Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [109]
12 July
The great news is that Harold is officially cleared of the oesophageal cancer – no trace and no treatment needed for leukaemia. Professor Cunningham told Harold that his poem ‘Cancer Cells’ was quoted from at a recent oncologists’ conference. ‘So you’ve made a pretty good thing out of it.’ Scottish twinkle.
24 July
Thrilled with the arrival of Pinter Poems which I edited for the Greville Press at the request of Anthony Astbury. Four copies. Harold gave me number one, I gave him number two, and we gave number three to Edna, the dedicatee, and number four to Victoria and Simon. Harold and I managed to go to the Picasso–Matisse exhibition at the Tate – no wheelchair this time.
1 August
Kingston Russell. Benjie and Harold had a session over Benjie’s poems. Harold finds this an extraordinarily exciting development: he loves the poems and helps Benjie choose some for a little book also to be published by the Greville Press called City Poems. At the end Benjie touchingly says: ‘I think this has been the happiest hour of my life.’ Later still I thank Harold for making my son so happy (he’s half asleep but smiles). Lucy reveals that Benjie always wrote poetry, even on their honeymoon, but it was previously ‘unresolved’.
17 August
Harold wrote a poem. A perfect image of an embrace.
MEETING
It is the dead of night,
The long dead look out towards
The new dead
Walking towards them
There is a soft heartbeat
As the dead embrace
Those who are long dead
And those of the new dead
Walking towards them
They cry and they kiss
As they meet again
For the first and last time
We met Norman Mailer later in the summer and he told Harold he didn’t like the poem. Too soft! But he liked everything else Harold had written. Harold actually delighted with both comments.
26 August
Harold gallantly came to Edinburgh Festival where I was booked to speak, and did a gig himself. He was interviewed by an Australian journalist. To my surprise, she began right in about cancer, reading the poem. Harold then talked about it, very frankly, including a tribute to his ‘brilliant’ doctors, ending on his wife. Felt tears coming but saw granddaughter Eliza’s little face beside me and thought: No. Of course it wasn’t all about that. Much vigorous political discussion as Harold defended his position on the Serbian leader Milosevic: he just wants him to have a fair trial.
27 August
My seventieth birthday. Turned out to be the happiest day of my life – so far. Part of this was relief, of course, the great unbelievable happiness that Harold is all right, and in fact seems to have been given a great fillip by Edinburgh. Then there was the ineffable happiness of the FamPicnic at Hampton Court followed by dinner in our garden. I am the luckiest woman in the world (Harold can no longer claim to be ‘the luckiest man’). In my speech, I determined to embarrass my children as what is otherwise the point of being old if you can’t be roguish? Told the story of the immortal courtesan Ninon de Lenclos, of extreme longevity in her career. She was pursued by a young gallant, but she wouldn’t say yes and she wouldn’t say no. Then one day she named a date three weeks ahead. The day – or rather night – arrived and it was the best night of the young gallant’s life. Towards dawn, however, he did ask: ‘Out of curiosity, beloved Ninon, why did we wait so long and why this precise date?’ ‘Oh, darling,’ she replied, ‘I just wanted it to take place on my seventy-fifth birthday.’
12 October
Shortly after his seventy-second birthday Harold played tennis again, forty minutes, a real breakthrough. I never ever thought this would happen. He slept like a top but no ill effects.
23 October
Mummy died peacefully at Bernhurst, as she would have wished. We were there, with the Billingtons and Thomas. Later Kevin said: