Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [112]
Otherwise we had an extremely good time. Harold’s professional career, which had been in the doldrums here since the death of his friend and translator Eric Kahane, has been given a boost by a big interview in Le Monde in which he praised the French stand over the Iraq war. A pro-French intellectual! Just what they like.
18 June
Our party for Benjie’s City Poems (Benjie paid, we gave). I organized it brilliantly and unaided with the mere help of Amanda, a top-class caterer, Linda, my PA, Linda’s stand-in Lesley, Benjie himself, Swiftprint, Teresa and Tina and twenty-five waiters. As you see, unaided. The real feature of the party for me was the praise people heaped on the garden with pink climbing roses and the orange blossom still flourishing, pink and dark red geraniums (Barbe Bleue), grey senecio and notes of blue plumbago. Lilies just beginning to flower. About fifty copies of the poems were sold because Eliza, adorably fey in her white muslin First Communion dress, her flaxen hair, her elfin looks, accosted each guest as they entered: ‘You’ve got to buy a copy!’ Who could refuse? Benjie thanked Harold for ‘making him so happy’.
20 July
In Scarborough Harold gave a reading of War and was then in dialogue with the extremely amiable Alan Ayckbourn. Later he said he thought he must vary his act at Cheltenham in the autumn. We discussed returning to readings of his plays that he enjoyed doing so much. Celebration? Harold: ‘I always fancied my Suki …’ (the sluttish young wife). I wouldn’t have raised it if he hadn’t, but did feel that the Turin speech made on 27 November 2002 needed an updating, given the fact that the war had only been pending then.
August 2003
Kingston Russell, Dorset. The most exciting social event was the visit of Jude Law, who will star in the new film of Sleuth, produced by Tom Sternberg, directed by Ken Branagh, screenplay by Harold. Tom brought him down, arriving in a huge silver car which satisfied all expectations of glamour. As indeed did Jude himself, lying asleep under an apple tree in his swimming trunks like a young Apollo taking a nap. (Alas, Edna O’Brien, also staying with us, ordained that we ladies should not swim at the same time as Jude, lest we lose our mystery for him.) Harold worked with Tom and Jude on the script on and off all day. He’s really enjoying himself. One forgets that Harold regards screenwriting as an important art, quite a separate one from playwrighting, it is true, but not just a ‘my-house-needs-painting’ exercise, as an extremely famous playwright once put it to us modestly, about his own screen-work.
24–28 August
Cornwall. Harold lurked at the Abbey Hotel, Penzance writing Sleuth; Rebecca lurked upstairs in the farmhouse she had rented working on the proofs of her masterwork A People’s History of Britain. Edward and I lurked round the gardens of many country pubs taking the girls out for lunch. All parties very happy.
October 2003. We went back to Paris for eight days for my research. Harold, owing to his political views being shared by the French, had a very happy time.
16 October
Harold read from the plays at Cheltenham, as planned, also three ‘political’ poems and three love poems. While he was enacting Gila in One for the Road, he had to suddenly shout back at the interrogator in a sudden fit of defiance from a helpless prisoner: ‘As it was!’ At which point a huge blond guide dog, sprawled fast asleep in the aisle in front of me leapt up and stood on guard against the attacks of the world. The dog remained extremely distressed until Harold’s ‘Gila’ voice once again softened.
18 November
Scene outside Quaker Meeting House