Low life
Surprised by bells
Jeffrey Bernard
he electricians have left my flat at last and, without telling me, they fitted a smoke alarm into the ceiling in the hall. It went off to my surprise and amazement the other morning, just as I lit my first cigarette of the day's 40-50 and as Vera was grilling me some bacon and tomatoes. As I say, it was a complete surprise and I nearly hopped out of my skin. How odd to fit a smoke alarm into the home of a certified nicotine addict and I wonder if it would really wake me up if I had had a skinful. In the afternoon my doctor called round to see me about the persistent and localised headaches I have been having for the past few weeks. She took my blood pressure and pronounced it to be perfec- tion. It always amuses me when members of the medical profession get tetchy at any atom of good health left in me; and there is a specialist in the Middlesex Hospital who makes a tremendous effort to hide his fury at the fact that past liver function tests and even two liver biopsies have always indicat- ed that I seem to have the liver of a goat. With the newly installed fire alarm in mind, I tried to throw the good doctor by asking her why on earth it is that every time I light a cigarette I get a ringing sound in my ears.
The following day saw the denouement of the melodrama of my niece Emma's wed- ding. The past few weeks leading up to it have put me in mind of the sort of film that J. Arthur Rank used to make —tiny hitch- es and the odd but rather mild tantrum or two leading up to a happy ending.
The service in a village church in Norfolk was conducted by a woman vicar who was very good in the way that she conveyed some joy into the happy proceedings. But even so I pictured her wearing the No 7 striker's shirt in a tough game of hockey. Ernma's father, my brother Oliver, read an extract of Walt Whitman and, the service over, we went out into the churchyard for a photograph session. I lit a cigarette alid more bells started ringing in a beautifully unthreatening way.
There followed a garden party and a sit- down meal in a marquee in the garden which was lit with fairy lights and candles. What was marvellous and fairly unusual was to see two people so palpably happy and I thank God that I managed to keep unwanted sentiment at bay, although every- thing that was happening was sending me careering headlong down memory lane.
When I got home that night I even looked up an old wedding picture of mine and found myself smiling as I gazed at it. My tears are now saved strictly for movies but even that sort of sentimentality is a ghastly form of self-pity. Anyway, the bridegroom — is he now my nephew-in- law? — had an enormous limousine laid on to take him and the bride away. His new mother-in-law told me it was big enough to have a billiard table in the back of it. Not surprisingly, he is a film-maker.
By this time I was back home in bed, glad the trip was over but glad I went and determined never again to go to a party at which I am the only person sitting and lit-
'Inner circle or fringe?' erally being talked down to. Perhaps I am getting old, but there was something utterly charming about the day and the deed and it negated the belief that up till now I have always shared with Robert Louis Stevenson that 'marriage is a sort of friendship recog- nised by the police.'
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