Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [87]
4 November
Moonlight transferred to the Comedy. Even better than at the Almeida. Boys speedier, wittier. Half the critics think it is a tragedy of a mother alienated from her sons, the others think it’s a father ditto. Why not both? Anna Massey’s Russian husband says triumphantly: ‘Ah, I get it at last. The boys have AIDS.’
Harold continued to enjoy life on stage as well as behind the scenes. The summer of 1995 saw a particularly happy combination, as I saw it, of Harold directing and acting, and me working on a historical book. My book The Gunpowder Plot, which I had long wanted to do, explored the world of the Catholic recusants – refuseniks as they would be called today – in the Elizabethan world, the factors which led to that great (unsuccessful) terrorist plot in November 1605. It was a subject which had fascinated me ever since my arrival at St Mary’s Ascot. As a Protestant girl of Anglo-Irish and Nonconformist ancestry – about to be converted to the Catholic Church – I there encountered the famous, revered names of England’s Catholic past. It wasn’t a project with built-in commercial appeal, although incidentally it appealed very much to Harold: I had to change my American publisher to persist in the project across the Atlantic.
In the meantime Harold was delighted to be asked to direct Ronnie Harwood’s new play Taking Sides, about Wilhelm Furtwängler and his relationship with the Nazi regime. He was full of admiration for Ronnie for handling the theme of art and collaboration so well. It was a good year altogether: two grandchildren born, William and Honor, and even our cat, beloved Catalina, gave birth to two kittens under my bed: Pushkin and Placido (Placido is with me as I write).
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At the beginning of August, we rented a house, allegedly near Chichester, which turned out to be near Petworth. Harold acted the tyrannical part of Colonel Roote in his own play The Hothouse; I worked on revising The Plot and was driven over the darkening Sussex hills in the evening to join him for dinner after the theatre. It was a magic time.
27 August
My sixty-third birthday. Dada has just told me on the telephone that, at this age, Churchill had yet to become Prime Minister and Attlee did become Prime Minister and so forth. Me: ‘I shall expect the call at any moment.’ Dada continues: ‘And I resigned from the cabinet, and Newman wrote Apologia Pro Vita Sua.’ He added kindly: ‘It’s a zenith.’ Ronnie and Natasha Harwood stayed here, to see The Hothouse. Ronnie on his success with Taking Sides (which Harold had directed): ‘It’s so extraordinary at sixty when one is declining.’ Me: ‘One is not.’ And Ronnie certainly isn’t. Amazing lunch party to which all the actors and their families came, as well as Betty Bacall: always a great hit with staff because she not only is famous but looks famous. The actors ate and ate and ate. They stayed till about six although Harold stumped off for a siesta before that, and issued some Roote-like instructions out of the window for some quiet (which everyone ignored, unintimidated, I was glad to see).
Harold’s next play which became Ashes to Ashes first emerged in my Diary in 1996.
25 January
Harold told me at dinner that Judy Daish (his agent and friend) had almost choked on the telephone when he said: ‘I’m writing.’ Me: ‘Do these people move or is it a radio play?’ Harold did not accept the distinction, saying: ‘Don’t forget that Landscape began as a radio play.’ Harold, having read it through, reported: ‘It’s a plant. It’s alive. Now I shall see whether it wants to grow or wants to remain as it is.’
He was referring to the fact that none of his recent plays – since Betrayal in fact – had been long. There had