Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [41]
3 June
Went on Read All About It, now chaired by Ronnie Harwood. We interviewed Vidia Naipaul in connection with India – A Wounded Civilization. I asked him about writing fiction and non-fiction. ‘I know it’s a corny question,’ I said, ‘but you are famously tolerant.’ Afterwards one of the people on the programme said she was glad to hear this because she had thought him ‘a wee bit intolerant’ (!) Vidia reveals that he writes fiction and non-fiction quite differently – typewriter v. hand-writing. I love hearing details of writers’ craft, as cannibals eat the brains of clever men to get cleverer.
6 June
Visit to Venice. We have to visit Torcello because of the mention of Robert’s visit in Betrayal. We also do a spirited rendering of the play itself, the two of us. I am a particularly fine Jerry, the lover, I feel, and Harold a feisty Emma as well as the husband Robert. The latter is actually his favourite part in the play – he says it’s the best part. (He subsequently acted it on radio.)
We have a long conversation about occupation beginning with what would have happened if England had been occupied by the Germans. Harold: ‘I would have taken to the Welsh Hills and joined the resistance.’ Me: ‘No, you would have been killed before you got there, as a prominent Jewish intellectual, but would have taken one or two Germans with you.’ We then turn to the agonizing subject of the ‘occupation’ by Israel of Arab lands v. the Jewish right to a national home. I remind him of the disquiet of our friends in Israel that Jews should in any way be an occupying power. In this endless discussion, we tend to reverse positions according to what the other person says, I notice.
More happily, Harold works hard on the screenplay of The French Lieutenant’s Woman. A sinister experience crossing back to the Cipriani in the hotel motorboat with other revellers, staid but elegant couples, mainly American. Suddenly Harold gives a shout. The lights of the island have all vanished. I look up and see a small strongboat with lights on the mast fore and aft which has just passed us. But right on top of us, totally black and enormous, is a vast menacing ocean liner which is in fact being towed out to sea by the little boat. Like a monster, rearing up out of the deep, quite silently, it has blocked out all the light.
At lunch on Torcello, the gatti prowl about, one all too like poor vanished Rocky, the rest like Rowley, but their eyes are fierce and pessimistic as they prowl among the tables, not like the confident, more innocent eyes of English cats. I buy a tablecloth from the traders outside, in imitation of Emma in Betrayal. I get a call from London saying that income tax is being cut drastically. All round us, wealthy English guests are rejoicing and of course it’s wonderful for us, most welcome at just this juncture, to put it mildly. But, I think: who gets poorer? As usual with my Diary cogitations, there is no answer.
3 July
We stayed with Clarissa Avon at Alfrediston. This is a perfect country house arranged with all the harmony I remember. I passionately appreciate Clarissa’s sense of order, huge pots of regale lilies, a jardinière of pink and white geraniums; two pots of fuchsia – Ballerina? Harold says in awe of his own dressing room: ‘My old black jersey has been neatly folded.’ David and Rachel Cecil come to dinner, bringing Iris Murdoch and John Bayley. David rings up to say they won’t be changing, ‘since the Bayleys don’t seem to have brought any luggage’. Later, when they’ve gone, Clarissa asks: ‘How can you bear to hear about it, Harold’s old girlfriends, Isobel, Dilys and the rest?’ (Harold had been talking about his past). Me: ‘It’s the memorable path which led to wonderful me!’ Clarissa comments that she hates competition (she is so beautiful, so well-read, that I don’t think she can face much of it). ‘The only sport I like is swimming, which is not competitive.’ Cecil Beaton came to lunch, every conceivable inch of him immaculate in white tussore. He is an advertisement for the stroke from which he