The way home
Jeffrey Bernard
I am very worried about a man who is, I believe, in Glasgow. That's where he said he was going when we saw the last of him, and it was only when he lurched off into the afternoon that it hit me that we might have really screwed him up for months to come — maybe years. I mean, for an ordinary bloke, a traveller in something-or-other, meeting us must have been a little like being whacked over the head with a hammer.
But I am jumping the gun. To start at the beginning, all I did was to walk into the Swiss pub in Old Compton Street the other morning for a heart-starting drink. I think it was a vodka and tonic. Anyway, I got involved with the usual mob a pornographer, his strong-arm man, a ponce, a stagehand and a couple of gentlemen who've been temporarily unemployed for some considerable time. The rounds were coming up fast and furious as is our wont — all of us being stark terrified of being considered tight — when the man from Glasgow joined us.
What happened was that one of us must have thought he was one of us, if you see what I mean. He must have been standing there and then accidentally got included in the round. Mind you, he didn't buy a drink all through the lunchtime session and I think we simply assumed he was down on his luck and had landed on our feet so to speak. So we went on sipping away and talking of this and that and the closer it got to closing time the more bewildered this chap — we were calling him Jock by then — began to look. Bewildered isn't really the right word. He looked dazed. When the bell rang for the last orders he suddenly spoke.
'I still haven't found out what I came in here to ask about,' he said. We turned on him and gave him enquiring glances and he went on and said, 'All I came in here for, three and half hours ago, was to ask someone how I could get to Kings Cross.' Well, you can imagine how surprised we were. I was amazed. I know what it is like to be led astray, but to go into a pub to ask the way to Kings Cross and then have roughly fourteen large gin and tonics poured down your throat and be none the wiser after three and a half hours is bordering on the ridiculous. As we stood outside on the pavement wondering who we could go and annoy for the rest of the afternoon, he explained briefly.
As I've told you he said he was a travelling salesman. It transpired that he had never been to London before, added to which the poor sod said he was happily married or had been until he bumped into us. He then boggled our minds by telling us that he hardly ever drank and you too would have been surprised at that if you'd seen the
Spectator 19 August 1978 way he fell into the taxi we got hint So You see, I keep thinking about Jock and I in, deeply concerned. The way I see it severat things could have happened to him. Fle, could have passed out on the train and ended up in some place like Fort William' He could have fallen off the train at Glasgow, got met by his boss, and then got ked. He might even have been met by wife and then informed by her that his Mar" nage was on the rocks. Worst of all he ought have developed a taste for the low life. In that event I shouldn't be at all surprised till! wasn't holding court at this very moment some terrible Glaswegian dive with a ponce, a stagehand, two layabouts and a hack'
If that is the case, and that's the I'd bet on, you do realize, don't outcome
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there'll be no going back for him? , that I'd bet on, you do realize, don't outcome
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What s. s° extraordinary is the lasting and damaging effect that an accidental and clanc.,e encounter with us washed down by fourtee" large gin and tonics might have on a Man' There is no doubt in my mind that the sion in the Swiss pub was the turning P°115 in Jock's life. What I am wondering now I_ whether it might not work in reverse. SUP pose I got mixed up and instead of goo! B back to Lambourne one day I ended up in: say, Bournemouth? I mean, if that had WI. pened I might even be sporting a hat, rolled umberella and a copY 01 Financial Times at this very moment to say nothing of being a member Of the golf du: and mowing the lawn on Sundays and nn ing down the Morris 1000.
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