Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [32]
Harold went back and I took the children on further west, giving a history lesson about the Cromwellian settlement, the expulsion of the native Irish too late to plant their new crops (and installation of the East Anglian Pakenhams); they burn with generous indignation. On Sunday, heading for the boat to the Isle of Arran, we push through crowds outside churches. Me: ‘What is this heathen rite?’ (As I’ve made no attempt to take them to church, I pretend I don’t recognize its existence. They giggle in a shocked way at my daring.)
13 August
52 Campden Hill Square. Here. Very happy. I’ve got a pink study again. And Harold is settling into his study with his own desk and chair, his cricket picture by Guy Vaesen, all he has been allowed from Hanover Terrace. He says it’s enough. In my pink study, I find papers blowing about dated July 1975; a Sleeping Beauty-awakened element to the house.
27 August
A Saturday (and I was born on a Saturday). Thank goodness my horoscope in the Evening Standard promises: ‘A Dull Year’. That’s just what I want. Harold gives me an aquamarine necklace and Mummy promises a clematis for the garden I’m about to redo. Now I’m going to start on King Charles. Michael Holroyd, with whom I share a birthday, writes to say that he is going to start on George Bernard Shaw, according to our promise. The first sentence was buzzing in my head yesterday.
I wrote my Diary much less when I was concentrating on King Charles II, occasionally noting how happy I was, how handsome the children were becoming and so forth. Whatever the continuing difficulties of Harold’s life, we were now secure together. The children went back to school. Two kittens, Rocky and Rowley, arrived, and were welcomed trustingly by Figaro who could not possibly believe they were cats: we would not do that to him. I note that Harold liked Simon Gray’s new play very much and wanted to direct it.
5 October
Harold: ‘While we are on the subject’ – we were talking about tax, should we share an accountant, etc. – ‘why don’t we get married?’ Me, in a dubious voice: ‘This is your second proposal.’ Harold, engagingly: ‘No, in fact it’s a return to my old proposal.’ He talks briefly of his period of strain. ‘I got through it because of you.’ Me: ‘What would we get married in?’ Pause. ‘You’re going to say: a Dress.’ We float the idea of New York where we find such contentment and have many friends but no family. In fact I do not imagine there will be any budging on the subject of divorce, so strongly demanded two years ago, now equally strongly denied, from Hanover Terrace.
19 October
We were lent Sam Spiegel’s house in Saint-Tropez. Blasting heat. I was able to type outside in a cotton robe and swim three times daily. Also inadvertently went to a nudist beach due to my lack of understanding of taxi driver’s French. I only cottoned on to his lewd jokes along the lines of ‘so you like that kind of thing, madame?’ too late when I got there. Stuck to my modest one-piece. Harold, dressed in black like Masha in The Seagull, read his book on the beach (a biography of Stanley, relevant to Simon’s new play The Rear Column) and never noticed.
30 October
A Catholic priest told me: ‘The Church used to take the line that divorced people living with other people were in a state of sin. There’s been a shift. Now we think only God knows who is in a state of sin … It is part of our pastoral care to help them.’ Impressed by this sensible attitude.
5 November
Poetry reading of W.S. Graham’s works in the Museum Tavern. Harold, Tony Astbury and Geoffrey Godbert. ‘Sheer Spooner-land,’ said Harold. The dirty upper room in the pub, unemptied ashtrays, wonderful verse. Hire: £3. Audience: two vast old poets, like antediluvian creatures waving their heads above the crowd, John Heath-Stubbs (blind) and David Wright (deaf). Both great poets. I see that people in the poetry world are animated by seriousness and love of the thing. Which makes these events so enjoyable.