Must You Go?: My Life With Harold Pinter

by Antonia Fraser

  I burst into tears and in some ways shall always remain upset by it, as well as deeply, unbearably moved. It was written, as it turned out, about eighteen months before Harold died. But at the time, and ever after, I recognized it for what it was: a farewell. The first line in particular gave me a jolt. Rather touchingly, Harold did not seem particularly upset by my reaction since he was busy being pleased with himself for the concept of the dead missing the living rather than the other way around. He kept exclaiming over it in a contented manner: ‘Isn’t it an original idea, the dead missing the live?’ ‘Yes, but …’

  I have the perennial spring picture of Harold in my mind, plotting with members of Gaieties Cricket Club for the greatest season ever to come – how good to record that in the summer of 2008 it actually happened. His very last season was a series of unbroken triumphs for Gaieties CC. Otherwise sitting in his chair he continued to read poetry, interlaced with politics: there was Yeats jostling with The Future of Iraq and similar titles, with Yeats gradually picked up more and more, The Future of Iraq out of exhaustion rather than lack of interest less and less.

  But then I look at my Diary and see that Harold managed to get to Leeds at the end of April to attend a Pinter Festival organized by Mark Taylor-Batty. While he was there (I slogged off to the Royal Armouries and tried on the armour of the Earl of Leicester’s horse as a diversion), he met the members of the Belorussian theatrical company, brought to England under the sponsorship of Tom Stoppard, always so practically effective in these matters to do with dissidents.

  The end of the performance was called Being Harold, and featured an enactment of his Nobel Speech, seen as relative to their plight. At the end the actors lined up on the stage of the Workshop Theatre in a circle. They were of very varying physical appearance, although all young. The actor in Harold enabled him to pass slowly and with great dignity round this wide semicircle shaking each hand, providing a striking image for the press – and no doubt for them too. Later in London he actually attended the performance: the Nobel Speech, always so close to his heart because in it he addressed his ‘forum’ as in ‘I have got my forum’. Of the Belorussian evening, Harold said, ‘I felt proud of what I’d written,’ even though it was a collage which he doesn’t normally like.

  Sunday 17 June

  We were both amused by a double article about us today in the Sunday Independent. I am reinvented as a sort of Mitford heroine, aristo, Catholic, with the headline: ‘He’s grumpy, she smoothes things over.’ I suggest that some role reversal might be fun in the future …

  Then there was an evening at the Lord’s Taverners’ to raise funds; Derek Walcott read poetry in his fine, deep voice and Harold read his piece about a cricketing hero, Arthur Wellard, which got a lot of appreciative laughs. Harold and I continued to disagree about British politics, me saluting the arrival of Gordon Brown at No. 10 and refusing to give up hope of an improvement in the situation in Iraq (despite, for example, three British soldiers killed and twelve so-called ‘civilians’ on 28 June). We also continued to debate – politely – about religion, especially following the car bombs which exploded in the West End and Glasgow. Harold: ‘People of religion must take responsibility for its crimes.’ Me: ‘And must people of no religion take responsibility for the crimes of those without religion?’ Harold: ‘Who are they?’ Me: ‘Stalin and Hitler.’ Harold, according to my Diary which generally, I have to admit, gives me the last word, replied: ‘I see the logic of what you say and acknowledge it.’

  At a moment of considerable distress – physical – Harold suddenly said he would ask Tony Astbury of Greville Press to print a pamphlet of all his love poems to me, starting with ‘Paris’ and ending on ‘I’ll Miss You So Much’ … Should it be Six Poems for A or Six Poems to A? Tony tells us that according to the poet Anne Ridler, ‘ “For” is for the living and “To” is to the dead.’ So it’s ‘For’. I like this distinction and find it cheering.

  On another occasion, listening in Dorset to an exquisite late-night Prom of Bach Cantatas, we discussed whether Bach’s belief in God validated Him. Evidently not, if God does not exist, which is Harold’s position some of the time. My point however is that Bach’s belief in God does mean that Harold (who worships Bach as God) can’t dismiss all people who believe in God as hopeless nincompoops. At one point I declare: ‘I wouldn’t care if Bach voted for Mussolini, this is the most perfect music I have ever heard.’ It’s the old Wagnerthe-anti-Semite argument: does Wagner’s anti-Semitism stop him being personally great? Yes. Does it stop his music being great? No. In all these discussions Harold is careful to say that he respects my personal position. I reply by saying that I admire Jesus Christ for the social message of the New Testament and that, more than the precepts of the Church, is what guides my life, even though I seldom, if ever, manage to live up to it.

  30 September

  Mitsuko Uchida was like a dragonfly skimming over a lake in her gauzy attire as she played Mozart’s Piano Concert No. 27 at the Barbican. We had wonderful seats from where we could see her miraculous hands. It may be the last concert Harold ever goes to (the physical strain of reaching the auditorium was so great) but what a concert!

  Friendship with Mitsuko Uchida and her partner the diplomat Robert Cooper with whom we played bridge and drank wonderful wines provided by them, I note from my Diaries, were among the solaces of these years.

  11 October

  The day after Harold’s birthday. The vengeful Gods were listening when I recorded yesterday, his seventy-seventh birthday, that Harold was really in good nick, given the weakness of his legs caused by the (essential) injections of steroids. I gave him the Letters of Graham Greene, one of his heroes. And there was a special showing of Sleuth in Soho, a film of which Harold is very proud. The next day Harold didn’t feel too well, which I put down to birthday-roistering. I was wrong. In a restaurant with Kevin and Rachel, Harold collapsed in front of our eyes and disappeared to the floor. I felt his forehead: it was ice cold and clammy where it had been burning in the morning. Terrifying hours passed in Casualty at St Mary’s, followed by intensive care for eight days. One 4 a.m. call from a doctor suggested that Harold might not recover (I was of course alone in the house) and if he did, he might not be in too good shape … The answer was prolonged internal bleeding leading to a terrifyingly low blood count. It had to be stopped. Harold did in a sense recover and so, I suppose, did I, although never totally. The Great Fear now walked with me everywhere and I guess it accompanied Harold too.

  There were very few light moments during the rest of the autumn, very few beautiful ones, although the arrival of Six Poems for A was one of them. There was the pleasure of sending it out, not as a memorial, as had seemed likely since the pamphlets arrived on 11 October, the day Harold fell ‘dead’. At least Harold retained a grim sense of humour having yet another brain scan. Harold to scanner: ‘Do you know what’s inside this brain?’ Busy scanner: ‘No.’ Harold: ‘Masses of unwritten plays.’ I like it: a nice concept.

  At times Harold issued poignant apologies along the lines: ‘I know I’m not the gallant you married–’ To which I would reply perfectly correctly: ‘And I’m not the romantic beauty you married.’ Both statements were true. All the same, the gallant and the romantic beauty were never quite forgotten, but seen through a prism of time and also long-lasting happiness. I tried to write a poem called ‘Death v. H.P.’ mentioning all the goals he had saved against Death: but ‘The trouble with Death: he only needs one goal.’ I read it to Harold, but it was not as good as I thought. Far better to concentrate on the words of the greatest poet of them all:

  Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  Admit impediment. Love is not love,

  Which alters when it alteration finds

  The truest lines on love that Shakespeare ever wrote, and I have always thought absolutely appropriate to us in these last years.

  16 December

  Our pre-Christmas lunch (for those with whom we wouldn’t spen
d Christmas) was notable for Harold presenting the grandchildren with £50 notes, to mark the British Library’s completion of the purchase of his archives. I was about to say: from his lottery winnings, which in one sense he has. I watched these delightful kids waving their £50 notes at him as they sat at the table and he came in on his stick, slowly but benevolently. The notes seemed almost as bright as Atalanta Fitzgerald’s beautiful Botticelli-like face. In the meantime the adults, who immediately felt like children themselves – but not children getting £50 notes – looked on disgruntled. ‘Don’t touch!’ I cried to them. To the children: ‘Don’t listen to any parental schemes for keeping your money safe.’

  31 December

  New Year’s Eve. Dinner with Simon and Victoria Gray at the Café Anglais. How many New Years have we seen in à quatre? This year however we parted before midnight.

  Harold’s friendship with Simon was precious to him and had already lasted over thirty-five years since he directed Butley with Alan Bates; altogether he directed nine of his stage plays, as well as for television and the film of Butley. Simon was one of the people in the world Harold really loved – quite apart from relishing his company as everyone did who knew him, famously ‘our funniest friend’. As in any long and deeply affectionate association there were transient disagreements, as when Harold objected to Simon mocking his political views as he saw it, in a TV play (I begged Harold not to take umbrage but was ignored, which left Victoria and me to mutter, ‘The men, God bless them …’, our separate friendship unaffected). It is therefore good to record that in this coming summer, which was to be the last summer of their lives, they were closer than ever. Our last image of Simon was a photograph taken in the box Harold took that year at Lord’s, smiling, a jest on his lips. Victoria was at his side smiling too.

  2008

  15 January

  The Granta party at the Twentieth-Century Theatre, in Westbourne Grove. We talk to Ian McEwan and Martin Amis. We have to leave, so I address them: ‘Could you giants of modern literature help Harold down the stairs?’ Harold will have none if it. ‘Out of my way, giants of modern literature,’ he commands – and plunges forward. It’s all right. He manages to stay upright. Symbolic or what? Harold refuses the support of the young lions.

  20 January

  We’ve been invited to Sunday lunch at Chequers by Gordon and Sarah Brown: this is because I met Sarah Brown at a ladies lunch and we discussed the Chequers portraits which I had reproduced in my biography Cromwell. At lunch Harold volunteered: ‘I have decided I will not go to Chequers. If I went, I might ask about Guantanamo Bay, also a case of schoolgirls arrested on an American base in Gloucestershire (I hadn’t heard about this). I might embarrass you.’ Me, taking a deep breath: ‘You could never embarrass me, but you might upset me.’ Harold, sweetly: ‘I don’t trust myself.’ And as I very much want to go, I decide hastily not to argue the point any further. After all, I needn’t feel any guilt at leaving him. God bless Harold!

  Thereafter Harold’s various visits to hospitals for various procedures, were interleaved with the opening of The Lover and The Collection. I console myself by obsessing over the American election, the Democratic contest, watching endless news bulletins in between going to see Harold.

  15 March

  Of course being Harold, there were moments of comedy, orchestrated by him. Witness the scene at the British Library where Harold formally handed over his archive. He had said to me, innocently, a few days before: ‘I’ve found an unpublished poem which I shall take the opportunity to hand over.’ Me: ‘What is it?’ Harold, carelessly: ‘Oh, wait and see.’ And secretly I thought it might be a new love poem to me … Well, it wasn’t exactly that. In the event, at the extremely formal ceremony, a man in an elegant suit, surrounded by other men in suits, introduced Harold with a tribute to his lyrical use of language. And Harold then proceeded to read from one of his yellow pages as follows a poem called ‘Modern Love’ which began: ‘Do you fuck him / And she fucks me too …’ going on to play with the word thereafter, with the word ‘love’ occasionally thrown in. I shall not easily forget that scene. The faces of the suits never moved: but after all suits do have total control of their facial expressions, don’t they? Rebecca, Judy and I were shaking.

  My Diaries at this time are full of good resolutions along predictable lines about taking each day as it comes, enjoying what yet remains, quotations from Browning’s ‘Rabbi Ben Ezra’: ‘Grow old along with me / The best is yet to be.’ Yes, but would we really be allowed to grow old (or you might say, older) together? Nevertheless Harold did not lose all his zest despite almost intolerable physical challenges. He suddenly volunteered to accompany me to Harrison Birtwistle’s opera The Minotaur, out of respect for and interest in Harry, when my original date fell through, a gesture of solidarity and optimism given that Covent Garden had long been deemed too physically testing. I think he identified with John Tomlinson’s Minotaur.

  19 May

  I can hardly write about the amazing night last night at The Birthday Party – its fiftieth anniversary in exactly the same theatre and on the exact date in 1958. It was a Gala to raise funds for the Lyric and what a gala! All the performances excellent – Sheila Hancock a joyful Meg – but most moving of all Harold going on stage at the end to join David Farr (the director) and the actors. Looking incredibly fragile, he was led on by Justin Salinger who played Stanley, a rather odd reversal of roles. His last fall (one of two recent ones) has left nasty debilitating wounds. But he managed to speak and tell the story of the usherette at the Thursday matinee who when he told her he was the author said, surveying the empty house: ‘You poor dear.’ And he appealed to the usherette if still around, to come forward and he would give her a kiss.

  I tried to think of some other playwright who would have attended the fiftieth anniversary of his own play, transformed from total failure to classic within his own lifetime. Chekhov? Died in his forties. John Osborne and Look Back in Anger? He died in his sixties; of course there was a difference because the Osborne play was a startling success, Harold’s a resounding failure.

  It is good to read of this glorious occasion because shortly afterwards there was a terrifying experience, when Harold collapsed and fell at 10 a.m. fifteen minutes before we were to leave for Eurostar and Europe. (I was due to talk on historical biography at the Shakespeare and Co. Bookshop festival.) The Great Fear was coming nearer, especially as he might easily have collapsed on Eurostar in the tunnel … At first Harold resisted the idea of going to hospital, his roar at the sound of the word ‘hospital’ making a Siberian tiger sound like a pussycat. He finally agreed. O Dante’s Inferno! O St Mary’s Casualty! We were cheered up in a highly depressing situation by the award of a CBE to Edward Fitzgerald for Human Rights and Harold vowed to give him a lunch on the day he went to the Palace.

  27 July

  We sat in the drawing room listening to my Desert Island Discs: Harold delighted by it and kept saying so throughout the day, that day and the next. He was immensely touched I chose the Beethoven String Quartet Op. 132 – his favourite piece of music – especially for him and didn’t mind me telling the anecdote from 1980 of the so-called ‘missing’ scene from Betrayal. Although it was perfectly true that I suggested one scene was missing, at which he went fast round Holland Park and then wrote it (not one I had expected, however) in principle I can’t bear it when artists’ wives say: ‘It was all me …’

  While we were at Westbrook House enjoying our Dorset holiday in the pleasant house with the pond and ducks, the tragedy occurred which plunged Harold into a profound depression that I believe never quite lifted till the end of his life. The telephone rang and it was Victoria Gray telling me the news that Simon had died, in a small sad voice of total disbelief. I had to go upstairs and break the news to Harold, who crumpled before my eyes. He said he had a premonition when he saw my face. He put his head in his hands and wept.

  With someone like Harold, it is impossible to divide off the reactions of
the body to those of the mind: with hindsight, the liver cancer which was diagnosed in October (but not present in May) may have been developing at exactly that moment. But certainly Harold went into a state of depression, expressed in virtual lack of mobility, which never lifted except briefly in the next months. He struggled to read Eliot at Simon’s funeral, helped up the steps to the pulpit by Matthew Burton. (I had been quite unsure that he would manage it.) And we gave the wake following the funeral in our house. It was after that that Harold gave me exact instructions about his own burial, sitting in his chair, who was to read what, the privacy of the event which he wanted. I think Harold was contemplating his own mortality from the moment of Simon’s death onwards in a way he had never quite done for seven years of illness because the need for courage and endurance did not encourage reflection. I told Harold this: ‘Death kept coming to grab you and you eluded him.’

  One of the gleams of happiness occurred when I persuaded Harold that he was needed to go to Dublin for the opening of No Man’s Land because it was not jollity but a ‘professional engagement–your advice is wanted’. He felt better after this decision – and we won the Test Match with a six! So we went. Harold adored the production with Michael Gambon, David Bradley, Nick Dunning and David Walliams; this great play about age and memory – and death and drink – was the last play he actually saw. And we had an idyllic spree, Celtic, which covered my birthday. (A 1913 volume of Yeats, green with golden embellishments, was my present from Harold to chime with a Yeats exhibition at the National Library of Ireland.) We both enjoyed a state of elegiac happiness for a few days including a visit to a restaurant perfectly entitled (for me) Aqua, surrounded on three sides by water, for my birthday lunch.