Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [93]
October 1998
Vienna. Visit to Shakespeare and Co. bookshop. My researcher, Jessica Beer, admirably efficient and intelligent, who helped me cope in German, said: ‘They will certainly be delighted to see you.’ We found a very pleasant shop in the old quarter of the town, small, absolutely crammed with English books. However in the large theatrical section there was only one copy of Harold’s work, a dusty little edition of A Slight Ache, obviously left over from the theatrical season of ten years earlier. To make sure, I enquired of the assistant if there was anything more. I added: ‘This is Harold Pinter.’ But there was nothing else. Then the proprietor, a large blonde lady, appeared and freaked out: ‘I am nearly sixty and this is the happiest moment I have ever had.’ She even added: ‘And you are certainly Antonia Fraser.’ Joy, joy, ecstasy, ecstasy. But – she didn’t have any of our books for all this, and capped it all by praising Harold’s Proust Screenplay to the skies, how wonderful, how absolutely brilliant: ‘Yes, yes, after a while I had to put it in the remainder tray, someone got that really cheaply, I can tell you.’
Our new shared French lives – because Harold decided to direct his own play Ashes to Ashes in Paris – got off to a flying start with Natasha’s marriage to Jean-Pierre Cavassoni in July 1997. Natasha had invited Harold to give her away and he accepted with much pleasure. He did not however bargain with Natasha’s French-acquired expertise where spectacle was concerned. In short when he found himself escorting Natasha across the bridge from the Crillon Hotel to the church of St Clothilde in a bright pink Cadillac, this was surely a dramatic experience for which nothing, no rich full life of acting, had prepared him. I asked Harold later if they had been cheered by the populace as they crossed the bridge. He gave me a look. It was my turn to quote his favourite phrase: ‘You have to take the rough with the smooth.’ Once in the church, in his black shades and his pale blue-grey morning suit, he looked more like the Godfather than the stepfather of the bride.
Both my parents, aged ninety and ninety-one, actually made the journey to see off Natasha, my father with the lure of making a speech, my mother with the lure of having fun. I had emphasized to Harold that speeches must take place. He gave in and made a charming speech saying quite truthfully that Natasha was the most beautiful bride he had ever seen. He might with justice have added that Jean-Pierre was, with his film-star looks, the most handsome bridegroom. My father accepted his bribe of making a speech with equal grace: the only untoward moment came when the bridegroom Jean-Pierre in true French mode tried to embrace his new grandfather-in-law at the end. Dada ducked. ‘I may be old-fashioned,’ he said loudly, brushing himself, ‘but I don’t kiss men.’
Unlike the wedding of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI at which large crowds were crushed to death in the mêlée surrounding the fireworks, Natasha and Jean-Pierre’s wedding was harmonious as well as picturesque at all times. I was reminded of the scene on the eighteenth-century fan Harold had given me for my birthday when I first decided on the project: it showed Montgolfier displaying the ascent of his famous azure and yellow balloon to the enraptured French court in 1783. We were all similarly enraptured by the dashing style of this thoroughly French wedding although the real star (apart from Natasha) was not French at all: Joan Collins. I met her in the ladies at the Cercle de l’Union Interalliée where the reception was given. She was in shades of cream including a cream straw hat, with matching creamy face, quite perfect. Delicately, the brims of our huge hats touched as we tried to kiss. She told me her daughter had got married, courtesy of Hello! Magazine, three weeks before. Joan: ‘Oh, Antonia, your Hello! people were so much less intrusive than ours … I mean ours even came on the honeymoon.’
All the