But I adore Elizabeth and I always will. I m not pretending it s not painful, but I ve given up drink for good. It was what Elizabeth hated most in me.
It was like pouring petrol over our marriage. Trying to explain how caring she had been of him, Burton told an anecdote about the time he and his brother had been beaten up by a gang of English skinheads while celebrating a Wales rugby win with one too many pints on Tottenham Court Road. Elizabeth, he said, was utterly magnificent when he arrived at their hotel suite at The Dorchester reeking of booze and covered in blood.
She didn t have a fit of the vapours, she didn t get excited, she didn t even tick me off for being drunk and getting beaten up, he said. Oh you poor thing, was all she said, and she rang down for bowl of water and towels and bandages. She sponged blood off my face, and found that my left eye was halfway out of its socket, so she carefully put it back in.
She was tough, you see, and brave too. And she tucked me up in bed with the bandages over my head and at 9 o clock the next morning, when I was starting to feel a bit better, she ordered up a magnum of Bollinger to cheer me up. His last words to Simpson on the subject were, If I m honest my life is a little empty without her.
No, if I m honest, my life is horribly empty without her. Not Quite World s End by John Simpson is published by Macmillan at 20.
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