Letters to a Friend

by Diana Athill

  You and your computers!! Surely you had a new one just the other day? All I can say is you’ll have to start doing desk-top publishing to justify this immersion in technology. Because I don’t know what a Scanner is I’m not as impressed as I ought to be by your treatment of the piece from Tears in the Fence – although I am tremendously impressed by the piece. He is a lovely man to get the point of you so thoroughly and to write about you so fully – I’m so glad you sent it to me.

  My own Fame is dying down: no more readings, and an outing to Cheltenham Festival last week to talk about Jean Rhys, not me. We were a panel of four and it went very well – one lady said afterwards that she’d attended seven Festivals and ours was the best evening she’d been to. So that was nice – and the hotel, too – although all we were given to eat was sandwiches! But I did have one very splendid belated review, in the Spectator, by the novelist Tim Mo – who I thought hated me! He flounced out on André Deutsch because André fucked him about over his second novel, and I’d assumed that he’d blamed me, too – but no! So that was nice. And so, very, was a reunion with the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, whom I admire a lot but had thought was lost to me for similar reasons. Her new novel, The Blind Assassin, is hot favourite for this year’s Booker Prize. She was in England for a short visit a little while ago, and somehow our local bookshop persuaded her to come to our local library and sign copies – it was part of a ‘Support Our Threatened Libraries’ campaign – and when I saw it announced I thought I really must go – we knew each other really rather well when AD was publishing her, and I liked her a lot – and hoped that after all this time she’d forgiven me. And I was shuffling up in the queue, and Peggy looked up from her signing to run a weary eye over the queue to see how many more, and her glance passed over me, paused, came back to me – and her face lit up with delight. She said of course she had never blamed me for that ages-ago nonsense, and she was in the middle of reading Stet and was loving it, and was absolutely delighted to see me again – and now she has ordered Bloomsbury, her publisher here, to invite me to the Booker party which will be fun even if she doesn’t win it (she’s so famous, and rich with it, by now that she doesn’t need it) . . . I ‘discovered’ her for England, so it will feel something of a triumph if she does win, as well as being lovely to know her again.

  I’m worried about Barry, and so is his brother Lloyd. He hardly ever gets out of bed now, and does absolutely nothing but watch sport, eat and sleep. He’s ceasing to exist as an intelligent person . . . Lloyd said the other day ‘He’s fading away in front of our eyes’. I’ve been watching this slow shrinking of his boundaries for such a long time that I hadn’t really taken it in until I saw it through Lloyd’s eyes. L and I agree that there’s nothing we can do about it – Barry flatly refuses to go anywhere or meet anyone or take any interest in anything. And he’s happy in his room with his television and his food, which he enjoys – so let him go on being happy in that way, we feel. But it is sad. It must be partly because of the diabetes, but I’m afraid it’s more because he’s developed a sort of tunnel-vision about his writing – if people don’t want to put on the one and only play he wants to write, which is about the one set of ideas on which he’s become fixated, then he’s not going to do (or perhaps has become unable to do) anything else. He’d rather just fade out . . . He’s so sweet and ungrudging about me having a nice time – God, how I wish this wasn’t happening to him.

  As for me, I’m getting on with what – I think – is going to be called Child’s Play. [It became Yesterday Morning.] I’m not at all sure yet, if I’m going to be able to give it any shape. I’ve just done 6 pages about my father hoping that it will become apparent how to fit it in – it hasn’t, yet! But it won’t really matter if it doesn’t work, because I’m having fun doing it.

  Good luck with the Pomeroy-Kuh novel – and even better luck with the group of literary portraits.

  Love and love

  Diana

  23 NOVEMBER 2000

  Darling Edward,

  The Booker evening turned out a funny mixture of appalling and magic. It was not the prize-winner’s table at the Guildhall I was invited to – at the dinner itself only authors, their spouses if any, and the top people in their publishers, are allowed, to which the sponsors add a lavish number of the flashier kind of VIP. So Bloomsbury, Peggy Atwood’s publisher, had decided to give a separate party of their own, to which Peggy would come after the award had been announced, to be consoled if she hadn’t won, and to celebrate if she had. It was that party to which she had asked them to invite me, and also Xandra Hardie, my neighbour across the road, who by a strange coincidence is a very old and dear friend of hers. So we were each duly sent an invitation to that, which was headed BOOKER DINNER PARTY. So both Xandra and I assumed – not, I think, unnaturally – that it was to be a dinner party: probably 15 or 20 people sitting round a table, eating a civilized meal, with a television set in the room so that we could follow the proceedings. Well, what in fact it meant was that it was a party, given in connection with the Booker Dinner – a very different kettle of fish, particularly as it was intended by the firm as a treat for all their lower ranks, who could bring their boy and girl friends and have a high old time whooping it up. (This, of course, Peggy didn’t know when she asked them to invite us.) So the first, and mild, surprise came when Xandra, and I, who had shared a taxi, arrived at the address in Soho which had been given simply as a street number, and found it to be an Irish pub. No doubt, we thought, it had rooms, or a room, for Functions upstairs. Surprise increased as the stairs turned out to be uncarpeted, splintery and dirty; and increased further as it appeared they were leading towards a god-awful din. Surprise turned to dismay when we arrived at a fairly small room, absolutely crammed (literally, all the bodies touching each other) with young and rather drunk people yelling at the tops of their voices. There was a television against one wall which no one was watching – and indeed no one could hear, except those right up against it – and when those happened to hear the commentators uttering a name they recognized, they all went ‘Whoooaaaargh!!!!!’ at the tops of their voices, whereupon all the rest of the room went ‘Whoooaaaargh!!!!’ too.

  Xandra bravely ploughed her way through to the opposite wall, where there was a chair – I think the only piece of furniture in the room – onto which she steered me. I took out my hearing aid. I truly think I might have fainted if I hadn’t, so appalling was the noise in the room when magnified by it. And without it, of course, I could hear nothing but the generalized roar of voices reduced to a more or less endurable volume – and no individual voices at all. There was no food, and although there was obviously lots of drink somewhere, the crowd was so dense that we couldn’t see where. And it was eight o’clock, and Peggy couldn’t possibly get there till 10.30 or 11.00 – and when she did get there, there would have been no hope of communicating with her. For a deaf person one month short of her 83rd birthday it was simply not to be endured. So Xandra (who is much younger) hacked me a path through the living jungle and found me a taxi, before returning to the fray (unwillingly, but she felt and I agreed that Peggy must find one of us there), and home I went. I was very disappointed and cross, having looked forward to this dinner party (hahaha) so much!

  Then, having got home, and divested myself sadly of my best evening glad-rags, I thought that probably by now the award ceremony must be reaching its climax, so I went into Barry’s room, got him to agree to switch off the current football match for a few minutes, and tuned in to BBC One . . . and there on the screen was Peggy’s face, and the words she was saying as I tuned in were: ‘And I want to thank Diana Athill . . .’ It really was a most extraordinary moment – almost uncanny. And because of the amazingness of that coincidence, it suddenly made the whole ridiculous evening much better than the civilized dinner-party would have been. And Peggy is going to be taking a flat in London for a few weeks come the spring, so we’ll have plenty of time to get together then.

  Anothe
r nice thing to happen last week was . . . I don’t know if you are familiar enough with the British press to recognize the name Lynn Barber. She’s a journalist who specializes in interviews and became famous for being unbelieveably beady-eyed about her interviewees. I always used to read her with pleasure because in fact she was less bitchy than extremely shrewd and sharp-eyed, and didn’t hesitate to say about people exactly what she felt – though she did, I think, sometimes choose frightful people to munch up, because munching was her thing. One used to wonder what possessed them, even to allow her into the same room with themselves, to say nothing of offering themselves to her for interviewing. Anyway, there she was, last week, frightening Lynn Barber, choosing her best books for the season – and there was Stet, being described by her as ‘a winner’. I was pleased.

  About Child’s Play the worrying thing is that I don’t think it can possibly be spun out to more than 100 pages of typescript – if that – which will make a terribly short book. My feeling is that it will work at about that length, but not if I stretch it. They’ll just have to (if they take it!) use a large type-face and wide margins. At this stage I really have no idea if anyone but me will find it interesting – but it’s still a bit too soon to try it out on you. I shall do so sooner or later.

  Much love

  [Addendum] 7 December

  Wrote this ages ago – and buried it! Disinterred it by accident just now. Recently gave your address and telephone number to my young and dear friend Andrea Ashworth. She and her partner, Mark Greenberg, are just settling in at Princeton, where he is lecturing on Philosophy. Andrea wrote an amazing book called Once In A House On Fire, about her absolutely horrific childhood – which she now, being very beautiful, very clever, and very sweet-natured, appears to have recovered from in an astonishing way. I think she is, in fact, still pretty frail, and perhaps always will be – still tormented by guilt, however much money she gives her poor feckless mother, at having more than one pair of shoes, lots of books, some pretty clothes and a man who loves her. She tends to hero-worship, and is at present endowing me with so many rare and wonderful qualities that I almost collapse under the burden – but still she herself is really so remarkable, and so dear, that I love her. If she does call, on one of their escapes from Princeton, give her a big hug. I’ve not yet met Mark (an American who has been studying at Oxford) – but he sounds OK.

  20 or 21 JANUARY 2001

  Darling Edward –

  Well here it is: Child’s Play, not yet read by anyone, not even Barry because I’ve been so uncertain about it that I thought he easily might not like it, and if he said anything in the least critical I’d have gone into a flap. I took it to Granta yesterday, on the understanding that alterations could of course be made – though not much can be added, without taking it into territory already touched on in Instead Of A Letter – which it already overlaps a little, in places. Luckily they like little books so at least its shortness won’t be against it.

  Barry’s in Washington for a couple of weeks – probably the last time he’ll be able to stay there in ambassadorial splendour, because Richard (his niece’s husband [and Jamaican Ambassador to the US]) thinks he’ll soon be recalled. He’s had a good long stint in the job, and can feel jealous people treading on his heels. Lloyd is staying here in Barry’s absence, which means lots of Healthy Eating. He eats like a horse and never gets fat – but luckily quite enjoys cooking, so I’m doing well, and consuming many more vegetables than lazy old me and Barry usually bother with.

  I do rather wish at this point that I had fax or e-mail, so could hear from you quickly . . . but never mind. If the thing’s not going to work, the later I know it the better! And if it’s going to work, then it’s nice to spin it out.

  Now for making some soup, which I’ve undertaken to do this evening . . .

  Much love

  Diana

  12 JULY 2001

  Darling Edward—

  I’m ashamed of not writing earlier, and your e-mail to Barbara made me feel worse. Somehow, getting used to living in the present climate seemed to consume so much energy . . . but we are getting used to it. Its nature is determined by Barbara, who is absolutely determined on Normality and makes it amazingly easy for the rest of us to act on that determination, but of course the feelings going on under the surface are still there.

  [Barbara had been diagnosed with an inoperable cancer. It eventually responded miraculously to treatment, but of course no one knew this would happen. For some time my letters were full of concerned reports on her progress. Because she would find such material displeasing I have cut almost all of it, which has made this letter and many of the following ones shorter than they were.]

  Barry’s chapter from his book has not been accepted by Granta. Ian [Jack, editor of Granta magazine until 2007] said the material was interesting but the manner was ‘too telegraphic and lacking in feeling’. Wimbledon has cheered him up (and the intensely dramatic men’s final match really was exciting) – but he’s persistently stuffing himself with more and more sugary food and becoming more and more lethargic. I know I ought to fight him about this, but I can’t – he just won’t take it.

  I’m the only one who is all right. While not allowing the dear reflexologist [who they met when in London] to brainwash me into following her raw food diet at all seriously, I have taken her advice to eat many more vegetables, much less dairy food, and no bread (I’d pretty well gone off meat already) – with dazzling results. No more runny nose in the morning. No more diffuse aches and pains. And I’ve already lost 12 pounds. The weight loss, together with the arrival from Wales of my magic handmade and exorbitantly expensive and hideous shandals (I think he calls them that because they are as much like shoes as sandals) has already made a considerable difference to my walking. The shandals are bliss – I hate to take them off. They are proof of how acutely painful feet affect the knees and hips, indeed the whole body. My stride is becoming longer and freer every day, and my carriage more upright. I’m not going to become a marathon walker by any means, but I’m quite surprisingly better than I was two weeks ago.

  I had fun at the Festival Hall discussion with Mary Karr [the American poet and essayist, and author of The Liars’ Club]. She rode into town with a Retinue: two people who figured in her last book (both very friendly and entertaining), ‘my student’ who I took to be the current lover, ‘my assistant’, and of course her American/English publisher who used to be her lover (they very nearly got married). This was not – as it might have been – at all daunting, but created a cosy and welcoming kind of family atmosphere. Mary is very attractive, sparkly and intelligent. She has quite clearly not read a word I’d written, but I like her stuff and liked her and we had lots to say to each other about memoir-writing, so all was well. Afterwards her publisher gave an enormous dinner for the lot of us, and at first I was horrified to find myself seated next to Rushdie: I’ve never been able to read him, and although one certainly doesn’t have to talk to a famous novelist about his work at a dinner party it is most uncomfortable to know one couldn’t. But luckily it was a long narrow table, and he and his smashing girl (a model, and how!) were opposite Mary and her publisher and they were all very old friends so talked to each other all the time. So I was able to concentrate on my other neighbour, a writer called Elena Lappin whose stories I’d read and loved and who is a most delightful person – we had a very happy time together and I was astounded, when I got home, to find it was 2.30 a.m. and I was not tired at all. So, you see, nice things are still happening in spite of everything.

  That’s all for now, my dears. How I hope NY goes on being cool and pleasant, and Neil is getting over the radiation, and that you are both well. Love and love. Diana

  1 AUGUST 2001

  Darling Edward,

  I’m afraid I’ve decided not to show your poem to Barbara because I don’t think she’d find it helpful. I’m sure that – like me – she finds the concept of ‘no error in the universe’ impossible to accept
. . . except in the sense that the notions of error and rightness etc. are products of the human mind, and given that in terms of the universe humans are infinitesimal atoms inhabiting a grain of sand, notions which seem to them important must be totally irrelevant universally speaking . . . No, I think B’s courage, which is marvellous, finds support in more mundane ideas, such as: Well, so long as one is still alive let’s be alive – if one has to die, do it with as much dignity as possible and don’t let anticipation of it spoil things for other people, or oneself more than it absolutely has to. A Stoic approach rather than a Christian Scientist one.

  I was a good deal shaken by your reference to Neil’s condition, which makes it pretty clear that Barry and I have been allowing ourselves to fool ourselves. Oh my dear loves, how I do wish you were near by so that if there was anything we could do we could do it. Barry, too, is increasingly a member of the invalids’ club – I hope to heaven not even more so than before. He has at last agreed to have a scan (on August 7) because Barbara added her nagging to mine – our worry being that his belly is growing bigger and bigger all the time but the rest of him is actually quite thin. I’ve been muttering about it for ages, to no effect – but B now has Authority on this subject, so he obeyed her without a murmur, thank god. And touch wood. What healthy old things like us need to do is to concentrate on being robust god help us!!!

  Which in fact, to a quite extraordinary extent, I am. In spite of all the heavy reasons for anxiety and sadness, I have been experiencing amazing and inexplicable moments of well-being – perhaps some kind of hormonal quirk? Who knows! It first happened some time ago, on my first visit to Dominica. Getting out of the plane at Antigua’s scruffy little airport, I suddenly felt Wow – I’m seeing things properly again like I did when I was young – and it went on for that whole holiday: a feeling of being in direct contact with everything – not thinking ‘now I’m doing this’ or ‘now I’m seeing this’, but just doing and seeing – just being, really, and it was marvellous. And recently these delicious times of being have been coming back in fits and starts. Three weeks ago, for example, I went to a concert of chamber music in a little church near our place in Norfolk (piano and cello, which are not distorted by my deafness like fiddles and voices) – and it was absolutely glorious: I haven’t been in the music like that since god knows when. And sometimes I wake up in the morning and look out of the window, and am suddenly quite amazed by how lovely everything is. And a really funny thing happened two evenings ago. I went to a party and there was a woman I know slightly but like a lot called Robin Dalton – an Australian almost my age who used to be a theatrical agent, very exuberant and in the swing and knowing everyone, so she used rather to overwhelm me. But then she loved Stet, and sent me a memoir she had written ages ago and had published in Australia, and I loved that – she writes exactly as she talks, very honest and funny – so I began not being overwhelmed. So there was dear Robin sitting on a sofa next to me at this party, and we were nattering away like mad and got onto the subject of being old, and for some reason I was moved to tell her about my ‘moments’ which I’ve never mentioned to anyone not even Barry, and she screeched ‘My dear – you too!!!!’ and it turned out that she has begun to have exactly the same experiences. ‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘that it means that we are going to die – die quite soon? A sort of vision of how marvellous life is, granted to us at the last moment?’ – And I had asked myself that exact same question that very day. And we agreed that whatever it meant we were astoundingly lucky to have it – so we sat there hand in hand, beaming at each other and gloating over our lovely moments of pure being. It was such fun! And I rather think that getting these moments gives me, even in the times when I’m not having them, an improved ability to survive sadness.