Must You Go?: My Life With Harold Pinter

by Antonia Fraser

  At the end of the first night of No Man’s Land, Michael Gambon gestured from the stage to Harold and he managed to stand up. The whole audience then stood up and clapped. Harold looked very genial, in Edward Fitzgerald’s favourite word. But he was visibly moved.

  7 October

  Fabulous opening night of No Man’s Land at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London. We began by sitting in a box together, for ease of access for Harold, but in order to spy Gambon’s second act entrance, that extraordinary sprightly tread which takes one by surprise after the weakness of his gait and the falls in the first act, I moved to an empty seat in the dress circle. Peter Stothard told me that the reason it was empty was because a big financial man had arrived and been rushed away to deal with the latest crisis in the City: ‘a vast aboriginal calamity’ to quote the line from the play when the financial adviser fails to arrive. Of course in the autumn of 2008 that line got a big laugh: whereas in 1975 like most of the rest of the play it had been received in dead silence.

  3 November

  Arrive on foot at Essenza to find Harold sitting looking wan. I sat opposite to him, then moved to his side in order to hear his voice, which was very weak. Et pour cause. He’s just come from seeing Jonathan Hoare at St Mary’s and he must give up drink ‘otherwise I won’t last very long’. Jonathan Hoare said to him: ‘You have survived so much. You have so much to live for.’ Harold says he answered: ‘And central to that is my marriage.’ As I reel from the shock, I realize that Harold has chosen life. That is the thing to cling to, in what is going to be a difficult time for him, very, very difficult.

  In the thirty-seven days which followed in which Harold heroically did not drink and the house flowed with elderflower wine, I had to keep reminding myself in view of his suffering that he had chosen to do this. ‘In order to live. And with you,’ as he said from time to time. As for me, I sneaked about swigging white wine from a silver goblet which just might contain elderflower wine … I reminded Harold that he had valiantly and successfully given up both whisky and cigarettes in the past.

  5 November

  O frabjous day! Calloo! Callay! The day that Obama was elected. Spoke about the Gunpowder Plot at the House of Commons, came back and watched TV all night, Harold having gone to sleep. But when Ohio fell, I couldn’t resist waking him and we rejoiced. In triumphalist mood, I point out that it is the United States of America, not England, France or Germany who has democratically elected the first black leader; we must now salute the American Embassy as we pass it, in honour of a great people, not wave fists. Harold goes back to sleep.

  9 November

  Listened to the Britten War Requiem on Radio 3 (the original Peter Pears/Fischer-Dieskau recording) and as I was just finishing Sebastian Barry’s awesome novel on the same subject A Long, Long Way, I found tears pouring down my face at: ‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend.’ Harold, who did not, I think, notice, wept silently at ‘Let us sleep now’.

  11 November

  Learned from Jonathan Hoare that Harold has a cancerous tumour on his liver, when in Harold’s presence and with Harold’s permission I question him, to get it straight. Felt in shock. Idiotically told myself: ‘It’s not liver cancer but just a cancerous tumour.’ As if there was a difference! I sat downstairs in the hospital waiting to be picked up to see the Babylon exhibition, of all things, at the British Museum and kept falling asleep. Shock. Jonathan Hoare is hopeful ‘so long as he doesn’t drink’. Harold, faintly but firmly: ‘I’ve no intention of drinking.’

  21 November

  Harold is so low, so thin, with his sad, searching eyes like a sick Labrador. I pity him so much and keep thinking what I can do to help, not able to face the fact, I suppose, that basically I can do nothing.

  28 November

  The long-promised lunch at Lucio’s restaurant which Harold gave for Edward, following his investiture at Buckingham Palace, was an enormous success, and at such a crucial moment, immensely warming for me. Superb arrangements, thanks to Lucio. I saw with pleasure that Edward, who had said, ‘No, no, I won’t make a speech, just a few remarks,’ had a thick pile of notes by his plate. Harold rose to his feet and quoted Yeats on Swift: ‘ “He serves human liberty”.’ (Edward would later read that at Harold’s burial.)

  30 November

  Went to Farm Street Mass and we then gave lunch to Sebastian and Allie Barry, with Dinah Wood, at Scott’s. ‘It’s very nice to meet new people,’ said Harold, a rare remark from him and a direct response to the charm of the Barrys, telling us of their Irish lives; also Harold’s profound admiration for The Secret Scriptures. (I had written in the Guardian the day before commending it: ‘What were the Booker judges thinking about?’ So we were all off to a flying start.) Sebastian Barry told Harold how seeing the 1975 No Man’s Land was the ‘first step’ towards him writing his great play The Steward of Christendom.

  17 December

  It’s the original ‘good news, bad news’ as I said to Harold in the car outside the Cromwell as we departed. It was a feeble attempt at black humour. The good news is that Harold can drink again, the bad news is that he’s dying, so it doesn’t matter if he drinks. We visited Dr Westaby who had saved Harold’s life once already over oesophageal cancer. Westaby said there was no point in a procedure to zap the tumour. It would – only possibly – prolong life: but there was a danger of infection, haemorrhage. Me: ‘What are we talking about? Years? Months?’ The answer after a silence was ‘Months’. I knew the real answer was probably rather different: weeks, perhaps.

  I did not guess that the real answer was ‘days’. At the time I told myself there would be lots and lots of months. All the same I hated the very word ‘months’. Dr Westaby kindly said there was no point Harold stopping drinking. He also told Harold that seven years ago, he never expected him to be alive for so long. I noticed that Harold left down the stairs, however, with more agility than when he had arrived. I said: ‘I know just what you are going to do when we get home.’ And sure enough Harold instructed me to fetch a bottle of champagne from the cellar and sat sipping: ‘Oh, the enjoyment of this glass! I had forgotten how absolutely lovely champagne was.’

  That was Wednesday. On the last Sunday, we had lunch at Scott’s, along with the Billingtons and Honor Fitzgerald, aged thirteen, whose parents were away celebrating their wedding anniversary. Harold was convivial although possibly, with hindsight, beginning to be a little confused. We watched a DVD of The Reader that night and Harold admired David Hare’s screenplay and Kate Winslett’s vigorous, intelligent acting at length. But he refused to eat.

  The next morning, Monday 22 December at about seven o’clock in the morning he collapsed. I contacted Dr Westaby and he was taken by ambulance to the Hammersmith Hospital. All round us, as we left, were the preparations for a family Christmas lunch. There was the Christmas tree in the window, and a pile of presents underneath it. In the square people were already getting their houses ready for the traditional Christmas Eve ritual of candles in all the windows. (When I returned home, the square would be in darkness except for flickering candlelight which seemed to be a salutation to Harold.) The ambulance took us through streets full of cheerful, busy people shopping urgently, holding parcels and children by the hand.

  Harold to me as he lay waiting for a bed: ‘What are your plans,’ pause, ‘generally?’ It was our last real conversation. I replied: ‘First of all I’m going to have wonderful support from family and friends, but by the way, you’re not dead yet. Secondly, I’m going to pop home for a short while to preside over Christmas lunch.’ The last word I heard him say was ‘the key’. It seemed to be a question.

  By the evening, and all the next day, he was unconscious, lying in a room which looked high over West London facing a clock tower as in some Oxford college.

  Wednesday 24 December

  Harold was very calm and still. I thought of Rilke’s ‘The Poet’s Death’, ‘his mere mask, timidly dying there, tender and open’. In the late morning all th
e grandchildren who were in England came to visit him and give him a last kiss. Their ages ranged from twenty-one to eight, all shapes and sizes. The scene was like a Victorian painting called ‘Farewell to a Grandfather’. The last to leave the room was Simon Soros, who bent and kissed Harold’s hand. That night he began to write a kind of reggae poem on the subject: with the title ‘Grandpa Harold’. It was exactly what this grandfather, to whom these children had brought so much pleasure, would have liked.

  About twenty past seven I was sitting reading Tolstoy’s Resurrection by Harold’s bedside. He was breathing but with a strong rattling sound. The nurses were outside. The children and grandchildren had dispersed for Christmas. I was alone in the room. I was happy like that. Suddenly the rattling stopped. Harold opened his black eyes very wide, almost staring, although he didn’t respond when I spoke to him as before: ‘It’s me, Antonia, who loves you.’ Then he went quite tense, his whole body. Finally he went still and silent.

  I leant forward and found no breath. He looked white and dead. I sat for a while. Then I kissed him. His dear body was already quite cool. Must you go? Yes, it was time. Before I left the room, after another, last kiss, I said: ‘Goodnight, sweet prince, and flights of angels sing you to your rest.’