Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [128]
21 November
Special lunch for Harold at the British Library to mark the purchase of his ‘Archive’. This includes his collection of press cuttings. Jamie Andrews, archivist, a very nice enthusiastic man, told us that Book One was one of the most borrowed items, with those horrible early clippings about The Birthday Party. As we gazed at them, we marvelled over the one prophetic review by Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times: ‘You will hear more of this man.’
2007
1 January
Harold and I both reflected on what a terrible year 2006 had been for him health-wise – with Krapp’s Last Tape and Orlando and Clemmie’s wedding as the bright spots. Harold’s engagement diary last year morbidly fascinating to him: daily appointments with a nurse to dress the ulcer. But he’s resolved he’s better: and he’s going to walk. He is determined.
4 January
This equanimity came to an end when Harold had a bad fall down some stairs when we took a break at Chewton Glen. It was a split-level apartment and it took me some time to awake to his cries: ‘Help me!’ He was very shaken and so was I.
Harold recovered enough to do a day’s film for the director Kenneth Branagh, a little cameo with Ken himself, in the film of Sleuth. Jude, as co-producer, came to watch. He’s been amazing, did the outside scaling-the-house scene yesterday in ‘towering winds’.
17 January
Fabulous occasion! Dominique de Villepin gave Harold the Légion d’Honneur at the French Embassy. Harold was deeply moved by de Villepin’s speech; I did not see his expression as I was standing protectively behind his chair but several people confirmed there was a tear. He looked extremely dashing in his Paul Smith suit, bought up the road on the occasion when he had to meet the Queen to receive the CH. He also wore the same pale silk tie I had had so firmly brought from Paris for Orlando’s wedding.
We were greeted at the very steps of the Embassy entrance by both the Ambassador Gérard Errera and de Villepin himself. As Rebecca said: ‘In Britain it would be a scrawled notice: WE’RE BY THE POOL.’ De Villepin a marvellous apparition as we ladies were all hoping, exquisite suit, marvellous thick iron-grey hair, patrician nose and faint olive tinge to his skin. Then we were ushered into the library, an austere room full of books that looked false but probably weren’t. The talk was what I used to call wide-ranging when Harold and the boys discussed nothing but cricket for the whole of a long meal but in this case was genuinely so: Venezuela where de Villepin lived for years, Cuba and Castro. De Villepin spoke intelligently and eloquently, not quite lecturing us, and leaving room for short answers by Harold and even shorter ones by me. (Throughout he was extraordinarily courteous in acknowledging me, referring to my works, even in the public oration, primed I am sure by the thoughtful Gérard Errera.)
Later it was intensely moving when de Villepin said: ‘In the name of the President of the Republic …’ and pinned the red ribbon on to Harold’s welcoming Paul Smith lapel. Huge gathering – the children, including Natasha whom Harold wanted to come from Paris – and French-based friends such as Suzy Menkes and Laure de Gramont, Christine Jourdais from Gallimard and Jude Law who was in the midst of filming Sleuth. Harold had a brief encounter of the sharp kind with Mary Soames at dinner when, with huge blue Churchillian eyes blazing, she criticized Harold’s views on British foreign policy expressed in his speech. ‘My husband Christopher Soames would never have said that on foreign soil,’ referring to the fact that we were technically on French territory at the Embassy. ‘I’m not your husband,’ retorted Harold. Even in