Two of the three Bernard brothers, Bruce and Jeffrey, would die within several years of one another, in 2000 and 1997 respectively. Although their lives had often been publicly fractious, they became differently attached as their elderly health grew more perilous. ‘The animosity between us was always a bit overrated,’ Bruce once told me.
Jeffrey’s mordant alcoholic self-loathing was legendary: he was once sick on the Queen Mother’s feet at Ascot. Once, while trying to settle a dispute with his infuriated editor, Jeffrey whipped out his penis and shouted ‘beat that!’ to his boss. He was fired on the spot. ‘Why do I drink so much? To stop myself from jogging,’ he once wrote. Bruce could be just as miserable and cutting. ‘I’ll never be angry with you again’ appeared on the back of a photograph he gave me one birthday, although the darkness that haunted him was less vocal. Many people were convinced the two brothers were capable of killing one another.
One night, somewhere in the middle of the 1990s, Bruce invited me to his flat in Frederick Street for a drink, aiming to take me out to dinner. He enjoyed exploring new restaurants and we often stayed out late, drinking and talking. That evening, as he carefully went about arranging the ingredients for our cocktails, he said he was worried about Jeffrey as he hadn’t answered his phone since the evening before. We started to drink our French 75s, but Bruce was increasingly unsettled. Eventually, he asked if I would come to Jeffrey’s flat with him. He did not want to be alone when he found his brother’s dead body. In any case, it was on the way to the restaurant, he added, as if I needed further inducement.
We took a taxi to Berwick Street Market and picked up Jeffrey’s key (from the nearby barrow man he’d left a spare with). We entered Kemp House, the looming tower block where Jeffrey lived on the 14th floor. After ringing the bell several times, Bruce unlocked the front door with the key. We could hear his brother’s voice. ‘I was worried about you,’ Bruce said immediately upon entering.
It was as if he’d shed a layer of clothing. We found Jeffrey immobilised in his wheelchair, wedged into the bathroom doorway, dehydrated, his pants down, desperate for a piss after spending the afternoon unable to move. Together we dislodged his chair and Bruce pushed him into the bathroom.
‘I’ve been stuck here since 2pm,’ said Jeffrey, gloomily, as Bruce helped him stand to use the lavatory. He stood holding his brother from behind as Jeffrey peed for what seemed like hours. The physical pathos of the two frail men was terribly affecting. I went into the living room to give them some privacy. Bruce helped his brother back into his wheelchair, then parked him in the living room.
‘For fuck’s sake, get the lady a drink,’ Jeffrey barked, frustration faded into his tired old voice. He’d recovered his equilibrium and went about lighting a cigarette, coughing horribly. ‘I’ll have one too,’ Bruce added with a wheeze. He located a bottle of whisky, making his way backwards and forwards across the room between the two sofas piled with books and cushions, then to the kitchen for glasses and water. In the absence of a drinks tray, he brought our drinks out in several separate trips. ‘No ice!’ Jeffrey said, glaring suspiciously at me.
‘Who is she, Bruce? Why have you brought her here?’ Bruce told his brother we had been on our way out to dinner, that we’d worked together cataloguing the 5,000 or so images in the John Deakin archive. We’d come across a number of portraits of each of the brothers, but at the time, Jeffrey’s two dramatic profile images were as yet unpublished. He seemed flattered to imagine his part in Deakin’s album of legendary Soho identities. Usually, the very mention of John Deakin in the circles Bruce and Jeffrey inhabited would be cause for snarls of disapproval. It was familiar territory to me. Even by the 1990s, few if any photographers were given much credit. Theirs wasn’t an art form many had embraced, and Deakin was not the only artist condemned in this milieu of insecure bohemians. The gifted photographer had managed to offend virtually all his friends, employers and subjects.
