Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [34]
1978
1–6 January
At the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne. I work flat out on Charles II and Harold sits about smoking his Black Sobranies and reading the Guardian. (We work in the same room, for the first and if I have anything to do with it, the last time.) At the end I have finished one chapter of Charles II. Harold has completely redrafted and polished off Betrayal – the name is back again. Names swirled about: now Patrick, Emma and Stephen having been Nick, Ned, Lucy, Jenny to name but a few. (In the end Robert, Emma and Jerry.) We talk endlessly about the play at meals. Harold is keen on Albert Finney for Stephen and I suggest Michael Gambon for Patrick: approved. Harold wonders whether Peter Hall would do it?
3 January
My first visit to Mr and Mrs Pinter in Hove. Me: ‘Please warn them how tall I am. People don’t realize who’ve only seen me on TV.’ Mrs Pinter to Harold: ‘Please warn her I haven’t been able to have my hair done because of the New Year.’ Mr Pinter is small and not nearly as fierce as Harold had indicated, in fact he’s extremely jolly, winking at Harold, apparently, behind my back. The flat is extremely cosy, full of well-tended plants. Frances Pinter is quite tall, wonderful long legs, slender, very well turned-out; the hair of course looks beautiful, thick, iron grey; she looks amazingly young for mid seventies. They are perfectly sweet to me, producing the family album – from which I notice, with an interior giggle, all photographs of his marriage which might be thought to distress me or embarrass Harold have been hastily removed. Harold as a baby, round and laughing. But Mrs Pinter confirms that they never had another because Harold was so difficult. ‘No peace for three years. We never went out,’ says Mr Pinter. ‘We tried to go out once, gradually relaxing my fingers from his, tip-toed out. By the time the wife and I reached the street, there was a reproachful little figure standing at the window, holding back the curtains …’
8 January
The third anniversary of our meeting. The Harwoods came to supper and Thomas dropped round, unexpectedly, talking about the Boer War when he came and talking about the Boer War when he left (he was writing a book on the subject). His concentration mesmerizes Harold, extending even to the moment when Damian exploded a can of Coke all over his shirt. Thomas talked on while others mopped him up.
I go forward with Charles II; Harold tinkers with White Wedding (as Betrayal has become) and rehearsals for The Rear Column. Harold also occupies himself refusing to let a single expletive be deleted from No Man’s Land which is being filmed by Granada. As a result, no one knows whether it will go ahead or not.
27 January
What a happy morning! Harold brings me proofs of his Poems and Prose. ‘One little thing to show you.’ It is dedicated ‘To Antonia’. Harold is thrilled by the appearance of this book. One should never forget that Harold wanted to be a poet and in many ways sees himself as a poet. He would agree with the order on Shakespeare’s grave which we visited last year: ‘Poet and Playwright’, i.e. poet first.
Peter Hall rang up and will do the new play at the National. Harold had been oddly nervous about this but perhaps people always are. Peter says it’s a bleak play but I think it’s about the affirmation of love, hence the ending on love, even if it begins with bleakness after the ending of love. This probably says something about Peter’s and my respective situations at the moment.
31 January
Harold read that jolly Larkin piece ‘Aubade’ to Tom and Miriam Stoppard and Henry Woolf. (He rushed in and read it to me with great excitement on Xmas Eve when I was in the bath. I thought: ‘So this is what Xmas with Harold Pinter is all about: I have to hear about “unresting