Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [23]
20 June
Drove Flora to her new tutor, a grand old lady in the great tradition of female dons. ‘I thought your Mary Stuart was charming,’ she told me, ‘But your Cromwell was very stiff. I couldn’t get through it.’ Me: ‘It was so stiff I could hardly write it.’ Take a B minus, Miss Pakenham.
27 June
Enormous heat continues. Images: Harold, Daniel and Orlando playing night cricket in the garden about 10 p.m. Sleeping out: Harold and me on separate mattresses; Harold slept till 9 a.m.; I woke at dawn.
4 July
New York: the two hundredth anniversary. But the real news of the day was the rescue of the Israeli hostages at Entebbe in a James Bond-like operation. My first words to Harold were to recall our argument in Dubrovnik where Harold maintained the militaristic spirit of Israel was no longer necessary although it had been once, and I disagreed due to the marauders surrounding Israel. Now Harold, I noticed, unqualifiedly thrilled by the rescue.
5 July
Said to Harold on the morning: ‘You know, I’d really like to go down and see the Tall Ships.’ Alas, Harold put up the minimum resistance to this wild plan. So off we went. First an hour’s ride in an uncooled taxi. Then debouched and walking in intense heat – I didn’t even have a hat. Propelled by police of exceptional unpleasantness. All we could see occasionally were the flags on the masts. Occasionally I began to laugh, thinking what on earth were we doing there and looking at Harold’s face.
7 July
Had a ghastly experience at a musical called A Chorus Line which is the hit of New York. We walked out and the attendants couldn’t believe it: ‘Is she sick or something?’ But Harold’s casting of Otherwise Engaged is going well.
8 July
Harold reading children for Miles and Flora in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, adapted for a stage play. A crowd of eager tots and chaperones inside the stage door. In the course of the morning I completely reversed my opinion of the children. My original candidate for Miles was too knowing altogether. A minute flaxen-haired doll called Sarah, so small she could hardly read the script, proved to be the most brilliant actress. (Years later I was amused to realize that the minute flaxen-haired doll had become famous as Sarah Jessica Parker.) Went to our one New York party. Jackie Kennedy was there. In her soft, wondering voice: ‘Why, Antonia, are you here for the Democratic Convention?’ Me: ‘Not exactly.’
9 July
Dinner at the discreet upper west side Carlyle Hotel with Steve McQueen to discuss Old Times as a film. What an erotic play it is! I read scenes in the hotel. Steve McQueen started quoting the most suggestive bits. ‘I’m fearfully decadent,’ he said, pronouncing it ‘decayed-ent’. ‘I love decayed-ent things.’ He was a strange sight, having grown a true lion’s mane of hair to his shoulders plus beard in order to walk about unrecognized. Only when he takes off his tinted glasses do you see the amazing blue eyes. And when he walks across the restaurant to take one of his many phone calls. Then you see the inimitable McQueen walk.
17 July
Dinner with the producer Michael Codron and his partner David Sutton in Chester Terrace. Many ghosts because Jack and Valerie Profumo lived there, and this was the garden Jack tended when he could not go out for fear of verbal and even physical abuse. Opposite were the wide doors of Chester Gate where after a party as a teenager I used to stay with Tony and Violet Powell because nobody would take me to my parents’ home in Hampstead Garden Suburb (it was too expensive: thus I considered my romantic prospects blighted). The lights were on and no curtains drawn on the summer