Letters to a Friend

by Diana Athill

  You know more about ladies now in two senses – one, from your intimate care of that poor body you know female bodies better, and two, from that same thing you know the female fate better. There was a night last year when I suddenly realized I despised men quite much (tho’ at a nothing-can-be-done-about-it-so-better-forget-it level). I’d had to call a doctor to my old Ma and he and I were alone with her in the still of the night – and as she vomited, and also had to be supported onto a commode and then cleaned up, he moved across the room and gazed absently out of the window while I did the holding and supporting and mopping up – and it occurred to me that all over the world at that moment there were women actually doing things to sick people, while men issued advice and prescriptions, and from time to time gave a nice tidy injection . . . Of course there are men who choose to be nurses, bless them, and of course there are women who are brutal to sick people; but on the whole it is true that women have to take on the job of caring once it involves touching sick bodies, while most men would be appalled at the idea of doing it. So you have crossed a great divide – and the greater because of the patient’s sex. I am sure that (in cases unrelated to me) I would find it much less repellant to wash a man’s genitals than a woman’s, because after all I’ve handled plenty of them in my time, and as a source of pleasure at that, while I have never touched, or even looked closely at another woman’s (until I had to nurse Ma). And the same is true for you, with perhaps an added resistance to the idea of them stemming from complex psychological reasons. So you truly were being amazingly good.

  The idea of that snake-pit [a care home for Neil’s mother] for which you are now having to pay is blood-chilling – with every year I get nearer to making plans for eventual suicide – but it’s so much easier said than done, and anyway if one is smitten with a stroke, like Neil’s mother, she will be unable to put even a very well-thought-out plan into action, probably.

  On which merry note – au revoir and much love, Diana

  [A letter must be missing during this long gap: I had obviously told him about my mother’s death in June.]

  7 JULY 1990

  Well!!! You can’t say the old monster [Norman Glass, of course] lacks nerve! My first reaction is to feel that he’s so far from sense by now that there’s no point in answering, whether firmly or cajolingly – but I suppose you may feel that it’s too cruel to snub someone you’ve known such a long time to that extent. If you do write, I hope it’s firmly, not cajolingly, and v. briefly – because I’m sure it won’t do any good, so the effort might as well be kept to the minimum. How on earth did he get himself to Tangier after being flat broke at Heathrow? I feel he must have terrified some perfect stranger into stumping up, given how he wears out friends. He’s kind of awe inspiring in a way.

  No, not pain about Ma, just sad, and a large gap left – but she was so stunningly lucky in the way she went that everything is blanketed by gratitude. She had a v. good spring and summer – lots of nice things happening, no vertigo attacks, much enjoyment of books, grandchildren, garden and gossip – but she was having to resort to her heart pills more often, and the thing she really dreaded – becoming too immobile to be able to bathe herself or get herself from her chair to the toilet – was perceptibly nearer: not yet quite here, but almost. So then, on a lovely day, she shuffles on her two sticks to the far end of the garden to oversee the planting of a new tree, and suddenly feels a bit odd. So her dear old henchman supports her back to the house and fetches Eileen Barrie, her beloved Home Help, and Eileen stays with her attentively all afternoon, then concludes that yes, she had better call the doctor and alert me altho’ all that’s happened at that stage is that Ma can’t eat and is feeling v. dozy. Doc sends her at once by ambulance to our small cottage hospital in the village – a familiar place, and very kind. By the time I get there it’s become horrid – she’s in heart failure, struggling for each breath – that was a painful day, very. We think she’ll die any minute – but no, she gets thro’ the night and next morning is suddenly calm, and feeling no discomfort, and saying how odd it is that she can remember almost nothing of the day before. All that day sleep alternates with snatches of sensible and quite cheerful talk (will I please see to it that the new tree is tied to its support in two places, not just one – an outing she’d had four days ago was ‘absolutely divine’ – altho’ her desk looks a mess she thinks I’ll find it in quite good order): and at 5.30 during one of the sleeps, she simply stops breathing. I doubt whether many people are lucky enough to have such an easy death. I can still hardly believe how completely she – and I – were spared the kind of thing I’ve spent the last three years trying not to think about.

  My sister, with whom I get on v. well, has come over from Zimbabwe, and we are coping with all the tidying up together. Fortunately the fact that keeping Ma reasonably comfortable in a modest way has exhausted her possessions comes as no surprise to anyone – but I have got a v. nice watercolour by a great grandfather, and one pretty cup, so it could be worse!

  Much love, D

  STARTED ON 27 SEPTEMBER 1990

  Darling Edward,

  Snatching a rare idle moment in the office to say that I think you and they did a wonderful job on the stories – it gives me such pleasure to have a copy [Head of a Sad Angel: Stories by Alfred Chester, edited by Edward] – every word of the stories proving how right we were to be spellbound by how good he was. Rereading one’s Great Experiences can prove disconcerting, but doesn’t with Alfred. Oh God – how I wish this firm weren’t still teetering on the brink of god knows what, but it is, and at present Tom [Rosenthal, who bought the firm from André Deutsch] is only buying things which he calculates will appear toothsome to commercially minded potential purchasers. And are there any around? We don’t know (except that I suppose if there were we would know). He’s off to meetings quite often, and sometimes looks rather cheerful the next day – but he’s not one to say anything until he has something final to say.

  There was a large piece in the ‘Review’ section of the Independent three Sundays ago, about the bad relations between Tom Rosenthal and André Deutsch, making Tom out to be a fool and a thug, and saying he hasn’t a hope in hell of finding a buyer. It included an obviously reluctant and (if you know Tom) therefore pompous interview, and a smug little piece about how André had declined to be interviewed (implication: because he didn’t want to have to say that Tom was a fool and a thug). End of forty years or so of friendship with André, so far as I’m concerned – because the editor of the Independent Review section told a journalist friend of mine that the whole piece came from André. To make it look as though this weren’t so, they arranged for a reporter to ask him for a formal interview so that he could refuse it! He has gone completely gaga – his one obsession now is that Tom threw him out of his firm – whereas he sold the firm to Tom absolutely of his own volition, with armies of his own lawyers at his elbow to make sure that the terms of the sale were favourable to him. He’s now a rich man as a result – tho’ he managed to make the article imply, without a flat statement of untruth, that he was cheated into letting it go for a song. All he wants to do now is ruin Tom, and if he ruins the firm he himself built up into the bargain, and all his old friends still in it, he doesn’t give a damn. So following dialogue takes place: ‘You don’t think that I had anything to do with that article, do you?’ – ‘Of course I do. Every word of it sounded like your voice, and anyway I’ve been told that you did.’ – ‘Are you calling me a liar?’ – ‘Yes I am.’ Whereupon he bolts out of the room and that’s that. Sad, after all those years. Barry says I must make up with him because ‘It isn’t like you’ not to, and anyway André presumably can’t help having gone gaga. So I expect I shall sooner or later. What a bore! Because having got rid of him I look back on those years of friendship and suddenly see how much of the friendship was simply habit, propinquity and good nature (the last on my part), and what a mean, manipulative, tyrannical little shit he always was.

  I’m off
to Italy for a couple of weeks’ holiday on October 13 – going with my cousin Barbara. Barry is not one for looking at things. He might enjoy a week in Venice if he could have his typewriter with him and work most of the time – or if we went en famille with our friends Sally and Henry and their children, whom he adores; but I think he gets much more pleasure simply from going to stay with them in Somerset. Once, when I was in Jamaica with him and had been spending most of the time watching him rehearse a play, he decided that he ought to give me at least one day of tourist’s pleasure, so drove me off to the beautiful part of the coast to see the sights. And by the time we got back to Kingston in the evening he was so tense with irritation at the waste of time that we were no longer speaking to each other! I feel quite sad, sometimes, at the thought of what fun we could have had over the years if he’d enjoyed seeing places in the way I do – but there have always been other people to see them with, so as snags in relationships go, it’s been a minor one. Barbara and I are going to hire a car in Milan and potter around for a week, ending at Venice where we’ll get rid of the car and stay in a lovely palazzo having a restful time.

  V. much love to you both

  Diana

  28 OCTOBER 1990

  Darling Edward –

  Bless you for being there, hidden in the pile of income tax assessments and bank statements and electricity bills, when I came staggering in from Italy. It really was like you being there – it gave me such delight – and such a vivid reminder of how incredibly lucky I was – and my mother too – in her end. Poor Muriel [Neil’s mother]– it’s so sad to know that she’s still got to go through it. But at least there is the great relief of her not minding being in a place where they will cope . . . so wonderful that it seems like a miracle, almost. And I remember an aunt telling me that oddly enough the heart attack which killed my grandmother was ‘much less bad’ than several of those which hadn’t killed her; and Ma’s actual dying, too, happened with a calm sort of inevitability. So I suspect that the traumatic bit is over for Neil and you, with the finding of the home and taking her there. What an extraordinary experience for you – thank you for letting me in on it.

  Venice – oh Venice! – how we adored it. It’s odd that Barbara and I, though we could hardly be more different in temperament, have always made the best of travelling companions (we did a lot together when we were young) because we share exactly the same way of wanting to ‘soak up’ a place. The first, driving-about, week was very enjoyable and took us to some enchanting places in blissful weather; but it was our week in Venice which was great. My poor old wrecked feet are always a curse, and B had just broken a little toe, so we were quite scared at the prospect of a place where you have no alternative to walking all the time (you can’t spend all of it going up and down the main thoroughfare in a vaporetto). But I have found a magic osteopath-naturopath-acupuncturist (such a dish, he is!) who gave me a special before-going-to-Venice reflexology treatment, and Barbara reluctantly but wisely bought a pair of Sensible Shoes and a lot of painkillers, and we were both able to walk all day and a lot of the night too without turning a hair. There’s something about Venetian paving-stones which is extraordinary – you only have to see how Venetians stride out to see that they give buoyancy. I sometimes find that not drinking wine any more is slightly embarrassing when with heavy drinkers – they can take it as an unspoken reproof – but our dear Venetian friends are sublimely easy-going (the whole tone is – I don’t know any less threatening place) – and heavenly cooks too . . . they just shoved the whisky in my direction and got on with their own toping, and we all guzzled and giggled in the utmost happiness. Our first dinner party, B and I left our map at home as an act of faith. Come two in the morning our host came some way with us to point us in the right direction, then we insisted that we knew where we were and said a fond farewell . . . and got totally lost – in the rain, at that. It’s not frightening, getting lost in Venice, because it’s such a small city that you know you’re bound to find yourself again eventually – but we were beginning to feel rather ready for our lovely beds in our luxurious flat – so finally we swallowed our pride and asked someone, and she told us to go left under the first archway we came to without remembering that there was a little archway before the one she meant, which would plunge us straight into the inky waters of a small canal – and as we came back out of that archway in fits of tipsy giggles at our narrow escape, she came running back (having realized what she’d done) and firmly insisted on taking us the whole way home. It was all full of such kindnesses and charm, in addition to its staggering beauty. And two of our days were of a radiant brilliance to put Canaletto to shame, and none of the other four were more than a touch rainy every now and then (always warm). And the luxurious and elegant delights of the apartment which we had so recklessly rented were quite alarmingly easy to get used to. So we rate it as one of the best hols we ever shared.

  In Mantua we went to a concert of Mozart piano music by an ancient but distinguished Italian pianist given in the ravishing theatre which Mozart opened – when as a boy wonder he was being trotted around Italy by his daddy. For the first half the old man seemed to me to be possessed by the spirit of a young Mozart – it made the hair rise on the back of one’s neck and if I’d parked the car in another street we’d never have known the concert was happening . . . So you see, it really was a good hol. And Barry was happily staying with Sally and Henry (where he still is until tomorrow) so that was OK (although they had a traumatic time when a cow died and they thought it might be mad cow disease – but it wasn’t thank god). Much love to you both (‘I love you I love you I love you’ as our Venetian host Pietroferruccio Berolo would – and constantly does – say)

  Diana

  10 MARCH 1991

  Darling Edward –

  Great to hear from you, tho’ I could have done without that bit about the rejection letters coming in all together. Since it’s a feature of life at E. Terrace [for Barry’s recent plays] I know so well what it’s like, and groan for you. But I don’t believe you’ve necessarily said a long farewell to Morocco. Perhaps the worst thing about that war [the Gulf War of 1990–91] has been its unreality – all those wretched people being killed for reasons that no sane person could take seriously – no passions involved (even automatic mid-east anti-Americanism blunted by the monstrousness of Saddam). I have a feeling that it won’t be long before it’s water off a duck’s back, except to the Iraqis – and if they manage to get rid of their monster who knows but that they might do the Japanese thing and become American-oriented? By the strict logic of Islam they ought to, because surely it’s the will of Allah which dictates the outcome of events, which must suggest that Saddam was being chastised for impiety and Bush (god help us!) is a kind of angel of the lord? I do, however, feel a bit nervous about the remote possibility of our getting a Labour government at our next general election. Suppose our new prime minister turned out to be not properly deferential to the angel of the lord, might he suddenly be cast in the role of Noriega?

  Seriously – the Bush regime is not a reassuring spectacle. It frightens Barry so much that he can no longer look at or read the news.

  Winter ailments seem to be over (touch wood!), and I’m beginning to get the feel of how much less tired I am now that I don’t have to devote all that time and worry to my mother. After three years of neglecting the garden and of secretly feeling that I might have even gone off it, I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of getting earth under my fingernails and I’m digging away like mad. And last week I signed on again for the evening class in drawing from life which I abandoned four years ago because it had become Too Much. I got a good welcome and was told that it would be a great pity not to go on with it when I had such a natural gift for it – purr purr!

  God alone knows what’s going to happen to the firm. Tom is very obviously aware of being short of money and is chiselling everything back to such a bare minimum that we can hardly keep going. He tries to disguise worry and keep our sp
irits up, but he’s looking a bit green-skinned and twitchy. Pray for us.

  I’ve just had a phone call saying my friend Calvin Hernton is coming over for four months – a sabbatical I suppose. Twenty years ago – my god, it seems about five, but twenty it is – he was my lodger for a time. We published a book of his called Sex and Racism (a good book) and he turned up in London as a sort of protégé of Ronald Laing, staying at first in a madhouse run by Laing in the East End of London with schizophrenics who had a lovely time being persuaded that it was they who were the sane ones. Cal’s not handsome – he had bad acne in his youth which ruined his face – but he’s tall and he has that lovely loose black man’s walk and he always wore very black shades day and night so he looked splendidly sinister, and then one discovered that (altho’ he sometimes went into odd panics when he was high – he was a terrible old pot-head) – he was the gentlest person imaginable . . . so no woman I saw him with including myself failed to fall into bed with him almost on sight, and – this was the really nice thing about him – once one had made love with him one became his fondest friend without in the least expecting him to be one’s own true love. He really had a sort of genius at that. During the time he was living in the room which is now Barry’s he had five women of whom he was very fond (by that time I’d pulled out – I think B – who was still with his wife – had come back to London from Canada), one or another of whom always spent the night with him (sleeping alone made him frightened). Only once did he get his lines crossed so that two turned up at the same time – but in fact I think they all knew about each other and didn’t mind. Of course we were in the mid sixties (it’s twenty years since he left), when no one worth their salt would confess to Possessiveness – and anyone who had spent an evening with Cal was pretty well bound to be so stoned that they were past minding anything. But there really was this feeling that what you had with him was so genuine and so sweet that there was no reason to fret for more. As a lodger he was almost faultless – incredibly neat and clean – never even a teaspoon left unwashed in the sink, because his granny had always said ‘it isn’t cleaning that matters it’s keeping things clean’. (He was raised by his granny because his mother, who was called Magnolia, was only fifteen when he was born.) And he was a night-bird so he was never in the way. When he was in I was out, and vice versa. The only snag was that when he came home, which was usually three or four in the morning, if he was very drunk as well as stoned (which he often was) he would start playing his record player very loud (‘I Heard It On The Grapevine’ and Chicken Shack singing ‘I’d rather go blind’ are engraved for ever in my aural system). For about fifteen minutes I’d lie with my pillow clutched to my ears, saying to myself ‘Surely they must soon fall into bed’; but almost always I had to sit up and yell – which worked without fail, but was a great nuisance. Now I ask myself ‘How did I bear it?’ but it didn’t seem too bad at the time. When he got back to the States he got a job at Oberlin [College, Ohio] lecturing in Afro-American studies. Then he got tenure – and it seems he’s still there – the number of students he must have fucked defies calculation. He was hoping, of course, that his old room would be available. Feeling deeply thankful that it is not – has made me realize how old I’ve become! Nowadays if I’m woken up at three in the morning I’m not able to go to sleep again. But it will be lovely to see the dear thing again. He must be well on in his fifties by now, but I doubt whether his habits will have changed. Ah me, we’ve heard the chimes at midnight, yes?