Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [130]
Chapter Twenty
I’LL MISS YOU SO MUCH
In the summer of 2007 Harold wrote me a poem. As usual he worked on it not so much secretly as privately before reading it to me. Here it is:
POEM
(To A)
I shall miss you so much when I’m dead
The loveliest of smiles
The softness of your body in our bed
My everlasting bride
Remember that when I am dead
You are forever alive in my heart and my head
I burst into tears and in some ways shall always remain upset by it, as well as deeply, unbearably moved. It was written, as it turned out, about eighteen months before Harold died. But at the time, and ever after, I recognized it for what it was: a farewell. The first line in particular gave me a jolt. Rather touchingly, Harold did not seem particularly upset by my reaction since he was busy being pleased with himself for the concept of the dead missing the living rather than the other way around. He kept exclaiming over it in a contented manner: ‘Isn’t it an original idea, the dead missing the live?’ ‘Yes, but …’
I have the perennial spring picture of Harold in my mind, plotting with members of Gaieties Cricket Club for the greatest season ever to come – how good to record that in the summer of 2008 it actually happened. His very last season was a series of unbroken triumphs for Gaieties CC. Otherwise sitting in his chair he continued to read poetry, interlaced with politics: there was Yeats jostling with The Future of Iraq and similar titles, with Yeats gradually picked up more and more, The Future of Iraq out of exhaustion rather than lack of interest less and less.
But then I look at my Diary and see that Harold managed to get to Leeds at the end of April to attend a Pinter Festival organized by Mark Taylor-Batty. While he was there (I slogged off to the Royal Armouries and tried on the armour of the Earl of Leicester’s horse as a diversion), he met the members of the Belorussian theatrical company, brought to England under the sponsorship of Tom Stoppard, always so practically effective in these matters to do with dissidents.
The end of the performance was called Being Harold, and featured an enactment of his Nobel Speech, seen as relative to their plight. At the end the actors lined up on the stage of the Workshop Theatre in a circle. They were of very varying physical appearance, although all young. The actor in Harold enabled him to pass slowly and with great dignity round this wide semicircle shaking each hand, providing a striking image for the press – and no doubt for them too. Later in London he actually attended the performance: the Nobel Speech, always so close to his heart because in it he addressed his ‘forum’ as in ‘I have got my forum’. Of the Belorussian evening, Harold said, ‘I felt proud of what I’d written,’ even though it was a collage which he doesn’t normally like.
Sunday 17 June
We were both amused by a double article about us today in the Sunday Independent. I am reinvented as a sort of Mitford heroine, aristo, Catholic, with the headline: ‘He’s grumpy, she smoothes things over.’ I suggest that some role reversal might be fun in the future …
Then there was an evening at the Lord’s Taverners’ to raise funds; Derek Walcott read poetry in his fine, deep voice and Harold read his piece about a cricketing hero, Arthur Wellard, which got a lot of appreciative laughs. Harold and I continued to disagree about British politics, me saluting the arrival of Gordon Brown at No. 10 and refusing to give up hope of an improvement in the situation in Iraq (despite, for example, three British soldiers killed and twelve so-called ‘civilians’ on 28 June). We also continued to debate – politely – about religion, especially following the car bombs which exploded in the West End and Glasgow. Harold: ‘People of religion must take responsibility for its crimes.’ Me: ‘And must people of no religion take responsibility for the crimes of those without religion?’ Harold: ‘Who are they?’ Me: ‘Stalin and Hitler.’ Harold,