Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [24]
Dorset in the high summer; the heat so great that the fields were white. We rented a cottage from the hospitable Warners at Laverstock, a magical valley in a countryside of narrow lanes, Mabey’s Farm Kitchen, hills, and just over the hills, THE SEA. Picnics of wasps and sand by the sea. The children very happy being driven about in Harold’s Mercedes and eating chicken’n’ chips in pub gardens. Thrilled when Harold ate three helpings of cherry pie. Harold spent a lot of time in what he calls ‘the creative activity of swatting flies’. Boys join in with enthusiasm, I suspect because they know it annoys me. Natasha re Harold on the beach at West Bay: ‘He looks quite different from everyone else. He’s obviously deep in thought.’ Meanwhile the children buried each other in the sand and Figaro tried to keep the sea away by barking.
30 July
Harold gave a performance of Old Times in the Warner kitchen. Said he had always wanted to play Deeley, ‘the man defeated by women’. Simone Warner sang the snatches of the songs (as Anna) just as Harold wanted them.
31 July
The proofs of Love Letters, my anthology, arrived. Gave Harold a copy. Pointed out: ‘For Harold’ in the dedication. Harold: ‘My heart gave a great leap.’
5 August
Harold and I went on a pilgrimage to East Coker where Harold recited the speech from Four Quartets he loved, ending ‘Now and in England’ (which actually turned out to be from ‘Little Gidding’). We were reverential towards the plaque inside the church commemorating Thomas Stearns Eliot.
17 August
The anniversary of the day I flew down from Scotland and joined Harold in Launceston Place to find it full of flowers. We tried to celebrate but things are really unhappy and unresolved (with Harold and Vivien, not me and Hugh, who is merrily grouse-shooting). Two of Harold’s old friends who wish Vivien well, chose to tell me separately that Harold is not actually doing her any favours by enabling her to stay in vast and now apparently mouldering Hanover Terrace, nearly eighteen months after he has departed. Naturally, he will buy her any house she wants. Perhaps they are right. It is of course Harold’s guilt. But I am obviously the last person who can or should comment on this.
Chapter Five
OUR NEWFOUNDLAND
21 August 1976
Eilean Aigas. Listening to Radio 3. Heard a man’s voice saying very clearly, tenderly and firmly, as though directly to me: ‘It is a beauteous evening, calm and free / The holy time is quiet as a nun.’ (Wordsworth’s sonnet.) Quiet as a nun! This is the title of my projected mystery story which I tinkered with in Dorset, when it was too hot to work on the state papers of Charles II. I am inspired to write and write and write. In the end it takes me about six weeks altogether: a first and a last where I was concerned.
27 August
My forty-fourth birthday. Flew back from Scotland to Launceston Place. Went to dinner at Walton’s with Claire Bloom, who will star in The Innocents in the autumn. Her companion Philip Roth is a wry man: I really liked him.
31 August
Vivien now says her doctor has told her she is an alcoholic. It would of course explain a lot. Harold, beyond repeating her statement, doesn’t discuss it further. I don’t wish to.
Harold goes to New York. Hugh and I manage to have a good talk about school fees, money and all the rest of it. He is in a very cheerful mood. ‘Although I can of course never be happy again,’ he tells me with a laugh, ‘I am in fact extremely content.’
18 September
Certainly writing Nun has brought me great happiness, and because of my birthday, I have always