Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [98]
Harold read it to me in full, as he then thought, as I lay in bed in our rose-chintzy bedroom. There’s now a Waiter, the best character in the play. It’s brilliantly and savagely funny, Swiftian, one might legitimately say, and I laughed a lot. Privately was depressed by the man–woman relationships of all three couples. Managed not to say so. Later Lucy in a letter recalled Harold’s original title of Celebration and that became the title. Harold told me that the Waiter had talked about Nicaraguan figures like Sandino and Ernesto Cardinale but then he decided that he was planting his own words in the Waiter’s mouth, which he never intended to do to his characters. So now he must listen to the Waiter. It transpired that the Waiter wanted to talk about Gary Cooper, Hedy Lamarr and T.S. Eliot.
12 September
People ring up about Celebration choking with laughter. It will be done at the Almeida, paired with Harold’s first play The Room. Apparently this was my suggestion: I think I must have counted up the characters and found they fitted. Harold to Jeremy King at a party for Ed Victor’s sixtieth birthday: ‘It’s about a restaurant, Jeremy, but nothing to do with the Ivy.’ May God forgive him. Harold said himself: ‘I’m slightly high on all this.’
4 November
Felt so proud of Harold and then ‘swooned’ when he gazed at me and recited the three love poems, ending with ‘It Is Here’. This was at the British Library, an evening for the American Friends. What a charming, civilized group! Harold himself rejected reading his strident poem ‘American Football’ (thank goodness) only to have a delightful, older lady hiss: ‘I hope you’re going to read “American Football”.’ But he didn’t. It would have been his definition of bad manners to suggest that this cultured, philanthropic group was in any way responsible for the crimes of the American government – as though all Americans were bad Americans, the sort of crude generalization which did not belong to serious debate. Back to the swooning. It was an extraordinary moment. He faced me at his table across the large room, our eyes met and he read … twenty-four years since ‘Must you go?’ and I still swooned.
20 March
Celebration and The Room have been received with ecstasy! No other word for it. The atmosphere on the first night on Wednesday was, as all agreed, extremely benevolent, even with all the critics there. And the laughter! A murmur of a special sort when Tom Wheatley entered as the ‘Jeremy’ character, Jeremy King himself having elegantly chosen to be present. Both have the same lofty, handsome appearance. Later Harold and I decided to tough it out and go to the Ivy. Game, set and match to Jeremy who had his maître d’ say, like the Waiter, ‘May I interject?’ before plonking down a saucer of complimentary gherkins in front of us in another reference to the play. Jeremy sees it as ‘an affectionate portrait’ and that is of course absolutely true. Simon to Harold: ‘If you had to guess the play written by the seventy-year-old, and the one written by the younger man, you would guess the other way round.’ Certainly The Room is a savage, melancholy play which ends in appalling on stage physical violence (something Harold never repeated, as though learning to do it better with words, although plenty of violence is suggested off stage). The melancholy of Celebration is existential. Mick Goldstein, Harold’s old friend: ‘It’s the last play the world would expect from you now. They expected Retribution and they got Celebration.’
John Peter got it exactly right when he wrote in the Sunday Times: ‘Harold Pinter is in a frisky mood. Imagine an ageing lion, the great yellow eyes aglow with a wicked twinkle, the huge paw might even be about to stroke you. And still you feel a certain unease, a shivery sense of apprehension.’
Ten years later I still think