Clapton_ The Autobiography - Eric Clapton [106]
On November 6, two days before leaving for Australia, I had one more meeting with Pattie. “I walked and talked with Nell this afternoon, she is lovelier than ever and I believe she wants to be left alone with her new man and her new life…she said that physically there was no attraction for me anymore and that she loved being with him, he’s a lucky man…and I am a fool, but I still believe that she loves me and that I can net her with patience. I can never stop loving her…I have hope and persistence on my side and I will never give in.” Owing to the turmoil I was in, I had avoided further complicating things by involving myself with any other women since my return from America, but the day I flew to Sydney, I went to bed with a girl I had been seeing on and off named Valentina. It released all kinds of feelings. “Valentina…made lunch and we made love. It felt so good to be cared for again, I’ve been so hungry for so long…but it still doesn’t stop the deeper yearning which I keep for my wife…but maybe that too will fade. I pray that she returns before it does…in another hour or so I shall be gone from here and all the ghosts.”
For me, the Australian tour was not a happy one. Not only was I on an emotional roller coaster, but I was not that happy with the sound we were getting onstage. “The rehearsal was very strange,” I recorded on November 12. “The sound was overpowering and I felt like I had dropped acid, my confidence is very low.” The problem was that Albert Lee was not with us this time around, and his place had been taken by Pete Robinson on synthesizer, an instrument I had got used to in the studio but had some difficulty adjusting to onstage. It seemed to make the show far too loud, which caused problems with my hearing. “I think the frequency of his synth playing could be what causes my deafness,” I noted on November 23, adding later, “the show was okay, for the most part, but toward the end it got too loud again…Deb said for her it was too loud from the word go…it would be great to do one show that was pleasing to everyone.” (Deb was short for Deborah Russell, a lady I had made friends with in Sydney, and a very fine painter.)
A week into the tour, we were in Sydney when Roger called me to tell me that Nigel Dempster had written up the story of our breakup in his column in the Daily Mail. This really hurt, because it hadn’t occurred to me up until that point that it was anyone else’s business. “Well it’s over,” I wrote. “I spoke to Nell about Divorce and she agrees to it. I have gone back into shock, God help me…. I called back in remorse and asked her to come with me to somewhere remote for a week just to talk it over.” Two days later I noted “…she has agreed to Florence for a week on the 7th, so I think that will decide it one way or another.”
I returned to England at the beginning of December 1984 feeling confused and depressed. “On mornings like this,” I wrote on my first day back at Hurtwood, “you really need someone to snuggle up to. It’s grey and dark and wet and cold. It’s England.” I decided not to press for a divorce, but to leave it to Pattie to ask for one if and when she decided to. I also wrote a letter to her lover in which I unequivocally stated my feelings. I told him that I hoped he was aware of just what he was doing, because Pattie had been the love of my life and he was succeeding in fucking over everyone.
That night, out of the blue, Alice called me from Paris, where she was now living, and “lifted my spirits, in fact snapped me out of it by saying that she always knew that Pattie would end up with a toff.” She suggested that I go to see her in Paris, which did not seem like a good idea. Instead, I pushed Pattie, who had been having second thoughts, into agreeing to the Florence trip, which turned into a three-day disaster. “The Florentine experiment proved to be a big letdown,” I wrote. “The most memorable part was the fact that she has proved,