Low life
Maurice
Jeffrey Bernard
As Maurice Richardson would have appreciated, it's bad enough having to write at all, but to have to write about him in the Past tense is a horribly sad business. God only knows how the writers of obituaries go about their craft. I certainly couldn't write one; but the man deserves more than a menti and for some odd reason I couldn't find i one n either The Times or the Sunday Times. Perhaps I simply missed a mention but, in any case, and to use the obituary writer s Cliche, Maurice is certainly going to be sadly missed. He was a remarkable bloke. , He struck me as being a pretty classic example of a manic-depressive, but I should have checked up with him on the matter since it wasn't j ust one of his pet subjects but one that he was an expert on. PsychologY apart Maurice knew loads about snakes, Gene Tunney, what fools we are, the inhabitants of Fleet Street and Soho and he knew slightly less than he would have have liked to about horse racing. I remember him best when I lived in Suffolk about six miles down the road from him. We'd both be driven by sheer boredom to a pub in Sudbury every Thursday, which was market day and, the boredom of countryilife apart, we met there because the pub was open all day on market days. We did quite a bit of chuckling together about the extraordinary landlord on the premises. He was new to the game and he used to charge us only 20p for Pernod and Ricard and so Maurice and I drank large ones. One day the landlord asked Maurice, 'I'm not sure I've got it right. Don't you think! ought to charge more for the stuff?' Maurice winked at me and, turning to our host, he said, 'Oh no. My dear chap this is simply rubbish from France. It makes people go blind in Marseilles. Gentlemen simply don't touch it. No, no. Twenty pence is just right.' I mentioned Maurice being something of a manic-depressive because it strikes mc now that I only met Maurice in his manic moments. On other occasions I assume he was at home or at home and working. Anyway, these manic moments were at once funny and embarrassing. His voice used to positively boom out and on the train we used between Sudbury and Liverpool Street I have to admit that on occasions I pretended I wasn't with him. Typical of Maurice was the time when we were standing in the buffet car surrounded by solicitors, city gents and what have you — all of them pin-striped and serious. Maurice was getting them in as they say and he turned round to me and, shouting over everyone's heads, he said, 'D'you know what I think I'll do this evening? I think I'll go to Ipswich and have a whore.' It was said with a terribly superior voice and I have his permission to tell you since he once said that when a man was dead that was just when you should say anything about him.
He was impeccable in his folly though. His betting slips were immaculatelywritten out— something he'd roar with laughter about — and his occasional offers of violence were most gentlemanly, as though he were proposing a duel in the grand old manner. He didn't suffer fools gladly and I remember him summing them up very briefly and with great disdain saying, 'Oh him. He's a frightful little shit.' Conversely, of an ex-boxer down on his luck or someone he liked who'd gone bust in the betting shop, 'Oh yes. Nice chap. Needs to be bought a drink. What?'
When I was down on my own luck and drying out for two-and-half years Maurice was never off the telephone to me or my nurse. He took a sudden interest in alcoholism and he suddenly regretted the fact that Freud had had so little to say about it. Of course, he had to have his joke. 'Still on the wagon?"Yes, Maurice,' I'd reply. He'd then roar with laughter, say, 'Well done,' and add, quite unnecessarily, 'I'm not.' Further peals of laughter and collapse of elderly party.
Finally, I remember meeting Maurice for the first time. It was in the old Mandrake Club. 'What are you going to do?' he asked me. `I'd like to write,' I said. 'Oh, I shouldn't do that,' he said, 'It's a frightful business. Have a drink instead.' Thank you, Maurice.
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