Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [101]
But this was a horrible time for the whole world.
11 September
We were at Florence Airport: Harold having received an honorary degree at the university and made a speech in which he denounced American foreign policy, when I idly noticed rows of people staring glazedly at the TV in the Exit Lounge. Two English lawyers, father and son, recognized us and told us the unbelievable story. Images sprang up: Independence Day, Towering Inferno. Thereafter we sat more or less in silence on the plane for two and a half hours, the memory of Harold’s recent speech with us both. In addition I realized that my son Damian was almost certainly in New York where he worked half the month in the financial sector. This was no doubt a common thought to all the people on the plane: Who is in New York? And where? It’s the first primitive thought of human beings.
When we reached home, Harold rang up his Italian translator, a close friend: ‘I want to withdraw my speech from any of the websites who asked for it.’ Damian had left me a message: ‘Like a war. People weeping in the streets.’ I managed to reach him on the telephone and he told me that in his mid-town office, ‘I look out on the Twin Towers and now they are not there.’ Then he told me the sort of personal details about people in his office and their losses which stab you. After that we just sat watching the TV screen. Harold’s speech lay heavy upon us because although there are rational arguments to be marshalled against US foreign policy, to say nothing of Iraqi casualties, nothing, but nothing, could alleviate the sheer horror of what had happened, the unalterable tragedy for those left behind.
Later Harold made a press statement pointing out with regard to his speech: ‘I use words not bombs.’ Then he maintained silence out of respect for the bereaved. My own private reaction was to cancel my projected book tour of the US to promote Marie Antoinette. ‘She had her sorrows too’ – perfectly true, but I couldn’t and shouldn’t say things like that at such a time.
15 November
Harold has not felt well since he returned from Canada, a month ago, absolutely exhausted, no energy. Both of us, in it together, feel a kind of despair which luckily we can discuss. Naturally I get nightmare scenarios in my head in the night hours. I don’t know how to combat them.
25 November
Harold feeling better. It’s just indigestion. We discuss Harold’s idea years ago for a play as a sequel to One for the Road, in which the wrecked parents Gila and Victor, together at liberty but of course without Nicky, meet the torturer Nicolas at a party. He had even started to write it, when I reached Chez Moi restaurant at 10 p.m. after a film. He has not written for over two years. It makes the whole difference to his spirits as ever. Harold on the problem: ‘There will be no confrontation. At least I don’t think there will …’ Later: ‘No explicit allusions.’ It takes place in an embassy, possibly in America – the UN? – and the characters are, as before, called Nicolas, Victor and Gila.
27 November
Our wedding anniversary – twenty-first. The hopeful entry above about a sequel to One for the Road has to be completely contradicted. Harold found ‘nothing’ in the ten or so pages he had written, had violent indigestion at Sunday lunch and felt incredible lassitude on Monday.
12 December
No Man’s Land having opened, Harold is off for an endoscopy. He feels generally better.
13 December
Oh, the optimistic tone of that entry yesterday morning. Everything has changed. Harold came back from his endoscopy and buzzed me in my Eyrie. I found him in the drawing room looking rather white. And I knew. What Dr Westaby said was: ‘There is something there and I don’t like the look of it.