Must You Go?: My Life With Harold Pinter Page 18

  Chapter Thirteen

  MARRIAGE – AGAIN

  In the summer of 1990 Harold and I began to have talks about the possibility of getting married – or rather having a ceremony of validation – in a Catholic church. In one sense, the strict Catholic sense, the deaths of our previous partners in 1982 and 1984 respectively, had left us free to marry. I see from my Diary that I must have mentioned it in passing in late 1984.

  22 December

  I told Harold lightly that I sensed a reservation about our getting married in a Catholic church. Harold: ‘That’s very perceptive of you. It’s my parents. They just wouldn’t understand. And they are not going to last many more years.’

  That made complete sense to me and the subject was dropped. After all, the senior Pinters had been through a lot, one way or another, the price of being parents of an only child who was Harold, proud of him as they were.

  Now the subject re-emerged. Of course we considered that we had been married in the eyes of God, if She/He exists, in November ten years earlier. What we discussed was a mixture of reaffirmation, as Christian couples sometimes do renew their vows at appropriate anniversaries, but also something more practical. I thought that if I died suddenly it would be an unnecessary grief for my children to have to deal all over again with my situation vis-à-vis the Catholic Church. They might have to ask: is our mother entitled to a Catholic Requiem Mass? Questions of that order. In the meantime I had returned to the practice of the Catholic religion, attempting to attend Mass regularly.

  By a happy coincidence, we were enjoying a friendship with Father Michael Campbell Johnston SJ, formerly in El Salvador. Like many Jesuits, he was a leading supporter of Liberation Theology in South and Latin America. I had always been emotionally prone to the Farm Street Jesuit Church, where my father had been received as a Catholic in 1940. And I had worked on documents there for Mary Queen of Scots, thanks to my friend the Archivist Father Francis Edwards SJ. Attendance by Harold as well as myself at the première of a film commemorating the murdered Archbishop Romero – the party was actually at the home of the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster – led to a propitious atmosphere.

  It may seem odd to relate that Harold, a determinedly non-believing and non-practising Jew, and I, an aspiring if extremely imperfect Catholic, should have lived together for thirty-three years in perfect amity where religion was concerned. We had lots of discussions about religion, always the spiritual side (he wasn’t interested in doctrine), very occasionally about the social decisions of the Church – and no rows.

  That could not be said about our political discussions, where as the years passed I decided to my own satisfaction that Harold really enjoyed a good political argument, didn’t he? So I gave it to him. Only our firm rule that we should not, as in the Bible, let the sun go down upon our wrath made sure that, even if there were pretty late sundowns, dawn at least always found us reconciled. Religion was different. Harold had a deep sense of the spiritual, hence his love of such poets as Eliot, and when we were abroad liked to sit in dark churches while I tried to brighten them up by lighting candles to St Antony.

  1 April

  The Beckett memorial evening at the National Theatre. What I got from it again and again was ‘I must go on, I’ll go on.’ Not the so-called despair with which Beckett is too loosely credited. Other impressions: how no one is ever dead in the Beckettian world, particularly not Beckett and particularly not the dead. The seriousness of Harold’s old friend, Delphine Seyrig, in Footfalls, an existentialist nun in black trouser suit, white collar, black-and-white spotted coif.

  I remember Harold’s grief when he heard of Beckett’s death at Christmas 1989; Harold had visited him in his Paris nursing home earlier in the year and they had spoken on the telephone only a short while before (Harold was excited that Beckett told him the Kafka screenplay was beside his bed). At the time I drew attention to Beckett’s lack of despair – ‘I’ll go on on’ – to Harold.

  20 May

  I tell Harold in a conversation on our balcony after Mass, aided by a convivial glass of champagne, that I went and wrote to Father Michael Campbell Johnston, wanting at least to know if a Catholic marriage is possible. Me: ‘The idea was originally that we should wait for your parents to die because it might upset them, but now I do believe they would accept anything we choose to do, and secondly, I am glad to say they are not going to die. They’re both extremely well.’ Harold: ‘It’s not as if I have to be a Catholic.’ Hardly!

  1 June

  Went to Catholic Institute for International Relations Third World Mass, concelebrated by Cardinal Hume with numerous Third World priests. Red vestments. The Cardinal waved his crozier about most skilfully; it occurred to me that it was a tradition going back to Cardinal Wolsey and beyond. Harold commented afterwards that he was impressed by the multiracial nature of those on the altar (although after Mass I often report that impressive fact back to him about the congregation at the Carmelite Church). ‘And how everyone knew exactly what to do.’ Told him, with hyperbole I dare say, that I would know where I was in the Mass if plonked down blindfold anywhere in the world. Cardinal Arns, from Brazil, preached; this was a great thrill for Harold who had just been reading about his courageous stand in logging the names of the Disappeared. The Cardinal related the work of the CIIR (on it’s fiftieth anniversary) to that of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost – the ecumenical nature of Whitsun.

  At the reception afterwards we were received by Cardinal Hume, who behaved as an Ampleforth gentleman to me, apologizing for not recognizing me (actually we had never met). I asked him about Communion in two kinds which I hadn’t taken as, apart from anything else, I was feeling faint from taking cortisone for my skin allergy: ‘We don’t have it generally, such a big place, so many people, but it would be expected by the CIIR people from overseas.’

  Later supper party at home to celebrate PEN’s Writers’ Day. Cold salmon and salad. A visit to the Super-Study after dinner where Harold read James Fenton’s Ballad of the Imam at the Well, that wonderful disquisition on the ascending growth of prejudice. Then Bernice Rubens persuaded him to read it again. Nadine Gordimer was tiny, calm, poised, friendly. Then there was Larry McMurtry, to whom I had taken a great fancy at a previous PEN conference at Maastricht, also to his works, another happy coincidence of the person and the prose.

  2 June

  Nadine Gordimer spoke marvellously well and clearly; she has such elegance of language, which is what I’ve always adored about her books. Larry managed the difficult task of both being funny (fundamentalist story of the 1850s in Texas) and serious. Both never stopped bringing in Salman Rushdie, which was good. Questions 99 per cent favourable to Salman this year. (Last year many more hostile to him.) Only one foolish woman talking about the ‘need for self-restraint’ we all have in our lives. But people generally seem to have settled into an understanding that for writers this is the serious issue of our time. William Shawcross told me at lunch that he would have withdrawn The Satanic Verses if he were Salman. Me: ‘But you’re not Salman, you’re not a creative writer; you’re a brilliant polemicist.’

  8 June

  Went to Farm Street to talk to Father Michael Campbell Johnston. Felt rather nervous. Harold: ‘Finally I would do it because I want to make you happy.’ Father Michael greeted us in grey shirt and trousers and sandals, although the weather was very cold. ‘I can’t get used to jackets or even shoes after so many years abroad,’ he said. We chatted about Harold’s recent broadcast concerning Latin America which has made him the hero of the hour in these circles. We discuss the question of the marriage. Father Michael: ‘For an unbaptized person [i.e. Harold] you get a dispensation. On the subject of privacy, you could get married in our chapel.’ I was extremely excited by the idea of a chapel and even more so when I saw it. The upper room of Catholic history! I felt emboldened to say: ‘Father, would you marry us?’

  Luckily Harold did not feel later that I had jumped the gun, perhaps because most of the re
st of our conversation was about the murdered Jesuits in El Salvador (I had read a most affecting pamphlet on the subject by Father Jon Sobrino SJ). I told Father Michael that Harold had come to respect the Catholic Church through its work in South America: indeed we were on the cover of the Catholic Herald that very morning, seen at the CIIR reception, the Cardinal beaming at me. A good omen? Discussed telling Harold’s parents. Tell them long, long after, if at all, was my advice. As to telling mine: fear of Dada’s publicity-mad streak prevented me; this really was a private matter for us both since all too much of our lives hitherto had been lived out, however reluctantly, in public. I would tell my mother in time, when it was all over, and she could then please herself by telling my father.

  11 June

  Theatre Museum, Covent Garden: Labour’s reception for ‘people in the Arts World’. The first thing which struck me about the Labour turn-out, male and female, was how smartly dressed they were. Has the word gone out? ‘Look successful! So we can Be successful.’ I really like Glenys Kinnock: a great person, direct, decent and intelligent. Neil Kinnock embraced me: ‘Hello, love.’ Me: ‘I thought you’d given all that love stuff up – glad you haven’t.’ Glenys: ‘All that is just a silly Southern reaction.’

  15 June

  We visit Father Michael together. One moment of nerves when reading out the provisions of the ceremony from the form, he says to Harold: ‘You are supposed to have instruction.’ Harold’s eyes glitter. ‘But I’m sure your wife can do it,’ he continues smoothly. Equally, at the age of fifty-seven, I had to sign a statement (like Sarah in the Bible) promising to bring up ‘the children of the marriage as Catholics’. At the CIIR meeting afterwards, everyone congratulated Harold on the various stands he has taken about Nicaragua and Latin America generally.

  22 July

  In New York. Harold talked proudly for the first time of the Pinter Review (American-based periodical of the Pinter Society). He is youthfully boastful about it. I think this is because it includes an article in this issue about ‘Harold Pinter, Citizen’: the thing which concerns him most these days being the-artist-is-also-a citizen. (He still doesn’t read the literary stuff, but then out of choice he never does that.) I am reminded of Simon Gray’s joke: Simon declined to contribute to Pinter Review I on the grounds that he was founding his own English Pinter Society. This imaginary society duly got acknowledged in Pinter Review I as ‘our sister organization’, since Harold forgot to tell the editor that it was all a joke. There were more acknowledgements in Pinter Reviews II and III. Future scholars in the British Library will never believe it didn’t exist and will comb the records endlessly. Now Carlos Fuentes, who is doing a piece for Pinter Review IV, proposes to sign it: ‘Carlos Fuentes, President, Mexican Pinter Society’.

  27 August

  The day my dream – fantasy as it had seemed for a long time – came true and in a ceremony of ‘grave simplicity’ (Harold’s words) we had our close-on ten-year marriage ‘convalidated’ (Father Michael’s words) in an upstairs chapel at Farm Street. I learnt later from Diana Phipps that it had been the chapel used by the gallant Czech airmen in the war. Edward Fitzgerald, our newish son-in-law, and Rebecca were our witnesses; their daughter Blanche, aged three months, was parked in a suite at the Connaught Hotel the while, with an appropriate carer. The fact it was my birthday solved the problem of two wedding anniversaries: we shall continue to celebrate 27 November. So now I am well and truly in a state of grace!! A lot of my feeling of fulfilment and happiness was due to the quiet, dignified benevolence of Father Michael, his absolute consideration of Harold’s feelings in the texts he used: we were referred to as being a fruitful life and also continuing a fruitful life.

  I bore a wedding bouquet of white roses, freesias and myrtle – picked from my own myrtle, grown from a cutting from Mummy’s wedding bouquet. In an access of discretion, Rebecca insisted on carrying it for me across the road ‘in case anyone should realize you are getting married’ although an unlikelier scenario – a middle-aged woman and man not in bridal clothes – is difficult to imagine. No one else was invited other than Diana Phipps, who had intended to come from Czechoslovakia, but at the last minute Olga Havel came to stay.

  Harold had cogitated in advance whether he would join in anything (nothing he didn’t agree with) but in fact as the ceremony progressed, joined in more and more, I noticed. Rebecca read from the Song of Solomon, Edward delivered St Paul to the Colossians with its admonition about ‘forbearing one another’: ‘And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony’. Then we all declaimed Psalm 148: ‘Praise him, sun and moon, Praise him, shining stars.’ And this is where Harold began to join in, for as I pointed out, this is your Old Testament. The Gospel was the wedding feast at Cana, chosen by me because it seemed so absolutely right for us – the best wine left till last.

  After it was all over, we went to the Connaught and drank a great deal of champagne. Little Blanche attempted to gnaw my knobbly pearl ring which Harold had given me as birthday present-cum wedding ring, blessed by Father Michael. The huge blue-green eyes which would make her a great beauty in eighteen years’ time were at present fixed avidly on the sanctified jewel.

  Later Harold and I went to see the Turners in the Clore Gallery: that was an extension of the beauty of the day, a day which had begun with good wishes from Salman Rushdie and Olga Havel (it transpired that Václav Havel had visited the ‘Czech’ Chapel when in England). Then Harold watched the English team save a cricket match and I fell asleep.

  The advent of Edward Fitzgerald into our family circle had brought happiness to every single member of it, starting with my father, who found in Edward the soul-mate he’d craved in his work for prisoners generally thought to be beyond redemption. That side of Edward – which enabled Harold to quote Yeats to him many years later: ‘He served human liberty’ – was immensely appealing to him. Then there was a personality rightly termed ‘genial’. (Edward’s favourite word.) A radical lawyer, he had been described to me before we met as looking like Dionysus and working for every good – if hopeless – cause, quite apart from having a double First in Classics at Oxford.

  As for Harold, he had been especially touched when Rebecca invited him to give her away at their wedding. Pouring himself into a hired morning suit for her sake, he reflected: ‘I haven’t worn one of these since I acted Sir Robert Chiltern in A Woman of No Importance.’ The other eternally happy event in the family circle occurred the year before when Flora gave birth to Stella.

  15 May 1987

  Having been invited to attend, about 1 a.m. I received a call from the hospital – the baby wouldn’t come before breakfast. I was curiously wakeful, most unlike me at that time of night, and thought I might just as well get up and go to the hospital; I wore my Tree of Life brooch (lucky). Walked into the room in St Mary’s. ‘You’re just in time,’ said Sister. It was an amazing sight, one of the most thrilling, unexpected moments of my life, the emergence of a tiny human being into a new world. It was an experience I’d had six times myself but never witnessed. (It was my mother who witnessed the births of my children.) There was so much going on, the baby was so small. Then Sister said: ‘It’s a lovely little girl.’ The young father said to the young mother: ‘All this happiness and she’s a girl.’ So Stella Elizabeth Powell-Jones, the first grandchild, later to be known for this reason as Senior, illumined our lives from that spring night onwards.

  This first stage in the welcome enlargement of the family circle was completed in late 1990, when Benjie brought his new girlfriend to play tennis with us at the Vanderbilt Club.

  We had joined the Vanderbilt five years earlier: we liked the fact that the décor of the bar resembled the Carlyle Hotel in New York but the whole structure was actually perched on top of a railway hangar at much less chic Shepherd’s Bush. I knew it was for Harold when I saw the notice: ‘Members Personal Laundry Done’. Harold said: ‘As I pull a muscle every time I play cricket [he was fifty-five]
, I shall concentrate on active tennis.’ There were those that maintained Harold remained a maniacal squash-player to the end of his days on the tennis court. The art of serving certainly eluded him: as against that, he had been Pinter the Sprinter at school – as he often reminded us – and could outrun many younger men. All in all, many of our happiest leisure hours were spent at the Vanderbilt.

  14 December 1990

  Lucy Roper-Curzon, aged twenty-one, looks like the nymph Ondine, tall and slender with fair floating hair, enormous almond-shaped blue eyes, translucent complexion fresh from some spring and wears nymph-like clothes to play tennis: a long trailing diaphanous skirt which contrasts strangely with our rugged tracksuits. She proves to be by far the best player on the court, her long skirts no obstacle to fast running, her slender arms capable of the most swingeing hard strokes.

  Lucy and Benjie got married the following July at Pylewell, the Elysian country house of her parents John and Elizabeth Teynham. The magic setting on the Solent, combined with the family life all round – Lucy had nine siblings including musicians and a sculptor, and there was even a cricket pitch – made this a favourite place for us to visit.

  By the time of Harold’s death twenty-one years later, Stella had become Senior to sixteen other grandchildren; the last born that he knew was Ruby, who contributed a memorable photographic image (which he had on his desk) of Harold dangling a toy before her. The baby with her angelic white-blonde curls and wide blue eyes gazes in polite amazement at the strange behaviour of a grown-up man. It was actually a rattle he had brought from Nicaragua to amuse Stella all those years ago: known as ‘the revolutionary rattle’. Harold adored small babies; all round he loved the relationship of quasi-grandfather (the children’s real grandfather had died three years before Stella was born) terming himself ‘Grandpa’ with zest. Benjie’s three sons, close together in age, Thomas, William and Hugh, getting up at first light to play cricket together on a lawn outside some holiday house, recreated his own childhood obsession. Later it dawned on the grandchildren that ‘Grandpa’ was a name with which to impress their teachers: ‘Oh, really, not the Harold Pinter …’ would be said with thoughtful interest in reaction to the throwaway line from a grandchild which introduced the name. As Harold’s plays were regularly set for public exams over the years, I guessed that his reputation soared upwards in the eyes of the younger generation.