Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [70]
5 May 1992
In Prague again: the third time in less than three years. This time it is for the shooting of The Trial. To the Barrandov Studios on a hill, built by Havel’s family. Harold feels strongly that The Trial is about man’s spiritual relationships, his search for God (like The Hound of Heaven, I add) i.e. not political.
At this point Harold wrote in my diary: ‘Quite right! H.P.’
5 May cont.
Later: Havel actually comes to watch the night-shooting when his immense work for the day is over. Harold is delighted. ‘I came to see his work,’ he says. ‘So he came to see mine: that’s how it is between us.’ I see Harold’s and Havel’s faces, close together, dark and fair, in the lighting of the street amid pools of darkness, like a picture by Rembrandt; both animated, and animated also by the human condition.
Chapter Twelve
STAGE WIFE
Harold, I noticed, felt a kind of existential despair in the mid eighties. It was partly the state of the world. Giving up smoking – from sixty Black Sobranies a day – no doubt added to it in the short term, although the trauma gave way to a permanent state of what one might call non-addiction and quite soon he said that he never felt the slightest temptation to regress. He had done this after Hugh died of lung cancer in March 1984. Hugh was a heavy smoker of the wartime generation which was unaware of the dangers and as a young soldier probably wouldn’t have cared too much about the prospects of a long life on the eve of a parachute jump. He also had a family blood condition which made smoking specially dangerous: but these things were not known then.
1984
9 July
Harold in a mood which I can only describe as savage melancholy. Directing seems to take more and more out of him. He is infuriated by the mainly adverse critical reaction to Simon Gray’s play The Common Pursuit, the whole episode exacerbated by his lack of smoking. Perhaps no one should accept to direct under these circumstances, especially a play by Simon Gray, the celebrated smoker, but it is easy to be wise after the event. Harold had admired the play even if he didn’t get the best out of it. Harold, leaving the Lyric, Hammersmith, hears a woman shout: ‘Harold Pinter, why don’t you write about the workers?’ Fatally he goes back. Further cries from this woman: ‘What about Chile? What about South Africa?’ As though One for the Road was not about Chile and the whole damn thing. This play had after all been on at this very theatre only a few months earlier as Harold’s attacker appeared not to know. The point is that the ridiculous incident got to him. Sometimes melancholy spreads across the waters of Harold’s life like black water lilies. At such moments he is always careful to except me from his cares. Sometimes when things are dire, he writes a poem to make the point as when he was visiting a relative in hospital.
DENMARK HILL
Well, at least you’re there,
And when I come into the room,
You’ll stand, your hands linked,
And smile,
Or, if asleep, wake.
1985
Harold started the year in better nick since he’s going to direct Lauren Bacall in Tennessee Williams’ Sweet Bird of Youth at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Also there will be a production of his Old Times with Michael Gambon, Liv Ullmann and Nicola Pagett at the same theatre.
8 January 1985
Tenth anniversary of our fatal meeting. Harold gave me an enormous Georgian paste ring, pale golden stone set in subtly gleaming dark paste diamonds and masses of white flowers. I gave him two silk shirts from Angelo’s. Personally, I allowed myself to be cheered up by the progress of the Arms Talks in Geneva. I mean on TV, the Americans, even Reagan, were issuing statements of compromise about Star Wars and Gromyko was quite gracious, if that’s the right word. Harold: ‘Listen, I adore you, that’s my position, and if Reagan and Gromyko make you happy, they’re my boys.’
The