Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [46]
11 June
Dame Peggy Ashcroft came to lunch, having indicated that she would like to do so. So I am FORGIVEN! (She had feared that my arrival as the first person in Harold’s life would disrupt the amitié amoureuse both treasured: which of course it didn’t.) She discusses the question of her biographer. Me: ‘Why not have a treat and choose someone really young?’ Peggy, little laugh: ‘But one might prefer, you know, someone who had seen one in one’s prime.’ That’s the trouble. Of all the people I know Peggy is the only one who treats old age with absolute astonishment and outrage. It’s because she really is so young inside that she cannot be reconciled to it.
12 June
Dinner with Teresa Gatacre and John Wells who praise us as an example of domestic bliss because we don’t quarrel. Well, not in public! Me: ‘The thing is, we all have to learn how to quarrel, without quarrelling about it.’
14 June
Official announcement that Hugh is to be knighted: the Wild Knight we call him. General delight throughout family and friends. ‘I hope they don’t think they can muzzle me,’ he harrumphs, referring to his eternally and admirably independent political views. Everyone assures him this is impossible.
3 July
Harold played in the fathers’ match at Colet Court (where Orlando was just concluding his time). He was evidently chuffed to do so.
6 July
With Isaiah Berlin at Jacob Rothschild’s London palace in Maida Vale, after a Brahms concert in the Festival Hall. Me: ‘Did Ann Fleming sleep with Hugh Gaitskell?’ Isaiah: ‘That is a factual question to which there must be an answer: Yes or No.’ But we never, in the course of a long and very enjoyable conversation, actually get to it.
9 July
Ann Fleming’s party for Angus Wilson’s knighthood. A.W. is delighted despite squalid behaviour of newspapers, one daring to call his magnificent, loyal partner Tony Garrett, ‘Lady Wilson’. Angus: ‘At last I understand what you and Harold went through.’ Long talk with Stuart Hampshire about his wife’s death: ‘I concentrated totally on one individual.’ At the end he presses my hand and tells me: ‘You mention Harold’s name in every sentence. That moves me and cheers me.’
1 August
Harold’s divorce actually went through. No fuss, not withdrawn at the last minute, etc. etc. (Vivien believed to be in a caravan in Scotland with her carpenter admirer – good move as it removed her from the clutches of the press). Harold, lying in bed with bronchitis and croaking: ‘I’m divorced.’ He takes me to the Belvedere Restaurant where he originally proposed. And proposed again. Silence. I thought it over. Then I said yes. Harold: ‘My God, I thought you were going to say No.’
14 August
FamHol in the Algarve. Bridge continues to be a feature as we are by now a four and we change partners every rubber. Damian aged fifteen is undoubtedly the best player (plays for Ampleforth), but he feels the necessity for a critical analysis of his partner’s play in a way that does not go down well with Harold – or me. It’s especially annoying for Damian that a) we are not very responsive to the opportunities he gives us for self-improvement, and b) he’s getting lousy cards. So Orlando on points, is consistently the overall winner. Later we go to a Fado-on-the-shore, an exceptionally noisy dance party, since our guidebook says of Fado, ‘if you can’t beat it join it’, and we’ve already endured one sleepless night. The high point is a sexy Dutchwoman lugging an apparently reluctant Harold on to the floor. She soon regrets her predatory approach when Harold flings himself about, giving it all he’s got in true Hackney style (he says), the Baryshnikov of East London