HAPPINESS AND GRIEF IN W1

I’m not sure how many books remain unread, how many films unseen but we’re well into three figures. And yet, I found time the other day to watch The Third Man again and finally nodded off well after midnight, just as Major Scobie was negotiating a risky financial arrangement with the slippery Syrian ‘businessman Yusef in Greene’s The Heart of the Matter.

I know how things turn out, of course. But there’s something about the way Orson Welles looks at Joseph Cotton on the big wheel, a sort of twinkling evil, which fascinates me. And where Scobie is concerned, we know that cast-iron, if world weary, decency will not be enough to save him. Lesser men will bring him down.

I return to the same places, as well. Southampton, Brighton and Marylebone are seldom far from my thoughts and I accept that repeat visits are far more likely than a long-promised (by me) trip to my father’s birthplace Blyth. It’s nearly seventy years since my one and only visit and I’m prepared for one or two changes but I must make the effort. Apart from anything else, I have it on good authority that Newcastle’s Dan Burn  –  my idea of a proper, old-fashioned, no-nonsense centre-half  –  walks his dog on Blyth beach.

I worked at both ends of Marylebone High St, for the Jockey Club and Gilbeys, and came to know it extremely well. Many of the restaurants and shops have gone but retain a place in my heart. Most of them were linked to horses I backed, for better or worse. Thus Odin’s  –  Peter Langan’s first smart luncheon venue before he opened Langan’s Brasserie on Piccadilly  –  became known as Crazy Horse, Richmond Sturdy’s selling plater, who waited all winter, as did I, before winning the humblest of contests at Folkestone in the hands of Geoff Lewis. I could hardly go wrong in H Backhouse in those days.

The human Crazy Horse deserved a more powerful equine cousin. He was instrumental in defeating Custer at the Little Big Horn, of course, but revenge of a sort came when the reservation Sioux were forced to leave their beloved Nebraska for a ‘promised’ new reservation on the Missouri River. Negotiations having stalled, Crazy Horse died at 35 in 1877, a bayonet thrust into his abdomen, though no official command was given. His parents buried him at Wounded Knee and were the only people to know the exact location.

The Alpino, a few doors down from H Backhouse and the scene of many a seven-card stud game in early afternoon when ordinary customers had gone, was referred to as Import, a handsome Wokingham Handicap bet having been hatched there. Sadly, there was no financial reward at the Baker and Oven opposite  –  the Ben Casey  –  when the sprinter of that name went in at 20/1 at a Wolverhampton night meeting. We’d all noted him and fancied him but a spirited game of Shut The Box was also in progress and, well, you know how it is.

My mother had sixpence on, though. She watched the hospital series on television and undoubtedly had a soft spot for Vince Edwards, who played. Ben. She would never have mentioned anything like that and even considered the lyrics to Move Over Darling a tad risque but her heart was pure gold.

Vince was a near Olympic-class swimmer and no mean crooner but he gambled all his life and ended up with very little. His marriage endured, however, and when he died his wife said his later years had been spent advising people not to get involved.

Too late for me, needless to say, though he might have persuaded me to give up where certain plodders were concerned. Which brings me to the ‘Ladas’, or the William Hill shop where Marylebone High St meets Thayer Street. There were more selling hurdles back in the 70s and most of them took place in my lunch hour, sorry, hour and a half, which made them lethal. Old Ladas F (no, I don’t know, either) must have run in nearly all of them and invariably finished placed but couldn’t win. Loyalty affects my thinking, that’s all there is to it.

Anyway, there were all these connections and many more but, as I say, the places themselves have largely disappeared.

Even so, the other day, on the eve of my 76^th birthday, something happened to make it all seem like yesterday. I was reading The Smoking Diaries by playwright Simon Gray and came again to the unbearably sad part where he’s visiting his great friend Alan Bates, the actor having been given only months to live.

“I used to have the taxi driver stop at the top of Marylebone High Street and walk the hundred yards or so to Harley Street and the London Clinic. I’d do it slowly, spinning it out, smoking two cigarettes and then often having one more on the steps of the Clinic.

“Afterwards, on returning to the pavement, I would smoke my way through to Marylebone High Street by the back route and sit at a pub that had chairs and tables outside, even though we were in December with Christmas coming nearer with every visit. I would sit at a table with a Diet Coke and concentrate on anything but Alan, or find a blankness sometimes so successfully that I’d forget what I was doing there. The truth is that, whatever joy there was in seeing Alan, it was also unbearable.”

Reading this again now I think I can work out which pub it was. I’d be sitting there in the fading December light, scribbling away with something stronger than Diet Coke to assist me and pondering a possible investment.

It’s time to acknowledge how lucky I’ve been.

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