by Unknown
Broken all the rules dear. Audrey Hepburn and I once compared notes and burrowed in our mutual shame.
But I have not drifted. You may have .. often have in fact. Dont you remember? You used to get weary of one, and just dribble away .. it was absolutely understood. Understandable. After Laddo or Ludo or wherever it was,2 there was a singing silence. One did’nt hear a sound for years. And then muffled ones from a Post Office .. and then more silence mixed up with gardening hints … and then little siren calls from Cricklewood.
And to the pictures, yet! No. We have’nt drifted. It’s the normal course.
And sadly, really sadly, I dont do ‘evenings’ now, only ‘matinees’.
I am usually sodden with drink (That is a VAST EXAGGERATION, but I liked the phrase) by seven o clock, and, apart from that I am to be found correcting a MS. Now that I am a writer and no longer act, nor ever will, I practice hard and daily.
My auto out Oct. 7th … when is yours? Collision course? Fun.
I’m on a novel now .. sequel to the last because people rather liked the Downs Syndrome child and the wayward nine year old.
I am going to dump the D.S one, too much trouble, and the wayward one is about to be ten (easier to cope with dialogue wise). The trouble is that I tend to haunt the school queue hurrying to and from Hill House,1 trying to guess height and age.
I’ll be arrested ere long ..
Sorry about the 29th .. a rain check? And my melianthus is cut hard back every November (black flies and white!) and flourishes madly in a fearfully pretty terracotta classic pot which cost £45. So you are tended with loving care daily... I ruffle your feathers and lift your skirts (signs of black fly) and drench copiously with libations of Gromore.
Drifting? Drifted?
Tosh.
With my love
Dirk
Just back from Hay.2
That was huge fun! D
To Daphne Fielding Cadogan Gardens
13 September 1993
Dearest darling one –
Oh what a groan of relief when your fat little missive arrived this morning. I was a titchy bit worried .. but I do fidget rather, and then realised that you’d probably be a bit busy what with Summer and all. Not that there was much summer, really. But I thought you’d be a bit Social. Well: more social than usual. I mean I have taken it on board that you cant dash about and that you have to have a minder, and all .. knew that. But, you know, sometimes one lets time slip past so quickly, and then the weeks become months. Nearly did call you actually. Paddy [Leigh Fermor] was in Town for an ’op. I saw it in the paper. He was at Sister Agnes (Edward VII) so I called and he said to come and see him so I did. With some ‘splits’ of Bollinger, and he was prone on his poor back, but jolly with it. He wanted, on some wild impulse, to telephone you from his bed and we’d all have a gay old chat. But, knowing your situation, I stayed his eager hand and said that perhaps we should’nt call. Just on spec. out of the blue and all that. He [ … ] shuffled off back to Greece shortly afterwards. He wrote a sweet note of Thanks, and said it really was’nt much fun haveing op’s at his age, and that he felt distinctly woozy and hoped he’d make the trip. I gather that he must have? There was an angry letter from him in the Spectator about something. Cant remember what. But a long, furious, Paddy Thing.
You know?
Now .. I have finished ‘A Short Walk From Harrods’. It comes out next month. An extract in the ‘Saturday Telegraph’ and a long promotional tour to follow. Leeds (!) Norwich, Eastbourne Brussels Antwerp .. and so on. I’m buying myself a new frock for the occasion. Now that I am up to all these ‘Shows’ I have to look proper. No open neck shirts and Literary-Style-Jeans and blousons for moi. Hacketts and Hermes. Very expensive but worth while. With my face steadily dissolving into sags and wattles, wearing a decent suit and good shoes does rather take the beady eyes off ones deficiencies. I am collecting a mass. Alas!
I’ll send you off a copy when I go into the Office (Viking) on Wed. I dont know what you’ll think of it: I cut out most of the really bad bits but people still groan and weep and say how-awful. But it was, it always is, is’nt it? However, I have tried to amuse the reader as well. You will, doubtless, tell me! Did you hear me reading ‘Great Meadow’?
Rather early of a morning. During the Recess (apparently peak time) it was very popular thank God, and lots of Elegant Ladies in the Cadogans cried out to me in the street; was’nt that nice? I am glad you liked ‘JERICHO’ … very well abridged, I thought, he’s a nice old chap1.… (Younger than me!) and looks rather like a Don. Probably is. He does all my bukes. I am now ‘¾’ of the way into the sequel! ‘A Period of Adjustment’, I am finding it rather fun, difficult to do, to write a seperate book with already established characters. Each book has to ‘stand on it’s own’ so to speak. But it does keep me close to my beloved France. Well: our part of it anyway. The Var, and Garde and a bit of the Alpes Maritime. Trouble is, I find that I forget, or am slowly beginning to, so many once familiar things. And it is only six years ago that I had to come back with Tote. Five since I’ve lived in this appartment. Amazing …
A busyish time for me, this summer. People come over from the States, so that means lunches and so on .. and Tide comes up every month now to have a three day ‘spoil’. Which means long chatter on the lines of ‘ … and do you remember the awful mole-skin travelling rug that Mummy WOULD wrap round herself when the hood was down? And how simply AWFUL it was when you almost cut off your index finger with the axe trying to open MY money box... ’ Well: my dear. You can imagine. Senility calls us. However […] she’s enjoying being a widow with champagne and little bottles of Floris scent.
My brothers’ middle son Rupert, who lives near Perpignon, had a quite ghastly experience this summer. His wife was declared clinically mad, schizo .. and was locked up in a very nice place. They could’nt keep her there indefinatly, and stuffed her with pills and a strict routine, and let her go. One morning (they have two adorable boys neither of them spoken to by her for two years!) she ran barefoot from the house, got in the car, drove away. No papers, no money, nothing. A fearful crash on the road to Narbonne .. she, wounded but walking, was helped to a house where she knelt on the ground and begged the farmer to shoot her because she was mad and wicked and would harm her children if he did not. A good French farmer, he called the police, but she had scarpered into the hills. And has not been seen since! Rupert arrested under suspicion (at the start) the police searched every leaf and blade of grass, my poor bro’ rushed to his son, I ransacked my bank, we all did what we could and we ALL said ‘This does’nt happen to people like us! It’s the sort of thing you read in the tabloids!’. Silly asses. It has happned to us. So. Rupert is now at liberty, has appealed on TV asking for help, huge rewards offered for info. Silence. And this was in early May. The police, and the Army (!) say we must wait until the Hunting Season starts. Someone will probably find her. For the moment that is that. Wow. As they say.1
[ … ] Really! Ones families .. what a problem they turn out to be. I thought I’d be safe from all that. But not at all. I’m the only one who is earning lolly. Naturally enough … and like you I am constantly being sought for advice by the children who dont want ‘Mum and Pa to know ..’ Useful, tiring, but at least one is wanted. I think?
I liked the Partridge2 very much indeed. Read all her books .. did’nt care for some of the early stuff. ‘Pacifists War’ and so on, but I have never cared for Pacifists much. Even though I am sure they have a point! Has’nt ever worked, mind you. Hence Bosnia et al. Now wallowing, no other word will do, in Nancy M’s letters. ‘Love From Nancy’3... they are so good and funny … must be read in little gulps. Not taken all together.
[ … ] Glad you liked the ladies on your card. I rather thought you might .. very elegant and lean, just like you! Bon chic, bon genre! Red boots notwithstanding. I’m off to make myself some risotto and then go to Hacketts for a fitting. Then hunt through books for suitable ‘pieces’ to read to the Belgian
s on the 1st. Thank you for you[r] acres of love poppies and daisies … moon ones … and this comes with great ropes of sweet peas and honeysuckle to drape around your slender body ..
Always all my love ..
Your devoted
Dirk xxxx
P.S. Stood behind F. Partridge at the check-out in – Partridges! Doughty Lady indeed! D.
To Daphne Fielding SW3
19 October 1993
Dearest Daph/Field –
I have been banging about doing Book Promotion; all kinds of places from Cheltenham to Leeds. Ghastly nerves to start with, always, but as soon as I hit the stage I’m fine. And Audiences are SO good and loving and make it all appear effortless! Then, after I have read a few bits and pieces and answered all the questions which they pose (usually this takes 1 to 2 hours) I settle down and sign books for them. As I now have 11 in paperback this can take AGES! But it’s good for sales. Not Margaret Thatcher Stuff, but not bad .. and I jumped to No 2 on the Best Seller List in the first week. I’ll probably drop now that she is published,1 and Terry-Awful-Waite2 was No 1. I cant think why? He makes me feel utterly creepy. Odd.
So your loving and lovely letter went unanswered but not un appreciated because you know how much I value your opinion. Especially as you were so close for so long. I am happy that people who knew and loved him [Tony] have said as you have said, that I have set him down on paper just as he was. I suppose, after all those years, I should have known his ‘voice’ but it is not the same thing as writing it down and bringing him alive again. I think, hope and pray, that I did that.
The reviews have been enormously gratifying .. not one snide or beastly one. At least, YET! There is still time, alas.
[ … ] I have been waiting for a man to come and do the ‘grouting’ on my terrace … the recent rains have started to see[p] through the cracks in the tiles into the sitting room of the German lady in the flat below. She’s been very polite about it, but wants to know, ‘Pleeze, ven I ken put paint to my ceilink?’ I have to tell her to wait for the British Worker to arrive when he says he will, and she sighs a heavy sigh because [ … ] she knows the British Worker as well as I do. Anyway: he’s arrived now. An hour late .. and gone to park his van.
So that’ll be another hour I suppose.
I have to go and be guest of Honour at a very big gathering at the RAC Club tomorrow. The Booksellers Association have invited me! I am chuffed with delight. They actually chose me as their Guest of Honour instead of M. Thatcher! I have to speak to them about the wickedness (in my view) of the probable imposition of VAT on books! The Press will be present .. so I have to watch my step. I dont at all approve of writers/actors involving themselves in politics, but on this occasion I feel that my career is being threatened along with a great many other people .. and all the un-told hundreds of young who WANT to write. And all this quite apart from the terrible price it will put on learning. Will they tax school books? How do they define what a school book IS? I had to read Scott at school … some kids now read Jane Austin today: some even read me for GSCE or whatever that stands for (GCSE? Does that look better? I dont know) .. I just know that £15.951 is too much for most people today … so with VAT on top of that it’ll be ‘night night darling’ to us all.
As soon as this Promotion business is over I can get down to my book again, the sequel to ‘JERICHO’ … it’s rather fun to write in a sort of ghastly way. I find that my people have rather taken me over and do exactly, and precisely, what they want. I just have to write it all down. I decided that my hero, William, was in danger of becoming very dull and unattractive. So I arranged for him to meet, unexpectedly, a lady from Louisiana called Loulou de Terrehaute. And she rapes him! It so shattered my beloved (young) Editor who was reading the last pages on the Tube to work, that she went red in the face and was quite shattered to think that someone might read it over her shoulder. I asked if she had found it offensive? Perhaps I’d better trim it a bit? But she screeched, and said ‘No! Dont touch it .. it’s amazing ..’ I have fearful thoughts of her rather worthy, but quite pretty, young husband being tied up to the four-poster tomorrow!
So … I have dipped my fingers into violent sex. I’m amazed that I even knew how … golly whiz …
Tomorrow is the speech to the Booksellers, then a couple of trips about the place and I end up in Eastbourne, all sold out, and then do a final evening at the Olivier in November. Also sold out!
Then back to work.… I have finished Nancy M. (all I could bear to read. I chucked it when she started to get ill. Had quite enough of all that, thanks.) and started on the autobiography of my mate Penelope Mortimer.2 Once married to John Mortimer. I rather pushed her to write this because, two years ago, she was terribly low and could not think of what to do .. she’d also had a nasty op. for lung cancer .. I thought that to bash away at her autobiography (she’d already done one half some years ago) would be amusing and good for her.
Well. I’m not easily shocked but, God almighty, I really got a fright when I read her epic. Due out in a few days time and she’ll be hung or hanged. It is the cruellest book I think I have ever read about a failed marriage. She spares no one. Neither herself or, above all, her wretched ex-husband, John. It is shattering. I heard myself say, aloud, ‘Oh no! No you cant write that down ..’ but .... she has.
Silly of her. It’s a revenge thing I suppose, and she claims that she and John are now both old and not easily hurt. Much! It’s the children I am sorry for … the spite and cruelty are really too much .. I dont at all reccomend it to you. Clever, brilliant writing, but far far too personal. How odd that someone who is sensitive as a writer should be so hideiously insensitive about her own life. I do get fussed and saddned. I had a bit of a struggle composing my letter of ‘thanks’ to her. But the critics will have a field day next week … unless I am very much mistaken: and I think not.
The sun is fading, the air chilling … it’s been the most lovely day in London, a sort of Provence/Var day .. clear sky, aching blue, still and hot in the sun. How I miss what you call our ‘lost fairylands’.
Bacchus got moved about today while the chap was grouting. God! He’s so heavy! But there he stands, eating his bunch of grapes and stareing through the October trees towards Peter Jones. He IS a comfort.
I must seal this, correct it first,1 then troll over to the post box across Sloane Street. You might get it tomorrow morning if I catch the five o clock post.
It comes, anyway, with acres and acres of lush love .. as always ..
Your very devoted chum
Dirk XXXX
To Brian McFarlane2 Cadogan Gardens
29 October 1993
Dear Brian –
I am writing this in a gap between plumber and the builder! Somewhere a pipe is leaking and no one quite knows where. Somewhere under the fitted-carpet.
I give up. And hasten to use the time away from my proper work by replying to your kind letter of the 23rd.
How amusing that you have seen ‘Singer’ AND ‘Libel’. I really do think that the latter was the most awful tosh … it felt like it at the time and it was, if you please, ‘a replacement movie’3 for the destroyed ‘Lawrence Of Arabia’ called, at that time, ‘Ross’.
I still dont know why it was cancelled at the last moment … two weeks from shooting in the desert! I only knew that we had to find a new project quickly and to use the Crew we had already hired.
‘Libel’ was ready, had been discarded, got re-written fifty times and finally got made. No one was happy. But Olivia [de Havilland] secured MGM money and so we had to ‘go’ for the thing. I had to wash my hair daily on account of the silver paint in my hair, and the make-up for No 3 or 9 or whatever he was called,1 took four hours to apply, and ages to shoot because I had to change and go back onto the same set as quite another person. It was all chaos and I cant be sure that anyway one ever saw it! It was adapted from an old play written, and hugely successful, in 19222 … I was a year old. So you can tell how it creaks!
‘Singer’ WOULD have been alright except for the idiot casting of Mills as my, and Mylene’s,3 dream-boat! I ask you! Originally was to be Paul Newman .. but he rightly turned it down. Then I refused Burton, then with only one picture to do with Fox who offered him ‘cheap’ for £25.000. They wanted shot of him. I did’nt want a failed Star and said ‘No’. He later got shoved into ‘Cleopatra’ when [Peter] Finch quit … But when I knew it was to be Mills I got into the leather gear and camped it silly. In desperation. We sold ten thousand pairs of leather pants in the first month of it’s release in London alone!
I recently took part in a documentary (four part) for Channel 4 TV called ‘Hollywood-UK’ .. which was goodish. About the British Cinema from ’50–66. I did’nt have much to do … but there were good clips from Darling and The Servant and so on … and too much on that daft Terence Stamp who really could’nt act his way out of a paper bag […] However it covered the period and many of the films about which you are writing. They were interesting years.
[ … ] ‘Great Meadow’ has been on the B/S list for some weeks in p/b .. and I recorded it for the BBC … which was fun. It was the easiest book I have ever written but the hardest to convince my Publishers it was worth printing! Luckily I prevailed, and they agreed and it has been a big success. TWO books on the b/s list in the same weeks is rather a pleasant feeling. I am very glad that I have totally pulled out of the Movies and acting all together. I dislike the Cinema today so much … and most of the people in it! Never even go to a Movie and hardly ever watch TV … it’s a forgotten time for me. No. Never went to Africa for ‘Simba’. I was cast long after they did the second unit casting! The double was eight foot tall with white hair and was a hunter! God knows how we managed … if we did!
