Must You Go?: My Life With Harold Pinter Read online

  What sound was that?

  I turn away, into the shaking room.

  What was that sound that came in on the dark?

  What is this maze of light it leaves us in?

  What is this stance we take,

  To turn away and then turn back?

  What did we hear?

  It was the breath we took when we first met.

  Listen. It is here.

  Taken by ourselves in a booth at the airport the first time we travelled abroad together.

  Gaieties C.C.

  Harold and Tom Stoppard, as the wicket keeper, with his celebrated red gloves.

  29 July 1975. Taking refuge at Diana Phipps’ barn at Taynton. Harold, George Weidenfeld, Diana.

  At the barn.

  Patricia Losey, Joe Losey in a ‘Proustian’ T-shirt, Harold: they were working on a film of À la Recherche du Temps Perdu (which was never made).

  Harold and Anthony Powell in the woods at The Chantry, Somerset.

  New York. Visiting the Tall Ships: 4 July 1976.

  With Paddy Chayevsky, winter 1976.

  New York. Outside the Carlyle Hotel for the American production of Betrayal.

  With the theatrical lawyer Arnold Weissberger, 1978.

  New York, 1979.

  Jerusalem, May 1978. With Mayor Teddy Kollek.

  PART TWO

  Chapter Nine

  WRITING IMAGES

  Living with Harold the writer was a rewarding experience since he behaved exactly like artists behave in books but seldom do in real life. He never wrote unless he had a sudden inspiration, an image, as he often used to explain. The image might come to him at anytime and anywhere – in a taxi, in a bar, late at night at his desk looking out of his window into the street lamps punctuating the darkness. Once or twice I was commissioned to write down a sentence or a phrase. At the same time he worked on his work, as it were, extremely hard. Poems or plays might be dashed off in the first instance but then a process of grind, revision began. One poem took a year to perfect.

  He also felt strongly that his characters took on a life of their own which had to be respected. I was reminded of this years later when I read an anecdote about Pushkin during the writing of Eugene Onegin: ‘Imagine what happened to my Tatiana!’ he told a certain princess at dinner. ‘She upped and rejected Onegin … I never expected it of her.’ Harold too believed in the autonomy of Emma and Ruth, Hirst and Spooner, and so forth.

  Harold’s total seriousness in anything he undertook extended, I began to notice, to his reading. It was not exactly that he never read for relaxation (although he personally might not have recognized reading cricket magazines under that description), more that since he gave every book his close attention, he had no appetite for the delightful genres such as crime and mystery with which I beguiled my leisure hours. He did not understand the mentality of one who was keenly awaiting the publication of the next Lee Child thriller. On one occasion we had dinner à trois with Bob Gottlieb in New York: Bob and I spent the whole meal expatiating on the merits of the novelist Joanna Trollope while Harold sat completely bemused (although he admired Joanna Trollope the person for her magnetism).

  In other ways, say, directing or writing screenplays, he was extremely diligent as well as serious, in observing a schedule (his own however). He was generous with reading his stuff aloud in the first instance to me, then to anyone who happened to visit the house. Bridge games in which he rejoiced might well end with a reading, as when Joe Brearley, his old English teacher at Hackney Downs died. Harold, who felt he owed much to Joe’s encouragement, both as an actor and a reader of literature, immediately wrote a poem when he got the news. I remember the emotion that very night when he subsequently read it aloud to Christopher and Gila Falkus.

  JOSEPH BREARLEY 1909–1977

  (TEACHER OF ENGLISH)

  Dear Joe, I’d like to walk with you

  From Clapton Pond to Stamford Hill

  And on,

  Through Manor House to Finsbury Park,

  And back,

  On the dead 653 trolleybus,

  To Clapton Pond,

  And walk across the shadows on to Hackney Downs,

  And stop by the old bandstand,

  And the quickness in which it all happened,

  And the quick shadow in which it persists.

  You’re gone. I’m at your side,

  Walking with you from Clapton Pond to Finsbury Park,

  And on, and on.

  1981

  1 March

  We had been married three months. Our visit to Caerhays Castle, Cornwall where Harold had been evacuated 1939–40 (but Harold is imprecise about dates, his mind is not linear). Most unusually Harold then wrote three pages about his experience of evacuation and his impressions of Cornwall in my Diary:-

  The image from childhood is dark green, bottle green, black trunks, vast flowering bushes, along the drive, a prison of green, sudden curtains drawn on the sky, far more sky than had ever been imagined, shut out again by black and green and stone, shut inside the castle, shut inside the castle, long black nights, crash of the sea, misery, strangeness, separation, happiness – rowing across the lake, fish running, seeing live fish for the first time. Not fishing for tiddlers, as in the River Lea in London.

  It is still dark green, the hedges, the narrow roads through woods, on the way to the castle. But the skylighter, flashing, bursts of rain and sunshine.

  Something enclosed about the place, private. When I was an inhabitant I couldn’t get out. Now I can’t really get in.

  Somewhere there was a glade. We couldn’t find it. Perhaps it was never there.

  The whole experience is well lost. It was desolate. But I was scarred by its beauty.

  Felt a thousand times happier to be accompanied by my most charming and lovely companion, my wife. If only she had been there then!

  (Signed) Harold Pinter

  12 March

  At the PEN Writers’ Day I sat next to Mario Vargas Llosa whose handsome horse-like features and flashing smile made a most favourable impression on me. As a result when he said that he admired Harold’s work intensely ‘especially Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ – which just happens to be by Edward Albee – I merely replied ‘Mmm’ where a less attractive man might have got a curt correction.

  18 March

  Harold went to the House of Lords and had lunch with Dada, about the only person not in trouble – so far as we know – to be invited. (Dada’s guests tended to be down on their luck for any number of reasons.) He adored it and gave a wonderful description of Dada taking him round the dining room, and introducing him as ‘my son-in-law the playwright’, mainly to dukes, it seems: he then interrogated them about the amount of Harold’s plays they had seen. It was the ladies, or rather the duchesses, who came up trumps, said Harold. Apparently dukes don’t do plays. Then a wonderful thing happened. Harold was drinking a glass of port. ‘Do you know what that is?’ asked Jack Donaldson. ‘Dow 1963,’ replied Harold with élan. They called for the waiter. ‘It’s Dow ’63,’ he replied. General astonishment of all lords and dukes present, even the waiter. Actually Dow ’63 is the only port Harold had heard of. But Dada tremendously impressed: he likes the traditional things of his youth. ‘My son-in-law, you know, he may be a playwright, but he’s a fine judge of port …’

  27 April

  Harold has gone to America for two days (naturally he travels on the day of a Civil Service disruption) about the film of Betrayal. Harold remembers it is the five months’ anniversary of our wedding and sends me white stocks, roses and freesias with the message, pace Betrayal: ‘Five months!!!’ Robert exclaims to Emma over her affair: ‘Two years!’ I thought as I got into my bed alone that if my marriage only lasts five months, I will have known what it is to be really happy.

  12 May

  Tony Powell came to dinner. It was lovely to see his handsome silver head here again. Tony talked about how good writers should be friends with other good writ
ers, as pretty girls should live together to make them seem prettier. He loved the story of Dada and the port: it is evident that he finds Dada as ridiculous as ever – they were at Eton together – and showed gloomy interest at hearing that Dada now drinks a lot of white wine.

  I spent a great deal of time that summer preparing my commentary for the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer – all very enjoyable and profitable as well – while Harold directed Simon Gray’s new play Quartermaine’s Terms, first of all on tour and then in the West End. We met at the end of the Wedding Day, which began at 5 a.m. for me, at a restaurant. Harold had been having a technical rehearsal of Quartermaine which had had its first night postponed from the actual day of the wedding, to his surprise and annoyance: he simply couldn’t understand why. When we met, Harold listened to my royal travellers’ tales and then asked: ‘What is the bride’s name?’ This – sincere – question illustrated to me Harold’s complete indifference to the subject of royalty, beyond a general admiration for the Queen, which meant conversely he was not remotely interested in republicanism. He thought there were other more important topics of dissent to be discussed.

  At some point in the ensuing FamHol in Ischia, Harold asked me to write down the words ‘Something is happening …’ because I had a typewriter and he didn’t.

  13 November

  Harold is reading Awakenings by Oliver Sacks. Apparently that line which he dictated was an ‘awakening’ of his own; an idea; one of his images; a woman speaking. But he hadn’t read the book, only heard talk about it. Now he’s reading the book.

  20 December

  Harold has written a play, a one-acter, based on the idea of Oliver Sacks’ book. I found it very moving, very complete. He read it to me as I lay in my bath. There’s always such an exciting feeling in this house when Harold writes. And he’s so happy.

  25 December

  Christmas lunch. Peter Hall and Maria Ewing came. Harold told Peter about the new play and that it would last an hour. Peter smiled in a pasha-like way and said, ‘That could be encompassed.’

  28 December

  The play is now called A Kind of Alaska, having had a short period as A White Tent. My parents came to dinner and afterwards Harold read the play to them. I was touched by the immense concentration with which Mummy listened, her face getting closer and closer to the script as she leaned forward. She takes an acute interest in Harold’s work with occasionally unexpected results. For example, when she watched a video of The Lover she was endlessly intrigued by the sexual fantasies played out by the husband and wife. Mummy: ‘Did Harold study the subject? Did he read medical books?’ Me: ‘Mummy!!!’ She adds hastily: ‘Perhaps he had a friend with these problems, so that was how he knew.’

  1982

  5 January

  Harold read his new sketch Victoria Station to Natasha and me; we howled with laughter. It’s based on something that happened to him in a minicab going to see his parents, and drove him to a frenzy. It’s twenty minutes so the composite evening is adding up.

  12 January

  Harold waiting anxiously for Peter Hall’s call re Alaska and is quite thrilled when Peter announces: ‘the first play I’ve read for ages that has excited me’.

  20 January

  Every day is Christmas. Peter does like Victoria Station: his silence which put Harold in a state of early-to-bed depression was due to his being in Scarborough.

  27 February

  PEN protest in favour of Solidarity outside the Polish Embassy was one of those things which oddly worked well. Protests in my experience are not always successful as such, although the causes are always good. However in this case Andrew Graham-Yooll got us such good press coverage that maybe our protest will be like the mustard seed in the Bible. News of it went out in Polish on the BBC external service. The weather was freezing. ‘Colder in Poland,’ says I loyally into one of the many mikes. I have to say that there are more mikes than writers: news reports talk about 100 writers but there were actually 100 journalists performing an excellent service by swelling our ranks.

  We congregate on a traffic island outside the Polish Embassy in Portland Place, on the walls of which I notice a plaque to Field-Marshal Lord Roberts. I point it out to Angus Wilson. ‘Little Bobs! Oh, he’d turn in his grave,’ says Angus, roaring with laughter. Only three of our number, led by V.S. Pritchett, stalwart figure in his eighties, are allowed inside. Harold and I shiver outside, feeling like the excluded boy on the hillside in the Pied Piper of Hamelin: will we ever see them again? Finally they emerge after a confrontation with a security guard who tries to fob them off with a cultural attaché: ‘But this is a political matter,’ says Francis King. Finally we go to the pub to warm up, accompanied by someone who I hope will be our new friend: Salman Rushdie. I take an instant fancy to him, helped by my enormous admiration for Midnight’s Children of course, but fuelled by his warmth and general liveliness. (Always delightful when you like both artist and work, although it doesn’t always happen with such perfect synchronicity as it did in Salman’s case.) On the way we see a huge bus full of policemen looking menacing. Salman and Harold imagine them getting ready for action: ‘Some of these writers can be awful toughs,’ Salman pictures them saying. The policemen must have been disappointed by our sober behaviour.

  13 March

  Worrying moment when Harold is told by a third person that Oliver Sacks objects to his use of ‘copyright material’. It was actually the image which inspired Harold not the book (he only read the book when he had roughed out the play). Next day Jonathan Miller acts most helpfully as a go-between and establishes that Oliver Sacks loves the play: calls it ‘a work of art’. Life given again to these poor creatures who have mainly by this time lost it. Has written an enthusiastic letter but Harold just hasn’t received it. Harold tells me that his heart leaps up when he gets this call.

  23 March

  Salman and Clarissa Rushdie come to dinner: she has romantic Celtic looks. Towards the end of the evening I nod off. Harold hastens to explain by telling the oft-related story of me sleeping during his sketch-reading, our first night in Launceston Place. Clarissa, brightly: ‘Yes, if I ever can’t get to sleep, I ask Salman to read to me.’

  3 April

  Invasion of the Falkland Islands brings political unity to the family lunch table. We listen to the House of Commons debate with approval, Harold’s patriotic feelings to the fore. Hateful Fascist Argentina is imposing its evil rule on the poor little Falkland Islanders: ‘we should fight.’

  10–12 April

  Staying at Oare with Henry Keswick and Tessa (born Fraser, Hugh’s niece). I’ve always been deeply fond of Henry, memories of the boy in Scotland, now transformed into the great Taipan of Hong Kong and a noble host. And then Tessa is utterly beguiling, I’ve always thought, her cat’s face, soft cat’s purr – and sharp intelligence beneath.

  Harold likes them both very much, despite Tessa’s very different political views. And how could he not be transported by the beauty of Oare, the gardens, the fairyland of magnolias in front of the house, the hillside opening behind and the beauty of the life it provides? Plus every known modern comfort that a returned Taipan can provide. The only trouble is what I call Post-Oare Syndrome when we have to return home at the end of the weekend to a good deal less luxury.

  17 April

  Damian (aged seventeen and a half) and I went to Paris, representing Harold at the French opening of Betrayal, since Harold is much involved in Betrayal the English film. Staying at Harold’s expense at the Meurice, taken everywhere by his genial translator Eric Kahane, we decide we can get used to this life.

  18 June

  To Rome where Harold has been nominated for an Italian Oscar, called a Donatello, for The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Wherever we go with other nominees, the press push us aside in order to photograph Warren Beatty. I would like to photograph him too as he is absolutely delightful. He has a perfect boy-angel’s face, about seven foot of him in a crumple
d white suit. Standing in line for the President of Italy’s handshake, he murmurs to me: ‘If you hadn’t met Harold, you would have had a lot of trouble with me.’ He adds: ‘Do you have a sister? How would she feel about a thirty-eight-year-old Hollywood degenerate?’ The man deserves his reputation! Later I watch him working the gold salon, evidently saying something along the same lines to every woman in the room, regardless of age, as a result of which a lot of women are very, very happy. Harold, neurotically later: ‘Warren knew.’ ‘Knew what?’ ‘He knew we walked out of Reds.’ (As this had been in some obscure English cinema, I thought it unlikely.) Me, firmly: ‘We saw Reds, Harold, and we loved it.’ Harold, with relief: ‘Quite right. It all comes back to me. All three hours of it.’

  29 July

  Off to the US for a FamHol, fixed up in the spring when Harold had a play on in Rhode Island and I took the opportunity to rent a house. Harold, sleepily, the morning of our departure: ‘East, West, home’s best. Won’t it be wonderful when we get back from America and you say that?’

  This more or less represented Harold’s view on travel, especially since it always seemed that dreadful unexpected things that did not happen to other travellers, happened to him. Nevertheless a good time was had by all, the boys in their casual breakfast wear – shorts and that’s it – transfixing the visiting Mrs Gandhi’s security guards at the Carlyle Hotel on the way, and the house by the sea, with its old books and faded flowered covers reminding me of Eilean Aigas in Scotland. The sea in which I persistently swam, to the bafflement of the courteous local inhabitants, was so cold that the boys screamed with pain and wished, they said, for the Pacific.