Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [35]
1 February
Harold told Joan about Betrayal in the Ladbroke Arms. She is ‘in a state of shock’. He always knew this was going to be quite a meeting. Me, idiotically: ‘Apart from that, did she like the play?’ Harold: ‘That would be like asking Mrs Lincoln the same question.’ I am a fool. Actually I feel extremely sympathetic to Joan over all this while Harold is torn between two desperate emotions, sympathy and the ruthlessness – I suppose that is the word – of the artist. The fact that it has always been so, doesn’t make it any better for Joan now.
5 February
Joan now feels better about Betrayal but concentrates her attack on the title. Alison Lurie: ‘You have to have something to betray.’ She means love.
I wrote Joan a letter giving her my honest opinion that Emma is by far the most honourable character in the play (‘both the men are shits,’ I tell Harold cheerfully) because she at least is prepared to follow through the consequences of her behaviour. Robert and Jerry can’t or won’t.
But for me, the unique quality of Betrayal was best captured by Samuel Beckett in his note to Harold after he had read the script. He referred to the power of the last scene which is in fact the first scene chronologically, the dawn of the love affair: ‘that first last look in the shadows, after all those in the light to come, a curtain of curtains’. It is that sense of foreknowledge which clutches me with pain every time I see the play.
23 February
The Rear Column has opened. Ghastly day. The reviews are terrible (except The Times). Completely unexpected. Simon in despair. Actors numbed. Simon tells actors: ‘All the same, last night was the proudest night of my life.’
26 February
Sunday reviews even worse and there isn’t even one dissenter. Harold feels very much for Simon: ‘I’m looking forward to my turn in the autumn.’ I beg him not to read the papers on his way to Hove and urge contact with a great mind, giving him Tolstoy’s story Master and Man. Joan writes an absolutely lovely review for The Wild Island, my new Jemima Shore, in the Mail: generous and funny.
The Rear Column came off in a few weeks.
12 March
Garrick Club dinner given by Melvyn Bragg for Harold to meet John Le Carré (David Cornwell). Harold to Cornwell: ‘How much are spies paid?’ Cornwell explains that these days computers generate so much material and are so expensive to analyse that ‘you are far better off bribing a secretary who knows what was really important’. Harold thrilled by the thought of this secretary. Harold’s continual obsession with spies (i.e. Philby, and he loved John Le Carré’s novel The Honourable Schoolboy) is one for the PhD students.
16 March
I quote a phrase taught me years ago by Ushy Adam about a man we knew: Hausteufel, engelstrasse: it describes a domestic tyrant, much loved by the outside world. Tell Harold he is the opposite: ‘House angel, street devil’. It is perfectly true: Harold has the lowest domestic expectations, which is perhaps just as well under the circumstances, never makes angry fusses like ‘Where’s my shirt?’, ‘Where’s my early-morning tea?’, ‘Polish my shoes!’ etc. (Harold polishes his own shoes); but he sure can explode publicly! Harold loves the phrase.
18 April
Took all the children to see Alan Ayckbourn’s Ten Times Table. Harold: ‘What a good-natured man! He loves his characters. No one is totally derided.’ He admires Ayckbourn enormously and will always go to a play by him.
22 April
Harold’s long programme with Melvyn Bragg. I was pleased by the humour as well as the seriousness. Millions of people now realize that the brooding, menacing fellow actually tells a joke or two. Nice that he refers to the respect for learning in his parents’ home. Harold reveals that his mother is absolutely fed up with the references to ‘East End boy’. ‘We lived in North London,’ she says firmly. ‘But Mum …’ begins Harold.
7 May
Bernard Levin in the Sunday Times is predictably foul about The Homecoming (a new production by Kevin Billington); he calls it ‘unendurable’ and gets in