* * *

  156 First published in 1968

  157 Published in 1943

  158 Ernest Bevin, British politician, 1881-1951

  159 Philip O’Connor, English writer and radio host, 1916-1998

  160 The British Broadcasting Corporation

  161 A national radio service broadcast by the BBC that started in September 1946 and was eventually absorbed into Radio 3 in 1970.

  162 John Milton, English poet, 1608-1674

  163 Milton’s most famous work, first published in 1667

  164 ‘Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav’n’, Line 263

  165 Founded in 1921 and nowadays part of the Random House Group

  166 Denis Mitchell, British documentary filmmaker, 1911-1990

  167 Originally broadcast in 1969 and then again in 1970 as part of the World In Action series.

  168 Philip Mackie, English writer and producer, 1918–1985

  169 Jack Gold, English director and producer, 1930–2015

  170 On 17th December, 1975

  171 In 1976

  172 Lettering for Brush and Pen, 1936, published by Stuart, Frederick Warne Ltd.

  173 Colour in Display, 1938, published by The Blandford Press

  174 By Bernard E Jones, published 1950

  175 A British publishing firm famous for the Beatrix Potter series

  176 George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd. nowadays Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd.

  177 By Alan St H. Brock.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Lower East Side

  The Lower East Side of Manhattan is the home of hopeless cases. You’re a hopeless case if, I think, like me, no amount of cajoling and processing can make you join the real world. I could have been taught how to be like a schoolboy but would never have been a schoolboy. The same could be said of my adult life. I’m a hopeless case and nothing could ever be done about it.

  I feel at home on the Lower East Side because here, we’re all hopeless. Mostly we are unconventional. Sometimes we are foreign. Sometimes we are outcasts. Most of the time we are poor and nearly all of us are outsiders.

  There are moves afoot to rename the Lower East Side as ‘The East Village’. This will only happen over my dead body. For me, the Lower East Side lacks the ‘arty flavor’ that makes Greenwich Village so very hard to bear. Greenwich Village is full of girls who nearly got the lead in one of Mr. Shakespeare’s178 plays, and men who are just about to write the great American novel. On the Lower East Side, nobody has any artistic pretensions. We’re the lowest of the low and it’s a wonderful place to be. You have the feeling of not being able to get any lower. That’s always very nice. From here the only way is up. Things can only get better.

  The block that I live on within the Lower East Side is also home to a local chapter of Hell’s Angels. They gather and live on the other side of the road to me, nearer to First Avenue. I live nearer to Second Avenue, so I don’t ever meet any of them. I only hear them whizzing by on their motorbikes.

  Everyone complains that The Hell’s Angels keep them awake by driving around with no mufflers on their motorbikes and making a great noise. This, of course, is nonsense. What actually keeps people awake is their indignation. If they lay in bed and thought, “Oh, the Hell’s Angels are going by. I wonder where they’re going?” They would soon be asleep. Instead they lie in bed, twisting and turning and cursing them through gnashed teeth. “How can they be so selfish? Why do they make all that noise in the middle of the night?” No one would ever get any sleep if they carry on like that.

  Nothing attracted me to the Lower East Side. My room was found for me by one of my spies who knew someone who knew someone else who knew the landlord. Thankfully, the landlord consented to let me in. I was in a very difficult position, you see. Most landlords would not let a room to me, but the landlord of my current abode let me one without even seeing me. Perhaps that’s why I got it.

  I have wandered about the Lower East Side by myself at all hours of the day and night. No harm has ever come to me, much to the surprise, or possibly disappointment, of many of the people who took time out of the busy schedules to warn me of the dangers of living here.

  The building I live in is a rooming house. I have one room which is smaller and colder and more expensive than the room in which I lived in London. Otherwise however, it is more or less the same. It’s a furnished room so the main things belong to the landlord: the bed, the chair and the washbasin. But the rest is my own. I have remained here because once I had moved in, I was determined never to move again. I shall stay here until I die. In fact, chances are I shall die in this room.

  The building I live in is a small building for New York. It is only four floors high. There is a nice flat on the ground floor which has two rooms. It runs from the front of the building to back. I saw it when it was being done up. Of course, such palatial accommodation would never suit me. Two rooms would always be one more than I would need and always one more than I can occupy at any time.

  On the next floor, the second floor to Americans, there are two large apartments, each comprising of one room each. I should think they are quite reasonably priced. Above them is the floor on which I live, the third floor, which contains six single occupancy rooms of which mine must be one of the larger ones. The room next to mine is like a cell at the YMCA. Inside there is just enough room for a bed and a smattering of cockroaches. I presume the fourth floor has the same layout as the third, which would mean that, all in all, my building contains fifteen separate lodgings. Typically, tenants in my building are very nice and very quiet.

  My room faces the back of the house, which is a disadvantage because the building has no front doorbells. This means I can’t sit by the window when I’m waiting for someone whom I’ve invited to come and see me, to arrive. I’m cut off from the world, but it is wonderful to be in Manhattan and not hear a sound. It’s like being in the countryside only without the locals or the boredom.

  My room is a sort of L-shaped room. It has a long sort of corridor down one side which leads into the room proper. The livable part of my room is probably about ten feet by twelve feet. It has two windows that face on to the house next door which is so near that the sun never shines into my room. If I want to know what it’s like outside, I have to lean out of the window and look up to the sky. The room’s walls are a sort of peach color. People have said to me, “Do you like them?”

  And I say, “Well, I’ve never disliked them.”

  I don’t tend to think about my surroundings except whether or not a place is convenient to live in or comfortable. My room is very convenient to live in. It has a bed, a chair, a television set, a refrigerator, a bookcase and a hotplate balanced on two milk crates. That’s all that I need. Oh, and a washbasin. Contrary to what people might think, I do wash. When people come and look around they say, “Do you have to live here?”

  And I say, “Why, shouldn’t I?”

  They must think I could live in splendor, somewhere. Well, maybe I could for a week or two, but if paid twelve hundred dollars a month for a room, which many people with an apartment do, I would soon be penniless.

  I live within my means. I’ve gotten used to my room and the location of where I live. In this respect I am very much like my sister was. My sister said, “The first thing I do when I move into a new house is set about liking it.”

  I do the same. At the time of writing I’ve spent nearly twenty years living here.

  My flat in London was larger. It had also had two windows. The main difference is you could walk about my London flat without falling over something, which you can’t do here. Oddly, I didn’t have a refrigerator or a washbasin in London. I had a bed, of course, and there was a table in the middle of the room and not one but three chests of drawers, so there was a lot more real furniture.

  The big difference is that my lodgings in London only cost me six pounds a month. That’s about ten dollars or so at the current exchange rate. Here in Manhattan, all this happiness has to be paid for so I am charged three hundred and forty dollars a month for my room, which believe it or not is very cheap for Manhattan, though very expensive compared to England.

  I couldn’t tell you whether things in general are cheaper or more expensive here because I never really regard the price of anything. As I’ve said before, I don’t really shop. I should say that food costs about the same. Restaurants are cheaper here, especially if someone else pays the bill for you.

  I dread spending money, but I can’t get away without spending money on rent and the telephone. My telephone is only $14 a month, which again would be a great deal in England, but which is comparably very little here America. People often ask me, “Why don’t you have an answering machine?” And the simple answer is, I don’t have an answering machine because then I would have to ring people back and that would end up costing me money. I may be a logophile179 but I don’t like the words ‘spend’, ‘buy’ or ‘purchase’. I prefer words and phrases like ‘find’, ‘come by’ and ‘happen upon’.

  Of course, I’ve lived alone most of my life. When I first left home I lived with a man, but as I have said before, we were not lovers. I suppose I was born spinsterish. Now of course, I am terribly spinsterish because I’ve lived alone for so very long. It’s what I’m used to. I couldn’t bear to live with another person. If anything in my room was moved or wasn’t where I’d put it, I would panic. Even though my things are scattered about, I know exactly where everything is.

  People have also asked me why haven’t I gotten a pet. They must assume that I am lonely, which is far from the truth. They fail to comprehend that I dislike pets intensely and like my own company perfectly well enough without having it interrupted by some slobbering dog or clawing cat. The only advantage of having a pet over a husband or a roommate would be that pets don’t live as long. But, as I have said already, I am hopeless. I can barely take care of myself. I couldn’t possibly be responsible for another living creature. It would be too much.

  Living by yourself does tend to mean you lack what others might call ‘social graces’. I would never consider myself rude, but I have developed a habit of saying what I mean, though I seldom speak without thinking. If someone mentions war, I don’t say, “Oh, that’s terrible,” out of habit or etiquette or because it’s the fashion. If I think something’s terrible, I’ll say it’s terrible and not otherwise. This can sometimes have the odd effect of making people slightly nervous around me, but only, I think, people who are afraid to speak the truth.

  People say that brevity is soul of wit, but brevity is in fact the body of wit. The soul of wit is truth. Nothing is funny unless it’s also true and we laugh at jokes because we recognize the grains of truth they contain. People think I like to be shocking, but I don’t. I merely like to say what I really think.

  In England, I was accused of talking for talking’s sake. When I was so accused, I said, “Would you be angry if I danced for dancing’s sake?” To which they merely repeated what they had previously said. What I should have said is, “Would you mind if I lived for living’s sake?” That seems to me to be of far greater import whether or not you live your life being true to who you are, which in my case I was.

  I don’t actually think people believe what I say anyway. Strangers speak to me not to hear the truth, but to hear something funny that they can rush away and repeat to their friends. A sound bite or anecdote, if you will. This I’m used to. I’m not offended by it, except sometimes when I’m being serious and people say, “Oh, you are such a s-s-c-c-ream.”

  In my head and then out loud, I hear myself saying, “No, I mean it. I was being serious.”

  And aside from the luxury of time, I have lived without luxury all my life. What I mean by this is that I have lived without material luxury. I was surprised once when someone described me as self-indulgent. When I thought about it, I thought, “Yes. I am self-indulgent when it comes to time. I have plenty of time and I spend it on myself. I don’t spend it doing good works. I don’t even spend it improving myself or my circumstances.” So, in a way they were right.

  I wallow in the excess of time that life has given me. A lot of people would say this has been a terrible waste. I would disagree. I don’t feel that every hour should be filled with useful occupation. Spare time is the one luxury in which I indulge. Some people never have any time for or to themselves and I am deeply sorry for them. The room in which I spend my time alone however, is devoid of luxury, although this has never bothered me.

  When I arrive home from an evening out, I don’t come back into my room and sigh at the depravity in which I live. I don’t ever remember returning and thinking, “You again. This terrible room.” To me, my room is everything I need it to be. I don’t need chandeliers or a four-poster bed. I don’t need air conditioning or rooms in which to entertain and impress others. I do my entertaining in any number of the rooms provided to the public by New York’s bars and restaurants. The world, if you like, is my dining room. This is merely where I rest and sleep.

  These days I never open my windows. Since losing the use of my left hand, lifting up the window has become impossible. It’s too heavy. Rather than complain however, I have instead come to the opinion that my room is cooler with the windows closed. I think this might even be true.

  Even if I could open the windows, the experts on television are advising against it. They want me to stay indoors today because of the risk of low level ozone, whatever that might be. When I was young, ozone was supposed to be good for you. You would go to the seaside and sniff the horrible stink of the sea, and people would say, “It’s ozone. It’s good for you.”

  Now it’s apparently bad for you. I give up. If there was one thing I would have thought I was safe from here in New York City it’s fresh air. I’ll just stay here in my room. It’s safer and cheaper. And of course, I need to be in just in case the phone rings.

  * * *

  178 William Shakespeare, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, 1564-1616

  179 A lover of words

  CHAPTER 15

  Daily Life

  Since I have no curtains in my room to obscure the light, I am woken every morning by sunlight hitting my face. In the summer, I therefore wake at about half past six and in the winter at about half past eight. I rise as soon as I wake up. There is no point in me waiting in bed, hoping that I will feel more awake with just a touch more rest. It doesn’t happen.

  These days, I don’t have breakfast. In fact, I don’t typically eat or drink anything until about lunch time. I used to drink a bottle of Guinness for breakfast. I would get out of bed and stagger over to where the Guinness was, open a bottle and drink it. Aside from its alcoholic qualities, Guinness is, of course, a food that you are sustained by. It’s like a meal in a bottle. The advantage of drinking it at dawn is also that it shortens the day. With a bottle of Guinness inside, you don’t really know that the day has begun until about twelve o’clock, which is nice.

  As a rule, around midday I tend to go out to lunch with somebody. This means that my first meal of the day is entirely in the hands of other people. I tend to have whatever people will buy for me. I seldom eat three meals a day. In fact, I usually eat two. Mostly, I like food to be tasteless. For breakfast, which for most people is lunch, I’ll have eggs, but I don’t care how they come. Scrambled, runny, hardboiled, sunny side up, it’s all the same to me. I don’t really like bacon very much because here in America bacon is almost all fat. I would say eggs Benedict would be my favorite thing to eat in America. Eggs are nice because they are a minimum risk food and high in protein.

  To drink I’ll have either orange juice or a sweetened and milky coffee. I’m not big on large meals. A small meal is ample to fortify me until the evening when I’ll eat again. Although the texture of food isn’t particularly important to me, I’m not a fan of things that are crunchy. I never can understand why advertisements think ‘crispy’ is a term of praise. When I hear the word it has exactly the opposite effect that the advertisers intended. When I was young I would eat my cereal with warm milk so that I could eat my meal without an awful noise going on about my face.

  Despite my English roots, I’m not one for high tea. I very seldom drink tea actually. Typically, I drink tea at home and coffee outdoors. Tea is made so badly in restaurants here that it’s really better to drink coffee. So I suppose the fact I rarely drink tea must be because I’m frequently too lazy to make it.

  I know lots of people who can’t function properly without their morning coffee. They will complain to me about how people “… spoke to me before I had had my coffee.” and I say, “How terrible.” but really I can’t imagine how they feel because I don’t feel any different when I drink coffee. When I’m awake, I’m awake and when I’m tired, I go to sleep. I’m very lucky in that regard because, as you know, Ms. Monroe had to be woken with stimulants and put to sleep with sedatives, the poor girl.

  From the above you should be able to guess that I am not what could be described as a cook. I rarely cook anything, but this is because I don’t really care about what I eat and don’t actually like cooking. I can open a tin of soup, fry an egg and boil a potato, but I know these are not skills that will make me a Michelin chef. When it comes to drinking I am much the same. I mostly drink orange juice because that way I don’t have to boil a kettle. I’m not a big fan of drinking cocoa or chocolate although if someplace has run out of tea and coffee, they are better than nothing.

  I’m a big fan of pudding however. When I was a child, I remember longing for pudding to come. We would have rice pudding, suet pudding, trifle and all other sorts. You can’t buy any of those in America, which is a great shame. Over here people confuse pudding with dessert, but they weren’t originally synonymous. Traditionally, dessert was a fruit course whereas pudding was a sweet course that followed and consisted of cake or the like. Over the years dessert has come to simply mean that which follows the main course. I suppose the change must have occurred as meals became simplified to typically consist of just three courses.