Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [119]
21 July
Dramatic day. I was interviewed by Cherie Blair, assisted by Cate Haste, at No. 10 on the subject of prime ministers’ wives for a TV film following their book (which contained much interesting, anecdotal stuff on the lives of the First Mates). Cherie, beautiful as she is in reality, not photographs, very sympathetic. I approve of her efforts to get the position of the prime minister’s spouse defined, in view of the constant hostility of the press. At the end she leaned forward and asked me whether I would like to have been a prime minister’s wife. I gazed at Cate and burst out laughing. ‘What, Harold for PM!’ and laughed some more. The bubble coming out of my head read: ‘My husband would like to indict your husband as a war criminal, so that’s what he would do as Prime Minister.’ What I actually said – perfectly truthfully – was: ‘If he was Prime Minster, Harold would commandeer all the boxes at Lord’s for the Ashes.’
Life’s rich tapestry. I went from No. 10 (enormous security, which at the time I thought possibly overdone) to the Royal Court Theatre where Harold was being interviewed by young foreign playwrights, the annual date he much enjoys. Cuban, Finnish, Arab, etc. Naturally he was inveighing against Tony Blair … He also spoke passionately about the need for humour in plays. No one cracked a smile. Went out to pick up a taxi and found a traffic block. Then I heard of the four bombs and the dread words Shepherd’s Bush (where two of my children and their families live). Found myself thinking that the police who had shot the would-be suicide bomber had been right, given his intentions and his desire to die, and I’m supposed to be a liberal! (I was of course totally wrong about this: here was an innocent man, the victim of police bungling.)
Harold’s still-declining health: I record the kindly reactions of others including the phrase that carers get to know: ‘Really, this is much worse for you.’ The answer is: ‘No, it’s not. It’s worse for Harold. Much worse. But it’s dreadful for me in a different way.’ In the meantime my Diary, with increasing gloom, lists the tiny amounts of food Harold manages to ingest. It’s all much more painful than chemo.
27 August
My seventy-third birthday. I can hardly describe it. The most beautiful weather I have ever known at Bernhurst and a banquet on the front lawn, going on as in a French film, till six o’clock in the evening. Interleaved with the cricket, watched by enthusiasts indoors, a cliffhanger which ends in triumph when England wins the Ashes. But Harold is worse, really worse, eats nothing, has virtually lost his voice, coughs and splutters all night long. Back to the doctor and soonest. Oh, why is it always a Bank Holiday at the time of agonies?
An excellent emergency doctor caused Harold to be admitted to Princess Grace Hospital. It took a little time for him to be diagnosed with a rare auto-immune blood disease called Pemphigus, where ‘the body attacks the body’. This is one of those diseases which you wish afterwards you had not looked up on the internet because the prognosis is so dire. Harold left me a sweet message: ‘I’ve been listening to the Rite of Spring on the radio. It reminds me of you.’ Actually I feel like the bleak rite of mid winter but the message is still lovely to receive.
10 September
It’s so odd being alone nearly all the time and my very best friend for thirty years can’t talk, really. So I moan to this Diary. Doing the Source Notes for Love and Louis XIV is however a marvellous distraction: normally I loathe the Bloody References’ as I call them, but this time they are keeping me sane.
14 September
Harold came home.
15 September
New Diary, new life. This morning Harold felt very warm when I hugged him, not so much the holy man-cum-skeleton of yesterday. ‘It’s Paradise being here.’ He said it. I agreed.
16 September
Harold went to a new doctor, Dr Chris Bunker, a dermatologist. Pemphigus is so rare that Dr Bunker, top expert, is currently treating only two people for it. And ‘it can be