Low life
The dog and duchess
Jeffrey Bernard
Ihave received many enquiries as to the true identity of last week's duchess. My lips must remain sealed except for one of her kisses and the chance of that would be a fine thing. It niggled some in the Groucho Club last Thursday when I took her there for lunch for they wondered how come a duchess would break bread with a dissolute tippler. I have no answer to that myself but then this life has never been so low as three successive editors of The Spectator have liked to believe. Even when Taki's dateline was Pentonville and mine was Barbados there was a little disbelief here.
Anyway, the duchess took me to lunch on Sunday. We met a little time before the bar opened and she had the foresight to bring a vacuum flask of ice-cold vodka, some carbonated mineral water and some smoked salmon. Actually that wasn't just foresight, it was saintly. I have never had even a wife who would have thought of that. In fact, a wife would try to discourage a drink long after the bar had opened.
The roast beef we had for lunch was excellent. Unfortunately I couldn't finish it because the sight of the duchess sitting opposite me brought a lump to my throat (I only have lumps in my throat or on the back of my head nowadays) so I could not swallow, although the wine managed to trickle down. It was a glorious day and we at in the garden all afternoon sipping in gentle spasms, listening to birdsong and slightly annoyed by the noise of children.
The duchess had borrowed a labrador dog for the weekend, having seen it suffer- ing and panting in the back of an overheat- ed car. She had told the dog's owner that she would look after it and he had readily agreed. I asked her if she saw me panting in the back of a car would she look after me for a weekend. It was then that I caught my first glimpse of her stately cold shoul- der. But my tail wags on. It is to be hoped that every dog really does have his day even if he isn't a labrador.
At the end of the afternoon the duchess kindly put me into a car which brought me home. I sat in my flat gazing at the view until dusk and the lights going on all over London, contemplating the accident of birth. I think I would have made a good duke. Not an excessive one like Clarence or a silly little one like Windsor or a gay one like Mountbatten, but a civilised, sip- by-sip duke, kind to his servants and lavish to his racehorses and parlourmaids. The trouble is that like water I usually find my own level. On the few occasions that I have stayed in mansions or stately homes I have embarrassed my hosts by being found in the butler's pantry early in the morning swigging vodka and chatting to them while they polished the silver.
The dear departed Bryce MacNab, a delightful, penniless boozer in his day, once told of staying the weekend with the then Lord Astor. A butler asked him if he would be wearing a dinner jacket for supper and Bryce said, 'Don't be a fool. You know I haven't got a bloody dinner jacket.' The butler then said, 'Would you mind wearing a tie, then, to show willing?' When Bryce left on the Monday he tried to tip the but- ler a half-crown. The butler rejected it with some disdain saying, 'I'm sorry, sir, this is a paper house.' And talking of paper, Bryce once rejected his paper wrapping in a fish and chip shop. He was a rugby fanatic and just before he left the shop his eye fell on the stop press column enveloping his cod and chips and he said to the proprietor, 'Could I have a fresh paper, please. Cardiff haven't beaten Swansea 32-17 since 1958.'
Were I a duke he would have certainly been on the staff. But there are small mer- cies, thank God. The duchess and I shall be dining tomorrow and this time I shall bring her a vacuum flask of cold white wine in case the bastards haven't opened the bar again.
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