Speaking of Jerusalem, I remember how those of my fellow poets who’d not been to Israel before found it hard to believe that the glittering toy façade they looked down on from the Intercontinental Hotel was indeed the walled old city of Jerusalem. And when we were led through the old city by the writer and guide Yehuda Ha’ezrachi to the Temple Mount, to the Mosque of Omar, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to the old Jewish Quarter – even when the city’s ghosts and associations had been lovingly recalled for us, even then the spell of unreality remained. Only later, when Ted, Carol, Dannie and I returned to wander the alleys and colourful bazaars and we were treated to a truly oriental display of bargaining by the lively Mrs Hughes, did the place take on some vestige of reality. (Amusingly, in Acre a few days later, Ted tried to match his wife’s performance, and when quoted £10 for a set of Turkish coffee cups offered £5. ‘Ah, so you want to bargain,’ came the fast reply. ‘OK, £20.’) I couldn’t help thinking back to the first time I’d looked down at the old city, in 1960, where Jordanian soldiers manned the walls, their rifles glistening in the sun. It was enemy territory then that could not be entered, but now we were free to wander there and when, guided by Yehuda Amichai, we returned for one last visit, Ted startled us as we came out of the Mosque of Omar by throwing himself full length on the ground and intoning into a metal grille beneath him, ‘Dark, dark, dark.’ He seemed to be trying to summon some kind of spirit from its depths. Then, rising, he held up his hands, proudly displaying the marks the grating had made on them, as if they were some kind of mystical sign.
Just as unreal as Jerusalem was an early morning drive through Galilee to Lake Tiberias (the Sea of Galilee), where several of us decided to swim, right by the remains of the ancient synagogue at Capernaum. It was February and the water was cold. ‘No wonder Jesus walked on the water,’ declared Dannie as he plunged bravely in. In nearby Nazareth, in the Basilica of the Annunciation, the traditional site of Joseph and Mary’s home, our guide rounded on Ted and Carol for holding hands (as honeymooners do), shouting, ‘This is no place for love!’ ‘Maybe not,’ whispered the ever-ready Enright, ‘but I know a handy cowshed.’ After that, we drove swiftly south through the desert down to the Dead Sea, where Carol Hughes and I and one or two of the others swam again, or tried to – not swimming but floating, as Stevie Smith might have put it. Then, finally, we reached Masada, where we stood in silent awe, trying to imagine the dramatic events that had unfolded there. I recalled how vividly David Kossoff had described these in his book, The Voices of Masada. It was a windy day, and I have several photos of us standing on the summit’s edge, as in a school photo, our hair wild in the breeze. On these journeys, Ted and I discovered that we shared a passion for the freshly squeezed orange juice that was invariably sold at the roadside stalls, and we raced to be first out whenever we stopped for a break. Messrs Porter and Enright, however, seemed to prefer the ice-cold Goldstar beer. Their thirst and their energy seemed unquenchable, and long after most of us had fallen into an exhausted silence on the way back from here or there, they’d continue their sparkling double act at full blast, whether talking about literature, the Bible, music or whatever. No wonder a pale Dennis Enright came down to breakfast one morning saying, ‘I feel like the Six Day Whore.’
Peter Porter cautiously leads Dannie Abse, me and Yehuda Amichai into the freezing waters of Lake Galilee.
It wasn’t just the beer, though. There were so many lunches and parties – before and after the readings. In Jerusalem, there was a lunch for us at the spectacularly situated Hebrew University, and in the evening the city’s famous mayor, Teddy Kollek, hosted a cocktail party where one of the guests was the Irish-born Chaim Herzog, who was later to become the country’s sixth president. Knowing that at one time this lively and genial man had been head of Israel’s military intelligence, I put on my publisher’s hat for a moment and tried to engage him in a conversation about Wolfgang Lotz, but the shutters went down in a flash and the subject was swiftly changed! Another evening we were invited for drinks at the home of the British Council’s director in Israel, who lived in Herzliya, now a rather affluent seaside suburb of Tel Aviv, where Carole and I had received the summons from Ben-Gurion six years earlier. After the British Council reception we found ourselves whisked to a lovely house where an enormous spread awaited us. The party had been arranged by the owners on spec and in the hope that they could lure Ted there. This was confirmation, if any were needed, of Ted’s fame and the regard in which he was held. That became yet clearer later that evening when the doorbell rang and a man, a little the worse for drink (doubtless he’d been at the earlier party), entered with his young son. He told us he’d been going from house to house looking for Ted, whom he greatly admired. It was the novelist Lionel Davidson, the award-winning author of such bestselling books as The Rose of Tibet and A Long Way to Shiloh, at whose quaint home in Hampstead Village Carole and I had spent several pleasurable evenings. He seemed to revere Ted, sitting rather embarrassingly at his feet, asking him questions. Ted had no idea who he was until Dannie tactfully explained, and next day I showed him a display of Davidson’s books in a shop window. It had been a bizarre visitation.
Generally, we were driven in small, air-conditioned ‘executive’ coaches, but sometimes we found ourselves in spacious taxis that accommodated us all. That was always an experience, for Israel’s taxi drivers must be among their country’s most volatile citizens, high-wire artists and clowns rolled into one. The show had started on the way from the airport to our hotel when our driver turned and announced solemnly, ‘The last poet I drove around Israel was Mr Priestley.’ They drove as though practising for a dash to the Suez Canal, and when a back door flew open on a Jerusalem bend our numbers might well have been reduced had not Ted grabbed hold of Dannie and pulled him back into the car. They all told involved stories, talked sadly about their sons in the army and the tensions of living in a country surrounded by enemies, and sang – and wouldn’t you sing if, as one driver claimed to have done, you’d once performed with Gigli at the Scala Milan? ‘Mirage,’ boomed another proudly as a plane swooped low over our heads. It had seemed real enough to me!
Jerusalem line-up (left to right): D. J. Enright, Dannie Abse, Carmi, Peter Porter, me, Ted Hughes, Charles Osborne and Yehuda Amichai (front).
That whole extraordinary trip might have seemed like a mirage were it not for the photos, posters and programmes I still have, and for the friendships that endured long after some of those mementos began to fade. But for all that, it was marvellous to be home and to share it all with Carole. A month or so later, the Arts Council held an event in London at The Place, at which we were all invited to read and share our experiences of Israel with the audience, and then Ted and Carol came to us for dinner. That was a warm and relaxed evening as we sat in the kitchen looking at photos and reminiscing. My Carole had been at the Theatre Royal when Ted first read at a poetry and jazz concert, so she was prepared for the power of his personality, but not perhaps for his gentleness and the consideration he displayed that night. However, I know she felt and still remembers the hypnotic power of his eyes. A few months later, in June, Carmi and Yehuda Amichai came to London to participate in Poetry International, the festival Ted had founded, and we gave a small party at home. It was gratifying to be able to return just a little of the hospitality we had received.
16
UP AND RUNNING
Back in a fairly grey London, it took me some time to get the excitement and buzz of the reading tour out of my system and buckle down to the daily publishing routine. I kept in touch with the others, with whom a kind of bond seemed to have been formed. Shortly after, Dennis Enright gave up his job at Chatto & Windus, where he’d been working as a literary adviser, to become literary editor of Encounter magazine, and I was delighted when he got in touch asking me to write for the magazine and to send him a few new poems. I wasn’t sure, when we chatted in Israel, that the intellectual Dennis was really cut out for the commercial world of
publishing, but he’d amused me by recalling that on arriving at Chatto, Norah Smallwood, the company’s grande dame, had told him it was important for him, as a publisher, to attend as many memorial services as possible. I can’t imagine that this was part of the original job description, though Dennis had a mournful streak that it might well have appealed to.
David Kessler and Frank Cass now seemed close to some form of marriage, though knowing K’s cautious nature and discovering in due course that Cass was one of the world’s great procrastinators, it was a show that could have run for some time. Later, Frank boasted to me that at school he’d been able to stay at the wicket all day without scoring, but in truth I never saw any evidence that he’d ever wielded a cricket bat. Eventually, however, a deal was struck, though I never knew its exact nature, and we upped sticks (to use a favourite Kessler phrase) and moved from the JC offices to the Frank Cass offices in Great Russell Street. From time to time, K would join us for the occasional meeting, so he must have retained some interest in the company. The list had really been growing, and the finance had to come from somewhere.
I got on well with Frank, and it was clear that he was thrilled to be entering the world of general publishing and by the prospect of meeting authors, especially if they were personalities. He had a small team of exceptional editors – Elizabeth Rose, Ursula Owen (who amidst much else was to become, with the formidable Carmen Callil, a founder director of Virago – two dazzling stars in the publishing firmament) and Jim Muir, who came with a first-class Cambridge degree in Arabic and eventually moved to Beirut, becoming the BBC’s award-winning Middle Eastern correspondent. Frank welcomed me into their editorial meetings, and it took me a while to realise that he’d only go ahead with the specialised academic titles he’d announced once he had sufficient orders on file. Sensible man! I also began to see that he frustrated his highly intelligent editors by prevaricating and using all kinds of diversionary tactics to avoid being pinned down. They, however, were never slow to speak their minds and to force matters when necessary. For all this, the Cass list was an impressive one and included a number of academic journals, each with a distinguished editor. He was an astute man with a real love and knowledge of books acquired from his bookselling days.
Frank’s invaluable right-hand man was Michael Zaidner, a top-flight accountant. Frank kept up a jovial front at all times, generally leaving Michael to deal with any unpleasantness that might arise. They were a good double act. I liked Michael and appreciated what a hard job he had containing Frank’s flights of fantasy and his Billy Liar approach to life. A disagreeable aspect of my first few months chez Cass was that Guy Meyers came to feel there wasn’t a place for him, and left. Apart from the fact that he was an accountant and Michael Zaidner controlled the financial side of things, being Kessler’s son-in-law must have made things awkward for Guy, and perhaps for the others too, for I sensed that Frank was wary about K knowing too much about his affairs. But maybe that was just my own projection. Guy was always very decent, and the whole episode made me feel extremely uncomfortable.
What quickly became clear as the list expanded was that I needed an assistant and, thinking back to my Aldus Books days, I approached Carolyn Fearnside, who had worked there as personal assistant to one of the directors, and after some thought she agreed to join us. Carolyn was efficiency itself – organised, painstaking, thorough – all the things I wasn’t. She also spoke German and was knowledgeable and passionate about classical music; her skills were later to prove invaluable. Looking back now at the editorial minutes, I realise that I managed to slip through titles K would never have thought right for Vallentine, Mitchell. These included Great German Short Stories edited by Stephen Spender, Great English Short Stories edited by Christopher Isherwood, and a book of Irish short stories too – part of a series I’d picked up at Frankfurt. The Jewish Classics series had expanded, and there were some quirky titles too, a favourite of mine being The Life and Crimes of Ikey Solomons, a Victorian underworld character on whom Dickens was said to have based Fagin. And then there was the dynamic Wolf Mankowitz, a man of so many parts it would require a special kind of superglue to hold them together. Sadly, Wolf is probably unknown to the younger generation, but in those days he was very much at the centre of the film and theatrical world, a wild cannon who fired in many directions – playwright, scriptwriter, director, novelist and the world expert on Wedgwood china. An odd mix. At Cambridge, Wolf had won the respect of the legendary F. R. Leavis, but he could not be academically contained. His most famous books (both made into films starring David Kossoff) were A Kid for Two Farthings and The Bespoke Overcoat. He also wrote the musical Expresso Bongo (the film version starred Cliff Richard and Laurence Harvey), the script for the The Millionairess, the West End musical Pickwick (in which Harry Secombe ‘ruled the world’), and the screenplay for the James Bond film Casino Royale. He was one of the original investors in the left-wing Partisan Coffee House and part-owner of the Pickwick Club in Piccadilly, and as if that weren’t enough, in 2010 files that came into the public domain revealed that for ten years after the war MI5 had suspected him of being a communist agent and kept him under surveillance. His many famous friends included Orson Welles, Topol, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. A man for all seasons, indeed.
While at Vallentine, Mitchell, I published Wolf’s play The Samson Riddle, and to launch it he arranged a rehearsed reading at the prestigious Gate Theatre as part of the 1972 Dublin Theatre Festival (Wolf had gone to live in Ireland, which had tax advantages for writers). What’s more, in typical Wolf style, he’d somehow persuaded Miriam Karlin and Susannah York to take part in it. Carole and I flew over for the Sunday performance, and Frank and Michael Zaidner and their wives joined us. As it was our first time in Dublin, we made the most of it, walking the city and loving its Joycean atmosphere. After the play, which was well received, Wolf and his psychologist wife Ann gave a party at their stylish home.
I hadn’t really encountered Miriam Karlin since the days of my parents’ soirées, when, as a young boy, I’d peered through the banisters, not wanting to leave the party and go up to bed. Since then she’d become extremely well known for her role as the shop steward in the TV series The Rag Trade with her ‘Everybody out!’ catchphrase. She’d also appeared opposite Laurence Olivier in the film adaptation of John Osborne’s The Entertainer. That night in Dublin she surprised me by revealing that only a year or so earlier my father had come to her rescue when she was offered the part of Catlady in the film A Clockwork Orange, for she had a phobia of cats, and in the film they would be crawling all over her. The prospect terrified her, but she was able to go through with it after my father had treated her by hypnosis, and she was for ever grateful. It was a year or so before Carole and I saw that frightening film, along with our friends Andrea and Jeremy Morris, at the Gaumont State Cinema in Kilburn. I’d seen some of the American jazz greats performing there in my younger days, but though their music was thrilling it was a rather different kind of thrill from the one we experienced that night, sitting on the edge of our seats in the circle as the film reached its violent climax. Afterwards, the lights still dim, Carole and Andrea followed the audience to the exit while Jeremy and I walked slowly to the toilets at the back of the circle to relieve ourselves and the tension. As we were winding up (or, more exactly, zipping up), we heard a disturbing noise behind us, and looking round saw a large man by the door, whirling a chain in the air. With the film still filling our minds, we both had the same thought, and raced without a word past the intimidating man and down an emergency staircase – Jeremy running so fast that he stumbled and broke a collarbone. When we sent for the manager we were told the man was just waiting to lock up, and Jeremy’s painful complaints fell on unsympathetic ears.
Wolf Mankowitz was always fun to be with, and in due course after we’d started Robson Books, Carole and I returned to Dublin to talk to him about various projects, one of which was a book of original fables, The Day of the Women and the Night
of the Men, for which he co-opted Charles Raymond as illustrator. I think Wolf liked the idea that in addition to being a protégé of Augustus John and winner of several awards, Raymond had illustrated the mega-selling The Joy of Sex (not for us, alas). Some of the drawings in our book turned out to be a great deal sexier – Raymond gave me several, which I must confess are not on display on our walls (I can hear the questions they’d provoke from our grandchildren and am not sure I’d know the answers!).
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