Letters to a Friend

by Diana Athill

  The really good thing is that at last I have done something I should have done long ago: hauled him out of bed and dragged him to see my doctor, instead of his. He had been on the books of an old woman doctor for years and years, long before we started living together, and was stubbornly loyal to her. And I think she was OK for a long time (he was hardly ever in the least bit ill, so didn’t need her anyway), but around the time of his op on April 23 I began to have to go to her surgery quite often to collect prescriptions, and at first I thought in a daft way: ‘What a nice civilized surgery – one never has to wait’, but fairly quickly it began to occur to me that a doctor’s surgery where there was never anyone but me was – to say the least – a bit odd. And then, whenever we needed to ask her something, she wasn’t there: ‘Doctor won’t be here until tomorrow afternoon’ and so on, every time. There was an assistant doctor, but he was usually out, too (and when available was very dim). And then, at a point of extreme crisis, when Lloyd and I had on our hands an hysterical Barry because he was having what he was sure was a bowel blockage (Lloyd, his brother, was staying with us) – the assistant was ‘on holiday’ and about the old woman all her receptionist could say was ‘I do not know when she will be coming in – at present there is no doctor at this surgery.’ – ‘So what can we do?’ – ‘All I can suggest is you go to the hospital.’ – ‘We’ve done that, and they say go to your doctor.’ – ‘Well, I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.’ It turned out that the bloody woman had not even opened a letter about Barry’s diabetes sent her from the hospital (over the phone we forced the receptionist to go and find it in the doc’s office, and open it and read it to us) – and at that point B’s loyalty collapsed. My doc has said he’ll take him on and he’s already been given a proper blood test for diabetes, and an eye-test connected with it, and next week, with the results in hand, my doc is going to adjust his medication (or perhaps even put him on insulin – I don’t know) – and let’s hope that he will at last start feeling more or less normal again. Up till now, all he’s been doing (apart from eating) is lying gazing into space – not even reading or watching telly. Lloyd, who has been a great blessing, looking after him when I went to Ireland for a week, and had three glorious weekends in Norfolk, went back to Jamaica two days ago in a great gloom, saying that B was exactly like their brother Carol was just before he died a year ago.

  But I’m pretty certain, now that the trouble is basically his diabetes, that if he can get the proper treatment for it he’ll respond. The operation has worked OK and the wound has healed at last – it took a long time. The key appointment with my doc, when the results of the tests will be in, is on June 7, so by the time you get to London we’ll know where we stand. (There was, by the way, no bowel blockage: that turned into black farce – but very exhausting for one and all.)

  Am just about to listen to my tape – thank you for sending it. It will be so lovely to see you.

  XXX

  Di

  11 JULY 2002

  Darling Edward,

  I hope you enjoy The Radetzky March and its little sequel. Can’t guess whether you will or not. I started off feeling only mildly interested, but Roth has gradually crept up on me until now I’m pretty well addicted.

  It’s so sad that you are no longer just a little way across town – I keep feeling that you must be.

  Barry got back yesterday, and although he says that he still wants to flop into bed and sleep all day, he is undoubtedly a bit better than he was. Today he got up and went out to buy Barbara some flowers, without it seeming extraordinary, and this evening he asked me what I thought of Claire Bloom’s account of her marriage to Philip Roth, and said ‘My god, what a bastard’. That may not sound much like a feast of reason and a flow of soul – but I can assure you that it’s four months since we had an exchange so nearly approaching it! And he’s looking more like himself too. He has an appointment with the doctor in five days time, when I hope he’ll hear the results of the latest blood test. If only he can have a bit more energy restored to him, we’ll be back to normal.

  In our Norfolk village a man has opened a little gallery on the walls of which are hung a few pictures at the very bottom end of what is hangable on a wall, and has announced in the Parish Magazine that he gives lessons in painting and watercolours. Whereupon I remembered that the few times I’ve tried to use watercolours I’ve ended up with a puddle of mud. This man’s watercolours are not puddles of mud. The colours are clear and fresh looking. So it occurred to me that he is exactly the person I need to take lessons from; he will be able to teach me the absolute beginner’s stuff – which colours you mix in order to get the colour you want, and so on – and whether you start a painting with the lights or the darks – the ABC of the method. So last Saturday evening we had my first lesson – not doing anything, just me asking him questions with a paintbox in front of us, and he demonstrating things from time to time, and then giving me a list of exactly what I must buy. So I came back to London and bought the things, and today I did my first exercise – copying a colour photo of a landscape, not in order to make a picture but simply to see if I could match the colours. And lo! I have done it, and it’s not a puddle of mud!!!! In fact, I suspect that I’ve got all that I need to be taught out of him in that first session, and that now all I need is to work at it by myself – one learns to paint by doing it, once one has been shown what to do. I fancy the idea of being able to do watercolours. In the days before photography and postcards every halfway educated person knew how. Off you went on your holiday with your little sketchbook in your pocket as a matter of course. My great-great-great-aunt Julie had a sketchbook about six inches by three inches, which I’ve seen. Faced with a vast panorama of Swiss mountains, did she quail? No, indeed not. She just sat down and ripped off a tiny watercolour of it, and very well too, without for a moment thinking of herself as ‘an artist’ – and she was one of the thousands of such people. So I do not despair, now the ice has been broken for me, of being like her.

  Love and love

  Diana

  [Alas, this hopeful start came to nothing. I did achieve one watercolour that was quite good, and then the impulse fizzled out.]

  4 AUGUST 2002

  Darling Edward –

  I hope your news is as good as ours is – by ‘good’, I mean that nothing horrible has happened, the weather is lovely, and we are able to enjoy nice things when they happen.

  Barry is really a good deal better. He still spends most of his time lying in bed, watching sport when he isn’t snoozing – but then, that’s what he was mostly doing before the prostate crisis in February. The improvement is that since his trip to Jamaica he gets up and goes to the library or the corner shop quite often – and last week he pottered off to see a very old friend of his with whom he has had a mild fucking relationship for years, since her marriage broke up. I’ve always marvelled at her good humour, because she never appeared to resent the fact that he would turn up at fairly wide intervals simply for the purpose of having a quick poke, though I think there was usually a token cup of coffee, and sometimes even lunch, to make a social occasion out of it. This time, after a gap of about five months, there was not even a cup of coffee. He reports that he got an erection but that he couldn’t feel anything, so he came away at once. When I asked if she had minded this total disregard of her as a person, he looked cross and said ‘No’. I hope that’s true.

  My restored freedom has rather gone to my head, and I’ve reverted to coming here (Norfolk) every weekend, and have taken passionately to painting. Did I tell you that I’d found someone here to give me lessons in water-colours? He’s giving me exactly what I wanted: the very simplest sort of technical tip. For instance, yesterday he positively changed my life by showing me how, if I changed the way I held my brush or pencil, it would become quite easy to draw sweeping lines and curves which went where I wanted them to go. As a result of his tuition my second finished work is quite clear and bright (instead of the disgusting little mud-p
uddle I made to start with) and has one or two passages which look quite technically accomplished. It’s rather odd, though, to have painted something which, if someone gave it to me, would fill me with embarrassment because I couldn’t possibly bring myself to hang it anywhere so would have to hurt the donor’s feelings! I have to remind myself that it is only my second attempt. But what worries me is that it’s not embarrassing because it’s badly done – it’s rather well done, considering – but because it’s such a boring little picture! It looks like an illustration for a slightly down-market children’s book. Help! Is that the kind of eye I have?

  Break for returning to London, where I found your letter. I don’t think I know anyone over 65 who has not got high blood pressure: join the club, my love. Speaking for my own, it was so alarmingly high when first detected that the doc sent me home with instructions to go up and down stairs as little as possible, and on no account to strain when attempting to shit – better constipation than a stroke – this extra care to be taken for at least a week until he could see whether the pill he’s prescribed was working. Well, it was, and has gone on doing so. That was three years ago, I think, and regular checks have shown my b.p. to be fine ever since. So thank heaven yours has been identified. I’m sure it’s a good thing to have a thorough check, because – despite your belief in the body’s ability to heal itself – it is a fact that a little chemical help, sensibly applied, can make the difference between illness and health. I look pretty healthy, don’t I? And I feel it. But I wouldn’t if I didn’t take three pills every day, one for stomach ulcer, one for b.p., one (¼ of an aspirin – it hardly counts!) for angina. Sometimes I’ve tested the stomach one by leaving it off, and it takes only about a week for the acid to get to work on the gut-lining and the pains to begin. I haven’t tested the others, because the results of doing so might be a bit too conclusive! All of which is to say that you will probably feel much better when properly medicated.

  Oh dear, one’s poor old sick friends! Not so long ago I was shocked when a lively 90-year-old woman of my acquaintance said ‘I’m so bored by all my friends – they’ve got so old’ – but now I know just what she meant! And so, poor you, do you!!

  But last week I made a new, much younger, friend. Not that he’ll be much use to me, since he lives in Tokyo. From which he called me, two weeks ago, to invite me to lunch, because he’s mad about Stet and has much enjoyed a letter I wrote refusing to write a contribution for a scholarly mag he edits for a Japanese university. He’s most odd, this skittish and distinctly dishy son of an alcoholic Irish squire, took off for Japan fifteen years ago ‘simply as an adventure’, has lived there ever since, thinks in Japanese by now, and has become the editor of a publication (exquisitely elegant) devoted to Irish literature and language (Erse, or Gaelic, or whatever they call it) written for and almost entirely by scholarly Japanese nuts. Their unbelievably pedantic papers are translated into English for the mag – why? Who is supposed to read it? What does a Japanese university gain by it? The poems are mostly translated by the editor, who is himself a poet. (Some of the poems are splendid.) He wanted a piece by me about Irish writing – and having sent me a copy of the mag ensured that he wouldn’t get one, because I could no more write something that would interest these mad scholars than I could fly. When I asked him what they are like he said ‘Odd. Very. You would not want to have lunch with them.’

  But I adored having lunch with him – largely because, when we met, he said ‘But you are such a surprise – I’ve just read your book about that Egyptian, and he described you as an absurd looking old spinster, – and you are beautiful!’ Is there a reverse form of that revolting term ‘a fag hag’? Because if so, Peter’s – ‘a hag fag’: he’s obviously a connoisseur of old women. He’s tremendously funny, full of mad enthusiasms, very open and warm. One of his most beloved hags is a vastly distinguished Irish woman (a scholar of about six medieval languages) who married a Japanese diplomat and who, on becoming widowed, was invited by the Emperor to become an official in the Imperial Household – the first woman and the first foreigner ever to hold such a post. She it was who discovered Stet, when on a visit to Paris, and she introduced Peter to it – and, I gather, many of the Crème de la Crème of Japanese Society! I am, it seems, quite the thing among them.

  Peter has an ex-wife who lives in Edinburgh (apparently, she thought she wouldn’t mind her husband being gay, but in the end it didn’t work, though they are still great friends). He says she’s a wonderfully creative woman who makes the most beautiful things out of whatever she lays her hands on, and that we must must must must meet when I’m there next week, so he’s given me her number, and has called her . . . Under the influence of his enthusiasm I got home from lunch much looking forward to meeting her, but by now I’ve realized that the poor woman will probably be thinking ‘Oh god! Not another of Peter’s impetuosities’, because impetuosities are obviously what he is much given to. But I’ll probably risk it, nevertheless. [I didn’t.]

  I’ll write and report on Edinburgh when I get back. Oh yes – and my third watercolour, done during the weekend, is much less shaming, hurrah hurrah!

  With much love, and my fingers are crossed to knotting point for the success of your high b.p. treatment.

  XXOXX

  Diana

  15 SEPTEMBER 2002

  Darling Edward –

  For a terrible moment just now, I thought there was no pen in this house! Barbara has gone back to London ahead of me – no pen in my handbag, none in the desk, none in the kitchen, none up in my bedroom . . . Of course it wouldn’t matter in the least if I didn’t write to you – or to anyone else – today, but it gave me a moment of near panic, having nothing to write with. What a creature of words I am! I wonder if you would react in the same way if your computer packed up and you had no pen? This one – rather a nice one – was lurking in the kitchen after all.

  The only nice thing that’s happened is that BBC Radio 4 is doing a programme in December called ‘A Letter to Myself’ – or rather, three half-hour programmes – in which a memoir writer takes a moment of crisis in his/her young life and writes a letter to the young self who experienced that crisis. They are using me, and Andrea Ashworth, and (they think) Christopher Logue. I’ve written mine and have just heard from the producer that it’s ‘perfect’ – I bet she says that to all of us, but still it’s cheered me up! I thought at first ‘what a phoney idea!’ but in the end rather enjoyed doing it. But am now hard put to it to tell whether the quite touching piece I produced represents my true feelings, or a newly discovered knack for turning out touching radio pieces! I’m coming to the conclusion that real fame would be appallingly corrupting, given the qualms that can result from insy-tinsy-mini fame! My ability to make an audience beam at me because I’m so nice seems to me deeply suspect! I suppose the sensible thing is just to enjoy it while given the chance. I’m sure you make audiences beam at you, too, but have the sense not to get your knickers in a twist about it.

  All the war-mongering going on is so sickening that I can hardly bring myself to read a newspaper any more. There never seems to be a photograph of anything in NY without a Stars & Stripes being brandished in it – not, of course, that it necessarily implies warlike feelings in the brandishers, but it’s worrying. I’ve not spoken to a single person here who doesn’t shudder at Blair’s support for Bush, but that doesn’t seem to prevent a fatalistic feeling that we’ll have to go along with it, so the Brits are just as sickening as the Yanks, even if they don’t brandish Union Jacks. Yuk and yuk again.

  09.16.02 At that point it became time to go to bed, and this morning I got back to find your letter, with its brilliant idea about Bleecker Street Press. Oh I do hope you resurrect it! And how very gratifying to do a gig that pays a thou! I thought the £400 I am getting for my Letter To Myself was quite good, but now it seems very mere!

  What did I notice on the way home, having just said we don’t brandish Union Jacks, but a demure little house in Hendon
(a northern suburb through which I drive) on the forecourt of which was planted a flagpole flying a Union Jack of a size suitable to Buckingham Palace, and lower down on the pole was a board with the proud announcement THE BRITISH HERNIA CENTRE. Now there’s food for thought! What happens at a hernia centre? If an American, a French or a Javan hernia turned up would it be refused entrance? Could a hernia centre situated in a London suburb be anything but British? It joins my two other Favourite Things on my journey between London and Norfolk. One of them, painted high on a wall in a particularly seedy stretch of the route, where any reference to Shakespeare however indirect is the last thing one would expect, is the advertisement (the wall belongs to a very shabby little beautician’s establishment): ‘Now is the winter of our Discount Tans’. My guess about that is that the business is probably run by Indians and a British-educated son or daughter has contributed this touch of sophistication. And the second is a small shop in the Finchley Road which declares itself to be ‘Jews for Jesus’ in big letters, and underneath, in smaller ones, ‘the Messiah Has Come’. Does ‘Jews for Jesus’ exist elsewhere, or is it a North London phenomenon? It’s by a traffic light, so I’ve quite often studied it. It has the sort of shop window display made of cardboard boxes over which someone has draped a piece of shiny magenta nylon, with hand-written notices propped against it, and although there’s usually a light on inside, I’ve never seen anyone there. I long to know if they’ve ever made any converts, but shall never go in to find out.

  Your possible visit to London is yet another reason to pray for peace! Oh god! To think that here we are, having to force ourselves to try to believe in the reality of this totally insane situation.

  Love and love. Does ‘Jews for Jesus’ exist elsewhere? [It seems that it does.]