'll go and have another large cry for help.
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