Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [10]
Terrible weeks of strain followed, compounded by Harold directing Simon Gray’s new play Otherwise Engaged with Alan Bates. In the end Sam Spiegel persuaded Vivien to withdraw the divorce petition for the time being. With his usual worldly bluntness, he told me that it was entirely in her own interests to suspend proceedings as if she doesn’t want to go to law, Harold may change his mind, but once she has, he never will. I didn’t comment. I knew that Sam, to whom we were both devoted, thought all this romantic talk about marriage was nonsense; why couldn’t we just have an affair like everyone else?
23 June
Had lunch with my hero the urbane and brilliant Charles Wintour (editor of the Evening Standard) and told him that for ‘personal reasons’ I must resign from the Evening Standard Drama Panel where I had been the lay critic very happily for seven years. I refer to a ‘serious relationship’ with Harold.
Charles: ‘It is honest of you to raise this.’ Later he says: ‘I must say that I admire your nerve.’ I thought he was perhaps referring to his own situation. As in most resignation meetings, however, I ended by not resigning. All this of course was about Otherwise Engaged, which would inevitably be considered by the panel.
Charles: ‘We must rise above it. No one would think your critical judgment impaired.’ Me: ‘No, no.’ Thinks: not half. Took Marigold Johnson to the theatre: Michael Frayn, pleasant and extremely funny.
24 June
Mummy takes the opportunity to say that she will now write me a letter to say that what I am doing is wrong: ‘The trouble is, darling, that the charm and charisma of your presence is such that one begins to feel a bit happier and even sound approving.’ This flattery gets her nowhere. I put down the telephone, I think. Or maybe it’s a wee slam-down. For heaven’s sake, I’m in my forties! She never took so much interest in my love life when I was sixteen: she did not encourage confidences so I did not make them. I was perfectly happy with that: I loved being so independent. But it is a bit late to alter our relationship twenty-five years later.
25 June
Harold exhausted by the strain of his home life, coupled with rehearsals. Though he did manage to dictate a new scene for Jeanne Moreau to Sam Spiegel and director Elia Kazan for The Last Tycoon. Me: ‘It’s WORK that is another country, not the past.’
26 June
Gave the prizes at St Philip’s Sports Day. Narrowly missed being extinguished – of all things – by a cricket ball. Ironic. Saw my lawyers, suggested by George Weidenfeld, in the morning. Mr Leslie Paisner seemed immensely wise, which is needed. Harold Paisner, his son, extremely young-looking, seemed sympathetic to what I am doing. To him it was romantic and dashing. But Mr Paisner père did implicitly warn me of possible dangers ahead. Also left me with some very sage words which I quoted verbatim to Hugh that night: ‘If two sensible, educated, civilized people can’t reach agreement about their own children, it is unlikely a court can.’
It was advice that Hugh and I took to heart. As it happens, our respective styles of parenting had always dovetailed: they continued to do so successfully for the nine years Hugh had to live.
Hugh was a devoted father. He was also someone who had chosen to base himself in his mother’s house until his marriage at the age of thirty-eight – because that way he could enjoy the free social life of a very popular bachelor. Of his new existence in which he reverted to this kind of life, one relation observed later: ‘In many ways the life of a bachelor with six children really suited him.’
27 June
Pat Naipaul came to lunch. Told her. She said: ‘Oh, poor Antonia! You will be married to a writer over forty and past his best, of failing creativity.’ I am too fond of Pat to make any comment, but Francis Wyndham pointed out later: she was manifestly talking about Vidia’s friend Margaret, if he chose to leave Pat for her. I also thought privately what Harold would have said to the question of creativity: ‘Fuck creativity.’
28 June
Managed to sit in the wrong