Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [3]
13 January
While I was away, Harold had apparently called home on the public line; on Monday morning he called on my private line – I’m not sure how he got the number. We met for a drink at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in Bayswater (‘an obscure place’ he said truthfully) at 6 p.m. The bar was very dark and at first I couldn’t see him. That made it all the more like a dream. But ‘so it wasn’t all a dream’ was the verdict of us both at the end. Told me of numerous obsessional phone calls – no answer – often from the famous Ladbroke Grove telephone box opposite Campden Hill Square. Had evidently told Kevin Billington about the whole thing! I began to guess this and he then admitted it. Can’t say I care. ‘I am loopy about you: I feel eighteen’ was the general theme; I said I preferred the word ‘dippy’ …
The truth is that Harold has mesmerized me. Kept waking all night on the subject of a) him b) Benjie’s departure for boarding school at Ampleforth. But a) has quite taken my mind off the horrible sadness of b). (Our third child and eldest son, aged not quite fourteen, was setting forth for his father’s old school.)
23 January
Met Harold at 5.30 in the Royal Lancaster Hotel (he has telephoned daily). Parted at 11.30 to our respective matrimonial homes. We never left the bar, just talked and talked. Discussed among other things No Man’s Land, his new play – to open at the National in April – and how he started to write it. At first he thought he was echoing himself (‘What, two old men together again …’), then he thought: ‘You are what you are.’ He had sent me the typescript after our first meeting. I liked the character of Spooner, the failed poet. So I asked him: ‘Did Spooner get the job?’ On the whole he thought: No. ‘But Spooner is an optimist and there will be other jobs.’ I said I would have to stop my ears at the first night for the dark of the ending: Winter/Night forever. But I liked ‘I’ll drink to that’ at the end. ‘That’s the point,’ Harold said, delighted … I am quite obsessed by him when I am with him. He tells me he is quite obsessed by me all the time – the days spent waiting to telephone, etc.… Described his life as a kind of prison, how, when can we meet, ever?
26 January
Taken to supper with Anthony Shaffer, author of Sleuth, by an old friend. The fashionable doctor for artists, Patrick Woodcock, warns me quite innocently against playwrights: ‘They’re the worst.’ Thought of Harold. I suppose I’m in love with him but there are many other things in my life. Yet: ‘oh, oh, the insomniac moonlight’ in the words of the Scottish poet I like, Liz Lochhead.
30 January
Harold called. He asks: ‘Does it make you happy that we met? You wouldn’t rather we hadn’t met?’
1 February
I knew it would be a good day. Harold rang up in the morning and said, ‘Tea is on’, having said two days ago ‘the situation is fluid’. Went at four, discreetly parking the car in Sussex Place. The house in Regent’s Park Terrace is vast, on first impression, and extremely sumptuous. I suppose it would not be so sumptuous if ten people lived in it. But with three, it is. A lot of large beautiful modern pictures in huge quiet rooms, apparently unlimited in number. Harold made tea. We went upstairs to the greeny-grey drawing room, vast pictures, few objects, greeny-grey light, enormous quantity of chairs and low sofas.
‘I will show you my study presently.’ And he did. At the top of the house, sixth floor in fact, we went up and up, like Tom Kitten. A marvellous room, much space, also less hushed. A desk with windows overlooking Regent’s Park and the other way, roofs. A chaise longue. A few chairs. Lots of books, novels and poetry. Harold presented me with his poems. ‘I would make a good secretary if you ever needed one,’ I said, seeing the accommodation. He said: ‘the same thought had already crossed my mind.’
9 February
Joyous, dangerous and unavoidable – Harold’s three words to