Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [21]
25 February
Party at the New Review. I see a handsome man who comes and shakes my hand and Harold’s vigorously. John Stonehouse, MP. ‘I want to sympathize with two fellow sufferers from the press.’ We grin back. But want to say: ‘Thank you. But we haven’t embezzled, faked death, and are not standing trial at the Old Bailey.’
2 March
Alison Lurie and the Billingtons came round for supper. Harold denounced Solzhenitsyn for his broadcast on Panorama which actually none of us had seen. ‘I hate messiahs,’ he said. And: ‘Why can’t he talk about Chile?’ Me: ‘Perhaps he doesn’t know about Chile.’ Harold is obsessed by Chile. Far into the night after the guests had left.
6–7 March
The weekend at Sissinghurst where Christopher Falkus, my editor at Weidenfeld & Nicolson, and Gila have taken the South Cottage, once Harold Nicolson’s own. Christopher taught Harold bridge!! A great success, confirming my theory of Harold’s naturally brilliant brain, seen for example in his editing of my work although he is hardly famous for that sort of thing. Slept in Vita’s bedroom, cold but grand. No ghosts.
13 March
I asked Hugh about Jackie Kennedy, an old friend but with whom his name had been recently linked by the press. I knew he had always liked and admired her. Hugh: ‘How can one have a romance with someone followed everywhere by forty-eight press photographers?’
15 March
Lunched with Graham Watson, my, agent. Agreed to do endless books: thrillers on a convent (my idea) and the Highlands (his).
19 March
Vidia and Pat Naipaul to lunch. It’s a great success. I see how much Vidia and Harold have in common including strong will and anger. They discuss anger like one might discuss a taste for port.
25 March
Went in the evening to the new National Theatre – the Lyttelton. Expedition marred by the absolutely appalling nature of John Osborne’s play Watch It Come Down. Indulgent, ranting, and from this great writer we both admired! Only Susan Fleetwood brought some kind of joy or at least plausibility to her role. When we first met, Harold told me: ‘You understand that I can never leave a play by a living author halfway.’ So I was dreading the second act. Fortunately at the interval, he said to me: ‘You remember that decision? Well, I’ve rethought it …’
26 March
Very nice letter from Charles Wintour about me leaving the Evening Standard as non-fiction reviewer at my own request, which set the seal on all that.
1 April
We have just learned that we have to quit this house by 14 December. Harold, airily: ‘Well, we’ll be in New York then’ – he was going to direct two plays there. Me, unspoken: ‘But my things won’t be in New York.’
Oh dear, insecurity. Can I really bear to be set up in another rented house and be ‘content’ as in The Homecoming? In the meantime Daniel returns to live with us.
8 April
Arrive in Zagreb for a performance of No Man’s Land in Serbo-Croat. Interestingly, Briggs and Foster were played as policemen, which we’re assured is realistic in the current situation in Yugoslavia.
In various fish restaurants in Dubrovnik, money worries are discussed. Also Harold mentions dinners in the past with Joan Bakewell and their respective spouses: and how different levels of knowledge among four people in a room might make a play. Or not. He spends most of his time in the hotel in what I call as a result the Beckett suite, studying for his recital of The Unnameable at the National next week.
15 April
Morning of reading – Venice Preserved (re Charles II) for me and Eric Kahane’s translation of No Man’s Land for Harold. Then we set off on a ‘Riviera Cruise’, as it is advertised. At one stopping point we are urged to climb up to a mausoleum. Harold to the guide: ‘I prefer life to death.’ Guide baffled.
18 April –