Pursuit: The Memoirs of John Calder

by John Calder

  I remember that Opera for All season for an incident that I record with some hesitation. The Traverse Theatre had a very attractive Scottish girl cooking for them at the time, and I brought her to do the cooking for that spring season at Ledlanet. I shall call her Fiona, not her real name. Inevitably one night, quite late, when everyone else had gone to bed, I detained her in the back corridor, and unable to control myself, because I always had great reservations then about sleeping with anyone I employed, told her that I passionately wanted her. She responded, and for the next year we had a circumspect but involved affair, sometimes at Ledlanet, sometimes at her own place, and frequently in other towns where I had my speaking engagements.

  I had other relationships at the time, but this was still under Bettina’s nose, and although I knew she had her own flings, we were both on the whole discreet, especially in Scotland. It was in fact Bettina who had first taken on Fiona as a partner to cater at the Traverse Theatre.

  Jacques Chaix turned up and was keen to go skiing at Glenshee, because there was snow, and as Opera for All were only performing on weekends, there were two free days. We were getting into the car – Jacques, his girlfriend from Paris and myself – when Fiona came out to see us off. Come along, I said on impulse, and she did, just as she was, and spent two days with me at Glenshee, compensating for not very good skiing. We got back just as the opera singers were arriving for the night’s performance. Fiona told Bettina she had had to go back to Edinburgh for two days for an emergency.

  Before Una cosa rara that autumn, there was a variety of other entertainments. We gave Schumann’s Dichterliebe in the Scottish translation by Sir Alexander Gray, dramatizing it for three voices. The artists were Sheila McGrow, Sheila Laing and Daniel McCoshan. Conrad Wilson, reviewing it for the Scotsman, did not approve, but the audience liked it. To accompany it we did the Cedric Thorpe Davie version of Burns’s Jolly Beggars with a cast that included all of the above and Ian Wallace. The latter was very nervous, because the composer was sitting in the front row. “I was afraid that I’d get a note wrong,” he confided to me afterwards. Douglas Gray of Scotsdisc persuaded me to let him mount a ceremonial song, dance and poetry evening entitled Harvest Home, and Mrs Ferguson, a doctor’s wife on our committee, who was a genius with flowers, arranged a remarkable decor for the show. The other big production, other than the operas and song cycles, was an improvised play based on Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters.

  I transformed the original into local town names, bringing out the rivalries which I knew existed between Kinross, the county town, five miles away, and Milnathort, three and a half miles away, adding a lot of slapstick and several songs. These I organized with John Watt. He found the music, and I put new words, which he sang. The audience acted as chorus, reading from a screen which I lowered and raised. I added a dream sequence at the beginning of the second half: the stage was then covered with a map of Scotland, and each of the characters sat on one of the three towns of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, having a conversation, and then each singing a song about the town. My purpose was to make fun of all the local rivalries and have the audience laughing at them. Alex McAvoy – actor, dancer and mime, with a good singing voice as well – played the Servant, quite brilliantly and with acrobatics, juggling and performing an astounding leap onto the stage from the platform which we had built out from the first-floor gallery. The cast contained established opera and folk singers as well as actors, including Dennis O’Neill, a real singing actor, who was later to make a big operatic career. The audience loved it, and Allen Wright gave it a rave review in the Scotsman.

  In the bar after the last night, I was chatting with Alex McAvoy, who had done so much to make the production memorable, and together with others we began talking about Scottish nationalism, of which, in spite of many friends in the SNP Party and the movement, I did not approve. “If I had known that, I wouldn’t have taken the part,” said McAvoy. “I thought it was a nationalist play.”

  * * *

  I have a tendency to skip around perhaps too much. Memory is necessarily associative, and strict chronology would not make very interesting reading. And there are some episodes that must be told as a sequence, even if they cover a large expanse of time.

  Trocchi became even more of a representative of the drug culture after the Sheffield Trial, but now the climate was changing, partly because of the invasion of ever more American beat and hippie drug addicts into Britain, caused largely by the closing up of Tangiers, no longer the drug haven it had been, but also because some doctors were obviously overprescribing. Not only was this very expensive for the National Health Service, but their motives in doing so were sometimes suspect. There was a Lady Isabella Frankau, a psychiatrist, who treated many addicts and became notorious and very suspect with the authorities. On some occasions I sent Alex Trocchi to my own doctor, a Hungarian, Tibor Csato, who helped him mainly with advice. He certainly would not overprescribe as Alex wanted, because the latter hoped to be able to sell his surplus once it became more difficult to get drugs.

  The crackdown was evident by the middle Sixties. There was a big event at the Royal Albert Hall, promoted by a New Zealand poet, John Esam, as a commercial venture, a large gathering of poets called The International Poetry Incarnation, where a considerable amount of box-office money disappeared, as did Esam himself. The Albert Hall was full, the air thick with cannabis smoke, and very many poets – British, American and European – read for a few minutes each from a central platform. The least popular was Allen Ginsberg, who recited an endless mantra. “This is McGonagall?!” shouted a Scottish voice.

  I was not impressed by a large group of mental patients who were in a group near me: they had been brought along by R.D. Laing, a poet, theorist and psychiatrist, very fashionable then, about whom I had enormous reservations. He was not unlike Trocchi, always keeping his name in the press and welcoming attack and controversy. Watching the twenty or so gibbering mental patients, whom he had brought out of hospital to subject them to an experience that they could not understand or appreciate, but that most of them found obviously distressing, could only have worsened their condition. They wandered around the area in which they had been enclosed, dribbling and making sounds, rarely looking at the stage.

  Trocchi himself, acting part of the time as a Master of Ceremonies, read a little of his work and, being then applauded, took the applause as a vindication of his lifestyle and a reply to the magistrates of Sheffield. The press gave the event the coverage that might be expected, playing up the presence of drugs and describing the sillier events. The Albert Hall managers declared that never again would the hall be used for such a purpose. Properly organized, it could have been a worthwhile rather than a notorious event. I enjoyed about half of it, because there were some good poets and some good readings, but already the American hippie invasion was attracting strong reactions, and the criminalization of drugs was becoming part of it, opening the way to professional crime.

  * * *

  Sam Beckett had stayed with me in Wimpole Street during the rehearsals of Waiting for Godot, which was revived at the Royal Court in 1964 (I am again returning to the past), and which was produced by Anthony Page. He would come back in the evening after rehearsal, grim-faced and unhappy because Page was not getting what he (Sam) wanted from the actors, especially from Nicol Williamson playing Vladimir. But one day he returned to the flat looking much happier. He had had a private talk with Williamson, whose previous role had been the lead in John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence, and the actor had told Sam that he was using the same London accent as in the earlier play. Previously he had been at the Dundee Rep. “But that can’t be your natural accent, then,” commented Beckett.

  “No, normally I have a Scots accent,” said Nicol.

  “Couldn’t you do that here?” asked Beckett, and Nicol did, whereupon he was asked to keep it. That was the evening Sam came back smiling. “A touch of genius there,” he s
aid to me. The other actors were satisfactory, although not chosen by Beckett, Estragon being played by Alfred Lynch. It was the first unexpurgated Godot given in Britain, the Lord Chamberlain having relented on what had previously been quite idiotic cuts.

  Bettina and I went to the opening. It was an extraordinary Godot, different from previous productions, largely because of the anguished animality of Nicol Williamson’s Vladimir. At the climax of his great speech towards the end of the second act, “Was I sleeping while the others suffered…” he started slowly and gathered speed, squeezing ever more feeling into his character’s questioning of the events of the day. When he looked down at Estragon and reached “Let him sleep on”, his whole body became convulsed into an expression of pain. Then, straightening, he released a trumpet call in all its stridency as he screamed out: “I can’t go on.” A long deepening silence followed as the audience sat up in their seats, their mouths open. Then he whispered, “What have I said?” The whole agony of the human condition was contained in that scream, one of the most vivid memories of my theatrical life. On the way out I followed a young couple. “That was obscene, but really obscene,” said the girl to her young man. It was the first important London production of Godot since 1955, but now the press had accepted Beckett, and the Royal Court as well, and there were good reviews and full houses. Beckett had arrived.

  It was that same year, 1964, when there was an extraordinary production of Endgame. This was rehearsed in London, then performed in Paris, and that then moved to London, to the Royal Court, and later, with a few changes and a different management, performed in London at the Aldwych as part of the Royal Shakespeare’s season. The backers were Victor Herbert, who had recently retired from Investors Overseas Services, Bernie Cornfeld’s mushrooming company. He was now devoting his life to benevolent hippiedom in his palatial Paris home on the Val-de-Grâce and to financing the theatre, together with a couple of rich Scottish acquaintances whom I had already met through Jim Fraser, and a young Frenchman, Philippe Staib, who seemed to have a finger in many pies. They had all put up the money to produce the play with Patrick Magee, Jack MacGowran, Sydney Bromley and Nancy Cole in the cast. The producer was an untried young man called Michael Blake, who had already lost the confidence of the actors when Beckett turned up after the first days of rehearsals, while the decor was by Ralph Koltai. I went once only to watch a rehearsal, but Clancy Sigal had a commission from the Observer to cover them all and to write about them. His descriptions aptly catch the twelve days of the production coming together, with Blake quickly fading out and the author exerting his authority over the cast. The rehearsals were in the very desolate back room of a pub, which gave Sam opportunity enough to remember his unhappy days in pre-war London. Those rehearsals had the effect of bonding Magee and MacGowran to him, a bonding that would last for the rest of their lives. Sam did not like Koltai’s set, and neutralized it with lighting.

  In Paris I walked into the Studio des Champs-Elysées where Endgame was playing, and there was Victor Herbert sitting in the ticket office. “Want a ticket, John?” he said, handing me a free one. The production became a legendary one, seen by many of the Parisian anglophones and positively reviewed in the French press. This shortly afterwards enabled Roger Blin, who had been trying for some time to raise the money for a French production, to do so. The English production then came to the Royal Court, and some time later was revived at the Aldwych.

  I am aware that my memory of events is not precisely the same as in the James Knowlson biography, but I think I may well be right. Endgame at the Royal Court had a curtain-raiser before it, which Knowlson does not mention, which I think was the first of the two mimes that Beckett had written for the stage, and each piece was preceded by jocular versions of the British and French national anthems by John Beckett, Sam’s cousin. This must have been shortly before I went skiing that year, because I met Philippe Staib’s sister at Val d’Isère, and I already knew her; she was there in the company of Pierre Henry, the concrete composer, with whom I had several interesting chats.

  It was Philippe Staib that I took to see Beckett’s private showing of Film. Barney had had the idea of making movies – the inspiration, if I can call it that, coming from an experiment he had tried with an erotic Swedish film called I Am Curious Yellow, which he had distributed in the US, presumably because no one else would take the risk. He had built a small cinema next to his Houston Street building, where he both lived and had his offices, and this was to be the first of a chain of cinemas showing erotic films. The venture did not work, because in cities less cosmopolitan than New York at that time people did not want to be seen by their neighbours queuing to see a “dirty” film. But before that day arrived, Barney had decided that if he was going into films he might as well use his prestigious authors to get scripts, and he started (and finished) with a project to make three short films by Beckett, Ionesco and Duras. Only the Beckett was made by him. Ionesco wrote an amusing short script, The Future Is in Eggs, which later became a ballet, and Duras wrote a script for a film that she eventually made herself. Beckett wrote Film for a single actor and suggested Buster Keaton to play the part. Barney then hired Alan Schneider to make it, and Sam Beckett made his one and only trip to the US in July 1964. The story of that trip is told in many other books.

  Sam rang me one day in London to say Film was to be shown every night for a week in a projection room and invited me to come, mentioning that possible distributors and more formal people were coming early in the week and friends later. I arranged to come on the Saturday and asked if could bring Philippe Staib. Sam did not know him, but he had helped to finance Endgame. I took a plane and arrived to see the showing, which lasted for less than an hour, and we were then all told to go to the Falstaff in Montparnasse. There were about forty people there. When later in the evening I said to the patron that Mr Staib and I would like to pay our share of the bill, I was told that Monsieur Beckett had paid every night all week and he was not allowed to take a penny from anyone else.

  I have seldom seen Sam drink as much as that night – the session with Burroughs is perhaps the only one to rival it – and he was also very happy and jovial. We were sitting at a number of long tables, and Barbara Bray was trying hard to make him come away. She nagged him for some time until he turned on her, told her to leave him alone and to go home alone. With tight lips she left the restaurant. Pat Magee was there, and he started some argument with a man at the bar. It quickly turned nasty, and they started to punch each other. Sam was sober enough to intervene and break it up. The party was still alive when I left at about eleven o’clock, having started at about six, and I took a taxi to Orly. But the last plane had gone, the hotel there was full, and I spent an uncomfortable night on three chairs until I could catch a flight in the morning.

  There are two other occasions associated with airports that I can conveniently relate here, both to do with Beckett. I cannot remember just when they happened, and it does not matter. Once, when I was meeting him at Heathrow, he looked both annoyed and relieved. The immigration official had looked at his passport and said, “How long are you staying, Paddy?”

  “Just because you have an Irish passport, they think they can call you Paddy,” was his querulous complaint, and his annoyance lasted some time. Perhaps it was then or perhaps on another occasion that he told me that once on the plane a voice on the loudspeakers had announced, “Votre Commandant Godot vous souhaite la bienvenue à bord.”21 If the doors had not been closed, he told me, he would probably have got off again.

  The other occasion was when we flew together in the opposite direction, to Paris. We had taken a taxi to the airport, and he was in a strange mood. “Let’s go first class, then we can drink free brandy on the way,” he said. It did not suit me at all to go first class, but for Sam I assented. But first class was full, so we went economy and paid for the two brandies each that we drank. As the plane was coming down, he suddenly announced, “Suzanne is meeting
us. I think we’ll have dinner at the airport. Orly has quite a good restaurant.” After a pause, he went on. “You know that Suzanne (Sam’s partner) is the only French woman I’ve ever met who doesn’t drink wine. She won’t touch a drop.”

  We arrived, were greeted by Suzanne and went to the restaurant. We got through our bottle of wine very quickly, and Sam immediately ordered another. Suzanne put her hand on Sam’s arm. “Please don’t drink so much,” she pleaded, but he was in a funny mood. “John likes wine,” he said, and the second bottle was soon succeeded by a third. But that was not all. “Madame Ionesco telephoned me,” she said, and went on about some problem on which her advice had been sought. “Madame Ionesco est une emmerdeuse” (“old nag” catches the meaning, but not its strength), he replied roughly, and from there on I was witnessing what must have been a daily family quarrel, wishing I could be anywhere else. I was sure that my presence would be held against me in the future by Suzanne. Strangely, although he had anticipated it, Sam needed a certain amount of drink before facing the everyday argument. On occasion, usually when the hotels were full or I had missed the last flight to London, I stayed in his spartan flat, which connected through the kitchen with Suzanne’s, but I never saw her on those occasions. They lived separate lives in close proximity.

  * * *

  After playing Vladimir, Nicol Williamson had returned to John Osborne’s Inadmissible Evidence, which had been revived at the Garrick Theatre. It was at this time that Patrick Garland invited me to put on a Beckett evening at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. It was to be on a Sunday night in their smaller theatre space. I asked Patrick Magee and Nicol Williamson if they would join me to read Beckett extracts, and they accepted. But Nick said he would only take part if he could be coached by Sam. The Godot experience had made him a total devotee. Sam agreed to see us both if we would come to Ussy, so I arranged for us both to fly to Paris on a Sunday morning and return on Monday in plenty of time for Nick’s performance at the Garrick. We agreed to meet for lunch on the Saturday, the day before, at Angela’s Restaurant, which was very close to the Garrick Theatre, where he had a 2.30 matinée that day.