Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [39]
17 September Sunday
Go with Harold and John Gross to the East End – or North London, as Frances Pinter would say – in the hot autumn sunshine. I get over excited, have the impression of something very green and garden-like, sun on the waters at Clapton Pond. It needs Harold at lunch at Bloom’s later to say: ‘You don’t understand. It was a terribly depressing place.’ John’s grandmother lived in Thistlethwaite Road opposite Harold’s parents. I photographed Harold and John outside the synagogue where Harold made his Bar Mitzvah. But I do see the force of Frances’ observation: this areas with its little gardens was not a place of first refuge: it was the next step on the ladder.
Preparations for Betrayal: the cast was now Dan Massey, Penelope Wilton and Michael Gambon, directed by Peter Hall. Also Harold had begun to work with the director Karel Reisz on the screenplay for The French Lieutenant’s Woman, something he had long wanted to do. The Reiszes – she is the film star Betsy Blair – come to dinner and play bridge. (This was the beginning of a lifelong friendship between the four of us.) In October Harold and Karel went down to Lyme Regis to inspect the Cobb, John Fowles, and other Dorset sights.
27 October
Rehearsals are not going well at the National. Perhaps this is always the case at this stage? Dan strikes his breast frequently and says he doesn’t feel it here, the humanity of the character. Answer in a chorus: how about acting it then? Penelope (who’s his wife in reality): ‘For that matter, I haven’t had a seven-year affair.’ Then sotto voce to Harold: ‘But if he goes on like this, I may soon.’
30 October
Betrayal is now wonderful, Harold says, and he is in love with Penelope Wilton. But there is a threat of wild-cat strikes at the National Theatre which may ruin everything.
The strikes continued to threaten, causing much anguish all round except to Peter Hall, apparently, who either had nerves of steel or gallantly pretended to have them. On the first night, no one knew for sure until the curtain went up whether the play would take place. The uncertainty did not necessarily affect the critics’ reaction but they were certainly lukewarm. Read over his shoulder at breakfast in The Times: ‘Pinter master of ambiguity, is blankly obvious.’ Billington of the Guardian, normally so intelligent, read us a lecture about bourgeois-affluent culture patterns … ‘Just what I expected,’ says Harold philosophically. He has after all been here before.
18 November
Sunday critics re Betrayal are even worse than the dailies. I read the ghastly self-important Bernard Levin; not sure whether Harold does.
24 November
Harold rings from the station (on his way to see his parents). Rave review from Benedict Nightingale in the New Statesman who also reviewed the reviewers: ‘glassy-eyed and furry-eared oafs’.
In December a house was bought for Vivien in Blackheath and Harold looked like getting back his books which, unlike the rest of the contents of palatial Hanover Terrace, he had pined for since 1975. (When we first lived together, he brought his desk, his chair and a picture of a cricket match.)
24/25 December
Midnight Mass at Farm Street. Haydn’s St Nicholas Mass which I had just been playing to Harold. Midnight Mass was over in fifty-five minutes, unlike the horror at Westminster Cathedral last year. Fr Peter Knott’s sermon began: ‘I don’t believe in long sermons for Midnight Mass.’ The Jesuits really know how to run things. Flora and I went thumbs-up. Harold’s stocking this year was a flighty long black nylon with a seam. I gave everyone an appropriate mug. His mug said: ‘You are a Genius.’ The mug vanished, the stocking hung around.
1979
New Year resolutions: 1) Be calm, have a calm centre, turn towards the calm centre and inspect it, contemplate my soul, if any. 2) Take joy in what Wordsworth called ‘the meanest flower that blows’; especially the