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By Root 1182 0

on the station for an hour – which says a lot for Thomas and William’s patience. Home by 6.30, and Helen and I spent the evening watching the box. I finished E L Doctorow’s Book of Daniel – a novel about the Rosenbergs (who were executed for treason in the early 1950s anti-commie atmosphere in the US). Written through the eyes of their son Daniel, it is good because it shows how complicated are the various reactions of family and friends to what now seems just a monstrously unfair case. It’s full of atmosphere – the Bronx in the 1950s, for instance – and yet another novel which makes me want to go to America. Here I am, nearly 29, and never outside Europe.1

Sunday, April 16th

Our sixth wedding anniversary.

We have reached a kind of material plateau at the moment – a house, two cars, two babies. Now we have more time to think about ourselves, and avoid becoming complacent lumps. We go out by ourselves once a week if possible, to a cinema and a meal, and can always go to the country at the weekends if we become really cheesed off. But we’re no longer the young savers, or the young home-hunters. We have a lot – the question now is, what are we going to do with it?

I’m fond of Oak Village – with its relative peace from the motor car, and its scale, which enables you to see your neighbours often. Today I sat in the garden and read about rising house prices in the Sunday Times. This place is now probably worth £20,000, which is a 70% increase in four years. We are well-off by most people’s standards – but we don’t really want to move from here, we don’t really want a bigger car. Our biggest luxuries are food and drink.

Saturday, April 22nd

Simon Albury turned up unexpectedly in the evening. We’ve missed his schemes and stories over the last couple of months – but he made a great comeback this evening, firing me once again with great enthusiasm to go to the States. I must say all the omens seem right at the moment. I have the money and the time in the summer, and I only have one year to go until I’m 30 – which, rightly or wrongly, I regard as a psychological turning-point beyond which one can no longer lay claim to youthful enthusiasm. Also Simon will be in New York making three films for Man Alive – the BBC programme he now works for. And of course it’s convention time in June, when the American election year really starts to hot up. I’ve always been fascinated by American politics, and I find the idea of attending a convention exciting in itself, as well as giving a point to going to the States.

Thursday, April 27th, Southwold

I lunched on the train to Ipswich. Excellent railway-made steak and kidney pie, washed down with a bottle of Liebfraumilch. The weather began to clear, as I got on to the little diesel train from Ipswich to Darsham, and, by the time it arrived at Darsham at 3.30, the sun was shining on the fresh, clean Suffolk countryside.

My father met me and drove me to Southwold. He seems as slow as usual, but one can’t help feeling that he still has a lot of untapped potential for enjoying life. For instance, he had been on a choir outing to see ‘The Black and White Minstrel Show’ in Norwich, but he and the Vicar left the main party, and went to see The Go-Between1 instead. Ostensibly not the kind of film my father would like at all, but he enjoyed it so much that he wants to see it again. This was very encouraging – and I can’t help feeling that, as his old irascibility decreases, and he is forced to take things more slowly, he does enjoy diversion more.

Unfortunately he is still no conversationalist, and, although still interesting and jokey in his own stories, he finds it impossible to follow anyone else’s. This is clearly very difficult to live with, and my mother has become sharp and rather quick to reprove him. I can’t blame her. Her mind works so fast and she has for so long lived with someone who shares hardly any of her interests. The sad thing is that both of them suppress each other’s potential instead of developing it. My visits are a sort of escape valve for both of them.

Sunday,