Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [62]
We were leaving Bruce Chatwin’s memorial service in the Moscow Road, Bayswater on 14 February when the actual news of the fatwa was published. A member of the press approached Harold as he was leaving the Greek Orthodox Church and surprised him by asking him if he was Salman Rushdie. ‘No look behind you,’ I said, jokingly, pointing to Tom Maschler. We were told the hideous truth at the wake for Bruce. Thereafter, in my desperate wish to do something, it was at least consoling to be the current president of English PEN, the international writers’ organization. At least I was able to lead deputations to two successive foreign secretaries on the subject. On one occasion the Foreign Secretary said to me as we all gathered in the extremely gracious official drawing room: ‘I believe Mr Rushdie is not too uncomfortable.’ He spoke in a patrician tone which somehow implied that Salman, a man of substance both by upbringing and by his own achievements, was enjoying running water for the first time in his life.
Naturally Harold’s concern for all the issues involved – justice to the individual against an authoritarian decree and the whole question of free speech – made him vehement in public defence of Salman. It was an unequivocal issue for him. It wasn’t a question of any political party. I tried explaining this to Tony Powell when I had lunch with him. ‘These days I only come up to London for the dentist and Mrs Thatcher,’ he told me. ‘I’m madly keen on her,’ he says. ‘It’s like being eighteen again, as I desperately try and think of things to interest her.’ He went on: ‘Of course I hear that your and Harold’s politics these days are practically Militant Tendency.’ Me: ‘Oh, far to the left of that.’ Then he asked how Harold fitted his admiration for Larkin with the latter’s politics. I explained that Harold’s views on literature were quite unaffected, so far as I could see, by his views on social justice, in fact justice in general. He maintained them quite independently without being troubled by the fact that, for example, Eliot’s views on many things would have been very different from his own.
26 February
Tough week. I can’t relate in detail the many, many meetings, calls and manoeuvres. Harold constantly on TV to the extent that worried people rang me up. Highlights: good row with Dada (Mummy on my side) who is in favour of a strong anti-blasphemy law. Much international action: Harold spent all Friday getting Beckett’s signature. Right-wing press, predictably, manages to condemn a) Islam b) Salman c) anyone, i.e. us, who supports him d) the feebleness of the intellectuals’ response in not supporting him.
28 February
Moving moment at 12.30 when telephone rang: ‘Antonia, it’s Salman …’ His distress that in England only, people have found it de rigueur to rubbish the book, while defending his right to publish it. It’s all right to say this to me because he knows that Harold and I liked his work even before we liked him. Then he adds he has been taken down from Danger One to Danger Two. Me: ‘Congratulations! I suppose.’
4 March
Writers’ Day (PEN). Sweet, cosy, humorous speech by P.D. James and a fine one from Chinua Achebe. Though some members wanted ‘a survey of African literature’, I preferred his discussion of the roots of imaginative literature. The questions included one referring to Salman about the artist’s responsibility as well as the artist’s freedom. In reply Harold made a fine speech about Salman being in the Joycean tradition.
6 March
No one talks about anything else except the Rushdie affair, but rather like Suez in 1956, you can’t immediately predict exactly what the reaction will be. A Muslim woman friend said she had been surprised both ways by Bernard Lewis who she thought would be favourable to Salman and Edward Said who she thought would not. I tell her that beneath most people’s attitudes,