by Unknown
Having no Norah has’nt helped much either; this is the first book (No. 7!) I’ve written entirely without her advice; even for ‘West of Sunset’ she was there to read what I had written, even though she did not edit or correct. She did, as a matter of fact, start off correcting this latest effort, now I remember … because I started it ages ago, set it aside because it bored me … and went on with the novel,1 as you will remember.
This time last year you were here and read the two, I seem to remember, or what was ready of the two. And I wondered then which to carry on with .. you suggested the autobiography … and perhaps thats why I went on finally. Sally said, on the telephone today (Sally is my typist you remember) that she found it ‘desperatly sad … but NOT depressing!’ … I don’t quite know what to make of that … but you cant alter the facts of life to suit a book … things happen as they happen and however hard you try to pretend that they DID’NT they bloody well did … and thats the end of it!
Anyway: thats the lot. I never want to write about ME again! Far too boring and far too limiting really. You simply have to stick to the facts and cant fiddle about with them. Well: too much anyway! Someone said, not long ago in some paper, that all autobiography was really only a novel in the end, and to some extent I suppose that this is true. One re-arranges the facts a bit to save time and space .. and condenses the years into a few lines … so in effect one IS novelising ones life.
Anyway I hope that I have covered everyone and everything properly: I must admit that writing about the time when T. was in hospital and you and I went off round the Tate and the National and had lunch at little restuarants and Guinness in The Globe brought it all back pretty vividly!
I had, of course, my detailed Diary to help me .. and there it all is in black and white .. so no one can say it is’nt true!
I have’nt been able to mention EVERYONE in my life! How could I? So there might be some grumpy faces when they read the Index! And I have shoved Rupert2 in among the voices on this terrace, along with Mark and Sarah3 and Brock … to leave him [Rupert] out, although he has never been here, seemed unkind and would have made Gareth (B) sad … because even he hardly gets a mention!
I have seen so little of Gareth and Cilla in my life; is’nt it odd? When you boil it all down we have seldome come together: I mean not like you and I, and George even … the war made a huge difference there I suppose because G. was six when I went off and twelve or thirteen when I came back1 which makes a gap […]
However it’s all done, I’ve called it ‘BACKCLOTH’ after all: there is a new book coming out quite soon called ‘Time and Time Again’1 … so I had to make a change, for that was my original title … and ‘Aunt Kitty’s Room’ as you said, did’nt ‘feel’ right somehow …
I have done fourteen full-page drawings (scribbles really) ranging from Lullington to Raffles Hotel in Singapore, and what I THINK I remember Aunt Kitty’s room to have looked like in West End Lane!
Tote recognised it immediatly! He said that was EXACTLY how he had thought it would have looked .. so I’m reassured. To an extent.
The cover, if they use it, has a super photograph Tote took of me last year repainting the swimming-hole! Just my back and a roller brush and bucket and half the pool fresh brilliant blue and the other faded and crummy … it looks as if I am painting a backcloth; not the Hippo-Pool.
I think they might buy it. They’d be dotty not to.2
Now thats enough of that. I wait here fretting away for the final two chapters to arrive properly typed from Sally … and then I’m almost sure I’ll feel better!
The Atts for dinner last night […] We fed them, naturally, in Attenborough Style. A huge, really big, leek-pie, which Dick had two helpings of, TWO chocolate ice creams with nuts and cream walloped on top, half a round of cheese, lots of bread and butter, figs from the garden and TWO bananas from the greengrocer!
I sat amazed … but could say nothing. Sheila had exactly the same, but one vast portion of leek-pie and not two. We had a bottle of wine, they did rather, and then coffee. Tote and I had finished our supper before they had started! Oh! I forgot .. with the Leek-pie they had my tomato salad mixed with fresh basil, sugar and oregano … and ate it all. We had made enough for our lunch today. No way.
But they are, when they are alone with us here, very relaxed and obviously, one feels, are very fond of us both. We never dry up for conversation and Dick is very un-pompous. EXACTLY what he is NOT in public life. Strange. He’s had a ghastly time with the Americans over his film3 … they have behaved dreadfully badly, as they always do, and summon him back and forth across the Atlantic as if he was an office boy. I dont know how he does it, or why he lets them do it to him … and told him so. He agreed that he was too decent and that his British Manners of fair-play and good humour were out of place in Los Angeles. As I know to my cost!
However off they go on Sunday for two weeks … to fight the battle again. No wonder, really, that they need so much food. They have to keep their energy going somehow … but I do fear the day when he’ll explode!
The weather is still very hot, and we sat out until dinner time on the terrace in flip-flops and tee shirts … and only went in to eat … its cool after the sun has gone behind Indian Hill … but not too cool to have to sit indoors with the door shut. We watched a part of ‘A Star Is Born’ which someone sent us from the U.S .... I say a ‘part’ because it runs for four and a half hours!1 We just did the ‘Born In A Trunk’ piece and it made us all blub … so ended a pleasant evening. Tote in very good form, which was wonderful for me. They dont bore him and they dont tire him … and they know the form, and if he was tired they’d slip off easily. It’s useful.
[ … ] The men are here to finish off the mowing: and in all this heat too … I cant think what the bill will be. Too much anyway .. but perhaps I’ll sell the book? Who can tell .. I’ll have to sell something else otherwise! [ … ]
All my love as ever.
Dirk XXOXX
To Kathleen Tynan Clermont
29 September 1985
Dearest Kath –
I have JUST finished my bloody book: and the void has to be filled somehow [ … ] I’ve also finished my first fillum script … and that was a lot of jokes!
Graham Green’s short story ‘May We Borrow Your Husband’ … which has had five scripts made of it, all failures, I gather. They asked me to play the Observer, always, as you know, the dullest part in any book and especially in a Green book … and I said I would if they could write the part up .... and of course they could’nt, and I said, silly fart, ‘I’ll have a bash then’ … and bashed it off in seven days and wrote myself the longest, DULLEST, BORINGEST, part ever.
They have accepted the script with alacrity … and I’m stuck!
But since it all takes place in Antibes I can at least come home of an evening! Trouble is they cant decide how to pay me: and have become quite bewildered by the idea that they have two Agents to deal with!
[ … ] Weather glorious, as it was when you were here .. and as hot. Which I dont care for .. and it makes it most worrying to know that you are somewhere in the center of [Hurricane] Gloria or whatever it’s called.
Golly! I’d hate to be in N.Y during an emergency … all those swaying buildings and trees flying in Central Park.
I pray you take the greatest care: but of course I wont know until I read it in The Guardian, will I?
We have had a quiet social life since you left: which had to be so because I cant lay tables and wash up and prepare food and write a book. Thats beyond me .. Iris Murdoch can, which irritates me greatly. But she can also write REAL books … her new one, just out, has had super reviews and the girl who typed her Manuscript said it was dreary-dull and 200.000 words long! Try that for size.
The British Consul1 came to lunch yesterday with his wife, April (well .. she’s very nice with it) and we had a happy enough time. He’s young, and what they call ‘dynamic’ and ‘into’ the Arts and April is given to wearing co
tton frocks with brogues, long hair with flowers wreathed through, like a wan Ophelia, and drinks hot water rather than anything else. Which is easy, of course, but a bit tiresome topping up her cup all afternoon … or morning.
David Puttnam and Patsey came over and stayed a whole day because they so hated the ‘Du Cap’ (as the Americans now call the Hotel) and were a glorious bounty. He is FAR too nice to be the Moguel he is!2 I cant understand how it works.
And various others wandered in for meals or drinks and wandered away again.
And now the Season is finally over. The hour went back here last night which is always very unsettling for me … it means that when it’s twelve o’clock by my gut, and a beer is desperatly needed, it’s only eleven o’clock by my watch .. and I have to hang about for an hour … maddening.
Perhaps today I’ll cheat.
I rather dread the coming month because I have to sit for my portrait by a gentleman called David Tindel3 .. who is to ‘do’ me for the National P. Gallery which, as Forwood said dryly, is really joining the Establishment … however as I am in Who’s Who already I see no reason not to hang on the august walls of the N.P.G.
I had to telephone Mr Tindel today in Northamptonshire to ask him how rich he was; because I have to find him local accomodation somewhere … and as the season is over everything possible has closed down until December … which leaves a crummy sort of Car-Motel up the road or an elegant, and costly, Auberge four miles away. He said that the N.P.G would give him ‘a certain amount of money to cover costs’ and when I told him that a taxi to Cannes from the village would set him back thirty quid. ONE WAY. He practically had a seizure.
So I’m going to try and get him into the Motel … which makes him altogether too near for comfort. But it’s all my fault. I should have declined.
He has a nice, roughish, North Country accent .. and is about the same age, I gather, as Hockney … and paints very well indeed. So maybe we’ll get on very well indeed … although I hate ‘sittings’ … the most dreadful torture I can think of at the moment. I cant even drift off into ‘plot-thinking’ because I have’nt any plots drifting about and my Muse, or whoever she is, has drifted off to the Great Wall of China and shows absolutely no signs of returning for a very long time.
Which is depressing.
And that is two ‘driftings’ and one ‘drift’ too many in two lines.
Forwood read the TS of the autobio’ the other day, he always very kindly does this chore, to check if there was anything which might be libellous … and quite enjoyed it but said that he had found one or two split-infinitives.
As I dont KNOW what a split-infinitive is to begin with it makes things a mite uneasy. But I hope Editors will. And do something.
[ … ] The Auberts1 celebrated Brigitts fortieth birthday at some vastly grand hotel in Eze .. naturally we did not go .. Forwood refuses to drive in the dark now … and the mention of a black tie sends me into a trance of terror. But I did send her forty WHITE roses … a sign of virginity, I thought … and as she is heavily married and has two strapping children I thought she’d prefer white to red .. Try and buy a white rose here! They are only grown for wedding ‘bowkays’ or, lowered voice, childrens funerals.
Anyway, at VAST expense, she got her 40 white roses. And the point. So that saved a lot of driving and sitting down to a ghastly dinner for 300 ‘personal guests’ in Eze. What are ‘personal guests’ may I ask? I thought that all guests were personal at a birthday party? Perhaps not. I dont know … and this really is degenerateing into piffle: so I’ll stop immediatly. It was simply to say again how truly lovely it was to be with you again, how lovely you looked, and how good you were to lavish wine upon one. And such wine! I only hope you looted it from what Angela Fox, in her forthcoming book, calls ‘Richardsons Nit De Duke’.2 She has taken all her family to the cleaners in this epic .. and most of her friends … it’ll cause quite a little stir come the Spring.
My love to you as ever ..
Devotedly
Dirk.
To Hélène Bordes Clermont
11 December 1985
Chere Hélène –
A note in great haste and I apologise already!
I have been in London for five whole weeks, it feels like five whole years … while my partner (Forwood) underwent surgery1 and we had a generally dismal and worrying time. I did not get any mail from home (here) because I could not cope in London with illness AND letters … so everything was left in a HUGE pile here until my return … among the pile all your charming little ‘butterflies’ of thought [ … ]
My head is bursting with so much mail (and impots!) to take in, plus bills for Electricity, Gas, Water and idiot Fan Letters from Germany (and England too!)
So this can only be a short ‘contact’ .. We arrived back here last Wednesday night (exhaustedly I watched, with horror, the Louvre!2) and in the early hours of the morning Forwood began to heamorrage badly. (I dont know if this is the correct spelling. But you will cleverly make out what I mean!) [ … ]
He is now in a Clinic in Grasse, recovering, and I am trapped in the house (I cant drive you remember?) and the nightmare which I always dreaded has come about … oh well. Maybe, with luck he’ll be back on Friday … and then starts the long convalescence .. and I cant cook either! God help us all!
The Louvre I found bitterly dissapointing … that idiot woman did all MY talking! I spent months studying the subject, and we were ‘free’ and not like School-Teachers … and suddenly they ‘cut’ all my work and replace it with some stupid voice of a woman speaking EXACTLY as I did NOT want it to be! I wanted it to be alive and amusing. How else do you make ‘stone’ come alive forM. Toutlemond I wonder? And then they dubbed me with a terrible voice … not like mine at all .. and only left in a few of my words … I was very sad.
I agree with you about Charlotte … she is very inexperienced3 .. but we do have a complicity .. and she was so much better in the original work … they cut her pieces dreadfully too … we need never have gone to Paris at all!
The next Episode, on the Flemish Masters, they tell me will be better. I wonder? That comes sometime in January, I think .. I dont know or care now. Madnessssssssss.
[ … ] The film-adaptation of Graham Greene’s short story will start shooting down here, at Cap Ferrat (we have found a hotel which looks like the ‘old Riveria’ there … all the others look like shoe-boxes now!) And I shall be acting again for the Television this time, not the Cinema … my first ever in England.4 I usually only work for TV in the USA because they pay so much more money and guarentee that the films will NEVER be shown in Europe!
I insist on that. And after the debacle of the Louvre you will understand why.
I am typing so badly because I am out of practice, cold, and very weary with trying to cook for me, the dogs, go to the Clinic in Grasse, and keep myself cheerful in the long, dark evenings …
Forwood has been my manager since he first ‘discovered’ me in a small theater outside London in 19381 and became my Agent. After the six years of war, and one disasterous marriage,2 he came to look after my affairs because I could not handle them! Now it looks as if I must reverse the role .. and try to understand my business problems. Not easy for a person like me who only ever worked in cotton-wool, cosseted from the problems, so that I could act or write … it is very different now. And age does not wait! […] I am what we call Next Of Kin and held responsible … which I dont mind at all .. it is not difficult to repay all those years of care, I must return a little which I was given. But this house is so isolated! And I am so awful at cooking (very good at tinned soup!) This depressing little letter is simply to keep in touch … I wont be able to write much until everything has settled down and this huge pile of mail has been sorted. To hell with the autogrammes! To hell with the Charities asking for money … to hell with it all .. plus the impots!
& forgive this terrible typing –
Ever. D.
To Mary Dodd Clermont
&n
bsp; 18 December 1985
Mainie dearest –
I am at a slight loss as to know exactly how you should now be addressed. The Reverand Mrs D … or Mrs D simply .. or what?3
It does’nt much matter anyway: I’ll still write Mrs J. D. on the envelope and etiquette has to go to hell.
I’m writing because Coz gave me your letter, and card, to read, and then went off to bed … not BECAUSE of your card and letter; but because he had foolishly thought that he’d have a ‘little lay down’ on the sofa, rather than, as I insist, he did ‘a Churchill’, and got into bed. He got into bed.
He’s progressing slowly. It’s not been easy; but then he only left the bloody Clinic a week ago tomorrow … so he’s bound to be ‘fragile’ and a bit wonky .. not in the head (although that counts too!) but in the legs and things … he simply wont come to terms with the fact that he’s had TWO op’s in less than six weeks .. and lost a fifth of his blood during the gay little hemmorage (sp?) last Thursday at four am. I ASK you! What are you supposed to DO at that hour. It’s only three am in London, no Doctor would reply (or did!) and the body is at it’s lowest ebb. Mine was. I jolly quickly got pulled together and dealt with things as best I could … and our good young Doctor in the village pulled on his (v. chic) sweater and jeans and tore up … and frankly saved your Coz’s life … he had half an hour to ‘go’. The bladder was full and about to burst … (I DO hope you’ve had Christmas by this time?) When I eventually spoke to our smart Sloan Street Dr he advised that I should force him to drink ‘gallons of water, and it’ll soon clear.’ Had I done so we’d all have clear’d and Coz would have been a gonner. I have to reconsider Doctors … it’s all a bit like ‘The Citadel’ (too young, you are … but it was Cronin’s best book, and a terrible fuss was caused.)
