Must You Go?

by Antonia Fraser

  3 July

  Went to Natasha’s open day at St Mary’s Ascot. I had a good time with the nuns commenting approvingly on Quiet as a Nun, all except Sister Oliver who said: ‘Why are there no intelligent nuns? You had character nuns and Red nuns and mad nuns. But no intelligent nuns.’ She made it clear to whom she was referring, as Sister Oliver is indeed very intelligent.

  9 July

  Dinner at L’Artiste Assoiffé as once we sat planning our new lives two years ago. Me: ‘Leaving aside all the emotional side, I never knew I had it in me to break my marriage. Didn’t know I had the guts.’ Harold: ‘Me too.’ Me: ‘You don’t regret having met me that night?’ (For we had been discussing all the tiny accidents which made the one meeting which changed so many lives so totally.) Harold: ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world.’ Later we sit in the Ladbroke Arms incongruously among off-duty police officers from across the way and think of our future in Campden Hill Square.

  This is the first time Harold said these light words to me – ‘I’m the luckiest man in the world’ – which became a mantra he often repeated. Sometimes I tried responding by quoting Ophelia: about myself sucking ‘the honey of his music vows’ but as Harold was no Hamlet and I was certainly no Ophelia, in the end I took to merely nodding and agreeing. The words remain inscribed on many, many anniversary and birthday cards.

  This particular Diary ended on a very happy note. Before we moved in, however, we took the three youngest children on a holiday to Ireland where we stayed with Thomas and Val Pakenham at Tullynally and Harold’s friend Robert Shaw, new wife and numerous children in the west.

  25 July

  Tullynally Castle, Co. Westmeath. Damian on his first visit to Ireland, merely read The Deep by Peter Benchley and didn’t look out of the window. Exactly the same atmosphere in the great hall, dark and lofty, as there was in the forties when Thomas and I used to come and stay with Uncle Edward and Aunt Christine (my father’s elder brother, whom he succeeded in the Longford title in 1961, while Thomas inherited the property directly).

  Otherwise a ballcock packs up somewhere, flooding the stairs, with Thomas and Val swearing at each other to mend it. Very funny. Oh, Anglo-Ireland! But I do admire Val intensely for the way she copes with all this: huge house, small children, endless guests including hungry relatives and very little help. And Thomas.

  30 July

  Harold has been and gone and it has all been a great success. Except for the flies. It is impossible to exaggerate his hysterical hatred of flies: we nickname him the Moscophobe. Down at the lake: ‘But Harold,’ says Val, ‘these are nice, clean Tullynally flies.’ ‘No, they are not. They’re evil aggressive flies and what is more they are attacking me.’ It was perfectly true; flies know their enemy. Finally he broke and ran like a horse, hooves stampeding, eyes rolling, back to the car, back to Tullynally and the flyless eighteenth-century library, the leather seats, the calm, which he loved.

  But at breakfast the next day when Thomas suggested that Harold might like to count and list all the (mainly eighteenth-century) plays in the library for an article which he, Thomas, is writing, Harold looks politely blank as if Thomas must be talking to someone else.

  5 August

  There are – how many? ten, I think – of Robert Shaw’s children in this house in Galway. Dark vital girls from his first marriage, paler children from his marriage to Mary Ure, and the baby boy with large blue eyes ‘Miss J.’ his present wife has given him, who is handed with love from girl to girl. The house is beautifully set. Water from Lough Mask on three sides. Robert looked magnetically handsome in a green tracksuit matching his green eyes. The trouble was that he had just returned from a fortnight’s tour of Japan and Australia promoting The Deep; this meant that for him day was night and the strain of it all meant that he had a good deal of drink taken. I am beginning to hate drink – not of course to the point of refusing wine myself! although I’m not drinking at lunch. Yet how difficult it is to face the truth of what one drinks oneself while sharply noting it in others. Meanwhile the rain fell softly down. But there were very nice things: the charm of this family, so devoted to each other despite the oddities of parentage.

  Harold went back and I took the children on further west, giving a history lesson about the Cromwellian settlement, the expulsion of the native Irish too late to plant their new crops (and installation of the East Anglian Pakenhams); they burn with generous indignation. On Sunday, heading for the boat to the Isle of Arran, we push through crowds outside churches. Me: ‘What is this heathen rite?’ (As I’ve made no attempt to take them to church, I pretend I don’t recognize its existence. They giggle in a shocked way at my daring.)

  13 August

  52 Campden Hill Square. Here. Very happy. I’ve got a pink study again. And Harold is settling into his study with his own desk and chair, his cricket picture by Guy Vaesen, all he has been allowed from Hanover Terrace. He says it’s enough. In my pink study, I find papers blowing about dated July 1975; a Sleeping Beauty-awakened element to the house.

  27 August

  A Saturday (and I was born on a Saturday). Thank goodness my horoscope in the Evening Standard promises: ‘A Dull Year’. That’s just what I want. Harold gives me an aquamarine necklace and Mummy promises a clematis for the garden I’m about to redo. Now I’m going to start on King Charles. Michael Holroyd, with whom I share a birthday, writes to say that he is going to start on George Bernard Shaw, according to our promise. The first sentence was buzzing in my head yesterday.

  I wrote my Diary much less when I was concentrating on King Charles II, occasionally noting how happy I was, how handsome the children were becoming and so forth. Whatever the continuing difficulties of Harold’s life, we were now secure together. The children went back to school. Two kittens, Rocky and Rowley, arrived, and were welcomed trustingly by Figaro who could not possibly believe they were cats: we would not do that to him. I note that Harold liked Simon Gray’s new play very much and wanted to direct it.

  5 October

  Harold: ‘While we are on the subject’ – we were talking about tax, should we share an accountant, etc. – ‘why don’t we get married?’ Me, in a dubious voice: ‘This is your second proposal.’ Harold, engagingly: ‘No, in fact it’s a return to my old proposal.’ He talks briefly of his period of strain. ‘I got through it because of you.’ Me: ‘What would we get married in?’ Pause. ‘You’re going to say: a Dress.’ We float the idea of New York where we find such contentment and have many friends but no family. In fact I do not imagine there will be any budging on the subject of divorce, so strongly demanded two years ago, now equally strongly denied, from Hanover Terrace.

  19 October

  We were lent Sam Spiegel’s house in Saint-Tropez. Blasting heat. I was able to type outside in a cotton robe and swim three times daily. Also inadvertently went to a nudist beach due to my lack of understanding of taxi driver’s French. I only cottoned on to his lewd jokes along the lines of ‘so you like that kind of thing, madame?’ too late when I got there. Stuck to my modest one-piece. Harold, dressed in black like Masha in The Seagull, read his book on the beach (a biography of Stanley, relevant to Simon’s new play The Rear Column) and never noticed.

  30 October

  A Catholic priest told me: ‘The Church used to take the line that divorced people living with other people were in a state of sin. There’s been a shift. Now we think only God knows who is in a state of sin … It is part of our pastoral care to help them.’ Impressed by this sensible attitude.

  5 November

  Poetry reading of W.S. Graham’s works in the Museum Tavern. Harold, Tony Astbury and Geoffrey Godbert. ‘Sheer Spooner-land,’ said Harold. The dirty upper room in the pub, unemptied ashtrays, wonderful verse. Hire: £3. Audience: two vast old poets, like antediluvian creatures waving their heads above the crowd, John Heath-Stubbs (blind) and David Wright (deaf). Both great poets. I see that people in the poetry world are animated by seriousness and love of the thing. Which mak
es these events so enjoyable.

  27 November

  Harold has begun to write a play: that’s the great news. I think Benjie’s friends crowding into the kitchen at half-term and making a fearful raucous noise, drove him upstairs. What happiness it brings him! He’s quite different.

  The play began with the image of Harold finding out from Michael Bakewell that he, Michael, had long known of Harold’s affair with his wife Joan – from Joan herself. But Bakewell had not let on to Harold when he met him in the role of radio producer. Harold began by saying: ‘I hope Joan won’t mind.’ At the time when I had not of course read the play, I thought she would be flattered. Joan and I got on well and we sometimes lunched together, when she was extremely helpful over my TV presenter heroine Jemima Shore. Harold’s seven-year affair with Joan, as described to me when we first met, was very much an on-off affair with prolonged gaps; it was also complicated by the fact that without Joan’s knowledge (or Vivien’s for that matter) Harold became obsessed with a woman in America whom he described as looking like Cleopatra, so there were many layers of deception. Harold and I, Joan and Jack Emery saw each other from time to time, always pleasant occasions. Harold told me that neither he nor Joan had ever contemplated breaking their marriages. In any case, Harold and I had, and needed to have, an unspoken amnesty where our respective pasts were concerned.

  4 December

  Harold has been reading the play, jokingly called Unsolicited Manuscript, to me. I see that it has completely taken off from the original image, as Harold tells me all his plays do wherever they start. It has become as much about the masculine non-homoerotic friendship, which means so much to Harold, witness his passion for cricket and his affection for cricketers. Harold says he was never particularly close to Michael Bakewell: certainly he’s never mentioned his name in two and a half years, and yet he goes on a lot about his male friends, sees a lot of them, it’s important to him. All the lines about playing squash: more Simon Gray I would guess. Without the twist of the wife. After all, Harold points out, wherever you start, finally a play is rooted in the imagination, is it not? Harold often returns to this theme about which he feel strongly. I notice he resents any effort to link his plays closely to a particular incident in his past, i.e. The Homecoming, sometimes claimed by this person or the other. (Who would want to claim The Homecoming??) I point out that it’s human nature to make these links. He doesn’t accept that.

  The play is very funny, but there is also a lot of pain there. I wonder what its real title will be?

  10 December

  Verity Lambert and I agree on Maria Aitken for Jemima Shore in the TV version to be made by Thames TV. I am thrilled. She comes round for a drink: I know she’ll be superb because she’s naturally starry.

  25 December Christmas Day

  The first Christmas of my life in London. I love it. One’s own home, no journey. I think of my favourite Gerard Manley Hopkins poem, ‘Heaven-Haven’, except that is about a nun finding refuge and I’m more of a Reverend Mother (as my mother used to call me, referring to my organizational powers, not my piety). On that subject we went to Midnight Mass at Westminster Cathedral: nearly three thousand people and no seats by 11.15 p.m. I went to Communion for the first time in three years. It was almost impossible not to because priests rushed at you with wafers. Ah well, perhaps they are carrying out God’s secret will. Home at 1.30 a.m.: Harold still up and slightly inebriated after a reunion with Mick Goldstein from Australia. Children opened their stockings and so did Harold. He was extremely puzzled. ‘Did you give me all this?’ he kept asking. ‘No, Father Christmas did.’ ‘Did you … ?’ He was still examining his stocking with care and still looking baffled the next morning when he was not at all inebriated.

  27 December

  Harold wrote for twelve hours the play he now calls Betrayal. He’s very excited.

  31 December

  Harold finished the first draft of Torcello as it’s now become. I read it and tentatively – very tentatively – suggested one scene was missing (the penultimate scene of the actual play). Harold very cross and went walking rapidly round Holland Park. Came back and wrote the scene. It was brilliant and not at all what I had asked for, of course.

  1978

  1–6 January

  At the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne. I work flat out on Charles II and Harold sits about smoking his Black Sobranies and reading the Guardian. (We work in the same room, for the first and if I have anything to do with it, the last time.) At the end I have finished one chapter of Charles II. Harold has completely redrafted and polished off Betrayal – the name is back again. Names swirled about: now Patrick, Emma and Stephen having been Nick, Ned, Lucy, Jenny to name but a few. (In the end Robert, Emma and Jerry.) We talk endlessly about the play at meals. Harold is keen on Albert Finney for Stephen and I suggest Michael Gambon for Patrick: approved. Harold wonders whether Peter Hall would do it?

  3 January

  My first visit to Mr and Mrs Pinter in Hove. Me: ‘Please warn them how tall I am. People don’t realize who’ve only seen me on TV.’ Mrs Pinter to Harold: ‘Please warn her I haven’t been able to have my hair done because of the New Year.’ Mr Pinter is small and not nearly as fierce as Harold had indicated, in fact he’s extremely jolly, winking at Harold, apparently, behind my back. The flat is extremely cosy, full of well-tended plants. Frances Pinter is quite tall, wonderful long legs, slender, very well turned-out; the hair of course looks beautiful, thick, iron grey; she looks amazingly young for mid seventies. They are perfectly sweet to me, producing the family album – from which I notice, with an interior giggle, all photographs of his marriage which might be thought to distress me or embarrass Harold have been hastily removed. Harold as a baby, round and laughing. But Mrs Pinter confirms that they never had another because Harold was so difficult. ‘No peace for three years. We never went out,’ says Mr Pinter. ‘We tried to go out once, gradually relaxing my fingers from his, tip-toed out. By the time the wife and I reached the street, there was a reproachful little figure standing at the window, holding back the curtains …’

  8 January

  The third anniversary of our meeting. The Harwoods came to supper and Thomas dropped round, unexpectedly, talking about the Boer War when he came and talking about the Boer War when he left (he was writing a book on the subject). His concentration mesmerizes Harold, extending even to the moment when Damian exploded a can of Coke all over his shirt. Thomas talked on while others mopped him up.

  I go forward with Charles II; Harold tinkers with White Wedding (as Betrayal has become) and rehearsals for The Rear Column. Harold also occupies himself refusing to let a single expletive be deleted from No Man’s Land which is being filmed by Granada. As a result, no one knows whether it will go ahead or not.

  27 January

  What a happy morning! Harold brings me proofs of his Poems and Prose. ‘One little thing to show you.’ It is dedicated ‘To Antonia’. Harold is thrilled by the appearance of this book. One should never forget that Harold wanted to be a poet and in many ways sees himself as a poet. He would agree with the order on Shakespeare’s grave which we visited last year: ‘Poet and Playwright’, i.e. poet first.

  Peter Hall rang up and will do the new play at the National. Harold had been oddly nervous about this but perhaps people always are. Peter says it’s a bleak play but I think it’s about the affirmation of love, hence the ending on love, even if it begins with bleakness after the ending of love. This probably says something about Peter’s and my respective situations at the moment.

  31 January

  Harold read that jolly Larkin piece ‘Aubade’ to Tom and Miriam Stoppard and Henry Woolf. (He rushed in and read it to me with great excitement on Xmas Eve when I was in the bath. I thought: ‘So this is what Xmas with Harold Pinter is all about: I have to hear about “unresting death, a whole day nearer now”.’)

  1 February

  Harold told Joan about Betrayal in the Ladbroke Arms. She is ‘in a state of shock’.
He always knew this was going to be quite a meeting. Me, idiotically: ‘Apart from that, did she like the play?’ Harold: ‘That would be like asking Mrs Lincoln the same question.’ I am a fool. Actually I feel extremely sympathetic to Joan over all this while Harold is torn between two desperate emotions, sympathy and the ruthlessness – I suppose that is the word – of the artist. The fact that it has always been so, doesn’t make it any better for Joan now.

  5 February

  Joan now feels better about Betrayal but concentrates her attack on the title. Alison Lurie: ‘You have to have something to betray.’ She means love.

  I wrote Joan a letter giving her my honest opinion that Emma is by far the most honourable character in the play (‘both the men are shits,’ I tell Harold cheerfully) because she at least is prepared to follow through the consequences of her behaviour. Robert and Jerry can’t or won’t.

  But for me, the unique quality of Betrayal was best captured by Samuel Beckett in his note to Harold after he had read the script. He referred to the power of the last scene which is in fact the first scene chronologically, the dawn of the love affair: ‘that first last look in the shadows, after all those in the light to come, a curtain of curtains’. It is that sense of foreknowledge which clutches me with pain every time I see the play.

  23 February

  The Rear Column has opened. Ghastly day. The reviews are terrible (except The Times). Completely unexpected. Simon in despair. Actors numbed. Simon tells actors: ‘All the same, last night was the proudest night of my life.’