Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [113]
19 November
Ken Livingstone’s Peace Party on the ninth floor of the so-called ‘gherkin’. Ken made an excellent speech stressing the amount of Americans he employed and his affection for the American people as opposed to the government. Plenty of old thespian radicals present including Corin Redgrave, Ken Cranham and Roger Lloyd Pack. Caryl Churchill told me about her short play at the Royal Court with Vanessa Redgrave as Laura Bush, seated graciously at an Iraqi children’s play group. Only all the children were dead. Laura Bush a.k.a. Vanessa: ‘And how did you die?’ Cooing at each one in turn. Vivid, horrifying – and not all that unfair.
2004
26 January
Coral Reef Hotel, Barbados. We spend most of our meals with the Grays. And then to everyone’s delight, Harold proposed himself as director for Simon’s new play about Berenson and Duveen, The Old Masters. It’s also greatly to my surprise as Harold has persistently said he has no more energy left to direct.
Looking back, I see this as a halcyon time. It was not our last visit to Barbados – that occurred a year later under far less propitious circumstances. But here was Harold offering to direct a new play by his favourite living playwright and favourite friend. It could not get much better. Meantime I was able to go to Mass at St Francis Church, where Father Michael Campbell Johnston who had performed our ceremony of marriage, now retired, was the parish priest. Happy-clappy Mass is never my personal choice in London where Latin and music are two essentials for me. But here it is absolutely correct and harmonious. Leadership of a strongly built black woman with a number of very young women in attendance, extremely beautiful, tiny skirts, high heels, choir of angels. Only upsetting moment when Victoria, a great animal lover, threw a banana down from her balcony to a family of eleven monkeys which filed past the pool at breakfast. A circular was issued: ‘Guests must not order extra bananas for monkeys … Guests who feed monkeys on their balconies and then leave the hotel … create unfortunate expectations … Monkeys do not understand the change of guests and become extremely aggressive towards the next occupants.’ Ghastly picture: bewildered and frightened guests, chattering disappointed monkeys. Question: ‘What do monkeys want?’
3 February
The deal is done. Harold is going to direct The Old Masters.
Conferences, faxes, emails, etc. round the pool. He is so pleased. Given Harold’s level of exhaustion, Simon thinks none of this would have taken place if Harold had read the play in cold, dispiriting London instead of being surrounded by energetic monkeys.
16 March
Harold magnificent on Iraq in a one-year-on special on Newsnight. Preempted any possible statement to the contrary by saying how happy he was with the news given by BBC poll that the Iraqis now in principle content with their lot. His opponent, an American named Ken Adelman made the mistake of arming himself with lavish compliments to Harold’s plays in order to lure him into complacency and then blast him. But Harold doesn’t do complacency. ‘My plays are irrelevant,’ he snapped at the third lavish compliment.
17 April
According to an article in the Guardian, President Bush was asked at a press conference yesterday how history would judge the Iraq War. He replied: ‘History? We don