Must You Go?: My Life With Harold Pinter
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My heart is not a beat away from you
You turn, and touch the light of me.
You smile and I become the man
You loved before, but never knew
It ended:
You turn, and touch the light of me.
You smile, your eyes become my sweetest dream of you.
Oh sweetest love,
My heart is not a beat away from you.
This was the short one:
I know the place
It is true.
Everything we do
Connects the space
Between death and me,
And you.
It subsequently became a favourite poem of Harold’s to mark this stage in our lives and he often recited it. However, when the poems arrived on the pale banana-coloured paper of the Peninsula Hotel, I protested about the comma after ‘me’ which divided us and left him on the side of death and it was eliminated (although not put immediately after ‘death’ as I wanted!).
He really seems mad with love. Diana Phipps, my confidante, on the telephone: ‘What happens when he asks you to pack your bags?’ Me: ‘He won’t. That’s the great thing. He isn’t a marryer. He has been married as long as I have.’ Diana: ‘Don’t count on it.’
In spite of that, thank God, she is wrong. Our relationship is more likely to bust out of passion because he won’t be able to bear it, not at that level anyway. His love letters, leaving aside the poems, are extraordinary. From time to time he writes in his large, clear unmistakeable handwriting: ‘I’m calm. Calm.’ and then he bursts out again, now with a big love letter, now with a poem – an extravagant poem, accompanied by a note: ‘This came out of the lonely middle of a desperate night thousands of miles from you, your image thudding in my skull. Don’t be alarmed by it.’
24 February
Kevin Billington came round, thanks to Hong Kong calls ad infinitum, and we had an extremely intense conversation; beginning of course with much embarrassment as up to that point we were friendly but not close. ‘It’s very serious for Harold,’ he said and added: ‘I speak as Harold’s friend and not because of our family relationship.’ Me: ‘It’s quite different for me … I haven’t known anything like this before or perhaps once years ago but ever since I have tried to guard myself.’ Kevin: ‘I’m very glad.’
25 February
Drink with Edna O’Brien at her request. She looked like a beautiful fortune-teller in her shawl by the fire, me her client. ‘He’s much enraptured,’ she said. Then: ‘I’m glad this is happening to him. Last summer when he was writing No Man’s Land in that cottage I almost thought – well,’ she hesitated. ‘He says he was waiting for death,’ I replied.
28 February
The last call from Hong Kong. No more contact for the next week. But lots of poems have arrived on the banana-coloured hotel paper. I keep them in a clutch in my handbag and read and reread. One of them is the strongest love poem I have ever received.
Harold came back, with Vivien, on 10 March. He was in a terrible state when I didn’t answer my telephone, also when I did. Explained later it was jet lag edging on panic that he had lost me.
11 March
Everything is now all right. But first I went to the Memorial Service for the murdered Ethiopian royal family who had helped me on my visit there in 1964. Deeply moving with the noble young Asfa Kassa, son of my patron Aserate Kassa, in charge: the grave and beautiful Crown Princess, a few other Ethiopians. I wept when Asfa read the lesson of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba in Amharic. (‘And Solomon gave the Queen of Sheba all that she desired.’)
Back here to wait for Harold. A knock. He was there. He clutched me and we clutched each other. At first it was almost desperate, he had suffered so much. Finally he said: ‘I feel like a new man’ (as perhaps Solomon said to the Queen of Sheba).
12 March
Beautiful white and pink and green orchids from Harold with a note: ‘My heart.’
13 March
Day transformed at six when Harold rang up and said he wondered what my evening arrangements were. They had just finished testing leading ladies for the film of The Last Tycoon, produced by Sam Spiegel, for which Harold had written the screenplay: Harold read the Robert De Niro part. Met at the Stafford Hotel. We talked and talked. Harold back on the kick of saying he’s going to tell Vivien sooner or later. ‘I should like to go away with you. Maybe Antarctica? But would you follow? I would like to be married to you when I’m eighty.’ ‘I’ll be seventy-eight.’ Where is all this passion leading, I ask myself. The trouble is – when I am with him I don’t care about anything and when I am not with him I don’t care much either as I am always thinking about him.
14 March
Drink with Harold on his way from the National at the Strand Palace Hotel. Naturally he has told Peter Hall who was directing No Man’s Land, ‘I’ve fallen in love’, because of the need for an alibi.
16 March
Harold caused me a great deal of heart-beating terror by announcing he was going to tell Vivien: ‘I don’t want to pretend I’m on a lecture tour.’ I suppose I’m used to being on that lecture tour and it seems a perfectly good way of life. But Harold’s force is burning me up and fascinating me all at the same time.
22/23 March
Weekend of considerable tension. Harold rang up Sunday evening and said he had told Vivien on Saturday: ‘I’ve met somebody.’ Her rage at his dishonesty in deceiving her (for two and a half months). Vivien says about me: ‘She’s a very bonny lady.’ But – with whisky and nightfall more rage at the deception.
I did not know at this point that Vivien was on her way to being a serious alcoholic; a condition which would lead to her death in her early fifties. Nor did Harold discuss the subject with me at this point, either in extenuation of his own behaviour or out of guilt. There was the odd oblique reference which I did not understand.
24 March
In a way it is unfair for Vivien to pick on the deception as opposed to Harold’s feelings, as he has always wanted to tell her; he couldn’t before she went away and certainly couldn’t when she was so ill. But nothing is fair in love (or war) whatever they say. For the first time I faced up to what another life would be like and whether it could ever exist. Or would be right. Right for whom? Never right for some. Diana Phipps: ‘Everyone must feel the temptation to leave their life behind. Don’t forget that in fact no one ever does leave their life behind. You take it with you.’
In the meantime, as they say, I always wanted to be in love. Ever since I was a little girl. And I always wanted to know a genius, which I suppose Harold sort of is, but that did not lure me to him in the first place. I was lured, compelled by a superior force, something drawn out of me by him, which was simply irresistible.
27 March
Last day before Scotland for the school holidays. It is snowing and I went for a snowy walkin the park. Nevertheless there were wet heaps of grass to be seen where some incurable optimist had started to cut it. So, through the snow and blustering wind came the unmistakeable smell of summer: lawn mowings. Met Harold at the Royal Lancaster as once before. He gave me the first bound copy of No Man’s Land with such a romantic inscription that I shall hardly be able to leave it about. The situation seems very fraught in the Pinter home and I honestly don’t know how it will turn out. Mingled fright and excitement.
6 April
Horror has struck at the periphery of Harold’s life. Mary Ure, wife of his buddy Robert Shaw, died the night after Robert had been out with Harold. Robert’s guilt – and his own. In the end after a lot of talk and guilt, we both went round to see Robert Shaw hidden in the Savoy with his children. Harold in a fearful state. The Shaw daughters full of fortitude. His son, the image of Mary, infinitely touching.
The rest of April passed with me toing and froing between London and Scotland during the school holidays, while being extremely active in campaigning for Public Lending Right (I was Chairman of the Society of Authors). Vivien left
Hanover Terrace for a while; Harold continued to attend rehearsals of No Man’s Land.
14 April
Harold came to lunch before rehearsal. Now very gloomy about the play – just because Sir Ralph Richardson can’t happen to get the words in the right order. This is torture for him. But says he is a little bit in love with Ralph all the same. Me: ‘As he is a man and seventy-two, that’s okay.’ Harold and Sir Ralph: the perfect actor for him except for this one fault which could utterly ruin everything Harold conceives the play to be, in terms of rhythm and poetry.
20 April – Sunday morning
Hugh asked: ‘Are you in love with someone else?’ I don’t think he expected to get the answer ‘Yes! I am madly in love with someone else.’ After a bit I told him who it was. Hugh, grimly: ‘The best living playwright. Very suitable.’ Then: ‘How old is he?’ Me: ‘My age.’ Hugh: ‘Well, that’s also very suitable.’ I had dreaded this moment so much, thought it would never come, because it never could come. Then it did come, suddenly, in a twinkling of an eye, and in a way it was perfectly all right. Except as Harold pointed out about his own situation, nothing is ever the same again.
The next weeks were agonizing for all concerned with a few bright moments which did not relate to personal relationships.
23 April
The great Public Lending Right Demo Day in Belgrave Square outside the Ministry. Wore spring-like suit to LBC Radio at 8.30 a.m.; frozen by 11.30. We hustled importantly on to a traffic island in Belgrave Square, media actually outnumbering the authors. But Angus Wilson came all the way up from Suffolk, good sweet man that he is. Bridget Brophy magnificent and large in a white princess-line dress, Maureen Duffy in a mauve frilly shirt with her trouser suit, running the show with her loud hailer. Gave interviews to TV, having been told by Frank Muir not to smile: ‘Look grim and defiant.’ Natasha (my fourth child: the others were Rebecca, Flora, Benjie, Damian and Orlando) said: ‘You looked like someone who wanted to have her own way. Like a queen, but cross,’ she added kindly.
Met Harold for lunch and gave him my lucky agate to hold in his sweaty palm at the first night of No Man’s Land. Went with Rachel and Kevin, and my brother Thomas to the theatre. Drink in the upstairs bar. Suddenly Harold walked in. Transfixed. Both of us. Could hardly speak or look at him. ‘Hello, Antonia,’ and hand outstretched: a very deep gravelly voice.
Then the play … In the interval Milton Shulman, there as drama critic of the Evening Standard, asked innocently: ‘What’s it all about?’ Revealed that he had been asleep in the first half. Critics!!! Me: ‘It’s about the creative artist locked in his own world. Gielgud as Spooner is shabby reality trying to get in.’ Milton: ??? Me: ‘Well, I’m only trying to help.’ Later we four went to Odin’s. Harold telephoned me from the first-night party at Peter Hall’s flat in the Barbican. Harold: ‘I was happy with it.’ He went on: ‘I watched you when you walked across the front of the stalls going to your seat after the interval. I liked your dress. You looked so beautiful.’ (I still have the dress.) Me: ‘I just couldn’t speak in the bar.’
24 April
Vivien told Harold: ‘The myth of the happy Pinter marriage is exploded. It hasn’t really existed for many years.’ She had not come to the first night; Harold took his son. This morning the Daily Mail blew the gaff, talking of ‘a literary friendship’. So that’s what they call it these days!
25 April
Harold is leaving Vivien for Sam Spiegel’s flat in Grosvenor House ‘So that murder shall not take place.’ It’s difficult to comment on this because up till the other night I had thought their marriage a happy one (albeit not perfect … because perfect marriages if they exist are immune from late-night romantic encounters). So I don’t understand anything at the moment.
28 April
Harold moved into Sam’s flat. Tried to liken it to a ship: large for a ship. Actually quite large for a flat. But the point is really, the grimness of anyone leaving their home where everything is arranged to their satisfaction, to live in a place where it isn’t. Harold very low. The prospect of Paris seems to cheer. But I’m sure the missing of home remains an eternal thing.
5–15 May
In Paris at the Hotel Lancaster. What can I write? (I’m back in London.) However, here goes. We had our suite, Harold’s famous emphasis on suites! A sitting room, três charmant, a large bedroom and another one for me, I insisted on that for telephonic reasons. Harold met me at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I floated up in the new moving passageway as in a dream towards him. Chauffeur-driven car (another great obsession). Thereafter we lived in our suite and went to restaurants and never really did anything at all for ten days. Very restful that, doing nothing. We did take very small walks in the truly wet and freezing weather (I bought two umbrellas when I was in Paris) ending fairly rapidly in bars. Like Hirst in No Man’s Land, Harold drinks a hell of an amount. Mostly we talked, sometimes good talks, sometimes ‘a good talk’ about the future. Occasionally Harold whirled into jealousy about the past.
We met Barbara Bray, the translator and literary critic with whom Harold had worked on the Proust screenplay for so long, Beckett’s girlfriend. Despite avowed Women’s Lib feelings, Barbara maddened Harold by looking and talking all the time to him, never me. I didn’t notice so wasn’t maddened. Finally she said: ‘I should be interested in you as a writer because you’re a woman, but of course it’s Harold I’m interested in.’ ‘So that’s two of us,’ I said. Much more fun was the ravishing Delphine Seyrig who failed to turn up as a cool blonde as I had hoped (see The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), but emerged as a frizzy red-haired biker holding a helmet. She was nevertheless delightful, very warm to me, and her beauty could not be quenched.
On Sunday evening Harold said we were swimming nearer and nearer the sea, in a series of rock pools. The ocean was ahead. Someone I adored was Harold’s translator Eric Kahane: a kindred spirit. (We became lifelong friends.) Once back, Harold went to Sam’s flat at Grosvenor House, me to Campden Hill Square. But Harold found a lawyer’s letter from Withers & Co. informing him that his wife was suing him for divorce, the cause being his own admitted adultery with me. This was the one thing we were sure would never happen, even though Vivien had written to Paris to announce what she would do if he didn’t return. Harold to me: ‘Tell your husband that my intentions are strictly honourable.’
16 & 17 May
Harold in a terrible state about money although he seems to me to earn a fortune, enough anyway not to worry. I think worrying about money is a substitute for worrying about the future. Harold has written me a magic poem called ‘Paris’: it ends ‘She dances in my life.’ I cling to that. What will happen next?
PARIS
The curtain white in folds,
She walks two steps and turns,
The curtain still, the light
Staggers in her eyes.
The lamps are golden.
Afternoon leans, silently.
She dances in my life.
The white day burns.
Chapter Two
PLEASURE AND A GOOD DEAL OF PAIN
22 May
Long, long talk with my mother at her Chesil Court flat about everything. She showed much brilliance, unlike some, in achieving her objective, which was to keep me approximately married to Hugh. ‘You note I am not talking about sanctity of family life.’ Tells me meaningful stories of her friends whose lovers chucked them for younger women, and is annoyed when I smile.
Harold has returned home to Regent’s Park to be with his son while Vivien is in Crete. Harold: ‘I want you to know that the way I am thinking is that I want to live with you, that’s the way my thoughts are.’ Then: ‘In twenty years’ time, we wouldn’t have this sort of crisis, because we would be sixty-four and sixty-two.’
Me, thinking of Lady Longford: ‘What about younger women?’
Harold (furious): ‘I like mature women, doesn’t she realize, I am a boy at heart, ever eighteen, so naturally I like mature women.’
28 May
Lunch with Mark Boxer at Neal Street Restaurant. Physically, a curious mixture of Harold’s looks, the dark curly hair and black/hazel eyes, but less force in his appearance. We had not met for some time.
Mark: ‘Do you remember when I brought a cricket side to the Hurst Green Cricket Club against your father?’
Me: ‘How odd! Of course I do. And I was telling somebody interested in cricket about it only the other day.’ I had indeed attempted to establish my cricket-loving credentials with Harold by telling him about this match against my father’s village. Of course Mark, who was always up for any gossip, got the reference immediately.
Mark, meaningfully: ‘Would SOMEBODY “interested in cricket” like to play in a match for the Sunday Times?’ I blushed. Mark told me he had been thinking aloud of cricketing stars for this match in Surrey, then of stars who played cricket. He asked the Surrey Chairman: ‘Would Harold Pinter do?’ Explained he was a playwright. Man from the club, affronted: ‘We have heard of Harold Pinter in Surrey!’
30 May
Took Harold to dinner with Diana Phipps. Diana seized a moment alone to hiss: ‘He’s marvellous. I revise all my advice. You must marry him as soon as possible.’ Really! She’s worse than Mummy in her advice.
The next night we had dinner with Sam Spiegel who simply could not understand why Harold had told Vivien: ‘You could have had all the pleasure and none of the pain.’ Ah, the Viennese!
2 June
I love Harold, I adore him, but I wonder whether I am capable of uprooting myself for anyone? Do I have the courage? I am quite a cowardly person, I know. Whether I have not finally and carefully constructed my own very pleasant prison from which emotionally I can’t escape. If only we could just go on and on being lovers … I fear for the effects of everyday life on love.