Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [13]
16 August
Harold in London begins to plan our new life. Me: ‘I’ve got to learn to live with someone. Togetherness. I’ve never really had that.’ True. Thought I would when I first married but Hugh didn’t want that. I remember instituting Bible readings in bed – togetherness – but Hugh, horrified, went to sleep! Who can blame him?
17–22 August
On Sunday I flew down from Inverness to live with Harold here, at 33 Launceston Place, off the Gloucester Road. He met me at the airport. Then we entered Launceston Place. The first thing I saw was a mass of white flowers in the hall. I had time to think, ‘Harold probably forgot to move them’, then he took my hand and led me into the drawing room. Lo! A vast arrangement of flowers including foxy lilies and other glories in the window, and another on the mantelpiece, and in the back room, all luxuriant, then on up the stairs. A huge arrangement this time of yellow flowers in the pink boudoir, more, pink, on my dressing-table, and pink also in the bathroom. At the time I wanted to photograph them. But having lived with them for a week, there is no need. They are in my ‘inner eye which is the bliss of solitude’. I shall never forget them. Or Harold’s expression. A mixture of excitement, triumph and laughter. It transpired he asked the flower lady from Grosvenor House (whom he knew from his time with Sam Spiegel when he sent me daily flowers) and commissioned them. ‘Is it for a party?’ she asked. ‘No, it’s for Sunday night.’
Chapter Three
READER, WE LIVED TOGETHER …
So we settled into our new lives. It was not all flowers and romance – probably the least romantic time of our lives, in retrospect.
I would like to be able to say in the immortal words of Jane Eyre: ‘Reader, I Married Him …’ Actually, it was a case of ‘Reader, We Lived Together’. I counted Anthony Powell as my uncle (the writer I admired so much was married to my father’s sister Violet). A stickler for these things, Tony asked me in advance of our arrival at his Somerset house, The Chantry, how I described my relationship with Harold officially. He was interested in the modern etiquette, he said. ‘Companion,’ I said, to tease. Tony pondered this. ‘Like an old lady?’ ‘Exactly like an old lady.’ Tony, who told me he had much admired the TV film of Harold’s play The Lover, looked puzzled. On that subject, Harold insisted on describing our relationship in the next CV in a National Theatre programme. ‘Harold Pinter has lived with Antonia Fraser since 1975.’ He told me that he heard on the grapevine that this was considered ‘unusual’ and somebody asked: ‘Don’t people generally try to cover up such things?’
19 August
Lunch with my father at l’Epicure which began well but got progressively worse as he tucked down his lips in a familiar grimace, following a perfectly satisfactory talk about Christopher Sykes’ biography of Evelyn Waugh, and started on at me.
Me: ‘I don’t ask you to approve, but to try to understand.’ But it’s no good and I see that Dada basically feels crossed at not having his own way. He never likes that.
21 August
Harold’s oldest friend Henry Woolf came to supper. Afterwards he performed Harold’s play Monologue. I thought it was brilliant. The night before Harold had read me his revue sketches and I fell asleep!! This time I did not fall asleep.
22 August
New TV show at the BBC, hosted by Melvyn Bragg, about paperback books. Original and admirable idea. Since we are dogged by the tabloids, including outside Launceston Place, Melvyn was gallant and arranged for me to be spirited away afterwards by a back