Angus Mackay Diaries Volume XI (1991 - 1993)

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 108

November 7 1991 – December 22 1991.

Thursday November 7 1991

Got stuck with play over a simple bit of working out one speech.

Bill for £300 odd for tax interest. To film as usual. The Fisher King. A pile-driver to drive in a pin. Terry Gilliam never knows when to stop. Another cursed with a visual imagination – they are never humble enough about words, - the reverse is not usually the case. Offered to take Janet out to supper, but happily for my money, she’s gone on a strict diet.

Tomorrow, and horrors, to supper with Matt and the frightful Ruth. How is it that someone so intelligent as Matthew could be so obtuse as not to notice how S. and I shrink into careful distaste in her presence?

American magazine editor. This has to be read word for word because we work very hard to get every word right.

In Radio Times, Miriam Stoppard discusses sex in pregnancy and Russell Grant star- gazes.

Friday November 8 1991

12.15 a.m.

Cleaned and fiddled generally, mainly drawing-room. Geoff turned up at two-forty five and we had a pleasant chat. When I got back from the shops, he’d gone and has not yet come back. Message from a Trish saying is tomorrow night on or off? So I hoovered and tided and dusted, and bathed, all about five, so that I could sit down and write another scene from the play. It seems rather dull to me.

Set out for Outer Siberia otherwise Turnpike Lane. I think I must describe it all tomorrow – it’s worth it. I am thankful to say that Robin found dear Ruth as improbabe as I do. Oh, how enormity makes one laugh! Poor little Matthew looks like a male spider moments after mating.

Seriously he looks thin and pale. Disgusting meal. Thank God I brought a lot of wine. Robin was a gem. I don’t know what I’d have done without him. And his twinkling eye. Yes, tomorrow. She is hell. Poor Matthew. Nice flat, £110 p.w.

Saturday November 9 1991

Well. Well. I arrived at Outer Siberia tube station at seven as planned. Robin had given me detailed instructions, which I’d left at home. Happily my intelligence took me through the tunnel and along the left hand turn marked Muswell Hill buses. Up there the usual horrid huge North London cross-roads – it’s all brutal cross-roads from Camden, North. And I waited and waited – and waited. And of course being what I am, I went up and came down and went up again all the various tunnels and exits and stairs, and even went up the one marked Bus Station in case he’d found easy parking, - but all I got was a leaflet about Anti-Fascists. I am so silly. I would go to one exit and say I’ll stay here, and after a minute or so my imagination would paint me a vivid picture of the overpowering reasons why Robin might come to the next exit that I was going to run to. I started to make plans to deal with him not arriving at all. On one of my visits to the bus station, I noted the number of a mini-cab firms, desperately needing to get to the dinner-party I didn’t remotely want to go to, and equally desperately imagining sitting waiting for the cab to take me away, half an hour after a disastrous evening had ended.

Just as I was, at 7.30, thinking of taking radical ‘phone calls, behind me, of course, Robin and a v. warm hug and those really heartfelt sorry’s that are worth everything. Guess what his ‘vintage’ sports car had gone wrong. Again. After he spent £300 last week. Still, as we streaked away, he said he had got a good slow but honest mechanic, and when he did one or two other things to it, it would be worth more than he paid for it. How mysterious those dear little toy worlds are that young men live in! (For, never forget, that K. likes his toys as toys, as well as his tools of creation.)

He rushed along as drivers do, but of course we didn’t overshoot, and we landed up in a quite nice street ‘Rather posh’ said Robin. And it was, superficially. I said ‘Well Ruth wouldn’t live anywhere squalid.’ Even as it was, Matthew was immensely relieved when she reservedly approved.

The car stopped. R. said Now what is our strategy? What is the reason why we’re leaving at 10.30? ‘You’re getting up at 9.0, and we’ve got to go through the play before that.’ Getting it straight like that, shows the director clearly.

So in we went to the tall four? storied North London house. Matthew was at the door in white shirt and dark jeans and bare feet. Now bare feet are almost invariably a bed sign. We went up to the attic floor, and on parts of the carpet were thin sheets of plastic. All well-decorated. Typical attic flat, quite spacious. Their décor runs to postcards in large groups on most walls. In the sitting-room, a sofa and arm chairs against the walls, and an over-large dining-table laid out with two vases of pinks. Robin said Can I wash my hands? and did so. I sat on one of the dining-chairs. M said ‘Gin?’ with that self-conscious smile of one who has probably not bought something else in order to pay for it. Ruth had kissed me against my will, and wiped the lipstick off playfully. Robin came back in and said Can I smoke? Ruth would love to have said No. ‘Ashtray?’ ‘I think there’s one on the balcony.’ She struggled to open it and Robin said Shall I smoke on the balcony? That was the first relish. I had one smallish gin, and only got another by asking for it – not because there wasn’t any but because no one thought of it. I talked determinedly, to be sure not to let her control the talk. She has a repellently self-conscious and smug personality, emphasised by a laugh on an indrawn breath especially when saying something about herself. She has it all, saying she was expecting to be the plumpest girl on the course, but…. The only line we were spared was ‘I have this strange sense of humour.’

Poor Matthew. He is obviously realising that he may never get a job of acting at all. He’s now writing to reps., and said Simon is doing what he can and could I … I reminded him that I had offered to do that when he left his drama-school and he’d refused saying he wanted to work in TV or theatre in London. ‘I can’t believe I said that. Can I come round and work on my audition pieces?’ I groaned inwardly but said ‘Yes.’ Then there was dinner… First course, sliced mango and raw red onion (Chris W. insisted….) then a dish that looked entirely similar, yellow and red, but turned out to be a meatless pilaff, with so many almonds and sultanas that it was sickly-sweet to the point that I could only get down a few forkfuls. Happily there was some eatable cheese and no uneatable pudding. And I’d brought some wine. At ten past ten I said we must start to think of going. So we laughed all the way home.

The best part of the evening was Robin and I trying to drag poor little worried M. to a bit of reality.

Sunday November 10 1991

Yves Montand is dead. Not great but the stuff of France. Woody Allen in Casino Royale, which I turned on for this one line, as James Bond’s nephew trying to get a girl into bed. ‘Let’s go into the bedroom and run amok. If you’re tired we’ll walk amok.’

Dear Robin came round. He’s 9-5ing and tired. Or rather not careless for the moment. But how good he is. Said some very useful things about our play, and then apologised for not saying more. One good thing is more than one has a right to expect.

Finished J. Osborne’s Almost a. Unputdownable.

Though rather bilious in places, (and the chapter about Jill B. most unpleasant) all the facts I can check are right,

Monday November 11 1991

How I remember this day before the war. The misery was palpable in the air.

Wrote another ten pages of the play quite good but lightweight, I fear. However, I am getting a skeleton together. Perhaps I can get some flesh on it.

Re-read Margery Allingham. Still first-rate in her line.

Tuesday November 12 1991

Rain, wind.

Wrote another ten pages. Robin confirmed it was lightweight. But still…

Wednesday November 13 1991

To lunch with K who rang just as I was leaving the house to ask me to buy it. ‘It’s quite simple, six eggs, some bacon and wine.’ So I knew it was my bacon and mushroom omelette that I taught him and it was. Arrived at the lovely clean open house, and he and Sharron were in the kitchen and lunch appeared within the usual length of time, for me, I mean! Divine easy time, no false note from Sharron – she was her lovely sunny self throughout, why isn’t she always? – no need for money talk, just love and fun and silly jokes, and at the end of it all, his music.

The Survival music is very striking, and the two new songs for the cycle show added dramatic mastery. The second is a genuine duet, and therefore I would need finally to hear it sung by the two contrasting voices. I hope they will all take enough into account the essential ludicrous quality in Jon Warnaby’s personality. A difficult thing to stage, difficult to decide how little to do.

In the evening to the Mikado at the ENO. Overall white set, Edwardianish – 20ish clothes, not a sign of Japan anywhere. As R has never seen it or any GandS, he was a bit puzzled. But not by the abominable acting. Except that the singing was rather better, the acting was of Amateur Operatic Co. standard. And many of the worst traits of the D’Oyly carte were exhibited, the meaninglessly up and down inflections, the dreadful conscious would-be funniness, even the camp bent knee, which even the D .C. mostly reserved for Patience. A ghastly plump little limp shrimp as Nanki-poo. No, I can’t be bothered. We left at the interval.

Got to Café Flo an hour early, but they found a table. A new waiter plainly thought I was out with my toy-boy, and was quite disappointed when Robin paid.

On the tube platform, a young man and woman were smoking. R. told them off, they were rude back, and I could see he was the weak silly sort who would live on opposition. My train came in first, and I thought I’d avoided them, but he was standing right above. Happily he hadn’t registered I was with R. He announced in a loud voice, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, do not panic. There is a bomb on this train.’ He repeated this several times, but the English crowd smiled uneasily as at any embarrassing public occurrence. One of our strengths. Rang R. to tell him.

A lovely day all round.

Thursday November 14 1991

To dinner with Hazel H. in Mayfair, met at her club, and up to a patisserie, with a strange mixture of customers and services, not surprising as Mayfair is so strange and half-dead an area. Poor businessmen who have turned it all into offices because it’s so smart, so now it won’t be.

A window full of cakes, grey banquettes and crystal chandeliers, Oriental waitresses (but that’s only ‘cos they’re cheaper) and a sort of menu. Not specially nice. Hazel has a touch of the Prims, and talks about a third the volume in public. This may be because she is actually deaf and afraid that she may speak louder than she can tell. But with my right ear still bunged up, I really didn’t hear much with the noise of the restaurant. I hope I kept my end up. Her conversation is only intermittently interesting, because of all her many narrownesses and prejudices, which of course cuts out much of life. Tom and Kim are breeding another pathetic example of crippling inhibition.

Friday November 15 1991

To lunch with S. in Hollywood Rd. To my amusement, Formula Venata turned out to be Jake’s, Foxtrot Quango, Jake’s, ? and now FV. in the same space. K took me out when he left here that first time, and Roy, and I took Patricia there! McN. I can’t believe that now.

The staircase at the front of the shop has gone, just flat floor. Same proprietor came in just as I was asking S. where he was now! We were sitting where there was always a bar. Of course the loos are in the same place.

Didn’t think much of it. Only three tables occupied, and three of the waiters’ friends diversified the last half-hour. Food reasonable, judging by the menu, but my mango and crab cocktail was a finely sliced mango still attached to its stem and a rather small blob of whisked crab meat on a flat plate. Too much mango. And not a dish really. Pasta with basil and smoked bacon was just tomato sauce really.

So the lunch was to tell me that I wasn’t going to be in My F.L. I didn’t feel the slightest disappointment, partly because I never believed it would come off, and partly because I have to admit I didn’t want to tour round for seven months. Could I make my mark in a full-scale musical, I wonder?

The only depression came from S’s rather ashamed face when he told me who was playing it and The Philanderer – Michael Medwin in MFL and Geoffrey Toone in the P.! Two mediocrities, who are better known in the profession perhaps, but mean no more than I do at the B.O. What’s more G. Toone is 82 and it seems, can’t learn it, and he was never much of an actor, just a fine figure of a man. M.M. is so common not in the social sense, and I shall be surprised if he and S. and Ed get on.

Other interesting trouvailles. He has been appointed Artistic Director of Turnstyle. As least it gives him a regular salary, the same as his mortgage, £2000 a month, but of course they have first call on his work, and he has to take theirs. Hm. My own feeling is that he’s ill-advised to tie himself up to someone like Howard P.

I tackled him about the Freud on K’s behalf. Snoo was coming to dinner tonight, so that’s something, and the LA Theatre Centre has closed, so that’s something else. (Disgraceful, but of course it was run by millionaires’ money only, and they’ve withdrawn it – ‘it’s 1929 all over again, but they’re pretending it isn’t, hoping it’ll be more gradual.’ – I said they might do it themselves, and he said, as I knew he would, that he would never stand in their way, ‘but I doubt if they’d get a show with ten cast and four musicians on, without me or someone.’

Chris has got a dog, a lurcher. Well, that ruins my lunch date – I can never relax with a dog in the room.

He went off in a taxi to see someone about a film in two years time. Can’t remember what.

Stopped in at the bookshop by the cinema in Fulham Rd. Small box on floor Crime – ½ price. Among them, A Life of Stanislavsky. Well, he did a lot of harm, but still….

Back here found the rent and this letter, ‘I’m not in tonight but will possibly be back Sat. night as I have an early rehearsal Sun. morning. If I don’t see you please could you leave directions on how to get to TV Centre, Wood Lane as I have a 5 a.m. call there Mon morning. It’s probably best if I take a cab. Jeff.

Ideal!

Saturday November 16 1991 Sunday November 17 1991

To TV shop to pick up the blue TV set, and Stephanie Powers’ hand TV. A relief. £36 for me, £38 for her. Back here R. rang on Sunday to say was I expecting him, well I was. He’d said he was coming at about four and doing the painting and the tarpaulin for the greenhouse. That seemed to have slipped away, and he turned up at seven, having very sweetly done some other shopping for me. Whisky, peanuts, two potatoes ‘from home’. We settled down at once to the play and said a thing or two before dinner and a thing or two after, tho’ there was a slight interruption.

The suggestions he made and we decided on, were all usable, and two of them more than that. He scribbled some notes on the script ‘only on the blank pages’ dear naif thing.

Usual success with dinner, although I’d forgotten to make his mustard. I felt mildly guilty, but deeply happy that he got up mildly and made it himself in the usual cup. What a homely way we have got into so soon! I wonder how poor his home-life really is, from his drawing in draughts from me and this flat. And from K and so on. He left at 11.30 for his hideous 9-5 day.

The interruption was the blocking of the sink and reappearance of my lodger. Jeff did not turn up until today, Sunday, about six saying he must get up at four, and get a cab to the TV Centre at five, and go in a mini-bus to Oxford for a film extra day. He had a quick uncooked snack, watched the Cosby Show, and went out ‘to have a beer and read my paper’ in, I suppose the B Court Pub, and then bed. Well, yes.

I told R. we must be quiet. But as I was making the coffee, the sink was seen to fill. I used the plunger as I so often have, and often with the usual belch and clear. But wank, wank, wank, and nothing. Within seconds R., back from the loo, was on his back under the sink, ‘Where are your pliers’ ‘Have you got any – what was that word for some sort of special pliers with masses of extra leverage’ and the u-bend was open and gushing unmentionable vomitings into a bowl, and then out in the yard, trying to undo newly-painted nuts, and banging pipes, altogether making Symphone Cacophonos perfectly calculated to keep a film extra awake before an early call.

I have a real lump of work to do on the play and he was so complimentary. He is a dear boy.

Monday November 18 1991

Warmer. Roy rang up at length. Second act much too long, had seen end, but it has taken too long to get to it. But third act is fairly short so all can be adjusted? Coming to read more tomorrow.

The lung, if it is laid out flat, occupies the same area as a tennis court.

But the way, left a long full message on K’s machine on Fri. p.m. after finding out that the answ. machine was at last on at 10.30. Nobody came back, and he still hasn’t tho’ I expect he has got caught up in music rehearsals as his deadline is the 21st. And he has real musicians and real singers to rehearse.

Terry Waite released. Talked of others rather than himself. A big man in every way. English people do this sort of thing best.

I do want to hear from him tho’, about the disappointments.

Tuesday November 19 1991

Roy had rung last night to say could he come round and read some more of his play, at ten. ‘Will you stay to lunch?’ ‘Yes, but can it be at twelve, because I work in the afternoon.’

So I got up at 8.15, because I hadn’t got a few things for lunch, and I had to get my pension and income support. A real winter day, a fierce north-east wind, drenching rain dark enough for car-lights to be on, and as I walked to the station, there was a huge flash of lightning and a crash of thunder. Not a very appropriate overture to a visit to Safeways.

And of course when I got back hurriedly in time for ten to ten, at ten past ten Roy rang to say they had just woken up. He got here about ten past eleven, with a designer stubble trembling on the edge of an incipient beard. Coffee, as always most satisfying chat and gossip, and finally the play. The three scenes that end the second act, which he thinks too long at an hour and quarter, and he’s probably right, start with the only inactive talk scene, but it can be trimmed, and then a wonderful scene with the archbishop left alone with two corpses upright in their coffins either side of the alter. The King has to choose a crown from seven brought for his approval, and finally wears all seven. There’s a fuck behind the altar that makes one of the corpses jump about in a resurrectionary manner. All jolly stuff. The key is the wonderful sure-footedness of the style.

Oh, Roy rang K. this morning, just as R did the other night. I wish I could, but I’m so frightened of having my head bitten off.

Wednesday November 20 1991

To lunch with Chris Woods. At Leicester Sq. it turned out that whole branch of the N line was at a halt, so went back to the Picc. line and changed at KX, and only quarter of an hour late. Not that someone of his age would notice if I were three-quarters of an hour late. And being prepared to receive someone seems to be unknown any more. He said we were going out and that cheered me up, as I had been rather dreading the meal if he cooked it, - after all the first course at dreaded Muswell Hill was suggested by him – and I was dreading the dog, a lurcher, but it was a dear like all dogs should be and aren’t. He didn’t come snarling and barking and jumping – he sniffed around wagging his tail and made no other input. He is a tribute to Chris’ taste, a most subtle mottling of grey and grey-brown and grey-white. He’s tied a gypsy hanky round Marl’s neck. The house is a fair old wreck, - Chris has started decorating, so everything is half done. The loo is full of wet paint-brushes etc., the conservatory door was propped open with the watering-can apparently permanently – I’m glad C. shares S’s taste for Arctic temperatures, and the garden – ‘You must see it.’ It is now as derelict as it was when I first started to clear and plant it, the paving and steps knee-deep in leaves again, but he’s ‘dug it over’, so the £150 complete planting has all gone, even the good clump of hostas that were there from before, - he cannot tell any plants.

It has made me determined only to give tiny little bits of advice in future, never to ‘do’ the garden. Lalla should have given me the clue with her beastly un-taste. He’s chopped the beautiful Garland to some stumps and will not be ready for the burst of fresh growth. Oh well, forget that.

He had told me he had an American friend arriving today. He was upstairs jet-lagged, and turned out to be narrow-faced, black hair, blue eyes, Austro-French-Irish, sweet, pliable, but with that undeniable lack of individuality that Anglo-phile Americans seem to display.

Chris said we’re going out. That slightly depressed me, because I thought of the money, but mainly of that loveless house, and the half-stripped dining-room and the kitchen never used for a thorough meal done properly. However, we went just across the road to a dear little bad restaurant called Primates. Illiterate. We only ordered a mince dish on the menu and a couple of omelettes, and no food appeared until we had finished the first bottle of wine, and my omelette was a mess of bacon and mushroom with bits of egg between. And a salad with no dressing tho’ I had been asked specifically if I wanted any.

However, I enjoyed the meal very much, as any meal out that I haven’t cooked has to be really disgusting not to be enjoyed. But mainly I took great pleasure in Chris’ company. He is, to me, a dear sympathetic cultivated (for his age) and civilised young man. From the very first I have found him mild and easy and serious about his work. Of which he seems to have a lot. He designed a cat-walk show for Bruce Oldfield, and a couple of operas etc. and has money to take out two people without worry.

Lenny? the American was jet-lagged and came over tired during lunch, and was he charmed? Is he really as unassertive a good audience as he seemed? Goodness knows, I enjoyed myself anyway!

In some ways the most remarkable thing to me is that Simon didn’t know I was lunching with Chris, and even by this time Chris didn’t know I’d lunched with Simon. He didn’t know I wasn’t going to be in MFL, he didn’t know who was, he didn’t know who S. was going to see when he left me, a film in two years’ time….

What a poor little view people have of marriage or whatever you like to call it! No wonder they come to grief.

S is so superficial and withheld by my standards, in his love affairs.

Thursday November 21 1991

A day of telephone calls, all welcome.

To launderette in morning, - it is telling a bit on my back, carrying the washing ten mins. there and back – and on to pick u prepared shoes. Also three pieces of sponge rubber as refills for My Spontex Washing-up Mop. The worn-out lump I threw away smelt disgusting, not exactly decaying or mouldy, but disgustingly, vividly sour. Asked for asbestos mats and was told loftily that they’d been banned. I don’t think simmering a pan thro’ a mat can do much harm, - at any rate a lifetime of using them hasn’t done anything to me – yet. Of course D. is dead….

Delicious mushroom omelette, and they were organic, so…. Message from Victoria Davar, sweet and dear, saying how perceptive I’d been to say ‘people avoid you after a bereavement.’ She is so young that she doesn’t realise it’s not perception, it’s just experience of reality.

Call from Tim W. from Stratford, sweet as ever, has been offered a part in Philip D’s series, so I said Come round next week, and Mairead darling Mairead, will be here, too.

Philip himself had rung twice while I was out, and left a free number for me to ring. I did and it was engaged for half an hour, yet it was a switchboard. Eventually I spoke to him, and he said he was offering me a part of an academic who, in the course of counting the number of commas in War and Peace is disturbed by the heroine putting up pictures next door. Jan-Feb?, two, three? days, all on film.

To pick up laundry after doing an hour’s other laundry, and to film as usual with Janet. ‘Breaking Point’ with two beautiful men? Partick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. (I’ve found that is pronounced Ki-arn-noo.) Very noisy, very long and very thin.

Back here a call from K in the middle of pleasure at having done v. well with music. Free next week during day. I long to see him. I would see him every day. Poor boy.

Friday November 22 1991

Luxembourg Foreign Minister ‘This is a very important motion.’ Said many times. Name, Jacques Poos.

Long sweet talk with R. at 11.30. Tired, and I’m not surprised. Coffee with K tomorrow, then to K’s Head rehearsal room for Song Cycle rehearsals. Told him to rehearse the words concentrate on the words. I was tired today. Full moon? Is that a point? Surely not. How easy that would be.

But I do feel low in various ways as they year limps towards its turn. Tho’ I have no special worries.

Poor Philip D has offered me a five line part. Awkward. Not worth giving up my income support.

Saturday November 23 1991

Roy rang to thank me for my notes and reception of the play, ‘as it enabled me to finish the second Act and see my way to the end of the play.’ I said ‘Oh!... I feel like Mr. W.H.’

But that’s not quite exact, there is a better and sillier comparison.

It this a first? I may be going to have met a murderer.

He’s rehearsing today – I thought of that delightful perilous satisfying feeling. Yes, I must love him, because I’m not jealous of him rehearsing.

Sunday November 24 1991

Most fascinating. Freddy Bartman is being questioned about the murder of Lady something, who served as an assistant in his antique shop in Pimlico. This was some months and a £10,000 reward ago. F.B. used to be an actor, and D. worked with him on Emergency-Ward Ten. Did we have dinner with him? We certainly went to his gallery, - I expect he was hoping we’d buy something. He was – no doubt, is – smallish, neat, typically the gay actor-turned antique- dealer, calculating, waspish a little queen, the type like John Moffatt, Graham Armitage etc who I can’t bear. Malk alas, has touches of it, especially as it’s accompanied usually by omniscience based on inferior information and half-education. I find it hard to believe that he battered someone to death with a metal bar, - stabbed, poisoned, yes. If he did it, she must have discovered him in something very disgraceful and/or illegal. Interesting. What could drive such a man to such lengths? Thirty years ago it could just conceivably be his gayness. Now what? Currency regulations? Drugs? Have I met a murderer? Poor little beast. But then poor Lady Thing.

Incidentally F.B. was the gallery-owner who gave Orton’s Halliwell’s collages a show. The gallery preview in the film was supposed to be his.

Forgot to say that S. told me the new lurcher chews things. The first thing was a book ‘All About the Lurcher’. Then he carefully unwrapped the Oxford Book of Theatrical Verse or some such title and buried it in the garden.

Robin rang at 9.30 to say could I get prayer-book from loo to give him bits of marriage service. Did so, and had a lovely talk. I was obviously thinker than I drunk I was on Fri.! He wants me to record some of it for Wedded. ‘You’re seeing Kevin on Tuesday?’ ‘Yes, I think so.’

So I was bold enough to ring K next to make sure Tuesday was on. Oh dear, a choke- off. Got Nigel. ‘He’s just come in.’ K spoke ‘Is this a bad moment?’ ‘I’m tired. What is it?’ ‘R rang, and said you wanted to record something on Tues. so is lunch still on?’ ‘Yes. He wants to record something.’ ‘Oh, right, so I’ll come round for lunch Tuesday.’ ‘I thought we’d arranged that.’ ‘Well, I was just confirming it, because – are you all right?’ ‘I’m tired.’ ‘Oh, well, see you Tuesday.’

Well, you see it’s no use pretending it mightn’t have been a conversation with D., especially on the ‘phone. It makes me nervous to think that what they give at other times is so much pressed down and running over, that perhaps my permanent trickle of witty bonhomie is somehow lacking in nourishment for them.

Monday November 25 1991

Darling Mairead and Tim have just gone. What an adorable perfectly unsentimental couple they are. He told me about a play version of the Woodlanders he’s trying to write. I hope I helped by saying he should decide the end of each act and work towards it. After all it is an adaptation of a great novel, and perhaps Hardy should be consulted about any sort of half or full close.

She gave me the usual horrific picture of dead Stratford.

Tuesday November 26 1991

To K for lunch. He’d got the bacon chopped up in the frying-pan already, and there he was in long-johns on the ‘phone about his itemized ‘phone-bill with lots of 0800 £3.10 calls that they’ve never made. He said tele-engineers push them on to bills, calls they’ve made themselves. Can that be true? It seems more likely to me to be Chris or Nigel.

Sharron appeared very loving and sweet. But, as he was laying the table, she said, quite sharply, ‘No, I’m not eating, remember.’ ‘Oh, all right.’ He cooked the omelettes and made the salad and we sat down and ate it, while she remained leaning against the wall by the kitchen door. As he was, as always at first, rather monosyllabic and unresponsive, I had to direct my conversation over my left shoulder.

I still cannot decide what it is, his northern ancestry or what, that makes him unable to respond easily at first. But there again it’s only sometimes.

At the end of the quick meal, he went off for his morning crap. And Sharron continued her dialogue, on a rather more intimate level. She immediately launched into her job prospects, well, good. Because I worry much for both of them, as to when she will get something to do, so as not to feel a nothing in the household. She has written all around, only had one nibble so far, and it was ‘a grotty place, with a designer with no qualifications, and the girl brought me a cup of black instant coffee, and ten minutes later, when I hadn’t drunk any of it, brought a milk jug with a little black rim round.’

Then I asked whether Nigel had started work at Richmond yet. He had. And K came downstairs and started to fiddle about in the music-room. She described very funnily N’s farewell party and his ridiculous Japanese boss reacting to ‘Hallo and goodbye’. ‘Ah, so, Beatles.’ And then said N. had been rather strange the last week, drunk every night and rather aggressive. Strange.

She said goodbye because my recording would not take long and she had to go out. So I went down to the music room and said So Nigel’s been rather tiresome, and K was very monosyllabic.

I wondered. She’d stood up against the wall, not talked about her work until K left, and he wouldn’t comment on her view of Nigel. Ah well.

So I recorded my bits of the marriage service, and was surprised to find him with tears in his eyes. I think because he thought it might remind too poignantly of my wedding. Well it did, but only to tell him how D. was in tears after, and I said It won’t be so bad.

‘No’, she said, ‘It’s just that it’s such a wonderful script.’

He recorded it roughly that is to say, it sounded perfect to me. – ‘the studio is mostly down at the rehearsal room’ – a music studio is the equipment not the room. I left with all the love I could wish for, and in his pale blue long johns and fat tummy he said ‘You’re coming to a pre-perf. of the song cycle aren’t you? Because I want to test the girl’s nerves.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you’ll come to all the perfs? ‘Oh, will I?’ ‘Yes.’

It will take a long time to stale, ‘He’s in the music room.’ I dislike their too much independence. Interesting. Song cycle. Wedded. I’m the only one who’s been married.

Wednesday November 27 1991

These darkening days are not exactly depressing to me, but I do feel less energy until after the turn of the year.

I lost my Bank cheque card and Selfridge’s account card in their nasty little plastic wallets. I felt for it in my overcoat pocket and it wasn’t there. So I don’t know whether it fell out or was taken out. That was nearly three weeks ago – neither card has been replaced. Really you’d think they didn’t want to make a profit.

Victoria D. and Gregor come to lunch tomorrow. Interesting. Poor boy, he’ll be feeling a bit numb still.

Lovely confiding call from R. to say the new duet is ‘terrific, sweeping you away – I stayed around, humming with them but was sent away.’ I’m glad K does it to others.

Thursday November 28 1991

A busy full day, for a change. Aching legs. Up at ten and did a certain amount of clearing up and preparation. Last night all through the coffee I polished the silver and about midnight polished the front door brasses! I must try and keep up the polish with these cloths. To the launderette and onto the shops, and bought those large brown mushrooms which have a bit more taste.

Back here at twelve, finished preparations, and waited. They arrived, Victoria looking radiantly beautiful with her hair down, and a huge bunch of flowers for me, and he with a bottle of wine. The whole lunch, going on till 4.45 was a, to me, marvellous success. She is a deliciously quivering nerve of sensitivity, he is a delight and a charmer, quick, witty, and well-read. For example, was half way through No Fond Return of Love, and had to stop reading it since his mother’s death, ‘because it was too powerful and painful.’ We shrieked with laughter, and certainly laid the foundations of a friendship. They are two dear young people and I am thankful they have one another and a bit of money in these very difficult times. He’s selling his mother’s two-bedroomed flat and buying one of his own and Victoria has well-off parents. Wellish. I was interested to learn that they are not really living together. They are together, very much so, but not living together.

When they left at 4.45, I went haring off to the Video shop twenty minutes walk and back, to pick up Stephanie Powers’ and my own receipt and guarantee. On the way back, picked up the laundry and sat down. Watched Neighbours and Home and Away, had a gin and tonic, and set out for the film, Frankie and Johnny with Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. An unashamed love story, which ends happily. She is very good, though, absolutely ideally, if I knew her, I would just say that she is a little too consciously taking pains to be dowdy, that very attractive women cannot usually help doing. She is a good enough actress to forget that.

Friday November 29 1991

Yes, Gregor is a cultivated young man of an old-fashioned kind in his gentleness. I feel I have a new friend.

This very early a.m. to the Coliseum to find a huge crowd cramming the foyers and out on to the pavements. A little while after ten, and about the time when tempers were going to mount, we were let in. When I got to the desk, as opposed to the box- office – the little desk to the right of the b.o. where I go to tell them I’ve arrived for our lunch date, always with the foyer empty – there was John. I was so little expecting to see him, that I didn’t recognise him, and suddenly squealed It’s you. (And I now so seldom see anyone I know in a collar and tie and suit.) So he said Stay here, after I said Robin hadn’t arrived yet. So I stood there and prayed R. wouldn’t be late. Well, he was according to the time we should have met, 9.45, but he struggled through the crowd. It’s so much less irritating being tall in a crowd, - I could see him and he could see me. John came back and I introduced them. John has already got into the American habit of saying ‘Hello, Robin’, on being introduced – I do hate it. But he was very sweet and took us straight to a good box. He stayed with us through the overture, which had a rather silly series of jokey credits like a comic film.

I must draw a veil over the perf. The Rose Linda sang beautifully, and the Adele had a good voice. The rest was a frightful desert of stupid facetiousness and abominable acting. I said we’d better stay for the second Act, as it was supposed to be completely different. Of course, it wasn’t, and by the way, the set was terrible, too. Violently out of perspective sets are a bad sign as a rule and this one would have depressed as a model at a student show.

Peter Jonas was sitting below us. As a serious artist, can some goodish singing, not by any means in all roles, make up to him for the ghastly amateurishness?

Oh those ho-ho baritones!

So we turned tail and turned up in Café Flo at 12.15. Got my favourite little table in the angle of the wall. He ordered two dishes with cream cheese in, can that be economy for me or an obsession, or not knowing c.c. was in both? Told him of Victoria and Gregor. He told me that his bro. 36, has back pain in the kidney area and a perm. cold and other symptoms, but omitting to tell me his house had fallen down, his job gone, his wife run off, or words to that effect. ‘No, don’t go to the doctor.’

There was an exciting smoky fire in the kitchen lasting just long enough to be interesting, and not long enough to cast a real blight. R is such a surprising boy in being far more bold than he seems at first. I basked in his understanding and humour. He didn’t ask about the play. Good. He knows he must hold himself together for Wedded. And anyway I can’t go on without him, as an audience, and I’m stuck. ! He went off to Central and gave me a big hug in the street. He is a great addition to our circle.

Wandered round the bookshops and saw nothing I wanted even if I could have afforded it. Relaxing. To new Australian film Proof at Camden Plaza. Very good little film, perfectly cast. New young woman writer-director. The younger man and the girl miraculous casting. She must have felt lucky.

Came back and made a big rice dish. More lamb left than the last few months because R. has been here on Sun.

Saturday November 30 1991

Mark Lawson very funny and possibly right about Alan B’s George III play. I don’t think he’s at all good at anything that isn’t miniature. Forty Years On was really only scenes between three or four – or two – people. And Talking Heads!

After finishing the rice dish, went up to Elfort Rd. to take Sharron’s poor little b’day present, the K. Penguin Max Beerbohm Edna gave me, with E’s signature, and ‘Wuthering Heights’ 1945, on the flyleaf. I expect she’s got it. Dropped it thro’ the letter-box, and went on to the Holloway Rd., passing the end of B. Rd., - it looked as if the Sold board was still up – and looked at the established block of flats where the Drayton Park Central Hall used to be. Most interesting that Drayton Park as the place Daddy used to go and preach at, is quite a different place to the derelict hall K was once hoping to turn into a… I mean, a completely different place in my head, just as I can remember and walk into, in my head, all the rooms I’ve ever been happy in for long. I can see the Earl’s Court sitting-room and bedroom, the whole of Manchuria Rd and the garden, oh and the cottage and the garden, the whole garden, and all Bryantwood Rd. soaked and pierced with feeling.

Went on to the organic butcher’s for a look. Sirloin steak £7.50 lb.etc. Looks very full and more prosperous. Not, I suppose, surprising as it’s one of the only how many? three? organic-specialising butchers in London. To the second-hand bookshop where I picked up a Shaw item remaindered, published in 1989, Shaw on photography. Michael Holroyd wrote an introduction, and Dan H. Laurence features at the head of the acknowledgements list, and yet at a quick leaf-through that photo of Lillah McCarthy in a row-boat is labelled unidentified, and another that is probably Charlotte. I caught Mrs. John Galsworth under another, which, I hope, for the of course, American scholars (sic), is a misprint. I can’t imagine what a careful reading will produce.

Then to the new Australian film Proof at the Camden Plaza. Very good little film. What am I saying that was yesterday!!

But oh that seeing and walking into, as it were, rooms and gardens that have long been dismantled or trampled into mud. I can walk into all my old rooms, incl. my first refuge, the attic room in Talbot Rd. with all that pretty Edwardian Regency furniture and my first writing-table.

Sunday December 1 1991

Still very mild. Opened the garden-door after the pheasant was out of the oven, and didn’t shut it till the cheese.

American Aido film Andre’s Mother of the grossest sentimentality.

Monday December 2 1991

Still very mild. Too hot with my coat done up. To pay my mortgage in Ealing, and wandered round the ‘shopping precinct’ and into the identical ‘Safeway’. This standardisation is quite restful as I approach my old age, because you know what you can buy there. Also bought another electric kettle, as the previous two simply didn’t work, - tho’ I only paid for one.

Interesting, Mary L. in our usual call yesterday – to think that I should be ringing Mary every Sunday, and she goes on talking – not that I don’t enjoy it very much – well, she said that 1950 was ‘the year D. took off to write.’ Well, yes. (I am fascinated equally by the didactic authority with which she pronounces on certain aspects of D’s life, and by her need gradually to unfold her confidences about D. Because the poor girl has nobody else to talk to about their strong friendship, which, in its original state, finished thirty-five years ago. Gosh, if only she knew how odd D came to see her!

I see Southend has the fifth highest homeless rate in the country. Well, all English resorts are decaying, but especially on the East Coast, because of that ‘lovely little fresh East wind.’ I’ve always meant to go there, because of Agate. Perfectly absurd, because it’s 60 years ago. Quite impossible to make anyone now believe that English resorts were ever remotely smart. All the same, I will go one day in the summer as an observing trip.

Seeing a young solicitor on TV defending an unpopular case, the possibly false immigrants, I am reminded that people of absolute integrity are getting more and more divorced from ordinary modes of expression. After all, any expression of integrity is by definition exact.

Tuesday December 3 1991

To bottle-bank with three bags of empty bottles, and found satisfaction in putting them in their green white or brown bins, thro’ those bristle-lined holes, and walking away with nothing to carry. Was hoping to get my pension etc., - there was a queue out into the street.

Strange message from Hazel that Brick Productions had enquired about Sweet Dove!

It turned out that it was Brook Prod. with ‘quite a good track record’ of productions I’ve never heard of, incl. ‘an Arthur Miller next year.’ But the interesting part was ‘We are interested in adaptations of novels, particularly so in those of B. Pym, and we think The Sweet Dove the most suitable.’ Hazel said What should we do about the BBC? I said ‘Send Brook Prods a script.’

So we’ll see. Rang K. Ruefully gave me a minute. Don’t think I don’t see he can be distracted from an idea in a second. And he was sweet and funny about it. But I must get straight about the a-machine when he’s composing. I would be perfectly happy with never speaking to him directly, if only I could just drop a thought of two for him to pick up at his leisure, that is all I want.

Tonight Ben Unwin, and his Sari to dinner. Lovely. Courgette soup, brill, courgette and celeriac, two sorts of potatoes, cheese and fruit. She is Finnish, quiet and strong, and he’s poor Ben, the ultimate Lothario, as he thought, right under her thumb. Now I think that quite a good thing, but I never like men and women resenting being at odds. What do they expect?

Ben was interesting as always, about the breakup of John J. and Rachael. Apparently J.H. went off to the Caribbean for 13 weeks filming – ‘filthy food’, - and came back and - Ben was not entirely clear in describing it – a man upstairs parked his motor- bike outside, and Ben seemed to say that that m. ups. had said Rachael had seen someone else, and then Jon used the motorbike as evidence of her infidelity, and he moved out. Well, come on. As Ben said, Jon has always been great at dumping people. One fuck and out? Rubbish.

More interesting because more unexpected, Sari said firmly ‘I think Paul is gay’ when we were discussing his worry about Paul having ‘a real disagreement’ with him for the first time. He’s very unhappy, I know that. And Sandra thinks…

Lent Ben S’s letter about Ballad under the strict rule that he shows it to no one else, and give it straight back to me. Because he is going to be a director. Before dinner he showed me a ghastly studio fashion show, clothes etc. frightful. His part under difficult conditions, not without merit.

By the way, Sari allowed herself ‘I go to work at 6.30, I earn the money.’ Now I have no time for that special message, whether it’s a man or woman.

Of course, they’re still at the stage of fencing for power, but why before anyone else? We never did, not after we were together.

Wednesday December 4 1991

So sweet. A handbill for Wedded put through the door after I was asleep, and when I opened it, out fell a little shower of confetti. No price stated, - is it free?

Hazel rang this morning to say that she’d rung Brook Prods. and Alexandra Thing had remained calm at the mention of Penny K. and Simon C.

A parcel with two bottles of wine from the Wine Society. No card, but I found Tom Holt’s name on the back of the bill – no amount shown. How embarrassing, as I find Tom and Kim rather creepy and ridiculous. Not to mention that I don’t really like presents from someone I hardly know. And of course I also know that Hazel must have given him some version of my money troubles.

Also I’m not too sure of the Wine Society.

Thursday December 5 1991

Crash, bang, wallop. Just as I was relaxing, another IT demand for ’89 for £1300, although Tony C. had said the amount I paid a few weeks ago, was all I owed till next time. Went to draw £20 and found the overdraft was already over £10,000. Went to newsshop to ask why the papers hadn’t been delivered and it turned out the bill hadn’t been paid by Simon’s accountants, some mix-up which I cleared up. Still a bad day. No more of that.

Terrific bump from upstairs at 11.5 a.m. above drawing-room. Katrina poleaxed by her boy-friend?

To the film as usual, a story of a show-biz couple as it might be Bob Hope and Betty Grable? Not a cliché left undulled. Janet Brown came as well, - she’s a client of Janet’s – and drove us home in her smart smooth white BMW. A delightful relaxed nice woman, just like her public persona always a good sign.

Dreamt last night in such a way that it seemed I was awake that Princess Anne had been shot dead. I note it down precisely, if only to show it wasn’t a premonition at all, just dream. Dead on cue, there was a TV prog. about prophecy and prediction. They never give evidence of when the prophecy was made and the predictors are invariably dim little back-street housewives filling their sad empty lives with illogical muddle-thinking rubbish.

Friday December 6 1991

Robin sent me the script of the Song Cycle and K. sent me some leaflets. Sharron designed them – not bad. Oh and K. rang up three times, to ask for Tom Stoppard’s address, and Spotlight and talk about leaflets. Having a bit of trouble with the girl. He decided to give her some singing notes, as they’d got that far with plotting and learning and running it, to do so. She was difficult, and on the way home, said to Jon W. ‘If he’s going to be critical, I don’t want to do it’ or words to that effect. (And Jon W. presumably repeated it to K. Hm. I must register that I don’t trust him.) So he’s having an evening with her alone. I wonder what she’d say of an actor who reacted to a first adverse note like that. She hasn’t done much singing professionally.

Really, there are so many – ists about at the moment, that I’m thinking of starting a humourist movement to protest against people with no sense of humour. I need protection. That’s very humourist, I shall say, in future.

Saturday December 7 1991

A depressed day, thinking about my money troubles. Cold, frost. But enlivened by R. ringing up yesterday morning at quarter to ten, and tonight at eleven. And his letter with the leaflets began Dearest Angus. Told him to assert himself against K, who would rehearse the music twenty-four hours a day if nothing else was going on. Papers still not back on.

Sunday December 8 1991

I can watch any film or read any book that I saw or read between 1982 and 1988 as if I had never seen or read it before.

Sharron rang long and long to thank me for my b’day present. And also to consult me about the song-cycle programme. Because I know about grammar and the theatre. And I do. How to spell Andromache and Leocadia, and should the Times be in ‘quotes’ as moderns muddingly call it. And then I found out, just in time she had italics.

Apparently the girl is all right now – R and K went to see her in the other RSC play she’s doing at the K’s Head – ‘and she did a long fifteen minute speech without difficulty’ – well, er yes, one hopes.

Also Roy had one lyric turned down for reasons Sharron didn’t fully illumine, not surprisingly.

At 12.30 K rang!! and we talked for half an hour and got everything said. The girl is all right, and the zoo lyric was self conscious.

Just that half hour is enough for a month’s happiness.

Rehearsal Tuesday 9.0.

Delacroix died at 65.

Monday December 9 1991

To Covent Garden this a.m. to see revival of Fille Mal Gardie – much improved again. I believe Alexander Grant pulled it back. There have been some fairly camp Widow Simone here and there, but Jonathan Burrows makes a real character out of her, small-minded, maddening, but loving and simple as well.

The new Colas and Lise are really young, which I think for this ballet, is essential. I really don’t think the illusion of youth is enough. Nina Ananiashvili – where does the accent come? is a real Russian, I imagine, - she looks Kirov to me, very delicate legs and feet in both senses, bourree like a puff of wind, big dark eyes, slope-away face like Markova. Could look the naughty girl, suddenly about twelve, in Act II.

Stuart Cassidy whom I haven’t knowingly seen before, is a real find. Tall, slim and muscular, perfectly proportioned, very good-looking, with lovely crisp turns and beats, and all this without the slightest insipidity, and a delightful careless boyishness – he can’t be more than 25 or so – that is just right for the part. His thick hair flops about because it does, and not because he’s arranged it to. I liked him as much as any male d. for some time. Have I recorded here that I wrote Jonathan Burrows a fan letter after his, I presume, debut as a choreographer, at his Royal Ballet School show, ten? years ago. And he replied. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole thing. No one like Ashton for a love duet to melt your heart.

Fire drill in the middle, so we had to stand in Bow St. on a very cold day for ten minutes. Peter Bourke in same row with baby daughter. He has been busy, - he would be, smarming away at the people who give jobs no doubt. Has bought the house next door in Brixton, and presumably started life again with a new partner, and embarked on fatherhood. It’s a pity I can’t smarm.

Message on machine to say I wasn’t to come to rehearsal as the girl didn’t want any audience. A pity because it is not too late, or it will be rather, for any suggestions of mine to be able to be adopted. Not that I blame her – I hate people in rehearsal, especially in a smallish rehearsal room where every expression of the visitors is instantly visible. If they were in a theatre, I could creep in, and sit in the shadows.

Tuesday December 10 1991

A quiet dull day, collecting the dole and ironing. Jeff Rann is dress-rehearsing and out all day and night.

Wednesday December 11 1991

I saw Lenny Henry the other night, the big black warm comedian. ‘Yes, I have suffered from racial attacks. They wrote COON on my front door and pushed some shit through the letter-box. But they couldn’t spell COON. They wrote CONE. Amazing I thought. Geometric discrimination. ‘You isosceles triangles. You come here with two equal sides and take away our jobs.’

A brilliantly good-humoured image. Lenny Henry is one of the people I would point to as a black Englishman. When the simple Caribbean West Indians finally are melded into Britons, Lenny Henry is one of a growing number of archetypes. So we can start to stop talking about the very boring subject of race.

Someone is moulding masks and hanging them on, for instance, the wall above the subway under the H’smith junction. A monkey, a goat, a sort of tragic mask, roughly modelled in plaster of paris, I think and painted pale brown. I rather like it, but it has suddenly occurred to me, I wonder if it’s a tiresome expression of the black magic rubbish. Very cold. -2 even here, they say.

Thursday December 12 1991

Very very cold. It’s been below freezing all day in Bath and Lincolnshire.

Janet’s curtain-sewing friend rang up. After a minute or two I felt I’d always known him.

Went and bought usual diary. £8. £2 up from last year.

Thick frost. At 18.30 turned out bedroom light so as not to attract. Three young white Rast-farians, I think, came tumbling along, climbing and stamping over the parked cars. Footprints in the frost.

Friday December 13 1991

Bitterly cold. Put my combies on for the first time.

Saturday December 14 1991

6.30 p.m.

Yesterday became much too full, and I didn’t get home till 1.30, and woke at 4.0. Why? Anyway, set out to Chalk Farm, another journey soaked with various emotions, and walked down past Marine Ices and ‘that’ pub where K appeared with Peter Orr, and I first met Sharron, and oh how bad K. was at announcing that next number, not getting the audience’s attention at all. And the other pub beyond the off- stage where he sat with me, frozen with terror. (Oh, and I got slightly held up on the tube and walked up and down KX platform, quite worried for a bit. Just as years ago.)

As I got there, Robin was coming out in his suit, sweet simple thing, and said I had to pee so we went to the other pub and I went straight to the Gents without a falter. When I got back, I looked for Robin, - there was a touch on my shoulder, and Robin had found Ben and Paul. They were so good and kind.

Oh, when I met R., there was Buddy. Just the same down-beat creature, but just as well-dressed and the shop as well-stocked, so there is some hard headed person somewhere. Although it was 8.23, curtain up 8.30, I’d said I think I’d like to go and sit down, and then realised the theatre wasn’t open yet. Buddy said Well I could open it for you.

When we got back from the theatre, S. turned up and Sharron who’d dressed up a bit, pearl choker bracelet on and so on and looked lovely. More like The Composer’s Wife than I’ve yet seen her. We went in and there was the little place. In the back row, James Roose-Evans, who introduced me to a pleasant-seeming woman, Philippa Weston was it? ‘You know Max? Fritz? No, I didn’t, but I suppose his ‘partner’, small, ‘foreign’-looking, in a way that becomes less and less common. ‘Angus was so marvellous in this theatre as Harold Macmillan.’ ‘Nicolson’. He didn’t correct himself. I sat between Simon and Ros., R’s ex-girl-friend, who has thankfully regrown her hair. I don’t know why she’s so pro-me. I’m afraid it’s off-putting to me, because she can’t know well enough after two? evenings for all that enthusiasm. Roy and Marian arrived with Rochelle. Clare and what is the name of that coarse trumpet-player who broke my balcony? Phil Lawrence. She has those sharp foxy looks that are animated by malice. How she falls on to anything discreditable or grotesque or unkind!

So the lights went down, and he came on. How my heart turned over. And how clear it is that he’s not a performer, because he looks exactly like himself from the front. Out came that fascinating little trickle of notes that links all the songs together. Jon W. I knew all about already – I knew he wouldn’t give me any surprises and he didn’t. (That in itself is depressing, -finiteness in talent is.) The girl has a good open face, usual big eyes, big mouth, big smile. She began to sing and was obviously terribly nervous, tonality rather uncertain – She did not get over this to the extent that the audience could feel confident. Jon W. was no better, and I thought he sang more out of tune than she did. They did not sing together, both musically and in less obvious ways. Now that does not preclude the piece holding the audience, with applause good enough to force a reluctant second call.

How I wept at K taking his call, a straight-faced bob, and an immediate wave to the two actors, ‘please take this spotlight off me.’ He said after at supper ‘I hate taking a bow.’

The main thing is that the perf. was good enough for S. to get up at the end and said ‘The music was terrific.’ It does appeal to the musical.

The usual rag-bag of opinions in the pub after. Rochelle Stevens, Roy’s agent predictably thought it only started to work when they started to tear one another to bits. Paul R thought it was monotonous. Ben U. said musicals were shit to him, ‘but it held me.’ And so on. So few people seem able to say more than one partial thing about a piece they have to judge without any guidance.

Simon said that we’d go and eat, but of course the boys had to start on the get-out, as they had to get in at the King’s Head at 12.0. We went to the Underground Café at the Camden Brasserie. Not bad, but nothing special. Soup just soup, could have been almost any vegetable. John Dory rather rubbery. S. paid for the wine, but did not pay all the rest. So at first there was just S. and me and Snoo Wilson. Snoo, a tall bulky youngish man, looking and dressing rather like my prep. school masters, and not unlike in manner, with its apparent grumpiness, lack of interest in anything anyone else is saying, and unexpected shafts of wit. The first twenty minutes were devoted to Snoo telling us how wicked Sellafield was, and the problem of nuclear waste, and that people had stopped protesting etc. etc. Not a very beguiling start to a first-night dinner – I daresay it would have been no different if he’d known I was K’s father, which he didn’t and I’m not. If you see what I mean.

K. and Sharron arrived sooner than I’d expected, and then Robin and a very pretty girl, who turned out to be called Zoe, but that’s all we learnt by then. She behaved very well, neither pushy nor withheld. The outsider with a lot of people who know one another very well. We’ll see. He deserves someone, really nice.

I said most of what I could say to K. (who of course sat by me and my good ear) and was much flattered to see R. each time lean forward to catch the pearls.

Only one necessary pearl, get better performers. When we came out at about twelve- ten, very frosty and very foggy. Both K and R. hoped to find me a taxi. K. ‘I’m not going off, till I see you getting into a taxi’ But I did persuade them that I could find a taxi by myself. Well, you see, I was pleased to find that he doesn’t really think I’m at all decrepit, so that London is so dangerous. I kissed them all lavishly, a pleasant innovation for one of my generation, and set off to Camden Town tube, always to me even, an area with unpleasant menace of unhappiness and mess and misery about it, but I passed thro’ it, and walked up Parkway towards civilisation. (There is no doubt I feel inimical towards the ghastly big cut-across roads of N. London. I like every road to have a stop every few yards.) I found myself in a long straight road, with Georgian buildings looming in a gentlemanlike way through the thickest fog I’ve walked through since when? At least ten years. Freezing. Kept thinking I’d get to Marylebone Rd. which I did, but by Gt. Portland St. and not along beside KX and Euston, as I’d half expected, and then there was a patch when I thought I must turn left soon. Both instrincts wrong. Home by one-fifteen. Tired.

I’d walked the entire length of Albany St. Saw no one, liked the feeling of ‘nineties mystery (Of course, it’s the nineties again, but equally of course, I mean the real ‘90s.), and as usual, nobody knowing where I was.

Today at 1.15 to the K’s Head. It was looking tattier and dirtier than ever. I watched the girl preparing the food, and wondered when the grill and so on were last cleaned, and wondered how anyone could think of ordering anything cooked. I had a bit of bread from the middle of the cut loaf and a wrapped piece of brie.

To my surprise there was Ernie M. and Phil, whom I hardly recognised so little had I expected to see him. I was much honoured by a handshake. Great condescension. Ernie gave more touching evidence of the strain of looking after Marjorie – ‘it’s been terrible these last few weeks’ with a bright smile.

The theatre was more or less full, and looked very good. Show went better, Jon W. being particularly quite a bit better. But it’s still under-played and sung. Myles R. came and amazed me by saying how the portrait of me in the Ken Branagh autobiog. seemed to him and Barbar New, ‘Angus to the life.’ Of course I betrayed not a flicker. But I was a bit shocked. That two such old friends should have seen no more in me than that superficial little cartoon. S. put it best when he said it hadn’t caught any of me at all. Of course I can’t judge, but I do know it’s a shallow picture, full of the sort of blurred journalesc little errors, like leg of lamb instead of shoulder of lamb.

It’s interesting that the very sort of person who can’t tell the quality of such a bit of writing, is also the very sort of person who would think I was suffering from sour grapes, or ‘couldn’t face the truth about myself’. Goodness I remember how angry I used to get at criticisms in my teens, and how the idiot family would tease, never guessing that my anger was because the jibes were almost invariably inaccurate or pointless, and never never witty.

Incidentally where’s my talk, my wit, my etc. in Ken’s portrait? Well…

Myles was able to compliment K. enough. I am more than ever impressed with it and long to see it thoroughly done.

I think the moment I would pick out from last night, as precious to me, apart from the cycle was going round and pushing open that dressing-room door, and seeing the two actors and then him saying, ‘Oh, here he is.’

Now to the Gate for 10.30. Sore throat.

Sunday December 15 1991

Tired. Morning in bed. So to the Gate last night, got there at five to ten. No one in the pub. Upstairs Sharron appeared and then R and K momentarily. And then Steve Wilson appeared! In wire-rimmed glasses. Did I say that Nigel was wearing wire- rimmed glasses? It makes them look American. Also Bruno and someone called Jerome; they sat in front of us, and I noticed Jerome diligently reading the fire-notices most of the time.

The perf. was for me, the best so far. She relaxed into something of a performance, and they did sing together a bit more. I long for it to be done properly and fully. Roy and Marian took me home in their taxi. Indeed the bread I cast on the waters… My sore throat and cold is coming on well.

Monday December 16 1991

It’s six years since Mrs. E. died. Extraordinary. Cleaned up a bit for Andrew Joselin, the curtain-lining boy feeling pretty chocked. Like a fantasy he rang at 11.30 to say he couldn’t make it because of the terrific bomb-scare with all the main termini closed most of the day.

In the end rang K and said I couldn’t come to the Gate at 11.15 p.m. tonight. Too difficult anyway, and I’ve no money for a taxi, but I’m feeling rotten.

Tuesday December 17 1991

Stayed in bed all day, except to go out for some whisky and the papers, which happened not to be delivered today. ‘Oh, yes, some of our delivery boys didn’t turn up.’ Hot, feverish, streaming, a thick cough.

I was in the drawing-room, not looking at the TV set, and heard a voice saying ‘Angus was found to be vicious and to have hip dysplasia problems, so a few weeks after these pictures he was put down.’ Feeling as ill as I was, I hurried to the set to see if it was showing a picture of me. Dead for a few weeks might certainly describe my sensations, but happily it showed a West Highland terrier.

Wednesday December 18 1991

Bed most of the day. Still streaming, and thickest cough I’ve ever had. Which isn’t saying much. It’s at its most trying really when it’s chokey. I cough and could choke purely because of the tickles my throat. I think it’s my big uvula.

But I feel more washed-out than I expected to, but only a bit. The result of being sixty-five, and the temperature being warmer tonight than it was this afternoon.

Roy rang and said could he come at ten tomorrow and read some more of the play? As K had said, he was coming to dinner, and Roy said K was coming to lunch with him and coming on to me after, I said Yes so as to have a complete something to pull myself together for.

R. rang at length last night and tonight. He wants me to find out what Roy ‘really thought.’ Very sweet. Roy is a man of, in those circs, few words.

Thursday December 19 1991

Rather hot sweaty night. Woke at five, read, dozed, got papers, read them, dozed and woke at ten past ten, not, I think, by the bell, soaked in sweat, drew the curtains, and came out to find Roy being let in by Jeff. ‘I’m Roy’. I think I must have been woken by the bell without hearing it. Changed pyj. and settled on sofa for new instalment of State of Grace. I didn’t have a coffee in case I needed to shit, and Jeff was in the bathroom in one of his Walkman baths.

Just before he began reading, I nearly said It must begin to burst out a bit and work up, but didn’t. And lo there were suddenly five or six short sharp more-than-action- packed opposed scenes. It’s extraordinary stuff. Goodness knows what I’ll think when I read it through.

During the reading K. rang! Full of streaming cold! Oh dear, I hope not my germ. So can’t come tonight, but wanted to say, the general shape of Christmas was that he and Sharron were having C. Eve, and Day and Box Day together alone, and then come to me on Friday, but instead of tonight, I must see you alone, Sunday?’

I couldn’t quite chart his insistence on our night alone, except that we haven’t had one for so long. And did he perhaps think I minded not being asked for Christmas? Surely not. Anyway, I took it very casually and to make assurance doubly sure, wrote him a letter saying I hoped he would never think We must have poor old Angus for Christmas and that I had had enough of family Christmases to make me enjoy ‘lonely’ Christmases for the rest of my life. Not, I wouldn’t spend it with him if he wanted to. It’s just any sort of ‘get-together’ would be so awful!! For instance, I shall see what R’s doing, in case he wants to go somewhere.

Felt better. Went shopping, and in the market had two presents, a bag of loose seedless grapes from the nice toothy girl, and a packet of smoked salmon from the fishmonger.

Friday December 20 1991 Saturday December 21 1991

Christmas card from R. making rather amazing reading. Dearest Angus. So sorry you have been unwell. I hope you are better soon. Thank you for your kindness, help and friendship during this year. You have made me keep a firm grasp on reality, helped me to believe in myself, and to remain strong in the face of possible adversity. Your love and friendship means more to me than I can say. Looking forward to seeing you during the dreaded ‘festive season’. Why should we be told when to be festive? All my love, R.

Well.

He turned up at seven, having struggled with the traffic. He’d said he would stay the night, which I know now means he wants to get drunk! And he certainly did! He questioned me closely about the song-cycle. Could hardly believe that I had no particular criticisms. I was interested that he displayed a lot more of his insecurities than ever before. His calm is harder won than I thought. I said something or other, I can’t remember what, but I suppose something that made him feel really accepted by me, by us, as a friend and a pro, and to my considerable surprise, he groaned ‘Oooh’ and rushed across the room, knelt at my feel and buried his face in my shoulder. Much more unexpected in a boy like R. ‘Poor little boy’, I said hugging and kissing him with great enthusiasm, ‘It’ll be all right.’ Though the tears were only of satisfaction, I think. ‘It’s all right now,’ he said.

I think I said one of my things like, ‘You must be up to some sort of mark to be able to face me in conversation on equal terms.’

Goodness we did get drunk, so that at 11.30 he was on the phone booking seats for When She Danced which we always meant to go to. How he got his mind and tongue round all those numbers, - he did it by credit card – I shall never know.

When I came in this morning – how long tall young men look sleeping on the floor – he said he was still drunk, and looked it. Came into the b-room to say it, and to ask for an aspirin. Of course he had smoked twenty or so cigs as well. Happily he doesn’t seem to feel queasy, as I do sometimes. I popped out to get the joint for K. tomorrow, and took a Kwell in case. Made him scrambled egg and bacon, which he ate with apparent relish.

The Globe was pretty empty, about forty in the circle, well, it comes off tonight. The house tabs were out – fancy – and a mid blue canvas curtain from flies to floor set ten or so feet upstage instead. When it was drawn back, it could be made to line the room, and VR winsomely dragged it along for the curtain call.

The set used the full height of the stage, so here is a hotel room with windows thirty feet tall, and a pillar on a day-trip from St. Peter’s, just inside the door holding up nothing. The set of a clever designer knowing he must give a thin play a bit of help.

Well, of course, it is still thin and a bit silly. I wish I could advise M. Sherman to stop trying to be a great big serious playwright, and settle into the cosy camp boulevard pleaser he certainly is by weight, and I think might be by skill. If he tried.

But, - and it is a big but – it is a very different play with Vanessa and a real Russian playing whatever his name is. He certainly seemed at this 3.0 last but one perf., electric with spontaneity. I do admire an actor who can give the impression of spontaneous anger or joy or despair in an apparently incontinent burst. At the last matinee.

And V. Redgrave? Well, in the middle of this rather feeble affair, every now and again she contrived to give an impression of greatness. Of course I wouldn’t recommend K to see it, to experience ‘greatness’, but I can pick up scraps of the polish wearing off the cast iron,

Onstage her face is still that wonderful classic mask, two burning eyes and a suffering mouth. And her smile. Even at the curtain call, her smile. Despite all her silliness.

We went to the lovely Algerian Coffee shop in Old C. Street where he bought some Gourmet Noir. Ah. Oh, and before, while we were waiting, because he had to pick up the tickets and get to Soho by 1.30 when regulated parking came to an end. (Even as it was, a nice man who was leaving, said Don’t park there, that’s residential permits. Take my place, this side of the road is free now.’) So we went to Maison Bertaux. I can’t remember when I last went there, but it still preserves its us-ish air. No tourists, just people. And Julian Firth to prove it, just as much of a little thirties creep as ever. It’s amazing what a 30ish B’bury air he has, coloured shirts and a soul full of malice to prove it.

I left R. at Picc. Circus, and came home to a quiet hungover but satisfied dinner.

A nearly naked body of a man was found on a rubbish tip or somewhere, in South London, of course, only identifying marks four tattoos. Mild and Bitter on one arm, Hazel and Steve on the other. Eat Your Heart Out on his chest, and, on this thigh, ‘a vulgar picture of women’s legs.’ Imagine going into eternity with such a series of touchingly trivial labels all over you. Poor little chap.

Someone on Antique Road Show said ‘When my mother demised.’ Twice.

Sunday December 22 1991

Mary L. rang me this morning, leaving a gnomic message, wondering if I’d had what she’d had, almost to the point of worrying me.

It turned out that she’d not only had a card from Edna for the first time for about ten years, but it was also a perfectly chosen card and a most apposite message. A hallway, with the door open on a blizzard, the cards being blown off the mantelpiece, a man wrapped up to ears, like Mary, dragging a dachsund out for a walk, and the dog is clinging to the balusters. Enda wrote ‘Oh how I feel for that dog.’

And no, I haven’t had one, but of course, Mary’s friendship goes back further, - it may be a presage of her not in the end remembering who I am. Or can it be the lightening before death? It is certainly odd. K. said perhaps it was a little nurse encouraging her. Probably partly true, still… I wonder. It’s an odd little flare-up of consciousness. Mary also told me how her fibrillations have been very tiring and tiresome these last days. Also Betty Carter, the Bayswater woman, sister-in-law of Margery Allingham is dying in a hospice.

Later. Indeed she died at 2.0 today. Good. Only been there a couple of days.

Two more deaths, Robert Eddison, and William Snape. I think Bill Snape was part of the writing team of Visiting day, and didn’t K have a little fling with him? I know he told me he did, and took it back again. Or the other way round!

Anyway, he was much associated with him for a bit, and I think felt a bit ashamed of it, in so far as K ever has such an unhealthy reaction. He’s arriving any minute.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 109

December 22 1991 – February 19 1992.

Sunday December 22 1991 (cont.)

He got here at seven-twenty. In his hug he said Long time no see, meaning our sessions together. Oh, so dearly familiar, when I came back with the ice and glasses the shoes were already off, and the socks and the bunions twitching. Later, ‘No, I will have a g&t as I’m not driving.

Showed him all the fire-irons, scuttles etc. from the cellar, which of course he’d completely forgotten. All I can give him this year.

Yes, he has got Penny Wesson interested. I strongly advised it, as London Management is so much at the centre of things. James R-E wants him to do a play. And which play? Venus Observed, no less. It wasn’t a success at the height of C. Fry’s vogue and with L.O. putting it on with himself in the lead, and a very poor wig- XX. Admittedly it was handicapped by Vivien L. having to withdraw before it opened, and L.O.’s ‘discovery’, Heather Stannard, being someone of whom afterwards one never heard. I found it heavy going – what can it read like now?

I told him exactly what I thought of the cycle, for instance, that the actors were quite inadequate. And that Robin had done well in not loading them with more than they could do. That is what a director has to weigh up.

He revealed to me he has some misgivings about R. After the K Head lunchtime, he came round to the actors, and K., without being able to describe it as an actor might, certainly conveyed R’s misjudgement well. He neither encouraged nor braced them. He left them flat. Well, K. must deal with that till I see it myself.

Jeff Rann came in and met K. K. mouthed he was ‘all right’, though he hasn’t paid the rent yet!

Baxter’s Cream of Pheasant soup. No good, tasted of more or less nothing. Lamb. Tried the Wine Society – tasted rather jujuby, the claret, I mean.

How wonderful it is to see him alone, and be completely calm, I love him more than ever, but he does not make me suffer any more.

Monday December 23 1991

Picked up pheasant, and a few other bits of shopping, and went to see a new film. True Love. Not bad here and there, a slice of life attempt, but many unbelievable streaks to it.

Tried to find Antony Tudor’s new biography reviewed yesterday, but nobody had heard of it. How odd the publishing world is now.

Tuesday December 14 1991

R. rang at 7.30. Long affectionate talk. He really seems to have concern for me. When he asks How I am, he really means it.

Wednesday December 25 1991

That lovely quiet.

While I was doing a bit of cooking an hilarious programme about the cult of the Virgin Mary. Even I hadn’t quite realised how little biblical justification there is for it. Apparently the best-attended (and presumably the most profitable – oh the souvenirs) is Fatima, where pilgrims cover the last few hundred yards on their knees. For which purpose there is a long stretch of smooth cream linoleum, and hefty knee- pads. Oh dear how ridiculous Catholicism is! I bet they charge for the knee-pads.

And of course the most devout are always like the balding bus-conductor with huge silly side-whiskers, thick glasses and no chin.

The pop group before the Queen was the Queen. But I expect that joke was made years before I had TV.

Watched bit of Pinoccio for old times sake. Struck again by the tawdry vulgarity of the Blue Fairy – like Ginger Rogers on an off day. Suburban. Also amused to realise that the Blue Fairy confers life on P. and then brings him back from the dead, prerogatives I had thought reserved for God and his son. It’s a wonder they haven’t had the anti-blasphemy fanciers after them. But sugary sentimental suburbanity is a wonderful protective against most complaints. Had R’s bottle of C. Neuf du P. with the pheasant. Scrumptious and nearly finished it.

Thursday December 26 1991

Oh, R. asked me to tape S. Sondheim’s Into the Woods, for him. I suppose he has no video, and wants to learn how to direct a musical! Had to forego taping Babettte’s Feast, - I watched the feast again, beautiful, and one of the, to me, most moving lines ever ‘The hungry cry of the artist ‘Give me leave to do my utmost’.’ Shephanie Audran is very good, and her dress!

Friday December 27 1991

Rather drunk. We shouted at one another but for good reason, and it was really a wonderful evening.

Sharron is glad when I shout at him.

Saturday December 28 1991 Sunday December 29 1991

Exhausted after a night of K. and Sharron, and then R. But all lovely and satisfying. Yes, he was in combative mood. He went on as usual about poor S. Now I know that he has more reason to do so than say, an actor forever protesting against a management, because he is, or was, or is supposed to be, S’s composer, part of the team. Now on that level, S has treated him badly. He has given Bruno the sets of Carmen J., but not the arrangements to K, nor My Fair Lady. To me K. is in a different class from Bruno. I think it’s probably S’s great suspicion of anything pop- like that makes him not take K on for such things.

However, K and I had a pact a long time ago that I would not be a go-between because it’s undignified for K. So I finally said You must not talk behind his back so much – it’s not good for you. You must stand on your dignity as his composer.

I also shouted him down, supported by Sharron!, when he tried to defend Snoo’s rudeness. When they left, Sharron hugged me till I couldn’t breathe, saying Thank you for being alive. I don’t think she has an easy time with him!

Last night with R. was sweet, but I was a bit tired, and I notice, pace fucking Lalla, the nights I’m a bit tired, don’t go so well. It’s my energy that partly makes it go. The girl who was at the first night, Zoe, rang up before he got here. Very sweet, but oh so gosh–jolly so her keeping quiet and looking very pretty, was a good idea! He rang her when he got here, - she was in Aberdeen – and asked if he could bring her round one night. ‘Are we going to work’ he said, because she’d obviously asked. And because he’d obviously talked about me. He took the play away with him, but that was all the work we did! It was a dear evening but not quite as concentrated as usual. I was tired and R was thinking of Zoe, I daresay. All the same, it was sensible of him to take the play away, and not read it under my nose.

But I am worried about money again. Bugger it. And Edna has flu.

Monday December 30 1991

A blessedly nothing day.

Tuesday December 31 1991

Lunch with John N. at Café Flo, warm and comforting as ever. Poor love, his mother and family are as irritating as ever, tho’ of course he is now more armoured against them with Simon’s love and security. Had thought to go to the cinema as usual, and then saw the trolls and goblins and worse that start surfacing on such days, and thought how much worse it might be on my way home. So went home.

Oh, and I met Andrew Joslin, Janet’s curtain friend at last. He came down to meet me in the Coliseum foyer. Not at all outrageous, very young, in a green field shirt, fairish, rather broad shoulders, not the preening queen she had described. Fixed for Thursday.

Back here a call from K. at 3.0 to see what I was doing for New Year’s Eve. Well, we have spent every NYE together for the last seven or so years. But I don’t need that any more. I know he’ll be there, I don’t have to hold on to him through ‘occasions’. So I rang, and we said all that, and he said he wasn’t spending it at home with Sharron. He was going to Aaron’s fortieth b’day party. ‘Somewhere glamourous, I’m sure?’ ‘Eltham’. ‘Shall I ring Sharron at midnight to wish her a HNY?’ ‘Do. She’s staying at home to start sketching again.’

Now this is realistic. Music House is his financial lifeline, and times are hard. I like it. In the end I rang Sharron at 9.30 and was in bed by 9.45, exhausted!

Wednesday January 1 1992

While ironing, Mary L rang, having spoken to Edna. ‘Good news and bad news, she’d fallen out of bed and broken her humerous, was taken to hospital and brought back again and was laughing away like anything.’ Well, perhaps, but it may be a different story in a week at 89.

Andrew J. rang to say can he come at 12.00 and be back at Coliseum at 2.0. Doesn’t drink!

Thursday January 2 1992

Andrew J. rang to say could he come at 12.0 as he has to be back at the Coliseum at 2.0 for some fittings. He arrived at ten to twelve. Delightful and only delicately camp. Struck me as on his own and may remain so. Slim and medium height, odd hair. If not dyed, it’s the most unusual silvery blond brown with a sort of glitter somewhere, but even I am not sure it’s dyed. He is composed, intelligent, amused and reads. One of the few who examine the shelves, remark on their preferences, take down a book and start irresistibly to read. He is twenty four, and has just read a Dos Passos! Well, that’s the only age when you can be bamboozled into thinking there’s something in him.

He looked at and handled the curtains with complete confidence, and that calm disinterest that impels confidence. Linings. £20. He’ll charge £75, but I must do it, because the next summer will rot the curtains instead of the linings. And I think one of my final economies if not the last, will be to give up being shut in.

He’s an old-fashioned creature.

K. rang! He’s coming round tomorrow night, Sharron going to her mother. I told him about the IT.

Friday January 3 1991

He arrived at 7.45, and we had an unpleasant talk about tax and finances, only unpleasant because of the subject. He gets cross because he’s frightened for me. I can’t go into it, it’s too squalid and uninteresting. Tho’ that is not to say I won’t deal with it. What hell poverty is.

The rest of the evening was as lovely as ever. The evening with Aaron was pretty awful, except for them all being black and dancing and partying so well. But he had to remain sober because he took the car.

Also he had some tickets for the Wembley Royal Opera Turandot and coo, wasn’t he bored! The ‘Nessun Dorma’ opera! Quel monde.

But the best bit of the evening to me was when we went through the song cycle line by line. He sang every number thro’ to remind me and I commented, as I like to do, from line to line and moment to moment, so that I can condemn or suggest any links, and, as I do to Roy with his play, say, no, that half-line doesn’t ring true. I think I said some good things.

He made his notes on my script which I had carefully interleaved with blank pages to make notes at the King’s Head, and couldn’t because it would have disturbed people. He carefully avoided the blank pages.

Saturday January 4 1992

He stayed the night. We sat up till three. He slept on the floor. I found him sitting up in the bedclothes this morning at 10.20 talking to Roy. He had asked me to ‘wake me at 10.30’ because he’s going to Phil Lawrence.

I am exhausted. It was wonderful but I mustn’t stay up till three I think.

Sunday January 5 1992

Depressed day feeling sick with worry about dreary old money.

Went to see City of Hope. Yes, it is good.

Sad.

Monday January 6 1992

A sick dull start to the day. Oh, I wrote a complete exposé of my poverty to Katrina upstairs. She went off with her boy-friend with it, I think, on Sat. and hasn’t come back yet. It would be nice if she’s gone for a skiing fortnight. Apart from anything else, it’s embarrassing to confess poverty to a young rich girl. I don’t suppose she’s ever thought of such a thing.

I went out in the afternoon, carefully looking round to see she wasn’t about – how interesting I’m skulking about like a criminal in my own house! – and went out for my treat for today, - taking my Housing Benefit form to the Housing office, and three carrier bags of bottles to the bottle-bank.

But the day ended better. I had rung K’s accountant John Davis – he wasn’t there – but I had a reasonable chat with his secretary, tho’ a bit discouraging. However, when I was just going out at six, there was a call and it was him, and oh such an encouraging optimistic up voice. He was interested and listened. I felt much encouraged and rang K. quickly to say so.

Then there was a call from Deloraine to tell me Edna was going to hospital for a week. ‘Actually she seemed to me rather better yesterday, but her fever was higher and she has pleurisy, and her doctor is overseeing her and she’s only in the Royal Victoria, Wimborne. Deloraine is going to ‘oversee’ Mercy into her blind home on Thursday, so the only sign of her concern was to say ‘I’ve left numbers where they can get me.’ After all, at 89, a little shrivelled gnome, what resistance is there? And I don’t wish her much more life.

Oh, K. rang about my message about Survival Special. Would I record it on a goodish tape. He’s going to do a promo for S.S. ‘So that’ll occupy me for the next two days, so you can ring me any minute about income tax.’ How odd, that he has been the centre of my life emotionally and didn’t know, and now is the centre of my life practically by his own choice and charity.

Rang R. in my new mood of optimism and said Come round on Wed.

Tuesday January 7 1992

Message on machine from K. wanting some info. about his Survival recorded at twenty to twelve. I was already in bed with earplugs. So charming and playful. Eventually got thro’ to him, and he was dismissive and short, as usual, when you ring him. I hope it doesn’t put people off. Of course, it’s always the same, when talent wants something, it can’t be bothered with any offer after it’s got what it wanted.

This p.m. to see Julian, as I have to do from time to time. Took as a little bribe the Ashton pas de deux. He said I have a video, too. My heart sank rather, because I know. Got there to find Gloucester Rd station still not finished, after five? years. And at his flat, there was Chris anonymous, plumpish, nothingy, - is he a boy friend? – who made some tea and crumpets and mince-pies and took himself humbly out of it most of the time. And a blond child of about six? seven? Julian Sands’ boy. V. like him.

Julian Slade said a fan had given him ‘a wonderful tape with many of my records that have been lost or broken.’ My heart sank again. So there I was listening to that first pathetic little piano record he made before anyone would take the risk of an L.P., listening to the Salad Days songs, while Julian Sands’ boy banged haphazardly on the piano, to indulgent smiles from Julian, and then attempted to put various animals on my head, to sharp commands from me that I was listening to the music.

So I played the pas de deux. They talked a bit, but Julian was impressed, so I thought the time not entirely wasted as I’d shown him something new.

Oh, and the Sands boy left just before I put on the ballet picked up by J. Sands from whom I got a bit of news about poor Neil. ‘Yes, they’ve got quite a nice house and I’m quite glad he hasn’t got anything yet, as it’s given him time to look round and get the girls settled in a school and so on.’ I recognised the gloss being put on the situation, and my heart bled for poor transparent Neil. Poor little thing.

Have I said that K’s Survival Special is to go out tomorrow night? How quick. Yes, I have, because he’s writing to everyone.

Wednesday January 8 1992

Well, it was a good programme, as they usually are, but I was rather surprised at how little music there was. Although I don’t like ceaseless music in a nature film, and do like a lot of solid information – how often I’ve been maddened, in a film about say, monkeys, not being told what the birds were, I felt on at least half a dozen occasions, they had missed the opportunity to raise the spirit and the beauty of the film as only music can – the deer flooding across the plain for instance.

Rang in the commercial break and got Sharron who said he was annoyed at how much had been cut and at half volume. Rang after it was over, and phone was engaged for a bit – must have rung before K’s name appeared – it was James R. Evans who annoyed K. by piling on the praise – and we had a long 25 min talk. There were some terrible editing joins apparently, ‘as if you repeated a word eight times, simply to fill in.’ ‘It’s all those terrible fifty-year old hacks, like at Granada.’

Nevertheless the music was beautiful.

Thursday January 9 1992

Suddenly cold and wet. Katrina Hall still away. Did I say I wrote to Mr Davis and Tony Cruse? So that’s done.

How dull my poor life is. Janet rang to cancel the film because the members have fully booked for once. That’s the only thing that’s happened today, except that I rang Edna’s hospital. Got the number of the Royal Victoria Hospital, Wimborne from Directory Enq, dialled it, and a voice said Bournemouth General Hospital. They gave me the Wimborne number and it was completely different. Edna was better and walking again, but they don’t know when she’ll come out. I wonder whether she shouldn’t die while she’s still a bit, a very little bit, of her. It’s such a waste in every sense.

Rang Mary to tell her, she’s had a bad time with her fibrillating heart.

Friday January 10 1992

To my amazement a sizeable article across four columns, at the foot of the front page of the Independent, about Tim Luscombe’s Gay Theatre Co. that K is doing the music for. I rang K and read it to him. The headline included gay group re-writing Shakespeare. ‘He never mentioned Shakespeare to me.’ No, but it’s an eye-catching headline, for the stupid. I read article out to him. The last line was ‘I don’t think there’s any gay character in Tom Stoppard.’ ‘That was me’, said K. ‘I suggested he got heterosexual authors to write gay plays.’ Very sensible. So few ‘gay’ plays are anything but that, ‘gay’ in inverted commas, like ‘black’ plays or ‘feminist’ plays. There is only one theatre and you put plays on in it. Tim L. is good at pushing himself – the para will be excellent publicity.

Rang R. He sounded a bit low. ‘How about Saturday?’ Rang Paul and fixed Tuesday.

Saturday January 11 1992 Sunday January 12 1992

R. rang to say he’d be late and eventually turned up at eight. It turned out he’d been with Ros. She’s finished the Fascinating Aida tour, and is about to start another demanding tour. Apparently the F A tour was a terrific strain, because the F.A. girl is insecure and unbelievably demanding and, as usual with that sort of person, attempts to unsettle everyone because it makes them feel more normal. And it was a physical strain as well. Anyway she summoned Robin to her side, and said she ‘couldn’t go on.’ Cried and all sorts so he’s going to help her load a lorry with flats or rostra or something on Monday. Now the interesting thing about this, is that she turned to her ex, from whom she split up six months ago. I said, ‘Hasn’t she any friends?’ ‘Masses’. ‘Yes, I expect they’re friends like me.’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Well, it depresses me that she regards me as a dear friend tho’ she’s only met me twice. What a poor little vision of friendship.’ So we talked of that for a bit. His modesty and good-heartedness is such, that he needed to have her insecurities and shallownesses charted. I now think she left him because he’s too real for her all the time, but in extremis she turns to that reality, and because she knows he’d do anything for anyone. So there he is, loading a truck on Monday.

He also had an hour or two’s talk with K. about the song-cycle, but obviously K. didn’t mention the complaint he made to me. Silly, because R. reacts to be sat on rather better than being encouraged. He longs for criticism. He was amusing about K. doing music in the music-room, talking about theatre in the kitchen, and ‘socialising’ in the drawing-room. Hideous word. I hadn’t thought of it, but it’s true.

I wonder if he’ll stop moving furniture round now he’s got plenty of room.

Because R. was late we couldn’t get on to the play till after dinner, and then we were too drunk. And this morning I didn’t wake till 12.30! R was flat out in the drawing till 1.30, or so, and left after a cup of black coffee, both rather the worse for wear.

Article on breast implants. ‘Silicone has also been found to leak into surrounding tissues, and there have been cases of saline implants bursting during aeroplane journeys, and the fluid finding its way to the ankles.’

So strange, I never went on recording my reading. Mostly lately, because I am troubled, detective stories. Have re-read all Sheila Radley, and am about two thirds of the way through all Ruth Rendall. I find S.R’s two policemen more subtle and interesting than R.R’s. There is a certain coarse edge somewhere.

I felt salty teared despair tonight, no-one I can ring, nothing I want to do, nowhere I want to go, and nothing I can afford to do. I wonder what is to become of me. I don’t seem to be able to decide.

Monday January 13 1992

Not so cold, but still cold. I don’t think there was an actual frost here, but it was a near thing. I did put the greenhouse heater on last night and at 9.30 the thermometer was at 50 degrees.

Did I say that my lodger left on the dining-table a cutting from the Sun about Tim Luscombe’s Gay Theatre season? Reported TL’s chat more or less as the Independent did, but prepended a headline ‘All’s well that bends well’ – (In Gothinc type!) Trendy theatre gays want to do King Queer, and appended a list of compleat Shakespeare, samples: Romeo and Julian, Loo Gentlemen of Verona, Tight-Ass Andronicus.

Sent a photo-copy to K. saying I’d make arrangements to take Sharron to a secret refuge to avoid the hideous scandal. Of course I couldn’t sign with love. When was Shakespeare last in the Sun? Rang R. 6.30ish to say about the Vivian Ellis show at K Head being on local news. He’s been going to ring me ‘cos he took his play notes away with him. So he’s spending time working on it till Thur. when he’s coming to lunch. V. sweet. He rang back having forgotten to watch it. I’d taped it, and left a message saying Return our complimentary tickets.

Tuesday January 14 1992

What sad figures journalists cut – only interested in things going wrong and in putting people against one another. How awful to be Jeremy Paxman and see that expression on one’s face.

Paul arrived with a Trofimov beard neatly trimmed, and much improving his appearance, but it’ll have to come off for Twelfth Night, otherwise Viola would have to play in a beard. He isn’t doing the Norfolk Touring Co’s Comedy of Errors after all, and is back with the profit-sharing Twelfth Night. Two pluses, it’s at the Waterman Centre at Brentford so he can try and get people to come and see it. And he’s got rid of that awful agent after twenty-one weeks out of work.

After dinner we had another go at his love-life, and now I’ll leave it. But I am still worried that at 26, he has still not had what I would call any real ‘relationship’ love affair with anyone. He claims not to be gay, but I wonder. A possessive Catholic mother, a repressive Catholic father, always going off any girl after a fuck or two, and yet many close men friends incl. me. Anyway, I’ll leave it now.

He is so much quieter and relaxed, and therefore more charming, and probably better at the acting. It’s odd that he has never fallen zonk for anyone, except Nicky or whatever her name was, who was hallmarked disaster from the start.

Wednesday January 16 1992

Lovely day, till the evening.

R. came round at 12.30, - I’d gone out doing exactly the right shopping at corner shops, and everything went right. Including the work. Bacon and mushroom omelette, fancy, and salad. We settled down to work, and he took the play apart, just as I wanted him to. We shrieked and screamed and teased and laughed. Oh youth, youth. He kept getting off the sofa, and stretching his long length across the floor, and then pulling his legs up and squatting when he could have been sitting!

All his suggestions inspired me, and some of them I adopted. And who am I to write a play about young people at 65? We arrived at a solution of the first Act and a possible resolution of the whole play that, I think, satisfied both of us.

Then we went on the tube together, what a thrill! – because he didn’t bring the car, as he’d have to pay parking dues. It’s an interesting feeling to sit by a new and dear friend in a new surrounding, even one as humdrum as the tube.

So off I went to the film with Janet. As it was so full, she hijacked two seats for the first time in the front row. Alas, I left after half an hour, also for the first time. A film called The Doctor. I cannot watch operations. My eyes were only open for five minutes out of the first half-hour. My main physical fear is of choking. So when the hero developed throat cancer… Just the examination finished me off.

Oh, yesterday I heard someone called Jack Good interviewed, was the producer of Oh Boy and other rock and roll programmes in the sixties. Is now putting on a r and r show at the Strand, and then will become a Carmalite hermit in Mexico, giving all that he has… Well. Two sides of the same coin.

Friday January 17 1992

Left my gloves behind at the film because I didn’t like to rummage about too much. So I arranged a packed day, for now.

To the shops in the morning. At 2.30 to Felix to sign the Salad Days film contract. F. had to unlock the main door to let me in, as they had been immured in the office for three or four hours because of a bomb scare in Cambridge Circus. In that pub the Marquis of Granby, where I have had so many solitary tear-ridden lunches. Incediaries down the back of a seat from the same vintage as the ones that gutted the upper room of the Cambridge opposite, in August.

Signed the contract, a sizable book. Felix had said did I want to meet or avoid J. So he signs on Monday. Called round at Janet’s for the gloves, on to Selfr. for Michael Carson’s Yanking at Yo-Yos. Read it at a gulp. The same wonderfully limpid writing, but I think slightly less good than the other two. Possibly the problem of bringing the trilogy to some sort of close.

Oh, the bill of sale came about the books I sent to Bloomsbury Books. On the dot, the sale was only yesterday. £145, all above reserve. Not bad.

Saturday January 18 1992 Sunday January 19 1992

K. rang to say he had Sat. night free unexpectedly, ‘We’ve got a chicken, why don’t you come here? So I did. I let myself in, and walked through the quiet lighted warm house, and thought yet again of that careless boy being persuaded to put £4000 in the Halifax in the lounge of the Midland. He was at the sink, in a black jacket, green t- shirt, grey-blue shorts over bright green long-johns and red socks peeping out of brown boots. He kissed me and showed me proudly the boxes of drink he’d bought. ‘I’m sick of popping out for the odd bottle.’ ‘Have you been out like that?’ He has such bottomlessly natural self-possession, that he could carry off a much odder ensemble than that. Sharron arrived – she looks and is so much better and happier right now, I think. Nigel turned up for a bit, but not for dinner, looking decidedly tubby. He’ll lose such looks as he’s got fairly soon, I fear.

Dinner nicer than usual, tho’ he asked Sharron to carve and she reduced the chicken as usual to a heap of damp fragments, some minutes before we ate! But it was a good dinner all the same, and the vegetables more cooked than usual. They certainly take great care to cook meals really separately – he did it all – except the carving. But I don’t think she ever has her friends – I’ve only met one in these four? years or whatever it is.

Told K about Robin saying he talked about different things in different rooms, and he was much amused. And of course had never noticed. So over dinner he told me all his professional news, and when we went into the drawing-room for coffee, he talked of personal things. There was no music to talk about, so we didn’t go to the music- room. Which in any case is in the back drawing-room, because the music-room itself is cleared to make way for the under pinning.

So to his work. Well, James Roose-Evans rang while I was sitting there – imagine! and they talked of Venus Observed for Chichester with Donald Sinden. Well, I told K. he never used to talk like that, and used to be a respectable actor. I somehow assume he started to talk like that after London Assurance, but I know nothing about it really. He certainly was a goodish actor, and perhaps can be again, under the joint influence of L. Oliviers’s ghost and Christopher Fry’s presence I suppose. However, I envy musicians and designers for their detachment from the play, so that they can emerge with credit from a disaster.

He has been taken on by London Management, not Penny Wesson, but someone called Rachel Daniels, who has a number of other composers. (Well, there you are, you couldn’t have got the two actors new agents out of the song-cycle.)

He’s got a ‘little thing’ to do for Music House this w/e, but Sat. was free, Tuesday is the run-thro’ of the Gay Plays Season. Wed. Creative Aspects. Next Tues. Gay Plays first night.

Sharron showed me some embroidery she’s been doing, and it is quite lovely. Most inventive stitches and delicious colour. A series of patterns four by three, are ideas for rugs. Plenty of talent and invention, will she have the push to get them over? How I sympathise – I haven’t. Lovely fish rugs, with a specially nice raised crimson and white stitch.

So to the drawing-room for the social and human side. First, a disastrous evening with Phil and Clare Lawrence. Phil really must go, - he was on the usual line of attacking K’s integrity, really a disguise for jealousy and, I have always thought, that tiresome rowdy ‘macho’ness, conceals a strong gay streak. He’s always had a strong reaction to K. Anyway, the main dish of the evening was a fondue, but a fondue set three times the usual size. It was set out as Claire wanted, and not as last time, as Phil wanted. This led to a fearful row between them, bad enough for Phil to leave the room and Clare to spend the rest of the evening in abject apology. I think even K. is coming to see he must go.

And there’s Chris. It seems he met a girl through the Samaritans, and has had to leave them because he met her. She lives in Dagenham, was a prostitute, but he’s persuaded her to give that up. She was abused as a child, has cancer in three places, including her brain, and doesn’t mind him having a small prick. It has the authentic mixture of the heart-rending and the ludicrous, which will no doubt dog his whole life,

It doesn’t sound like an uncloudely, lovely evening, but it was for me!

An incident this evening. I went out to get a bottle of gin. There was a policeman at the corner of St. D. Rd and Margravine Rd. Halfway up, there were two or three p- men and a photographer. These policemen stopped me going any further. The Max Factor tart came out buttoning her blouse rather insecurely over those breasts which cover the space between her chin and her waist. She told me that a shooting-brake, with five silly youths in it – she was rather fascinatingly precise, and said they were twenty-eight – had rushed up the road, crashed into ‘that lovely American Carreras, it’s a write-off, and then backed into another car and smashed its side, the youths ran off, except for the one sitting in the boot who was seriously injured and taken to Charing X. This had happened at 4.0ish, and yet all the cars were still in place, the shooting brake completely blocking the road, and policemen still taking photos. After a few minutes I was allowed to go to the shops – animated discussion all round, people’s faces flushed with pleasure.

The American car was quite extraordinarily damaged. A quarter of the car, half the back, was smashed flat into the rest, in ribbons of metal. My favourite part was the M.F. tart saying she couldn’t get on with her work with all those police about. Police behaved perfectly.

Monday January 20 1992

R. rang to say he wasn’t coming to lunch. Why? And arrived at 2.45. And we had a terrific session. He’d made up a lot of notes, wrote a scene, and nerved himself, and I could see he had to, to give me a wonderful note about the James/Jason scene. ‘Write long speeches, don’t break it up too much, your talks to me have been long speeches that I remember.’ I am enjoying it.

Tuesday January 21 1992

Bill from Tony Cruse, £600 odd reduced to £387. Terrible. What has he done since that last bill? Write three letters.

Wednesday January 22 1992

Very very cold last night. Coldest Jan. night for five years. -4 even here.

Roy came to read some more of the play and stayed to lunch. He still gobbles like a trapped wolf.

Although the twenty mins (which actually took thirty-five – oh, authors) was as good as ever, my impression was that these scenes slow up too much in comparison with what has gone before, in this last act, and as it’s rushing into its last ten minutes. I can’t really tell until I read the whole thing, - after all the first act is getting a bit dim by now. He reckons it’s three and three quarters – I think more, but he’s very sensible about cutting. Still can’t remember the title, which shows it can’t be right.

Bought a hen pheasant at Safeway £2.95, reduced from £3.60. I suppose once it starts to be eatable, Safeway customers go off it. I looked around for some fish or something, nothing under 1.95, all to be ate at once. The pheasant will last me at least three meals.

Thursday January 23 1992

Still very cold. Lodger away since Sunday. Three calls from ‘Tish’, last one tonight. ‘Tell him I won’t call again as he hasn’t called me’. Last night’s call was that she was back in Tunbridge Wells. She hasn’t got his number, so I didn’t give it her. Can this be the Natasha whom he said was his girl-friend? I can’t imagine him having a close relationship with anyone. He’s very secretive, I should think.

Thank God, started to write again this p.m. Rewrote and amplified the Jason-H and Sarah-James scenes. Rang R. to read them, he seemed to approve. He’s wonderfully grand and complacent with me, in the effort not to be submissive, I think. Probably living thro’ his relationship with his early-dying father.

Friday January 24 1992

Wrote five pages of very dull stuff and then turned tail and went to the Renoir to see Ma Nuit Chez Maud. I love Eric Rohmer’s films. In most ways they are what I want films to be, the opposite of those tiresome films in which so much happens all the time that there’s no time for anything to happen. Jeff away till Tues. But R. away in Cambridge tomorrow. Bother.

Saturday January 25 1992

Another hard frost last night, and fairly cold today. It definitely slows me up in some indefinable way. I write less in here for instance. I think.

Imagine, it’s Burns Night tonight. Roy came round this a.m. to borrow my Highland dress. It was sweet to think of him wearing it again, and satisfying to think I shall not have to be there, or at any other Scottish gathering.

Forgot to record two picture p.c s from S. during MFL The first said Rehearsals are HELLLL – Ed is acting weirdly, as if underwater – I wrote back to say didn’t he know Ed was weird, but that from all that inhibition he could produce little miracles of acting – sometimes. I got another p.c. today to say that he takes it all back, they’ve had a breakthrough, and trust is all. I suppose I don’t report letters because I subconsciously expect all letters to be investigated/preserved/and/or published – I’m that generation!

Another thing I haven’t recorded is my observation, day by day, of the building of the new Hammersmith tube station, with that huge shopping centre above it, and Braemore House, part of a façade to be restored. Almost every day, I go one station to Hammersmith to shop. When I first moved here and later, half the site was more or less derelict around the above-ground station, except for a row of one-storey shops on short leases and the bus-station. Everything was swept away except the front of the bus-station which apparently is the front of an 18th Century house called Bremore? Is it? House. They are going to reconstruct it and make it a gracious restaurant. Or something. As the remnants of the front consists only of two flat Corinthian pilasters between four window embrasure, no pediment, no doors, and this ‘front’ is held up by a mass of girders, it’s a bit like that politician in a Woody Allen film being reconstructed from his nose. They started work last year, and obviously the station is a strong priority, and they work on it seven days a week, and twenty four hours a day for all I know. They are now up to the third floor on the Broadway and Talgarth Rd fronts, and half the station has roofs over the platforms and it will eventually be under the shopping-centre. This will be a great improvement on cold winter days, tho’ I suppose there will be a draught along the lines from the outside. The station will not be under ground, I suppose. There are a row of big curving girders – the skeleton of the escalators?

Sunday January 26 1992

D. would be 79 today.

By an odd coincidence, there was a programme about homeless teenagers, with a text quoted in the blurb in the Radio Times. This sparked off a memory of, I suppose, fifteen or twenty years ago. We were sitting up in bed reading, some time after midnight. Gradually we became aware of a muffled thumping, difficult to identify either in kind or direction. Without looking up from her book, D. said ‘I hope it will stop soon.’ It didn’t. I looked out of the window, and saw two people were also looking out of the house opposite. They told me it was a young man further down the road, who was banging on the door. I craned out and there he was, thumping. ‘Have you a ‘phone, ring the police.’ So I did. It is regrettably natural to assume that such a boy is an axe-murderer at least. The police arrived within five minutes, and were admirable as far as I can tell. They questioned him from the gate, no axe but perhaps a knife. One of them went back to the car to check on his record, if any. I presume none, as shortly after they left.

D. was watching too, by this time. I need hardly say that we were the only ones left – the people opposite and a few others vanished when the police arrived. (At that point we were more or less the only middle-class people in that part of the road.) The boy watched the police, leant on the little dividing wall, and then suddenly buried his face in his hands and had a bit of a cry. He stood up, picked up his suitcase, put back his shoulders, and walked up the middle of the road towards the Common, as we found out afterwards, to sleep there. As he was just about to pass the house, D. suddenly said, ‘Go out and ask him in’, and within seconds, the axe murderer was sitting on our bed, and telling me how he’d been to a wedding in his native East End and his landlady had locked him out because it was after twelve, while D made up the spare- room bed. In the morning, I gave him breakfast and one of D’s cigs, which he asked for very charmingly, he left his case here while he made arrangements to leave the digs, - and also I think in a touching effort to demonstrate trust and integrity back – About eleven, he came back. I opened the door. He was with a boy of about eleven ‘This is my little bruvver’, he shook our hands and said, ‘I didn’t know there were people in the world like you.’

But the spark that started this off was the text. The boy – what was his name? Where is he now? - was safely settled in the spare room. We got back into bed, and D said ‘Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.’

I did not know that all these years later that text would come so movingly true.

Monday January 27 1992 Tuesday January 28 1992

Last week Julian rang to say he’d like to take me to lunch and then a movie. I must choose the movie and of course I chose the restaurant, as he was threatening to take me to Café Fish, where we went when he last took me out two years ago. Even then it had gone off and got too expensive for what it is. I gave him minute instructions on how to get to Café Flo. I got there at 12.45 for one, and ordered a glass of wine. He arrived, the usual decayed wreck, and almost before he had sat down, he said, in two or three different ways, ‘Now Angus, I want to tell you, I want to take you out to this lunch, I want to pay for this lunch.’

‘And we’ll go Dutch at the cinema.’

How sensible to get money matters settled early on. Poor little shrivelled soul.

He said he’d been having difficulties with Chris, ‘I have had to talk to Chris about it’. Confusing, if you don’t know that the second Chris is his brother, who’s a High Court judge, and the first is that rather lumpen anonymous chap who’s been in J’s flat for some time. ‘What does he do?’ ‘That’s the problem I had to ask Chris about.’ ‘I am sorry.’ ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more, it’s too painful.’ Oh, that wonderfully snubbing put-down that insecure people use, so as to feel on top. After all, I only said I was sorry because he’d brought it up. What a dreary little trouble, the poor boy has cost J. MONEY and hasn’t WORKED.

We saw Proof. I thought it was better if anything. Miraculously cast. J. can still respond to good acting, thank goodness.

Left him at Russell Square tube, - oh, how he’s slowed up, tho’ this time he was perfectly compos mentis, and the lunchtime went quickly, because I paper the cracks and keep old jokes going.

Back here, I started sorting things in the kitchen – it was twenty past five. I’d told R. to get here by six and put the joint on in case I didn’t get back in time. I went to take my coat off, and looked out of the window and saw a glamourous white sports car being cleaned by a glamourous young man with Greek curls, and it was dreary old R.

While I had my bath, he read what I’d written. When I got back, he was sufficiently complimentary. I think it’s rather dull. He started getting tight quite early – I am far from minding, - and, after we watched Breaking Away, which he much enjoyed, I think, even when an old friend, John, rang up in the middle, and he had to talk really seriously to him.

Later he started to drink seriously, and in the intervals of chain-smoking, drank rather more than a half-bottle of whisky by himself. Again and again he poured himself a half-tumbler and we were up till quarter to four. He expressed his deep depression about the theatre ‘There is nothing that I am envious of not having done.’ And then depression about the song cycle.

I think there is a further level of depression that must be addressed. It was a satisfying evening for me because he confessed how he depended on me.

This morning he couldn’t get up till 1.30. He’s got a set-building job at the King’s H. so that covers the next week or two. Tired.

Wednesday January 29 1992

I wasn’t too tired to relish every second of him ringing up last night. In the middle of the first night that he hadn’t gone to. He hasn’t done anything original for it, ‘only some Vivaldi etc.’ We talked of the Freud; he giggled. Simon had rung saying Vanessa and Tony Hopkins etc etc. were going to be in it. Fancy. I just hope it will be some sort of ‘showcase’ for K. I dread it – I hate that sort of ill-thought ‘significant’ ‘60s rubbish. He said he was concentrating on the house foundation work for some time. But he’d come with me to see Mr. Davis. That was a terrific comfort to me, not to mention an anticipation of a little day out. An outing to meet an accountant – am I come to that? Yes, but with him anything, even that, is transformed.

It seems Mods and Rockers riots were taking place at Hastings in 1964. They brought two of the dreary creatures together again, to find that they were, of course, quite conventional and dull and respectable now. No social ethos is useful if it allows dreary people to let off dreary steam before becoming dreary people again.

Thursday January 30 1992

Put an advert in Loot for the room. You ring up, and someone gives idiot instructions. A stage in my life, as it might be a complete stranger for the first time and by complete, I mean quite unsympathetic. Not a pro.

Forgot to record, the Sunday Sport main front-page headline, was not Russia abandons Communism, but ‘Rev’s Big Red Candle’.

Friday January 31 1992

Letter from John Davis saying the £2400 is payable. A disappointing tone. I need someone who’ll take me on. But perhaps our actual interview will help. Says I can pay in instalments but with interest. Perhaps the bank will wear it.

R. rang at 8.40. Tired and down. But there is something else troubling him. What?

Saturday February 1 1992

Read V. Sackville-West’s Country Notes at last. From Edna. Published in 1938 with rather beautiful photographs and respectable print and paper, oh and that rough linen binding, so much part of my adolescence. And of course, it’s lovely reading it and finding it touching and perceptive and insular, just as she’s always been. I’ve had for many years, Country Notes in Wartime, a small thin meagre Gollancz book, with poor wartime paper and the same delightful tone. Tone?

Really raw and cold. And another 2 letters to accountant and bank-manager.

Sunday February 2 1992

Oh, God, if Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer and Paul Rogers are doing such a feeble passé series, what hope is there for me?

Hazel rang, as she often does on a Sunday. Told her of Julian, and Café Flo, also of his pronouncing, when we were undergraduates, that Emma was Jane Austen’s best novel, and, of course, Pride and Prejudice, and then I found out they were the only two he’d read. But I must remember that Hazel is not reliable either. ‘I think Sense and Sensibility…’ Well, of course, she probably doesn’t see much difference between it and E.F. Benson! Can’t she see that SandS is an inferior work, comparatively? No, she can’t.

Monday February 3 1992

Decidedly warmer. Good.

Someone who invented crochet dresses in the ‘60s, said, ‘We farmed them out to five or six hundred middle-aged ladies in the South and West, and they crocheted away. Sometime, if their husbands had been difficult, they crocheted tight little dresses for dolls. If they’d had a couple of sherries, they would send loose see-through tents.’

Some thieves tried to steal a Van Gogh worth how many million? from the National Gallery, and found their get-away car wheel-clamped. None of them had the money to pay the fine.

Rang Mr. Davis, - encouraging – wrote IT and the bank. Oh, the dreariness.

Barbara New rang at 9.15 and talked for half an hour. Rather sweet. For once.

R. rang at 9.45. K. rang him last night! R. hadn’t had the rather important letter I wrote him on Saturday. Bother. As I didn’t really want to talk to him again till he’d read it. Tho’ perhaps he won’t see it as an important statement of friendship. I must ring K. It seems he isn’t foundation building, so I won’t interrupt him.

Tuesday February 4 1992

Brook Prods. don’t want the Pym play because it’s ‘too close to the novel.’ !!

‘Neighbours’, BBC soap opera, ‘Joe is getting worried about Toby’s shoplifting.’

Rushed around to get ready for Tim and Mairead. To launderette at 2.45, and on to get dole, and shopped for fennel and onion dish, and other bits and pieces. Bach here, polished table, washed up, and went to shops for wine and bread and a bit of chicken for me. Then to launderette to pick up washing at five-ish having remembered that I’d left a letter to my bank-manager, and my accountant with two IT assessments, in the bag of laundry. I expected to find the dignified elderly lady who presides over the afternoon, to say ‘Oh yes, here are your letters.’ No, she’s put them through the washer. Only by chance did I recover the clotted remains from the waste bin, I think enough to convince the IT to issue copies! Very funny. Carried the laundry back, and hoovered the bedroom and sitting-room. Polished the table, had my bath, and the ‘phone rang. And Tim had made a muddle, and wasn’t sure it was tonight. I went away with a soaring heart, and had a gin and tonic in the bath. Isn’t it awful, getting old means it’s delightful when almost anyone isn’t coming to dinner.

So I sat down in a clean cleared-up flat to enjoy another evening alone.

Then I saw there was a message on the machine from Sharron, asking for advice about a dish, but I couldn’t tell what the dish was, and idly decided it must be the Chocolate B. Whip. Wondered whether to ring, or just enjoy my sudden free evening.

But of course I did ring, - and got S.! Of course, it was the Snoo and S production conference. What a piece of luck for S. – we had a delightful talk for some minutes, during which Snoo sent his regards – it’s got thro’ to him at last who I am. He talked well about MFL, saying how awful the publicity was and how the audience was not tight perm beige sandals, but advertising yuppies. Well, it may be, to whom MFL is a perilous exciting classic. I hope so. He sounded as ever.

K. came on and said Oh fuck off, we’re talking, I’ll ring you tomorrow. Have you got a lodger?

And everything was all right again.

Sharron rang a bit later to ask me how to cook plaice. ‘You did those curled-up bits of plaice?’

Didn’t like to say I didn’t. She was doing the dinner for the ‘conference’. ‘We emptied the loft, and the whole house was filthy again. We just got it cleaned up in time, we worked all today, and he just hadn’t had time to get the dinner, and get ready for Snoo and S.’ Poor girl, she’s low and no wonder.

But I don’t blame him either.

Wednesday February 5 1992

Warm. 55 degrees. The window-cleaner arrived an hour and a half early, outside my bedroom window. Happily the curtains were drawn, and I was simply asleep. An hour or so before that, I was having a fairly exhibitionist wank. I must tell him.

His fairly moronic sidekick, Patrick, was mugged in North End Road on Monday. A black man, as is all too usual, I fear, hit him over the head with an iron bar, ‘he lost two pints of blood, and his clothes were, oh dear, soaked, and he had twenty four stitches.’ Odd, because he is an undistinguished, not to say, slightly subnormal figure, and certainly couldn’t be thought to have any money. But he’s a bit unbalanced, perhaps had a drink, and provoked it? Had a new assistant, ‘my next door neighbour, he’s 18 and out of work, he’s staying with the car because of your resident’s permit scheme, have you got a car?’ He looked, at a distance, a bit like a younger K., with tied back long hair.

This p.m. to ‘Black Robe’ film. No show with Lothaire Bluteau can be without interest, and nor is this. But there are longeurs. And the actual weight of the film is not up to its intentions. New cinema no 4 at Trocadero has one seat at back all alone, a row on its own!

Thursday February 6 1992

The fortieth anniversary of the Queen’s accession. Curious little tie-ups to her anniversaries. The death of the King found me on my first week on tour, in Cardiff. Someone came into the circle and said the King was dead. The rehearsal and performance were cancelled. When we came out into the street at eleven-thirty, the big shops had already emptied their windows except for draped swathes of grey and purple and black. Then the Silver Jubilee a most frightful time.

It may be foolish but I think I sense something in the Queen of the same feeling that comes from being the same age, and being thirteen when the war began. Even she, in her secure life, prizes sameness more because of that.

An interesting day. My advert for the room in Loot got through today – did I say I put an advert in the Loot? Loot is a large loose youthful Exchange and Mart, all advertisements, and the advertisements are free. The cards in the drama schools and the Actor’s Centre and the Opera House produced nothing. Loot produced seven calls just today. Happily the first one was a crisp young voice, ‘Edward Ash’. ‘What do you do?’ ‘I’m an actor. I’m in Talgarth Rd. with double windows on T Rd., and the back on the tube.’ ‘Well come round.’

Crispin R. was coming to lunch, so it was rather good. I watched him walking down the road, finding the house. Very young, very slight, in a real overcoat, and beautifully polished shoes. A bright up intelligent sharpness when I opened the door. An old fashioned boy, with fairly well off parents, I’d say. It turned out his father is a lecturer in English at St. Andrews and his mother is a translator. He has lived with her, and reacts to his father. And he’s a Catholic! He has signed a contract for some Czech plays. Was hoping ‘to do a play at the Loft and then there was no money.’ May go to university or drama school. Is 20. And took the room on impulse and me. And Crispin. Who was good. Moving in on Sunday. I hope.

Quickish lunch because C. had to drive down to his aged parents in the country. They were burgled last week, while they were there. All they stole was a rocking-horse, on which C. rode as a child. But the main horror was that, as they are both over seventy, and his father is much frailer and almost incapacitated with emphysema, they are now frightened in their comparatively remote house. So his going down in case they are going to be burgled again, as I think is a bit the case in a new pattern of rural burglary. (In fact, Edward Ash said his g’father was burgled twice last year, all his treasures.)

He also said to me how could he break free from always having to go ‘to his parents for approval.’ And he’s thirty-three. And he has to get their approval for his girl friends, so no wonder he limps from girl to girl. It’s a wonder he’s not gay – ‘No, my mother never says she doesn’t…’ But, he is the youngest, he was born with part of his stomach outside, and his father’s weak. So don’t let us blame Joyce R. too much.

Rang K. and told him of lodger. They’re coming round on Sat.

Friday February 7 1992

Programme on the Queen most moving – I cried buckets. How can people not understand?

And she was funny.

Paul R. came to lunch, lost beard but kept longer hair, which suits him. Is much less tense and frenetic, and much improved thereby. We had kippers – odd how few young people have either had them or perhaps as a result, like them.

We went to see Hors la Vie, - a French photographer being taken hostage in Beirut. One of the most convincing films I’ve ever seen, remarkably honest and real. Hippolyte Girardot unrelenting and yet perfectly judged. For example, I don’t think I’ve seen someone look so genuinely ill and tired. True.

Have just realised that R. has not answered or acknowledged my rather special letter. I wonder if it hit the mark too much.

Saturday February 8 1992 Sunday February 9 1992

Heavenly evening last night.

To lunch first with Hazel at Café Flo. How embarrassed I’d have been years ago to keep going there with different people who always pay. Still I suppose they’re grateful I keep bringing fresh customers – I’m expecting a free meal any day. I have to watch every word I say, but nevertheless I enjoy her company; I had brought that article about B. Pym from the E. Standard. Oh dear, bewailing her ‘neglect’, carefully quoting Lord David C. rather than P. Larkin, to make an anticase. And also A.S. Byatt, (who?) who said ‘She tried to write like Angela Thirkell, but didn’t succeed as well’ or words to that effect. ASB. has not a particle of humour and therefore is not likely to get B. Pym at all right. Poor pompous things. She was however pleased at the publicity, especially as there was a notice for the paperback of A Lot to Ask and a couple of wildly differing notices in the main article, - ‘A scissors and paste job, suffering from cosiness’. ‘The best literary biography for many years.’ (Again, I haven’t quoted correctly because I gave H. the article.) As usual, the truth is somewhere between.

Went straight to H’smith and got a couple of plaice on the bone. So we had watercress soup, 75p, the plaice, £1.65, and chocolate brandy whip, about £1.00. How are the mighty fallen.

Over dinner we had a memorable laugh. How lovely they are, those helpless aching laughs, with every attempted word sparking off another endless spasm! K. said ‘What did you put in Loot?’ ‘Baron’s Court -’ ‘Did you put ‘only four stations from Harrod’s?’ No, I put ‘bedsit in actor’s house.’ ‘Oh, my God, how exciting, and did you put ‘might meet Simon Callow?’ ‘No, but I put ‘might meet Kevin Malpass who got a wonderful letter from Stephen Sondheim.’

Told me that the royalty cheque from Music House was down instead of up. Well, of course, people unerringly go for the third-rate. I’m not in the least surprised, nor at the information that one of his tracks raised £400 more than any of the other composers, whose mass of tracks raised thousands altogether. There you are, one person saw the special quality. He says he’s going to try and write something more saleable for them and Aaron has said he wants to oversee each stage. K. will do that now, where a few years ago he wouldn’t have. Good, if he can, as it is only to make money, like me doing a commercial. If I ever did!

We talked about Chris exhaustively, with me insisting that K. give Chris one last chance to reveal the trauma that has made him what he is. Perhaps he is self- indulgent and his difficulties only stem from his teasing at Dulwich, - on the other hand it may have been worse and he was gang-raped or something. One last try, I said.

Also about R., most interestingly. K. agreed with me that he never talks of his love life, not even if you ask him, not even to a contemporary. At least you’d think Zoe would be mentioned.

Told me about Simon and Snoo evening. The only practical outcome was that K. got it put off for a month or so to give him more time, the time to do the orchestrations.

But K. was amazed to hear S. say to Snoo, ‘Now talk me through the first scene and number, and then the links, and so on, talk me through it.’ Since the show was written two years or so before K was brought into it, you’d have thought they might have gone thro’ it before this. But people are like that now.

Today Edward Ash arrived. He’s said ten o’clock, with two girls helping him, but it was half-ten with a couple of largish cases and alone. The girls never surfaced, even to apologise. He may be a bit of a victim, I don’t know. He’s slightly built, boyish, cultivated, at least in manner, knows all the right what darling K. calls ‘references’, and seems to come from thirty of forty years ago. Leather shoes, a reading-lamp on the table. I said he could put some things in my wardrobe, - two suits and a dinner jacket. He is pleasant-looking in a very old-fashioned way. But now I relish his manners, while feeling protective about him in the modern world. Well, we’ll see – he has a kind of crispness somewhere. As the downstairs TV is still being repaired, I said he could watch anything up here that he really wanted to see. So we found ourselves sitting on the sofa on his first night, watching The Lost Language of Cranes adapted by Ian Mck’s old flame, Sean Mathias, a play about a son declaring his gayness, finding that his father is gay too. I was watching because of Eileen A. who managed to spear a few good moments of acting out of the mess.

What would the outside world make of us watching it? If I were a Cabinet Minister…

R. rang at last, and said What are you doing tomorrow night? Just mentioned the letter.

Monday February 10 1992

R. is asleep on the floor next door. What an interesting evening. But I’m going to have…

I’ve never been in the right place at the right time, or the wrong place at the wrong time, or any other permutation.

I’ve never had the good luck to be picked up by the wave of history at all.

Tuesday February 11 1992

He asked me to call him at 6.0, did so, and he got up at 7.30. I had such a lovely snooze after he’d gone. A dear evening, tho’ he skilfully evaded talking about my letter, as I knew he would, so that’s the end of letters, till he comes to me. Edward Ash came up for a drink, and showed to advantage. R. had remembered he’d auditioned him for the Tabard play ‘his voice was very poor’, which I can believe. A public school education, Fettes, is a poor grounding for voice production. May be a writer, - apart from the Gech plays.

While I was in the bath, R. read the ‘big’ scene between Jason and James, which I wrote to escape the shame of having done nothing to the play, seven pages in forty- five minutes. He approved with reservations. Of course, so carefully did I adhere to his instructions, that I did write long speeches – he didn’t mention them – and put my own beliefs into it, - he mentioned that he’d heard it all before, but was fair enough to say that someone who didn’t know me would naturally not think that. When I looked at the script after he’d gone, he’d put 7/10, See me in my study later.

Yes, we never talked of my letter and he said he wasn’t going to get drunk, but he did drink almost as much as usual.

Oh, by the way, he arrived, all dusty and looking very much the workman, as Edward and I were talking in the hall. So E. came up for a drink.

R. is a great joy to me. I am lucky in my friends.

Reading Stevie Smith’s life. To think she was in Palmers Green all that time, and all I met were René and Grace.

Wednesday February 1992

Of course, I did meet Stevie Smith, at Gerard’s in 1952. A small shrivelled sharp- eyed woman. I remember nothing else about her except that she betrayed no interest in me so nothing came of it. Tho’ very possibly I wasn’t so good at identifying interest as I am now.

An exhausting though v. satisfying day. Andrew J. was coming at nine to start re- lining the curtains, so I slept badly and woke at quarter past four. Went deliciously off again, after reading more of S. Smith by F. Spalding. Nine is a very early start for me, so I was pleased when a telephone message came from him that he’d underbought the lining and had to get some more, so he’d be here at ten-thirty, ‘or perhaps a bit before’. Of course, knowing his generation, I thought he might be a bit later even than that, but also thought he’s a nice little gay who is good at his meticulous job, so he won’t be so late. But I was again standing at the window as usual for an hour unable to settle to anything, with the furniture pushed back and so on. He arrived at eleven-thirty, respectably apologietic. We had a coffee and he had began. And it was a pleasure to see that it wouldn’t matter when he began because he knows exactly what he’s doing. It’s so satisfying watching anyone using their artistic material confidently, which in his case, is cloth and a needle. He finished the red sitting-room (Vaudeville) curtains, and I felt a poignant sweet feeling, seeing him repairing D’s stitches which have lasted for thirty years.

In the middle of it all, Jeffrey Rann arrived to pick up his parents’ door key which he handed me by mistake with mine when he left. Odd, about the only uncalculated thing he did. Also interesting that the little tea-time we had, with Andrew working and Jeff on the red sofa over the tea-tray, Jeff was more forthcoming than he’d ever been when he was here. Poor Jeff.

Phone call at six-thirty from Selfridges a/c, ‘you haven’t paid’ - £16 !!

Thursday February 13 1992

Strange form from Income Tax, like nothing I’ve seen before, streams of figures, quite incomprehensible.

Still very mild, and sitting here at ten p.m. with no heat but my relined curtains. Edward A. came back tonight, for first time for two? nights, having eaten. The only washing-up he’s left so far has been a crumby plate.

Oh, Peter Hutch rang last night to say he quite understood about me and the born- again-Christians, but would I come to the reception? Happily on the machine. How odd people are in that half and half way! How can he ‘understand’ my disapproving of what is presumably the core of his life? He should have championed his faith fiercely. Alas, all he thinks of, is that he must be liked. Poor Peter, I hope he’ll be happy but I doubt it. So when K. rang about various things, partly to say he’d be free to resume relations now that his best man duties would be over, I was able to say unequivocally that I wouldn’t even go to the reception, as I disapproved so thoroughly all the way round. K was impressed!

What a lot of harm those instant-conversion movements do!

Friday February 14 1992 Saturday February 15 1992

Friday a most exhausting day, getting ready for Tim and Mairead. I never seemed to stop running up and down the stairs. First, I was glad to find the fennel and red onions from last week were still usable, so the meal, with a 75p tin of water-cress soup, and an apple meringue, was cheap. I don’t quite know why, but went twice to H’smith, for various things, once before lunch – why? and once after.

Quite a lot of mess after Andrew still, and hoovered and dusted – tearing the curtain- lining made a lot of dust – and it all seemed to take a lot of time, and my legs ached.

Anyway, it got done and they arrived and Mairead as always, irradiated and enchanted the evening. Tim was low but adorable, and later on, for him burst out about us working again on Osbert Lancaster. I quite understand, it’s the only original thing for the last year.

I’d said I would ask Edward A. in for a gin and t. Did not calculate not to, tho’ I might have done as both almost ran out. Remembered at the last minute as we were going down to dinner, so it was a glass of wine. Also providential that it was a dish I had to cook there and then, so it gave them all time to take in the dining-room for about the same length of time as the g&t time. I didn’t hear much of it, but enough of it to know how kind and sensitive they were about Edward’s audition for Central tomorrow, Sat. Oh, today. How very lucky that Tim met Mairead before this period of out of work. He is depressed enough as it is, but with her lively love he will get through. Maddening Amanda Royle and her frightful child may move to her mother’s at Richmond. Then Mairead can take over her part of the mortgage, and T. and she will be alone there. As well as everything else Amanda has a French male au pair in that tiny room.

Yes, the fennel and onion dish was the first vegetarian dish I’ve done for T. A large fennel sliced thin and sauted for five mins, add two medium onions sliced. Soften. Turn gas right up, and throw on some sherry or wine vinegar. Reduce quickly, add fresh thyme, and seasoning.

Today, Saturday has also been a bit tiring, because Andrew J. has been here again doing the bedroom curtains. Not because he’s tiring, but because I had to wash up all the dinner-things and get lunch, and then I couldn’t settle to anything, and then I got him some tea. He said he was going but we had a chat in the twilight, and he told me he didn’t drink because he’d had to go into a clinic two or three years ago. So satisfying having the curtains saved.

Two or three crocuses out in the cemetery. There were none yesterday.

Card for Edward – his name is Ashe – from his mother. My reading speed is such that I am incapable of reading the address without reading the message. ‘What do you want for you 21st?’ Must try and find out tactfully.

Cheap offer in Independ. Secret Storage Pouffe. I thought Guy Burgess was dead. Of course, he was certainly cheap.

Sunday February 16 1992

Bright sunshine. Curiously tranquil despite my financial troubles. Spoke to Edna for the first time for weeks. She is back in the rest home, - oh these euphemisms – and seemingly back to her usual form. Her voice came over as strong as ever – the training was certainly for life at Central in the early ‘20s.

Dear Mary L. sent me £100 ‘because Betty Carter left me a few hundred.’ A funny little link with Margery Allingham. She is still well.

Oh, long letter from Neil. Typically endearing and idiotic. I always love descriptions of L.A. ‘We can go out into the garden and pick our own oranges and lemons, there are humming birds etc. etc.’ Well, er-yes, but a minute or two of oranges and lemons and humming-birds are not much to put between oneself and six months unemployment. However, he writes cheerfully, with some interesting passages, interesting, as usual, as much for his naiveté as his perception.

They took the younger child, Chloe, out of the first school – she’s 6 or 7 – because she can read and write and the American children were still finger-painting. One, of course, has to remember that most American scholars can’t read in any sense that I understand it.

Reported on Robin Sachs, ‘Oh, what a sad figure at the moment. As you probably know, he’s left Sian Phillips and the decree absolute goes thro’ at any moment. When he arrived here last year dear Robin’s head was turned. He had several mad flings and then settled on a woman in her late 30s. He went to London, told Sian and moved over here to start a new life with two suitcases, a cardboard box and the new love of his life… and her fourteen year old son. She’s now booted him out – he’s got no work permit (essential) and no money (disastrous). He’s not looking as pretty as he did and is currently relying on the kindness of semi-strangers. If he goes back to England, heaven knows what awaits him there. He’s hardly worked for the last ten years. It’s all a total mess, but it could be the making of him. Robin has never really grown up and had to fend for himself. Even moving in with this lady was moving into a completely comfortable set up – her own home and income etc. I think she smelled a rat. Robin likes the easy life, without putting in the hard work.’

Roy rang, to say he was coming tomorrow to read the last twenty minutes of the play before he delivers it to the RSC. Also told me amusingly that Peter Stephens, Rochelle’s husband, now managing Chichester, had call from K. about Venus O. Could he work late at night and did he mind, their music director had a pony tail!? Must remember to tell him, if he sees P.S., to mention D. at least. I think they liked each other in Nottingham.

K rang. Coming tomorrow.

Monday February 17 1992

Wedding day 34 years ago. Gracious. Also MFL first night in M’chester.

Roy was to come at 9.30, so I got up and shaved, a thing I rarely do before 12.0, he rang just as I got downstairs, to say he’d forgotten to do the cast list. He eventually arrived at 11.15. He started reading at 11.35, and again the ‘few pages’ lasted an hour. He reckons it’s 3 ¾ hours, I reckon it’s nearer five hours. Every reading session has been close to an hour, and there have been five! Still it’s a remarkable achievement. The style is so even and flexible and treads that very dangerous path between tushery and O.K. The last Sawney Bean scene is terrific.

Divine night with K. How odd that all comes together is harmony. I go to sleep happy always.

Tuesday February 18 1992

He had said he might be here by six, but in fact it was seven-fifteen. He’s taken his eight-track to what he called South Hall, of which he’d never before heard, ‘somewhere near Heathrow’, to be repaired. He plumped down on the sofa, and I called Edward A. up for a drink. I think he was a little startled at the louche figure on the sofa already performing a modified strip-tease. First, of course, the shoes, then the top layer, then another sweater, then the realigning of the pony-tail in its ring. But, of course, he talked to him sweetly. I am always much struck by him when I see him again through some new person’s eyes, and see that mild tolerant kindly gaze. I’m also struck with the keen pleasure it gives me to, as it were, appear together with him. Even in the midst of our deepest disagreements or rows, we have presented a united front to strangers. And better than just a united front, a supple playful perceptive and within limits, unselfish front.

So, after Edward had gone, we sat down to Spag. Bog. – and he wiped the plate – (well, he and Shar. do cook too quickly). So I gradually got his news. The Freud is now to be done at Hampstead! Snoo is as cross as K. and they are in partnership against Simon! Well, I quite understand. I also quite understand S’s misgivings about ‘Freud’ which he espoused and involved K in, in earlier and more ample days. I believe nothing in it.

He told me of James Roose-Evans’ difficulty in understanding why I didn’t entrust him with the Pym, and why I don’t like him. He also told me why I’m not playing a good part in Venus Observed! Because J.R.E. is not sure. So I settled that, and said I didn’t like him or trust him. ‘Right, so perhaps I won’t mention you again?’ ‘No, don’t’.

He hasn’t heard from Roger McGough. ‘Aren’t you surprised?’ ‘No.’

Oh, and Susan Raven briskly rang and got me, because he answered.

Wednesday February 19 1992

Few bits I forgot. He rang Chris before dinner and after Edward had gone, and made an ‘appointment’ to have a talk for twelve the next day. He used his most authoritative tone, put the ‘phone down, and said ‘A real wanker’. Dear K., nobody but he would have stood Chris for so long.

Oh and the wedding – I never mentioned the wedding! Well, it was obviously quite as awful as I imagined. All the usual things, but such people can always sink to idiocies that one can prepare for. At the conclusion of the actual marriage, the bride and groom were surrounded by I don’t quite know who, who concealed them completely from sight, while calling out the usual ill-judged slogans ‘Bless Peter and whatever her name is, Lord’, and so on. I have many reasons to distrust organised religion, and many and varied examples of stupidity and prejudice inside it, but few sillier than the ridiculous behaviour of the simple and easily imposed-up inadequate people who become born-again Christians. Poor things, it must be like walking on a rotten floor. He told me two surprising things. He’s had only one or two sentences with the bride, despite being one of the best men. If only people could see that conventional manners were invented to help those who are too dim or insensitive to make up manners from themselves out of their own responses. And incidentally protect others from the aforesaid dim and insensitive.

And Peter H. mentioned me in his speech. Again poor thing. I suppose he imagines that our rather chequered acquaintance constitutes a deep and lasting and enduring friendship. The saddest thing is, that by his standards, it probably is.

He left, as always so flatteringly, at the very last possible minute, at ten past twelve.

I’m getting a bit behind. I now have to tell about dinner with Barbara Barrington, on Tuesday. It was comparatively painless, though I was a little apprehensive. But her opinions were less to the fore than usual, and her status as a very old friend was more to the fore, so I was able to keep us on old friends, and old times and avoid such dangerous issues as the impossibility of travelling on the tube (cont.)

1991. 30. 65 2001. 40. 75 2011. 50. 85? 2021. 60. 95?

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 110

February 19 1992 – April 4 1992.

Wednesday February 19 1992

She asked me to arrive at 7.30. She has a new cat, which adopted her, a fact of which, like so many ‘cat-lovers’ she is rather unhealthily proud. But even I had to admit that he was a very elegant cat. Siamese, I think, with that small head, and perfection of shape, but, in addition, with fur of a beautiful glossy unmarked black. Looked like an ornament on her cream carpet. But imagine talking to an animal when you could talk to a human being! After a couple of really generous gins, off we went in the car, for a couple of minutes walk, to the Spanish restaurant we were heading for. ‘It has a tapas bar at the front’ she said proudly, ‘and it’s full of Spanish people, which is always a good sign.’ I was a bit put off by the chairs, those high-backed ones ordered by bad Italian restaurants. There was a real Spanish guitarist, singing real Spanish songs, fairly quietly. Thankfully only three or four other couples turned up. She regretted the lack of ‘atmosphere’, ‘Sometimes they dance’. She ordered in Spanish. The menu was fairly ordinary, and entirely printed. Hake and prawns loomed large – there were a dozen or so prawn dishes which looked substantially identical to me, and hake obviously permanently on the menu. Grilled, fried, and some five other ways, but no fish of the day. I ordered paté to see, - it was a bit bland pale smooth. Hake was plain grilled and eatable. The house white was quite good, and strawy pale, looking not unlike sherry. Some Rioja or other, I forget what.

I talked about Michael as much as I could, and we laughed a lot over old times, and I forgot how uselessly self-opinionated she can be and how wrong!

Message on machine when I got back from R. at 10.30, and funny talk with Edward taking his no. at the K Head workshop. So rang him at 11.35, and he answered ‘Workshop’. I always like to hear how dear friends sound when they don’t know they’re talking to you. He just wanted a little chat, he was tired and a bit dispirited. When I said I was sitting having a whisky, he said, with a real groan, ‘Oh, don’t.’ A pity he’s too busy to take advantage of Edward’s being away till Sunday.

This p.m. to film Death in Brunswick. Goodish. Sam Neill really got away from himself, and was excellent. Hilarious programme about the heir of the late Lord Moynihan. An old crony with his back to the camera, asked for his opinion, said ‘One of the biggest shits of all time.’ Poor little baby Charles Vance is his trustee!!

Later.

Could not watch the Bookmark programme about B. Pym. Every time I turned it on I got a further jab of disgust at the coarse texture of it. Pat Routledge is an excellent actress, but cannot get the accent, let alone anything subtler. The trouble about our accent is that it is still not looked at as an accent representing an attitude of mind and way of life, just as much as say, the Lancashire accent does. They just put on their ‘poshest’ accent and get cross if you tell them they’re not getting it. It’s the withheld quality, the irony and so on they don’t get. She and Marcia Warren in the village street having a gossip, was straight out of C. Street. The very way they looked down the street was totally wrong.

I was also much troubled by many bits from the reading, including the end. I feel I must write to Penny and disclaim it. And what can I say to Hazel?

Thursday February 20 1992

How shocked he’d be that I still watch Brookside sometimes, to feel close to him because of Liverpool!

Reopened my Halifax Building Society account, which had been moribund since 1985, with £9.17 in it. Paid in the £100 from Mary, and the £119 from the books I sold. So the balance, with the interest on the £9.17 twice a year since 1985, is now £233.04. Neither of the cheques are taxable, and I felt, with uncertain times ahead, it would be unprofessional not to have a little available cash for, for instance, buying a shirt or something for a part. I am beginning to feel my nerve has gone. I simply cannot imagine playing a big part again.

Later. A great relief, Hazel rang and felt exactly the same as I did about the programme. In fact, she said ‘You are a great comfort to me. I haven’t been able to say to anyone how awful I thought it was.’ I reminded myself, in the face of the great wave of Philistinism, that Barbara Pym herself chose Hazel as her literary executor, (not Hilary) and Hazel chose me as her adapter, it makes me feel better.

Nice piece of chicken for dinner. The oven has gone wrong, just a trickle of gas. So had to fry it, delicious!

Rang K. and poured out about the Pym. He’d watched some of it, said it wasn’t funny. Got it exactly right.

Friday February 21 1992

R. rang at four, so sweet, still in Holland Park studio rebuilding it. ‘You were a bit low when you rang about Barbara Pym weren’t you?’ He’s ringing again after dinner.

Did so, but we couldn’t have what he called ‘a real chat’ because he was still in the studio. It’s the get-in at King’s Head on Saturday, but may be able to come in the week. Fried a delicious plaice.

Jonathan Cecil left a message on machine implying he’d hated the programme and asking me round to meet – John Moffatt. So I cried off, not quite a lie as Andrew was coming round until he cried off.

Rang Mary to tell her of Hazel’s call to set the record straight. She told me she’d heard S’s interview with Michael Parkinson, and he said he was going to do Versailles in September or October. Happily she thought he was perfect in his treatment of the interview. I pick up the details of one of my closest friends here and there, seldom from his expensive lips.

Saturday February 22 1992

Oh, what a delightful surprise. I was just dressing about twelve, and glanced out of the window as a car drew up, and saw a very familiar pony tail, and it was him! He’d taken Nigel to Heathrow, - N. is taking that black girl to Hawaii for a holiday, and paying for everything, getting the tickets very cheap through the travel agency he works for – K. thought about £200 for both of them. There are, I believe, a lot of very cheap tickets about everywhere.

And he’d dropped in to look at my oven! And he put it right. He manipulated the Regulo knob, and the weak little flame flared into its usual size. He said he’d come and do it properly and take the front off and everything. In the garden I gave him a branch of bay leaves and a bunch of rosemary. He looked at the greenhouse and said it was easy. I asked if he wanted lunch. ‘I’ve only been up an hour, so I’m not very hungry. – But I’ll have a cup of tea. And perhaps some toast.’ So we did that. He told me he’d now had a letter from S. in answer to his, and Snoo had had one in answer to his fax, about the Freud. S. said he had to go back to M’chester ‘because many things were still wrong.’ They wanted two days of talks which he’d promised them, he offered them two hours on was it? Wednesday afternoon.

I said how did his talk with Chris go. He said that C. is still a fifteen year old. He tackled him on counts and C. could not really answer. At the end he gave K a hug which K refused. ‘I said to him that I always said what I felt, and I am with-holding my friendship until I see some change.’

We talked more of the Pym prog. Even I am amazed at his perception of something about which he knows almost nothing except my reading. He had got complete hold of the lack of self-pity or ‘solemnity’. ‘It was a programme about a woman dying.’ He left about one, and I shopped.

In the afternoon, I rang Jonathan Cecil. Got Anna Sharkey – I wonder how he can stand her ‘genteel’ vowels – especially as we talked at length about the accent later. I am thankful to say that he had loathed the programme. ‘We’re still spitting blood.’ So that was satisfying and we had all that about accents. And I asked them to lunch on Friday.

He told me a good story. Mrs. Graham Sutherland said to his father, ‘You write books I believe, I haven’t read any of them, I can’t afford to buy books now because I promised my husband on his death-bed that I would always stay at the Connaught.’

Sunday February 25 1992

Rather horrified to see Jack Hedley, who played the superior – I’m-on-this-level-for- life star of that play I did for June Howson, where I got such a good notice as a psychiatrist, playing three lines in an episode of Allo Allo as a ridiculous Nazi general. He looked much the same, a bit tireder, but not a wreck. What happened? He was an archetype of success, a type indistinguishable from the dreariest of business-men or estate agents or whatever – how could success elude him? He is every bit as dreary and lacking in vitality as Paul Eddington? Why isn’t his name still in lights?

Rang Edna as usual, now she’s back. For the second time running, she said, in a rather different tone, ‘I’m cold’. And was rather blurred. When I rang Mary, of course she attributed it to the radiator being in the wrong place, and to the central- heating perhaps not being turned on at night. Based I fear on no direct evidence, it simply represented Mary’s own obsession with heat. Edna has never been so obsessed or susceptible, and it may represent her failing. I don’t know.

Edward Ashe came back from his mother’s. Sat down and chatted, a little bit longer than I’d have liked, but I can’t blame him. He needs the information. Told me of Czech play that he’d got the rights of again. Yes, he did go to C. to get them. I suggested I could put it forward to the Bush or Hampstead or whatever. Oh dear, he still has eggshell on, very sympathetically. He didn’t want it done on the fringe. He was thinking of it being done in Scotland – to which he has a strong attachment, as people who are not what he calls Scottish are – and in a proper theatre. And so on and so on. The usual idealistic fantasy which one is so chary of deflating. Most interesting, a partner in the enterprise hove into view, and by implication, quite a commanding partner, Jason Droe, ‘an actor, he’s twenty-five’, ‘Is he working?’ ‘Yes, he’s understudying Stanley Baxter in panto at Glasgow.’ What can J.D. be like? And Edward has the Edmund White King of Naples book by his bed. I put his room to rights while he was away.

Rang. K. about oven casually at six-ish to ask what he did to the oven to make it work, and got Sharron, who said he was talking to Kerry. ‘Who’s Kerry?’ ‘The choreographer.’ ‘Well, don’t worry him.’

Who’s Kerry? That phoney girl who did that silly affair in the rain? In Chichester?

Anyway, later Sharron rang back to ask a dear question about apostrophes. Solved that, and was rather troubled that he rang back about the oven, ‘because I was worried’, but solved that.

Monday February 24 1992

Fascinating full but tiring day. Dashed about by my elderly standard, cleaning and shopping and so on. When I got back at four, Andrew J. was already here and sewing, and Edward was back in his room without me being able to warn him that a strange man was going to let himself in. As always with Andrew from the very first, the talk took off in perfect if narrow sympathy. He is a very typical gay ‘little thing’ in manner and up to a point, appearance, but escapes the archetype in his charity and for his age, 26, wisdom. He didn’t put a foot wrong with me at any point, except to say ‘she’ about a man, and I think saw at once I couldn’t have that. Edward came in and certainly didn’t jib away.

During gin and tonic K. rang to say excitedly that he had work to do and did I mind if we put off our meeting with John Davis? No, I don’t, but I didn’t say I minded him putting off repairing the oven. Which is still not working. While he was talking, Robin arrived and we spoke, and I was interested, he was quite inhibited, said I’ll ring you later. And did, and was pouring it out as usual. Darling K. so caught up. I would think less of him if he remembered my oven. And I’m very good at cooking on top.

Tuesday February 25 1992

A day filled with the highlights of the week. I renewed my travel permit and got my pension. I went on to Ealing and paid my mortgage, and posted a form to the income- support people. Exciting day altogether.

Wednesday February 26 1992

Kevin’s 31st birthday. At his request I gave him my spare pair of secateurs. As I know he was working, I went round and pushed it through the letter-box. On my way back to the tube-station, I had the treat of a dog suddenly barking violently and coming at me, so I had to shut myself in someone’s garden. It has always been unbelievable to me that a sentient human being should even have the possibility of being even disturbed, let alone attacked, by a stupid wild animal.

I’d put on his note that this was now the happiest day of my life in the year. Because I’m so grateful for him being born.

Just after my bath he rang to thank me, and told me again what he was working on, the Olympic Theme for Granada. They have to have it by Friday and if they like it, he’ll have to go up to M’chester on Monday. It might mean quite a bit of money. A very aaah conversation.

Susan Raven rang while I was out and left a message that nobody would be there but me, and then rang twice more while I was out, saying James Perry was coming as well and was longing to meet me again. Who’s James Perry? Can he be Morris Perry’s son? I do remember a disastrous evening with Morris being sour and bitter all over the place. I think I remember some children, but not individually. He’ll be older than K if it is him. Oh, I do love him.

Thursday February 27 1992

Started to get ready for Jonathan Cecil and Anna Sharkey, tomorrow lunch! Did the shopping, little extra to buy. Hoovered the bedroom and the draw. room. It makes me so hot, - I always have to change the sweat-soaked clothes after. No wonder servants smell. Poor Mrs. Endean.

Off to film after launderette and Safeway and ironing and bath. But not before receiving a half-hilarious, half-repellent photocopy of a letter from the motor-maniac and road-fidgeter opposite. ‘Dear Neighbour, As you may have noticed I have installed CCTV to cover the street. I have done this as a result of various incidents of car damage and theft of accessories, and attempted house break-ins. I know it has been noted by at least one house burglar who attempted to break into No 11 some months ago. I disturbed him then and the other day he took a good look at the cameras and left the area. I hope that it may well act as a deterrent to vandals as well. While it does not cover the whole street, it does cover most of the vehicles on the even side so if anything happens during the night the video may be reviewed by you the next day and I will be happy to assist.

For the above reasons I try to keep my car outside my house near the street light also, under its blue cover my car is rather obtrusive and I try not to be a nuisance as I’m sure you all want to park outside your own houses and I respect your right to do so. Sincerely, Tim Halas?

My reaction was twofold – a feeling that it might make things a bit safer, and outrage at two recording cameras pointed directly at my house all the time; I also felt sadness at having lived into a time where such a thing should be thought necessary, and the standards of that sort of man should become publicly acceptable. His illiterate note does not allow for the non-motorist for instance. He delivered two to this house with, I’m sure, no idea that I have no car. Fascinating.

Managed a bath before the film, as the housework had made me so hot and sweaty. The foyer of 20th Cent. Fox is being redecorated hideously. Had to sit in very front row, but happily there are head rests. And the film happily was so poor that I had a refreshing nap. ‘Shining Through’ a wartime thriller, was jammed with slow clichés, which I prophesied with unerring aim ‘Now she’s going to the broken flute’ etc. Really awful. Dear Janet, it was lovely to see her after a little gap. She is slimmer tho’ she doesn’t think so. But she’s tired.

Friday February 28 1992

This a.m. washed-up, swept the stairs, hoovered the kitchen and hall, went to the shops, polished the brasses. At the shops I realised the tube-station was still closed because of the bomb at London Bridge four hours before. Thank God there were only twenty-eight wounded and no dead. But still twenty-eight too many. Why are they never arrested on suspicion? Why is there never a raid on an IRA headquarters in Ireland?

Jonathan and Anna arrived by minicab at twenty past twelve, apologising for being early, and bringing two large bunches of pink/white tulips. I was struck at how old and old-fashioned they looked on the doorstep. He huddled and crumpled in a top- coat with velvet collar, she clutching a tartan rug to her throat, in a pale yellowy- orange knitted dress with a sequinned motif from shoulder to waist. She immediately reasserted her genuine charm which is expressed thro’ that artificial accent and certain very dated moues and sudden freezes and girlishly hanging on your lips, to a point that, in description, might not sound charming, but is. He remains exactly the same, intelligent to a surprising point, considering the way he constantly switched off.

Sometimes he glanced round the room and his eye was caught by something and remarked on it. Sometimes he just glanced round, leaving the suggestion that he was suddenly bored. But I don’t think he was. There is a decided tho’ very limited likeness between him and Ju. He is a genuine member of the genuine upper classes in his complete physical helplessness. She watches him all the time in case. When they left, for instance, he hoiked his velvet-collared overcoat on as if for the first time, and got the collar very clumsily turned in. But I fear the clumsiness needs more genuine ability to justify it. He has charm and ease and tells a story well, and has a delightful ready laugh, but no special wit or invention of his own. She is long-suffering and they are devoted to one another.

I think possibly the most interesting part of the conversation was about Karin McCarthy, whom I am only really interested in because of Mary. She has ME, and it has ‘ruined her life’, in exactly the same way that ‘Mary’s chest’ has carefully been allowed to ruin hers. (How M. fastens on any mention of illness of anyone!) As we went on talking, Anna and Jonathan spelled out that ME was, at any rate for Karin, a refuge from a disappointing career and marriage. ‘I’ve seen her skipping around the supermarket and then she must have seen me and she slowed up to tiredness. What you don’t know about the marriage is that she had a twelve-year affair with a married man of all that could be despairing, part of it after she married Roly. Who is, by the way, diabetic and a natural bachelor.’ Coo! And Mary goes into her illness and has mentioned nothing of this to me. Of course, both may be wrong! I know almost nothing about Karin or Roly except by hearsay. I do know about Mary that she has a most unhealthy obsession with ill-health, and I think an interest in encouraging that obsession in others. Look at her interest in my cough!

They seemed to enjoy their lunch violently. Oh, when they got a bit drunk, they told me about some radio programme that he’s doing, ‘like a revue, really, with two young musicians, one of them with shoulder length hair’, ‘rather old-fashioned really’, and they asked him to lunch or dinner, ‘and we went to a lot of trouble, he rang up and said he’d be two hours late, and then was later, and I (Anna) said I didn’t want to know’ and so on and so on. And Jonathan spoke to him and he said he felt very guilty, ‘What can I do?’ ‘Give her some flowers, she loves freesias.’ And nothing happened. Eventually he said he hadn’t had any money. ‘Well, I mean, a bunch of freesias are only a pound.’ Well, yes.

Jonathan certainly pours the wine down, four glasses before lunch, and half the bot. during. ‘He has a hiatus hernia.’ Within these limits, they are pleasant company, because of generation likeness.

R. rang full of affection. ‘What about Sunday?’ ‘You have saved a bit of my immortal soul. I was just about to refuse Susan Raven because I had to see you on Sunday night.’ So, I rang her and she didn’t really seem to know who James Perry was, tho’ it turned out it was Morris’ son who is in his late thirties now, and I suppose/hope he remembers us with pleasure as people not locked in an unhappy marriage and ridiculous left-wing attitudes. I asked her to lunch next Thursday, alone. That’ll teach her. How lovely. R. on Sunday perfect.

Saturday February 29 1992

First day of Spring, if it wasn’t Leap Year. And it was. Warm, cloudless sky sheets of crocus in Margravine. Worked in garden in p.m. and removed two tons of weed from pond.

First primrose, cowslips little leaves, rather behind. No sign of double primrose. Yet. A good hour.

Edward was meant to pay me on Fri. but hasn’t. Bother.

Hazel rang as often. Lovely talk. She has had long letter from Tristram Powell saying what hell the Bookmark prog. was. I said why not send him the play. She did mention the reading.

Sunday March 1 1992 Monday March 2 1992

He staggered out, R I mean, with the usual blurred face, at eight o’clock. I do rather long for him to get a proper job so that he can sleep in. We had a good go at the play, but what we really need is a few days with long afternoons, and some concentrated work. His delightful nature and intelligence doesn’t blind me to the laziness, and lack of fierce ambition, two qualities so conspicuously lacking in K. But I can help him. I am also struck by the lack of openness; I don’t mean nastily so, but I do remember how stuck he was, the first time he met him, by S’s ‘openness’, which never occurred to me. And it is certainly true that he seldom tells me anything that he has been doing or feeling or thinking without me asking. Most interesting that there is almost nothing that he has to mention. For instance, he has not mentioned Zoe’s name at all, even incidentally. But I enjoy every minute of our time together, despite that. He really likes me.

Today, worried by seeing a letter in Edward’s room about owing £150, and him not paying the rent on Friday, as I’d asked him to do. Had to write a cheque as a result which I don’t want to do. Spent a few hours worrying that he was going to be in difficulties. However, he paid me when I got in, and said he’d pay next Friday. I didn’t read the letter about the debt – I saw it as I was putting some plates and cutlery back. I moved the letter and read it at a glance. I think it’s difficult for people to believe that these days – they seem to read more and more slowly. Perhaps I could convey it to say, K. that I read a whole page of writing-paper as he reads the address on an envelope.

To film The Man in the Moon, mild American sub-sentiment in rural surroundings. When the young man was crushed to death under the tractor, I left. Partly because the film wasn’t able to support a death, and partly because of D’s ‘Why do they have to have that part?’

Some time ago I bought the large three-volume complete Gilbert White, and am halfway thro’ the first volume, his Gardeners’ Kalendar. Strange reading to some, but enthralling to me. Have switched from Ruth Rendell at night to M. Innes. The latest vol. from the Soc. for Theatre Research is quite interesting for once, a biography of the Calverts, with a detailed picture of their famous Shakespeare seasons at Manchester.

Oh, a story of Lady Asquith Jonathan told me that I’ve just remembered. Lord David C. was staying at the Wharf aged 18, and was rather startled to receive a note from Lady A. while he was still in bed. (Not unusual, vide Osbert Sitwell, among others.) The note said, Dear David, You must not mind about your spots, they are quite common at your age, and will go away as you get older. I have known many distinguished people who had spots, including many members of the Royal Family, but, of course, not Queen Victoria.’

Tuesday March 3 1992

I queued for my pension today and saw a young woman and her small boy, about five, in the queue. She was dark and unsmiling, and dragged the boy to the counter rather irritably. When I looked next, the boy had hidden in the only available hiding-place, behind the passport photo-booth. She looked round when she was finished, and an anxious expression crossed her face for a moment as she wondered if he was in the street, a very main street, but then she realised where he was; she crept towards the booth with a face so full of amused love that it brought a tear to my eye. She bounced round the booth and said Boo! before he could, he gave a great scream of delight and she whisked him away.

Went to Curzon Phoenix, but came away when I found the seats were bookable and I couldn’t have the only row I can sit in, without getting a crick in my neck. So I came away.

Wednesday March 4 1992

Well. Well. Last night K’s music appeared on the six o’clock news marking the opening of the Manchester bid for the Olympic Games in 2000. And he’s up there, staying in Liverpool, and overseeing it all. I suppose if he’s on a royalty, - and it’s all been in such a hurry I don’t know whether he is yet – he could make mints between now and then. I could hardly hear the music this time, as it was under all the reporting. Rang Sharron to ask whether it was his music, because, of course, he didn’t know that was going to happen till he got there. It was. How killing.

Long talk with Sharron. Chris is leaving. At last. Only K. would have borne with his tepid mess so long. Very funny about hurriedly buying a new jacket in an Oxfam? shop in plum! velvet!!

He rang this p.m. while I was out, and when I rang back at six, he’d been out all day and was expected back at six, so perhaps Edward should have taken down a number. However, I had a lovely talk to Marjorie, - never much to say to poor Ernie. She’s waiting on yet another operation, the other knee. She was very funny about washing his sweater and ‘finding’ it was maroon. He’s seen June Hawson. ‘He should be back by now.’ Ha, ha.

Oh, Sharron was so sweet about repairing the sofa. I never knew she’d noticed.

Thursday March 5 1992

Susan Raven to lunch. Well. The strangeness of seeing someone after forty-two years. A little like Hilary Pym. Small, square, short cropped hair in a slightly pinky dull ash. A softer colour and style would have been more becoming. Heavy lines. Her unhappy life has certainly not made her more sensitive or responsive. She showed me her son’s paintings, in postcard form, just as I was dicing the bacon for the omelettes in the heating pans. When I said, ‘Do you want some cheese?’ ‘No, I don’t want any cheese’, rather in the tone of someone outraged to feel that someone has suggested that they commit suicide by the offer of arsenic. I put the coffee down on the sofa-table where she had been sitting before lunch. She made for the arch- chair. ‘I don’t want to be mother.’

Oh, dear, she has gone through her life putting people’s backs up, and thereby acquiring a rather jaundiced view of humanity.

She insists on asking me to dinner with various people. Why? We got nowhere today, and she quite plainly didn’t notice, poor woman. I could see her thinking, like a chat-show host, that I was being a bit vague.

Marjorie rang just after four, to say he’d left at four. (Rather a relief to hear in a hired car.) And was going to see some middle-aged gentleman in Knutsford. Dr John Rae? But she didn’t know the name! She said something wonderful had happened in the morning, ‘But I can’t tell you, because he’d be cross, he wants to tell you himself.’ Ernie was really tired, and K. said ‘I’ll wash up’ – Oh, how kind – ‘tomorrow.’ ‘Now, Angus, you know Eernie and I would never leave any washing-up overnight.’

No, they wouldn’t and nor would Lalla. And neither of them have ever wondered what they might do instead of washing-up, now. Something might come of not interrupting the conversation. But she really loves K. and sees more of him than anyone has a right to expect.

Rang Ju after his message. Wanted my ‘advice’ on the film. Repeated many times, like plugging a song, that Ealing films was the effect we wanted, a fantastic (sic) situation treated calmly and naturalistically. I repeated, I mean. !

Friday March 6 1991

Diarrhoea. In a mild unpainful way. Except that with my skin, my arsehole gets so sore, after the second go. But of course I don’t change my regime at all. A bit of kaolin and morphine, and all the usual. I expect Susan K. brought it on to get me at a disadvantage.

Used some wholemeal spaghetti last night. It might have been not quite fresh, but it was disgusting, a bit sweet and heavy and wouldn’t wrap round a fork or take up the sauce. I hate wholemeal of any kind, it dries up my mouth.

Later. He rang at 5.30, like a boil bursting. Never likes to tell on ‘phone. Come to din tomorrow and I know you like to go early on Sat. so come early, at six. June H. said was I still living with Simon and, of course, I had a private income.

Saturday March 7 1992

So I went, and the dinner was started and we sat down to have it before eight. The cat is a proper cat, black and white, with half its nose black and half white in a perfectly straight line down the middle. It’s Sharron, of course it gives her something to mother slightly.

I was sitting at that table I bought in the Northcote Rd. for £1, when the ‘phone rang, and he talked away, and it was June Howson. I could not follow the scheme he was talking about, - he gestured that he’d tell me and I knew it had blown up fast. And then suddenly I was talking to her again, after getting on for ten years. She’s certainly been pulled off such pedestal as she was on. She said, without any affectation, that she’d been called into whoever it was four years ago at Granada, and they’d said ‘We’re not having directors or producers over forty any more’ and she’d laughed, thinking they were joking, ‘and then I saw they weren’t.’ And she’d been so successful… Except that she masterminded Studio, about as big a complete disaster, and as expensive a complete disaster, as I’ve ever been aware of. It sank entirely without trace or reaction from the beginning. Certainly failure has made her warmer. She has always kept me at very much arm’s length, but suddenly it’s ‘perhaps we can have dinner when I’m in London in the summer.’

Over dinner, lamb chop, of rather strange cut but delicious taste and, as usual, seventy-three vegetables, he started to tell me of the TV prog. he was talking about to her. Fifteen minutes, a man going through the assault of the sounds of the day. The luddite manager – what is his name? – and Roger McGough came into it somewhere, and that Bubb boy with the rubber face who was at school with him, and June doing the editing. And K put it all together. Oh, he’s so sweet and vital and good at this, and gets so impatient if you even put in a tiny interjection when he’s telling. !

Gave Sharron that guinea-fowl plumage scarf I found on my fence. Beautiful silk, only mark Ingeborg.

Lovely evening. I rest in him.

Sunday March 8 1992

Yesterday saw a beautiful moth clinging to the china-cupboard door. If its wings had been spread, I think it would have been an inch and a half. Shades of dull brown lilac and pale buff in those unmistakable rhomboid patterns. Put it out on the ammonite stones and looked it up. It had two little protuberances on its thorax just behind the head. And there it was out in March, and the only one that at all fitted – ‘this moth is very variable’, - was the Yellow Horned Moth. I think that was right.

Oh, and Hazel rang to say she’d had a letter back from Tristram Powell and she’d said about the play. So. No baby yet, and the midwife had said ‘You’ve made that baby too comfortable in there.’ Pets, babies, intelligence is still a stupid pushover for idiot clichés.

R. rang at 9.0 and said could he come on Wednesday at about eight-thirty or nine, and then again on Friday at six, so that we could go at the play. Lovely. Later, at eleven, left message to say ‘Don’t give my address to a man ringing up for Zoe.’ !

Monday March 9 1992

S. rang up to say could I have lunch tomorrow, Mon Plaisir, sorry it’s such short notice. Told him of June H’s absurdity. Much amused.

Rang K. to say I was seeing S. and did he want me to say anything. Told him of S’s amusement about June H. and he was suddenly cross. How naïf he can be every now and again, again. His loyalty is so strong and his opinion of me so high, that when the two collide he’s upset. I don’t want to tell him how crass June H. can be. After all how much she’s always kept me at arm’s length, until now, when she’s unsuccessful.

Tuesday March 10 1992

To Mon Plaisir, and the same table, alone by the bar. For my ear. A fairly scarifying tale, one way and another. S. had to tell. Yes, Howard is buying the Duke of York’s, and completion day is Wednesday, tomorrow. But S. thinks Richard Attenborough and Capital Radio may not complete, may – I don’t know whether the word would be renege, back out, or cheat, - and if so, the £250,000 deposit will be forfeit. Another £250,000 was invested in a play for John Malkovich in Chicago, with the (contractual) understanding that it would come in to the Shaftesbury, which has been booked. It got poor notices, but is sold out, and John M. won’t come to the Shaftesbury. Various reasons, aforesaid notices and his girl-friend having a baby in Los Angeles. So, as the Shaftesbury is costing £60,000 a week, Harold P. has flown out to persuade him, and asked S. to come too, to add his persuasive powers. S’s business sense is not his strongest feature, but he seems to think Turnstyle may be finished by these two sums. If so, it’s under-capitalized. They’re paying him a £24,000 p.a. retainer, just enough for his mortgage.

Then there’s Carmen Jones, being re-cast, with twenty? new people. Hilarious description of Wilhelmina thing suddenly amazed by her Don Jose tearing off his trousers and underpants, and humping with a bare bum to the audience. ‘He’s gay, of course.’ Wants us to come and see it March 30, 31.

Then there’s My Fair Lady. Oh dear, it sounds awful, but I hope the reality is slightly better. How I dread seeing anything these days, as standards drop. It seems there were rather more than the usual teething troubles. The lighting man, whom S had had for Infernal Machine et. al., had to be sacked, producing chaos when he kept keying into the board light 73 when he meant 74. Then Helen Hobson and Ed don’t get on. She is mus. com. and while that wouldn’t matter in an ordinary mus. com. Ed expects Shavian acting back and isn’t getting it. S. burst out comically but with great feeling about the extraordinary inflections ‘which have been laboriously learnt by them wrong.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ when they mean ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ He taxed her with it and she used a wrong inflection in her answer! He has struggled with her, to the point of tears twice. But he likes her and so do the audiences.

Ed, on the other hand, is inaudible, and in another world. ‘You know, big stars, even when they haven’t got there, usually do something, like all their vocal mannerisms at double volume. Ed comes to a bit he hasn’t decided what to do with, and more or less says to the audience Nothing doing here, come back in a week or two. S. has had over a hundred letters in a week saying they can’t hear him. I wonder how many years it is since he played in these big theatres, and in a musical, where the dialogue always has to be louder as the audience has just been listening to an orchestra and chorus. A disturbing thought – is the show miked? And is he still inaudible? Happily S. didn’t mention Michael Medwin. Oh, and it’s sold out.

I chose more carefully from the menu but was still unimpressed. A veal escalope with a mushroom sauce was gluey and tasteless, and the crème brulee was not only a bit meagre in size, but with a much too hard and therefore tasteless top, and the custard a little sloppy and insufficient. The Aligote, one of my favourites, lacking in intensity. It’s not me by the way!

But it was lovely to see him, and we walked to turnstile in a downpour, through which, as usual, S. walked too slowly! though he will never admit it.

Have I said that the crocuses in Margravine are particularly beautiful this year? Two or three beautiful drifts under the trees, looking completely natural. And yet, the same (presumably) taste has planted a cherry tree near enough to them to spoil their simple clear jeweled effect with its hideous bluey-pink flowers.

Oh, and it’s Budget Day. I just heard that car tax had been halved and that made me so cross I looked no more.

Wednesday March 11 1992

Oh, forgot to record, Joanna David’s reaction to MFL. She’s always sworn rather self-consciously, I suppose to counteract her quiet wholesome wan-like looks. ‘When he’s good, he can be lovely, but when he’s not, he’s crap, isn’t he? Still, I’m on the end of the ‘phone, and if you want, just ring and I’ll come to suck him off.’

Robin said he was going to be about nine and was, but of course, I didn’t want to work then and got quickly drunk after he said he didn’t want to look at the play. And he forgot to bring any wine for the first time. Now I like both those things – an advance in friendship.

Took little ballet film to show Zoe, and ‘something to read, I must read more’, and took 40 Years On the copy inscribed to Dorothy by Alan. Improbably a fool.

Thursday March 12 1992

Tried to write and couldn’t.

To film and came out after fifteen minutes. Message on machine from Hazel that her grandchild, a girl, was born at 4.0 this p.m. and both well. That odd inhibited girl who could hardly face me across a lunch table, can face having a baby. What’s the betting that poor little baby will eventually be a spinster looking after her increasingly old parents.

Friday March 13 1992

Rang Hazel and offered congratulations. She was, as might be expected, a little distrait. It was not a very ‘personalised’ talk, and they’re not seeing the baby till tomorrow. ‘She had a bad time, and….’ Ah, now that’s more in key with the girl I met. Poor creature, she did sound a bit too calm about it.

Went to Ealing about that DSS form and shopped in the Safeways there. Yes, I do like identical shops everywhere, sometimes. Provided that isn’t all there is.

Back here K. rang, to ask R. to dinner! but also told me he’d had a good creative talk with James R-Evans about Venus Observed, but had been much depressed to hear that Patrick Garland had expressed concern as to what sort of composer he was, ‘bringing a whole studio down, and synthetic’ etc. etc. It made him feel grey and uncreative, to think that someone in charge of such a big affair as Chichester, should know so little, ‘and I suppose, yet again, I’ll get no appreciation from the man at the top’ J. R-E had to explain that ‘Kevin sits by me, and I murmur something and he writes the music there and then.’ I told K. to mention us to P.G. and remind him we met with Penny. Can’t say worse about Patrick than that I think that would make a difference.

The worst thing is the ignorance that can drain away a creative feeling. But K. is v. tough, and has probably got over it already.

R. didn’t get here till seven-thirty, instead of six, the traffic was so bad. He read the play right through, and made a really good suggestion, for bringing on Sarah’s mother, and thereby, possibly, helping us to end the first Act! That was over dinner – another first. After he talked for more or less the first time about Zoe and her parents. They’re divorced, she lives in Perth, he in Fitzroy Square! She is not well off, he is a sort of business manager to an Arabian oil magnate. Or some such. So he has a pretty good salary. He seems all that can be of a dull business man, not even able to be a decent tyrant to Zoe, with whom he shares F. Square. He didn’t want her to do the foundation course, and now that she wants to go on to a proper art-school course, she depends on him paying for it, because his income is too big for her to apply for a grant.

Hm. How old is she? Forgot to ask. But it sounds to me like a convenient difficulty. But I must meet her first. Lovely evening.

Nevertheless he talked about her.

Saturday March 14 1992

Oh, yes, so we left it yesterday that I would go to dinner, too, but R. wasn’t free, presumably Zoeing, so got it changed to Sunday. Not so good for me, as I don’t like travelling the morning after a night out. Or anytime really!

Poor politicians, they are commercial travellers now, with no capacity for speaking, and get forced to speak. They command a few painfully learned inflections, which have little or no relation to the sense of what they are saying. Mr. Major has two downward inflections which, I suppose, he thinks add weight to what he’s saying. Really it sounds as if he’s just learnt them. Which he has, and the debasing of the literary currency, if that’s still possible. Talking of this election as the Battle of Britain. Overblown then, but now…

Sunday March 15 1992

Forgot to record that R. said about tonight ‘I haven’t seen you with K. since…’ Most interesting, I would never have thought of that, but he is obviously fascinated by our relationship. Which partly accounts for ours (R’s and mine), I suppose, and all come back to his relationship, or lack of one, with his father.

Oh, rang John N. to chat. He asked me to dinner next Saturday. Simon won’t be there, but that’ll be nice for once. Curious insensitivities people have. Told me he was 45 next week and was giving up ironing shirts as a treat, (I’d interrupted him doing that) and I didn’t remind that I told him recently I’d had to take up ironing my shirts at 65.

Heavenly, wonderful, hilarious evening. Got there to find Robin there to my great surprise. Hugged K. at the oven and Sharron, and, in hugging Robin, my umbrella point brought K’s beer-glass crashing to the ground. I was immediately in disgrace. K. said ‘Go into the front room and shut the door and try to behave nicely and I’ll bring you a gin and tonic.’ Glass everywhere and of course really they were worried about the kitten, which runs heedlessly everywhere. Stayed there while the joke went on, with Nigel rather catatonically watching TV inside his 9-5 life. K, thundering up and downstairs, came in to say, ‘I’m trying to find another glass for you.’ The cat flitted irresponsibly about, scratching at the equipment. He brought me a gin and I went back in, no longer a pariah. R. was in permanent giggles. He-he-he. We settled down to chat. ‘You sit there and don’t move.’ I told them of further details of my chat with S. and MFL etc. Interesting.

R. said something about the delicious fried potatoes I’d done for him. K. turned from the stove like a demon. ‘You did fried potatoes for him? Fried potatoes?’ So that was another joke.

Then he started to tell about going to Chichester on Tuesday – imagine going on two expeditions on successive days! – I once could – to see the sound man, and inspect ‘some’ farmhouses, where he could stay without disturbing anyone with the studio. In the middle of all this, he was dishing up the many vegetables, the carrots, the sprouts, the roast potatoes, and the chicken, which K. always asks Sharron to carve, so that she can reduce it to damp shreds – odd – apart from anything else, he asks her to carve too soon – anyway we ate most happily and then after, over the coffee-getting, he started to tell what Chichester had offered. A girl with a voice like a typewriter rang to ask where he’d like to live, and he said he was bringing his studio down and he would want somewhere to make a lot of noise and disturb no-one. ‘Eeoh’ she said. And, when a bit drunk, K. is a good mimic, not otherwise.

Then he went on to tell us what they’d suggested before he demanded the farmhouse. A dressing-room after hours in the Minerva. But K. in his ignorant, unlettered Liverpool-yob mood, elected to call it the Minnervoire. Even I don’t know whether he pronounced it wrong at first unconsciously. His subtlety is bottomless, though he still conceals that knowledge from himself.

Anyway, it set me off, and Robin and Sharron. We were all just drunk enough to lean on the walls in endless, helpless screaming laughter. Minnervoy.

It’s also, as usual, cutting things down to size. Like Chichester and Patrick Garland. And I left early enough to feel well tomorrow.

Monday March 16 1992

Tiring but fascinating touching day. Any day, any time with him is very precious, and this doubly so as it was yet a further demonstration of trust and intimacy. He was not only on time at Paddington, he’d already bought his ticket. Autres ages, autre moeurs. He got himself an egg and bacon burger and me a doughnut and there we were on a train again for the first time since when? We sat down, and he said ‘Now we’re alone, what about those fried potatoes?’ Easy journey, an hour and a quarter; the station at Chippenham built of Cotswold stone, handsome, and so could the town be, but alas there is continual heavy through traffic. This has delivered the town to the Philistines. Edna was quite right to say I’ve only driven through it quickly. We walked in mild weather down the hill to the main street, passing Harvey’s Restaurant, with three menus on the window. We found nowhere else at all, except a pub with a microwave and a special menu for Mother’s Day and two unpromising hotels. We walked back to Harvey’s. The menus were notices of closure. We walked back again, a café bar by the river. ‘Looks a bit like the Exchange’. Inside we faced stony skin head expressions, and left. We ended up at the Bear – the Angel restaurant charged £13 or £14 for a main course, off a printed menu, ugh. The Bear was a typical bar, shabby, the stools with stained upholstery. We had plaice and chips and steak and kidney pie, £3 or £4, and actually cooked. Eatable. He paid for everything.

While we’d been walking round, he’d found a Georgian house with John B. Davis on its plate. It looked a bit shut to me, and when he suggested we left out bags and coats there – we were both a bit hot, as it was so mild – we could get no answer. It turned out he’d left there three years before! K had not looked at the address!

The actual office was a shop further up the road, but very trim and fresh-looking. We got there at 2.30 instead of 3. And altogether I felt I’d been right to go with K yet again. I paid with Tony Cruse, in every way, for pretension and front and inaccuracy. So there he was, John Davis, at the top of the neat stairs, in a striped shirt and tie, and pin-stripe trousers. Balding, moustached, mild. And as time wore on, intelligent, humourous, listening intently.

I sat, after he’d gone over my squalid little concerns, leaving me feeling comforted, watching K while he went thro’ his own accounts in the minutest detail questioning everything, and then D. went into it and into it, and back over it, and reopened the file again after I thought it was all over, with deeply undiminished patience.

And, for instance, he considered B’mouth with extraordinary concentration.

As we were leaving we talked of the Birds, because, of course, they recommended J.D. to K. It turns out that Sue lives with Donald Crist and her baby two minutes from the station. K. wanted to see them, and although I was very tired, I couldn’t deny him. He ‘had meant to write about the baby’, which is already six months. So we got to the other side of the station, and found a row of terraced houses in Malmesbury Rd. opposite a handsome Victorian church and pretty churchyard, but with ceaseless traffic between. Houses in Cotswold stone, a size smaller than M’churia Rd. As we stood at the front door, I said I felt like Michael Aspel on This is your Life or Cilla Black. Sue wasn’t in, and so I met Donald Crist, her husband, a ‘very good’ horn- player. Interested at youth’s reaction to an unexpected call. He frowned and grimaced and pointed a sharp finger at K. Dark, tall, good-looking, wearing a small vest and track-suit trousers, I thought he was quite good opposition as Sue’s husband and K’s replacement. We went through a rather cluttered hall to the ‘middle/breakfast’ room, muddily decorated, with fatty/cuttery plates on the plastic table-cloth. He put on a few clothes – I sat down, having walked rather a long way, and looked nervously at a large old red setter under a shelf on an old blanket. He went into the kitchen to make some coffee and tea. I noticed that he made rather unattractive little ‘comic’ scowls in response to most statements. He took a long time to make real coffee, loaded the washing-up machine and had to be reminded by K. to serve the tea. Then the child woke up upstairs, he brought her down and let the dog out into the yard, where it started to whine and scratch at the door. K. was still trying to reminisce; the child was quite quiet until he suddenly put her above his head and turned her upside down. She started to cry, he let the dog back in, who of course started to bounce around, and I was touched that K. said straight-away about me being frightened of dogs. Donald seemed a little removed from us! Sue was expected back at five, because she is still feeding the baby herself. She arrived at five-thirty, and her appearance gave us both a shock, espec. K. of course. The golden hair has quite vanished – rather gaunt, with little make-up, her hair faded and pulled back quite flatly, she looks older than the thirty she must be. But her warmth and good nature, and the rather gouche intrusive but really inoffensive manners, haven’t changed. I’d forgotten how much I liked her. The father came out of prison two days before the baby was born. He still has the two Bosendorfers and the studio, and he’s going for that. I presume the bank is not having him back. We had a somewhat uneasy talk in their sitting-room. The whole house shows an uneasy taste and a muddy sense of colour. They walked us to the station only a few minutes away. Their kindness is obvious, but rather unfocused. Oh, that young ardent fifteen-year old sister, who was so in love with Roy, has one child and another on the way. I had to hold the baby on the station. It nearly broke my arm.

The moment the train moved, he went and got two g&ts. We had two more each before we got to Paddington. I was v. tired, but it had been well worth it.

Tuesday March 17 1992

Tired all day. Stayed in bed till twelve, and went to see ‘Hear My Song’ in p.m. Much praised and bruited, but it did not catch me at all. I was very bored.

Oh, K was going to Chichester to spy round. That’ll be interesting.

Rang Mary to tell about Chippenham. She told me of a comic correction on some radio prog. ‘The title was Gorging Dream, not Gorging Lunch.’

Call from Sandra to say she’d bought the tape of Fledern with that divine little Ashton in the middle of it. And also she had a ticket for the dress of the triple bill with the new Macmillan Judas Tree in it. Vinana ZZ Duranta is the girl. And S. Cassidy probably in the others. Good.

Forgot to record that last Wednesday I woke very early, and going to get another book, heard a blackbird singing very lustily at 4.5 a.m. Spring is well underway, camellia about to burst, full clump of primroses, trees budding, though not the beech at the front really yet. The buds are slightly more prominent but not open yet. Ferns unfurling in the greenhouse.

Wednesday March 18 1992

Up at 8.0, and to the Garden by 9.20. Bought a sausage-roll, hot, delicious in theory but not in practice, because it was garlicky and oniony, which an English sausage-roll should not perceptibly be. Got to the stage-door at 9.45 to find the curtain went up at 10.25, another cock up by Sandra! However this time she did come over at ten to with a couple of white tutus over her arm – she popped down with them to the dressing-rooms. I only saw one dancer while I was waiting, and by odd coincidence it was Stuart Cassidy. He is certainly a golden boy at the moment, and looks as if everyone is in love with him.

I went up to the room in wardrobe Sandra shares with what’s her name? I ought to remember, she’s very nice. White dresses with silver trimming everywhere, for what turned out to be the last ballet.

The ticket was in the amphitheatre rather at the side, but because the pros. opening at the Garden is so high, the actual view is not bad. It’s just the extra distance. I could see most of the back wall for example.

It was an interesting morning. The first and last were both Balanchine. It’s no use, I cannot warm to Balanchine. Yes, I see the inventiveness, the cleverness, the ingenuity, even the style, but I also see an exhausted civilisation building on a non- existent one, and a real style cannot be created on that shifting foundation. I cannot imagine being excited or moved by Balanchine. Both were ‘classical’ ballets, men and women in conventional ballet dress, tutus and waist-tunics. The first had Darcey Bussell and Sylvie Guillam as principals, neither of whom I had seen before live. Both have very secure highly gymnastic techniques. I hope the very exaggerated extensions were in the choreography. And they have the hardihood of youth. Sylvie Guillem on this evidence has for me no personality at all, just a hard brittle physical expertise. Darcey B. is an accident proved, a nice little shop-girl with an unusual physical gift. She was being lifted across the stage to form part of one of those ‘exciting’ diagonal designs, made of some kneeling couples. Losing direction slightly, her cavalier lowered her gently, reverentially, with proper pride in the muscles to do it according to those two adjectives, on to someone’s head. Darcey B. went right off. Standing on her flat ostrich feet, with her hand over her mouth she shrieked. And had to run across the stage to catch up her more sober partner. Otherwise Zoltan Solymosi has some life and shape. The last ballet was Symphony in C. By the fact that it was the last ballet, that the symphony is a light affair, and by the dancers involved, I think it was meant to be a ballet of easy delight. Alas for me an arid shimmering vacuum.

The Macmillan was, not unexpectedly quite another thing. I don’t know that it was specially good as yet. It seemed to me to be a cosy homosexual fantasy remembered from his youthful memories of Brando/Tennessee W etc films of his youth. Mukhamedov swaggering in a chopped-off T-shirt and jeans, Viviana Durante as a limp doll compliant with anything. The bystanders, all young men, taking their shirts off halfway thro’. Why? Decorative, of course, being dancers. But still...

Nevertheless, it had a certain real power even from its uncertain roots, in a way that the shining emptiness of Balanchine couldn’t touch. Mukhamedov has, apart from an impermeable technique, a passion and simplicity that makes this ballet.

Mark Silver is a silly old maid.

In the afternoon I read the play Edward has adapted from the Czech-slovakian by his mother, the Neapolitan Disease by Karel Steigerwald. Hm. It is a flexible limpid affair, which might as well attract a director and actors, because it could be done in quite a few ways. But a great deal of it consists of people talking about what happened years ago somewhere else, or what might happen sometime else. Little of the action is dragged on to the stage. Later on I took the script in, and we chatted fruitfully about it. Then I said would he do me his bits for his RADA audition. He did them without any silliness either way. Constantin and Antipholus of Ephesus. Granted his intelligence and his literary intelligence, he was pretty blunt-ended. The Constantine was rather trivial and petulant, and the Antiph. was quite lacking in comedy, or even in shaping the lines. Did what I could, but as the audition is tomorrow was careful. I fear he is not an actor. But I don’t worry about that – I think he’s quite a strong character.

Put Tim and Mairead off because of the oven.

Thursday March 19 1992

Still mild. Duke and Duchess of York split up. Poor creature, she has no idea of husbandry of effect. You cannot be dignified and spontaneous unless you have an innate structure of manners and an exceptional social gift, as, for inst. the Queen Mother has. She was luckier in her generation. Poor Sarah has American manners. Formal manners are necessary for those moments when one’s spontaneous emotions don’t flow so freely. Oh dear, it’s so like modern actors!

All most unedifying and gives the Royal Family less room to move. We owe a lot to having a proper Royal Family.

Met Edward in street and he said he’d done well, and had interview of about fifteen minutes. I fear people with our accent are not persona grata at drama schools nowadays.

A thirteenth-century mosaic floor has been revealed at Westminster Abbey – it’s usually covered up. There are some motifs predicting the end of the world in 1963. Well, I wouldn’t swear they were wrong…. Philip Larkin…

Found a note I’d made I can’t remember from where. Perhaps I’ve noted it before. But I like it.

How do you Titillate an ocelot? You Oscillate its tit a lot.

Friday March 20 1992

K spending day in Norwich for ‘Survival’. I wonder what it’s like now.

Philip D. to lunch. Fat again. Had seen S. at Cottesloe last night for that ‘Angels’ play. ‘S was very off-hand’. Well, yes, S. can’t stand him. They’re selling the Altrincham house, good news, but only for another two streets away, bad news. He actually said that it might not be good to have only a M’chester address. But of course Lesley is a monomanic about M’chester. And he loves her.

But oh dear he is one-dimensional. Gave him a child’s pusher for Hugh that Lalla told me I used as a child. But of course kept the real scratched beautiful one. He gave me a grave hug, considering his accusation years ago!

To film after he went at 2.30, J’Embrasse Pas. A youngster leaves his (very) provincial home and goes to Paris to become an actor! Starts by washing-up and ends up as a rent boy. Affair with middle-aged landlady, introduced to gay couple etc. etc. Peripheral interest, the acting class where To be or not to be was the piece being worked on. In French, of course. Odd. Also Philippe Noiret in it as the one who tried to be kind to him. That’s interesting, because it shows the ongoing richness of the French cinema that an actor of his stature should be in a comparatively minor and unsatisfactory film. I’m glad that it doesn’t have a retributive ending. I think the young man is going back to see his mother, but stops off to go to the sea and have a dip – he’s never seen the sea. It’s a very long shot, in case you should be worried. If it was a girl, of course, it would be a ‘close-up’. Incidentally, no doubt many prostitutes dislike selling themselves, but I find it difficult to believe they dislike the variety of sex they sell themselves for. Especially men. If it really repelled these boys, they would not become erect, let alone come.

Saturday March 21 199

To dear John N. for dinner. Everything as it has always been, lavish hospitality. (But I have to say, why I never quite enjoy the food, because he sprinkles dried herbs with too lavish a hand, tasting of dusty sourness, and he’s done that for years, and I’ve never had it anywhere else!) but I talk to him with more freedom than to almost anyone else. Simon R. is in the Philippines, advising the Education Dept. on their schools? something like that. How odd, and they still haven’t got a video recorder! He wanted to put me in a taxi ‘because it’s going to be very bad weather tonight.’ Well, the weather forecast was poor, but it turned out to be no more than rain for the two mins to the tube!

I was unhappy that when I asked K. if I should get him to come to our next lunch, he reacted unfavourably. I think he’s forgotten how much he liked him. I shouldn’t have said what I did about laundry, I think. Edward still away.

Sunday March 22 1992

Turned on TV after lunch into the middle of some pre-Easter prog. and got Michael Grade’s voice-over saying ‘I couldn’t imagine life without my faith’ while playing Send in the Clowns on his boudoir grand.

Monday March 23 1992

K. rang suddenly from Music House to say ‘You know masks of Comedy and Tragedy on a programme – is there a word for that, I need a title for a track.’ Imagine him having noticed that. I can’t keep track. No, there isn’t a word. I thought of cothurni etc. ! so I rang back and got an idiot girl. ‘He’s just gone out for a moment’ and suggested ‘masquerade.’

Went to quite idiotic film in a shower, and came out long before the end. Looked round bookshops, and found nothing.

Back home on machine message from Ben U. that Paul’s father had died. When Edward came back, he told me Sandra had rung with the same sad news. Rang Ben but got his machine. Later Sandra rang and said he got the message at 9.0 this morning. The father was only, I think, in his 50s and still earning as a barman at a golf-club, and I fear there may be money problems. Odd. I spoke to P’s mother only last week for the first time for a few years. Poor boy, on top of a year out of work, and unable to help her. I’m glad I wrote to Philip D. about him, even if it comes to nothing. May have a strong effect on him one way and another.

Toothache last three days. Rang Roy’s dentist, - he’s gone away on his honeymoon.

Had a very good wank this morning. Poor Paul. Have written.

Tuesday March 24 1992

Suddenly remembered – why? that it was Donald’s b’day. I never think of him. I sometimes think about Ann.

Nasty and cold again.

Purposely left R. after dining three times in six. Rang him last Tuesday.

Rang up full of warmth, has been working again at K.H. all over w/e. Embraced idea of settling here for three days or more. I think a few days might be a terrific leap forward with the play.

Wednesday March 25 1992

Day of untrammeled well-being. Why? To terrible film in p.m., left after 25 mins. But still happy.

Rang Paul this evening, and found him in the expected state, poor boy. His mother is being ‘very strong’. A pity. I bet those macho brothers are a mess.

Through his tears he said When I come back, I think I’ll come and see you first.

On medical prog. a man aged forty something, said he’d developed ME at sixteen, and he didn’t sound like a hypochondriac hysterical fool. He said he didn’t know it was ME till lately. Six months before he developed what he ‘now knows to be ME symptoms’, he had fifteen mercury-based dental fillings.

Rang Mary L. and was received with the usual reserve at any suggestion of a solution of a disease. Not that it is.

Thursday March 26 1992

Paul’s twenty-sixth birthday. Poor boy. Also Janet’s forty-fifth. Odd.

Cold.

Friday March 27 1992

Letter from bank manager saying over the £12,000. Hm. Edward came to say he’s been asked to Malmesbury suddenly for the weekend. I was glad because R. is coming round tonight.

To 1.45 show – first show – of My Private Idaho. Both actors exceptional. And film with quality, very un-American. Lot wrong with it, but a lot right with it.

Heavenly evening with R. He had to go back to go on building the K’s Head set, - pity as the spare bed was free. He suggested the Easter weekend entire for work. That would be wonderful.

Oh, K. called round this p.m. while I was out, and told Edward the oven needed cleaning. And I rang Sharron earlier about seeing S. was directing Pauline C. in Shades in June, and she told about her father giving her the car, and finding the insurance might be £438. And R’s with that wild car is only £320. So he’s going to ring her.

I just hate my life these days. With no money and no work and no leeway to do anything.

What would I do without K and Sharron and S and Paul and Mary L.

And K and K and K and K and K and K and K.

Saturday March 28 1992

That ghastly north wind has dropped.

In p.m. to the new Almovodar film. Disappointing, but still more watchable than most people’s. Had to answer a little questionnaire handed me with my ticket. I love answering this sort of questionnaire, asking me where I’ve come from – why? – and when it says how often do you come to this cinema, and then find the intervals indicated are every two weeks when the Gate films ‘always run’ longer than that, you wonder whether it is a standard issue questionnaire. In the general comment bit, I put ‘One of my half-dozen favourite cinemas.’

So Punch really is finishing. I suppose mine was the last generation to take it for granted reading. There was nothing else. And the few bound volumes I have from the twenties and thirties mirror a world that nobody now believes in or is interested in. But, within its very narrow limits, what it looks at it records, sometimes by default, sometimes obliquely, very exactly. I know because it was my childhood.

Heard in my bath a few memories all of course, from years after I stopped reading it except for a bored flash at the dentist’s and barber’s. Two jokes, both rather sixties and quite funny in that narrow decade’s manner.

Bookshop. Assistant redeploying a large pile of ‘Lady C’s Lover’, drops them on his foot. Caption: Fuck.

Bonneted lady facing an early 19th Century publisher, ‘The plot’s very good, Miss Austen, but all that f-ing and blinding will have to go.

Sunday March 29 1992

Edward is leaving, to base himself in Scotland. How very depressing. Just as I have got used to him. It seems that nothing can go right or easy for me.

Monday March 30 1992

Victoria Davar rang, dear thing, to say she’d got comps for her play that she’s been touring with, - it’s at Richmond this week. Well, I went to see the redecorated theatre.

Rang R. because she wants to meet him. Found he’d been laid low with ‘flu and was feeling awful. But was going to have to get up to work on the set today. All this was yesterday. Asked Edward to go with me, heaping coals of fire. I had no idea what the play was called before we got there. Then I remembered, in a flash of beige, that it had come from the Nuffield, and had Martin Jarvis! and Angela Pleasance!! in the cast. Going out with Edward, which we haven’t done before, I noticed a faintly unpleasant touch of yuppie arrogance about him. And he is certainly naïf, sometimes tactless, and sometimes surprisingly slow. What quick wit he has, is patchy.

So to the theatre which has been redone to the highest standards. Matcham, the plasterwork of an unusual fullness and complexity. Before, apart from a very pervasive general shabbiness, it had of course had a general all-over wash to disguise, as far as possible, the despised Victorian decorations. For instance, the very grimy dome in the middle of the ceiling was divided into four, as I thought them, of the usual browned panel paintings. They turn out to be, under layers of wash and bas reliefs of considerable delicacy, and scenes from Shakespeare. On the enscrollent in the middle of the pros arch was a quotation from Pope’s prologue to Addison’s Cato, ‘To wake the soul by tender strokes of art.’

So, reluctantly, to the play and the acting. A 1927 play by Jean Sarment, of whom I’d never previously heard. Written for Louis Joubet. When the first half curtain came down, I said to Edward ‘How very French’. And a poor creature in the row in front turned round pityingly getting me a bit wrong. Talk and witty talk about love and people to be skimmed at us, to be raised like a soufflé, to be blown at us like foam. Ah well.

The set and production are all right. But. The curtain went up on Angela Pleasance bent double on a river bank in a grotesque ‘spinster’ outfit, her face an inch from a book, her right hand poised above her ear, waving a card fan-wise in a rhythm that would give no cooling relief, the whole exhaling that intense preoccupation and self- consciousness that marks the non-actor. Nothing got much better.

Martin Jarvis can do almost anything technically. He is a most accomplished mimic. He can, as they say, play anything. Alas, he can only give an imitation of an actor giving a performance from the heart. He listens to his voice and his perf. consisted of reminiscences of how people used to play this sort of play, all glissandos and unnaturally natural timing, including a few double-takes!, interspersed with several acute attacks of Ian McKellen.

Sarah Badel unfortunately took his tone for a time after she came on, but later asserted herself. And with her now matronly figure and crisp clear style, a whole range of matron parts are open to her.

Odd mixture of audience. Over-smart ‘Green’ people and the usual scruffs more than usually T-shirt by blazer. A comic pair were Elaine Paige and Claire Rayner. E.P. was in black satin, with a lot of diamante embroidery on the sleeves, long diamond earrings, and very high-heeled black patent courts. She is so short the earrings were almost brushing the floor. C.R. was in a large tent of elephant grey. On the way to the party after the show, Elaine P. was walking ahead of us, with Claire R. behind her. As Claire R is at a round computation, about eight times the size in every direction of E.P., there was only the odd flash of diamante round the edges of the billowing.

The ‘party’ was in the Matcham room. A converted passage. Fit for business-men. Met Pippa Meyer and her hideous business-man father. Victoria arrived, dear brimming girl, and Gregor, who’s going up to Manchester to play a couple of parts in The Recruiting Officer at the Exchange for Braham Murray. Victoria is a rare soul. She called me her mentor, as she introduced me to a tall, faded smoothly, blond, red- faced, pin-striped suit. Difficult to place. Gave me a lift to the door in a rather smart car, to my untutored eye. On the way, he asked about work. I’d thought he was an agent, perhaps. Turns out he’s general understudy, and has spent last twenty years? in Brazil married to a Brazilian actress and acting in Portuguese. Told him of Philip D’s Spanish series. Shows what a poor agent he’s got that he’d never heard of it. Doesn’t he read the papers – even I’ve heard of it.

Finished the Spag. Bog. Delicious. By the way, left the ‘party’ – where I saw Claire R. really stuffing her face – after twenty mins or so. Edward stayed, and had to telephone from Charing X Hospital, because he’d forgotten his key. Was back at the door in a 20-year old flash. I expect he ran from simple energy.

Tuesday March 31 1992 Wednesday April 1 1992

I would have written a very bitter despairing entry last night, and I wasn’t at all drunk. Because the evening was a more or less complete failure as far as I was concerned. I was expecting a quiet talk afterwards over a meal. Not that S. had said that, and perhaps he can’t afford it any more. But I certainly didn’t know till Janet told me in the morning, that ‘there was a sort of party for the new take-over cast.’ S. was there to welcome us in the stalls, but he didn’t say that there was a little champagne reception in the interval. I said it to K when we got up, ‘If S. was a real host, there’d be a bottle of champagne in a private room.’ K laughed, but there was. At least in a roped off area of the foyer. But we might have ordered our drinks already – S. should have thought of that.

And there was Howard Panter. I had curious coupe d’oeil as I approached him. I thought he seemed nearer to me than the distance between us rendered possible. Then I saw why. He is more than twice the size he was at the Offstage. Chris greeted me so warmly, - well, I think he’s very nice. Bruno kissed me, breezed how wonderful it was to… and in the next sentence was off…I talked for the ten mins or so we were there to Isobel? who works at Turnstile. Two sentences with S. I said ‘It isn’t really catching me, tho’ you’ve done it very well.’ ‘No, I knew it wouldn’t’.

So what was it like? Well, Bizet has always been second if not third rate. The best you can say is that he achieved the easy appeal of the musical some fifty years before. So no wonder, carefully re-lyriced and brought up to the most advanced needs of middleaged American tourists, it seems like a nice ‘50s musical. I don’t think there’s much more I can say. Only number like ‘Beat out that Rhythm on the Drum’ going on and on and going up and up, puts me right off, like a hot-gospeller, or anyone who appeals to hysteria.

So at the end there we were in the foyer, and S. already upstairs at a party and him the only person I knew, (and I can’t hear at a party at the moment) and I suddenly saw my fantasy of going home alone on the tube was the reality. K. was my passport – I knew he would make it all right. I must not expect anyone else to have our old standards of hospitality – I suffer much from foolishly still expecting others to map out the pattern of hospitality. I must remember they have no intention of a pattern, just a vague suggestion.

This morning wrote S. a longish, for nowadays, letter, in a mild vein.

I felt very low last night. For every possible reason. Even Vernon Dobtcheff is out of work.

Thursday April 2 1992

Just before I went out last night, I heard a woman say on a medical prog., asked whether her allergy might be due to her cat, ‘Oh, no, we’ve had cats for donkey’s years.’

Also forgot to record, last Friday the ‘phone rang and it was for Edward. I called him, he took it, from a woman – American – who had mistaken me for him – and obviously went on doing so, because he said. ‘No, that was Angus’…. ‘Well, it couldn’t have been me’…. ‘Because I wouldn’t have handed the ‘phone to someone else.’

Funny. I thought of Muriel and Miss Sneezeby today. Why?

Friday April 3 1992

Yes, Muriel Nelder. I expect it was talking to Julian about the S.D. film. I have never gone back and read my diary before ’77, but it was much more spasmodic then, and I may never have mentioned her. Well, she was SD’s most enthusiastic and slightly mad fan. She came two, sometimes three times every week, booking A5 and 6 each time for her next visit. She was tall for her period, she must have been in her sixties. Her hair still held a faint Edwardian echo. She looked more than her full age, being very comprehensively wrinkled. Deep wrinkles are unpromising territory for thick blue eye shadow and rather ill-placed rouge, but she persevered. Pre-1914 also were her hands, long, narrow, with no pressure in her handshake whatever from hands that had never lifted anything heavier than a tea-cup, or turned anything more difficult than a door-knob. (And probably for her first forty years not even a door-knob). Her father was one of the three founders of the Indian Pacific Railway, so I suppose she was genuinely well-off. Certainly for the last twenty years of her life she lived at the De Vere Hotel. ‘I never thought I’d be living in a hotel with a companion.’ Miss Sneezeby was one of many, and as memorable as her name. Squarely built, with thin flat greyish-yellow hair and cold glasses, she presented a savagely bad-tempered expression to the world. Any stranger seeing them together would certainly have taken Muriel for the companion and Miss. S. for the mistress.

But Muriel was a gentle kind creature, with a kind of mild wit. I visited her most weeks to the end of her life, and D. went to the nursing-home when she was dying. This must have been the middle seventies. Julian never went, of course.

Saturday April 4 1992

Tim and Mairead stayed till 12.15 and had a mini-cab to her new flat in North St. Clapham. Used that firm opp. H’smith tube. Here in a flash, and a very smart car.

I’m sorry K. has rather taken against Tim. I know it’s because he is a stiff upper lip public school boy to the outer eye, and at first very shy and laconic. I don’t think I shall try and bring them together, no point, they have so little in common. I’ll just go on as we are, and see. Poor Mairead had had a major disappointment, not getting that Irish part for which she is exactly right. But of course the last thing the RSC wants is a round peg in a round hole. I did not encourage her to dwell on it. She’s had her cry at home, and she must go on. But it was a lovely evening for me – I hope for them. The soup, Eggs Florentines, Orange Boodles Fool. Delicious. Would K. like that?

1992. 31. 66. 2002. 41. 76.? 2012. 51. 86.? 2022. 61. 96.? ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 111

April 4 1992- June 1 1992

Saturday April 4 1992 (Cont.)

Oh, instead of a letter from the bank, I had a very polite call from the nice girl- assistant, saying couldn’t I put a bit of money in as it was over …. But you needn’t come to talk to him with Mr. Malpass until at least the end of April. So I’ve put it in to the back of my mind just for tonight.

But, of course I haven’t recorded Edward A. going back to Scotland. He left yesterday, but left his room fully furnished, a row of books and shoes, files, and angle-poised lamp. And agreed to send the rent cash in a reg. envelope. Yesterday his elder bro. rang, very censorious. ‘We thought he was arriving today,’ as if I had personally affronted him. He is another younger brother. How odd, but how divine, a lodger who pays but isn’t here. Cold.

Sunday April 5 1992

Perceptibly warmer today. Had the garden door open while I was cooking. The rosemary is in flower, with the subtlest touch of blue in the grey. The lilies are sprouting well, the sparrows have pecked off the primroses and the cowslips are not out yet.

Edna not so coherent as usual and asked me what I was giving my guest (Robin) two minutes after I described the menu in detail. And she reacted with delight to Orange Boodles fool the second time, because she remembered it from two minutes before, thinking she remembered it from Manchuria Road.

So Robin’s dinner was the celeriac and green pea soup, steak cass. and OB fool, which rather ravished him, I think.

But before he arrived, I rang John N. to hear about the Duchess Of York. I certainly felt much more sympathetic with the poor creature than I did before, but then John has that effect.

Well, George Weidenfeld, the publisher, is on the board, and some time ago said he had ‘The Princes Of Wales and The Duchess Of York in my pocket, because they want to learn about opera.’ Since that York de-bácle, he also seemed to imply that he could teach her to be more royal. From all I’ve heard of him, I wouldn’t say he’d be the first person I’d choose as a social arbiter.

The first Opera was Barber. As the date was getting near John rang to check, thinking it wouldn’t happen because of the uproar. G.W’s security was v. stroppy, but it was on, and G.W. rang to say to J. ‘What are you doing about supper?’ And he asked him to join the other five at the Garrick.

He was presented and took them to the private room at the Coliseum. ‘Hello, John.’ Um. He denied that she was a typical Sloane, ‘She asked intelligent questions.’ He gathered that the palace had been ‘Horrible to her, this not from her, except at once unspoken point. She looked very tired.’ Supper was at the Garrick where they were joined by her financial adviser. Odd, John thought. “He was balding, and eyes too close together, but I’d have gone anywhere with him.’ I suppose he couldn’t be seen with her – the Garrick is private, I suppose.

After the first course, she half got up and said ‘I must see if my boys have been fed.’ (Her three security men.) G.W. said the Garrick had seen to it.

At one point, the talk turned to the election. Somebody said that it was a hung parliament, the country would be governed by Robert Fellowes and Charles Anson. She burst out, ‘Robert Fellowes No!’ John realized there was no sound in the room but knives and forks. And she put her fingers to her lips. Later John Mortimer came to speak to G.W. and when he saw her, just giggled and couldn’t seem to think of anything to say or how to get himself away. How gauche people are.

I said ‘Do you think she’s having a fling with the financial adviser?’ ‘At first I thought very likely not, but little flash made me change my mind. She’d ordered some cigarettes (‘Silk Cuts will do fine’). As she got up to go, she found the cigs wouldn’t fit her tiny jeweled evening bag. She didn’t say anything, she just threw them at him, and he caught them without a word. And I knew.’

And so strange he talked about D. to her, because she is very interested in her work as patron of the Motor Neurone Society. It’s fifteen years on Tuesday. How odd.

Monday April 6 1991

Another lovely evening with R. even tho’ my tooth was playing up again. I don’t quite know why it so pleasant to spend an evening with him. We didn’t work, but a good meal and drink and an excellent film The World According To Garp, which he suggested we watch, and he has fitted himself very neatly into my heart and my life.

Watched K. Clark doing a prog. about Rembrandt. Certainly he explains it better, more satisfyingly for me, than anyone else. But I remain only superficially moved by painting. It has little weight for me. I glance at its beauty and glance away again. The strange thing is that my taste in painting is quite good. Unlike music where I really prefer cheap music.

The understudy newspaper seller at the tube-station told me he’s read ‘A book’ in which there was a prophecy that Prince Charles would be assassinated this year.

Tuesday April 7 1992

She’s been dead for fifteen years. I often think of her and talk about her. All my friends know her well.

Paul R. came round for his first visit after his father’s death. Still with longish hair which suits him. He had a couple of little weeps, and I hope I helped a bit. Oddly I took away the feeling that he may draw away from me now. Now why did I feel that.

I realised that I have never met my M.P. wherever I’ve lived. Never have I been canvassed. One labour man came round with some leaflets, but for all he said, might just as well have put them through the door. No loudspeakers.

When I came here eleven years ago almost every house between here and the station had a poster of some sort. Now only two or three.

Wednesday April 8 1992

Watched This Is Your Life, which I very rarely do, because it was Susan Hampshire. She is a person of very minimal artistic gifts, but of course sexually attractive, and like Anna Neagle, of strong character and always to be found in a clean twin set.

When D. attempted to give her a note during rehearsals of ‘Follow That Girl.’ Susan said ‘Oh, I don’t want my voice to go up and down like an actress.’ Years later we saw her in something, and D. said ‘Well, she got her wish.’

How gruesome that programme is. And what fools (fairly) respectable actors so often make of themselves. I don’t think anyone I really respect has ever appeared on it, except simple people, whose goodness can survive anything. And the luck this dim girl has had. Her mother ran a dancing-school that had Anthony Powell among its pupils. (He turned up, with two others – imagine F. Ashton….) She did a film when she was nine. Her father was a director of ICI…

Martin Jarvis turned up – the prog. is just his mark. Gerald Harper wrung my heart, as every spoiled beauty must who sticks to one style, each element of which starts to fall apart. The casually brushed back abundant hair, thinning in the middle, the heroic jawline sagging, and all with the same expression over all, oh the luck of not being a sex symbol. I can quietly fall to pieces with nobody noticing or caring.

Oh, and Susannah York was her mother’s lodger. Everything second rate right down the line.

Wednesday April 8 1992

Edward’s sister Zoe rang to speak to him. How like young people that she hadn’t heard from him. Because I think he quite likes her.

Toothache distracting every now and then. Have got thro’ 96 Nurofen since the beginning of last week. Seeing dentist tomorrow.

K. rang 8.30. All loving and full of work. That’s all I want.

Thursday April 9 1992

Oh, ‘phone call on the machine yesterday for Jeffrey Rann from dear Geraldine Stephenson with no idea that the voice she didn’t recognise was mine. Rang back and had a jolly chat, she doesn’t trust James R-E either! cf. Temptation. She wants Jeffery for some dancing in House of Elliott, one of the ones directed by Jane Howson. A small world.

To dentist because it was hurting. Most interesting. I wandered about a bit one way and another up and down the road that leads to Roy’s Chiswick Village. And there it was, a shop front with ‘Dental Practice’ on the fascia, 50, for the first time I go to a dentist, or indeed any professional, in a shop.

But, the brass plates were shining, and when I went inside the ‘reception area’ it was not only immaculate, but actually tasteful and smart and relaxed young receptionist and the dental hygienist dread figure. But she was a jolly girl, too. But the receptionist has a little turn of detached observation. She talked of her Australian-in- law’s manners and modes. They’re staying with her and she took them to obviously a sort of copper-kettle tea room in Kew, ‘full of rather select old ladies, who all shrank back as they shouted out all their plans, and my husband said Why are you whispering, but he’s never said that before. And they put their underwear out to dry on the balcony. We live in a quite a select road, and when we left today, I didn’t dare look up.

It is sad that some people – most people – confuse good manners with class. I am proud to be a native of a country that on the whole dislikes raised voices in public places, not to mention a pretty balcony with pants and knickers where none should be, obscuring the shape of it. Considering for other peoples’ susceptibilities that’s nothing to do with class.

Dentist rather smooth youngish south African just back from his honeymoon. Has the rather obvious good looks of a Mills and Boon cover, no doubt why that innocent Roy thought he was gay. Very efficient, despite prescribing antibiotics before taking the tooth out tomorrow. I have taken a couple of antibiotics once, during the TV play during which I met S. and never felt so bad in my life, my head bursting, of course, I had a bit of flu, and only took them to get through the dress run the next day. Well, I will take them tonight just this once and see what happens, as it’s nice and quick. And of course, they rely on the fact that you cannot have the pill and not have the pill at the same time. All I can say is that I have had sort of flu here and there, tho’ never stayed in bed for it. I wish I’d just gone on, instead of feeling as if I were in a dream with drugs.

Form from P.O. to say that they’d tried to deliver a reg. env. The rent. Went to Ravenscourt Park and got it, in Royal Bank of Scotland notes, and a card of the Queen receiving a small gown from St. Andrews Univ., and it was signed much love. Well.

Friday April 10 1992

Had my aching tooth out. A relief. He called it a raging abscess, and certainly last night it was. The worst it’s been. But of course I’d taken two of those antibiotics at eight hour intervals, - as far as I could tell, they gave the worst headache I’ve ever had, failed to have any effect in the abscess, exacerbated it, judging by the pain, and useless I’m mistaken, would have kept me awake even without pain. So never again. I was actually reduced to watching the religion.

The religion? The election.

Written with one of my old Conway Stewart pens from before the war. I did all my exams with them, and thought it quite ordinary to have a 14cl gold nib, gold not plated, as everyone else, more or less, had.

So the election is over and the conservatives have won again. It’s no use pretending I mind, Neil Kinnock is so embarrassing. Poor man, tho’ I feel sorry for him now. And Labour were going to put another £5 on my pension! After all, they’re all hopeless and empty people. Think of Geoffrey Howe at Cambridge. Ugh.

I watched a mock election held jointly at a school in Liverpool, and a public school in Sevenoaks. Never mind the vote – I was struck to tears by the generosity of spirit of the young Liverpool people.

Oh, when I was watching the election results being proclaimed, one of the ridiculous moments that pleased me, was of Ian Paisley’s majority. He walked to the microphone to make his acceptance speech, opened his mouth and launched full voice into two verses of Praise My Soul The King Of Heaven. He really comes from a pre 1914 non-conformity made doubly ridiculous by time. Now if someone assassinated him…

As I left the house to go to the dentist, there was a little commotion in the hall as I double-locked the front door, and what with youth and my deaf ear, I simply assumed it was someone rattling up and down stairs. But as I was about to turn the corner, he caught me up, Katrina’s boy-friend, I assume. He’s an attractive boy, and has the directness of his generation. Asked me whether I’d heard his ‘brother’s new car being broken into at 12.30 last night.’ No, I hadn’t, but I recommended him to the security cameras opposite.

The nice receptionist at the dentist’s made me laugh again, and if I can make someone laugh who’s waiting to have an abscessed tooth out you are an agreeable person.

‘My first car was a mini. And I wanted it to get rid of it, and thought I wouldn’t get enough for it to be worth selling it. So I thought I’d let it get stolen. I left the doors unlocked. I Left the doors open. I left the keys in the ignition and the doors open. I left a bottle of wine on the back seat. And still it wasn’t stolen.

She part exchanged it in the end.

Saturday April 11 1992

K rang while R was here. He’s been doing the survival music at home on his own equipment, and that is the recording they’ll use for the film. This is very unusual I think that the quality is that good. And he’s got to write a theme for ITV and the TV film goes on till Tues. And then we can have lunch or dinner, and then there’s Chichester. Oh so lovely because of the contrast with R. I don’t mean a nasty one. I mean that K. is just there and I’m still charting R.

Lovely day with R. He arrived from his friend, Billy’s house, where he’s doing a lot of work, all for nothing, rather dusty and tired. But we worked very well, and really finished Act I, and started to talk seriously about Act II. Only five pages, but vital ones. At least it’s there to be chopped about, R is most responsive and intelligent and humble and cheeky in very good proportion. There is something about his physical presence that is very soothing. And how we laugh.

Sunday April 12 1992

He first said he’d come and eat the steak on Monday, and stay at Billy’s tonight, but he’d got it wrong and arrived at half-past three, and we worked and he stayed the night again. We started Act II, but I found I was too tired to work for more than an hour and a half, with another dinner to cook. Tho’ it was again lovely to feel he was ‘living’ here for a bit.

Monday April 13 1992

It lived up to its reputation a bit. Went to see ‘At play in the field of the Lord’ a very silly film with some pretty silly over the top acting of that sudden-shout-at-exactly- the-moment-you-expect school of American acting which has been in for so long. Poor Aiden Quinn tried but that’s all one can say. Left after an hour, and even that had me fidgeting, it’s three altogether! When I got home, was very depressed to find a message on the machine in an Indian accent, ‘This is the manger of Martin’s newsagents, your newspaper a/c is 4 1/2 months overdue £187.’

Naturally thought a variety of things, such as that S’s accountant had never bothered, how would I pay etc. Rang Janet to ask her to cope and she said she’s sent the accounts every month as per to Brebner Trapp. But it weighed on one all night, despite having passed it on to Janet to deal with – bad mood.

Tuesday April 14 1992

There was another message at five past nine, with a suggestion of solicitors. I had to ring Janet anyway, to tell her I wouldn’t come to the film on Thursday, because Roy has finally got these comps for Heart Br. H, so told her about nine call. All this on machine, she called back at one-something to say she’d spoken to the accounts and the cheques had all been cashed and I was paid up till the end of March. When I got back from the shops, there was a message from a manager of the shop, (A new manager, incidentally) could I ring him, I thought I’d let him stew for a bit, as I had. But I picked up the ‘phone at 6.15 or so, and found him respectful and apologetic, and telling me that nobody from Martins had rung me. ‘Indeed I shouldn’t be ringing you now, it’s not our policy, but I asked yr secretary! for yr number, as I thought it important.’

(Amusing point, he said deprecatingly, that I might find it difficult to believe that there was no Indian in our firm, not even at headquarters.)

So we parted amicably. Leaving me with at least the comfort of not being in debt.

But, who left those two messages? Who knows approximately the time I have had papers from there and the appro. sum owed! And what could he possibly expect to get out of it, since he didn’t say leave £187 in an oak tree on Streatham Common. And he couldn’t get anything from Martins. Worrying.

And where did he get my number? Combined with Martin’s?

Wednesday April 15 1992

To heartbreak House at Haymarket with Roy. An unusual experience – it was very good indeed. Every part was perfectly cast, and all were actually skillful actors, and therefore the whole play rushed ahead at the right pace. The set was beautiful, and so designed that it could be naturalistic, when necessary, and symbolic when necessary. And so the production. Even the clothes were right.

But most of all the play was right. How extraordinary that is still possible for a stupid critic to wonder if Shaw will survive, or all his characters are just Shaw etc.

Paul Scofield has laid aside nearly all those vocal mannerisms that sometimes cloud his wonderful simple work. His perf. is as plain and powerful as his plain block clothes. Vanessa has had the inspired idea playing Hermione as an uncorseted barefooted free-thinking Fabian, hinting at nude sessions in the bracken, a black v. coarsely-woven material so it’s not dead black. A cloud of black hair and a long savage plait. Breadth, generosity, warmth.

Felicity, looking exactly like the illustrations in the Dolly Dialogues (which I see from the programme she’s played on TV) at first gives a bravura display of femininity, making at least two exits with all ovaries blazing. She develops the character most skillfully to hint successfully at their sisterhood, though physically they are so unlike. What a good stage face f. has ! So fine-cut and so clear and those eyes…

Dan M. is dead right as Hector because he is Hector, and with skill and sense enough, (and no doubt help from the director) to just do that.

Imogen Stubbs is still a bit raw and actually shouts instead of covering her shouts. But she has the fire and the looks and the strength, and that is much.

Oliver Ford Davis is unobtrusively perfect. David Calder gives a very detailed skillful powerful perf. as Mangan. The best one I’ve seen, the most range of feeling and sensations. Joe Melia and Shawn Scott are luxury castings.

The best evening I’ve had at the theatre for years, and restores some of my lost faith.

Thursday April 16 1992

No word from K. so he must still be swamped. The beginning of the usual Easter seclusion. I never go out on Bank Holidays if I can help it.

Edward rang and we had a jolly chat. Nothing much seems to be happening. He said he’d sent the money. I hope he has. He seems to be fonder of me than I thought.

To my surprise Jason D rang, also thinking E. was still here. I thought he’d gone up to Scotland to be with Jason. Ah well. How restful it is not to care. If it had been K…

Oh, a girl called Jemima rang one of the nights R was here, and said could she pick up a leather jacket she lent E. ‘Where are you speaking from?’ ‘Mayfair’ with an unmistakable ‘of course’ in the inflection. So round she came, v. young, but it was perfectly possible to see the plumpish Knightsbridge matron she will be a few years hence. We found the jacket behind the sofa as E. had said, but not hung up, crushed in a ball. I would have liked a chat, but the ‘phone rang just as we came back out into the hall, and R. appeared saying it was Hazel ringing from Devon, which drove Jemima out the door. I was married the same year as Nelson Mandela. Odd.

Friday April 17 1992

Warmer. The wind’s gone down. The montana clematis from the house opposite is coming out in the Pyracntha. The armandii is still strong.

K. Rang.

Dinner tomorrow.

Saturday April 18 1992

Showed him the bank manager’s letter. He’s fucking changed again. So we’ll have to explain all over again, without the benefit of continuity. I mean, he won’t feel the triumph of raising the £28,000 as Mr. Brazier did. And I’ll have to go alone. He’s off to Manchester on Wednesday for another dollop of Manchester Olympic bid music. Good for poor Marjorie, who’s just had another knee done. The following Monday he’s off to Chichester. My heart sank at having to go alone but I hope I concealed it. We certainly laughed a lot. I can see me now helplessly holding Sharron’s hand for support. She cooked skate. I’d forgotten how easy it is to eat, though it doesn’t look it. I don’t quite know why it’s so expensive, tho’ I notice everything meaty that’s really easy to eat, is.

No, I haven’t complained to him yet and I hope to survive this ghastly nightmare without doing so.

Sunday April 19 1992

A lovely warm sunny spring day.

Frankie Howard died, after a few weeks ‘successful’ treatment in an expensive Harley St heart clinic, he was sent home ‘convalescent’, and collapsed and died a few days later. Just down the road in Charing X. I hope he didn’t know – I expect he would be scared. He was a sad man. I think. On the way home from a party a few years ago, he asked S. to go to bed with him, and wasn’t at all surprised to be refused.

He made me laugh about as much as anyone. ‘There was this man in hospital who was beginning to feel a bit better, you see, and he said to this nurse, ‘Come on, give us a kiss.’ ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t, oh, no, oh, I couldn’t oh, no, oh, no.’ – Frankie being the nurse refusing, could have lasted forever – ‘I should be lying on this bed with you really.’

David Gilmore chooses his 21st b’day outing, a show at The Prince Of Wales starring F. and the young Cilla Black. His opening spiel erected (a word he would not have left unremarked) an elaborate fantasy that we must be quiet because his impresario Lew Grade, lived upstairs. Later, the then Prime Minister, Harold MacMillan was to be pited – his wife was the trouble. ‘Dottie – she’s the one.’

Later still, there was a beautifully posed and lit reproduction of the Death Of Nelson, this at a period when such ‘serious’ items were still artistically slotted in. ‘Kiss me, Hardy.’ Hardy turned round, F. Howard, of course. ‘Twenty years on the same ship and now he asks me.’

So, to Tim’s surprise b’day party in Clapham. House up North Rd., usual terrace, but very pretty well-stocked garden, and simple and charming rooms. Darling Mairéad said so many went foolishly away for Easter to sit on the motorways. I was delighted – there were only about ten people – ideal. I talked to a nice intelligent girl who is editorial assistant on History Today. And Crispin turned up with his Australian g.f, nicely surprizable. Stayed just under two hours, and enjoyed myself.

Clapham was looking at its prettiest in the first flush spring. But the row of shops leading to the south side, give and take a few different shop fronts, looks as tacky and shabby as it did thirty years ago, despite the smartness of Clapham. And I was actually really surprised to find that none of the tube-stations have been touched since we moved there in ’61.

Back here to expect R. who said he’d pop round from Billy’s at five. He turned up at 7.45 with an Easter egg, stayed half an hour and left his cigs and D’s lighter I gave him behind. I was much touched by that somehow. He’d noticed I kept his C’mas card on the table. Good. His is a strange boy in his in and outness.

Fish feeding voraciously.

Monday April 20 1992 Easter Monday.

Another lonely day.

Felt miserable. Scrubbed and polished front hall as they’re all away. Just in time as they came back tonight. What sheep even quite intelligent people are, going away for public holidays.

Gracious, now Benny Hill has been found dead, two hours ago. He also spent some restorative weeks being ‘cured’ in a very expensive hospital. I have never cared for his work. There is such a strong element of arrested development that I cannot laugh at the result. It seems the arrested development was present in his private life, too. A melancholy, case to me, another indication of the working classes not really knowing when they are enjoying themselves. Oh, those terrible middle-aged womens’ laughter from a miserable life.

Last night I had a long (as it seemed) dream. A concatenation of anxieties and irritations no doubt attached to my financial worries. It was compounded of school, and I was being inducted as M.P., and Julian leapt in – literally – and Lalla turned up, and I had to try to find the dormitory. I’m glad that the fierce frustration I feel has its outlet in sleep. So far.

How poor one’s brain’s sense of time is in a dream – it happens in a century or a second. Like one’s mouth having no sense of size or proportion.

Tuesday April 21 1992

Forgot to say K. gave me a cheque for £150 clawed back from the solicitors over the mortgage. Put it in the Halifax and drew out £50 to buy the new A. Powell reviews and the second Vol. of Stannard’s Waugh. No doubt K. would think it extravagant, but for two reasons it isn’t. First, I must live on something. Second, I must try and save, and books are the one thing I am financially shrewd about, and they will be there to sell. How awful that one must think like this.

Galloped the A Powell in the tube and after Mary L. to lunch tomorrow.

Wednesday April 22 1992

Another lovely day. Had done most of the shopping yesterday, mushroom, and tomato omelette salad and cheese, and then suddenly I remembered I’d offered to do Boodle’s Orange Fool, so I rushed to H’smith and got 5 oranges, 4 lemons, all unwaxed. Got back home at twelve, and did the zest and the juices, and got it in the fridge in time. Right no. of oranges and lemons, but ideally a little too much juice. It should just completely soak the sponge cake and no more. However, the cream stayed on the top and wasn’t affected.

M. arrived at 12.30, wrapped up in overcoat and scarves as usual. Looking rather older, hair a little shorter, cheeks rather dropped, and yet more affirmative. A most successful lunch, I think, she loved the omlette and adored the fool, - I played her a little Ashton Pas De Deux, and she was entranced – ‘It all goes past in an unbroken dream’ or words to that effect. She saw that it was a complete arc. I wish she had seen the point of me earlier. And oh dear, she talked of Quiet Weekend. Again.

Thursday April 23 1992

Roy rang to say he’s written a part for me in his Carlton series. But it’s not till next winter. Still, touching.

To film with Janet for the first time for eight weeks. Combination of films neither of us wanted to see, Janet having the flu and the films filling up because of getting near Oscars. So like my life, in that eight weeks the whole place has been completely redecorated. Though it looks much the same. Film The Hand The Rocks The Cradle. Quite well done rubbish. The heroine got asthma at vital moment to supply reason why the police didn’t come straight round. Rebecca De Mornay crisp, and economical. I liked Julianne Moore as the cynical estate agent. Like to see her again.

Friday April 24 1992

R. is asleep downstairs and although he did not get here till an hour later than he’d said, because of the traffic, he was able to read through what I’d done, and we had a good word or two. But I must insist on a real working patch. Difficult with no money, and poor R. is, I think, more depressed than he thinks. He stretched almost for the first time, betraying that this is a refuge. From what exactly? I was interested that he told me that Dreary David had left the mortgage statement lying on the table, and it showed that it was two payments behind. I was rather troubled by that, because David has a pretty good salary, was it £21,000? And strikes me as careful and niminy-piminy rather than not. I hope it doesn’t mean anything, but a possible scenario by my Judgment of D. is that he’s lost his job and hasn’t said. And this is his way of saying. I told R. he could stay here as long as he likes, and for nothing. And if the worst comes to the worst, he could store stuff at K’s.

We watched the Peter Ustinov tape again and when it finished, he said I could watch it all over again. It is difficult to describe his strange combination of warmth and wit, and intelligence and affection and a – yes - caution and reticence. He will not discuss personal matters except very briefly and on his own terms. Think of K and his pouring-outs years ago.

Saturday April 25 1992

He arrived in my b’room this morning looking a wreck as usual. He has a sort of face that is puffy in the morning – his hair everywhere, but his open country-lad look – how he’d hate that – remains the same.

‘Phoned Edward A. because of a call from Vienna asking him to call back over the weekend. I have to note every call now to identify them on my itemized bill. How squalid modern life is!

Up to Belsize Park to see ‘Broadway Bound’, the third in Neil Simon’s trilogy based on his own life. Despite his trying for a Tchekovian tone and the good acting, especially Anne Bancroft, it remains the clear product of a man who made his reputation with boulevard comedies.

I have never had any interest whatever in Napoléon, and have never been tempted to read anything about him.

Sunday April 26 1992

12.30 a.m.

Forgot to say that Edward had been going to ring me. He’s coming down today – just for the day. He didn’t say what for, and I didn’t gather he was staying the night! Well, it’s his money. No sign of him yet – I left a note and it’s still there. So –

This p.m. to see Paul in his play at the White Bear. I had no idea what it would be like, called Viva L’Espana, it was a musical about a group of loutish lads and slaggy girls off to Ibiza. Full of delightful vulgarity delivered by four boys and four girls. With colossal attack and brio. Excellent simple choreography, and good pounding beaty music which was acceptable. It went like a bomb, was cheered to the echo, and is transferring to the Bloomsbury for six weeks. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Tall dark boy, and gamine little girl – she, I think was Charlotte Edwards, very good. Paul was all right, but close to, he looks self-conscious, the last infirmity. That’s what it is.

Back here, grilled two of those delicious English lamb chops and chicory, and read Evelyn Waugh and enjoyed myself. So Edward hasn’t come after all.

Monday April 27 1992

10.30 a.m.

Completely forgot to record that I met Katrina, the girl upstairs, on the front steps. She said did I know anything about the Criterion Theatre? So I said. She said she was going for an interview today – Monday - to be considered for doing the redecoration. Gosh. Would they consider somebody so young and inexperienced? The only things I’ve heard she’s done, is a friend’s shop-front and a friends nursery. Of course for all I know she took her designing degree in Victorian plaster work and molding painting. Anyway, left whatever books I could muster, marked in the hall.

Oh, so when I went down to shit, saw damp foot-marks in the bathroom, and thought perhaps Edward had come. It was not till eleven-forty-five that I found a letter in the dining room, and realized he’d come and gone! Gracious, it must have been a wasted journey. The letter was a scream. I’m beginning to wonder whether he may not attract odd situations – not here. I hope. His letter.

Angus,

I hope I didn’t make too much noise arriving last night. Our train (my brother came with me because he is on his way to France or somewhere) was 71/2 hours late!!

From beginning to end the entire journey was a disaster! Everything happened – including a woman being taken off the train to give birth!! At least BR paid for a taxi between King’s Cross and B’s court. See you soon (possibly.)

Edward.

I must tell him not to depend on exclamation marks.

Message on machine last night from K. to give me his Chichester address. ‘Never mind, just ring up tomorrow morning, anytime, before I go.’ So I did at quarter past eleven, to get the usual ‘Hello.’ It turned out he’d been hassled by everyone, and the address was in the car, and he rang me when he got there. The dear little thing, he cannot manage these ordinary exchanges, any more than D so often couldn’t. Their concentration works only one way.

Tuesday April 28 1992

Ian Burns to lunch, - in the a.m. Had inspiration to ask Roy M. as well. Ian has a simple artless frightful cutting thoroughness that I like to temper with a little company.

He arrived at ten to one – I’d had a little sit-down with the papers. I had to pick them up, as they had not been delivered. No doubt the delivery boy had not turned up, because of the pouring ceaseless rain from the early hours onwards. And rushing round to get the lunch, I needed the fifteen minutes with the Daily Mail before they arrived. Ian produced a bottle of Gordon’s and a large tonic. He looks better, less raw. And he was delightfully surprised when I produced Roy unexpectedly. When the bell rang, he stood up, - with his preoccupation he assumed it would be a woman.

A most enjoyable lunch for me, such a rare treat nowadays. Oh, and Roy, a large bottle of duty-free extra-strong.

Darling Sharron rang at 10.30 to give me the address and telephone number, making it quite clear that only I could ring, that he’d left it very carefully open for me to feel he was there.

Especially as I’d had a tiresome letter from the bank in spite of me seeing them on Thursday. Feel quite sick about money as usual.

Wednesday April 29 1992

Glad to have the distraction of going out to dinner with Hazel, so kind of her. But frightful preoccupation made me long to talk about it; of course, I didn’t. So few people give you the cue.

I am peculiarly lonely just now, with K away, and John N. and S. silent for weeks on end, their full busy lives making them feel that everyone else has etc. Even Philip D. is in Spain, and didn’t answer my letter about Paul. I ring Edna in her old people’s home every Sunday, but who rings me? K. of course.

We went to the same piddling place in South Audley St. which I described before, indifferent, but I was glad of her company, her sharp humour and intelligence. Tho’ one has to tread carefully. Back here I’d left myself not quite enough whiskey, but still I slept.

Thursday April 30 1992

The new man is as well as Mr. Brazier, and is Scots and really pleasant, within the limits of the ridiculous idea of banks and money.

I put it off till K. comes back. I won’t sully these pages with the boredom, but I do not mean by that that I am not facing up to it.

In the evening to film with dear Janet, who is a great comfort to me in this difficult time. Janet Brown was there again, such a delightful woman for a short drive home in her beautiful cream BMW.

The film ‘My Cousin Vinnie’ whose trailer had caused Janet to say perhaps we’d miss it. Turned out to be a very funny well-acted courtroom comedy. I am always a push- over for right triumphing.

K’s and my stars! ‘While it is unclear whether it is the financial side or the responsibility for certain agreements which is of concern what is sure is that only after considerable persuasion are partners or associates finally beginning to see the light. And none too soon.’

That’s me.

And mine. ‘So often listener and general cheering squad for family and friends. Now that the role is reversed and it is you who are in need of counsel and guidance, you may be in for a shock or disappointment when those whom you have helped do not offer the same in return.’ Well, er, yes.

Amusing.

Friday May 1 1992

R. rang last night and suggested coming for the weekend, so he’s arriving for lunch on Sunday, working on his car on Monday for the M.O.T. Lovely. Imagine.

To see My Private Idaho again, I thought it was even better, espec. River Phoenix.

Saturday May 2 1992

K. rang and I was here!

Sunday May 3 1992 Monday May 4 1992

Most interesting conversation. He quite likes the people he’s staying with, - ‘There’s a spare room, why don’t you come down. I’d pay’ – he described the surroundings as not altogether idyllic an airfield nearby, and so on. All round there is very built up by my standards. I don’t think as things are with me at the moment, I will go. He will be so busy when he’s home. And the rest of the time at rehearsal of a play I’m not in, in a festival with Ken B. about, - I think not. If I could have one real reason to be with him – if we were working on something or whatever – he said sweetly well, you could read and go for walks, which after all, is all I do anyway. No, I haven’t the strength for all that at the moment, especially him keeping on leaving me. But it was a lovely talk, giving me a reason to go living.

Rehearsals are going very well; he likes the play more, and tho’ C. Fry is not really a dramatist he is certainly a word-fancier, with an ear, which appeals to a musician. He’s written a song for Denis Puilley, and he was just playing it to the company and Patrick Garland came in ‘and oiled all over me.’ Donald Sinden is being ‘rather good’ and his manner suits the part well, perhaps. He used to be a good actor; perhaps a serious revival may make him come off it. I certainly don’t want to go to the first night or a preview. He suggested the last night. He may not be able to stay for the first night, because of ‘Shades’.

He asked about the bank-manager, so I said Do you really, and he did. It was very heartening.

Robin arrived in time for lunch, but just when I thought we would settle down with the play, and he’d work on the car tomorrow, he spent the whole afternoon on the car. He took two bolts out of something out of pure conscience and couldn’t get them back in, or they broke or something, and it was Bank Holiday and all the places where you could get the bolts were shut…

In the end he spent half an hour on the play, and all Monday on the car, leaving at five-thirty without the chicken–casserole. The fabled Billy came over to help him, an amiable shaven headed warm man, whom I wouldn’t mind spending an evening with. I told K. about it and he did emphasise how very important an M.O.T. is. He did not, however emphasise how unimportant it is to have a car!

I was a bit miffed.

Tuesday May 5 1992

The window-cleaner was supposed to come at one, arrived at 11.30, I sent them away ‘for half an hour’ as the dotty one suggested. They came back at 1.0, a wasted hour and a half.

Tried to work on the play and couldn’t. Oh, Billy’s name is Seago, but taken by his Hungarian father from Norfolk where he settled.

Wednesday May 6 1992

Annoying and irritating day. Had arranged as I thought two comps for Heartbreak House, Roy had them, and I thought Shaun Scott said I could have some too. When I asked for them at the box-office, the usual little malicious weed said ‘Customer to pay.’ Of course I couldn’t afford £44 for a play I’d already seen even for Robin. But even if I had, I only had £21. Of course, I couldn’t tackle Shaun before the show – that is strictly against the rules, at least my rules. But by an unlucky chance, when we got home, his ‘phone was out of order. Most awkward. And R. went to sleep during. Bicycle Thieves. It’s difficult combining a nine-to-five job with an actor’s hours!

All most irritating. Why do I have such rotten luck?

Wednesday May 7 1992

No sign from Sharron. Left note at stage-door, but nothing when I got back here.

Bother.

For one reason or another, felt restless and went out at threeish and went to Naked Lunch at Screen on the Green. Very poor and as usual with U.S. avant-garde (sic) films, very slow. Quite amusingly free of the careless gay events of the books. Quite pointless. But then so is the book. Went straight on to film with Janet, after the Haymarket. A piece of best-seller rubbish called City Of Joy with Patrice Swayze and Pauline Collins! The city of Calcutta and some terrible dialogue, presumably extracts from a calendar or out of a cracker. Revolting that millions of dollars should be spent in a city with such suffering poor as Calcutta and on a cheap film.

Dear Janet is a great help with her free treat every week and a taxi home. So since my travel permit it is literally free. I much enjoy my supper on these occasions. I can always add a bit of chicken to the casserole.

Oh, I found out the proper source of River Phoenix’s unchristian name. It seems Amerindians see four elements in their world – forest, river, rain and earth. Mind you he has a brother called leaf.

Friday May 8 1992

Darling Sharron had rung up and said was I free tonight and I was, so she came round to dinner. Lovely. Watercress soup. The aforesaid casserole was added to, and I made a chocolate brandy whip, because she loves it and hasn’t made it right herself yet. She rang at seven to say she’d been held up at the shop and was just starting out from the house. She was looking lovely and is much more relaxed, what with the job and probably one thing and another. She seemed to like the food, and drank more than usual.

I am interested that their open relationship extends to me. That is, partly thro’ her delicacy, but partly because she does sense in him a privacy about me, she does not interfere at all, much less than I expect or allow for indeed. And it is not just not interfering it is completely non-possessive of him. I have always been careful, I hope, to be non-possessive, too! I have learnt from her more of how he feels, in her care in dealing with me.

She is very perceptive about people. The only thing I don’t like about her is her voice, - it’s tone is rather whiney and it’s accent rather Croydony. Odd that she should remark on someone else’s unpleasant voice. One day perhaps K’s voice will influence hers, or my accent. For her age, she sees people pretty clearly, thank god because K. so often doesn’t! No, not fair, he often does nowadays.

And he rang. Sharron and I were in the middle of dinner, I said I was just getting her into the bedroom. Lovely talk. Ah well. I finally said I wouldn’t come down.

Poured in torrents all day.

Saturday May 9 1992

I don’t think I said that I planted runner beans and sweet peas on the balcony trellis. We’ll see.

Went over to Clifton’s Nurseries to get an umbrella plant which might do for the copper pot corner. Nothing, but at least I got some Basil seeds, which everyone else seemed to have sold out.

And R. rang at 9.15 to see if I was all right, because I’d ‘sounded low’ when he rang on Thursday. The bother is that I have such an uplift in my voice that if I’m a bit tired, people think I’m ill or sad, even if I’m only a bit absent! And when I am depressed and want to cry, nobody will listen or take me seriously except D. and K. D. said it was because I seem so self-sufficient. Do I? Am I? I don’t seem so to myself.

I said to R. that of course, I do get depressed about being out of work and being poor, and as I get to know him better I reveal more of that depression. (I must emphasise that I was not at all conscious of being depressed the other night, but I am not sure that I recorded that he was rather depressed the other week, and for such a sensitive boy, expressed it pretty forcibly when he said he didn’t see much point in going on trying to be a director – ‘I can’t see any way forward really, three years ago I was assistant on Artist in the West End, and now -.’ I comforted him as best I could, three or four times over a period.)

‘Well,’ I said. (To go back to the 9.15 call) why aren’t you with Zoe on a Sat. night?’ ‘Well,’ he said rather shiftily, ‘We had a celebratory drink about her getting to Wimbledon Art College.’ Big deal for poor Zoe – why not a celebratory fuck? And, blow me, within minutes, he was going out to do something more to the car, in torchlight. I teased him, and said, ‘She rules your life.’ ‘It’s not she, the car’s he!’ Ah.

Sunday May 10 1992

Although I never think of my parents, or almost never, I oddly do on their birthdays. He’d be 103 today.

Rather nothingy weather, on the chilly side. 2º of ground frost in Scotland… Have taken everything out of the greenhouse except the plants, because of the leaks.

It’s going to go hot on Wednesday, it says. This time I really will clear out the cellar. I half have.

Bought three thrillers at the Oxfam shop which I really wanted yesterday – unusual. And good, as they were only 50p. Each. I had forgotten how well the relationship was done between Dagobert and Jane, and it’s genuine wit. Also three short novellas by Flaubert that I’ve never read.

Monday May 11 1992

To Selfridges to pay a/c, to get pumice stone and bicarb, so much cheaper than alka- seltzer. Nothing in the book dept. All rather empty. Meant to see a silly film, which had received no critical notices at all, which on the whole attracts my favorable attention so used the money to go to the market, and buy some of the fresh things. A bundle of English asparagus, £1. 2lbs of Jersey Royals, 70p. (they’re delicious just now). Cooked and ate the asparagus for dinner, with a good lot of fruit and cheese after. Was sitting up in bed at 11.45 or so on my last whisky, and wondering why I was unsettled. Suddenly realised I was hungry – only asparagus for dinner, you see. Went down and made some pain perda and then two more fried eggs, one after the other, as I realised I hadn’t had enough. Ate them with great appetite, went back to bed and slept very well.

Tuesday May 12 1992

Nice bright day, and the wind going down. They said again it’ll be 80º on Thursday. Tried to buy some polenta in Hammersmith and was suddenly struck all over again by the down-marketness, comparatively speaking, of Hammersmith. Safeways, for instance, seems to have no idea of the customers who are not denizens of rise blocks and council houses. Why is there no delicatessen in H’Smith or anything approaching one? Why are the two new shops opened in the last six months, the TSB and Cheltenham and Gloucester?

Young man age 25 raped last Friday on the Northern Line by two men between London Bridge and Angel. Frightful no doubt, but my first thought was it would take me Cockfosters and back these days. Seems it’s the first male rape reported on the tube. How odd people must be who choose such a venue.

R. rang at 9.20, for a nice long chat. Told him to bring Zoe to lunch sometime. An endearing talk.

Wednesday May 13 1992

K. rang this morning! ‘I still can’t find my address book, and only your number is engraved on my brain, what’s Simon’s number? And Janet’s?’ Dear little thing, just to hear his voice sends me winging through the day.

Still haven’t heard from Roy about Pygmalion.

Thursday May 14 1992

In the end I had to ring, he said ‘Can I ring back in five minutes?’ He did, and told me he was just turning someone out of the flat- something to do with the court case between the landlord and the residents of his block of flats. He and Marian are going away for a week from Friday to a villa in Tuscany to miss the case. The villa’s being lent, free, by Lucy Chrystal an ex of his, who now has two children! He does have good luck just now.

As for Pygmalion, he dismissed it quite lightly, saying it wasn’t on tonight. ‘You hadn’t cancelled the film, had you?’ ‘No, I hadn’t, as it happened…..’

So that was that. Perhaps all compounded by his having met S. at a surprise b’day party for Frances Barber last night, whom I’m not seeing as Eliza tonight. And they only had a long talk and ‘never mentioned you once.’ Curious, but of course at a less miserable time, I too might have thought if funny. He told me a funny thing that did make me laugh. S., who knows as little of the popular world as D. did, was at a party. Brain Murray, one of the famous pop-group, Queen, came up to S. and said ‘Brain Murray, Queen,’ and S. said ‘Simon Callow. Snap.’

A curious little vein of striking insensitivity Roy shows sometimes. I don’t just mean today. He can scarcely conceal that he rings up when he has something to say.

Oh, Morris Angel have bought up Berman’s who are a couple of million in the red. Is nothing sacred? I thought B was very much the leader among costumers. It’s certainly the biggest. Well, as I never work now, it’s of academic interest. MA is easier to get to for me. That’s all I can say. I’ve never met anyone at either place who knew enough or as much as I do, about costume.

Hottest day since last Sept. over 80º but not humid, very pleasant. Garden lovely.

Film tonight graced by the return of Charlie Schneer, covered in sun-spots, and greeting me warmly to my surprise. I was rather touched. I asked after his wife, who has some mysterious blood disease still unidentified even on a millionaires scale, and of course he didn’t know I knew about it as I’ve never really spoken to him before, so he was rather touched.

The film ‘Article 99’ was a nice old fashioned right trumpeting over wrong, albeit with some nasty violence in the name of realism, actor called Ray Liotta I’ve not seen before, striking flawed looks, blue eyes, of course, and at first thoughts just a good- looker, but he has a stroke of real feeling and can act a bit. Quiet a crude affair as well, how sentimental even actors thought of in America as first-rate are – Kiefer Sutherland and Eli Wallach at their very different ages just the same.

Made some delicious mayonnaise tonight, and had a sardine salad.

Friday May 15 1992

First to Janet to get script of Shades, S’s next with Pauline C – not that I would or could be in it even if there were a part for me, but yet again there isn’t. It is uncanny how everything S. has done in the last ten years has not had a part for me. Except Chance in a Million which I wish I could have afforded to turn down, and MFL which of course he couldn’t get me. Rather depressed to find it’s a four in hand again. As is the Bernard Slade isn’t it, and Versailles, and The Freud but only for one night. What is to become of me?

What I mean about the decadence and coarseness of Americans life revealed in light programmes. In Roseanne the husband, a large meant-to-be-entirely-sympathetic bear, asks a boy-friend, he has up to now not approved of, ‘You hit him?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Did he puke?’ ‘No.’ But nevertheless, the boy-friend is accepted. A little later, husband exits to roars of delighted indulgent laughter, ‘If I’d hit him, he’d have puked.’ I can’t think why they are surprised at real life violence.

Talking of real life violence, they said the gang-rape victim had drawn impressions of his attackers and he was an artist. ‘In all tube stations.’ Not a sign. Nor in the evening standard. If it had been a woman, it would have been all over the paper. Or the police may have become suspicious that it’s a fantasy of the victim.

If I could talk to K. every day, I would be perfectly happy – just a few minutes.

Saturday May 16 1992

Yesterday p.m. to film Europa Eurpoa. Quite amusing, hardly a judgment to apply to a film taking a Jewish boy through the holocaust, pretending to be a Russian and a Nazi and greeting his brother fresh from Auschwitz. Interesting in its lack of emotion and weight. But perhaps that’s how it appears to people of 30 or so.

There is an anti-bullying campaign on, partly headed by Esther Rantzen. It is amazing to me that anyone imagines for a second that reports of bullying are exaggerated. All those breakfasts that stuck in my mouth alltho’ it was my favorite bacon and egg, because in the school crocodile Muitland would tread off my shoes just because he knew that was what I’d hate most. And then at public school, Turley and Gout, wonderful names for bullies. It was that first realisation that people preferred disorder and disruption and worry and pain to their opposites that was such a shock. I thought it was just Daddy and Mummy and Donald and Lalla who preferred such things, but it turned out to be most of the world.

For example, now it doesn’t surprise me that Coventry is having riots. When we were there in 1961 what a terrible impression the inhabitants made on me, of twisted difficult deprived and inadequate people – and I suppose it’s their grandchildren, perhaps, who are rioting. D. and I both commented on the extraordinary proportion of crippled disabled and odd people about. Coventry’s never had a chance – a huge suburb devoted to cars. And where D’s father died in 1913.

What would I say to S. if I could bother? Friendship is a continuing knowledge of what the other is thinking and feeling and deciding. Can it survive without that?

I rang Hazel and we had a jolly chat considerably enlivened by a discovery of common delight in Delano Ames detective stories. She said that ‘he’ was a woman who wrote the stories as a sideline to a serious career. I agreed without agreeing. The moment I put the ‘phone down, I looked at my Penguin copy of Music Maestro Please and saw a photo of a man with receding hair and a moustache. I wrote to Hazel and said that a moustache and thinning hair are not inalienable evidence of masculinity. After all, Alice B. Toklas in later life is evidence of that. But the autobiog – at front is unequivocal. Must be over eighty or more, and he had a couple of plays in the West End before the war.

Sunday May 17 1992

Rang Julian out of duty, No particular news of the SD film man. How mysterious ‘business minds’ are – they are, I presume, riddled with superstition. How is he going to proceed with raising money, that is, at what point will he tell us how much money has been raised? Which I presume is all he is doing at the moment, besides conning, as it might be, Richard Attenborough into saying some preliminary something, in order to raise more money.

What will be the amount mentioned? The first million? The first 10 million? Goodness knows. Who cares? It is certain to be ludicrous and mean. He recommended a film, The Dark Wind. Odd. I went this p.m. Small slow thriller. What quality had it that made him claim so much for it? ‘You must see it.’ Odd, a bit noir, which ‘grabs’ some people so much more than others. And certainly not me.

Monday May 18 1992

Another lovely day.

Wrote letter to the bank, John Davis, Hazel about Delano Ames, and K. after finishing reading Shades.

My diary is entirely blank this week, except for Janet and the film.

It is now well over two months since I heard from Simon or John N. Neil is silent in L.A., and Phil Draycott in Spain. R, rang tonight full of affection. Building all weekend.

Tuesday May 19 1992

Hot, sunny. To give myself a free diversion went on the tube and walked about.

Put the big sweet geraniums out at the balcony, and repotted the lemon Tree, now about a foot and a half high. Planted tomato seeds; runner beans and sweet peas coming up.

I love this time of year.

I am so glad K. will be back on Thursday. I hate even being this far from him.

Wednesday May 20 1992

Hot, sunny. 79º yesterday. Parsley seeds sprouting in two of the pots, but not in the big black bowl. Why not? Chervil no sign, but they were last year’s seeds. Some varieties, some seeds survived, some don’t.

Thursday May 21 1992

K. has broken a bone in his right hand.

Friday May 22 1992

He’s all right. Never mind any problems, he’s all right. I felt sick and numb, and I found myself clearing out the cupboards under the sink, scrubbing them out and putting fresh lining paper down, after the film, waiting for a call. He got back at ten or just after. Poor Sharron was so nervous and rang me because he wasn’t back. No wonder. He’s all right, that’s all I see.

Later.

He told me on the ‘phone on Thursday night that he was worried about Survival, going to see them on Tues., ‘And what’ll they think of my sling?’

I said firmly that was a hurdle he’d have to get over. He agreed. But said ‘I like to bang away on the piano and bring it out. And if I can’t, and have to do it in my head, I don’t want to find it isn’t there.’ Laughed.

Never managed to mention me to Denis Quilley and Kate O’Mara. ‘Apart that Mrs. Lincoln’….

‘The audience loved it. Venus, I mean. And my music.

Oh, really, poor Sharron never got there. When we talked about K., she also told me that the car broke down at Wandsworth High St., ‘in all that heat’, and she never got there.

Happily, the theatre turned up trumps and has put in for compensation, laid on someone to pack up everything at his digs, and one of the sound boys, to bring up all his equipment in a van on Saturday, unload it all and set it all up. Lunch, on Sat. so I might see. In the middle of my panic, I got, completely by chance, a shot of myself in that ghastly film Percy’s Progress as a prologue to Percy! Horrid.

Moved to tears in the gardening prog. to find that Gaelic for Garden was Dear Green Place. E. David dead. Oh!

Saturday May 23 1992

To K. to cook lunch for him etc.

Nigel and present model were just coming out, so chatted to them and caught first sight of K. over their shoulder. I might have cried, because he looked a bit strained and tired and grey, and his dear hand swollen and strapped up, oh dear, I sound like Queen Victoria. I looked at it more closely later.

We smiled over it as one does over genuine unchangeable injury. Ruefully. ‘The kitchen is down there.’ So I started on the lunch, b and m omelettes, jersey’s, lettuce and pepper salad, and tomato and basil.

‘Oh there’s some chocolate ice’, Sharron said. ‘Give me a hand with the table.’ So we took that £1 table from the first-floor back at M. Rd. into the yard. Baking, but saved by two trees, a plane and a huge ash, as it now turns out to be. How convulsive it is cooking even in his kitchen, instead of one’s own!

Settled to lunch and was struck at his comparative lack of appetite. He only has a glass and half of wine because, I’m sure, he felt instinctively that he must have his blood unheated to mend the bone. Exactly in the same was you keep the arm up so that the blood will not throb. Told me all about the play – he thought it went pretty well, obviously had no bother with Donald S., ‘sets by Poppy Mitchell are really beautiful.’ I was fascinated by judgments darting backwards and forwards over the years, for instance that Denis Quilley is charming and delightful, ‘But has something missing in the middle as an actor.’ Almost D’s exact words thirty or so years ago. At another point, he went to get a p.c. that he’d written but not sent because of his accident. (Oh, I hate writing that!!) and there was another curious combination of names on this p.c. ‘Christopher Fry hated all the music and sound. Isn’t it strange that Dorothy didn’t like him….’

Now, of course, D. was fond of C.F. as a man, but did despised him as a playwright. K. naturally can’t get that right yet, not knowing either of them. But he did confirm that C.F. gave the same Christian Science smile he gave in 1945 when D. told him he couldn’t really write plays. Happily James R.E. and P. Garland backed him up.

All the same, wouldn’t the playwright be right? Especially with a play that must be nearly dead. Oh dear, he says that girl, Susannah Harker, isn’t good, or hasn’t got there yet. Nevertheless, a possible success destine.

So I looked at his hand, right hand the two middle fingers very firmly bound together, and secured. Back of the palm swollen in a shallow curve, no bruising as yet except a little on the palm itself. Yet the consultant, Paul Sherwood, sounded sensible. No operation, no treatment except some anti-inflammatory drugs. The break is very well aligned and should knit easily. He charges £50 a time, and K. ‘believed him within limits.’ I prefer doctors who do nothing.

Oh, and he went to see Shades run-thro. Very good description of S. trying to get the boy to be real, by saying suddenly ‘What’s that noise outside?’ Oh dear, how everyone acts these days. But he’s not good and is the worry, just as I knew he would be. You can get a perf. out of a ten year old bit by bit and day by day on a film, but not in a fifty page dialogue with a technically very proficient actress.

Lunch with Pauline C. before. Very sweet, saying ‘Thank you for your pretty card, - I’ve kept it on my dressing-table.’ He couldn’t think what she meant, until she said ‘All that confetti, so sorry I couldn’t get to it, I wasn’t in England.’ She meant the song-cycle. As always, on these occasions to my combined amazement and resignation, I heard that Turnstyle have offered him £1000, a quarter of what Chichester, a notoriously low payer, paid him. And no music budget, so he’d make about £100 even with his own studio now. I’m thankful to say his new agent, London Management, was tough and just said no. They came back and said £1250, to which she ‘Double £1250, and we can start negotiations from there.’ Of course it’s Howard trying it on, because K. is part of S’s team. And is a major W.E. production, starring p.c. who had equal billing with Patrick Swayze in her last film.

After lunch, we had a memorable laugh. I said it was strange us being friends, when his furniture was in a different place every time I came round, whereas not a stick of mine had been moved since he first walked in eleven years ago. ‘Oh, it isn’t as bad as that. The desk’s been in the window for a bit, and that table and arm-chairs.’ He pondered. ‘Anyway, when the equipment comes this afternoon, it’ll all have to be changed round.’

And, when I got back from getting his prescription from Blackstock Rd., a hot walk, there was the van from Chichester. And a nice boy called Andy, from the sound dept. at Chich., who carried all the stuff in and set it up. He’d been at it for two and half hours when I left at six. It was such a relief to have seen him, and know he’s more or less alright.

Oh, he didn’t ring me about his hand, just as I knew, ‘because I knew you’d have….’ I would. As it was, I turned out the cupboards under the sink.

Sunday May 25 1992

Still very hot. Went on with my cleaning programme. Spent the p.m. cleaning and polishing all the candlesticks, pewter tankards, coronation mugs from the cottage mantelpiece, on the kitchen mantelpiece. Apart from anything else, I had to clean off a thick brown layer of Kitchen grease from all of them, and then start polishing, and scrub the mantelpiece. It does looks nice.

Edward arrived, looking fresh and young, - well, he is – in a sweater, saying how hot it was. Amazed at the garden, saying the roses aren’t out in Scotland, well they are a bit early here. The lovely little Scots rose is out, and Royal thing, and the red climber and Kathleen Harrop, Runner beans four ins., parsley seeds sprouting like anything.

What an odd boy he is, coming down for two nights over bank holiday when everything’s shut and everyone’s away, saying he’s going to be in and then going out, and – it’s now 11.30 and he’s not back yet. How wonderful that I don’t remotely care. The great thing about Edward is I forget he’s here.

Oh rang Victoria and got her wretched father, with his self-conscious crude affectation of vagueness. I suppose she’s another in search of a father. She’s at the West Yorks Playhouse, - I mean, she rang today in answer to me ringing the father. In a Calderon play Life is a Dream or A Dream of Life or Yesterday is Tomorrow. Directed by Mathew Warchus. We had a long and fruitful talk. She’s parted from Gregory. ‘He seems to have become very selfish.’ Well, it’s a student romance, exposed to the light of every day. I never saw them as a couple. Oddly enough any more than K. and Sue B., because she was a bit bigger than him!

A good talk. I must write to her.

Monday May 26 1992.

No, Edward never came in, though he’d said he wasn’t going out! I don’t know what he’s doing today, and I can’t imagine who he could see on a bank holiday.

Cleaned bathroom. Did a lot of re-potting. I must do cellar in the next few days, while the heat-wave is on, the light and having the back door open.

Tuesday May 26 1992

Edward left at about ten-thirty without a talk, leaving the fifty pounds on the table without a note, I don’t know. I think I must write to him, too!

S. rang this p.m. To ask me to supper on Friday and a play!

Of course, he’d seen K! Anyway, I’m pleased.

This p.m. to the Shaw Exhibition at the NPG. How extraordinary that people still think he is passionless, when he is so full of feeling the ripples of the surface have to be ripples of endless frivolity. (I am not a genius, nor even talented, but certainly capable of deep feeling and equally capable of being accused by stupid sallow people of heartlessness – poor silly Daddy and Lalla….).

The exhibition was as good as it could be in preaching to the converted. That is it was just exhibits of his life and writing and plays. I prefer that anyway for a museum, and am proud that my favorite author does not lend himself to a theme park. Yet.

There was very little there that was new to me, but little that wasn’t of interest. I only noticed one small mistake. Colin Keith, instead of K. Johnstone as Adam in Back to M.

At entrance there was a video machine showing him at the opening of the Malvern Festival in 1930. What it doesn’t emphasise enough, is his manipulation of the news films as a medium. First discovered at the top of a garden terrace, and I presume told by the idiot director to walk naturally or words to that effect, he takes a step back and then swings his arms with elaborate ‘naturalness’. Now that, it is necessary to remind everyone now, was very unusual. Yes, he was a precursor of Monty Python, and other movements with more weight.

What was new was the manuscript of ‘Captain Brassbound’, poignant to me, as my license from Blanche Patch is the nearest I’ve got, in 1943, and the MS is in pencil, in small thin notebooks, written lengthwise, six or seven lines a page, about the size of autograph-books. About as many corrections as my MS.

But I was moved by the sight of his pen, or one of them. A thickish fountain pen, with a generous gold nib, in that – what material? that my earliest pen, pinched from my fathers desk, was made of, a black bakelite? that turns greyish with age. Yes, the sight of that pen brought tears to my eyes, as I thought with what delight I always pick up my pen.

Rang K. tonight to say when I’d be free – all the time really – He’d had lunch with S. and I said did he have any influence on S. asking me out. Yes, and S. had said but I want to see Angus for a whole evening. Rather as if I’d been preventing this for – well, how long is it since we had an evening together? – a year? two years? As for S. having no time, their lunch went on till five. Thank god S. said he backed K – entirely in standing out for better money. He is only getting £6000, though he might make £2000 a week if it takes off. About the £6000, he said sharply, ‘Don’t tell Angus.’ Interesting. Is it that he feels I might think it below him to get only £6000 and protest? Or expect him to help me? I don’t know. Nor, happily do I care.

K. seems all right. It’s not hurting so much and the pills don’t seem to have any adverse effects, like so many of the modern medicines. Tomorrow is the first night. He has a rehearsal in the morning, an appointment with his consultant at twelve, a rehearsal in the afternoon, and Sharron is driving him to Chich. for the first night. Oh, and today he went to Norwich to talk to Anglia about the Survival. ‘That seems to be a bit more realised than I thought.’ And he broke his hand last Thursday. Ah, youth, youth.

Oh, what would I do without him? Isn’t it odd?

Oh, R. rang. Sat lunch, work, night. I am so lucky.

Wednesday May 27 1992

11.40 p.m.

Because he is vulnerable physically at the moment, I do think of him going all the way to Chich. for a first night and rehearsal tomorrow and Anglia on Tues and even at 31 he will be tired.

And I hope no one crashes into them on the road.

I am such a baby.

Thursday May 28 1992 Friday May 29 1992

Torrential rain and thunder, in night, it’s now Saturday, didn’t sleep much. Thurs. to film with Janet, that Lover film. Coo, the boredom. When I say the publicity, quite widespread, is whether they actually fucked. Oh dear. Very hot still, though air conditioning so freezing that coming out into the ten o’clock evening was like cuddling up to a log-fire.

Last night, Friday, I at last saw S. again, at that same table at Mon Plaisir, Crab mayonnaise, poached turbot.

Conversation packed with interest as usual. First, ‘My Fair Lady.’ Ed gets worse. His hatred of the conductor made S. call a meeting between them, during which Ed said, ‘I will not have my timing tied to your beat, to which the conductor reasonably replied, ‘If I were an accompanist, I could follow you as flexibly as you like, but with twenty-three musicians under me, we have to start together, and if we do not finish together, we shall both look foolish.’ Ed said, ‘Well anyway, The music, is too loud and too fast.’ etc. etc.

The next day, S. crept into the matinee, to find Ed delivering every number into the centre of the conductors forehead like a vicious bullet. In the interval Joanna materialised with their little boy, Freddy, now four or five – it’s that long since I’ve seen them – and said, ‘Is Ed being a terrific cunt?’ There were a lot of children at the matinee, including a spastic boy who went on chanting ‘Liar’ in echo of Eliza for quite some time, and other children were quite vocal.

Backstage, at sight of S., Ed apologised as charmingly as only he can. After a bit of that S. said he felt he’d better speak to the child. ‘How did you enjoy it?’ ‘I thought the music was too loud and too fast.’ Then Ed showed his silky-sadistic side, refusing to believe that Freddy hadn’t made much of the children’s noise out front. Though Joanne had assured S. that F. had remained silent, in the interval.

It seems the girl isn’t really good enough – he’s obviously given up a bit on her. He also said how unsympathetic and second rate the rest of the cast is. Very funny describing Bryan Pringle drying on ‘With a little… of luck’ or ‘Get me to the…on time.’ When he started on Michael Medwin, I stopped him. I told him B.P. dried constantly without apologising at Salisbury in 1957. I did not tell him that he cast them all. I have to face it that he is bad at casting. It’s Infernal Machine all over again. He can cast the star – Ed is dead right, however awkward. But…

I was quite surprised at his vulgarity in bringing up Michael M.

Told me he’d seen Matt. The woman he was much embroiled with, had parted from him. But another – am I getting this right? – wanted to be pregnant by him and did but miscarried. Hm. Also described – how did Gary come up? – driving back from somewhere with Gary kissing and feeling him wholesale while driving down the motorway, or anyway a big road. ‘I didn’t ask him in though, because the sheets were dirty and I had such an early call, but mainly I was afraid I wouldn’t be up to such a legendary fuck.’

But, for the first time, in our friendship he lost the track of his remarks two or three times. I think being with Chris tires him. C. is in Glasgow designing a no-budget film.

Saturday May 30 1992 Sunday May 31 1992

R. rang to say was he coming to lunch? ‘Yes, that’s what you said you were doing.’ Got here 1.30. Asparagus. Worked well, got some way further into Act II. Completely delightful soothing day. Pork chops and straws, and made melted butter mustard sauce for him. He’d brought Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes 2. Very Poor, we didn’t finish it. He loved Pigeon Bert – well, it was shorter. I said something very witty over dinner, but cannot remember what it was.

He left at eleven this morning, and such is my age, I now welcome anyone leaving! ‘Venus O’ notices almost all savage about the play, so it seems D was right when she told C. Fry he couldn’t really write plays, when she first read one in 1945 or 1946, ‘and he gave me a Christian Science smile,’ She didn’t say he couldn’t write.

K. rang at eleven-five! Lovely long talk, naturally wanted to know all about S. Told him that S. had said, - forgot to record this, that K. had sat with such a brooding face for four hours, that people kept coming up to ask what was the matter. Well, Christine thing connected the equipment up in such a way that one of the amplifiers burnt out in flames. And the whole building’s lights fused! Poor S. he’s upset generally.

K’s hand is out of st. plaster, and he can use the two fingers enough to compose, thank god. Made him laugh a lot, ‘When I asked S about the Bernard Slade play, he said it was off, ‘I can’t cast it.’ Janet said, ‘Well, I can’t read it.’ Told him everything I could. Am always amused at K’s incipient paranoia. Which he’ll have when he reads this, in I hope, a good many years time. If he can’t believe I love him, then he’s hopelessly paranoid!!

Monday June 1992

R. had asked me to go to that student show that we once went to, to see Sharron’s jewelry, partly because it’s where he’s been working, and for which he’d built all the rostra and display screens, (though he didn’t say that!), and because it is as it were, the backcloth of our play. My impression was that the standard is even lower. A mass of muddled wires sprayed gold, many pictures(sic) in very bright primary colours, from lack of nerve. As a matter of fact, one of the more possible exhibits was R’s girl-friend Zoe Irvine’s. It was a small series of boxed shelves, first shelf, all inch and half candle ends, second many cosmetic bottles etc., third shelf bunch of dried flowers. One of the very few that was light and not creaking with effort.

R. greeted me in the hall with the eminently sensible words ‘You must need a drink.’ I’d intended to get one on the way, but that bit of London is remarkably bleak. He led me along the usual anonymous corridors to a large refreshment room carrying on the bleak theme. He got me a large g&t, which turned out, when I bought one myself later, to cost only £1.75. We’d only sat down for one slurp when an unmistakable female organiser whisked him saying We must have a light in that passage. This was the dress-parade of fashion. This was awful stuff very badly staged. So poor was it, it was pointless to describe it. Silly children who have not attended to their dressings- up from the tat-box.

A tired unshaven fortyish man said quietly, ‘Angus.’ George Fenton, with his delightful wife. George Fenton has a girl of 19 who had a garment (sic) in the show. George Fenton, who is 19 and captain of the Rugger XV in Forty Years On. I saw her after kiss him, - rather a long sad face, in essence looking older that George. Gemma. Later on R. told me that she’s down in the roll as Gemma Tripp. We had a little confusion over George’s real name being Howe, but it occurred to me later that perhaps she’s George’s wife’s daughter? Just one detail of the ill-management, the rostra which models crossed and recrossed much too constantly, would be modishly dancing with those grinding steps so popular for so many years, the rostra were covered with thin black polythene (bin-liners?) which tore and peeled at once.

Wrote to K. when I got home, to ask him to write to bank-manager.

I hate/love to think of him toiling away.

66 1992 31 ? 76 2002 41 ? 86 2012 51 ? 96 2022 61

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 112

June 2 1992 - July 15 1992.

Tuesday June 2 1992

Sent card to Victoria Davar for her first night of the Calderon at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. Tried to work on play. Showers. Greenhouse awash. Letter from Crispin R., is in Marivaux premiére, ‘Les Fausses Confidences’ at the Gate, called The False Servant, wants me to go. Asked R. to go, because he must see something. He’s ricked his back taking down the student show. I remembered the moment he’d said it, that he had a slipped disc in his ‘youth’. He suggested coming to lunch and working thro’ and off to the play – ‘if I can sit there’.

Wednesday June 3 1989

R. rang at 11.0, again to ask if he was coming to lunch. When he arrived, I was touched to see that he was limping quite badly, and at once, and later, I saw that he was in the acute pain I remember so well, that comes from a cough or a sneeze. He sat on the red sofa, while we were working and became so uncomfortable that he lay on the floor. At first he lay with legs stretched out flat. I ventured to say that when my back was bad, that was just what I couldn’t do and he found that to be true later. We worked as I always hoped we would work, swapping lines backwards and forwards, testing their reality by ringing them on the counter, and later he said ‘I prefer this way of working’. I realised this time one way and another how diffident he still is, and how submissive. I must try and get him out of that. What good has it done me? We did good work, and got ahead.

In the p.m. we went to the Marivaux play at the Gate, Les Fausses Confidantes claimed as a British premiére. Can it be? Anyway, he bravely made up his mind that he could sit there, and off we went. The pub below has been opened up very well, and made much more pleasant, with tables and chairs out in the yard. The Gate has used its prize money to put in air conditioning. An article in the E. Standard, I think said ‘Air conditioning at the Gate? What next? Metric coinage at the King’s Head?’ I bet the Gate will be less successful. Play rather ponderous, comic servants, heroine en travesti etc. Like Restoration but with the disadvantage of translation, such plays can only be tolerable by sustained beauty of execution. Happily Crispin was the nearest to that happy ideal – tho’ nowadays the near is very far. The only note I thought useful was to tell him to stop fisting his hands and wet-white them, as ruffles make hands purple at once.

Never mind R’s back, I came as near to peeing my trousers as I ever have, and walked through the play fifteen minutes before the end of the Act One. Wrote a note to Crispin R., rescued R., and we enjoyed our dinner very much. Told R. he could crash here, and stay in bed and be looked after. Don’t think he believed me.

Thursday June 4 1989

He left this a.m. with D’s rubber ferrules stick and I had to help him into his dashing sports car. I said it all again, that he needed a bit of looking after, and I did mean it, - and he did say there was no-one else to look after him. Oh, dear, these young men and their girls!

To film with Janet as usual. She had worried me earlier on by ringing in a sort of panic - and no wonder – because Mark Furness is supposed to be going bankrupt, and he now only owns the building in which Janet has her office, but his offices are upstairs. If he is declared bankrupt, one possibility is that the building would be sealed up without warning and J. would have to prove that the contents of her office were her property and not subject to the receivers. But that might take ages and her work is all theatrical, that is, time is all important. For instance, S’s first night is next week and many things have to be done between now and then which are meaningless later. She is moving S’s files to Turnstyle tomorrow. It’s been pouring all day which makes for depression and more difficulty with moving things.

The film was The Playboys, about a touring theatre co. arriving in an Irish village in the 50’s. Albert Finney was the local Policeman. He’d fathered a baby on a local girl, and was now obsessed with her. She fell for Aiden Quinn from the theatre. Conflict. Albert is a great heavy boring lump. When he faces a close up, he does literally nothing, except a bit of clichéd lip-acting. Holding the mouth in ‘a position’ is a bad sign. Ed! All Albie exhales now is smugness, and egotism. Girl lovely. Aidan Quinn good, film mildly entertaining.

It is disgraceful that poor Janet should be in such difficulties, tho’ it seems she has no proper rental agreement. And has not consulted a Solicitor formally to see what her position is.

We went back to pick up some stuff from the office. On our way out at twenty to ten, a tall mild gentlemanly late-forties man passed us mildly exhaling a certain ineffectuality. Mark Furness.

Friday June 5 1992

On LBC radio, some journalist said a phone vote on Maastricht had had 8000 voters, fairly good sample. ‘Oh no, our biggest was 70,000!’ ‘What was that vote?’ ‘Is Kenneth Clarke a moron or a prat?’ A prat by a small majority.

On Mike Parkinson’s show, ugh, heard Albert say he’d cleared his dressing room, ‘We might be playing tonight, we might not’ as his play is put on by Mark Furness. I’ve always known that Albie was boring, but I didn’t realise he was quite so cowardly and unprofessional.

K rang to ask me to cook lunch for him. At eleven. Going.

Saturday June 8 1992

10.25 p.m. Tired! So I dashed round getting lunch together, and got myself there at 1.15. Cooked him omelettes, a salad of lettuce, peppers, chicory, laid out nicely, tomato and Sharron’s basil. Heavenly. On phone half of lunch. Equipment hire firm very well-known, main West End firm, Really Useful, Cameron Mack etc., but K chary of them. However, management insisted, and he had to go along with it. But on phone today, he had to attack someone called Terry. ‘Would I want a machine that wouldn’t record, only play back? Why would I want it. When I’ve got one already?’ Lots of fleas in ears, couldn’t get the Shades production manager, tho’ he has four phone numbers, and the only point of a production manager is that he is a liaison, and always available for that purpose. That is his only point. He got the money woman. And pushed and pushed and I think must have put a seed in all their minds that the firm is not the best it’s painted.

When he greeted me, he gave me a faintly embarrassed look, and said ‘can you wash up?’ I said sharply, ‘I’d do this every day if you want’. His fingers are still strapped together, - that alone –

Then he said, ‘Can you do some running around for me?’ So off I went in the rain to the West End first, to Soho Sound in Livonia Place off Berwick St. Through glass doors, a fat slob pressed the entry button. ‘Downstairs’. Picked up a compact disc of fanfares and percussion from a startled youth, who had probably never seen anyone over the age of thirty in that basement before. Back into the rain to The Nat West bank in Oxford St. to get out £100 on his bank card, and slot in his old number instead of the new one he’s been given. He wants his old one, too sweet, 1208, my ‘phone number’. So I didn’t go to the tills outside because it was finely damply raining. The one inside was called a Rapid Money Till, which we don’t have in Lloyds. The wonders of modern technology suggested to me that if it could be really rapid, it couldn’t change K’s number, from 3150 to 1208. I asked a girl cashier, but I could tell she was an idiot. The Rapid Cash was just that, a hundred pounds in a second. Oh dear, outside I did change the number, and I hope it took – the machine became a little confused.

Then I was off to Chalk Farm, to Ironbridge House, - a large affair with an iron bridge surprisingly enough. There was an entry phone with an elaborate code to be punched in. K. had omitted to tell me what the name of the firm was. And I wondered. However, two women, were ‘punching’ in their code, and I went in with them, with, for all the security knew, my bomb. Very tame – the first door opposite the main door revealed a receptionist with an envelope with K’s name.

Back to Elfort Rd. Left everything. Much irritated by taking his credit card with me. All this Friday. Back here on F. night. Rang R. Got Zoe and had a good talk about Central, R. etc. She sounds all right. Very young, dear thing. Then R. saying he was no worse but no better. Warned him about the dangers of conventional fucking in his state. Plenty of other positions. ‘No chance of that’. Odd. Rang back later about Master and Margarita at Lyric. Said I’ll get a scene in the post, - tomorrow?

After all that when I was settling back into an alcoholic and exhausted stupor, K. rang to say would I do lunch and dinner tomorrow – today! – As always, I said yes, as quick as I possibly could, without a thought of the effort. So up at 9.30, to go and get the laundry. Then back to do the shopping. At Safeway there was a man ahead of me in the queue who had a mouth like a trap, and predictably searched for a purse after the bill was presented. He produced a certain amount of money, and then presented seventeen of those 10p and 50p vouchers all of which had to be lingeringly checked by the idiot girl. The queue muttered and then I held things up, unwittingly. When she rang the total up, it read £450.92. A lovely couple next to me enjoyed it, hugely when I said well, I try not to spend that much every time I come. A supervisor, also an idiot, appeared and undid the machine and adjusted the mistake. When I looked at the bill later, I thought well we all know the EEC is going to be a mixed blessing, but a half lb. of EEC white cheddar £444.11 a bit much.

Back here, re-arranged carrier bags, taking two basins, my whisk, a sharp knife! And, any other time, even my kitchen scissors are better than their dull blades. The chocolate, brandy vanilla pod, and eggs for the CBW and the steak, carrots, jerseys, onions etc. for the casserole. I also took a rainbow trout, £1 which was quite enough for both of us, from the market, peas, jerseys.

Did the trout in the oven with cream and butter and a few mush. He relished it, and spooned and mopped up all the juice, saying what is all this, you’ve put something in it, cheesy. Only the fragments of baked cream. He graciously said I could just relax, although he had to go back to work. Dear little thing. Nigel turned up. With another girl. Goodness, he is plump. A face like a moon. She was a graceless creature. They were going to Cambridge for the day, - I said give it my love, - she looked blank.

So I started on the casserole, a big Spanish onion, - I hate Eng. onions – rather distracted by the cat, which is happily going to be neutered next week, which I hope will calm it down. Of course it’s charming if you have nothing to do. Started on the chocolate brandy whip. Despite bringing so much, one is always at a disadvantage out of one’s own kitchen. He had told me he was prepared to leave his music to watch me fold the egg white into the chocolate. ‘Oh, I’ve never had it as stiff as that’ he said, sticking a finger straight into it. We put it in the fridge, I washed up, kissed him goodbye and came away.

But shot thro’ the whole two days, was the most beautiful theme he has written for Shades, a simple rising tune for solo viola. Both exquisite and accessible. Pauline made a special point of saying a deux, how beautiful it was. I had to remind him that she’d said on his first night card ‘when I hear the music on the Tannoy, it makes it easier for me to become Shirley Valentine.

He showed me his x-rays. It’s a sort of crack down the bone, not across, so I can see it should not be difficult to knit. ‘Oh I said, ‘Kevin, you’ve got a skeleton’. ‘I know’.

Sunday June 7 1992

Kevin and Robin’s theory that Edward is a serial killer is borne out by his arrival tonight. When he rang last night, he certainly exhibited his powers as a prig. I said that what with Robin’s back and K’s hand, they could hardly make one decent man between them. ‘I think that’s rather cruel’. Apart from missing the joke, which doesn’t help, he might be quite shocked to be told that he has no right to comment on my treatment of two close friends.

He arrived tonight at ten past six, said one sentence, and vanished into his room. No mention of my letter after his last visit asking if I could help. Poor love, he doesn’t know how rare an offer of disinterested help is. (However useless!) Later still, when Jemima rang, he’d gone. ‘I think I know where he is’.

Rang R. and told him the one sentence had been ‘it’s so hot’ taking off his sweater. It’s only hot in comparison with the NE coast of Scotland. When I said he’d shut himself in his room without any further word, R said ‘He’s re-wrapping the head.’

Monday June 8 1992

Disgusting papers about the Prince and Princess of Wales. Ignorance, envy, empty lives, Rupert Murdoch.

R rang two or three times, more serial killer jokes. His hideous flat mate has been away, and what with his back he’s written the play to the end.! Because he has privacy. Perhaps I’ve misjudged him.

Tuesday June 9 1992

Yes I have, he has finished the play.

Well, today was heavy and overcast. Over lunch it became more and more oppressive and darker and darker. About quarter to three, there burst out one of the most violent thunder storms, of my life, certainly one of the first half-dozen. As I have to say to younger friends, a more interesting judgment at my age. The thunder and the rain were striking enough to bring Edward and me out on to the landings. I went to look through the bedroom window, and lightning came near enough to seem to light up my face inside the room. Certainly the tearing crunching cracking thunder was the loudest and nearest I’ve ever heard. Rang R. in the middle of it to say for fun. Shall I bring your umbrella? Very anti-climactic, got David and there was no rain there at all. And the rain was heavy enough to splash up under the splashboard and make little pools in here, only happened once before in eleven years, and then only a drop or two.

This p.m. nevertheless finished Act II Sc. II. As he’s done the next scene, we have a skeleton to articulate.

Set out for the Angel at 5.30. Only just got there for 6.20, and the Angel new station is still not open. Caught by another shower at the station for five minutes – that curious little tiny emergency feeling with strangers. Arrived at one of the most drenched-with-feeling areas, DWF perhaps from now. The nasty pub, a step on from its transformation into trendy Brasserie type, by being empty except for R and one other. Lovely.

He produced the last scene, and I gave him mine. The shape of his is good, but Maureen is too bland. Interesting, because a note I’d made had been that he seems to feel she’s more down market than I had thought of her. Not that I want her anything, but hamstrung and taking everything thirdhand. Good talk. We went to the fish and chip shop. Lovely welcome from George, the waitress, as always, and Olga amazingly bringing my name to her lips immediately. And Penny and the Pym. I had fried halibut, huge piece, delicious. He had Plaice with a lot of tomato ketchup, - how odd, you wouldn’t be able to taste the plaice at all. It suddenly occurs to me that he doesn’t like fish because it tastes of nothing. Certainly the mustard does suggest that he can only catch violent tastes. But it was a satisfying dinner, some NZ chardonnay, Montana.

We got to the King’s Head at about five to eight to find it full, but we sat on the cinema type seats pinned to the right hand wall. More comfortable for me because your feet are off the floor and if you lean back against the wall, you can’t see the stage at all.

Very poor thin little play with very poor thin little Irish acting. When it’s bad, it’s triply bad, because that same dreary sloothering tune is used by the whole cast. Valerie Hermanni in it, good gracious, a takeover of a takeover in the musicals. Her photo in prog. like her then, now she is a slightly acidulated suburban matron.

Interested to see Michael Codron there with sleek little boyfriend, who Robin tells me, is to play the boy in September Tide with Patricia Hodge later on. I was bored with the play, and glanced now and then at Codron across the room. Riveted by him compulsively chewing, like Helen Cherry’s grimaces. In both cases, but for very different reasons, a lifetime of repressive self-control, suppression of self, is taking its toll. After the first interval, M.C. came and sat next to me, and we exchanged our usual five-yearly ‘Hello, Angus. How are you?’ ‘Hello, Michael. How are you?’ I was quite strongly reminded of Binkie B. and whoever it was who said to me that he was always afraid someone would ask him for a job. M.C. was there apparently to wrest the West End presentation of the play from Bill Kenwright – perhaps, But in any case, he could not possibly say what he really thought in the interval and for the first time I felt sorry for him. I could slag him off to Robin, but he couldn’t slag me off till he got home. Tho’ I think he probably feels a vague nostalgic pleasure to see me – I probably suggest easier times

Left at second interval. R. very sweet and loving. I walked away into the cool evening, pleased all round.

Wednesday June 10 1992

Photos in papers, show elderly woman on young man’s shoulders in (his) waist–deep water at Putney High St. Stefan Edberg paddling his way out of Queens more than ankle-deep. B. Court station closed for an hour or two it seems. 2 ½’’ of rain. So.

Listening to LBC this a.m. heard on the news, someone from the American Medical Association, one of those Americans who can speak English with some respectable weight, and who can suggest that certain areas of American intellectual life are holding firm. It seems that the commonest cause of death among young American blacks under 20 is gun-shot wounds. And it is the second most common cause of death in all teenagers. Of course, the gun-laws, or rather lack of them in the U.S. are the most ludicrously hysterical in the civilised world. The AMA spokesman, said, ‘If this were a virus, all America would be shouting for a cure’. It seems the amount spent on investigation of gun-shot wounds is 7% of what is spent on cancer and heart disease.

Thinking of troubles in Yugo-s. and Czecho-s, although Daddy was not a wise man, he was wise when he said that the main opposition to church unity, was that the President of the Methodist Church wished to remain so.

Janet cancelled us going to the Tom Cruise film – it’s been postponed. I was watching a beautiful film about praying-mantis shrimps narrated by David Attenborough, - they can not only crack a crab’s shell but crack a bit of glass in an aquarium – when it was cut off and a voice said ‘You’ll be pleased to hear the power failure on our O B van at Canterbury has been put right, and we can go back to the Test Match.’ Perhaps I was the only person in the U.K. who….

Shot-putter from E. Germany, Gerd Bank.

Rang R. this p.m. about the Jason. Fr. tie. Cleared up. Rang Sharron to wish him good luck. She is so sweet in giving me space, that I don’t want but it is very generous of her. Did I want to leave a message on the machine. He came in last night pretty bad tempered – how well I know, - but she fed him a lot of potatoes and he went to sleep. Their only dress rehearsal is tonight. Really Simon is… She isn’t going at all. She has to work early, on Sat., tho’ she’s going to change her work pattern.

Fascinating, that he behaves exactly the same to her, with the usual egotism of talent.

Leaflet through door of Evangelistic illiteracy. ‘Come and believe to see the mighty move of God’.

All my love and good fortune for tomorrow night, dearest Kevin. Dear, dearest Kevin. If only this play is a half success, it will help you.

Thursday June 11 1992

Still warm and now fine. Dream last night in play at Buck House. Usual anxiety over finding dressing room and clothes. Stole a suitcase belonging to Andy Mapp (who he?) filled with ruffles, neckcloths, a Henry VIII hat etc. Met Princess Di who took to me greatly and kissed me repeatedly. I left her saying ‘Don’t worry, the press will forget and get bored. They always do’.

Also heard that silly woman, Ruth Leon, on LBC say ‘Anyone who doesn’t respond to Philadelphia Here I Come shouldn’t be sitting in the theatre, in my view. Memory play in Co. Donegal … leaving his past behind him…. Seeing his future in front of him…. Hero played by 2 actors… visual poetry. Best thing I’ve seen in years, poignant, haunting and marvelous. If it doesn’t transfer, I know nothing about the theatre.’

Well, she doesn’t know much. She doesn’t mention the slight anecdotal nature of the play, the near-amateur very monotonous acting or the inadequacy of the direction.

Rang R. who was rather depressed by the whole thing. I must raise his courage.

At lunch-time fought my way thro’ the ticket touts to buy a Standard. Edberg, Sampras etc all on show today and no rain. When I went out to go to film with J., found the tube closed down because of a bomb threat. Found out later it went on for two hours, so came back home and bought a steak instead. How is his night going? How?

Friday June 12 1992 Saturday June 13 1992

10.45 p.m.

Phew, what a thirty six hours! Do I mean thirty-six? R. arrived for lunch rather more punctually than usual as he was travelling by the useless tube instead of the glorious car. (Not his nomenclature.) Asparagus, straws, and a v. good afternoon’s work. I started yesterday on a fair copy clarifying and polishing on the way. Now we can look at the whole thing, and correct the probable misproportions. About 5.30 I had my bath and we had a drink and onto tube, got to Richmond about ten to seven. At the theatre the B.O. had heard nothing of K. except four seats ‘to be paid for’ Shades of the Haymarket! So we dashed around trying to find K. – how I hate that flusterdom. And how I hate the smug B.O. look. In the end, K. had to pay, getting on for £20 a ticket, which is just stupid as there were plenty of empty seats. That is really a stupid policy and most backward-looking. Anyway, we got the seats, in the circle, and K said he couldn’t sit with us because his seat was somewhere else, but in the event, there were two seats empty towards the centre of the circle, and the rest of the row the other way was empty. Plenty of empty seats elsewhere, not surprisingly as it had purposely not been publicized at all, as far as I know. K. happily in good mood, altho’ much had gone wrong, not negatively raging as sometimes.

Well, the play. Hm. Boy decidedly better than I’d feared, and will probably be all right. Pauline V. good bits, and will also probably get there, with much more credit. The play? A mild remote anecdote without even the purple cooks of ‘When I was a Girl’ to curl my nose with scorn for its simplicity. It had no grip at all. As I said later today, to R., Sat., ‘Of course it’s the mother and son’ claustrophobic relationship that appeals to S. Like any ghetto deprived personality, he thinks his own difficulties are more interesting than they are! I’ve always said he knows nothing of a real relationship in life, and this proves it in the theatre.

As for the music, it does indeed, only much more so, bear out S. Sondheim’s ‘Lends the play a dimension it would be poorer without.’ There should be much more of it as the play, just like ‘When I was a Girl’ is decidedly one-dimensional. When authors abandon naturalism and don’t achieve anything else definite, the result is a dull dream.

K. in touchingly sweet mood. We went to the pub and he had two pints, really wanted whisky but couldn’t yet because he had to get up tomorrow and go on. Three memorable laughs. Oh that head thrown back like his picture as a little boy. First was when I showed him my bill for £444.11. Second, when he described Christine making up for the ‘club’ scene during the show. ‘Every time I went back to the desk, she’d got another eye done’. Later he was talking about the deficiencies of Autograph, the music-equipment hire firm ‘But they do all the big shows’. ‘Oh yes’ said Robin. ‘They did Peggy Ramsay’s funeral’.

K. had ordered a mini-cab to take us all home. Twice, three times he said things like ‘What have you got for supper?’ and I knew he longed to come in and have a good session. But he couldn’t because he had to be there for fresh tech. rehearsals tomorrow. But how he clung. I was so grateful to have R to come back with me and the cold meats I’d bought, Mortadella with olives in it, German peppered sausage and tongue for me. He made the salad dressing and how odd in a jug, though there was a salad bowl. I suppose they get used to that. Not enough of it, of course. But lovely chat, next best thing to having K. there. He settled down inside a couple of duvets in the drawing-room.

And I am now writing, having just retrieved the whisky bottle, just after he’d settled down. How long he looks lying down! That’s why coffins of tall people are such a surprise.

Oh. Completely forgot to record that on Thursday, Janet rang to say about the tube, and that she had a letter for me from S. about Shades. To my amazement it was a deprecating letter saying ‘It may be a little shaky with technical faults’, so – well, virtually ‘be kind’. Then he suddenly recovered himself and said, ‘Of course, it’s not your first visit to the theatre’.

First time I’ve ever know him deprecate and warn like that. He must have doubts.

Sunday June 14 1992

Very hot still. We had lunch in the garden on Fri. for the first time this year. And again yesterday and today.

So, Saturday!

I got up at 12.15, having woken up at 7.15, read the papers, read a thriller and dozed off. R. was at the d-table, and when I said it was 12.30 so wouldn’t he for once stay to lunch? ‘Yes’ good. So we had asparagus again and worked in the p.m. then a strange little scenario emerged. It seemed he was spending the evening with Zoe who was getting off work at 6.30. So he spent quite a time looking for a film to go to. But time went by and she didn’t ring and didn’t ring. And he went to get a bottle of wine and stayed to dinner, in the garden. And didn’t apologise – first time. I was impressed that he concealed his worry and disappointment so well. And yet he expected…. He went at 10.0, which would get him home well after eleven – it’s quite a long walk from Turnpike Lane. He left his pager behind, so I rang at 11.45 about that, and she’d rung v. quickly to say she was out with her class or something, but he still had to have the explanation. He made the best of it, but it sounded to me as if she’d dumped him. Especially as tonight when we spoke, she was seeing a friend from abroad tonight. Tho’ he’d seen her this p.m. obviously fairly briefly. There seems to be no making-up for having given him a worrying time last night. He doesn’t mistake arrangements. Not with me anyway.

Rang Edna this morning and found her a little more remote. Mary wasn’t in. Went to Johnny Suede, a young man’s film in every sense, that is, a third intriguing novelty, a third sentimental idealism, a third rubbish. But Brad Pitt is a remarkable actor. No method slowness. A sudden collapse into tears quite floored me, not to mention the wit. Clear definition, and beautiful face and body. Ten years since K. came to live here – one of my two luckiest days.

Monday June 15 1992

Still very hot and humid. Letter from IT at last to go and see them about instalments.

Otherwise a certain apathy of enjoyment of meals in the garden, and so on, takes over.

What odd things happen to people’s noses as they get older. Not just size or purple or spots, Harrison Ford in 1977 had no sideways septum as he has now. Oh so humid.

Tuesday June 16 1992

Much cooler. Quite chilly tonight.

R. rang tonight to say he couldn’t come tomorrow, because of the Spread a Little H. set, but will come Friday and Sat.

Oh dear, I was looking forward. Oh well.

I seem to have to face every disappointment however serious or trivial. No reply from K for letter about 10th anniv.

Wednesday June 17 1992

Cloudy and a north wind, but it cheered up enough for Mary to ask if we could lunch in the garden.

I’d gone to meet her and found her walking very slowly. She’s a bit thinner again, and perhaps a bit too thin now. Certainly at least a third less weight than this time last year. Not that she seems at all ill, - she ate with much appetite and pleasure the asparagus and raspberries which I bought for £4 altogether in H’smith market. ‘You can’t get any of this in Cricklewood, a few nasty Belgian strawberries’. That is really just disgraceful apathy and deprivation as it is obviously not cost. She also told me that the block of flats opposite that was gutted six or seven years ago and then filled with Asian families by the council, has now been gutted again and a fresh board reading Luxury Flats, has gone up.

Karin Mcarthy’s husband, Roly Davis, is being replaced in his play Murder by Misadventure, as is Deborah Watling. He’s very down and no wonder, as Codron is bringing it in, and it was Codron, directly, who replaced them. Well, Roly is a very stock actor!

However, the wonderfully fascinating and charismatic stars must be adequately supported, Gerald Harper and William Gaunt who’s the writer? Edward Taylor?

I was sorry R could not be here; although Mary is not ill, who knows what the weight loss means or where it will stop? Not that she isn’t exactly the type to wither away to a wisp. She said, when I told her, ‘Oh, and I was just thinking as I was coming along, how lovely, I’m going to meet someone young’.

Thursday June 18 1992

Only warm in the sun, with a north wind. Mind you, only relatively chilly, - I didn’t put my sweater on, tho’ I took it. To the Mambo? Came out after half an hour, only went because one of Almodov’s stars was in it. Deeply boring.

Thinking of J Suede, and the gross sentimentality of most of Tom Cruise’s films, I thought, well, it must have something to do with his own judgment of a script. I daresay he wasn’t sent J.S., but, if he had been, I don’t think he’s got the talent or jump to do it. B. Pitt has that fascinating potential.

R. rang, lovely talk, tomorrow.

Told him we’d go to a film at the Astral instead. Best Bit of Crumpet in Denmark.

I’m not sure! Could do a job now if I got one. Still no word from K.

Friday June 19 1992 Saturday June 20 1992

A delightfully tiring and full two days. R. was here when I arrived back from the shops, possibly the first time he’s arrived less than three-quarters of an hour late.! Asparagus and straw. delicious. Much fun.

Excellent afternoon’s work. R. is thank goodness, much more bold in criticism. If the audience laugh as much as we do while writing it, it’ll be the success of what’s left of the century. I can’t write the play and write about it here. But I can write about R. There is something very comforting about his physical presence. I hope I give him confidence in that, as well as everything else.

Later. Hilarious bit in political prog. about change of law on armed forces gays. The presenter made the link to the next item thus, ‘Giving a whole new meaning to comrades in arms…. David Mellor, to change the subject completely….

Some Indian who has been pretending to be a doctor for 30 years prescribed shampoo to be taken three times a day, etc.

Suppositories were also taken orally. A patient remarked ‘for all the good those pills did me, I might as well have shoved them up my arse’.

Oh, phone from Edward to say he was coming back at six tonight, but he didn’t. R. changed the bed back. We worked this p.m. too.

He also asked if he could put his name on my ans-machine because David had missed another few messages, and lost Zoe a job this time. Much flattered. Rang later, and found phone engaged so long it was off the hook or out of order.

Sunday June 21 1992

Reading English Theatre in Wales, and realised that theatre towns here have always been the same, i.e. that there are no new theatre towns, only no theatre towns now. For example, one of Sarah Siddons’ sisters was born in Warrington where D. did a twice-nightly, twice-weekly season, and wrote in her diary, ‘small parts leave you too much time to think’.

R. rang at g&t time, to say it must have been out of order, and he hadn’t taken the Dame Edna tape we’d looked at. He also chose to watch Grease, so we have the same ghastly taste.

So he’s going to Billy’s tomorrow, Can I come and work tomorrow on the way, and pick up the tape? And all this one day running into another, and R. being here all the time, has made me forget to record, though not forget to feel that K rang on Sat.

‘Well, I was at Woking Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. It’s better. Tuesday was sold out which isn’t bad in a 1300 seat theatre. It’s coming on. Then I fitted in the Music House day on Thursday, and started the Survival yesterday.’ I said was that the second one. Scorn! He did the second one a month ago. Never told me but he thinks he did! He said to tell R. the Freud was definitely on for R. The Albery is not definitely on for Shades! That doesn’t change. We had a financial talk – how I hate him having to be concerned, but what would I do if he wasn’t? Only thing that troubled me was that I said ‘How’s Sharron?’ and he said ‘Oh she’s all right’, in such a flat grey voice, that it worried me. But I may be quite wrong. Edward turned up tonight about 9.30, having tamely stopped off to see a friend: Going off tomorrow morning to work in a sandwich bar.

Warm again. Lilies beautiful.

I am so grateful that K has this abundance of pressure of good work at 31, in full flood, when he can do it, and develop

That’s how I know I love him, that I can be glad even tho’ I don’t see him so much while he’s busy.

Monday June 22 1992

Another wonderful lovely laughing productive day with R.

He’s taken the Act II Sc I bit away, as well and can start typing on Friday. He has a bit of work at St. Martin’s the next two days. We had an omelette and salad in the garden, watching a bit of Dame Edna again and then started in: even more screams than usual, - at one moment R. got complete hysterics, impossible to reproduce the context except to say that it sprang from a suggestion for the outside scene that Jason could push Sarah out on Hamp-Heath in a wheelchair. Once we started, we couldn’t stop, so any mention of a wheel-chair… At one point he had to go out onto the balcony.

He hadn’t had my letter, so it was doubly touching and satisfying that he used my words almost, when he left. He left at 7.30 to go to Billy’s. K. rang at 8.30 to ask for my b. manager’s name. He is so good.

Funny day for Edward – was supposed to go for a job in a sandwich bar in Old Compton St. I heard the tap run at 10.30 and found he’d overslept. He claimed they’d been keeping the job for him while he was in Devon – seems unlikely. Later he came up to get his suit to go to an interview for barman in the cocktail bar at the Regency Hotel in Kensington Grove. He borrowed my chic little book on cocktails.

R. and I continue our serial killer fantasy. I attributed his sleep-over to being up all Saturday night digging.

Tuesday June 23 1992

Lovely, sunny, warm, and it looks as if it is going on.

A nasty day in prospect, as I had to go to see the tax people at Shepherd’s Bush. Same building as for signing on, when I did that, but a different bit. Just a smart office-block with carpets in the lift. Up on the quiet 4th floor, I gave my letter to a girl, who said that someone would come and deal with it in a minute. It was a small room with two glassed-in counters, one to sit at, already occupied, one to stand at, and a bell to ring for attention. Two or three chairs, nobody on them. Rang the bell and the aforesaid girl went away, and a polite young woman appeared; we could have stood at the screen, with the other interview going on at the side, when I should have to strain to hear every word. She went out into the passage and tapped at a door marked engaged, and it wasn’t. She could listen and respond, and was not rule- bound. I told her all, and came out with £5.00 a week and a review after three months. And only a cursory glance at the bank statements. That’s another load at least temporarily lifted. Bought some raspberries, each £1.00 for three large punnets of both.

Back here watched a bit of Wimbledon. Agassi appeared again, with a long blond mane and that enchanting air of serene good will. Caught a glimpse of M. Navratilova, and wondered whether the world shouldn’t be protected from a mad neurotic lesbian multi-millionairess turned loose to wreak her vengeance on an empty world.

In some soap or other, one of the main characters is marrying a girl dying any minute of AIDS – coo, the immorality, so that he’ll be free again any minute to romp sexually having extracted the maximum amount of sentimentality on the cheapest possible terms.

Later.

R. rang at 9.30 to say he’d gone to look at a room in Moray Rd, as big as E’s two sitting rooms, top floor, £75 p.w., owner a woman, going away-abroad? Other rooms may be occupied by musicians and a decision needed tomorrow morning. I told him to go for it, as he really needs a fresh start, - I mean, it comes to something when one’s flat mate loses one a £2000 job by wiping the answer machine, which by the way is Robin’s own.

Mind you, set up sounds a bit strange. I’m just glad he’s looking for somewhere else.

He rang K. to confirm changing the typing-day to Friday. Got Sharron who said K. was at Granada in M’chester at a party! and seeing Snoo Wilson tonight! I think he may have misunderstood and K was at Granada in Soho.

Wednesday June 24 1992

Yes, we’re having a good summer.

To film ‘Paradise’ which has had some savage notices, but simply because of the sort of film it is. I cried a good deal, I thought Don Johnson and his wife gave excellent restrained perfs., the children especially the boy most touching and un-American. I fear some of the savage notices were owing to that hatred of reconciliation still widely prized as evidence of hard sophistication, instead of what it is, exactly the opposite.

Thursday June 25 1992

Much moved to get a letter from K., copy of letter to the bank.

I am writing to let you know.

At this point K rang up to ask me to dinner! that my heavy schedule comes to an end on the 19 July. Perhaps we can arrange a meeting for 12 noon on the 21 of July to discuss all possible means of attack on the overdraft. I hope this date is not too far in the future and that you can keep all of Mr Mackay’s facilities going until then.

A penciled note to me ‘Now this man has a very funny name. All love.

Apart from the loving care, who would have thought that boy, ten years ago, could have written a trenchant letter driving its points into the head and not a word out of place.

Wrote back straight away. Also to the Community Charge who’d asked me to pay three overdue installments, or the order book would be withdrawn. As it was sent to me blank, as, I presumed, an indication that I wasn’t liable to pay anything…

Heavy tonight and humid, - the West End awash with people eating in restaurants, people eating at tables in front of restaurants and people eating. How I now realise the force of being taught in my youth that it was vulgar to eat in the street! The film unusually full being The Player, much hyped from the States, well, it is witty, and more or less uniformly well acted, especially by Tim Robbins (whom I picked out at once in that baseball picture) who gives a subtle deceitful perf. with no moralising, unusual for simple Americans. His appearance is interesting, a round, pale, slightly pudgy face, but, when he has a mud bath, a slim rather girlish-boyish figure. Actually played a scene with an English actress and didn’t become more American. Many stars, about forty, appeared briefly, as themselves, as it’s a satire on Hollywood. And that’s the trouble, that it isn’t really true to its satirical intent. Even on the surface, there are little cracks. For inst. when Whoopi Goldberg first appears fondling an Oscar, (which she has actually won) and parodying an accept-speech, you naturally think she’s playing herself and are quite disconcerted to find she’s the Detective. But, on a deeper level, you cannot have a nasty murder in a satiric piece and preserve the tone. Despite its elegance and genuine wit, the film left a nasty taste in my mouth. No, not because it was supposed to – Oh, how sweet and innocent all these cynical people are! – but because of muddled thinking and failing artistic courage.

Instead of sliding graciously into a taxi – we picked up some things at Janet’s office – Garrick St. was strangely empty and when we were forced down there, so was the Strand, - so much so that in the end we hopped on a 9. It turned out later, there’d been another bomb in the City, and four more scares, so K X and Ox Cir. and many roads were closed. No one hurt. Thank goodness.

Message from R. saying he’d rung K. and said about the typing ‘and I said Am I staying to dinner and K had said I don’t know yet, so ring me.’ So did. He’s seeing a room in Notting Hill – that would be nice - and K. had rung back to say Yes, come to dinner, and tell Angus to come at five and cook it, get him to ring me at midday. Lovely. All I want.

Friday June 26 1992

Still very hot and humid, over 80◦. A busy day. R – was starting to type the play at K’s. I had a restful morning knowing what was ahead and then did a big shop. Four hugely heavy carrier-bags. Shoulder of lamb, £5.17, peas, 2 lbs., beans, lb. four courgettes, raspberries. Got there about five-fifteen, as usual K immersed in music- room. An Indian approached me and asked if Mr. Something lived next door. I said scrabbling for my key, I’ll just ask my hosts, went in, put the four ton bags on the floor. The cat rushed up the hall, jumped on the bags and rushed towards, the open door (and he’s not to be allowed out!) so I was quite flustered and went back to the door shouting back, no back, get back although my whole soul had been geared to coming in silently, and I heard myself saying to the poor Indian ‘I don’t think they’re in’ outside the closed front door. At which K appeared in quiet slight outraged dignity, with the wretched cat in his arms, solved, or rather couldn’t solve, the Indian’s difficulty, and drew me inside, sent me to the kitchen and went back to the music-room!

Humbly settled down to shelling the peas and beans, cleaned the potatoes, - the washing-up had been done for once – got the joint on at six and was still shelling when R. arrived. After that, K. came out of seclusion. Sharron arrived from work looking lovely and slimmer still, - oh dear, I sense she will become socially ambitious if he does well enough, - and the evening took off. They all praised the food rather extravagantly, it was quite ordinary really, but I took off a bit, and got a bit witty, and things started to flow. How odd, I reduced them to tears of continuous laugher for, it seemed, hours to the point that K was saying ‘mind the neighbours’ – we were eating in the garden. When my humour really streams, I never mean to monopolise the talk, I just hope that someone, everyone, will cap and recap my sallies – but they don’t. I leave enough time by my standards for them to come in, but they don’t. That’s why poor Lalla got cross, because she’s never heard any witty talk let alone good wit.

Aside from that, I got all K’s pro-news. He was down at Woking for three days and put a fair bit more music in, S cut quite a lot more, and they were sold out. K. raged away about Christine, how he’d wanted to sack her and S. wouldn’t. But K. is seeing more of the whole picture and is less critical of S., who has to hold all the threads together. K. focuses rightly and intently on his music, but…

Oh he’s been offered by Music House the possibility of writing a sort of anthem for the RNIB. Tricky. As it was, R. and I being verbal beings, couldn’t stop ourselves throwing tasteless puns about. K. was shocked for a moment.

After the rasps, Sharron said she’d make the coffee, - it was about 9.10, - we went on with undiminished brio, but by 9.35, K. asked her where the coffee was, and she said, a bit crossly, ‘I’m everything up for someone with a bad hand’. We didn’t have coffee till 9.45, delicious, and with dear little mints. Nevertheless she had all but cast another blight, making K. ask.

And of course it was because she had to go to work in the morning, and obscurely wished to protest at that fact, and the continuing busyness of K. as against the collapse of her career. Left at eleven. I leave K. always like a little death.

Saturday June 27 1992

R. arrived at lunch-t. Lovely. Artichokes in the garden, - I love my guests sitting in a guest-shaped space in the rosemary bush – it now has the stature of a tree because it is already raised some four feet above the level the table is on. So the sun dapples delightfully through.

I’d rung him at eleven, not able to wait to tell him that Ron Moody had been sacked from Spread a Little Happiness that we see on Monday. He gave a wild orgasmic scream. The biggest reaction I’ve ever witnessed in him. I was interested that his reaction to Dan C is so strong – it does prove that his directorial career is absolutely central to him. I had also read a report of a course that might be adopted by one of our characters – so I said ‘Do you think Sarah could go on a clitoris awareness course?

After all, it couldn’t take long.

So we settled down to work, and cleared up a good deal. He I working so much harder and getting bolder in criticism all the time. If only he knew that that is exactly the effect I wanted to produce. Whatever comes of this play, I think I have increased his confidence. Poached salmon and rasps for dins, after I searched out some videos for him – Edward wasn’t in - and settled in the end for All About Eve, which he’d never seen! and was much taken with. I can’t believe that he’d never heard of it. He loved it ‘it’s slow etc. but it’s theatrical’ and Bette D. is still original in her timing and danger.

He is a dear young man, still in all his youthful physical beauty. Oh, the young.

Sunday June 28 1992

Hot, 83◦, humid. We got up about 11.30, though I’d been about since 7, and R. went off to Clapham to pick up the script of the Freud from Snoo W’s grand Victorian house in The Chase. Came back with it when I was on the phone to Hazel, and was sitting placidly at the table in the garden with the Sunday papers I’d put out, and he’d given himself a glass of wine – oh, how I love my friends paying me the compliment of doing that.

Omelette, salad, rasps. ‘I’ll just sit and read the papers for a bit’. And left at 2.30. I am so lucky in my friends.

Oh, I didn’t say Jimmy Thompson is taking over from Ron Moody. Where has he been? Since B’mouth in 1966.

Monday June 29 1992

To first night of Spread a Little Happiness at the Whitehall. Boilingly humidly hot. An evening made up of Vivian Ellis songs, most of them agreeable and musicianly enough. Tho’ I don’t think his music shows to advantage for a whole evening. Even if they did, the feeble amateurism displayed by most of the cast and the complete lack of production, would have scuppered a much stronger evening. Much of it was inaudible, (to Robin as well!) because the pianos and percussion upstage behind a gauze! were miked, of course, and of course were too loud. And the majority of the nos. relied much on their words. Jimmy Thompson’s much-bruited takeover- gallantly-at-the-last-moment-from Ron-Moody consisted of two numbers, one almost totally ineffective and inaudible ‘Up the Amazon’ – v. funny when done by Denis Lawson - and ‘Small Time’ which from its confidence I take to have been already in his repertoire, his appearance in the opening and closing limited to leaning against the pros. arch for the closing in a rather tentative way, all accompanied by idiot wild bursts of applause. The whole evening, stupidly indulgent audience, was a sad picture of that once proud occasion and West End first night.

That trivial fool. Dan Crawford, underlined his foolishness by making his pre-curtain announcement in his sports-coat as per the King’s Head. I expect I’ll hear someone say how wonderful that he’s the same wherever…….. He is, he is. The more I know of him, the more I understand why he was so beastly to K. Sharp, and totally uncreative, you see, like K’s English master.

That English tennis player who didn’t quite win, when asked Would you have done anything differently? he didn’t say, ‘Yes, I would have won’.

Oh, the importance of games. And I knew it, a serious article saying Wimbledon should abandon grass.

R. was in a pale blue shirt – he should wear a lot of blue while he’s still young, brings up his hair and eyes. Why don’t people think of these things? On the way there, went up to Noel St. off Wardour St., where London Management have moved from Park Lane. Who would ever have thought they’d leave P. Lane? Smart, but much less grand. Asked for the scripts, packets marked

ATTN: ANGUS On behalf of Kevin Malpass.

The humiliation!

Tuesday June 30 1992

On the weather forecast tonight, it was declared that this has been the hottest June since 1976, that bitter summer when I watched D. get weaker and worse. And the tortoises tottered round ceaselessly in the dry heat. All the lawns withered. The pond on the Common half dried up. Such a portent. And poor D. hated the heat. That was unkind of fate.

A financial day. Paid £5 to the IT. Two-booth office empty, nobody there all through. Then to Ealing to get money from Halifax to make up mortgage. Bargain bookshop, stocktaking happily. Paid mortgage. Came back to find Edward had been to job interview, at Ken. Pal. Hotel, barman, 8.30–5, 8–1. That would be good, and he’d get all his meals.

Natasha, from the K Head, who’d sat next to us at the K’s Head show (with a girl who didn’t recognise R. because of having grown his hair) rang with a message for R., gave her K’s no., but she rang back to say she thought it would be ‘too convoluted’ to leave the message on their machine. I saw why, as it was three-fold with lots of tel. nos. and details.

Rang R. and tamely found him in. He must ring me if he’s using my number! R. said there was news of Shades but he’d leave it to K to tell me. ‘Has he got the sack?’ ‘Oh no’. Well.

Forgot to say, that I read something in the paper that led me to say to R. ‘Could one of our characters go on a clitoris awareness course?’

Wednesday July 1 1992

Very dark and heavy. Rang K quickly at 11.30 to ask if it was his Survival on July 10 ’Yes’ ‘When is July 10?’, he said. ‘It’s a Friday’. ‘Next Friday?’

I said ‘I see your first night is on my b’day’. ‘Oh, yes, so it is, - if there is a first night. Didn’t Robin tell you? Pauline has wanted out since the second week of rehearsal. She thinks she’s wrong for it.

I was really disappointed to hear this of Pauline. There are enough silly people in acting as it is. I thought she had more sense and judgment. I am thankful to say that K. has thought S. ‘wonderful’ in dealing with it. He rang Howard from my house – Howard said ‘couldn’t we give her new clothes, and a new set?’ and S. said, ‘Howard, you do not cut off your foot because of an aching tooth’. I’ll hear all the details later. Also hilarious about ringing my bank. Mr Spowart had replied saying he couldn’t manage the 21st because he would be on holiday., ‘Ring my secretary’. So K. did, and someone said ‘Mr Spowart is on a course this week.’ ‘I only want to speak to his secretary!’ ‘I’m afraid she’s on holiday’.

I said, ‘Let’s go off to the South of France with my overdraft’.

Then R. rang and said had I found John Connell’s address. So I rang the Coliseum and got it and rang K. again with it. He said could R. ring him urgently. I said I’d tell him if and when he rang back but he’s at Central School in Holborn and you can’t ring him there. I think he’ll have to ring me every day till the Freud is on.

Later, rang R. and he’d just got in 9.45. Seen house in Kentish Town ‘how sound- proof is the back drawing-room, with the doors closed?’ ‘Not fuck-proof.’ Funny, he’d rung K at 4.0 and seen him at 6.0. Nothing urgent!

I asked him about my letter – it seemed to have troubled him in some way. How? I’d rather upset almost anyone else. Odd. Perhaps he was thrown or tired or both. But still we had a jolly talk.

Thursday July 2 1992

A bit of rain, and not quite so heavy. Wrote to R. and made it all right I hope. Tho’ I don’t know what was all wrong. This p.m. re-wrote and wrote the James-Sarah scene and made myself cry by playing Sarah.

A girl called Ruth James rang, so I sold Freud to her and then wished I hadn’t. She wanted to find out from R. whether it was worth being in or not, though she’d ‘loved’ the what was it called? The song cycle Wedded.

Turns out to be an ex of R’s. ‘We could do better, she’s very self-conscious, that’s her worst thing’. Are there going to be many exs of yours turning up in our lives? How many are there?’ ‘Too many’

He’d been woken suddenly yes. morn. by some man wanting to be in the Freud, and then he’d read my letter. I think there’s still something rankling. What can it be? Don’t know till I look in his eyes tomorrow.

Friday July 3 1992 Saturday July 4 1992

All is well, I think he just had an off day. Anyway, he had my other letter, and that must have been full enough of love and compliments to make anyone feel confident against anything!

Really it gets better and better. He brought the typescript of all but the last scene. Quite contrary to my expectation, I found it improved. I know Roy had said that happened, but I didn’t believe it. I thought I’d see the holes, but I didn’t. There is still so much to do. We had a heavenly evening. It is indeed kind of heaven to send me another such friend. Especially when K. and all the others are so busy. I read the TS after I went to bed, and he told me this morning he’d heard me laughing. He’d made many small additions and changes all much for the better, and some new funny lines. He has a distinct quiet wit of his own. Thank goodness we have a solid friendship now.

Tonight out to dinner with John N. So lovely to see him after so long. I don’t suppose he remembers that it is three months since I saw him. It used to be once a fortnight. He came here with a bottle of gin, and was disappointed the wine hadn’t been delivered. Then off we went in a smart white car, pretty new. Simon’s company car. He hadn’t got a car anymore – there, you see, he is a friend of mine, he decided it was an unjustifiable expense in London. I would never have believed John of all people would give up his car. A straw in the wind.

We went to La Famiglia in Langton St. opp a specially smart looking bit. Two shops knocked together with the usual faintly Georgian fronts which open like a bistro. White walls, half-tiled with some faint blue line somewhere, a few pictures black and white mostly, too far to see what they were. First waiter a little too forward, we soon put a stop to that, but of course with American tastes more and more in the ascendant, anything with any dignity left, will soon be a thing of the past. Tables too close together, but enjoyed the evening v. much, apart from John, except that most of the customers were too rich for me. By apart from John I mean that he is one of my dearest and truest friends. I still trust K. to him, if I died tomorrow.

Roast boar on menu. As I might never be offered even false Roast Boar again, I had that. First, crab salad, delicious especially because it’s such a bore to do oneself. Then the boar, thinly sliced quite pleasant pork, pale, just pork. I cannot believe that r. boar is not a bit more like grouse than chicken. Still, it was only £10.50 so I suppose it hadn’t been caught by men with spears on horseback. Then a tasty fruit- tart with red and black currants, and straws and rasp. I relished it, but only because I have had really a lot of straws and rasps au naturel. I cannot understand people who never have them alone. They are one of the sublime dishes of the world along with cream and a little sugar, when they are at their English best, as they have been this summer.

He is to be promoted, taking over the B.O., publicity etc etc as well as his present job. I hope it is promotion and not making use of him. He told me that the situation at Diana’s remains the same, the three children still in bed in separate rooms. Four meals a day and I suppose they’re 25 stone each by this time. He drove me home and I had that perfectly un-full feeling of a good meal.

Monday July 6 1992

R. rang in a.m. to give me my instructions. ‘I’ve arranged your afternoon for you really’.

So off I set, first to K’s for some cassettes for his agent, and a script and cassette for Sheila Cuff at Carmen Jones. Put my key in the door, he came straight out with the padded envelopes, handed them to me. I said goodbye and left! S. was inside. Both of us took a pleasure in the laconic exchange. I decided to go straight to the Old Vic and left the cassette and script there, and then back on the Northern line to Tott. Court Rd. and delivered the cassettes to London Management, and picked up the screen scripts and down to Leicester Sq., hoping to find a Ryman to get some A4 paper, but forgot it’s a Spaghetti House. And then up to K’s with the scripts. No one in. Left him a note saying my tube fares total £10.50, so it figures using an old messenger for a no-budget production.

R. rang tonight to sum up, but not only that, to say that his sister and bro-in-law would be going on holiday in August and we could go there for a week together and finish the play properly as I said weeks ago, thinking of K. and I in that painful, resonant, exhausting, vivid fortnight at – Kilburn.

Tuesday July 7 1992

Felt empty. Went to stupid film. Alan Bennett praised Joan Sanderson! Always totally competent but with that silly little reppy squark in her voice which had insufficient basis in real life, always third-rate. She was referring to a mode of speech which she had insufficiently mastered. Competent in that she always firmly did what she had decided to do. Not an artist.

Wednesday July 8 1992

Plaintive messages from K on machine by ten! It was going to be the Farringdon message that R., ‘I’ll ring you in five minutes’. He did, in one of his blind rages, because someone had badly let him down. In these moments, nothing will make it better, he has to concentrate on it to get rid of it and even the slightest attempt to distract or ameliorate, gets a savage response. But I know now.

When I got there, he was chomping toast and marmalade in the kitchen. He said forbiddingly, ‘You’re lucky you came in one of my three minute breaks’. He was wearing only a t-shirt and baggy y-fronts. It seemed to me he had a bit of a hard on but that must have been my imagination, as there was nobody in the house but the cat…. He gave me the pile of two hundred throwaways and told me, the wanker’s defection means he has to re-arrange his schedule, ‘and I took a day off from Shades specially’.

So I set off to distribute the throwaways around every West End theatre. In the pouring rain. I must say I was struck not so much by the number of theatres closed, tho’ there are a few, but by the number of theatres that stopped me putting the things in the racks. And by the undeniable inescapable fact that the audiences going to most of those plays and musicals, wouldn’t have the remotest interest in a musical about Freud written in the Snoo Wilson manner. Very few West End theatres have anything other than West End hits in their publicity racks. Coo, I was tired at the end of it all. Went to Selfridge’s to pay account, then bus to Strand, Adelphi and Vaudeville, then Aldwych and from there back thro’ W.E. to Picc. Circ. and home. I get stiff these days.

Yesterday watched the first of Philip’s soap, Oh dear.

Thursday July 9 1992

Warm again. Rather fraught day, as there were a series of messages for Robin, but he never rang. And one message specially worried me as it was from London Lighthouse asking for publicity details, ‘as we have to get the details out before the weekend.’ So rang K, and he was beside himself because R. hadn’t rung up, and so we went backwards and forwards, wondering what R was up to. He’d said to me he was going to be at Billy’s and he wasn’t.

In the end, I wrote a wedge of the play whilst waiting, spurred on by a wedge of a letter of five pages from R. arrived this a.m. And he rang about 9.30 and we talked for about half an hour. On youth, he’s worked all day at the Notting Hill studio, and comes home to sort out the flat before moving on Sunday, and starting rehearsals on Monday. A lovely talk, much of the play. What a joy he is to me.

K rang at 11.30 to say could I take a script to Dave Threlfall. Oh dear, I can’t see Simon getting on with him. How lucky I am to have both of them.

Friday July 10 1992

Pleasant tiring day. To Covent Garden for the Royal Ballet School perf. I have gone to this for so many years and thought I would have to miss it this time, and then Sandra turned up with a ticket for it. Signs of the times, after this one perf. at the Garden, there will only be two perfs. at Holland Park, instead of the usual week.

It turned out that Paul was there too, which was lovely (especially as I asked him to lunch and he refused, so that it looks as if I’d had him to lunch, when I can’t really afford to have him at all.) I bought a sausage-roll at a sandwich-shop opposite the back of the Opera House, just past Books etc., he put it in the micro-wave, 95p, and it was piercingly hot, unlike the usual.

I was in the first circle. I’m not sure the prog. showed the school to the greatest advantage. I quite see that they wanted to make the most use of the big stage, so they put on two twenty minute ballets and the 2nd Act of Swan Lake. That’s rather like doing the 3rd Act of Hamlet, and two other classic plays with one or two leading parts, if it were a drama-school. I would have thought a series of dances giving a much greater variety of chances, and a chance to tell which dancer is which. As it was, you could only identify the Prince and the Swan etc. And there was nothing remotely comic in the entire morning. But the standard was decidedly good all round this time, but no striking personalities, and the two ‘Princes’ pretty awful, one with a silly small head and the other with pudgy completely uncultured thighs. I did pick a fair boy with a quaff of hair, a good jump, a together body and a joyous smile in the Morris dance, the Lower School, no names. And the Odette, Pamela Smith, good arms.

Later.

Back here I settled down to wait for K’s Survival Special, video recorder poised. R. is at that Notting Hill Studio, earning money to take on his new room. Poor little thing. The survival was as usual fascinating, apart from K’s music. Goodness, the sturgeon’s roe is huge, no wonder it became caviar. Again, though I certainly don’t want all music, and certainly no funny music, as in those jokey Disney nature films, there were again sequences, like those deer rushing forward in millions when you longed for music. But his music is beautiful, tactful, perfect.

Rang at 10.30 to say various messages and that I was free over the weekend, - and got him. So we had a little chat about Survival. He said he’d poked his nose in for the first minutes of the first preview ‘and they laughed’. Good, though I don’t know what at much. So we finished by him saying could I get to him by 9.30 as he’d got a lot for me to do. Good. He does believe me.

Saturday July 11 1992

I am so tired. But very happy.

Sunday July 12 1992

Yes, well I was up, shaved, dressed, with my hand on the door to go out, when he rang to say I needn’t come. So I sat down rather stunned and read The Spectator, feeling that time might pass and I might know what to do with this suddenly empty and unexpected morning, up three hours earlier than usual. Half an hour later, he rang that he did want me. Got there, about 10.45, first to Chappell’s in Bond St. to get £13 worth of music MS. Walked all round West End to find a stationer and a photo-copy shop. No stationer the length of Bond St., Picc., or glancing up Regent. I knew there were a few in Soho etc., but time was going on, and the ones I knew were open in Holloway Rd. might close. As I thought every one I found of either, were closed. That was why I left the score of three or four numbers at the house. He gave me a rueful smile and said You forgot it, but I was back with it repro’d and getting the lunch in half an hour.

I went to the shop he used to work in, and got the stationery, the repro’ing done, and a talk about K. I could see he was the sort of man who’d get up K’s nose but that’s not to say he was all that unpleasant! I drew him out, he certainly hadn’t forgotten K! ‘He took time to get used to a different sort of work and it got to the point where we shouted at one another and I said ‘Let’s sit down and talk about it’. ‘Why haven’t you sacked me?’ I could see he wasn’t an ordinary boy, he had a strong personality’ He was quite thrilled to hear of K’s success.

After lunch I sat for a couple of hours, sticking the orchestra score together on the MS and was just thinking I’d finished and I could take the score to Phil Lawrence for scoring. And go home and lie down. ‘There’s another no. to take and be repro’d and then stuck in.’ So off I went again, with the possibility of going back again to get it repro’d with K’s corrections and emendations only I thought we couldn’t manage it before the shop closed. And so it proved – there was someone before me on the machine, and then it went wrong and printed two A3 sheets instead of A4. So I didn’t get back till five to five and the shop closed at five. Even on the tube it took me ten minutes or more. And the machine going wrong and the hurry, meant I’d missed a sheet. So I stuck it and left for Phil’s in Leytonstone. I’d never been there before and hope never to go again. The grey nothingness. I walked back a different way, hoping. It was a huge cleft with a dual carriageway at the bottom of forty-four high cement walls, like a tunnel without a ceiling. It was called Church Lane.

I got home about eight-fifteen, with legs that had started to stop working. He remembered my birthday in the middle of it all with a dear smile of self- congratulations at his thoughtfulness and amazing unselfishness. A golden day, for all the aching legs.

Sunday July 12 1992

K. rang to see if I was all right. And said he didn’t want me today, which was a relief, to know, - otherwise I listened for the telephone all day.

R. rang later and touched me to the heart, by saying it was the first call he’d made from his new place and he wanted it to be to me. And he said he was having some keys cut, and would I go in on Tues and Wed and unpack for him. That is friendship indeed – I am surprised and delighted. How lucky I am. We talked for ages.

The Serial Killer starts work tomorrow so that’s a relief to have him out of the house for a definite period. He said it was 8.30 to 5 and then 8 – 1, but that can’t be, I expect he’s got it wrong, but at least I’ll have a bit of definite time alone.

I am overcome again by R’s trust.

And I’m thinking and hoping for a good week’s rehearsal for K.

Monday July 13 1992

Dull, muggy, a little drizzle. R. rang just before lunch, and I said I’d be up there after. He asked me to pick up some scripts from London Management. Went to shops quickly, set out at ten to 3 and got to H’stead at quarter to five, having found nobody knew anything of scripts at Lon. Man. At Swiss Cottage, suddenly jumped on by R. – was he waiting for me, surely not - and taken up to the ramshackle rehearsal room, things lying across the rafters, shelves with anything on. Sat at the back and pasted again, and gulped in that mixture of tension and boredom and creation and investigation and endless controlled laughter, that is the rehearsal air I never breathe now. Later went off to try and get keys cut for R. but shop was shut at five. Left at quarter to six with R. who kissed me and said I haven’t seen you for ages; eight days actually.

So a rather under-unemployed day, but only by chance. Phil Lawrence taking singing rehearsals, his coarseness is good for jollying a disparate collection of people through the drudgery of learning a fairly difficult chorus or two. K. is very clever, sitting aside, shaping the crude clay. His quiet utterly unobtrusive authority always takes me unawares.

Even today made my legs a bit tired.

R. hadn’t rung and I had an actor’s message so rang K briefly who gave me R’s new no. – R hadn’t got the van or done his move – no time, one sentence with each.

Tuesday July 14 1992

So R. rang and said ‘What are you doing this morning?’ so off I went to K’s to look for a floppy disk he’d left behind. Nothing there. Rang theatre to see where it might be. In the key-board? No isn’t there a box index of them somewhere? No. Isn’t it on the keyboard? Nothing on the keyboard but a Kit-Kat. Nothing on the 24 track but an empty Ampex box. In the kitchen? No.

I finally found it between the keyboard stand and the box the screen stands on, on the floor, under a file.

I got to the theatre at five to one. I left the house at 10.25. Stopped off at H’smith to pay my £5, got to K’s about 11.30, ten mins or so finding it and phoning backwards and forwards then tube to K X , change to Baker St. change, Swiss Cottage. Met Bruno on the tube between K X and B St., with Brunge. Moved in with friend John two months, so now lives in Crouch end. Had seen Shades and thought K’s music the best thing about it, ‘It’s staged like Traviata, but the music, besides being beautiful, is in scale with the piece.’

They were ploughing through a chorus which was quite difficult, full of awkward intervals but of course they may not be awkward to younger and more musical people. There was Janet Amsden, curious dim smiling figure in S’s life, no doubt. I seem a similar figure to her.

Mouthed to Paul sitting next to Roy’s Marian – how odd – where’s K, and he said in the theatre. I went down, appeared briefly on the stage and handed over the precious disk. To my great amusement, when I met R in the pub for lunch the first thing he said was ‘K is going home after lunch to go on working, and then taking Denis Lawson thro’ his nos from 4 to 6.’ As far as I know he hadn’t used the disk at all, so my two hours traffic through the West End was a bit pointless.

So K. joined us for lunch, and accepted a sandwich after an initial refusal. I never had such a strong picture of his concentration as this lunch time when I kept seeing his attention drawn back to the work, as a compass is drawn back to the north. Three huge shoulder-bags, tottered off home to take Denis Lawson thro’ the solo numbers from 4–6.0. Handed his cheque card to R. who handed it to me to draw £100. R. had paid for my ham sandwich and wine. K. had let me off any further work! – R. said he would pick up a tape and script and deliver it to Henry Goodman (who he?) at the National for him to consider overnight. I see R. thinking K. is insensitive to get me to come to Elfort Rd, at ‘6.0 – no 7.0 to go to the National, is that all right?’ It’s sweet of R., but it is all right. Not that I’m not grateful to be saved an exhausted evening.

Also finally got his keys cut for R., though even at the last minute the rather curmudgeonly key-cutter has seemed again to stymie me – Closed till 3 o’clock. So I had half an hour to kill. Went round two book-shops, odd, but Finchley Rd etc is odd. One was all psycho-analytical, the other had a rotating six-foot high picador book stand with only one book in it. So I went and had a coffee in the nice little Italian Café. Two lesbians having highly spiced sausage and mash at three next me. Funny little gnat-like old man darted across thru four tables before settling on one, where he studied a map exhaustively.

So to key-shop. Turned out be a fast developing eccentric, balding, stooped, but must be twenty years younger than me. Chuntered. Paid him. I never look at my change, so I was surprised when a young man ran after me and said the man had paid me too much change. £5 too much as it turned out. Of course I felt like a crook, and thought the young man a busybody. ‘What do you do?’ I said. ‘I’m an account’, ‘Oh fuck’ I said.

It’s only one up from working for the Inland Revenue.

I was amazed that the Chubb keys cost £5 each.

Went on pasting up the score, a simple job and one that I can do, and save time and possibly money.

Good gracious, it’s thirty years since I walked back across the mainline Waterloo station, on my way back from three or four weeks alone at the cottage, hands swollen with hard work, very brown, looking forward to D coming back, and stopped at that table that man kept with the evening papers and read that Marilyn M. had died. I was fond of her work in a mild sort of way – I remember How to Marry a Millionaire with pleasure – but the main reason for the disbelief I felt, was because we were the same age. She, I and the queen. She couldn’t be dead, she was born in 1926. She was 36 and so was I.

Left a message at R’s new place, and was rather dashed to hear one of the women answer, - it’s obviously a shared line. What does that mean for his answering machine? I’d better say, he must use this as his business number. K rang to say we’d have lunch together!

Wednesday July 15 1992

Sixty-six today. Gracious. To Hampstead at ten, to find no-one there but K. R., and the drummer and pianist.

Sat down at the table and waited. K. sent R. to repro, some more stuff, while four women showed up, Janet Amsden among them. I’d forgotten what a raw fool she is in her social attitudes. She began to sing Happy Birthday to you, and what I afterwards found to be the idiot….

You know it’s a double U when you go Wh! Wh! Wh!

66. 1992. 31 ?76. 2002. 41 ?86. 2012. 51 ?96. 2022. 61

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 113

July 15 1992 (cont.) – August 30 1992.

Wednesday July 15 1992 (cont.) pianist, joined in until I viciously stopped him.

Listened to the girls rehearsing an excellent no. – Fire in the title - he really can do it. He is more mature, and although I recognise much of the tone of the old days, he drives the musical points more simply home. R. came back with the repros. but there was no MS paper. They thought Phil L must have taken it away. So poor R. had to go off to get some because of having a car. The really irritating thing is that there probably was a place within striking distance, but who knows where? I said I got it from Chappells and he made a face, but when he got back two hours, nearly, later, that’s where he’d had to go.

In the middle of a very busy rehearsal, with the chorus-master away, so K. had to do the flogging through the nos for accuracy, which he hates, he came over and gave me Sharron’s present, - which turned out to be two beautiful things, not surprisingly. A short thick candle, made of real beeswax? – certainly of a dense clear pale yellow. And a notebook of handmade paper, made in South India from recycled cotton and rice husk, the paper thick and with a marked surface flecked with brown and cream, lovely to write on. I think I will use it for my verses.

Oh, Snoo Wilson turned up, with a ridiculous thatch of bleached hair. Tall, pompous, affected in his unaffectedness, he waved to me, he condescended to come over and talk, he remembered me. So we talked less uneasily than ever before, for about ten minutes. He’s like an Army Officer hobnobbing with the other ranks. Hasn’t seen or read Shades. So I started pasting when R. got back, and then lunch. Nice boring young couple Neil Roberts and Liz Hollinder, who’ve been married for five years, and are only 27 and 28, lookalikes – were there, too, but I had five mins with K. ‘Sorry you had to wait around, and on your birthday’. ‘Being in the same room with you working and me helping. I can’t imagine a better treat’. I had to say it again, but he believed me and melted. It’s always interesting to me that D. and I have always found that literal truth is the most unbelievable thing to most people.

I was also most touched that R. kept the young couple at the bar for the five mins K and I had together. I think it was deliberate, in any case, it was restful.

K. went back, I regaled the nice dull couple with a few chic stores to keep them at a distance, and build up R, K and S’s legends, and went back. I went out to get some dividers etc at W. H. Smith and did some quick shopping at Sainsbury’s, and then came back and pasted up the score of three numbers, - that took about an hour and a half, and I was free at quarter past four.

Oh, how I relish being part of a rehearsal, even this much …

Three happy returns messages from R., and a card this morning. Michaelangelo’s David, cock and all, with a bunch of flowers and a handbag, entitled Camp David. Sweet message including, ‘It’s because of you that I’m involved with all of this, and it’s because of you that my life has taken a sharp turn for the better over the last twelve months. For that, I can never thank you enough!

When I think of today, I shall think of that – that’s worth my year – but I shall remember K’s turning to me as I came in to say ‘Happy Birthday’, coming over to give me Sharron’s present, taking time off for lunch. All in the context of his compass always going back to the North of his work. I think, possibly, only I know how extraordinary is that turning aside even for a moment, for anything. I am so lucky. Oh a message from S. on phone!

Thursday July 16 1992

Yes, S. sang Happy B’Day to you. That is a treat for special friends, because he cannot sing in tune. (But I don’t believe that, I think it’s a residual part of his early lack of confidence, some possible definite insecurity like a terrible music–master, and most of all, his extreme love of music. He cannot be tone deaf because he’s such a good mimic. If you can adjust your larynx for one purpose exactly, you can do so for another.) He murmured some few words of deep betrayal or some such phrase. I fear Pauline has proved herself to be John Alderton’s wife.

So I wrenched myself to my feet and got to Hampstead by 11.45. Neither K. nor R were there. Phil was beating everyone thro’ Save Us. This seemed to go on for ages, and was deafening . However, I didn’t have to bear it long. When I gave R. the file, he said have you brought the scripts? Which I hadn’t because I knew there would be something else to do and one journey instead of two - and there was. Tho’ in the end, I regretted it!

I first went to Turnstile; the office opens directly off the little landing of the lift, a big square very light room, with four desks, three occupied by people apparently frozen to their telephones, quite silent, and a girl typing, also silent, as it was an electric machine. I contemplated this impressive scene for a moment. The typist looked up and said ‘Can I help you?’ ‘Louise’. She pointed to the fortyish lady opposite her. I said I’ve called for the photocopying paper. She gestured to a cardboard box on the sofa without looking up. I picked it up and left, a dismissed errand boy. I am always amused by this sort of thing, because it is always people like this who are the first to be all over you when they find out you are the secretary of S’s Co. especially as it is a position of no significance!

The box was too heavy to be carried on one hand, too bulky to be put under one arm, and had no handles to lighten the load. So I carried the box through the boiling hot morning to Wardour St. I staggered in and put the big box down on the comfortable sofa and thanked God for my friends’ having a grand agent. So I said to the nice dull girl – receptionist that it would be a Christian act to find me a carrier –bag. She found me one for the scripts, it broke before I’d got out of the diner! – door. I struggled through the moist crowds in Oxford St. to Tottenham Court Rd. station. At the theatre I found R at the stage-door, and put the lot in his hands and said I suppose you won’t be satisfied until I have a heart attack in Wardour Street.

So In the p.m. I was set to go out and get enough dividing files to make up the orchestra scores, five binder files, staple the music MS together back to back for easy solid turnover, then ring-punch each page, and index properly. That took two and a half hours, but sitting down, thank god.

Left at 6.10. Sat down.

Friday July 17 1992

R. had said get there at coffee break, and when I did, he said he wanted me to go to Studio Spares, in a street behind Simon’s house, backing on to his garden almost to get two DAT tapes, two hours each if possible. Can you get back before lunch? Even R. didn’t really care. So off I went and trudged the ten min. walk and back. A sign outside but no display as it’s for pros only. Inside, just a factory with a counter, a few wires clamped to a board, all different colours. A man my age, to my faint surprise, and a dark rather hairy youngish man, 36, in an intense personal relationship with a keyboard. How much longer it takes to key in a bill than to write it!

Tapes in a nice clear plastic bag, half the size of an ordinary cassette, £17.

Back at the treadmill, R. was preparing to go to the Nat. Theatre wardrobe at Brixton to get the dinner-jackets, and some more things, so he would be away for the afternoon, hiring a van etc. and he left me a list of things K. wanted.

1. Photocopy 2 scripts. 2. Make 2 copies of every number from the vocal score except 1A, 1B and 1C 3. Be me and sort out problems.

Before he went he took me up to the office, (as usual in theatres, even an old pre-fab theatre like this, that people think should be knocked down and expensively rebuilt, the ‘offices’ are the best, most spacious, best lighted rooms in the building. They are cleaner than the dressing rooms, for instance, the girls wear very nice clothes, actors wear nothing much.

He showed me the photo-copying machine, no doubt the ultimate in humdrum utility, but to me complicated not only with its own technological complication, but with my tense stomach-clenching worry over not doing it properly, perhaps wasting time, paper and the goodwill of H’stead. The worst I managed was to press what I thought were the right knobs, but they didn’t seem to work, so I pressed something again, the silly thing with these modern machines is the pre-programming, out come 49 copies instead of 7.

Useful rough paper, but I felt hot.

Took it all back and he was grateful. But I had to go back four or five times to do other bits, and as usual, I had been too polite to Lizzie the small neat pretty underling in the office who had helped me kindly.

However, when I sat with him at the very end, at 6.15, (the end for me but not for him, he had had a band call at Phil’s at Leytonstone Thur. night till 12.0 and again tonight) I had all the reward I want. The last bit of music he wanted me to copy, he was just scribbling the chords on, - we were alone, in that cluttered prop-room, and he looked up and said, without quite looking at me ‘I’m so thirsty. I haven’t had anything to drink all day’. I ran to the little shop in the tube-station and got three chilled tins of Tango and an orange and pineapple something. Oh, it was lovely to see him drink it. And then R. came back with the clothes and the benches. And he had the other one. (I didn’t have one.)

I left them, leaning over both of them with love, and being let off tomorrow!

I forgot completely to say that S. was here today. He was sitting conferring with R. in the theatre café. He made to embrace me. I said ‘Paul Johnson may be watching’ I mentioned Pauline – he rested his forehead on my chest. Said we’d go to M. MacLiammoir at NFT but he had to go to dinner with? After. I recognised his parity also, when he said he’d asked Maria ‘to get him some acting work’ and did a little wriggle. Poor dear.

Saturday July 18 1992

My day off. Got immediately drunk, cooked myself a delicious meal of fish cakes, runner beans, peas, new pots and raspberries, and Sank gratefully into bed with a Delano Ames.

Sunday July 19 1992

I am in such a RAGE

Monday July 20 1992

I don’t want to describe the whole painful thing. Only to say that I spent all this work including copying and stapling all the programmes this afternoon, on a ‘musical’ that had K.’s superb music beautifully done, and a would-be-facetious sixties-fringe script, which thinks many mentions of penis is exciting, I presume, and Hitler having a scene with Freud interesting? It’s impossible to tell, as every time the play took over, it didn’t. It remained flat on the floor because he has no theatre sense. You could hardly hope for a more intelligent or indulgent audience than H’Stead on a Sun. night, when everyone in the audience knew someone in the cast. (Not that they are intelligent, but you couldn’t hope for more). It wasn’t anything. R. tells me S. said to Denis L. in the interval that he was sorry. Hm. I was so angry I just had one word with K. and left. Today I was still liable to go off pop so wrote a note to S. and took it up to the house. I did not trust myself to speak to him. Even as it was, the letter included ‘witless jejune ineptitude’. Very close and heavy.

Tuesday July 21 1992

Very irritating end to the day. Yesterday R. rang to ask me to come up and see the new place and the old. I was touched to the core. Also Paul rang to say that Sandra had seats for the a.m. rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet at the Garden. R. said he’d try and come but I knew he couldn’t really – he’d just got back from Chichester, having left London at 6.0 to take the sound equipment back, and driven through the storm. Oh, yes, my rage made me forget to say that there was a terrific storm yesterday. Torrential rain and a sudden wind. I opened the back-door and saw the rain being blown sideways like a blizzard, so that I could hardly see the houses opposite. I’ve never seen that to quite such a frightening degree so his drive must have been a strain. And in fact he didn’t make it. Just as well, as he was finishing off moving and doing an afternoon’s work at that studio, and the curtain went up an hour late. Paul and I were in a box, no 36, stage right. Boxes are a delightful invention. To my amazement, a single Mohican haircut young man climbed over from the next box to ask if he could sit in what is the worst seat. He looked frightening but was as mild as a newt. Kittens are not mild. We had been warned that the principals would be in costume but no one else. I must say I rather liked the effect, a sort of combination of West Side Story and RandJ. When the curtain went up, down the stairs came a radiant young man, in a deeply décolleté grey-blue singlet, making his broad shoulders broader, and loose clear vermillion trousers, rapier at the ready, blond hair flopping from a centre parting above a perfect twenty-two? year old face. Romeo? No, the back row of the corps. The perf. is going to be goodish. I needn’t say anything of ballet or score. Need I? I think it’s as good as it can be. But the perf: Laurent Hilaire moved me even at this scratch rehearsal. Stephen Jefferies is excellent as Mercutio, as good as anyone, acting and dancing. But Sylvie Guillem? For once, the ordinary on dit is true, now that I’ve seen her in a part where feeling and its expression is really all; the technique is flawless, except that every step is pushed that little bit further to prove – what? And there, above it all, is that tight, slopeaway inexpressive cross little face.

She came on for the marriage scene in huge black plastic ski-trousers. All that to keep her muscles warm on a very humid day with the temperature over 80◦?

We went out in the second interval and got huge baps six inches across from that shop opposite the back of the Opera House that they’re re-building. The bit that was added on ten years ago. Mine had four or five slices of beef and a lot of mustard – I thought of R. - and Paul’s had an omelette in it, herby, but goodness knows what herbs, dusty sage and thyme no doubt.

We came out at 2.30, and I zoomed off home to get my pension and dole and pay the £3 to the IT, and realise thankfully that I had a lot of food in, because Paul hadn’t come to lunch.

So off I set to Moray Road, and found myself in Fonthill Rd for the first time since 1946–7. Only superficially changed, except in one respect, all the shops have heavy grills over their windows. I suppose it is difficult to persuade anyone now, that, when we went to Glasgow in 1961 on tour with Wildest Dreams, we had only seen such grills on jewelers shops, and not always then. I turned off before Tollington Park, into Moray road, with those four story terraced houses that only seem to occur in North London in quantity. No 57 looked well cared for and proved to be so. I let myself in with my key – it worked, and it all looked spruce and newly decorated. And there was R. coming out of the communal sitting room and kitchen that ruins the double drawing-room, but one mustn’t think like that. ‘Communal’ is such an awful word and of course there’s a communal garden, too. Could be very petty, even a little pond full of leaves and too much weed. I offered to do it, and think it would not be too much work, as it is mostly a matter of freeing plenty of good plants. A beautiful bank of rue for instance with that lovely grape bloom. We, R, Zoe and I climbed the four flights, - youth, youth. I told him about Barefoot in the Park on the way, so that I could enjoy my breathlessness – a big room a quarter as long again as my sitting- room, with a window at either end. It looks furnished not at all makeshift, with his desk at the back window, with a nice leather desk-chair, ‘from Candida’. There isn’t a single unpleasant object in the room, and, for someone his age, masses of books, some on the stairs. On the other side of the tiny landing, a loo, basin and shower. So he is virtually independent, especially if he gets a Baby Belling.

So I saw a bit more of Zoe, - she is a delicately featured pretty girl, with a sad wistful resigned expression. No doubt the result of living with an intransigent parent. And indeed a moment or two after I thought this, she said she had to leave ‘to have dinner with my father’.

Have I recorded R’s telling me of their Barretts of W. St. relationship? R. thinks she will leave home when she goes to Wimbledon. I hope so. You can’t be sure, with these unnatural relationships. And what it must be with actual incest!?

So she left and we went over to Wightman Road so that I could see it as he left it. Certainly the road is very busy and hard to cross, and though there is an immaculately pretty garden two floors down, there are trains running fairly constantly at the bottom of it.

Nothing squalid till the door-frame of the living-room turned out to be lath and plaster. ‘And this is the bath-room. He stripped the walls and was going to put a new surround to the bath two years ago’. And in the sitting-room there was a three- shelved bookcase with nothing but videos of Star-trek. His old room was about as big as my bedroom, with a big cupboard window seat. ‘I built that and kept all my clothes in it… You can see why I couldn’t ask you here.’ Not so much because of the room or the space but Star Trek.

On the way back we bought some gin and whisky (‘oh you’ve bought my favourite, how did you know?) and I suggested I stay to dinner, buying some fish and chips from the shop on the corner, so he wouldn’t have to buy anything. And it was one of those very successful ideas that happen spontaneously. We ate up in the flat on our knees. We talked a bit of the Freud and a bit of this and that, and I left in time for him to go to his residents meeting at ten. I walked round Tottington Park and looked at Mr and Mrs King’s house. A garage in the mews under my room. What was under it then? Those few houses are earlier than the others, I think. About 1840. The walk to the tube seems much longer! Oh, yes, there were decayed horse boxes with mangers and half-doors.

R. said to me I must come there whenever I like. He has really let me into his life, and I am much touched. I scribbled on a bit of paper that I’d been waiting for K and R., instead of Donald and Daddy, and Turley and Gout.

Wednesday July 22 1992

Rather drunk, just back from Roy and Marian. So to sober up, various notes, some delayed because of ‘Blue Vienna’. When I came back tonight I turned on an ‘OUT’ prog. I’d taped because it had an extract from Angels in America at the Cottesloe. Flash – a rather limp gay, who had lived with a rather flamboyant black artist – rather flamboyant blacks do seem to be attracted by limp suburban gays – describing their first meeting, in a markedly insipid voice, ’He was in bright yellow leather trousers, a black leather cap and a huge portfolio’.

On July 19 on the way to Staple programmes, I saw a Chinese boy in singlet and pony-tail NM Express in hand. Does he know the archetypal Chinkie of the music- hall had a pig-tail?

On Fri. 19, saw Mavis Nicholson interviewing her sister about their mother’s descent into Alzheimers. Does one need further evidence of M.N.’s transparent simplicity than that?

I knew I would have a good evening with Roy and M. because I was in that mood, and I needed release and the moment I got there I saw they were the same. A large – huge – gin and tonic in my hand at once, Roy in the kitchen, -, I for once twenty mins late, he, for once, ready with the meal at the proper – i.e. – my – time. Of course there’s tension between them, but he obviously behaves better when I’m there!

Tagliatelle with cheese and mushroom sauce, boned lamb stuffed with nasty dried herb-dust and too much garlic for me, but the lamb was delicious in itself. Blackberry tart, picked by himself, and with latticed pastry on the top. Five sorts of cheese. All by him, but I love her, a real reppy actress and a lot more beside. And realistic. When I left, she’d packed up a parcel consisting of three or four hunks of cheese, salad dressing, a hunk of the blackberry tart, and the end of the lamb. Two meals. Nevertheless he depends on me – I did enjoy this carefree evening.

Thursday July 23 1992

K’s and S’s first night. ‘Shades’ at Albery. For the first time, didn’t send even a card. He never acknowledges them. Never gives me a special time to comment on the play – vide Carmen Jones – the last present was a rather special prog. at Lyric Ham. Infernal Machine. He never mentioned it. He forgets how long he lets go by.

At last got my hair cut, - it was the longest it’s ever been because of the Freud. Comic because it’s only at the back and no-one else notices. K. rang about five and said did I want to go. I said No, knowing that if he wanted me to go, he’d ask me. Very sweet. Told him about talk to S. He said he was really looking forward to tomorrow, and could he make it dinner instead of lunch because he had to go to Music House in the day. ‘More time’. Lovely.

Later S. rang , but I didn’t answer as it was a message for Robin apart from anything else, to say not Mon Plaisir (too dear? who knows?) Ruby-in-the-Dust. 102. Campd. High St. Also told a new MacLiammoir story ‘Have you ever considered getting married?’ ‘Yes, yes, I have.’ ‘Was there a particular objection in that instance?’ ‘Yes. He was a Protestant’.

Later again, J. Slade rang up. He’d been to the Royal Garden Party, and got into the Princess of Wales’ bit, because he’d never seen her. He said she looked beautiful, not thin or ill or unhappy or anything. As she came nearer, one petal-hatted lady said, to another ‘oh – she’s in biscuit’.

To film with dear Janet – she’d refused Shades too – Harrison Ford in something, such a silly piece of thriller rubbish. Still, we were spared the Queen coming to the American hero’s bedside to present him with the KCVO, which apparently happens in the book! Found a bit of paper on which I scribbled my feelings as I sat slurping wine and watching two horror films which providentially happened to be on, - so I could dull a good many outraged senses together – I wrote:

Horror film knows its audience and humbly pleases them. He knows nothing of any audience and cares less for them. Hideously selfish and self-indulgent. AND BORING. RAGE.

Friday July 24 1992

Oh the heaven of a whole evening. And what an evening!

‘I could only tell you my new agent made a pass at me. I took her for a walk in St James’s Park.’

Ate large plate of straws. Think, years ago. I don’t care about anyone – well I do, but if only one, him.

Saturday July 25 1992

R. is asleep in the sitting-room, and I have a moment to write about yesterday.

We didn’t talk about money at all. He rang to ask if I wanted anything, and brought a bottle of gin, a bottle of whisky, a bottle of Fleurie. It isn’t just the generosity, it’s the grace.

After we settled down, and he’d looked round and taken his shoes and socks and trousers off, and dangled his feet in the pool, sitting framed in the honeysuckle, having stepped across it in one step, he said he’d got something to tell me, ‘I can only tell you, I shall have to tell Sharron, of course’. I said this sounds serious. ‘Well, it is in a way. At the first-night party, my new agent made a pass at me’. ‘What did you say?’ ‘I said I was happy with my girl-friend of seven years’. ‘Is it seven?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Gracious.’ We agreed that he must tell Sharron. If he’d succumbed, I might have recommended saying nothing. I am not a great one for guilt. Unloading confessions making only the innocent receiver miserable.

I was struck all over again, by his extreme simplicity and straightforwardness, when he said, ‘We have been totally faithful. If we weren’t, it would all be over’.

Well, I’ll have to get him out of that. He described his agent as not at all attractive, unhappily married, but she is a top-class agent at London Management and is doing good things for him, and should do more. I’m sorry for her as a woman, but I mind more about the professional side of it. We had a laugh about him being out of practice at dealing with passes. After all, when I first knew him - ! I said, now if this had happened in the corridor of the student’s hostel at the Royal Northern College of Music in 1980 you’d have known exactly what to do! But his sense of proportion is unfailing.

I’d made a lamb casserole, sixteen rounds of stewing lamb, at 98 or 96 or 97p a four, so it was under four pounds, and a few carrots and so on. So I hoped it would do for W, and R. and perhaps more. Then the aforementioned strawberries, those small watery tasty utterly English straws that the supermarkets despise in exchange for large stiff crimson lumps of Spanish tastelessness.

A perfect evening. I rest in him.

But I am worried by the agent thing. It would be a great pity if it led to a break-up. She’s so go-ahead. And if it did break up, it would be no fault of his.

Bother. I love that boy – no one could love him more.

Sunday July 26 1992

I write with sore, stiff scratched hands trying to get up-to-date. Set out to the shops with happily the remains of my lodger’s rent, to get bits and pieces to add to the casserole, and lunch. Artich. for that, and the remains of John N’s wine. Hot again, and lunch in the garden, and then good work on the play, going thro’ all his pages of notes and his letter, very purging, until six o’clock. I gave him the last scene – twenty pages – the last bit to be typed. I long for that week in Devon if it ever comes off, when we have nothing to do but the play.

So to the casserole and R’s bottle of Jacob’s Creek claret, and always good talk. And he has a nice dirty mind.

After dinner, I thought we’d do a little more relaxed work, with these curious soaring possibly useful ideas faint drunkenness brings, and that worked a bit. Dinner in the garden, how odd that it is still rather glamorous, not to mention delicious. What a good thing I haven’t a video of an enchanting meal. Over coffee, there were all the videos I’d threatened to put a label on, ‘Things to keep R. Emery quiet’ but he went down to the book-room to look for himself, and came back with – Now Voyager.! I was astonished.

He pretended only to watch a bit of it, but was grateful when I watched it to the end. But I was doubly astonished to find him so affected. It is of course first-class poppycock, enlivened by B. Davis and G. Cooper knowing exactly how to skate over the treacherous surface and skim the little bits of emotional truth. I shed a tear or two, but mostly for my youth. But when that infamous last line escaped, I was amazed to find him not just welling, but shaking with sobs. I had to give him a hug to help. How very odd.

Nevertheless a lovely evening.

So today, after a mush-omelette and salad, we drove, in his immensely chic white sports-car, to Moray Rd., and I did the garden. First cleared the small pool of a great mass of stinking plane leaves. Also two stinking pots of dead plants. The garden has been planted by someone knowledgeable, but it is overgrown with weeds, but only over and between plants, so it’s easy and lovely to free them. Only wrong planting is rosemary planted next to and under a Pierre Oger so I think the rosemary was put in by someone else. Good clearing and pruning. Cleared a curving paved path which looked satisfyingly beautiful once I had restored the balance of plants brimming over stone, instead of over weeds. Zoe arrived, - I must see more of her, because she doesn’t make an entirely favourable impression quickly – she seems a bit silly, which she can help, and a bit young, which she can’t.

Called to R at 5.30, ‘Now I need some Ooh and aah, how wonderful I am’.

Back home, I sank into a bath, and soaked my poor hands. Borrowed a shirt from R.

Turned on radio and got one sentence from Frankie Howerd,, who left a million, I see, ‘I was lying in bed mending this puncture, you see’. Maxine Audley and Arletty dead. Arletty had an unassailable sexuality and unblinking chic. Like a song you couldn’t believe had never been. Maxine I sat by, in Bristol Old Vic, on a kitchen chair, the first time I ever saw D. House sold out. M. was down to do Love for Love and gave a party during rehearsal ‘to celebrate my 100th man’.

Monday July 27 1992

Rang K. at 10.30 to remind him that we were to go to a different address. Had a comforting little talk with Sharron. ‘Do you want to talk to him, he’s just come out of the loo?’ ‘No, he’d only bite my head off’.

He rang at eleven to say he was just leaving, and would I look out for him at Baron’s Court. And there he was – peering at me with that same smile and a hand raised.

I won’t describe the interview as it is so revolting to me to see a poor man struggling in the clutches of a frightful institution like a bank. And I don’t mean me!

I believe I played my part properly, and K. was quite magnificent ’You are the fourth person we’ve had to explain ourselves to’. He tried every possibility. I cannot image anybody fighting for themselves better than he did for me. I won’t degrade myself with the details. I will only record the results, as they occur. The poor wretched man hidebound by the ghastly business mentality, pathetically said, as we left, that he was sorry and he hoped it was all right. Poor men, no wonder we’re all in a mess, with greed striding over the world.

As we came away, he rubbed my shoulder, and said Poor you, let’s get a nice bottle of wine. So we did, Orvieto, and lunch in the garden and talked of his agent. He’s taking her out to lunch on Wednesday.

Tuesday July 28 1992

To Ealing to pay mortgage and enquire about extending it. Also rang about my summons for the poll tax, to find that I should have applied again. They’d send me a form to claim it back. And the electric bill was £173, 100 more than it’s ever been, and I’ve only had lights on for the last three months.

Of course R. now rings every night for his calls – lovely. He rang last night at 11.0, was obviously exhausted, but wouldn’t admit it. Rang while I was out to say if the Soho Poly rang, tell them – well you’ll know. They did ring to say the administrators were taking some time off or some such phrase, and they’d have some decision at the beginning of next week. I was so pleased to hear it was on the cards again. That would be ideal. Very hot still.

Wednesday July 29 1992

Still very hot. Tried to work in bed. Lots of tiresome paper work. What hell money is. Rang K. to say Are we going to Chichester hoping against hope we weren’t. I don’t want to see that play at all, let alone with the understudy. That was a message last night. Sharron rang and said he thought he’d made it clear that it wasn’t on, but perhaps he hadn’t. Oh, good, and I have no money – literally. She said she’d seen a note on his desk saying this is to confirm you have two tickets for Thur. and a note in K’s hand, saying ‘Angus – No’.

Tried to work on the play, but I found our notes incomprehensible, in any useful way.

Rang Mary L. back from Emsworth, a visit that always depresses her. ‘So the second day we visited some friends and some friends visited us’… and I was as bored as she had been, immediately. She said she listened to the interminable ‘and on the Thursday we went on the bypass to the supermarket in…’ Later she had a drink, and was tired, and heard herself saying ‘Oh, I couldn’t live like that’, to which the woman said ‘I have no choice with my busy life’. It developed to her saying, ‘I have had to look after a husband’.

Oh dear, Mary shouldn’t but she can’t help it. There’s no point in pulling the façade off a suburban wife. Letting the elements in… well. We just mustn’t meet them on those terms.

Oh, I was interested, when I talked briefly to Sharron about Rachel Daniels, and she said, ‘I don’t want to think about it much’, not to stop me, and not, I think, because she wasn’t facing it exactly, but because it had disturbed her a bit. Possibly she had been worried that he’d mentioned an approach, possibly for the first time, and perhaps is subconsciously thinking that his mention, of it makes it something significant. The only significance is the professional significance, possibly losing a good agent. Sharron knows that, but possibly does not feel it.

Anyway, when she rang later, he sent a message saying no to Chichester and he seemed ‘quite happy’ after his lunch. Even better, he was salvaging the tape, apparently successfully. So that at least seems all right.

Ten p.m.

He’s rung to say the only sentence I want, that the lunch went all right, so all is well.

Told about my ghastly two days, oh the relief to have him to tell. Also that I don’t care about Chich – isn’t it good that I don’t?

I couldn’t sit thro’ Venus with the understudy.

D. Sinden has a slipped disc – Hm. I think he’s got out of a complete flop.

R. rang to get his call from Nigel who turns out to be the designer of Spread. ‘And we haven’t got our fucking money.’ R. a little remote because of tiredness and irritation at notices of Philadelphia…

Also date for conservatory ‘not settled’. Oh.

Thursday July 30 1992

Quite forgot to record, not surprisingly, that three criminals on the run, ditched the car, and barricaded themselves in a house in Greenham Rd., Muswell Hill. Where Donald and Ann live. Well. Heard nothing more about it.

What a relief it is to me to have nothing to do with Lalla and Donald. Do they feel the same? Probably, only they have little capacity for reality.

Very heavy and humid. Tried to work on the play in the p.m., but only did small proof reading stints, and two or three new lines.

A few phone calls in a.m., one for R. from the clinic he’s working at, so I was able to phone Marion and leave it for him. He’s being a success there, thank goodness.

To film in evening. It is good to talk thro’ Soho and see it back to its old and much better than its old, atmosphere. Heaps of nice restaurants, heaps of tables on the pavements, (and would be more if they weren’t so narrow). The right number of sex cinemas and clubs, and the young do all this naturally, so it’s more real than it’s ever been. Lots of open Brasserie folding doors.

Film Sisters with Whoopi Goldberg and Maggie Smith. I have long ago decided which side I’m on when we are asked to applaud nuns jiving as an exciting leap forward in the church’s approach to the public. That being said, the film itself doesn’t put a foot wrong, and there isn’t a single dull patch. Within my initial stricture, I laughed quite a lot.

We went back to Janet’s office (where by the way, she is still installed, with Mark Furness still trembling excitingly on the edge of bankruptcy) and not only had she remembered the Mary Hocking trilogy, but she also gave me something Stephanie Powers (hm) had given her. There it was, in a rich white box with Concorde on it. A blotter, one of those curved holders for blotting paper, that have now become perilously antiquarian objects fit to be reproduced in badly-made wood and cheap silver plate. But I was touched that she didn’t know anyone else who used a real pen. And K. on the road back from Chich.

Friday July 31 1992

Very hot and heavy indeed. It doesn’t suit me, parts of my hands go all white and soggy as if I’ve been washing up for ages. Mrs Tiggy-Winkle. SK paid his rent on the nail thank God, as I only had £ left.

Had lovely talk with R. as usual. He’s dining with K. on Tues. I think K is going to give him a pep talk about his career. Good. For R is still at the stage of being too humble.

Oh, Ba New rang at her sweetest. I told her how poor I was without saying figures, and she said how she understood not entertaining from poverty, and pretending to be prosperous. Interesting, as she has not said anything so real for many years. I said I had such good friends, mentioning R. and John N. and S and of course, K., and she said ‘You deserve them’.

Leonard Cheshire has died. A man who has passed from an RAF Pilot who won the Victoria Cross, to the only British observer at the atom bomb at Nagasaki, to founding over 270 homes for mentally and physically handicapped people, to dying of motor- neurone disease. I could extrapolate from that, that only fine-drawn good, even saintly, people die of motor-neurone disease. I must suggest that to Snoo Wilson as the subject for his next play.

Saturday August 1 1992

A bit of pain in the evening. It seems S. is offended with me. I rather hope so, when I think of all his black marks against me… After all, a close friend from whom I hear not a word for three months at a time, March 10 to May 29 for instance. Not even a chat on the phone. And, of course, there were two unhappy coincidences with his forgetting his keys, and K. saying about him not acknowledging my first night messages so that my losing my temper about Blue Vienna would never have impinged on him except in my letter, if he had not forgotten his keys, and he would have heard about me not sending him a first night message on a less emotive occasion than the, I daresay, insipid first night of Shades. He does not, unfortunately, pay the proper price for friendship. Can I rest in him? Can I ask his advice? Can I count on him being there? No. I can only count on him being an enchanting companion when he decides to see me. Poor dear, he has also been as generous as he can be with no money, but now I have the worry that his accountants haven’t paid my paper bill. If there is a backlog, I can’t pay it.

What a pathetic state the theatre is in. It has no grip at all.

Further pain from K. wanting to go on with the Freud, after dinner with S. the night before. He was struck when I said Keep the songs, nobody listens to the words, and get a different script. He greeted that as an original thought of enduring significance, as I did his idea of a concept album. After all, nothing matters on that except the music, so I could agree to that. But I must not discuss Snoo with either of them again. Lovely dinner, melon, chops and sausages on the barbecue, ‘Are these three stale sausages and three fresh ones?’ ‘They are three herb sausages and three Cumberland sausages, Angus dear’. But we had a bit of a shouting match over the wretched thing. I shall have to give up on it, and leave it to them. If they think it’ll go, all right. All I know is it’s no good. And the music must be cut loose from it to get my respect.

Hazel rang yesterday to tell me about their tour of Clitheroe and Sutherland. They stayed at one point with a friend in Helmsdale. There is a church on his property which he can’t sell tho’ it’s only priced at £15,000. It made me think again of turning tail and running and expecting nothing because of having nothing. It’s only K. really. I get little or nothing from anyone else but dear R. and can give nothing to any of them.

Sunday August 2 1992

Rang Malk! To ask about digs in Leeds for Jeff Rann.

Hilarious as ever ‘Well, dear, the first might interest him. Or not. Novello House. They haven’t bought any new furniture since they bought Ivor Novello’s piano after he died in 1951. A room, with use of kitchen, £48 p.w., £52 with TV. Ring Basil Hartley, 2, Ladywood Rd. Roundhay. Then there’s the other one. Ann Green, Green House, 5, Bank View, Chapel Allerton. It’s a quiet peaceful house, down a leafy lane. Ten mins theatre. Theatre rate £50, with TV and hot water bottle. Vegetarian meals a specialty.

Rang Mary and told her. She was much amused. I wish she wouldn’t say ‘That’s right’ so often.

Monday August 3 1992

‘Another lovely day! To do R’s garden and finished it. And he bustled round sweeping and dusting and re-arranging. And I saw he was a bit compulsive about tidying up. So I’m good for him. He got back about 4.15. The garden has its shape revealed – two curving paths to a paved area and a little pool - charming – and a huge La Reine Victoria ten feet high badly needing pruning as it is leggy and wind-shaken. Also transformed front garden.

Went up to change and have shower and of course couldn’t make shower work. Had a good rub down. He told me switch these two switches, oh well.

Went (him) to get gin and whisky, which I was thrilled to pay for, because he gave me £30 his landlord had taken off their rent, for him getting someone to do the garden. I partly used most of it at once for both of us, because I wasn’t sure he hadn’t provided it himself.

We had a good talk about the play, notable suggestion from him that we want a bomb ten minutes from end. He has a boldness that comes out sometimes. Went out again (him) – I can’t do the stairs often – to get the fish and chips, delicious plaice and nice soggy chips. He has arranged his plants beautifully, notably a spider plant in full flow with four or five small ones hanging from it, in a brass bowl on a balance like justice with another plant on the other side.

Wednesday August 5 1992

Funny day. The poll tax people rang at 9.30 to ask why I hadn’t paid anything. He repeated a few shibboleths like an automaton, and then of course revealed no connection of any kind with the Housing Benefit people, but if I paid £20 today, the summons would be etc. so it’s they who quash the summons. So paid and forgot about it all. I cannot get my mind to work like these poor little clerks.

So I journeyed to Ravenscroft Park to a smart new paying in bank-like affair with a guard/receptionist and two smart cashier girls in their air-conditioned glass cubicles and paid my £20, - the office was otherwise empty. Then I went to the Income Tax to pay my £5, to another smart girl behind glass, - the office was otherwise empty.

Later Victoria Davar, darling girl, rang and we had a lovely talk. I must get her into our circle – I think R. would like her, not quite sure if K. would. Almost the only thing I don’t like about the young, is their unplanned day so that they ring up during meals.

Peter Ustinov on Clive James’ prog. ‘Yes, I do find your countrymen sometimes rather sensitive. At a party in Sydney, a man came up and said, ‘I suppose you despise us all because we are descended from convicts’. I said, ‘I’m much more disturbed to think that some of you are descended from warders’.

Have I said Green-house Restoration Day is now to be Friday, not tomorrow? R is having hell from Steven Berkoff. I find him a sad figure, going down a plug hole looking for his father and mother to shock. So R. has had to work longer on the set, and goes to that Notting Hill studio – I shall be glad when that’s finished – but he rang tonight to see if any messages and there weren’t. Oh I hope Soho Poly doesn’t just tamely fade away. How could they reject him? And take who?

Thursday August 6 1992

Mary rang up last night after going down to see Edna. ‘My first look was of a tired skull, but she pulled herself together and said, ‘I’d given you up’.’

Very Edna even in her senility. But M. has decided not to go again. It was difficult to fill the time, and it will be better to ring for the last flickers.

R. rang about eleven to say he’d had a call there – why? – from Soho poly, who want him to come and see the administrators next Monday. That sounds promising except that I’m v. irritated to think who the administrators might be. I don’t want to know.

Still very hot and humid. Film tonight Winterland with Jeremy Irons. I think it’s probably a venture stemming from his Oscar, ’Choose a script Jeremy’ and his wife’s in it and it’s nicely illogical and there are moments when you can’t tell fact from fantasy fancy, and I think he’s a bit studied, and it’s a bit sexy, and his real wife plays his wife who loses her insides with a fearful abortion because they’ve done it and years later she steals a baby and it gets even more studied and silly, and I can’t be bothered any more.

Home in a taxi as usual, only we went first to Janet and second to me, because of my rake which she’d borrowed. Taxi-driver, after we left her, talked really intelligently and refused a tip.

Friday August 7 1992

1.40 a.m. Difficult, tiring, maddening and wonderful day. Green house torn down as I knew it would be, because he cannot do a botched job.

Oh, I’m tired, and I’ve done nothing in comparison, except shopping and cooking and three trips to H’smith.

Sharron is an angel. Poor R is naturally muddled and thinks K is behaving badly to me!

Saturday August 8 1992

He was painfully angry with me, and I cried, and he mistook my crying for weakness over my difficulties. I was crying at being divided from him. I have not yet cried over my difficulties.

But he gets angry when his responsibility gets too much for him

And I had thought to give him a chance to decide again – not to postpone.

Sunday august 9 1992

Wrote to S. at last, and was pleased when the page finished ‘don’t you know I am completely committed to everything you do?’ so that the next page could begin ‘Provided it’s any good’.

Wrote to Tim W. and said I couldn’t afford to have them to dinner any more. And to the Bank, and to the Housing Benefit, and other such enchanting correspondents.

Late tonight, 12.30 R. rang. Long warm loving talk about the play, full of ideas, and as we finished, he settled to go on writing ‘till one-thirty or so, I’m in the mood.’ ‘In the nude’. ‘Well that’s a very good way, seriously’. He’s sending me the last scene, which he’d typed at K’s tonight. Oh youth, youth. I didn’t think he’d get round to it till? He sees the Soho/Poly at 3.0 tomorrow.

Monday August 10 1992

At last fresher, not sweaty. Did all the phone calls K wanted, seventeen so far, and so many answer-phones. R. rang during my bath – isn’t it odd? – to say it was production manager. And that the woman director had done that Cole Porter show at Cambridge that he thought pretty poor. Would he commit himself, at least to four weeks’ notice? Well, would he? With Versailles coming up?

Oh dear, how muddled issues are, utterly uselessly in theatrical life. Splendid for the great mass of people who seem to be prepared to avoid as much as possible of a job they hate.

Coming round tomorrow. Sending the last scene to get here before him. Heaven.

But I look forward to Thursday Thursday Thursday to get straight with K.

Tuesday August 11 1992 Wednesday August 12 1992

Very tired. Both days very tiring, till now, late afternoon, Wed. On Tuesday I was prepared for two of the carpet and building people coming, and R. arriving at 5.15 to do some cementing in the greenhouse, but I hadn’t allowed for the letting agent at Bournemouth to say that the insurance policy on the house had lapsed. It needed half a dozen phone calls in the middle of which the drawing-room phone dial went wrong, and I found I was dialing numbers I hadn’t dialed while the dial took minutes to wind back. I went down to use the kitchen telephone and found I had left all the relevant numbers upstairs… This happened twice.

The carpet man arrived at two, a pleasant timid middle aged man, who was gone in fifteen minutes. I went to H’smith to shop for R’s dinner. He arrived at 4.15, instead of 5.15 which was nice. Got on with the concrete. We talked in detail about the Soho-poly interview. I came down on the side of him not doing it, as he thought himself. We did a bit of work, and he returned to it at the end of dinner, but of course with drink raging and already tired, I was not at my best and was upset when he actually had written in some dialogue after Jason begins to walk into the North light. How couldn’t he see that was an interruptible hieratic moment? Or nothing. And he’d cut Sarah’s line ‘I love the smell of his dirty clothes’ which was the turning point of the scene. So he’d picked on two of my most important moments to change because he’d missed them? or because they aren’t important. About the line, he said he couldn’t imagine a young actress bringing it off as a climax. Now that is simply sad. But my anger and our discussion caused another of his rushing over and kneeling at my feet and hugging and stroking, so that was nice. He is a very warm boy, far from cautious. So we went to bed about 12.30, rather drunk. Now K. had rung to say the damp-course man was coming between seven and eight. Of course I didn’t dare stop him ‘but you’re always up at six’ – he actually arrived at twenty to seven!!

I was flung from a deep sleep – for once – by R. coming in having flung on his shirt and jeans, looking all puffy as usual, saying that Edward had said there was a maniac at the area door. So there was a wild whirling time while we faced a small fanatically neat little sergeant-major, of the authentic obsessive sort, who obviously thinks the entire troubles of the world can be solved by proper treatment to the damp course. R. and I sat up here, me still in my pyjamas. ‘Shall we have some coffee?’ ‘We’d better’.

The sergeant-major left after about quarter of an hour’s laconic disparagement of the flat, wondering who dusts the pictures etc. There was rather an agonizing hour for me when I was longing to take my hangover back to bed, and R. wasn’t going to Notting Hill till 9.0. He actually settled down to re-write a scene in the play. I wonder if he was surprised I didn’t join in, but I would be completely incapable of it at that time and after that awakening! ‘Go back to bed’ he said, as he left, and I said ‘that’s just what I’m going to do’ and slept for 2 ½ hours.

The telephone dial went right again before the engineer came and I don’t think he believed me that it had been wrong at all. Quiet evening thank God.

Thursday August 13 1992

Dreary end to day. K. cannot manage to come tomorrow and do the greenhouse, so it will remain open to the skies for another fortnight. He rang to say he was sorry, he just had too much to do before he went away, and the lest hope went when Sharron was really bad with her curse not ‘coming on’ as he calls it, for a fortnight. ‘There were three things she was going to do for me tomorrow morning and now I’ve got to do them myself’. At first he couldn’t speak because she was in the room, then she went back to bed. He described how swollen she gets and so on. I said water retention can be dealt with, there were remedies, but perhaps she wouldn’t want to take them, ‘Not if they’re chemicals, she wouldn’t’.

Dear things, how simple they are.

He’s got so much to do with his work, that’s what it is. So I don’t mind, though it is yet another thing to wait for. Which is all I seem to do nowadays.

So that is one reason why the comforting routine of going to the film with Janet and home in a taxi, is so comforting. Not that the film was especially comforting, ‘White Men can’t Jump.’ Approximately seventy five percent of the film was baseball games, sometimes in slow-motion, the whole of the sound track was very loud rap at a relentlessly loud mezzo-forte, more or less continuous. As I don’t understand baseball and don’t like rap I enjoyed a good many refreshing naps and thanked nature for my deaf ear.

Back here K rang, as I said, and I rang R. to tell him not to come tomorrow morning. K. had said his back was bad again. Rang at five past 12 and R. insisted he would come, and put up a plastic cover. So.

Friday August 14 1992

3.45

And here I am writing again. Waited for the decorator, happily he was on time and gone in fifteen minutes. Now I’m waiting for R. rather worried, as it is very unlike him to be at least four hours late without letting me know about lunch at least.

Rang K. at five and again at 9.30. They hadn’t heard a thing. Sharron said should we go round, he might have had a fall. Well he’s not an old lady. A muscular young man of 27, unless he fractured his skull, could haul himself to the phone somehow. If he doesn’t ring for his messages, then I will be worried.

Dear Tim and Mairead rang in answer to my letter, that I couldn’t afford to have them round any more, it’s sad, but their response, cheered me. I’m going to Clapham on Monday to dinner.

I can’t listen to music any more, it is too upsetting. With all my difficulties, I cannot risk the seeping away of emotion. I saw the 9th symphony was on the Proms- I just couldn’t, it’s too much of a luxury. Now I see why the poor are as they are, and am ashamed I haven’t seen it before. I knew Tim wouldn’t let me down.

12.30. R rang. ½ hour. ‘I said I’d ring’. ‘Yes, but I didn’t think you wouldn’t come at all’. ! ‘I’m sorry. Could you do me a favour?’ !!

Bed after a wasted day waiting. He was going to do the plastic sheet for the greenhouse.

Saturday August 15 1992 Sunday August 16 1992

Rather drunk last night, tho’ I read a couple of Acts of Love for Love on the tube on my way home.

Yes Dear R. hadn’t really got a leg to stand on. After all, I’d rang the night before to say don’t come ‘cos your back’s bad, and he’d insisted on coming and in the morning, so………!

Shopping, 3 artichokes for £1, 3 corn on the cob for £1. Launderette to pick up. Ironed my shirt, and was off with four punnets of blackberries, £1, the balcony table, which he can find time to repair when he wants to take it to France, though I’ve done without it for two years! And a heavy metal case of tools which was R’s favour.

K. came to open the door, and took me into the front drawing-room, piled with stuff for the holiday. A set of new saucepans, storage boxes which fit inside one another empty but on top of one another full, and a portable two-burner gas –stove that folds up into a four-inch deep metal case.

Sharron took me down to the basement to instruct me into the mysteries of wriggling the shovel to find a urine ball in the cat-litter. ‘Then you can have a gin and tonic’ said K.

Upstairs he showed me dinner, a whole turbot. It was dunked in a basin of water as he was a bit worried that it wasn’t fresh enough. A number of observations.

(i) It wasn’t very fresh. He eyes were a bit sunken and dull and the markings on the back not all that bright, and it smelt a bit fishy. (ii) But I knew it would be perfectly all right when it was cooked. (iii) K’s generation, like David G’s before him has no judgment of freshness by smell having little experience of un-chilled or un-refrigerated food. (iv) It was a small turbot, about a foot across. I must reveal to him that turbot is huge and the best cut is a ‘steak’ from a full size turbot.

But it was eatable, and he’d done some runners, sliced up properly, and the blackberries I’d brought. Over dinner we had the usual wonderful restorative helpless laugher, with me holding on to Sharron’s knee to keep my balance. Was able to say it all and he gave me a cheque for the electric bill, which I’ll pay back by selling more books.

Left them at eleven, and felt sad I’d be without him or any way of getting in touch with him, for a fortnight. And there are all the dangers. Oh dear, I wish ‘people’ wouldn’t go on holiday. But he needs it, - he spent the last whisky half hour yawning uncontrollably, because getting my dinner was his last compulsory task! And he’s switching off, after such a long hard period of work.

Today went to see Masala at the Metro. The boy who directed it played the lead. A bit like Almovodar, but as it was made in India, it was an even more courageous picturesque messy effort.

Tonight when R. rang at 12.30! he had been to the Metro in the morning with K! to that film by Bruno Santini’s bro. that Sharron had been cross K. was bothering to go to. Guess what, it was beautifully photographed. How loyal K. is. right to the end. He’s working on the King’s Head set he’s driving to Edinburgh next weekend, every day this week, so I may not see him at all, and the play is like the greenhouse, very much on hold. More waiting.

Monday August 17 1992 Tuesday August 18 1992

Got back from Clapham on the last train from Leicester Square on Monday at 12.19 and fairly drunk. Dear Tim and Mairead had asked me to dinner because I had written to say I had no money and could not have them to dinner any more. The flat in North St. is really pleasant in its arrangement and atmosphere. (Despite it originally belonging to a friend, who parted acrimoniously from a lover fifteen years younger, an actor called Paul Venable, a friend of Tim’s who left her for a young girl.) It was a perfect evening for me, flattered, cossetted, given a drink at every right moment, a baked trout from two vegetarians. And I think I listened and talked and entertained and listened and advised and talked and listened.

And there was a delightful bonus for me, Mairead is rehearsing for a tour of Otherwise Engaged and loves the company and loves her part, but is suffering from the star and director, Peter Bowles! Oh, how satisfying all these years later, to be able to advise and encourage a bold courageous very talented actress to see poor Peter B as he actually is – insecure, woolly minded, and a bit dim. He rang up during dinner – what if he’d known? I wonder if he remembers me? Probably not.

M’s flat mate introduced bewilderingly as Yum-Yum, useless to me, is a forthright immature talkative girl, who will simmer down as time goes by but she should have got further than she has at 29. Not that I didn’t like her, I did, and I think she’ll simmer down to a real person in time and with work.

I was most interested to hear about Mark Clements at Derby. He sounds like the right stuff. John Godber’s Bouncers 98%. Blithe Spirit 95%. The new adaptation of the Woodlanders that Tim was in, 65%. What I really like is that he seems to know how to build a programme like a menu, and to be interested in filling the theatre, - the audience can always sense whether there is someone at the top who wants them to come unlike that fat woman who hurled a dozen avant-garde (sic) productions in the audience’s face, and left to the loud applause of the Royal Court etc., leaving the theatre in ruins.

On Monday p.m. went to feed the cat for the first time. Got there at 4.43 and was greeted by that terrible cat smell. Surely K’s sensitive nose – Ah well, it’s none of my business. The cat came down to the kitchen when he heard me cutting up the meat. He ate avidly. I locked the cat flap, but he knocked his nose against it later so many times, and sat and stared at nothing as forcibly as if at a hundred mouse can-can dancers, that I let him out. The plants were still steaming so I didn’t water. Picked out the shit and urine balls from the litter and put them down the loo. Have started a separate cat diary for Sharron, knowing what people with cats are like. I think I’m doing it quite well. K. is so loyal and good. Can he be more like Ernie than I thought, and attached himself to a hypochondriac? And now she has a cat.

Today got home and realised I hadn’t watered the plants. Doesn’t matter. And there’s going to be some rain.

R. rang after twelve to say he’d try for Thurs. night. We had a long talk – we must have said Are you all right? about four times each.

Still quite hot.

Wednesday August 19 1992

Still warm and humid. Poll tax demand and summonses again. Really. Went to Housing Benefit after ringing many times, always engaged, and found them closed. Very luxurious building in Brook Green! Couldn’t they have found somewhere cheaper?

To K’s at 4.45. The cat was waiting on the mat. No shit in the box. Watered the plants. One of the tomatoes has gone red the moment Sharron’s back was turned. It hadn’t shat either.

Had penciled in being taken out to dinner by Nicola Slade. No sound. Rather relieved as there is already too much on this week. Got out of film to be as sure as I can of a bit of time off.

When I got back K. had rang from France saying I got here, I’m safe. I was almost glad I wasn’t here. Dear thing.

Thursday August 20 1992

To Benefit office at 10.30. Ticket system with exactly the same machine as at the cheese counter at Safeway. On the little TV screen was 43, - my number was 71. By eleven twenty, they’d got to 51. Mary L was coming at 12.30. I had to go to the Tax office and buy lunch and be back to let her in – it was pouring, and I wanted to pee. So I must go again tomorrow to avoid the bailiffs.

Mary was just as usual, though perhaps a little less again. Asked her if she wanted to see D in A Day Out, but she decided not. She has to watch alone. Unlike me.

Mushroom omelette with oyster mushrooms of which M. had never heard, salad, melon, cheese. She brought some delicious cream cheese with nuts and flavoured with orange. Danish. Rang R. at the workshop as he had thought he might come round. As he thought it was about four and it was actually twenty to seven … But he touched me very much, by saying he must see me before he went away, and made three separate suggestions to do so, a moving demonstration of his sincerity.

Later he rang with all his phone nos in Scotland, with dates. So that I can pin him down all the way along! He’s coming over to see me at K’s tomorrow.

Friday August 1992

He didn’t, in the end, the work was too much. A hill of a day.

Up at nine, and to the Housing Benefit place by ten-fifteen, to find my number was 61, and they were already at 58. So I was in in about ten minutes. Nice willing young man with a spot on his nose. When I explained that I had filled the form in earlier in the year, and had the two loose sheets to prove it, he revealed that the reason was probably that there has been no one looking after the MAC section individually for the last five months. He put his name and number on the top of the reiterated summons demand and I went off to the Recovery Dept. of the Poll Tax. I don’t think I can bother to dignify the rest of the silly twenty minutes I spent there. As well as my reduced poll-tax, I have to pay £33 court costs for the cancelled summons. ‘Because you hadn’t paid anything towards the poll-tax’. Well, no, because I didn’t know what I had to pay. The rule has to be pursued. I expect K. would be cross, but how can I pursue not paying £33 against those poor little clerks? I could not bear to fight those little live-to-rule people. It would be back to Lalla. But it was tiring.

Back here, I had a leisurely lunch, watched Neighbours and Home and Away with some amusement and lust and Paul arrived at two. Gave him an oyster mushroom and bacon omelette and salad. Very sweet. Is growing up. After his lunch he played me two of the songs he’s written and sings. Never mentioned such a thing before, and I was quite impressed by the songs and the perf. A shape to the songs and a ring in the voice. Vitality, force. I said he must play them to K. But I was really pleased.

He left with me at about 4.15. I’d rung R. to say I’d be at K’s from about five on. Fed the cat. Sat down to read. The wretched thing clambered all over me. Sat on one arm of the chair, sat on the other, sat on the back, fidget, fidget, fidget. How can people who ever want to concentrate possibly have a pet? Shut it out of the room.

About six R. rang. Of course the portable phone was up in Nigel’s room but even if it hadn’t been the snares for an elderly person in modern telephone systems are many. I couldn’t get the kitchen phone to speak to me. So I rang back and got him and of course he couldn’t make it. But again, he insisted on ringing me when he got in and we had a lovely talk at twelve thirty. I shall miss him even for this week.

Saturday August 22 1992

Up by eleven to greet a builder, which gave me collywobbles. So I was delighted when his wife rang to say he couldn’t come. But I was horrified at the reason. He’d been doing some tiling and a sliver of tile had gone into his eye. I expressed my horror and concern freely and we had a concerned talk. But it’s so awful seeing someone you love in pain. That struck a nerve in her.

In the p.m. to film Lovers, with Almovodar’s Victoria Abril in it. I fear it’s being treated as a ‘sex’ film. When are we going to get out of that? Quite good, nothing extra. And nothing extra for the dirty mac brigade either.

When I got back there was a message from S. saying he couldn’t manage Monday, so Thursday. Later I had a gossip with Janet, who told me that they were considering the re-casting of Shades when Pauline C. leaves. I hope it keeps fine for them. The list included Helen Mirren who’s turned it down, - not surprising as it’s insulting to offer her a takeover – Patricia Hodge, and Pam Ferris. Now the first two are wrong because they’re too obviously triumphantly attractive. Pam F. is rather good, and fat. S. had penciled by her name. Never heard of this actress. Oh dear, she’s only in the biggest popular hit series on TV, Darling Buds of May. Poor S. Really must learn more about the ordinary world, if only to protect his tiny little one.

He’s rehearsing Patti Boulaye in Carmen, and she’s African, not West Indian and therefore is more secure in her sexuality. Why? Can she sing that well? I didn’t know.

Sunday August 23 1992

To R’s in the p.m. Found that the car was perfectly all right though there was a car parked behind it that surely must bump it when it drives away. It was so near and in such a small space. I was looking forward to finishing my long letter to R. at his own desk, but the chubb key didn’t work. When I looked more closely it wasn’t Chubb but something else, so perhaps, that’s why. Front garden looked good, after the rain has softened that rock I weeded the other week.

When I rang later on and got some girl to ask when someone would be in, she said R. had asked her to water the plants. Ah, youth, youth.

I feel forces are gathering to destroy me.

Eighty million Americans didn’t vote in the last Pres. Election. What a country.

Monday August 24 1992

Raining. Sent off some estimates and Bournemouth insurance forms. One of them became a series of blurred circles, because I used a ‘real’ pen as people now call a pen.

To feed the cat in the rain.

Back here, message from Billy Seago, his wife has had her baby, Georgia Elizabeth 71b 12 oz. Tell robin so I did. He aah’d himself silly. Didn’t talk much because it was the first night and I didn’t want to spoil my letter and he was obviously so tired. Said he’d ring tomorrow night.

To feed cat. Noting to say about it except the smell. Absurd sentimentality to keep the cat littler indoors for a cat you let out. The pathetic fallacy in fact.

Tuesday August 25 1992

R. rang at 2.30 or so. ‘Well, I’ve slept’. ‘Where?’ ‘We hired a flat, it’s all right, three to a room! But one of the actresses has lost her voice, so Natasha’s going on for her with the book, and I’ve got to take her through it, because the director’s gone back to London.’ ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Linda Marlow’. Just like R. who’s, I’m sure, doing it for nothing. ‘I should be on the train to Aberdeen by now’. So he’s missing one day with Zoe as well.

Later on Zoe rang about six, worried about where he was, saying something about the ans. machine having lost the message. Um. She hadn’t got the number of the theatre either, but she’d got my number. Funny little things.

Wednesday August 26 1992

Supposed to rain all p.m. Hardly a drop, tho’ some dogmatic clouds. Zoe rang up again at two! Hadn’t had a word from him and the Churchill said he’d left. I didn’t bother to go into it, but the implication was that she hadn’t rung the theatre yesterday. And now she’ a bit worried because he hasn’t turned up. ‘How long is the railway journey from Edinburgh to Aberdeen?’ ‘Two and a half hours.’ ‘Oh well, I expect he’ll turn up.’ ‘I can give you his brother’s address, he said he might go there first’. Thus did I smooth it over. Did he say he was going to his brother’s? But why did I know so much more of his movements and so on that she did? Is that the caution and reticence? If so, if I were her, I would be hurt that I had to ring someone else twice, long-distance.

Oh, yes, she called it ‘this awful old machine’ meaning, I suppose, one that is primitive and partly out of order.

Went and fed the cat. They were preparing the stalls for an Arsenal match outside the tube, tho’ there was no announcement on that metal enamel sign with the space for the date. Pinched some gin. Sent another long letter to R.

Thursday August 27 1992

S. to lunch, looking a little hunted, as well he might. I told him not to bring a bottle of wine, so he brought a bottle or gin saying ‘We’re not going to be beaten’. Later, he said he was on a new diet, so could it be red wine as I was opening a bottle – the bottle - of white. I said it was the only… ‘Oh my, dear, my dear’ so he has not got very far along the road to poverty.

Main talk. He’s fallen violently in love! Again! with the company manager of Shades. Nick? Oh dear, and Chris has slashed his writs before…..

They’re still having awful rows, and obviously it’s finished ‘If I had any money, I would take a flat with Nick and give Chris the house’. I can imagine Chris being violent with S. There’s something wrong between them. I’m ashamed that I haven’t seen it before. Nick Frankfort. K. will know him. There is a great buzz. They had lunch and looked at each other and said ‘What are we going to do?’

They haven’t done anything yet. No bed – I fear S. is irredeemably shallow where love affairs are concerned .

To cat and car today, car first, and took comfort from both their absent presences.

Friday August 28 1992

So as usual, I was not able to talk of almost anything except what he wanted to talk about which was mostly Nick. For example, I never got around to Versailles, which I presume is also off, since he didn’t mention it as even a possible source of income.

He’s been and is rehearsing Patti Boulaye into Carman J. To my amusement he told me she owed her surname to being taken up by Anton Dolin and therefore by Boo Laye, who suggested her new name. I expect she had a rather impenetrable African name. I remember seeing E. Laye and Anton D. at that table on the right as you came in to Chez Solange – was that the night we entertained Nigel Nicholson or K. and that wardrobe – Janet Benge? Goodness knows.

Poor S., I wonder if he’s ever rested in anyone or anything. He certainly hasn’t in me! Or any armchair. Because he’s never had one. What am I going to do with him? You see, it’s a real judgment on him that he only comes to me in extremis.

Found out the other day that Mary L. rents the flat at Chichele Mansions. Now what happened to the capital sum that D. spent on Alma Sq.? Oh well.

Forgot to record that, in pursuance of my feeling that I should sell and get out and buy something somewhere where prices are really cheap, and be alone, like the cottage, and not mind that I saw no one…. It’s certainly true that solitude is moreish, and I have not given up the idea, if only because it may be necessary.

Hazel and Geoffrey went up Caithness and Sutherland and stayed at Helmsdale on the East coast off Sutherland with some old friends. They have an old church on their land which they are still trying to sell at £15,000. So I sent a letter and a s.a.e. to Estate Agents, Helmsdale, asking for details and giving a few details myself. I was quite surprised to have it returned by the P.O. I thought in such a small place ‘where they can’t give properties away’, someone would have the gump to get the letter to the right place. But no. Rather sad.

S K out again last night!

Saturday August 29 1992 Sunday August 30 1992

Still rather humid. A hard day ahead! Staying at K’s tonight, but could not face taking everything over there to cook, as would once have been effortless. It was quite enough to go to H’smith do a bit of shopping, lovely and cheap in the market, 2 articho. for £1.20, 2 melons £1. Mince 60 p. cod fish cakes 98p.

Then to Moray Rd, panted upstairs, and found two boxes of books at the bottom of the flight up to R’s landing. Wondered if it was his turned out from somewhere else. Was just looking to see if it was his copy of that imitation rexine-bound Hamlet, when the door opened, and the Janine Duvitski lookalike came out and said she was leaving. ‘Oh yes, I met you before’. How wonderfully thrillingly insipid English people are! It is our glory. Watered the plants, and left the badly ironed shirt and the only half-read copy of the Magus. Then off to K’s, where I knew there was a football match on at the Arsenal ground. Quite a lot of police, and a few fans running down to the trams already. I thought it was the end of the match, but as I walked along Elfort Rd. I heard that curious remote aaaargh at great volume that is the bold statement of thousands of timid souls shouting safely together. So I fed the cat, and made my way back to the tube and found the football crowd ritual in full regalia. Uncounted walking policemen, at least half-a-dozen mounted policemen. As I came round the corner of Drayton Park into Gillespie Rd. I saw a stream of men (almost entirely men) six or seven wide, coming down Highbury Hill and going into the tube station, by way of some barriers leading them a little to the left. Another stream was apparently going straight up Gillespie Rd. towards the Blackstock Rd. – odd, I thought, how do they pick out those men who live up that way? But then I saw they were being sent up and round another series of barriers to come back to the tube station, to filter the weight of numbers. I let the weight lighten a bit - and they were disappointingly orderly - and joined the route. Now I saw why the tube station was ordered as it is, unlike any other I’ve been in, tho’ there may be others specially ordered for special purposes. Just past the ticket office are eight steps, followed by a very gradual slope of about fifty? yards. Down the left hand side of this slope is an eight foot high stout railing fencing over a single file path. After fifty yards the main slope is divided into two passages divided by the usual solid wall, but the left passage is usually a gate as thick as the fence shutting off the single-file path. Now I saw it all in operation. The eight steps at the opening check the crowd pace, then they go down the gentle slope. It is then divided into two again reducing the pace. And the single file behind the fence is passengers coming off a train, because otherwise it might take someone ten minutes to get out. Most interesting.

So back to Elfort Rd. at ten o’clock. I thought the tube would be full of the usual out from-under-stones people. Not at all, Mild. Made up the bed with the sheet already there and Nigel‘s duvet and pillows. Shut the cat out, because I might overlay him. How people can have cats or pets (or indeed children) and still have any concentration, I don’t know.

Slept better than I expected. Went to pee at 6.30, the cat was outside, and sprang onto the bed, and for the next hour or two cleaned himself very exhaustively, and slept fairly restfully.

Back home by 9.15. Toast, marmalade and coffee, and back to bed with the Sunday papers, and sleep. So glad to get more artichokes so late in the year. Had one and off to feed the cat at five, he ate very well, the cat, I mean.

Found most of the plants blown over in their pots, including the two weeping figs and the tomato, from which a truss was broken. Why do people have uncaged pets? Unless they like their concentration disturbed? Or want a child? Oh, and he trod my cock at one point. Yes, I see the sensual element. After all, if Janet’s cat treads her thigh, he is the only animal who has. But I cannot believe that K. doesn’t like the stupid distraction and the smell. I long for him to be back.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 114

August 30 1992 - October 18 1992.

Monday August 31 1992

I had no feelings sleeping in their bed. When I let the cat in this morning, who I now see, has a disc on his collar saying ‘Boo’, he settled down for a bit, then rushed about sitting on the dressing table and knocked something off. After which I shut him out again. How can people bear the irritation? That’s why the only pet I’d have would be a bird or a fish because one is in the water and the other is in a cage. Left this time at 8.30. Always amazed at people on the streets and the tube at that time, who are obviously naturally there every day, unlike you, - even on a Bank Holiday. At Baron’s Court, bought a delicious baguette from the new café C’est Ici. Two cups of coffee, a good deal of baguette, butter and bed until twelve.

Funny article by Mark Lawson about TV Hell, a programme about bad TV. Well, they won’t be short of material.

K rang at last. I was here, tho’ only just. And he’d only got 30 seconds on the card left. He didn’t sound very up, but that means nothing, tho’ there has been bad weather. Back on Thursday at 4 a.m. Much touched at the house to see on his memory ‘phone, in this order (i) Angus (ii) M and D (iii) LM (iv) MH (v)Robin.

Tuesday September 1. 1992

Had to ring the DSS to get some money out of them. And I can’t afford a phone call. But of course I can afford being without money less.

I don’t know why I’m not more depressed. Left my cat diary at Elfort Rod, as I was hoping Nigel could feed him tomorrow, but he couldn’t. R tomorrow, lovely.

Wednesday Sept 2 1992

Hazel rang and might come round. Oh dear and the flat is so dirty and untidy by her standards, but as I was out all afternoon, we missed one another.

Had an exhausting and tiring day, to Ealing in a.m. to pay mortgage and get £30 from the Halifax. I wish that cheque for ‘Day Out” would arrive, and I wish I need never think about money again. R. is asleep next door. I was so so pleased to see him, and his face melted a bit when he saw me. We did no work, it wasn’t the moment. We watched my tape of TV Hell, which he relished.

After that and over the coffee, I told him about my money troubles, as K. and I felt I should. He put his arms round me and said if he ever had any money, I would have some of it. I am so lucky in my friends. Just delight.

Thursday Septembe3 1992

I had to wake him for once at Twenty five past eight. He was supposed to leave at eight. However, he said it didn’t matter, and I hope it didn’t

Went back to bed and came awake to find a message from K. on the machine back, sounding good. Would I come round tonight? He’d read my cat diary in bed and it was ‘brilliant’. Sweetly, ten minutes later, there was a message from Sharron, thanking me separately and asking me to dinner from them both. Cancelled the film with Janet.

To Elfort Rd after he rang to say come earlier because Nigel is coming at seven with his girlfriend, and we want to be sure of a little time first! (Have I recorded that Nigel went to Cumbria for the holiday weekend? ‘It’s only four hours on the train.’ Went on Sat. Back on Monday. Misery to me. I wonder how often I’ve repeated myself in this record – happily I shall never know.)

I had hardly put my key in the door, but he was there, in my arms, looking so different, so fresh and with a pink nose. I saw how grey he’s looked these last hideously busy months. He suddenly was the boy I first knew again. Not that I mind what he looks like, provided he’s well and working.

He dragged me into the kitchen where all my presents were arranged on the table. Two packets of ground coffee, a packet of extra bitter Lindt, a Camembert, and a magnum of Glen Turner malt, and access to a great deal of wine and tonic and beer. The generosity on top of everything else.

‘There’s a piece of beef. How long do I cook it for? ! So I put it on its side, and he cooked it for getting on for two hours at no. 5. and it was delicious.

Over dinner, after Nigel had come down looking even fatter – round the neck - and been very pleasant, and not brought his girlfriend in for more than a minute or two, and then gone back for good – I teased out as much as I could of their holiday, and was struck yet again at how comfortless and flat a lot of it sounded. Of course they had a wonderful time together, all those times when any lack of comfort or flatness doesn’t matter because you’re together. All the same, I wish they did sometimes have a really beautiful long beautiful beautiful journey through exquisite country with exquisite meals. A perfect evening.

Friday September 4 1992

Forms arrived from the Housing Benefit £45 go credit, £12 left to pay. Paid £5 of it today, so I suppose there’s only £1 left. But I forgot to take the forms with me! I suppose I should be glad that I really don’t think of money!

Oh, K. gave me £20 as well as paying my phone bill of £115. But I’ll pay that and the electric bill back from the cheque for D’s ‘Day Out’ which I have decided to pay into the Halifax - perhaps £750 - and fuck the bank.

To film after shopping, feeling rich with the money and the presents. ‘The Cutting Edge’ poor film. Beatrice and Benedick, but I couldn’t wait.

Oh, wonderful absurd search for R. when Central School wanted him for an afternoon’s work at rather short notice – 12.30. I ran through seven or eight calls to various places inclu. K. and never got him. When he rang tonight, he agreed he should ring at lunchtime, as a rule, if I’m taking his business messages. Nasty chilly blowy day, put a vest on for the first time since May.

Saturday Sept 5 1992

Bought a steak and chip. sausages, and let the butcher think I’d been staying at K’s for three weeks – as I described it, ‘not just the cat. I was really twenty-four track sitting.’

I could not have sat in the house, so went to the new black film at the Renoir, ‘Straight out of Brooklyn’. Made for £100,000 dollars, by Matt Rich, who lived in the sort of mansion block shown in the film. He was 19, and wrote, produced and directed it. It got a prize at Robert Redford’s Sundance Festival. Of course, it’s ‘crude and one-dimensional’ and ‘simplistic’ but, it made me think of K at 20, in its very different way.

Bought the usual azure envelopes at the stationers that has suddenly been thrown into one with the little supermarket next door in the week or two since I last went to the Renoir. Both Pakistani I suppose. Why are the azure envelopes available at so few places without being discontinued? Basildon Bond, I mean.

R. had rung while I was out. He’s with K. tonight. I thought of them together with such love.

Sunday September 6 1992

At last did my ironing, emptied the buckets in the cellar, applied lime scale remover to the taps and various other things. Well done.

Monday September 7 1992

Another tiresome hour or two trying to trace R, after a call from central for two afternoons work, Tues. and Wed. He was at a technical conference at the King’s Head. I rang Moray Rd in the end although I am supposed to be his business no! and got Zoe! Who, I suppose, was working there as he said she might. So I did get thro’ to him, when he rang back at 5.30. But it seemed Zoe had not passed on my message very exactly, particularly the bit about a written contract.

But we must get some modus telephoni or I will spend an hour and a half on the phone many afternoons.

Cancelled dinner with Julian as Mairead asked me to go to Otherwise Engaged at Richmond tomorrow. Peter Bowles. Imagine. I hope I don’t have to see P. Bowles every ten years, as seems to have been the form.

The serial killer came back for an hour to bath and change after having not slept here for four or five nights, and will be out tonight! I gave him the telephone bill, on which his itemized calls were £9.90 and I didn’t quite know what further to charge him. He suggested £50. The whole bill was £115.

Tuesday September 8 1992

Peter Bowles being interviewed on LBC radio this morning. My impression of him as rather, stupid was much confirmed. Such irony as he can command is paper thin, and his charm is laboriously contrived. His opening remark to ‘Pete’ Murray , ‘I just want to tell you how very well and very handsome you’re looking’. This was a clumsy attempt to distract us from just that sort of flattery on both sides throughout the interview. Rang Mairead during the break and said that he hadn’t mentioned anyone else in the cast, and he was halfway through. ‘He won’t’ she said. ‘in all the interviews he’s given so far, he hasn’t mentioned anyone’. He also said ‘self- deprecatingly’, ho, ho, that the cast were still speaking to him, only just. I loved the play originally. I’ll see tonight.

Yes, I did see. Poor P.B. lacks any inside. He played the play as fairly shallow light comedy. Yes, he did come in underneath, but only that. Alan Bates was a volcano coming in underneath. Everyone joined in more or less except Mairead, Her clarity of appearance and of diction are a joy.

P.B.’s star applause was nothing extra, which, considering that he is always present in dialogue, shows that the audience sensed the emptiness, too. Have I seen him from the front before? Perhaps not. His voice is thin, rather high and flat. It has no feeling of power held in rein.

The production is not there really.

Wednesday September 9 1992

Yes, it was played as a shallow light comedy, whereas the play is full of pain. He had certainly encouraged the others to act up. All were fairly good actors, and so didn’t become caricatures exactly, but certainly the brother and the father of Joanna, had removed the pathos from their parts. The young man was poor, quite poor. Disgraceful with so many out of work.

More and more I notice that acting and production lacks weight and certainty. By that I partly mean, how often I have suffered in the last ten years or more from all concerned in a play not having seen or found what there is to be got out of a play. Let alone the capacity to express such parts of it as they see. How I long for the great artist who can squeeze from a play exactly what there is to be got out of it and no more, expressed in finished exact beautiful expressive acting.

By the way, a pretty good house for now. Main body of stalls full. Two side aisles, five seats wide, on our side, all comps. Centre section not sold out, just pretty good.

Builder came, sweet big young man, younger than K!! I felt terrible cheating him. Rang K. and got him in ‘I’m on my way out’ mode. R. rang later to say K was embarking on another library album. That’ll teach me not to ring him back at once. R. will not be free till after the weekend, and K. when? To go on with the greenhouse. I am so tired of the dirt and mess, and going into the open-air and rain to go to the loo. Oh dear, I wonder what all those others of my generation, let alone above it, would think!

I sometimes get so tired of waiting. Well, at least I got the SK’s cheque for the telephone tonight. Still beggars can’t be choosers.

Thursday September 10 1992

Long letter from S. Two A4 pages, the first closely typewritten till near the bottom, when he grabs his pen.

He and Chris had a stupendous row the weekend after he came to lunch. It seems S. really had it out with Chris and said it all, about C.’s intense ‘possessiveness’, ‘stranglehold’ and so on. ‘I accused him of being a domestic and emotional tyrant. C. said Could we not try again? Give me a month to prove I can be different. Pathetic. Finally I told him about Nick. Of course there was a huge explosion … he believed that nothing…. had passed between us. We went out for lunch, walked the dog… He said he had nowhere to go, no money, nowhere to live…’

Chris Suggested in his innocence ‘that it would be probably be a lot healthier if we both felt free to have affairs.’ Oh dear. And S. going on, in pen, ‘suddenly all the oppressiveness, the accumulated oppressiveness of years disappeared and it was as if we’d just met. For a week, we’ve been very jolly, happy, and it must be added, sexy together. ‘Years’ - is it three? The rest of the hand-written part was about Nick. I wonder if his ‘intensity’ is S’s feelings and how far it’s poor Nick’s. Anyone may flinch under Niagara. I wrote a loving letter, talking of the Chris side, for I am not in a position to say anything useful about Nick, first because S. was going from the letter to see him, so things will be different now, and, of course, I have not yet met him.

I was sorry to see that Mary Norton has died at 88. How surprised much of the literary world will be, to find that the fineness of her writing will be the aspic that will preserve her work long after more pompously praised stuff. I must read through them again, out of gratitude. Not that I don’t anyway every year or two. I remember D., when she read The Borrowers for the first time, being moved to tears by the description of Arietty coming up from under the clock for the first time.

R. rang at twenty to twelve and we talked long and long. We have got a long way.

Friday September 11. 1992

Yesterday paid off my Poll Tax after all that face, I mean, fuss.

To my great irritation, the serial killer went away without paying the rent, leaving me with only four pounds after paying the window cleaner his £16. He announced, on his entrance, that he was exhausted, because he’s been working so hard. These days? He had with him a new young assistant. He stood on my bedroom window sill making me feel quite giddy and tummy twitching and broke a bit off my beech-tree. It’s a sad thought that I think at such moments, ‘I hope he won’t come back and burgle me’. Alan, the w-c admitted his former assistant was touched, at least to the point of saying ‘Well, his father was.’ Asked him to come in the afternoon, and he said certainly. Why didn’t I before?

No gin tonight. At Safeways, brought a lump of mince enough for two or even three goes of spag. bog, 78p, two cod fish-cakes for tonight, 98p, a pound of French beans, 50p two Spanish onions, 40p and two punnets of rasp, £1.

Saturday September 12 1992

There was a carrier bag on the edge of the pavement a couple of houses away, on Thursday. It seemed full of something heavy, but I thought oh well. Today it had been moved to outside my area gate. I was in a hurry but picked it up or tried to. The carrier bag broke, because it was a car battery and very heavy. Liquid was spilling out and a mass of newspaper all falling to pieces in a funny pinky decayed way. I had to get to Selfridges to buy some gin and whisky on my account, quite unjustifiable but I felt defiant. And I was partly repaid, because when I plucked a Gordon’s and a Bell from the shelf, though they were about £1 more than at the corner, they were giving away with them a bottle of Jacob’s Creek, £4.50 a time.

When I got back I looked at the bag again, and realised that the liquid spilling out was acid. So rang K for advice. Got Nigel, who was a bit of help. K. was off picking up Sharron. She rang when she got in and said I’d need gloves to pick it up and put it on a bed of newspaper to soak up the acid. And then ring up the Town Hall on Monday. Aren’t people hell to dump such a bother? I had to move it because children or pets might suffer. Not that I care about either.

I watched a nature programme on the usual sweep of evolution, and one sort of animal ‘dominating and challenging and overcoming’ another. Do you know I think we’ve come to the end of all that. And to changes of fashion in the arts and so on. There won’t be the easy way out of novelty. I think we’re face to face with ourselves just as we are for eternity.

Rather enjoyed a comedian called Paul Merton. ‘I’ve always wanted to ask Lee Harvey Oswald whether he remembers where he was when Pres. Kennedy was assassinated.’

Sunday September 13 1992

Edna’s birthday. Because of the SK defection, I had no way of sending anything in time. I didn’t think of the Selfridge card in time. Still, I don’t suppose she noticed. She is living very much moment by moment.

Rang Mary as usual and had so long a talk I nearly didn’t get to my film. I was much intrigued to find that she’d quoted me to many friends with much success. Imagine it, some remark I made on the phone about not going to the serial killer’s amateur production of Rebecca.!! Mentioned Mary Norton’s death. Dead silence. She’d never heard of her. Well, so I mildly described D. crying over the description of Arietty seeing the hall for the first time. A bit dangerous, but I think it’s perhaps all right now. But I bet the poor dear finds something mysteriously wrong with the book if she ever really gets round to reading it.

Another long talk to R in course of which he told me that Zoe is going to Wimbledon Art School, she has got a grant, and she is leaving home! Sensation. And is going to live at Clapham South, but he can’t remember the name of the street. Also can she come to Shades when we go? Yes that’ll be better, because I can pair off with Nick F. and clock him more unobtrusively.

Forgot to record that, one day when I was pursuing R. thro’ all the numbers, I got Natasha at the King’s Head. I made some playful remark about her and R. and she reacted quite strongly, saying she was just a good friend, and going on to overdo it by saying that she had been the go between with him and Ros, and someone else? And betrayed a bit of the same thing that Ros was guilty of being a bit jealous about him, implying that he was at once too reserved and too emotional ‘When he let go, he really let go’, or some phrase like that, but she did not say it with approval. Interesting. I still find it difficult to understand Ros’s phone call.

Now he tells me Natasha has been sacked without warning by Dan Crawford! Who’s surprised? As for Zoe leaving home and going to Art School? If I were R., I’d be nervous!

Monday September 14 1992

No builder’s estimate. K. rang! Two o’clock ‘What’s happening on the business front?’ Library music album going well, ‘I’m making some interesting discoveries’. I’ve always thought that the l. music may not bring him the money the others get because it won’t be ordinary enough, but it gives him space and time to experiment and invent with no parameters. Lots of people would be intimated by that, but not K. Has something to do for the Children’s Foundation and something else? We talked a bit of the blind anthem, ‘a celebration of the other senses’. Hm. Also talked of Paul R’s evening, - he was already going. Good. So he and R will be there, which will much please Paul. Told him about comps for Shades. When I rang Janet this a.m. she told me S had dictated a letter to R. saying that he could get comps for the matinee more easily! but perhaps one or two for an evening. So the director can’t get comps even though he’s in love with the company manager! How absurd it’s getting, because K. said, ‘I went to Shades last Monday, and the upper circle was closed, and the back three rows of the dress circle were empty, which was where we sat. So I had another look at Nick Frankfort. I really couldn’t see, (screams from me) but he’s reliable, again I think he’s what we want for S. Mind you, he hasn’t answered three messages from me. ‘But he’s only there to answer messages’. Greenhouse next week? He’s got to go down to Chichester to take photos for his law case for damages. Said the only reason they hadn’t done green h. before was R being too busy! Odd about R and jobs for me that he’s done nothing for me, compared …

Scottish judges under suspicion of favouring gay prosecutions to conceal their own gayness. ‘When asked for his comments, Lord Advocate Lord Roger said….’

Bought and read M. Coveney’s biography of Maggie Smith. Oh dear, I will comment later. But how inaccurate they all are.

Tuesday September 15 1992

Yes, the book is a bit cheap like its subject. Yes, I see her gifts but where is her judgment? It is simply an insult to compare her to Edith. And, of course the Judges brought in to pronounce on her merits, are Alec McCowen, Derek Jacobi, and of course most centrally, John Moffatt. It is painful to me that people would think we’d get on – I daresay they can see no difference between us. But then I must always remember that the National had Peggy Mount instead of D. for their first play. Both battleaxes … They all lack judgment, as Maggie S. does, and therefore aren’t worried by strokes of quite coarse vulgarity in the middle of delicate comedy, that appall me. They don’t seem to know. Maggie S. is the decadent end of a tradition, and somewhere knows it, which causes her insecurity. I was much struck yet again, that, in front of an audience, she will do anything to keep them on her side. I presume she did better in Canada because it didn’t matter so much. Every time John is quoted, he is right. He distinguishes the meretricious from the true, an activity that never seems to occur to the others.

Rather hungover this morning, as the serial killer brought Jemima in to see me just as I was going to bed, having had my ration of whisky, so I had a bit too much inescapably. A nice bright girl, 18, going to read History of Art. How transparent the very young are! I idly guessed at one point, ‘and fall in love with a married man’. That caught her between wind and water because she obviously is! As if most girls of 18 of that style don’t fall for their father!

Felt hungover but happily not badly enough not to enjoy my lunch at dear Café Flo. Familiarity is all as far as I’m concerned. Fish shop lemon-sole, espresso. John looks a little older again, - he’s going to get smaller from now on, and will be a tiny little shriveled old man! Business at Coliseum poor. Did I say R. told me Philadelphia was only doing 25%? And it doesn’t deserve that much. Thinks Royal Family are on the way out. Diana’s mother, who knows a friend of Joyce says it’s Charles who’s unpleasant and won’t give up Camilla Parker Bowles. I’m not going to think about it anymore. Wandered about the book-shops, found nothing, bought three more of these note-books, and visited Janet. Dennis Lawson came in briefly rather pink. Felt rather dyspeptic. Bought some smoked salmon for dinner, to help – it’s the lemon.

Girl on phone-in extolling the benefits of living alone. ‘I was sick of all that stuff about whose cornflakes are these? It drove me bananas.’

Musicians and actors often misunderstand one another, and one of the reasons is the silly faces musicians make when they play; these repel actors because musicians thus vulgarly invade one of the actor’s instruments, the face. And vice versa, when most actors attempt to sing. Warm again. Rang R. re Shades at cockpit. He’d been up all night!!

Wednesday September 16 1992

Slept and dozed till 12.0. SD royalty of £128. Finance crisis. Fancy!

In p.m. went to R’s and did garden. Left note from crusty old gardener. To my great irritation I forgot my travel permit. £1.20 each way. To H’smith when I got back, got cold chicken and pie and fish cakes. R. beans, and four rasps, for £1.20 and two straws for £1.00, so stocked up for the next three days for £6.15. False start for H’smith because I had forgotten my travel permit again. However at the bottom of my steps, I met the dear couple from No 1, who look after the Russian church House next door and asked them whether they had let their house, as a board had gone up. It was a mistake, like the one that went up for Giles a couple of years before Katrina moved in.

Incidentally the house in multiple – well, five or six bells on the front door – has been sold, only a fortnight’s warning given. Mrs Russian said she thought the council had bought it. I hope so, for the sake of the tenants. If it’s a private landlord, god help them in the present climate. Dear talk with the Russians despite them having gone to see Otherwise Engaged and thinking ‘All the acting superb!’ And the architect’s house for sale, the noisy, motor-bike, too, did I say? How pathetic the whole financial situation is! Poor little grey men who know about nothing except money.

Thursday September 17 1992

I meant of course, the national financial situation! I think it’ll distract the papers from silly David Mellor who is good news for the arts. Whatever he may be for women.

The serial killer’s hotel rang to ask where he was twice and I said he was at the doctors. His mother rang tonight, and hasn’t heard from him, and revealed by her tone that a certain waywardness is to be expected.

Put D’s cheque for A Day Out in the Halifax, £648.68 making £715.16, all together. Comforting at this moment, giving a little cash to prepare for the winter.

The film tonight was Strictly Ballroom an Australian film set in the world, the absurd blinkered - what is the opposite of apotheosis? suburban-lack-of-taste-plus of Australian ballroom dance. An hour and a half of unalloyed delight – not a longeur and an extraordinarily exact ironic edge on the whole thing. Author of stage play and screen play, producer and director. Baz Luhrmah

Friday September 18 1992

R. rang at midnight. Up all night Wed night, too, so pretty exhausted. Depressing outlook for the green house, - he’s more or less tied up at The Cockpit for the next fortnight or more. I haven’t let on to him or K. how depressing I find it, at this time of my life to have the flat in chaos downstairs and to go out into the open air to the loo. I can’t get on with anything. But they are young and forget. It’s not their fault, it’s life and my poverty.

To film at Renoir, Night on Earth, that one about various taxi-videos and talks. If he has aimed at reality, he has achieved triumphantly the sensation for his audience of actually driving for hours with intensely boring min-cab drivers.

Saturday Sept 20 1992

Still warmish and wettish. Bought Auberon Waugh’s autobiography in p. back Will This Do? Amusing, but little more, - as usual, he lacks some basic vitality. Tho’ he thinks he’s got away from his father, he hasn’t. But he has a fair amount of wit, and relaxation about himself. And a pretty daughter and son, Daisy and Nathaniel.

R, rang from the Cockpit. ‘I must talk to you about my career’. Because, he must stop helping people out to the detriment of his own dignity as a director. I was so bold as to say that if he had any spare time, it mustn’t be time given to the play, give it to the greenhouse, because it’s really getting me down. He caved in sweetly. Yes, I must have a long basic talk to him.

Sunday September 21 1992

Back from Chichester!

K rang 7.30, just out of the bath (me). Coming to do greenhouse on Friday, has arranged it with R ! ! told him I’d made R guilty about it and reminded him about R’s unpainted wall and him doing all this other work perhaps for money, I don’t know. I’m too drunk and hopeless and finished to know what I’m thinking.

Picked up on the pavement by a doorway, as beautiful a flat oval black stone four inches by three by one thick as any of Edna’s or on the shore.

Where did it come from? In a few leaves by a door post.

Monday September 21 1992

What I meant was that I meant R. to get things in proportion, and not agree to do things out of weak good will. After all, he’s written a play with me, so don’t I deserve to have my house put in order?

Also forgot to say that K. went to see the Virginia W. Vita evening with Eileen Atkins and Penelope Wilton that Mary L saw. M. said the set and production were ‘superb’. K said they were ridiculous crap, and that the set was ‘by Peter Hall’s daughter’! Just as the assistant director of Venus O was P. Hall’s son, ‘a real wally’.

My opinion slightly influenced by M’s painful narrowness and K’s total ignorance of V.W. and VSW.! Perhaps the set was better than he thought! I wonder if the dear thing realised Vita was Harold Nicholson’s wife?

Wrote a long letter to R. after he rang for a long talk after the first night. Depressed again by inferior work and lack of people to notice it. I hope the letter will cheer him up.

The young builder put his estimate through the door, ten days it’s taken him £3000 odd. That should do it. Rain, but what a lovely year for plants and gardens.

Why do all these young men depend on me? I know why I need them, but what on earth do they get from me?

Tuesday September 22 1992

Pouring and muggy all day. Rang Janet and arranged Shades seats for Thursday. She rang back on the machine to say Chris was upset, so… Later S. rang from a public phone with Helena Bonham Carter waiting at a wine bar table. He couldn’t say much, but he did say he’d just like to be on his own for a time. That reinforces what I’ve thought from the start, that S.’s attraction to N.F. was as much as anything a reaction against Chris. In fact, he hasn’t taken a tiny step forward from his leaving Bruno for Chris. It’s the same. I simply repeat, he doesn’t know what the price of a real relationship is.

Rang K. and got a draught of sanity. ‘Keep in with NF, I still have to get some money from Turnstile’! Oh, yes, did I say, I was supposed to be having dinner with Julian, postponed twice, until he rang last Thursday or so to say he might be going to LA to see Julian Sands, and he’d let me know. He didn’t and I had to ring his ‘lodger’ to find out he’d already gone. Of course I’m delighted not to be going to a difficult awkward and unappetising evening, but I am depressed by the lack of the sort of manners he purports to subscribe to.

Disney Prog. How odd that people don’t seem able to disentangle the vulgarity from the beautiful. Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty are only tolerable with the mice etc. Do Americans not know? No, they don’t, they talk of investigating Books of Hours etc, for … But the callow Yank college boys and girls rule undisputed. Two seconds of K. on ‘phone is enough for a week.

Wednesday September 23 1992

Alliance rang to say valuer was coming round tomorrow, so we’ve got that far. Rang K. to say, and also to tell him what Janet had revealed of S’s plans for Versailles. He wants to put on two plays, directing both, playing the lead in both in repertoire at the D of Y. Versailles and that play of Peter Barnes that J has been typing for what seems forever. Madness.

Terrible rain in N. London and SE France. Nothing extra here, but shots of shopping streets in Edgeware with four feet of water in a travel agency. Mysterious.

R. rang at nineish in the middle of running the show at the Cockpit. Thanked me for my letter, well, he might as it was full of encouraging compliments. Has read it three times. Serial killer still away, since Fri. night now. Rather immoderate.

My Fools and Horses Christmas no. on again. Do I get another repeat fee? Goodness knows.

Asked K. whether I should cover the wood foundations against the rain. He said yes and happily it stopped raining about twelve, and fitful sun and warmth dried the wood out completely. I covered it, and it is supposed to rain tonight. I only record this because my practical life is usually exactly the other way round. It is so comforting to me to think of them both being here on Friday. I get such support in their different ways from both. But, when I go down into the hall and past his room, it is always him I call out to if I’m alone.

The serial killer won’t, I hope, be tempted to stay where he’s been lately. She’s American, so she may be rich. By our standards.

TV drama-docu about McCarthy etc. Without their consent, only months later. Disgusting and tasteless. And pointless.

R. rang again when he got home, dear sweet creature. He is scheming to spend more time with me.

Thursday September 24 1992

The Alliance/Leicester valuer came, twenty minutes late. Apologised with a clumsy teddy bear charm, ‘I like to look at people’s bits and pieces, of course I’m a complete philistine, I don’t read’. Later ‘If I said security to you what would you answer?’ ‘Books’ I said. ‘Most people would say money.’ Very much the ‘I’m very interested in your life, let me tell you all about me’ syndrome, vide taxi-drivers.

Early lunch after he’d gone, life further complicated by Celia Bannerman, no less, to ask if I had a copy of that Saki evening Emlyn Williams wanted D. to be in. I remember D. had cast approval and went to auditions, and Celia B. and Michael Cochrane completed the quartet. But the whole thing collapsed, to poor Emlyn’s great shock and pain, by Tennents pulling out on Emlyn. Of course not Binkie but Sly Helen Montague. I was glad because D. was not well enough to do it, and would have been discovered during rehearsal. Now Celia and Michael C. suddenly thought, We could play the middle-aged ones now. Of course it took a bit of searching and I found it. Rather tatty text with corrections etc., called Beasts, which I hadn’t remembered.

After a bit of toing and froing, she said she could pick it up at the Albery when I met R. to see Shades so that’s what we did. R. came up just as I handed it over and Zoe a second later. Smaller than I thought, delicate little face. I went to pick up tickets. Funny exchange between woman tourist and box-office man over my shoulder. ‘I want a return’. ‘We’ve not sold out, there are seats at all prices’. ‘But I want a return’. She went to the other b.o. window to try again. I suppose she’d heard that at the hit shows, you queue for returns. So a return was a special sort of ticket. So she had to have one.

Our seats were in the front row of the dress-circle. At the end of the first half the woman next to me said How are you enjoying it? Before I could stop myself, I said Not much and then I heard myself saying rather shrilly ‘I’m a great friend of Simon Callow, so perhaps I’d better say nothing more’.

It’s no use, both R. and I were bored again and admitted we’d nearly nodded off. There is no distinction in the writing, it is quite ordinary, no, not wonderful plain writing, just ordinary. Pauline C. has coarsened her perf. with sudden raises of voice for laughs and semaphoric gestures equally broad. The boy has only one inflection. It must be S’s mother son thing.

It was more or less full, and I was so interested that they tut-tutted and ohhd and ahd and tittered like D’s mother, of course, the anti-men bits went well. Oh dear, I was bored.

R. and Zoe came back for dinner, and I was most interested to spend an evening with her. She is small and pale and with an unusually strong and determined character for 20. She has manners, also unusual. Of course we soon got on to her father. She is not coming to the ‘60s thing on Sunday, as it’s her last night in the old home. Her father is Mary Slade mutatis mutandis. I can scarcely be bothered to say more. A human relations chain-saw. She’s getting away. That’s the main thing. R. devoted his time to being exactly the same as usual. Nevertheless he gave me a big hug when she was away buying her tube ticket and not when we met! She’s strong or she couldn’t have got away, so she’ll be good for R who needs it. Have I said I said to R it was going to be very different when she was in digs at Clapham and at Wimbledon. For one thing, when they can meet every night, she may be surprised… And then going to a whole new college, R. might be discommoded by a great rush of new friends, of 19, 20 and 21, a great gulf to 28 who hobnobs with me! Interesting.

Friday September 25 1992 Saturday September 26 1992

Again a very tiring but satisfying two greenhouse days. Almost too tired to write now, but must try. These days are a big physical challenge with all the shopping, and the many trips up and down stairs and elsewhere, not to mention just the exhaustion of having two people there, banging and drilling and nailing and considering, even if I love both of them! I have to decide to sit down and rest, if I am to get through getting the dinner and the rest of the evening. And particularly getting four meals for three people on the trot. And of course they don’t really believe me.

The whole two days were completely overshadowed and made unreal for me, by first a letter from John Davis with two years accounts and a bill for £493, which more or less blanks out the £600 odd in the Halifax which I was looking forward to spending on certain essentials like a new pair of trousers and a shirt or two. Even worse, the Alliance rather naturally cried off the extension of the mortgage. I disclosed neither of these blows till tonight, which added to my tiredness of course. But then I never expect any unclouded happiness any more. Yet there was quite a lot. The very first exchange K sitting at dining table.

‘Have you a bit of paper?’ A. ‘Do you want a real bit of paper? K. ‘No, I want a pretend piece’.

I listened to them working, very frequently punctuated by helpless laughter.

They arrived at about eleven, and at the end of the day, had most of the frame built, and one pane of glass back in by the door.

During the evening Zoe rang about her move just as the talk was at a really good point. But so does Sharron and Linda. R. went downstairs to talk to her long enough for K. – not me - to raise his eyebrows. Ah well.

But I did put it all behind me, and thoroughly enjoyed as I always do, their relishing of dinner, beef casserole. Of course the demons of anxiety came back into the bedroom in the early morning.

K. rang at 10.30 cross, to say R’s car had broken down and he was coming by tube. So one way and another nothing happened till 12.0, and R didn’t get here till 1.30. He had to leave at 6.0 to run the show at the Cockpit. Still, they fetched the roof, and trimmed it, and got half of it on and screwed together before R. left. And K. worked on till seven thirty and got the roof on. His application is quite extraordinary, to anything that he has set his mind and heart on.

To my surprise R did leave – he thought he’d warned me, but he hadn’t. However, it makes me buy in advance, which is good. So I have plenty of food. Sharron was coming round, and bringing the car. So over the gand t he asked me, and I told him all. His first reaction is never at all panicky. He just flickered when I told him about John D. He then said his first instinct was to let the bank do their worst. ‘The Courts are a bit against the banks, it would take forever to bring the action. A friend of mine was taken to Court for a £6000 o’d and told to pay £10 a week by the Court.’ Snubs to the bank. That’s all very well, but he had no house or possessions. It’s odd that I didn’t feel sick or panic – I never do when he’s actually there. I don‘t see how I can go on living here.

Sharron arrived and was as always so loving and warm, to me. She took away my silver chain and the locket. She can put them together, and she did. He brought them round today, oh dear it’s Sunday now.

Sunday September 27 1992

So a less tiring day, with a morning in bed. Even with the bad news, it was a lovely evening. He left me with the comforting sentence, ‘The roof’s secured on, but we haven’t put the flashings on, so if it rains, it may leak as badly as ever. If there’s a wind, it may rattle a bit, don’t bother about that, but it there’s a gale and it blows off, give me a ring.’

So tonight a curiously perfect evening – for me. We went to Paul Ryan’s perf. like Blue Vienna, a staged perf. of a thing called The Leader of the Pack. It turned out to be a biog. musical about Ellie Greenwich, who further turns out to be the composer of many almost identical nos. typified by Be My Baby. And they were orchestrated to sound even more alike than they actually are. Always dangerous to have a string of nos. by the same person strung on nothing but the chronology of their composition.

Beginning of evening in the Green Man and French Horn, a thought marginally better than most central London pubs. They were already there, at just before seven, amazing. K. beautifully shaved, in a new edge to edge dark woolen jacket, with a white embroidered stitching on the edges. ‘Makes you look thinner’, I said.

He produced the box Sharron gave me some time ago, with the silver ring chain and the locket melted together. The dear girl knew I was needing any help, and certainly to hang my dear memories round my neck is no hindrance.

So it was Sam Brown playing the lead. Hopeless. She could be got through a musical if she would submit to tuition. But she had one fatal fault – only one, after all is enough – she reacts to a question just before it has finished. Meaningless legs, bad news in sixties skirts. Paul was excellent – the only one who could act or tried to act.

Evening slightly overcast for the audience by being trapped and crushed in the foyer on a hot night for twenty minutes with the doors shut. (Paul told me that they had only one run through which started at 5.30. Curtain up at 7.30 only it didn’t.)

Dangerously complaisant audient. I kept nodding off.

At interval met boys in the pub, with a fairly thumbs down verdict. I went to leave a note for Paul. Rather ashamed to find as I came round the corner to that familiar stage-door, there they were all going down for the second half and there was Paul’s back. Now how different theatre morals are from outside! If I had ‘honestly’ confessed my presence, I might very well have depressed P. by my unconcealable feelings of depression and rendered him less able to do his best in the second half and perhaps carry the piece to triumph? Anyway, I left an affectionate note, and went back to the pub, where K had decided to take us out to sups. Warm as a July night to Café Pasta in Garrick St. Table on street leaning so much it would have shot K’s lasagna into his lap. Salade Nicoise for me. Fusilli gorgonzola for R.

The charm and pleasure of the spontaneous, the frisson of beggars, and the food and the wine and him.

Monday September 28 1992

I must sit and think. Wrote and accepted the estimate for Bournemouth. K rang and I told him, and he was cross because I should have got him and Robin to do it; he rang off. It upsets me so much. I couldn’t very well say if it takes them two months to get one little greenhouse done…

Lalla couldn’t stand the mess for so long.

Tuesday September 29 1992

An unexpected and very pleasant treat. Roy rang last night to say did I want to go and see the Gunnersbury Triangle. ‘But would we come back from it?’ ‘It’s a London wildlife Park, about six acres beside, well a triangle between the District tube lines. Nearest station, Chiswick Park. The entrance still looks like the scrap metal yard that it was as recently as 1985, when LWT took it over. A fat man came out and we chatted, enquiring into the possibilities of mushrooms. The reality was rather disappointing. A narrow graveled path led us through birch wood, a pool, a bank with fox-holes in it, one or two glades, at least ten sorts of mushrooms, but, but, almost the entire six acres was nothing but nettles and bramble. It could be quite beautiful, like the wild garden at Kew, but has little or no management. So much so that I wondered how that fat man could sit in that hut instead of working. We saw a robin and a jay. Big deal, and there are no fish in the pond. Why not? It could be so much more beautiful and packed.

We walked back and turned right at Chiswick Park station and there, a few yards away, is the largest Sainsbury’s in London. And goodness it is big. You walk into the vegetable bit, and round the central display stand, there was a space through which you could almost have driven two small cars abreast. On the fruit shelf, I saw shelled coconuts the size of a grape, £2.29 a lb. Serves a pretty mixed area, but with some of the most up-market areas in it. He bought some nice wine NZ Chardonnay – he read me a letter from his NZ TV producer friend later, - and we had that delicious Tagliatelle funghi – oyster mushrooms, that he did for a ‘starter’ the last time I was there. Dear Marian came in, I do hope they stay together. It seems very good now, - they’ve had and probably still have, the right sort of rows.

The morning and lunch were a little balm to my poor worried self.

Wednesday September 30 1992

I am becoming more and more convinced I’ll have to sell. But there is nothing more to say yet.

This evening to the Orange Tree to see His Majesty, Granville Barker’s last play. This season is its world premiere. Would not have missed it, tho’ it was only respectably acted, and has some important flaws, inclu. finishing about four times. But it was never close to production in his lifetime and possibly it is the first draft, with lots of sections left in in case. Much of it shows the qualities of the other plays, clear headed argument, coherent character drawing, subtle wit, and a noble spirit.

Sam Dastor is not a star, and is too fond of a plangent elegiac downward note in his voice, but he has intelligence and can be still and carry a scene forward with the words and ideas, and not with all that tiresome energy, which is so frequently all you get nowadays. Caroline John as the Queen is humourless, a bit strident, a bit obvious one-dimensional, - she misses the character badly. Doesn’t help him at all, and is a bit too old. Misses the silliness completely. It’s probably a portrait of Lillah.

Barrie Cookson, excellent, doesn’t seem to act.

Tim was perfect, no other word for it, a small part of an English pilot on the outskirts of the action. Someone says to him, As you don’t care, you can probably tell us more of the truth. Or words to that effect. He filled the part exactly as full as it could bear and no more. A rare experience, a display of exact judgment. I must one day write a little monograph on the random use of the inane laugh in the upper and upper-middle- classes. His was really the one distinguished perf. Clothes, hair, all.

Interesting Sam Walters greeted me with enthusiasm. I don‘t think we’d get on, however, when I said how much I admired the unforced unpumped pace and delivery, without all that tiresome ‘energy’, ‘Oh I don’t want to do without energy’. I fear he didn’t catch the inverted commas. Dear Tim gave me a lift home. How impossible it is to get over to them all how real a treat it is to me to get such a lift. The ordinary stuff of life to them. Why am I not committing suicide? I don’t know.

Thursday October 1 1992

Paid water bill £63 and IT and gas bill £39

Wrote to K and said I would sell, because how otherwise could I possibly keep up the payments on the £28,000 he raised for me, let alone pay it off. ‘My back’s to the wall’, and I felt the strange touch of coincidence that always heralds change with me. No sooner had I posted the letter, but the phone rang, to say I had a commercial casting tomorrow morning. The first time for getting on for two years.

To film as usual. ‘Unforgiven’, a Western. I have seen at most, half a dozen westerns in my life, always under duress. This was not only horrible, but pathetically immoral, that is, not really knowing how immoral it was, but also of an intense tedium. J. said I snored. Certainly I had my eyes shut most of the time. I value my more delicate reflexes, which are not to be needlessly violated by culpably invocate Americans.

Friday October 2 1992

11.25 pm

For the first time, I didn’t answer K. on the phone, because he hadn’t had my letter last night when I got back. I felt badly but it’s so important, and I couldn’t have repeated the letter. I wanted to say it in a letter, to stop him being angry, which deprives my brain and heart and self of that’s why I never remember anything he says to me then. I wanted him to read the letter before I spoke to him. I sometimes think he despises that. I don‘t know why. You can be more exact in a letter.

To commercial interv. At 10.30. The Casting suite at 55 Portland St. Went in shirt and trousers, as nobody had said different. I was interested that none of the men were in suit and collar and tie which two years ago they would have been, and which I had consciously eschewed for independence, so that was a relief. But the other people there looked pathetic has-beens, the women in precarious best shoes and coats and skirts, one man in a grey two piece that didn’t match his hair, brushed forward in a fringe in an imitation of youthful style some years ago.

Still, degrading as it was, I gave the young director a jump. The’ character’ was a man who didn’t quite believe that whatever the name of the furniture firm was, had tested the drawers 25000 times. ‘He’s obsessed’. He described that for a bit and then I said swiftly ‘Oh, those real obsessions, when you can’t stop washing your hands. I remember going into the Gents at a Bristol Café for a crap (jump from the female producer) and a man was washing his hands finger by finger, and when I came out, minutes later, he was still at it. And it’s the same for turning off the electric fire or light seventy three times. Haven’t you ever felt like going back to switch something off again?’ ‘Oh yes, I have’ said the young director, meekly, and went into it a bit. ‘Well, it’s sexual guilt they say’. I said.

Then I did it. And repeated sexual guilt as I went out. That’ll teach them to do these ghastly commercials.

After to lunch, (home again in between) with S. but must write about that when I’m sober. He had come from DR with K. Oh oh.

Saturday October 3 1992

K. and Robin are here again, and they’ve got the big glass in and the panel on by the door, so the place is more or less draught proof and watertight.

Simon. Yes, well it is coincidence time. On the way to Café Pasta, I passed the Albery stage-door and was called back by Chris W.! I didn’t recognise him. His hair is short and brushed forward like Frankenstein, and his face is pouchy and haggard, in comparison to the rather sickly golden model boy he used to be. He greeted me warmly and on I went to Café Pasta, again. S. sitting at the back, waved. I hope he got some comfort from our talk, it seemed rather inconclusive to me. Except for two good points. First, he is splitting up with Howard P and Turnstile. And he said, at some length that most of all he wanted to be alone. Alone and looking into himself and doing nothing. Oh I wish I’d said that to him more strongly in the last two years or so. I really do know.

Had Salade Nicoise again. He had a starter without warning. I said Can’t I have a starter? ‘No, I have brought you here to humiliate you’.

Back home to put my feet in the two-year-old hole in the carpet.

11.30. He’s gone.

Sunday October 4 1992

I had written to him laying out what I intended to do, sell the flat and put the furniture into store and live in a rented room until Lalla dies and I can have a flat again if I’m not too old. (I wonder what the world would think of my difficulties, if they were told that our only family asset was tied for a general servant because she looked after my parents till they died. Yes, but am I to be turned out of my home for that?) I don’t say that but the world might. I also asked him to try not to get angry with me, as it upsets me so much and more importantly, stops me thinking. And I don’t think I deserve it. Of course, it’s his impatient love and I will learn to bear it as time goes on. So Robin and he arrived at ten thirty or so, and started off at once, though they couldn’t do the flashing because it was and had been wet. So after a bit of toast and tea, and ‘there’s plenty to do without the flashing’, K. set off to get the big pane of glass and various other bits and pieces, and as it turned out, not only beautiful picture- frame mouldings for the big pane and a whole new tin of pale green paint for the yard. They worked hard and well, and by the end, it was more or less finished and certainly much more draught proof and shut in. Of course, it will still leak a bit till the flashings. Usual omelette and salad for lunch and I went out shopping. Then as before, came back and sat down and dozed while they worked. It exhausts me, just as if they were real workmen!

R. rigged up a bin-bag or two over the roof to keep any drips out. I wondered why he hadn’t done it a year ago and saved me a winter of misery. But I suppose he never saw it in full flow.

During the afternoon R. made a much wider shelf in the form of a proper staging, duckboards like Kew’s, lovely. It turned out R. couldn’t stay to dinner. Whether it was diplomatic, so that K. and I could talk, I wondered, but then when he went to the shops and came back, with a bag of shopping I realised he was having Zoe round. Why didn’t he say so?

So there we were, at this serious moment in my life having to tell the Bank something on Monday. We went through all the alternatives, selling, letting, selling the SD rights, will the DSS go on with the mortgage if I sell and buy, and so on. He said more than once, he could not forgive himself if he did not look at every possibility, before selling. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so clearly how much he loves me. He sat there, devoting his whole self to my piddling little affairs. Perhaps the most affecting moment was when he said that he offered to withdraw completely from my financial affairs and no more criticism if that would make my life easier.

At another point, he said, If you sell, you’ll have enough to buy somewhere really rundown, and Robin and I can rebuild it from the ground up. At another, ‘And you could live with us’. There is nothing he wouldn’t do to help me. And he didn’t lose his temper.

Monday October 5 1992

Started on it all. Rang S. and John N. and Roy, and estate agent Lawson and Daughter. Wrote Julian and Felix. Much touched by S’s immediate response altho’ it is Patricia Hodge’s first night. He left a message with Janet, and a letter for Tom Erhart of Peggy Ramsay! to talk about the sale of the S.D. royalties. And also left the new Rex Harrison biog. by Alexander Walker at Janet’s.

Rang Tom Erhart ebullient campy Yank, and went along this p.m. to Cavaradossi (sic) – Ramsay’s new offices in Wardour Street. Anonymous grey carpeted glass cubicles. Sat for quarter of an hour in a sort of reception area. Tom E. arrived, plump queeny middle-aged American. Very mild, sweet, seemingly rather helpless. Perhaps not, but it seems odd that he can survive, obviously prosperous, without any apparent steel, like me! He was only helpful negatively, and seemed very unworldly saying ‘Julian Slade hasn’t got any money’. Most interesting bit him telling me they’ve just taken over the Aldons Huxley Estate, and in the course of saying he’d never experienced a selling of rights – odd! – he did say that Huxley sold the Giveonda Smile outright to French’s. so perhaps French’s….

Huxley? Peggy? The past reaching out. Wasn’t there a son? Matthew? He must be at least my age, but not much more.

Messages on machine from John N and Felix but nothing from Julian! But of course, he may not be back from L.A. Even so I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if he remained silent under advice. Cautious, poor dear. Nothing from Roy.

Tuesday October 6 1992

Mary L. had rung to say that she wouldn’t be coming, as her hip and back were bad, and R. was going to the Suffolk St. Osteopath Clinic! So at half past one, neither had arrived. Then R. came hobbling along and was in some pain throughout the day. Nevertheless we had a very good working day. We went thoroughly through the dialogue of the whole play, bit by bit, at once getting rid of stiff and awkward bits that said the right thing, but didn’t say it well, and the bits of re-writing that he did while we’ve been apart. It was a working time of about four hours, diversified by screams of laughter as always and much affection. And Zoe rang up – as ever. Dinner, lamb steaks, r-beans, courgettes, raspberries.

After dinner, we had a go at his application for the Young Vic Directorship. He won’t get it but it was useful to talk it through, and map out a programme. He is still too diffident and humble.

But oh, he is a dear young man. He offered any money he had ever to help my difficulties. I never receive that well, not well enough. He left at 11.13 to feed his fish.

Wednesday October 7 1992

Remembered a story about that excellent actor Herbert Lomas, always called Tiny because he was about 6’ 4”. He had a big craggy face, played Abraham Lincoln in John Drinkwater’s A.B A big sideways full-lipped mouth, making him going Yah yah yah in a very beguiling Yorkshire way that gave an extraordinary sincerity in for instance ‘The Holly and the Ivy’.

D worked with him at The Arts in the ‘40s. Later, she met him in the street, and said ‘How are you Tiny? Haven’t seen you for a bit’. (I think it was that very cold winter of ‘46-‘47.) ‘No, I’ve been very ill with the flu. I’ve been really bad for three weeks. Only got up for the show’.

Wrote to K and quoted ‘Friendship doubleth joys and cuteth griefs in half’. Bacon also says Let diaries be brought in use. Chilly NE wind.

Thursday October 8 1992

So I rang Felix and to my surprise, he was sweet from the first moment, ‘Well, we must see what we can do about this’. So that was a relief. He seemed to think it was all possible and would put out feelers. I was so relieved he was not rude, that I did not realise until I put the phone down that he had not said anything concrete. He may do nothing. John N. rang to suggest that someone on his own level, say, Simon? rang Cameron Mackintosh, and he’s not only very rich but very generous, and might just write a cheque for £25,000 knowing you were in difficulties. Hm, I wonder, remembering our row in a hotel bedroom in Harrogate 20? years ago. On the other hand, he might like to bail me out because of the row. Who knows? I’ll take anything!

Still no news from Roy though Marian put up a loyal front.

Cleared up the flat a bit for the estate-agent, Lawson and Daughter. A slightly plump young man smelling of booze at 4.0 as I expect I was too, and he was not in the least formidable and obviously charmed by the flat. Eventually he said he’d give me his gut feeling about the price, £105 - £110. That was a great relief to me, as I’d expected it to be even less than the modernisation-costs less than the £12000 the flat upstairs went for eighteen months ago - and of course plus the garden.

I felt quite faint and strange with relief. I was expecting £85,000. Left message on K’s machine.

Zoe rang at six to ask where R was. How odd modern couples are! She should be outraged that she had to ring someone else to find out where he was! The amusing thing is that I remembered rather late in the conversation that R. was typing the play at K’s and I’m sure I said it to sound like a guilty excuse.

Rang Janet to say I wouldn’t come to Carry on Columbus. She told me Carl Toms is pretty ill, and John Perry has as it were, entrapped him in the Oxford house. He wants so much to sell his share in it, and get away.

Oh, and K. was doing something for Peter Hutch. Ah well.

Friday October 9 1992

A bit chilly. Rested after exhausting week. Little or no money, no rent. Lunch, bacon omelette. Dinner, that half of pie left, and a bit of frilly lettuce. Couldn’t afford any w-up liquid after paying the £5 IT three days late. With all the tension I forgot! Oh dear K. will never understand that!

I rang tonight to tell him about Julian’s letter and he was quite cross about me not finding out about letting or storage, neither of which can come about for weeks. But perhaps he needs to get cross with me, - I think he does. Also spoke to R. and Sharron, who’s got her sinus. No word from Roy. R. has typed the whole except last scene.

Later. The serial killer came round to pay the rent. We talked about the blitz, because of the big windows in the greenhouse. He gave me his girl’s number. It is an indication of his curious nothingness that I feel no impulse to save him from the stupidness he’s making of his life.

I must tackle K about his ‘But didn’t I tell you…’ I do love him.

Saturday October 10 1992

A bit cold, and rain when I didn’t expect it. Letter from estate agent which made me feel awful.

Oh, Denholm Elliott died and of AIDS, thus confirming all the stories of daisy chains in Tangier. The sleaze beneath the surface wasn’t acting.

Went shopping in p.m. and cleared up the yard a bit. Oh, K. said Cameron M. was interested in the rights, but is away for a fortnight.

Sunday October 11 1992

Philip Larkin’s letters are, as expected, endearingly flat, and will be much criticized for being dull. Not so.

Bit I liked best was to Judy Egerton,… there was rather too much of four-letter Larkin for my liking. ‘They fuck you up’ will clearly be my Luke of Innisfree. I fully expect to hear it recited by a thousand Girl Guides before I die.

Hazel rang this p.m. and I am glad I told her all. She was very good about it. I shall try not to tell Mary because she has so little life and it will make her feel less protected. All the same, she is so interested in shipwreck that I may indulge her one day.

Edna quite up, and said to Mary I would try to arrange her lunch with Robin. R. rang at five or so, he’d got rid of his mother and sister. They spent £300 in MandS and R. bought K some underpants, the same old large Y-fronts. Dear thing, if he could buy them with the stains on, he would.

Monday October 12 1992

Just back from K’s ! He rang at half past four and said he’d got a something together for the blind anthem, and dinner. We had a session first, lovely, like the old days. Interesting theme, starting with a triplet and flexible enough to be set in a number of slightly different metres. Made me a tape with the tune just looping round – one of those funny little tapes with just enough tape for one song. V. sensible. Over the g&t, he brought up the gay programme last night on the interesting subject of whether you are born gay or have gayness thrust upon you. He applied it to S. and started on a rather silly line about public school boys and S. not being gay if etc. and actually said most gayness came from p. schools and there weren’t many gays in the North. Sharron and I gently opposed him simply on grounds of complete ignorance and total lack of information! As he was in his ‘please let me speak, don’t interrupt me’ even if we agreed I was glad he went off to get the diner – lamb chops and a delicious summer pudding.

I had spent the afternoon working thro’ the amended script sent by R. this morning. All changes basically for the better, but amended some of the phrasing as he’d suggested. Wrote five or six A4 pages of notes, enlivened by my descriptions of the few misprints viz ‘everyhwhere’ – this is you dragging in your early Norse quotations again’ or ‘maazing’ – I didn’t know Helena was South African, and ‘The pile of Helena’, No she’s not south African, she’s a Greek Saint ‘The pile of H’ and so on. Sent it before the last post, hoping R. would ring later on. Of course he walked in at K’s half-way thro’ dinner with K’s underpants. K. had told me over dinner, to my great amusement that R’s sister works in MandS in Barnstaple and comes to the O St. to buy the latest lines to show off to her fellow assistants in Barnstaple! One pair of K’s pants were in a chaste subdued navy. R bent over to give me a kiss, and yelped with his back. Many minutes of helpless laughter as usual. ‘Did you make this summer pudding?’ ‘No I got it at Mark’s.’ I am so lucky.

Messages on machine from Marjorie, sounding drunk. From Hazel, suggesting I ring Tom H. who had suggested to her that I raise money from a reversion on B’mouth. Sweet of them both to bother, but odd that he doesn’t realise as a lawyer that nobody will raise any money on B’mouth, because I might die before Lalla.

Also message from R who only stayed half an hour at K’s suggesting a new title for the play from something of Zola’s, Living Out Loud. Now it’s quite a good title in vacuo, but what has it to do with the play? An evening with K makes all all right.

Tuesday October 13 1992

Oh, Felix rang up yesterday a.m. – of course, he hadn’t done anything as he revealed by saying did I want to sell the entire rights! How strange all these business people are, in that they cannot hear what you say. Which is why I can never be business like, I suppose. I told him of Cameron’s interest and Julian’s letter. He forbade me to have anything to do with it all. Good. At last got my nasty little cheap top coat back from the cleaners. I first took it there in June, to have it cleaned and repaired. What with no money and the manager ringing up at halfway mark to say the collar had gone all funny, and then more money and going back to see the collar and finding the repairs hadn’t been done and then no more money and finally just having the £12.50, I got it. The collar is certainly shrunken like a shriveled Peter Pan collar on the inside of the real collar. So I look as if I have a gabardine pie frill round my neck.

Saw a TV prog. about Ridley Scott, the director. ‘Filming is a little like going to war. You have to choose your lieutenants’. His art teacher said some people thought his work was a bit on the slick side for West Hartlepool.

His brother, Tony Scott, was a feeble respectful copy, ‘Amazing he had that skill at drawing, even then’.

Which of them was it whose advert I was in, which was exhausting humiliation second only to Bradford and Bingley?

R. rang at 8.15 and seemed a bit surprised I was having dinner. That in itself was unusual in that his memory and respect for my habits is total. He was obviously a bit worried about something. I rang back and he was eating.

He was fairly distressed by that stupid girl at cockpit. She has engaged two other people on salaries to substitute for him and Tim as well as objecting to R. taking a week off for his back.

The main advice I gave him is that he must not associate himself with complete amateurs any more. After October 29 when Tim comes back, he must cut them out, and all such people in future. He is so humble. To a fault.

Wednesday October 14 1992

Chilly and going to be wet. Went to pick up laundry in my ruined little coat.

K. rang in the p.m. about the blind song, and was much more illuminating about it. It’s simply a celebratory affair and not a blind celebration, which is fairly inhibiting. It is to be sung by a choir at a big celebration for the 150th anniv. run by St. Dunstan’s – fancy - and then all over the world, and translated into 150 languages! ‘So it ought to be a pop song, not an anthem ‘anthem’. The man he spoke to quoted ‘If I ruled the world every day would be the first day of spring.’

It seems someone has written one about ‘The windows of my mind’ but obviously the windows don’t open on much. ‘Wonders of the world’ stuff. He cleared my mind, which had still been floundering in troughs of bad taste. Now I need to listen to the music for the next two days.

Later.

Just at the end of dinner, most moving, Ken Fountaine rang from Lincolnshire. D. Fountaine’s nephew told me that they have settled her into a rest home up there outside Scunthorpe. ‘She’s been falling over once or twice lately’. A flat Northern/Midlands voice, spoke three times to his wife who supplied the more delicate intimate details like her nice view, and it was quiet and so on. They sounded really good kind solid people, but he of course, suffered from that Northern crippling of the emotions.

I put the phone down and wept into my cheese. That chirpy self-sufficient bright and common-sensical woman forced into dependence. And Edna deprived of her visits. I asked what had become of her grandfather clock, a family one. ‘My son’s taken it in’. The end of a life, really.

Thursday October 15 1992

Rather cold, chance of frost. Storm of phone calls, and script in post with a part of three lines, getting Richard Briers to give a urine test. Still after two years I couldn’t face a sizable part – yet. B’mouth insur. rang, fuck them.

Crispin rang to offer me two comps for Way of the World. R. rang to arrange tomorrow and is still not sure. I do hope someday soon he arranges his life a little more certainty so that we can plan ahead!

Oh, and the cheque arrived for Only Fools and S.D which I made Felix send to me, instead of to the bank. £1161. I have to have some cash for so many things, and in case. If that cheque of D’s hadn’t come to me, K. would have had to pay John D’s bill, and I can’t have that. I must have two new bits of clothes, because that’s all I have now, since I put on weight.

Half the mines are to be closed, some as soon as tomorrow. The whys and wherefores of any individual development or failure in politics are opaque to me, but I feel in the air an unpleasant feeling of some imminent basic collapse unlike any I have known. Because this time all that is going wrong cannot be to anyone’s advantage.

Re-reading Ruth Draper’s letters. A noble soul as her work is noble. She speaks from a vanished world. How appalled she would be to turn on the radio or TV and find people talking about nothing but money.

Rang Deloraine and got up to date. Edna can alas tell one nothing. Mercy broke both legs at different times, is now bent, can’t walk, and can’t dial a ‘phone call, but has recovered her brain which went for a bit.

R. rang tonight to ask whether there was a film on. Not content with my being his business number, I have to be his information desk as well. Lovely. K. and Sharron are off to L’pool for Ernie’s 65 b’day. Poor loves. Must ring Marjorie tomorrow.

Friday October 16 1992

R. has just left after our really last session on the play. All that remains is the last typing on the word processor and whatever final little surface corrections occur to either of us. And then – show it to ‘somebody’. Well, Kevin and Roy.

All the alterations he made were always for clarity. Almost all I agreed with. I am lucky in my work with him. I am also drunk.

Saturday October 17 1992

Mildly hungover this morning. Went to shops for the weekend. Bought the substance of that waldorf salad, as I had apples, parsley, chevril. Bought walnuts and what turned out to be delicious celery. I had forgotten how much I like it but I didn’t make the salad in the end because the market fishmonger gave me a packet of smoked salmon again. And I must say it is the perfect lunch for a hangover, the actual flesh easily digested, drenched in lemon juice and salt, which correct dehydration and acidity, and encourages you to drink large glasses of dry white wine, which finally sets you right.

R. and I had arranged to see the Way of the World preview at the Lyric H’smith. Crispin R. had rung to ask me to see it, with an offer of two comps. So I said Come to lunch, for ease and convenience, just as I had rather expected him to say last night as the serial killer is still away, but he didn’t do either, he has to go back now to feed that goldfish, or rather blackfish. Aren’t people odd to lumber themselves with a tie like that? Of course, R. loves having any bolthole to escape!

However, he did turn up at 1.15 but had had lunch, he said. That did not stop him having two glasses of wine and quite a bit of bread and cheese, liberally spread with mustard. It turned out his lunch had been scotch pancakes. I must talk to him about proper food.

So off we went to the Lyric with R looking about him with the air of Marco Polo or Columbus which all devoted motorists assume on the tube or on the pavements.

The play was, most unexpectedly, not half bad. Directed by Peter Gill, it was in accurate period, plainly done, serving the play and getting it clearly done. I was really struck by the first scene between Mrs F. and Mrs M. They sat down on high- backed dining-chairs, and played the whole dialogue without moving. Level of acting not at all bad for nowadays. Jeremy Northam is an unmistakable leading man and without being a ‘star’ is well worthwhile. Jonathan Phillips has the right size and volume and made me understand every word he said, a considerable feat in Congreve. Everyone more or less seemed at home in the clothes, except for one girl, of whom more later. (The standard of the clothes may be judged by the ruffles, which are all different.) The men used their legs as they should for a well-turned calf etc.

Sheila Hancock is miscast as Lady W., tho’ of course very popular with the pensioner audience because they know who she is. Lady W. shouldn’t be thin with a Punch nose and chin, - she must be a bit overblown. Of course S.H. has enough comic force to make some of the points. But she also has, as usual, the coarse strokes that make me long to say ‘Don’t do that, dear’. And of course, the inescapable pinched vowels that would be funny if they were deliberate.

The best thing about it, apart from Peter Gill, is Barbara Flynn as Millamant. She can sit up straight, say a line with perfect timing, and turn her head into profile, making a perfect picture, and keep it still. She can wear the clothes – (Have I seen anyone for the last twenty years who can wear them so naturally? The other girl put her fan between her knees!) She has taken the trouble to learn how to use her fan so that it becomes a complete extension of her arm. And she had learnt some of the language of the fan and used it. When did I last see that? And she had the complete measure of the lines and an excellent French accent, and could control every man on the stage. I hope the success of the production, if it has one, will encourage her to come up one notch and then it will knock everyone out as it did me today.

Dear R. went off to Zoe on the tube. I came back to look after the demand from Alliance that I hadn’t paid my mortgage. Of course I hadn’t – the DSS had reduced my income support to pay it direct, - and hadn’t done it!

Later.

Curiously moved by a little flash programme to fill in time. A female casting-director faced with Ellen Terry’s Lady Macbeth by Sargent, gave her opinion of her ‘potential’. And, of course, the face, in close-up on TV, with the eyes with much red around, quite unlike E.T, I would think, but nevertheless, sufficiently ‘exciting’ and ‘dramatic’ (sic) for nowadays. The fat rather unattractive c.d. said she was ‘obviously a leading actress. There’s a strong personality, there. I’d like to look at her C.V. – But it’s a hundred years ago.’

I was touched at catching it with John’s photos of ET behind me. I suppose the poor wretched fat C.D. had never heard of her. But me catching it is another good E.T. coincidence like the beautiful Bournemouth photograph.

And he is in Liverpool for his father’s 65 b’day celebrations. I’m glad he can combine a visit with a b’day. More people, less time to quarrel. One hopes. But oh, how I hate him being away. I hate him driving, oh dear, it’s my mother’s fear.

Later still.

To see Janet tomorrow about S. She’s worried! So am I!

Sunday October 18 1992

To Janet’s office, passing the boarded-up pub bombed the other day. Poor little Mary L. saying it was the only pub round there which had ‘got it right’ because it looks like ‘the pub’ of her youth. What a long time it must be that she has been living the life of those few years. It is actually as dreary a central London pub as you could find, which is saying a good deal. Why do, or did, people like pubs? I can’t see it. If you can afford drink at home or elsewhere.

I think I focused Janet’s mind, by repeating a fair number of times, the two issues she should push with S., her volume of work, and the late payments, and the ridiculous division between her diary of S’s movements and Marion Martin’s office’s utter incompetence. I tried to sift her away from saying And it’s so bad for you to rely on me to do everything. ‘He’s asked me to work for him alone. I won’t do it ever, even I he could afford it.’ She described vividly the waste of money. ‘Ring Richard Rodney Bennett and see if we can meet next week’. ‘I ring RRB in the Shetlands and he’s in London. I ring him in London and he says he’s free these days. I ring S. and say where does he want to meet, and he says, RRB can’t and… All those phone calls that S. could have done with one. Do you know, he once rang me from the L.A. Theatre Centre to send some flowers to Pauline Collins at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel.’ I think I left her on an even keel, but I rather tremble to think what K. will feel about it all, as a generation two down. But I rely on him.

66. 1992. 31. ?76. 2002. 41. ?86. 2012 51 ?96. 2022 61.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 115

October 18 1992 (cont) December 3 1992

Sunday October 18 1992 (cont)

After I had, I think given my best advice, I settled down, as a little bonus, to go through Spotlight to start getting my eye in for casting. Janet has no Spotlights, but there were some in the room next door, but only men. Awful, there are now three vols. for men A-G, H-M and N to Z. Whole set both sexes, £150 odd. What was really worrying, was the ridiculous self-classifications. David Troughton, as Young Actor when he must be all of 45. Why not a Character Actor? Or at least a Leading Actor? And Ian Glen as a Young Actor?

Monday October 19 1992

What a day! I am thankful that K. has no idea or perception that I ever get tired, so I suppose I don’t seem to be aging. He asked me to bring bacon and eggs – for the lunch R and I had sprung on him like the old days. Got there at one. So heavenly to be welcomed with hugs all round. Sharron had said before, hearing I was coming, ‘Oh, I’ll have such a laugh’. We’d hardly sat down before I was telling them about Barbara Flynn and her fan. A dirty mind is a perpetual feast. They were helpless.

R and I settled in front of the word processor, and I can imagine what a strain it could be on eyes, neck, back, legs. But what a treat it is to correct one line and not to have to rewrite the whole page. We put in all the new bits, made several excellent running repairs and new changes. We worked from 2.30 to seven, R much harder than me as he was doing all the typing, accompanied again by the helpless laughter that our working together always seems to produce.

There was an excellent moment for the despiser of machinery. R. didn’t know how to make the machine page the script, and K. said Call me, when you want to do it. I did – he was in the middle of a bit of library music and got up out of the banks of complicated machinery he works among. He and R. bent over the machine, pressing various knobs fruitlessly. The manual of instructions could not be found. Suddenly Nigel arrived back, Just the man we need - and he couldn’t do it either, or find the manual. I went down and had a gin and tonic and read the paper. It was setting my teeth on edge. They managed to do it, K. went back to the music and I more or less cooked the dinner. He’d done the vegetables etc. Lovely bit of lamb.

So the script is finished. R. will do four copies, and then – judgement. I think it’s a bit flat.

After dinner, - more screams – coffee in the sitting-room, with Nigel and Sharron. R. and K. stayed in d-room, talking about what? The American musical? Anyway, they never came back till I left. And I didn’t care a bit. I much enjoyed my chat with the others, and felt nothing except thankfulness, that they’re building their friendship, and that they have no worries about me at all.

Left them all there waving at the door. Tube empty. Back here long strip on tape. Susan Raven again, ‘tho’ invitation only issued yesterday! Ugh! And she cut me in the street the other day!

And six messages from Janet and one from S. Janet ‘horrendous developments’, not specifying. Then one from S. saying Nick and Chris have got together!!! It was the only the other week …

I felt pity for S. and an apoplectic laughter.

Rang K and Sharron said ‘Talk of the devil, we were talking about you’. I got K., and I said, and he said Well, that’ll keep us going for another half an hour.

Tuesday October 20 1992

Found a D. Mirror on tube. Unusual, as the typical Mirror reader moves his lips over the paper for the twenty four hours till the next issue.

This p.m. the ‘man from Pickfords’ arrived to give me an estimate for storage, insisted upon by K. Little willing dwarf in a suit.

Wednesday October 21 1992

K. rang in a.m. to say talk about money when I said I was picking up script from R. Neither K nor R. in their different sensitive way have noticed that I like to do these free jaunts on my travel permit. What a jaunt to Finsbury Park to climb four flights, pant, pant, to pick up a script of my own play! But that is a treat to me, because it costs nothing except panting so he said Come to tea. So I did.

Oh, and I had talked to Felix in the a.m. who gave me what he called ‘the state of play’ – Cameron had offered £15,000, Samuel French – the man, who deals with this is in the states for a fortnight and Julian, who has gone away to talk to Chris! and Felix said We don’t want to get into an auction. Yes, I said – we do. But perhaps… So I said that to K and he veered in to make me do what he seems lately to need to do, to make me do whatever is most repayment and difficult for me. But there you are.

So there was that, after him saying, having read the play, You shouldn’t watch Neighbours so much. Tedious was the word that often escaped. He liked the light from the room, but there wasn’t enough of it.

Of course he hates naturalism and talk. But still… I don’t think it’s very good. But it was painful on top of everything else. Never once did he say that it was perhaps rather brave to write a play for the first time at 66 while probably being turned out of my house! ! ! But why should he? Pro.

Thursday October 22 1992

So I forced myself and wrote to Felix – I’d better not tell K. that I didn’t ring, - and filled in the utterly incomprehensible insurance forms, - but at least that’s it. I cannot confront people as K wants me to, as it is rude and money-grabbing. Took script to Roy, and found him on the telephone like an agent. And, of course, it was his agent. Gave me a pot of his apricot/peach/almond? jam because it was all going off. As I was going down in the lift he said It’s rotten fruit jam.

Oh dear, when will it I eat it?

Have re-read Sybille Bedford’s Aldous H. As I wrote in it at the time, lovely books.

Friday October 23 1992

A bit warmer. Felix rang and Mr Sykes, from the B’mouth insurance and didn’t answer either. I’m away for the weekend. Went out to see Beauty and the Beast and again didn’t go in because of the screaming children outside and I hadn’t got my garroting wire, so I didn’t dare to go in. I bought the Philip Larkin letters instead. K. rang up about my letter while I was out, but he hasn’t rung back, and I haven’t, because I just want to rest and not think for the moment.

S.K. came round to pay the rent and sat and had a whisky. Not going to college till next year now, poor drifting creature. R. rang up during and said There’s somebody there, who is it, and I tried to get him to decide when we’d meet to go to Stri. Ballroom, but he, as usual, could not make up his mind. As none of the young can, in case something more exciting comes up.

Saturday October 24 1992

Cold wine, but sunny. Shopped a bit more extravagantly because of Monday, but only a bit. Had a quiche Lorraine from Safeway instead of making something! Not particularly nice. Perhaps better hot. Oh I turned the oven on again, to see if there was any change. There wasn’t, still the lowest gas, except that it wouldn’t turn off! A good thing it’s autumn, as it is, it’s a pleasant little warmth. Now I’ll have to have the gasman.

So with Felix and Sykes silenced for the weekend, I sat down to my lunch with some tranquility, and Donald Swann’s Swann’s Way which I finished. Dear Donald, absurd to some, but full of love. Nevertheless I have to record that the dear thing has got nowhere since he left Michael Flanders and he would never have been successful by himself. I must talk to K. about this book, and ask him whether his serious music could be any good. It seems he has written an opera based on Perelandra with the help of C. S. Lewis and another with Tolkien! Not to mention a Requiem with C. Day Lewis. All active with him on these affairs, and nothing has come of any of them at least to the point of any of us hearing anything about them. Nevertheless I love D.S. and he is a truly good man. Alas, he has a crippling naiveté, - at one point, says Am I naïf?, without apparently, any notion that the entire civilized world would thunder back ‘Yes’. Certain things remind me of D..

Sunday October 25 1992

Beastly, windy, rainy coldy day. Couldn’t see out of the windows when I rang Edna and Mary. E. rather bright. Rang Andreas J. and arranged for Tuesday on his machine. Did a good deal on the cuttings. Made lists for tomorrow.

Did I say I wrote to Susan Raven to choke her off finally. I hope.

Oh Jimmy Mulville show, a young comic called Steve Coogan (Roy tells me, that’s what his name is) said, in response to his solution to G.B.’s economic difficulties ‘I think we should have a penis tax. Each inch would attract more tax. So unlike most taxes, people would rush to pay more’.

Dear Hazel rang, and we talked of the Philip Larkin letters. She has been sent a copy marked ‘With compliments!’ and she’s not quite sure who’s it from! Tho’ it may be from the creepy editors to creep themselves back into her good books because they refused PL’s letter for Very Private Eye. She’d flipped thro’ and of course, been too revolted by the uncharitableness and bad language and porn etc. etc.

Her interesting comment was on PL’s tone to Barbara, and about Barbara, always perceptive and kind, ‘No, I don’t think he ever said hateful things about Barbara behind her back’. And when our correspondence passed the point of talking about Barbara to writing to each other, it was very pleasant indeed. I said Monica Jones seemed a really made-up figure, with her name straight out of a 50’s novel, and a photo of her sitting on a desk in glasses. ‘Ah well’, said Hazel, ‘she came once to Barbara’s with Philip dressed entirely in pink hat, dress, gloves, bag, shoes, carried relentlessly out - and buried, ‘And at Barbara’s funeral, she was dressed in navy, but she had navy stockings and that won’t do. Will it?

Monday October 26 1992

Armed with my £15,000 for the SD rights from Cameron, backed up by £16,500 from Julian provided he agrees within seven days – oh, poor Julian, he’ll be driven to apologise in one way or another bother – I went out and bought a couple of pullovers and some shirts and socks all in navy at MandS to carry me through the next ghastly years. Also Will Self’s Cock and Bull, a real book at 9.99 and a new bottle brush.

Bacon and egg for lunch, my favourite. Message for R. so had to ring him at 11.30 – why does he not ring to see if there have been messages? But tonight I was hurt and pretended to be drunk, because he said he could not let me know about a night to see Stri. Ballroom until tonight, when… well, fuck him. And he was remote when I rang and had obviously no recollection of me saying ‘I must arrange my week…’

They learn but they probably won’t now – how I do convey helpless giggles?

Tuesday October 27 1992

Cold and wet. Dreading the whole SD thing every minute, feeling sick.

Possible message from Felix, but it might have been yesterday’s so rang and got Bruno. ‘Oh, hadn’t I told you your fee? £400. How remiss of me’.

How do I get through this time? Darling Mairead rang to ask me to go to play part of Not the RSC and Sandra to offer me a ticket for Mayerling.

Wednesday October 28 1992

What a strain of a day! Up at 9.0 to go to Covent Garden for a morning rehearsal. Sausage roll at usual shop, but the shop badly thrown by a huge queue of middle-aged women only a couple of cuts above Lalla, CERTAIN that nobody wanted anything but a hot drink so the sandwich/pie/roll chap was washing up cups. At last Sandra told me to buzz her from the stage-door and she’d come down with the tickets. And she did. Why not before?

And it was a seat in the stalls. Restful. Mayerling is not my favourite ballet, though I think it is partly the insipid Lizst music to blame. It was a pretty lack lustre affair. Michael Nunn as Archduke Thing has little personality and heavy meaningless legs. Leanne Benjamin I like, but the rest did not interest me enough for me to stay after the first interval. But it was a release. I drew out £300 again for K’s mortgage, after the bank had written to say they couldn’t pay it, as it would… and was there any news about the house being sold? After a fortnight or so? Also a form from the housing benefit, ‘As you aren’t getting income support’. Oh dear, more calls and forms. There seems no day without some testing embarrassing, upsetting disgusting tussle with financial nothings. I dread facing K. with the news of all sorts.

Rang him 2.45 and got Sharron, him not back from advert interview. Told her a bit and was comforted. And I thought she would tell him a bit beforehand. Arranged to take him the mortgage after Mairead’s play. So off I went to King’s Cross and turned right to Drummond’s Wine Bar, above which is the New Grove Theatre, a nice big room and an exit if you had to go to the loo, not necessarily on stage. The play was riveting, I didn’t go off once. Many Shakespearean echoes which the play could subsume without ridicule. Both perfs excellent within the limits. M. has all the gifts if she can rein in her own exciting self-indulgence in her own gifts. The black girl has perfect pitch and a delightful estimate of her own comedy while she’s doing it.

So after that to K. where I could tell at once he was reining himself in. We talked through it – he turned Nigel out at one point – ‘we’re having a rack’ – I went up and down in despair and possible future. He said he would come with me to see Felix tomorrow. He was utterly appalled to find F. was J’s agent too. And that F. took commission on PRS. He didn’t shout at me. Sharron came in and said There’s another bit of chicken…’ but I couldn’t. And at down times he said ‘I would back you up – I would stand by you’, etc.

Of course, all the time I have known that he was angry for me, not with me, but that angry tone in his voice is hard for me to bear. How weak one way and another, he must think me. But, of course, it’s partly that I come from another time, so many one ways and another.

Used the word ‘arriviste’! The author of M’s play is Dan Holton. Delightful, touch type talk about title Death 1 and 2, ‘sounds like black leather jackets’. Also ‘A breath of a whisper’. Me: Well it’s a bit lyrical’, better.

Thursday October 29 1992

A tiring day, tho’ only because of a half-hour’s interview with Felix.

Spent the morning lying in bed, feeling sick and thinking about it and not thinking about it.

Met K. at Embankment station and was so touched that he’d smartened himself up. Cords, the dark red sweater, that little black-brown coatee with the white hemstitching, and his ‘good’ shoes. We walked up Villiers Street, which is always full now-a-days, and the huge new building on the left which is now finished, will make it busier. It’s no use, they are fairly poor buildings aesthetically but I certainly prefer brick on a comparatively human scale, to huge concrete flat glass labs.

He asked me one or two questions in his hectoring, ‘Why did you say’, like a prosecuting counsel, but in so much milder a style and almost immediately abandoned it. We got to Felix’s and had to ring the bell three times, while I listened to Bruno laughing merrily with someone. What a nice life agents have, insulated from recession by the multiplicity of clients.

So we sat down, and Felix emitted his usual aggressive and patronising opening. K. began, and I saw immediately we would get nowhere. Because of course he is only interested in expediency. I don’t think I can bother to go into such details as there were.

No, perhaps, tomorrow, no film on tonight, no R. tomorrow, I’m too tired. Self- seeking people always make me tired.

Dear dear K. He took me to meet his new agent. She is a dear, no wonder she was in love with him. That sweetened the end of a rather disgusting day. There is no one like him.

Friday October 30 1992

Very tired, but rather more tranquil, with some of the strain removed. Wanted to put Andrew off but felt I couldn’t tho’ it means clearing the entire flat.

Marian rang, and we had a long talk, because she felt she ought to ring because Roy hadn’t. (that’s an interesting step forward in their ‘relationship’ - and another is that she said she thinks she’s got him quite near to a permanent ‘union’ – ‘commitment’ - what word did she use? We are the same weight people, and she often uses phrases I’m just about to myself. Told her all about the situation. As always a relief.

Egg salad for lunch. Some crisp small lettuce leaves with two firm but not hard- boiled eggs split once on top of them, in a dressing with plenty of mustard in. To new film, first day of showing, Mon Pére Mon Heros. Depardieu and two sweet but not cloying young people, in an example of that rare genre, a successful light comedy. Not perfect but I laughed quite a lot.

I walk by every litter bin nervously, and yet I see no one else look anything, and certainly the crowds are no less. There was a bomb in Whitehall this evening. Andrew J. had cried off. Lovely!

Am reading new life of Wilkie Collins by Catherine Peters, bought for £1.99. The disarray of publishing is good for me. Interesting. I am ashamed that I didn’t know how close he and Dickens were. How people can find dickens sympathetic as a man, let alone as a novelist. Of course I see his great gifts but I can’t bear his use of them or his letting in of the philistines.

Saturday October 31 1992

Cold. Shopped and again didn’t go to a film – a combination of bombs and old age? I decided I needed some self-indulgence this weekend so I did my cuttings all afternoon without moving and watching television.

When I went to the drinks shop, I think I saw a couple of small girls going round, accompanied by two middle-aged women, perhaps doing that ghastly American thing, as it’s Halloween. When I came back, turned off the front lights in case they came to my front door, and I could not restrain myself from strangling them. They never came, or if they did, I never heard them. How repellent American manners are! The tiny glimpses I get, by mistake, of the American elections are of a ghastly pit of vulgarity and muddled thinking.

And talking of M.T. a ghost programme – oh, dear, oh, dear, muddled thinking is one of my – our – major sins. Part of the MT is using actors for a lot of it, mixing what they don’t know is fact and aren’t aware is fiction with ‘documentary’ presentation and ‘experts and evidence’. God save the mark. I suppose it would surprise everyone in the prog. that they are all guilty of tampering with simple minds and obfuscating the truth.

SK came round with the rent, having kept me on the qui vive all day till 4.30. And then he had to ring the bell, as he’d forgotten his key. Oh dear, he is a rather dull boy at the moment.

Oh, I rang Mary and she has no gas in her block of flats. Hideous drilling and gas pipes will be run up on the outside of the mansion block. Fascinating how Mary seems to attract to herself those conditions that render her life sufficiently insupportable. British Gas has lent her two old electric plates.

Sunday November 1 1992

Warmer and dry. Have made up my mind to accept the £16,500 though I dread telling K. as I know he will be disappointed in me. That is partly the generation gap – he is young and has infinite possibilities in front of him. I can’t take the risk because of course I’ve been on tenter hooks for so long and this money will solve something for a sort of certainty for a bit. K, has the energy to pursue things, even the energy over to pursue things for me. But I haven’t. After all, Kenneth MacMillan has dropped dead, why shouldn’t I? It does remind one of the horizon. Rang Edna as usual, and found her unusually bright. Showed me that she is reading the paper, by mentioning the Whitehall bomb all by herself. What a world, that that’s what she mentioned, even Edna! Mary has her chest !! no doubt the result of that pipe shaped hole in the kitchen. And Edna had had neuralgia in the face and hadn’t taken anything ‘to be sure you don’t stop it working when you really need it’. Edna said of M. – ‘Oh, she needs antibiotics by the shovelful.’

Rang K. at six, and he was quiet but generous, and said ‘It’s your decision and I’m behind that.’ But I know he wished I’d fought. But I couldn’t. We parted laughing. He’d heard nothing of his meeting with Simon and Snoo, about making a big musical based on A Voyage Round the World in 80 Days. (Completely forgot to record that S. rang on Friday to make a date for lunch tomorrow at Café Pasta and to say ‘I’m seeing K. at 3.00 so let’s meet at 12.30, but he doesn’t know yet. And said he was going to ring him that minute. But obviously didn’t. I said to K. that I couldn’t imagine Snoo writing a big musical which V A 80 mins would presumably have to be. He misunderstand that I was simply expressing my disenchantment with Snoo. I won’t bother to do that again because I know neither of them will see it, but I simply meant the actual practical lack of experience of a big show. (After all S. did say that Snoo had done a version of it in L.S. with Ray Davis of the Kinks and it was terrible. So we’ll do it again?) Then K. said ‘Didn’t Snoo do Mutiny? With David Essex, that was such a failure at the Piccadilly’ ‘Yes’ and he laughed so. ‘But Snoo has ideas and his lyrics inspired me to write the Blue Vienna Music Time. Still, he is an unreconstructed Hippie. How I hate that vagueness, it’s done such harm.

No K. knew nothing of the Monday meeting, - he’s off to Bristol for a little assignment ‘with a ballet company’ – probably that wretched all-girl troupe. We parted warmly, Thank God. I can bear anything but being even momentarily estranged from him. Even in that, of course, his youth has more hardihood.

Oh, I rang Roy and he said exactly what I thought about the play, except that he said first, I hoped that James was going to make a real set at the boy.

‘Two dimensional, first 30 pages good, but all that about art less interesting.’

Rang R. to tell him, and found him ill. On Friday, when I was tired and cancelled our meeting his face swelled really badly. An abscess tooth out, today still lying down. I wonder if he’s a bit… because he still doesn’t know whether he’ll be able to go to Post Mortem on Tues?! After only having had a tooth out on Fri? I hope K. doesn’t despise me.

Monday November 2 1992

Lunch with S. at Café Pasta at one. Already there, appreciably slimmer, put his fist between his belt and his stomach. Hair quite grey now and getting rather thin, but much brighter in spirit.

I fear the romantic situation remains rather absurd. I see now that the abrupt changes are the result of the shallow soil in which they’re sown. Nick and Chris have decided to split up after being together what seems to me for about three days, but may be a month! ‘Oh, yes, they’ve been together much of the time, but only had sex seven times. Nick isn’t interested really, he’s interested in manipulating and Chris saw this and saw too much of himself in Nick. …’ Well, yes. ‘I went down to Bristol and saw Matt. He’s left that woman, who tried to have a baby by him and had three miscarriages. He’s working as a nursing auxiliary in a Bristol hospital, wiping old men’s bottoms and living in a very dreary attic room. I was in a new rich hotel, and I think he liked that and the food after so long. We went to bed together and I regretted the moment after. Oh and I had lunch with Bruno and he said why don’t you go all over the world with the Sonnets? And I’d come with you and stage manage the whole thing? I said ‘Who’s Bruno with now?’ ‘Oh a dear man called John, he’s the Hon. John actually, he’s working as a therapist at Wormwood Scrubs.

He seems to be serious about taking stock and not doing so much and looking at himself and so on. I might be more convinced if he hadn’t said that he was having four sessions of transcendental meditation next week and quoted more of Shelley van Strunkel’s astrological prediction. His mother has given him £12,000, and he gets on with her v. well now and was v. funny about having to re-shape his notions about the universe as a result. He is very apt to make judgments about his own and other people’s ‘relationships’ and makes them fluently and well. But is usually wrong – look at his life. Goodness, if I’d taken his advice over K, where would I be today? He is the dearest, kindest, warmest man, but a baby where people are concerned. I did the best I could for him – I wonder if he notices the things I don’t say. I wonder if he ever registers I was happily married for 20 years and is closer than ever after 11 years to K.

I had asparagus wrapped in ham and a salade Nicoise. A half bottle of white. Enjoyed the whole meal immensely. Says the Criterion play is coming off, and the redecorated Cri. has only been open for a fortnight. I did think a redecorated beautiful theatre, shut for 4 years, might have attracted by itself, - it always used to.

Walked with him to his meeting at Maison Bertaux with Snoo W. and K. K. hadn’t got back from Bristol and I walked away alone as usual. And thought yet again how S’s every day is still phone till a morning meeting, a lunch, an afternoon meeting, a meeting over a drink and a play and supper after – will that ever stop? Little flush on his cheeks by the way, and despite his diet he leant over and wolfed, gollop, gollop the six slices of cucumber and three of tomato I’d left on my plate. I do love him.

Went to see J and told her all. Much interested.

Back here K rang at 7.30 and we mulled it over. I agreed that Snoo has ideas and images – that is true, but I regard muddled thinking as a sin. Never mind how stimulating the ‘ideas’ are. Perhaps the more ‘stimulating’ they are, the more wicked. Oh and K laughed so at all S’s extra vagueness. ‘Cheaper to buy a house and let off part – I couldn’t have lodgers not possibly.’ Even S. is capable of that insensitivity! Darling K.

Tuesday November 2 1992

Long call from R. putting off Post Mortem yet again till next Sunday, but made two other dates besides. ‘Sorry I’ve been a bit away’. ‘We used to meet every week’. ‘And we will again.’ And Andrew rang up saying he couldn’t come tomorrow – well, it was Thursday and he’s being paid.

K had rung earlier to say as I was coming over to the K’s Head could I bring Visiting Day and the Survivals – are they on one tape? – to show to his advertising people. So I said about the weather being good for the next four days so ‘Friday’ he said. Yes.

Wednesday November 4 1992

Met Hazel at Café Flo. New staff again but sweet. Oh, she is difficult to hear with my one ear, but happily my actor’s instinct can satisfy her, I think, and she does relish my London gossip. Andrew Motion sent her a copy of PL’s letters, or was it a Thwaite? She’s not sure. Hm.

We had the lamb chops, no starter, and a glass of white for her and red for me. She is not in the least mean but she’s no great eater or drinker. Tho’ she does look so much better than a few years ago.

After went up to K’s with the tapes and R’s drill, that he’d asked for. We talked over coffee, lovely, lovely and about Friday. And I rang in the evening to see if Sharron was coming as well (as she had half implied and then I got distracted), and we decided on the dinner, not fish, chicken. So I was upset when he rang later that he’d made a mess, and he had to go to something of James Roose-Evans at 7.30. Now of course this is possible work, but oh, if anyone of them knew how I long for the unburst boil of the greenhouse to be burst and all the myriad frustrations of my life … There isn’t a single thing that comes through.

And I sit and listen and try to solve their frustrations.

I’ve cancelled Andrew tomorrow before he can!

Thursday November 5 1992

Well, of course I was drunk, but nevertheless…

One or two more apercus from Hazel. Her lip curled with disgust for the early pages of Larkin’s letters. She is a real Mary Whitehouse in her complete (apparently) inability to contain or forgive any four letter word or worse. How odd that she can’t see PL’s pathetic bravura displays of ‘obscenity’ as a protest against his stifling home and parents when he was still sitting in his bedroom in the middle of it. ‘They fuck you up’ came later. How Odd it is that even someone like H. should be so caught up on vocabulary. I suppose she has never gone over her own youth enough. I seem to remember a father … Are we getting any further on parent fixation? Not much.

As the lunch went on it became more and more difficult to hear as the restaurant got fuller, but I think she mentioned again Henry James’ friend who organizes lecture tours. Oh, dear.

Oh, and yesterday afternoon, after lunch and K, went to the Renoir, to Les Amants de Pont Neuf. Oh, dear, again, it ended about seventeen times, was an hour too long, its only excuse can be that its director is very young and very spoilt. Otherwise.

Today K, rang to say that he couldn’t even manage Friday morning, how about Sunday? He hasn’t noticed my upset last night, thank God. So, yes, Sunday, just as good.

To Chelsea Wharf to try and get my diary and order more writing-paper. But I was put off by the sort of office, hardly a shop, when my lack of a cheque book might very well be embarrassing. It didn’t look as if there was a cash drawer. So I walked past to the embankment wall, and had a delicious surprise. The river was at low tide but over to the right was a large shallow pool protected by two banks of shingle. The usual mallard, gulls and I think I saw a tufted duck or two, always identifiable by diving. But my eye was caught at once by a heron, tall, immovable and then by a cormorant to my surprise, with that unmistakable upright head and low-slung in the water. Suddenly he rushed into the heron’s lagoon and almost immediately caught what I thought was an eel, by the time and struggle it took him to swallow it. The heron stalked a step or two towards the cormorant’s success and then walked away in dignity.

Tim rang and we arranged for Sat. week.

‘Do I repeat myself – very well, then, I repeat myself.’ Where does that come from? I know James Agate often repeats it. So I perhaps repeat that I have lived into a world where a programme about the American election could say that President Bush was a doubtful candidate at first because he was too well-bred!

Oh, and last night Zoe rang me again to find out where R. was. I must tell him off about that – he must not subject any girl-friend to that.

Walked a fair way today. I suppose, all the way from Earl’s Court station to Chelsea Wharf and then back to World’s End. How many luxury shops there still are! Saw a man about my age in the Fulham Road in a very smart tailored suit, a carnation in his button hole, handmade shoes going into that smart greengrocers to buy something expensive for dinner, already with an Italian delicatessen bulging bag. Oh, walked past The Wine Gallery. It now has Brinkley’s on the other side and it is just a wine shop. The Old Brinkley’s is now Chapter 2, and rather down market. I looked at the menu and it looked much the same, roulade of smoked salmon and shrimps exactly the same.

How strange the issue of women priests is! Is the Church not traditional and laying on of hands etc? I care little, but wonder what they say when you say that Jesus didn’t appoint women disciples. I suppose it’s the same impulse that leads theatre directors to know better than Shakespeare.

Friday November 6 1992

Reading the Larkin letters at a pace. Can’t understand why PL at once kept a diary and asked for it to be destroyed. I know why he wrote it, and why he thought he wanted it to be destroyed. Did he often re-read it, or bits of it, as I sometimes do or refer to ideas for poems etc. If not, why didn’t he destroy it bit by bit himself as he went along? Surely he did mean… so far, 1959, he hasn’t mentioned the diary.

How anyone yet again, can enjoy children’s company!

This p.m. to the first day of the film The Last Mohican. Left after about half an hour. Just a western with bad historical dialogue, and Daniel Day Lewis conducting a flirtation with ‘enigmatic’ smiles. Yet another example of the most boring sort of film of all, where so much happens all the time that there’s no time for anything to happen. In the big cinema at the Trocadero, and pretty full at 3.30. Oh, dear, I was bored. D D.L. on the wrong line, I fear, body building, walking out on Hamlet and all. Plenty of money and fame no doubt, but for how long? Wouldn’t I rather be John G. than Paul Newman?

Saturday November 7 1992

Still haven’t heard or got through to R. to tell him I can’t go to Post M. tomorrow. What is the matter with him? I think he likes to hide himself away – well, I understand that. No sign of the SK with the rent. I must tell him, apart from wanting the money, it’s the waiting and not knowing whether…

Later. I rang K. about R. and now K can’t do the greenhouse tomorrow cos of … well work good. So that solves that. Only R. should have rung.

The SK turned up at the end of lunch, and could only stay a minute! ‘You must meet Liz’. Well, I hope she’s nicer than her whining complaining voice. It’s always depressing to hear it. Even on the answering machine.

Les Dawson was on some chat show and Cher came on as the star. She found out that he’d had a daughter five weeks ago and he’s – what? 60 - and she said, with what I’m sure passes with liberated intelligent (sic) liberal etc etc stars who are real people ‘You’ve had a daughter? That’s really cool.’ And I’m sure because I think she is quite a decent woman, she has no idea what a stupid patronising ignorant bitch she was being to one of the last representatives of a noble breed of honest comedians, tempered in the fire of a live audience.

I have the Remembrance Festival to talk of which is unimportant and the appearance of Maxine A in Casualty, which is. Both nevertheless need to be dealt with, with a great deal more exactness than I could bring to bear on them now, drunk as I am.

PL is like us, no wonder we liked his poems.

Sunday November 8 1992

Last night saw Maxine Audley in Casualty playing a wife with an ailing husband, concealing what proved to be a fatal heart condition. M.A. died of a heart attack a few weeks ago aged 63? She has a little niche in my life because I sat on a kitchen chair with her, in one of the doorways of the dress circle at the Bristol Old Vic, the first time I saw D. in that Christmas show. MA had come down to be in Love for Love, and later I heard that she gave a party during that time to celebrate her 100th man. Now she was a perfectly respectable actress (unlike Pauline Jameson) within the limits of her rather mechanically voluptuous personality. I was interested that by now she and D. were equal, - and indeed MA’s last part was much more obvious and unindividual than D’s. What a distraction sex is to the art of acting.

In fact, MA had less at her disposal at the end of her acting life than D. had, because she had depended more than she knew, on her sex. That is what I mean by a distraction even to a good actress.

Yes I can still be moved by the 2 minutes silence, because I remember the real one and all those funny middle-aged women in Daddy’s congregations getting funnier because they had no husbands and no chance of one. I felt the pain in the air even at eleven and twelve, without knowing what it was, even finding it exciting.

Oh, how I hate this persecution of the Royal Family! I think if I knew it was deliberate, purposefully to destroy them, I would feel better about it. But I fear it is empty headed sensation, and it will hit the vast mass of the people who take great pleasure in Royalty, but don’t really know what they want. That frightens me, to look round and see ignorance and lack of feeling, destruction of their own pleasure, coming to the surface. And why haven’t the Prime Minister’s children been pilloried. There they are at what-ever-it-is, 18, 22 or something. Why aren’t they savaged, too? Now I want it to happen to nobody, but who is stopping it happening to them? If it’s wanton.

R. rang this morning ‘Been very busy. I’ll explain when I see you.’ He asked if I’d forgotten about Post Mortem – I hadn’t. I said I hoped I wouldn’t have to say at the end that it was very interesting to see the new Angel station.

Well, it was interesting to see it, vast and very very deep – the second escalator to the surface is even longer than the one at Highgate. One always forgets North London is higher – that’s why it’s so much windier and colder. I was really interested that the entrance, quite broad and generous, is at the northern corner of that huge new building that went up on the corner. Good for me, because it turns me out on the Upper Street a good fifty yards or so nearer to the bits I want. Oh, how it’s ‘drenched in feeling’.

So there R. was talking to some nice staff member, whose name I can’t remember and before I could think there we were in the end in a perfectly respectably sized audience for Noel’s dud. It was the last perf. at 3.30 on a Sunday and it was being videoed. To my amazement, Michael Codron was there again. He murmured We can’t keep meeting like this and jibbed away. So fascinating, that caution and calculation. I suppose it never occurs to him that I wouldn’t say or do anything else. Like all power-conscious people, they cut you off anyway.

The play was exactly what I expected, ill-digested sentimentality and shallowness of feeling. But also with passages of dialogue and once or twice whole scenes, that worked and gripped the audience, because he is a playwright and not a politician or a lawyer or a university lecturer, all three of whom might have written more respectable articles on the subject.

Pretty well cast, especially the first Journey’s End scene. Steven Pacey dead right as a poor man’s Robert Graves/Siegfr. S. Main boy had the wide-eyed, big eared innocence required. Sylvia Syms revived the acting of my youth with some confidence as the mother. Well, we both agreed we weren’t bored. Of course we weren’t tested as to leaving at the interval because there wasn’t one.

I said, when I left him, ‘The Angel station was very deep’. He is working on the next thing which is a drag/Aids play. He can’t manage Tues. I daresay. He’s a funny boy.

Monday November 9 1992

Still reading the Larkin letters. Much amused and much moved. It doesn’t matter how much you intelligently anticipate illness and death – it still comes.

Tuesday November 10 1992

At last got to Beauty and The Beast. Yes, it is quite good, but only by taking what passes for thought in the Disney studio. It is sad, for instance that the sort of music that is necessary for the dignity of a fairy story is now old-fashioned. After all the final shot of Cinderella has to be a lyrical dreamy dance – a waltz in fact. I don’t think a modern child could thrill to the ‘tunes’ in this as I did to Snow White in 1937. I couldn’t tell which song had won the Oscar for Best Song.

Oh, R – rang last night – he couldn’t manage today. A bit colder, and wet!

Turned on the Late Show in the middle of an interview with a woman of fifty? with a big face and a lot of black greying hair. Her appearance put me off a bit, as of an ageing ‘60s character and she was American. But her good plain style of speech, both verbal and aural, was very un-American. ‘You can extend your sympathy as you can extend your love’.

Her constant ellisions and allusions, her speed, ‘I bought the Sir W. Hamilton prints in a shop by the British Museum – it’s in Covent Garden now – …

‘Yes I took a flat in Berlin to write the novel, - I’ve got a couple of friends there – so that I could be alone most of the time – I might have gone to Manchester (And with no stupid smirk.) And she’s written a play about Alice in Wonderland and Alice James!

And she has a son, who she described as ‘someone I really like and I think he likes me’. I didn’t find till the end who it was. Susan Sontag. I would like to meet her.

Wednesday November 11 1992

Colder and wetter. Spend most mornings in bed these days to save heat, and read the papers and nod off and read and nod off and read and nod off. One of the times I had enough of a nightmare to wake sweating and to my perception, shouting in frustration.

I wrote it down at once.

‘On cliffs, (B’mouth) some event, reading Larkin letters which vanished somehow from under my arm when I was walking round looking for a place to put down my plate to eat. Then I was meeting Hazel at Chez Colombe? and it got later and later and some idiot woman whose mother owned the house, had no telephone directory to tell Hazel we were going to be late, and we had to be at CC at 7.30 and it was 7.25 and CC was in the West End. Lalla was being irritating and male? and K. wouldn’t stop a conversation. I spat at someone who laughed. Expressed much concern for H. though I don’t think that’s what it was about!

Yes dreams do speak. A scented geranium out on the balcony in a sodden bowl, overlooked, has survived completely unharmed – rather less embroidered than one indoors.

Yes, the Larkin letters – again and again. It’ll be, - they went to Sark, too. To the Dixcart. We were at the stocks. I wonder if I ever wrote about Sark – what if they were there when we were? Perhaps the biography will make it clearer.

Thursday November 12 1992

Cold. Mary asked me to do some shopping on Monday! Well!

On Crimewatch someone wanted for car-theft in Ormskirk looked quite like poor Jeremy Rowe, ten years older and with a fair red beard. Possible. Sad. He might do anything.

Finally began cleaning the gas cooker, preparatory to getting the oven repaired.

Friday November 13 1992

Colder. Interesting day picking up the laundry, shopping for tomorrow and sitting down.

Saturday November 14 1992

1.15 a.m. What a day! I am too tired to write much. Went to the shops and the Halifax as the SK had yet again not brought the money on Friday. She gave me a new sort of account which brings in more interest and a new book. After all these years. When I first had it, the entries were written in pen and ink. Back here by 12.00. At 12.5 someone who looked like Julian Stocks’ brother rang my bell. I didn’t answer of course and eventually someone came down to let him in. Later I nearly tripped over a bag with the obligatory hockey stick. At 12.15 the downstairs bell rang, and I thought it was Andrew a bit early, but it was the SK’s sister. She seemed a bit worried. She is a sad-looking girl, rather the same features as him, but longer and plainer, poor child. I thought it odd to come here – I suppose she knows where he is. At 12.30 Andrew rang to say he’d been held up because he found he hadn’t any something thread and had to go out to get some. He eventually arrived at 1.30, me gasping for lunch.

We had a jolly lunch at once, usual omelette, - he finished the salad, almost, before I had any. He certainly is the arch-typical camp wardrobe assistant, but he has a kind heart, his stories are really funny and well observed and he is a real reader with judgment.

When he settled down to the sewing, it was a pleasure to see him smooth out a piece of material and know he knew what he was doing. I asked him about the leather needed for the new collar on my cheap little coat, and he produced a roll of good brown suede and said ‘Don’t bother I was going through the wardrobe and this just fell off into my bag’! When he’d finished, it looked better than it ever has. He did the cushion in the bedroom and renovated my Mackay tartan dressing gown. Good light warm wool.

Kept up very funny monologue. ‘Well, dear, I was meeting this courier in Bloomsbury and he didn’t turn up, so I went into Russell Square and sat down feeling low. Five minutes later I was back in my flat with this Italian. ‘Is Russell Square where you go to-er?’ ‘Oh yes, dear’. And what about your doctor? Oh. It’s a different doctor now. What about the Italian? ‘He’s worried because I’m so highly sexed dear’.

Hilarious about his conversations with the girl he shares a room with at the Coliseum. ‘I’d have to be blond, dear, to be so fluffy. I can’t remember any names (he’s only 26) and neither can she, so we say ‘Did you see thing Tuesday? When Oojah came in? then he told what’s her-name, and she went and told chummy and then the fat was in the whatsit.’

R. arrived after five. What a long time it seems since he was here. But it was lovely to see him and he laughed helplessly at Andrew, especially at Andrew saying ‘Yes, I’m going to the first night of Princess Ida – oh, what a rehearsal time dear, everything on the set has Prince Charles’ ears on and they said to me ‘We’re all going in black and white’. and I said ‘It’ll have to be claret and stone for me’.

We parted at the tube and we caught the last glimpse of the claret and stone on the other platform.

At the Orange Tree. I was pleased to see it buzzing and full, not bad for now, a Sat night and a deservedly obscure Elizabethan play. The Dutch Courtesan. It has a certain wry humour in the dialogue of the high comedy characters and a fairly skillful manipulation of Shakespearean echoes, incl. ‘Let me not be mad’, from the up-to-the- minute King Lear of the same year, 1605. But the ghastly comic sub-plot loomed much too large. The programme rightly said that the main comic (sic) character, Coeledemoy, (ugh) was like Jeremy Beadle, telling people lies and then laughing at them for believing them. Shakespeare is bad enough – think of Touchstone and Shaw’s Even a self-respecting Eskimo would ask for his money back – but this – the wretched actor kept bounding on to the stage with a burst of mirthless laughter prefacing every first line, quite rightly thinking that he’d better laugh in case nobody else did. I won’t bother to analyse the whole thing – it made me think of Snoo! – only one monumental misjudgment I must note – the high comedy finished in the penultimate scene, leaving the dreadful comics to limp to an unsatisfying limp ending.

But the main pleasure was Tim. As far as I’m concerned, he’s taken a leap forward. I daresay it’s partly the result of being in a permanent company which he can, by and large, respect, partly having been out of work and checked for a year, and partly darling Mairead.

He played with an easy witty smooth style that could move from near-farce to rage and near-murder with high comedy and lyrical poetry in between. He made me long to see him as Romeo, Bendick and yes, Hamlet. Fat chance in a decent equalitarian rep. like the O T. I think Sam hates stars. Ah well.

Oh, and I was rather worried about Tim this morning. There had been a lorry loaded with a tonne of explosives, stopped by Police. One man ran away and is still at large, the other was chased by another policeman, whom he shot but didn’t kill, in a garden in the side road on the corner of which they’d been stopped. There it was on the front of the Daily Mail, Stoke Newington High St and Belgrade Road. And the area had been evacuated and they were sleeping in community centres. I left a message on his machine that I awaited his first entrance with more than the usual anxiety.

Thank God he was with Mairead at Clapham.

So funny, R had left the car here, so we went back on the tube and of course the train waited longer that I’ve ever known, and later on flooded South African supporters from the rugger match. How confident they all were in a, I presume, strange country, dominating the carriage with their hideous pinched accents. R. heard one tell a story of being mugged, ‘Of course I shot them both, and all I had was 80 dollars’. Good thing there were no black Englishmen about. Back here, I produced the cold chicken, pepper lettuce and chicory salad and cheese and so on and he relished it genuinely I think. He never stays the night now. Ah well. I think he’s gone off me a bit since he found I was poor. I don’t think he knows he has, but he has.

Sat up till 1.15 watching a silly horror film, to try to get sleepy.

November 15 1992

Milder. Tired.

Rang Mary to get her shopping list. She has actually asked me to do something as intimate as that. Who would have etc etc …

¼ Double Gloucester Summerfield Onion and cheese flan ½ Anchor sl.salt. butter ½ gold (spread) ¼ Lapsang souchong(Twinnings) 1 lb. carrots 3 cox’s 3 oranges 2 lbs. onions med ¼ mush Green pepper 3 Little Gem Wine And I’m taking the Sunday papers and three thrillers.

Monday November 16 1992

A thoroughly grey dank rainy dark day. I stay in bed most mornings and read and doze delightfully and save heat. Egg salad for lunch. Then to Safeway to get Mary’s shopping. Got to Willsden Green about 4.45 and the seven minute walk in the rain looked just the same. The lift had a notice beside it saying it was elderly and could take no more than two adults without shopping – 20 stone or one adult with shopping 20 stone. Anyway it got me upstairs. To my amazement, the flat was, well, not immaculate, but perfectly passable, like her attitude now! A long runner of newish patterned carpet down the corridor and every room redecorated. The bathroom and kitchen acceptable to anyone and they never used to be, and she was proud of that! Now it all looks much better than here! We had a good talk, I refused a glass of wine or a drink and left about 6.25 and got home at 7.45 because of a dear little security alert at King’s Cross. I was just deciding to go back upstairs at Green Park and go home by Charing X and the district line when he announced that Charing X was closed for a security check. Subtle distinction. Back here had just got out of the bath and into dressing-gown when S. rang, first time since the lunch in great pain, feeling perfectly grey and flat and ashes inside, - an unusual feeling for him and very upsetting. He poured it all out, in the usual obsessive way one does, coming back and back to Chris despite their difficulties, he told me more of Nick. ‘I think he’s quite devious, you know I said he refused sex quite often, well Chris taxed him with it, and when C. went round next, there was Nick in a diaphanous robe and they fucked four times that night! ‘Oh dear’, I said, ‘that’s a bad sign, a very bad sign’. I wish I’d met Nick, I might say at once. And of course S. went off on how we now know so much more about one another because of talking about Nick whom they’re both in love with. ‘We’ve said things to one another we’ve never said before’, well, I daresay ‘So we might get back together. He said we would start again, we would begin and … etc.’ Ah, well. I hope I was as good as he was with me years ago. I said very firmly, he must wait and not rush back. Wait till you have gone away again for at least a weekend. He did go away to Brighton and walked from Hove to Rottingdean and so on. The sea is always a help. He must do that again, before he decides anything. He can’t go anywhere for a fortnight because of various things but I changed my voice to seriousness to make him not decide before he’d gone away again. Anything to stop him rushing absurdly forward. I have little hope that he won’t ring me in two days and say they are happier than they’ve ever… He forgets how long it took K and me to forge our friendship.

And the whole day was solved and calmed and irradiated by K ringing at 2.15 to say sorry he hadn’t ‘But it’s been tough. I’ve had four nights last week up to five a.m.’ I made him laugh three or four times, ‘If the blind thing is wrong, write your own lyric and we’ll go from there.’ ‘Don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for the next fortnight’.

So all was well.

Oh, and S. said he’d had a letter out of the blue about Shades from K ‘acknowledging’ only a page and a half.

And I said Wasn’t that English Teacher wrong? Yes said S. Because, of course,…

Tuesday November 17 1992

Another dark greasy cold November day.

To get my hair cut at last and all those itchy curly bits over my ears. What an itchy person I am, always those violent itches like a prick with an itchy pin.

To the Pencraft shop by Austin Reed to ask if they could put a new clip in the top of this pen. They’d have to send it away and I can’t do without it. Oh, it suddenly occurs to me – I could just give them the top, surely. Bought two bottles of ink, £3,50 each. Also two detective stories by a new author, to me, Elizabeth George.

Have I said that I went out to buy another leather photo-frame such as has been the ordinary photo-frame in every big shop, especially Peter Jones. Not a one. I was amazed I would as much expect to see table lamps disappear. I love the table-lamp dept in PJ, the endless proliferation of unhappy Slade households. Did I say – I don’t know – that I looked at tiles for the greenhouse? Big, 9? green aqueous, £1.75. Small space, big tiles.

Back here Janet rang, and Simon Thornley and finally the Collector of Taxes at ten to six! Janet wanted to talk about her move, and ‘arrange with Robin.’ Simon T rang, back from Chicago, three months! and living in Bucks – oh dear. Very sweet in his way and very generous when I told him of my difficulties which I did at once. He’s asked me to dinner next week and asked me to suggest, so I said somewhere cheap so it’s Café Flo. And he also said he had lost touch with the theatre, so shall we form a theatre club so that I’ll take you say, once a month, to something you suggest? Can I bear it? I must see, but yet again beggars can’t be choosers.

The tax man rang at ten to six! to enquire about the £5 a week I was paying. Nice mild man who simply acquiesced when I said when I said my circumstances were exactly the same and all I could pay was the £5. So there we are for another three months. Actually they left it nearer six.

It’s no use pretending that I don’t like sitting down in front of the television set with a drink, because I do. Even I can’t read for eighteen hours a day!

Reading the Jocelyn Brooke trilogy, which I put aside for a bit. Funny little beautifully written cul-de-sac.

Wednesday November 18 1992

Dounreay atomic station to be dismantled, along with others. Oh, scientists, who in my youth, told me in a superior way, that a glass of water had enough energy in it properly harnessed, to drive the Queen Mary twice across the Atlantic.

Thursday November 19 1992

To film after a lapse of some weeks because the films were uninteresting to us. This one was called Hero. Like all Stephen Frears’ films, I don’t believe a word of it, and it is full of those moments I despise, when nobody can think of a reason for somebody not having an explanation which would resolve the whole film, and finish it in perhaps the first five minutes – except unbelievably to shut them down. Dustin Hoffman shows the mannerisms of someone who never listens to criticism. And I had my eyes shut for quite a time at the end when they were on a ledge twenty stories up – I can’t and I mean literally can’t, watch such scenes any more than D. could without most unpleasant spasms in my stomach. Hers were spears up her arse, ‘so good for your constipation’ I used to say, but it didn’t seem to help…

Back here so enjoyed my tongue and salad and Semillon recce. By some paper, £2.85 at Safeway. Fitting tomorrow, how odd.

Friday November 20 1992

To BBC wardrobe at Acton. It is so long since I worked that I did not possess my travel permit when I last went there. The journey is awkward for the distance involved, tube to Hammersmith, down the subway to the H’smith and City, wait for train to Shepherd’s Bush and then a seven minute walk to the Sh. B Central line station, then a possible wait, this time five, but it can be ten minutes for a train to go three stations, or possibly stop for some time at White City, or even change. And this for a journey, as the crow flies out of the rush-hour of about ten minutes.

The wardrobe building now has a highly reinforced pedestrian gate as well as a motor one, with an entry-phone. I pressed the button and said my name and appointment, and before what turned out to be an idiot girl receptionist could answer and let me in, a young man came through the gate, held it open for me, and I went through with my bomb hidden in a detective story.

Fitting just as usual. Wardrobe mistress small, impenetrably Scots and soft-voiced to the point of neurosis. Make-up girl poised and amused. W’robe assis young and therefore amused. Why are make-up girls so much less neurotic than W’robe assis?

As I took my trousers off without being asked in front of these three young women, I thought what a silly story you could make of it for most of the population. That is where actors are good, because no actor worthy of the name would even notice it, and I only do because of recording it. Janet’s move tomorrow – I must take care not to be silly about doing too much and therefore being useless later on. Discovered Elizabeth George, a new to me, detective-story-writer.

Saturday November 21 1992

Up at ten and to Janet’s by eleven. To my slight surprise, was the last there, perhaps as well as I could do the least. To my delighted surprise, the Sarah who Janet had mentioned, was the jolly laughing woman who was on that nasty Paul Nichols show with me and that nice woman Harriet Reynolds. I was especially glad to see her again, as she gave me a friend’s name to whom I would write, because poor Harriet died recently. At any rate her name was in Equity letter obituary column this issue.

The first van load went off in the rain the full forty yards to the new office at 15, New Row, top two floors. Curious little square low Georgian rooms, pretty unmodernised with dear little fireplaces set asymmetrically in the chimney breasts. Looks straight out of the Swan pub. Four flights of narrow steep stairs, so I opted for staying in the new office and going a bit of the way down to take things from people. I am good at putting things in their right place and sorting to type. Everything was in, second van- load and all by about 1.30. Janet said Lunch and took all five of us to the Café Pasta. Janet and Sarah had minestrone and spaghetti something. Tim had fusilli something and fettucine something. R and I had asparagus wrapped in ham and then he had that gorgonzola fusilli he had with K and me on the pavement and I had salad Nicoise again. Two bots of house white, Italian, good for the price. Bill, £64.

Back at the office, R. and Tim tackled a huge metal sarchofagus – should that be ph? – in one of the upper rooms, the skeleton I suppose of an old-fashioned office cupboard. They got it down the first flight and it stuck and would go no further. I loved them both for no bluster fluster or fuss. R said ‘Were going over to the Albery to borrow something to cut it in half. They went, came back with the something, cut the sarcophagus in half, took the something back to the Albery. It cost nothing and they said nothing more about it.

In Janet’s office itself, Sarah, J. and I toiled to empty the many cardboard boxes cluttering up the floor, and when we left at 5.30 most of her files were back in place, her desk set up more or less with word processor, monitor and phones in place. So much for her thinking this part of the move would take two days. I am pretty sure that by the end of tomorrow, bar a few details of pictures and so on, the actual business will be in full working order by Christmas. Christmas? What do I mean? Is my mind going at last? I meant by Monday. By the way I wonder what he would think if he knew that J. said ‘Oh, these Peter Barnes boxes – top shelf’. Only just within my reach. Unloading the files of all the clients from the shelves, an inch for Maggie Smith, an inch and a half for Joan Plowright… The bottom shelf is all Callow.

I walked away with Janet, very tired despite having done less than anyone, and fell asleep on the sofa. Still I am twenty years older than anyone there.

Back here K rang and he’s coming to stay the night on Monday. Thank heaven for the tube strike! Oh, how lovely.

Sunday November 22 1992

Rang K. to be sure he’s got a key. He says he has.

Went out this p.m. to see the Crying Game at the Fulham cinema, walked along Baron’s Court Rd, North End Road, past that lovely garden statue place now stripped bare. The lodge-gate-arch is covered in posters and half of it is a little hamburger bar. But the whole could be made beautiful again. I doubt if it will be, as someone who could afford it would hardly want to live next to a supermarket and among a street- market. Fulham Rd to the corner of Drayton St. took about ¾ of an hour. Cinema 5 has two seats all alone at the back. It was a bit full, so I sat in one of them. It got fuller and fuller and people gave me glances so the combination of it being so full, the intolerable thought of someone else in this other isolated seat and the guilt at keeping this isolated double from some nice young couple drove me from the cinema before the main film. Of course, I didn’t really want to see the film at all, as I instinctively know Neil Jordan is not simpatico. That wretched Wolves thing - ugh. So crude. Tiresome tangle with poll tax. DSS, Housing Benefit tomorrow, more ugh!

Flash of Edna aged 90. Told her of possible difficulties of tube strike, so think of us on Tuesday ‘I won’t give it another thought. I’ll put it right out of my mind’.

Monday November 23 1992

12.25 He is asleep downstairs.

Tuesday November 24 1992

Oh, it was so good to have him here, it makes sense of my life!

He rang from the studio – it’s called Snake Track. They’re always called something very humdrum like Dale Howe. ‘I’m on my way’. ‘Have you eaten?’ ‘No. What have you got?’ ‘Some ham and salad.’ ‘I’ll grab something.’ He arrived at twenty to eleven having ‘grabbed’ about a pound of hot chips. He ate them all and the ham and salad with great appetite and plucked the napkin off the dish of cold potatoes and said ‘You didn’t tell me?’ That’s all he’d meant.

Sweet talk, much laughter, he began to get sleepy almost immediately after supper. Was awake most of Sunday night ‘going over and over even the rests.’ He’s got what Phil Lawrence even called ‘the best sessions trumpet-player in the world’. Woke him in the morning with some tea, - there he was with the duvet worn like a large skirt with those great feet sticking up. But unlike the old days, he didn’t go back to sleep and I heard the tap running ten minutes later. He left at 8.30, gave me a hug and I said ‘So don’t be nervous’ and he said ‘I’m not’.

Wednesday November 25 1992

Pouring all day.

To dinner with Simon and Victoria Thornley in West End. Got to Café Flo which I had told them about and found it full and they hadn’t of course, being efficient business people, booked. Fortunately, just as I was leaving, there was Simon on the phone. So I said I’d been in the Green Man and Horn, where surprisingly there was a table. They got there about quarter of a hour later. Victoria looks years older, her hair pulled back, granny glasses, no make-up. All that Spanish? glamour gone. Scunthorpe? He just the same. They were sweet to me after we’d settled down. But of course, as usual, I did most of the talking, because they have little to say. As with most business people they know, if they have any sensitivity at all, that what they do is quite horrendously dull, even to themselves often. For example, they mentioned how wonderfully open and un-class-conscious the ordinary people are in Chicago. But they mentioned no names, they didn’t start from a dear friend or a personal incident. I will not have general conversation. I suppose that’s why poor old Lalla thought I ‘monopolised’ the conversation – only with people who can’t converse. They want to take me to some plays. Yes, but I’ll let it tail off. Potentially lovely, possibly perfect day tomorrow.

Thursday November 26 1992

1.15

Phew, yes, it was lovely, but I’m too drunk now.

Friday November 27 1992

Yesterday washed up in a.m. to shops and back for R’s dinner, which I’d thought I might do at Safeways near Renoir. Also fitted in picture-framer and visit to Janet before Café Pasta. Found S. doing letters with Janet, so had to come down again and spend a little while in Waterstone’s. Interesting that there is no book at the moment I want.

Poofy manager said You again and I said I was eating at C.P. for the foreseeable future every meal. So we settled down at 12.0 on the otherwise empty street-level floor, good for my deaf ear. He looks better, less strained, he said ‘Well I’ve taken your advice’. I nearly fainted with surprise. Although he has slept with Chris a few times, I made light of that. All I was pleased with was there had been no silly snap ‘exciting’ decision, they were talking slowly and at length (I hope) and that he was still looking for somewhere else to buy and live. Hilarious about Ismail M. offering to buy him a house. In that ridiculous lilting accent – I have told S. that, just as he must play a drunk sometime soon, he also must play Ismail soon – Ismail said ‘I am worried about. Are you all right?’ ‘Apart from having split up with Chris, grave financial problems and no professional plans, I’m fine’. After explanations, ‘I will buy you a house’ and they actually went to look at some flats. ‘The market is so odd at the moment with repossessions and so on, - we saw a six-room flat with a new kitchen and so on in Hyde Park Gate, no less.’ Of course, he refused, and the next day, I sent him a cheque for £5000, which he also refused.

Saddest bit was when he said there was some big reception or awards ceremony or something impossible, ‘I didn’t go because I had nothing to say with no definite plans’, or words to that effect. Never heard that before from him. Of course, I’ve heard it from myself for many years now. But of course I’ve never said it to S., because one of the definitions of a star is that only they say sentences like that.

Went home to do the shopping that I hadn’t done before and back again to the Renoir to meet R. to see Strictly Ballroom. He fidgeted a bit probably because of his back, not that I minded but I was a little sensitive to him enjoying it. One always is seeing a film a second time that you’ve strongly recommended. Happily at the end, with tears in eyes and laughing he said ‘Very good’.

The best thing is the true comic viewpoint. The young couple are good and true, and everyone else has been keyed to a couple of points of caricature above. Everyone and only two points. To hold a whole cast in such a balance is true comedy.

Back here we had a lovely evening and I was able to tell him that S. would write to Patrick Garland for him. As will I. He left at 12.15, just getting the last tube, I imagine. What a funny in and out boy he is!

Friday November 27 1992

Oh, yes we had a long sort of argument about the state of the theatre. Guess What. I think I was quite coherent despite being drunk, partly because of. He shows signs of disillusionment, no wonder. How I try to give them hope, who gives me hope! Well, no-one any more directly, but they all do, by being young and hopeful. And that he wants to write the TV series is hopeful.

In the p.m. today to film The Waterland. Quite saw its XX XX but was terribly bored and left. Very mild. Still raining.

Saturday November 28 1992

In bed all morning; woke up as usual about six. Waited for papers, read them, and started to doze off. Read thriller dozed and woke at twelve, feeling stale.

To shops in p.m. Plaice, mince for spag. bog. Got drunk again – what else is there to do? Oh, how I wish the greenhouse was done and not leaking, so that I could go to the loo in my slippers. But he’s so busy.

Sunday November 29 1992

Very mild, drizzle. Turned off the gas fire tonight.

Oh, Sunday TV and games, the mystery of it, I never get over it. Football, especially – I suppose because of its popularity. The trivial nothingness of it! The deprived working class certainly, if that’s the best that can be done for them. And cars, oh dear, someone must give up their car….

Rang Edna after three, as BT has a cheap scheme till Christmas, anywhere after 3 – 12 on a Sunday, for the price of a local call. It says on the advert, you call from Land’s end to John O’Groats for an hour costing 83p! So long talk to Mary, too. And soon after Hazel rang and we talked for an hour. She’s written to the Queen to say how sorry she is about everything. I must. I loathe the disrespect.

Read me excerpts from a letter of Violet Powell’s. They’re all quietly venomous about the P. Larkin letters. And of course they cannot see it as being left behind. ‘All the letters have done is diminished the poetry’. Um.

Sharron rang, and said ‘Can we come to lunch on Tuesday, (her birthday.) We’ll bring the lunch. Kevin said I’d like a laff lets go to Angus’s and they’re coming. With smoked salmon and white wine. ‘I expect you’d like to speak to Kevin.’ From clanking of saucepans ‘No I’ll ring later’. Did so. We talked of the money and greenhouse, ‘Thursday? Is Robin free?’ Oh, that would so be good, the leaking is awful – ‘Yes, yes yes’.

That did make me laugh. How wonderfully lucky I am to have him to love.

Monday November 30 1992

Lunched in my shirt sleeves with no heat in the room. Pouring all day, and the wind got up – one of those moments, two heavy bags, umbrella nearly blows inside out, turn a corner and a deep puddle you don’t see.

Message from K on machine. When I rang back he couldn’t remember what he wanted to say but it was to ask how S. was last week, as he was writing to him and didn’t want to tread on corns.

Tuesday December 1 1992

Lovely day

K. and Sharron arrived about 1.30 instead of two, with a large bag of Harrods’ smoked salmon and salad and bayed for wine. They thought the Semillon excellent. Thank goodness. He went out and had a long look at the g’house, and Sharron as well, because she’s coming on Thur because R. can’t come till Friday.

They were going shopping and to a film, which they eventually settled to be Strictly Ballroom, because there was really nothing else. But I was not so sure that they’d like it. He is at the early 30’s suspicion of easy enjoyment, and she is, I fear, showing more of that shrinking girlish fastidiousness which, if it is not checked, so often cuts out more and more.

Going to Hamley’s and Liberty’s – is that in Bond St? Oh, no, it’s near to Music House. I had to reveal to him that it was, on the other hand, Music House that was near to Liberty’s. And we did ‘laff’ a lot. With the greenhouse, still leaking, it’s been the wettest autumn since 1956. Now there are bad floods in the West.

Later.

Not such a lovely day. With their dear support behind me, I rang B. Gas about the oven. When I told them it’d been on without being able to be turned off, tho’ very low, they expressed emergency concern – fumes etc – so I didn’t tell them I was dead as it had been like that for month. He came round in about an hour and within seconds, I’d turned off the gas main and he’d disconnected the oven and pronounced it irreparable. So my kitchen was laid waste in a second, and I said It’s not your problem and went upstairs and came down again a little later, saying I’ve got to get a new oven and I haven’t any money. As I showed him out, I said It looks as if I’ve got money but I haven’t any, and he scuttled away, feeling – what? anything? The end of a tiresome day? I don’t know. But I think I removed as much as most people would do of the shock. And when I turned the gas back on, nothing came on. I rang the gas people who finally opined that the gas was off when the handle was pointing up. Still nothing. Apparently gas not coming on is another emergency. Meanwhile tonight no bath, no cooking, no heat. Exciting. After three.

Wednesday December 2 1992

This a.m. to C. Garden. Turned out to be The Dream as well as the Beatrix Potter. Far too many children. Two ghastly little girls in front of me aged 10 – 11? Put their feet in shoes, on the red velvet of the front ledge of the stalls circle. I daresay it was the first time they’d been there, and they should be humbly proud and thrilled to be there – on their knees.

Dream a bit thin and slight. Not helped by that silly old maid Mark Silver. A. Dowell, who was in front as director, was always too eunuchoid for me, but M. Silver is Princess Helena Victoria, Tiara and all. Puck very good, beautiful easy jump, lightness etc. Peter Abegglen. Also Adam Cooper as Demetrius, nice chumsey masculine boy. Stayed till J. Puddleduck and Fox and then left, because I had to have lunch and get the planer from Janet and get back here for the Gasman at 3.00 who didn’t come till 5.30. I was interested as to how they would deal with the problem of size, - after all, an actual-size 6’ hedgehog might frighten the children. The beginning was effective, the bottom four steps of a huge staircase, the treads five feet or so, and ballet school children as mice. I thought something had gone wrong with my eyes it was so effective. All the same I wasn’t sorry to leave – the imitation is distracting and not much to do with dance.

Took myself out to lunch at Café Pasta – first time for eighteen months – excuse, the eighteen months, and no gas-stove or heat of any kind. Half bot, fettucine dell- Alfredo (creamy cheese sauce) cappuccino, £10.85. Almost alone, as I got there at 12.30, Janet was out, but got in and found the planer. Met J. on the way to tube, looking rather ghastly, tummy bug, change?

The gasman told me the gas was turned on with the lever left when I thought it was off. So all is well! Cooked dinner in lodger’s room on that double burner. Ever before?

Yes, they hated Strictly Ballroom.

Thursday December 3 1992

Well, they didn’t actually hate it, but I fear it was damned by Sharron’s usual turn of the lip, the fatal ‘I didn’t mind it’, I think is her. I’ll have to see as time goes on. Certainly she is seemingly inhibited from appreciating the whole gesture of almost anything. She turns away too soon.

He argued well, - ‘You’ve always said’ etc. ‘Have I missed’ well, yes if he admires my opinion, why doesn’t he look further? Ah well, the broccoli intervened and we started again over dinner, which they loved. And she is so good at keeping him up to the mark on small things.

But all is dwarfed by the loving hard work from them both that has finished the flashings for the greenhouse and there they are like an elegant small black guttering, bonded with heat to the balcony from 2–6.30, lit by my desk lamp, held by Sharron after dark. Kneeling on a plank on the roof. Too late to buy an oven, but he casually re-connected the old one and said he’d buy me the new one. There is no one like him.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 116

December 4 1992 - February 6 1993.

Friday December 4 1992 Saturday December 5 1992

Excellent day of work and laughter ruined by me losing my temper with R. over a political argument that I never want or am interested in. I was angry much more of the introduction of such a sour cynical note at the end of a tiring but good day as I was by the very unwelcome opinions revealed. All ended in disorder and I am miserable.

Later. In p.m. Sat to film Slackers afraid every minute K would ring, although I know I am not entirely to blame. R. was so cold and aggressive and going on as if I were on the other side and it was all my fault. Slackers held my attention. A tribute.

Sunday December 6 1992

Edward rang to say he was in Devon and his girl-friend would deliver the rent. Next he’ll pay the rent without wanting the room. Bed early, first job for two years tomorrow.

Monday December 7 1992

Woke at 4.10 and dozed till 6.30. Got myself to Ealing TV Studios which I had never been to before, altho’ I know Ealing quite well. A pretty walk past Bowling Green and a once attractive Georgian house, and down a ‘lane’ with coach-houses and cottages all, all spoiled now, and the usual collection of over-staffed, over-piped buildings. Inside a comely blonde woman in a nice black dress, who hovered about a bit later on, but who I never saw do a hand’s-turn - I think she was in ‘charge’ of make-up – greeted me nicely and I went upstairs to yes, indeed, room N107 as Beverley Lad said. Thirties office block painted in sand etc, - dowdy by ‘modern’ standards, more like repainted old theatre dressing-rooms and all the better for that – when I opened the door, I was greeted by a blast of such violent heat tho’ both small windows were open, that my shirt-sleeves were soaked with sweat in seconds, let alone anywhere else. Had I had to sit there for the usual hours, it might have been awful, but I had time only to read two pages of the Telegraph before Beverley said Can we go down and rehearse? So I met Richard Briers in the passage and his utter simplicity in remembering me and greeting me, quite disarmed me. Within seconds we were agreeing that Paul Nicholas was hell, ‘just a smile’, and he was telling me that their mother died ten days ago. So poor Kate is now lost in the bungalow in Pinner, with no doubt a frightful weight frightfully removed.

We had started filming by 8.30 and I was finished by 11.30. R.B. and I had swopped stories and skill, and I felt all right. And dear Martin Morris, whose name I can’t remember because it’s Marcus Mortimer, is a dear simpleton in the hands of his cameraman and assistants.

I wandered off into Ealing, determined to escape for a little longer from my misery by having lunch out which I can’t afford. I thought I’d go to that Prima Pasta where I took Paul and his mother what seems a year or two ago. But it had vanished, which I suppose I should have known, as I have been out and about in Ealing paying the mortgage. But I didn’t notice and it wasn’t there, - so I got off at Ravens Court Park and went to the Café Pasta in King St. Empty at 12.15, took table in window niche bedside door, containing just the table, perfect. Had half-bot. of same wine as other day, sharp and full, and so hungry, delicious, same pasta, two cappuccino. Wonderful luxury. Back here and went to bed, utterly miserable.

Tuesday December 8 1992

Didn’t wake up till twenty past one, had a couple of boiled eggs, coffee and toast, read S’s 18th Century Gay Culture book a bit, dinner being sausages, and stayed in a limbo. Still miserable.

Wednesday December 9 1992

Nothing weather. Message on machine last night after I’d gone to bed from K. ‘It’s only me’. That in itself made me feel better. ‘I wonder if you’ve come to your senses’ and then it cut out. When you love your temper, mostly the right is seen as on the other side. Well, I don’t know. I’m glad I’ve got a temper to lose.

Up at 12.0 and to launderette at 3.0. Rang Felix who thinks all may be done soon, and got £600 by post today too.

Wrote K. because if I ring, his disapproval kills me.

Thursday December 10 1992

Woke up at 8.30, read papers, and letters, dozed off and woke at 1.15. Was just sitting down to watch Home and Away without washing or shaving, when K. rang. Long painful talk. Apart from poor dear R. and my own feelings of shame, he at once told me I acted too much in life, and suggested I gave up acting professionally. Not as crudely as that, of course, but both have gone through me like a knife.

Film, Holiday in Las Vegas. Poor little affair. J. very sweet as ever.

Friday December 11 1992

Still limbo.

Saturday December 12 1992

To film Sneakers. Left two-thirds of the way through as so often when all falls apart. I just think of R all the time. Didn’t wake till 12.35 today.

Sunday December 13 1992

To ‘Single White Female’ well I don’t know. Drunk, woke again at 12.15.

Monday December 14 1992

Same again, but wrote the sketch of letters to K and R. In their different ways neither of them have any idea of how terrible life has been for me for years. K and no work or money and K .

To The Crying Game. Coo, what a predictable bore.

Shocks?! What shocks’?

Tuesday December 15 1992

Again slept till twelve and found a call going on from S. asking me to see the B’ham Royal Ballet in Nutcracker in B’ham on Thursday and to see the film ‘Chaplin’ this p.m. which is being shown privately to him alone in a preview cinema in Wardour St. The Nutcracker is designed by someone S is interested in, and Joseph Cipoli, and after all, I was born in B’ham.

Message on machine after from K., why haven’t I been in touch with R. – how hard he pushes me. I’ll finish the letters tomorrow.

The Chaplin film a simple ‘biog’ with some of the idiocies of old Hollywood days. R. Downey Jnr. does everything that can be done, with leaden script and direction. His three different English accents, cockney, middle nothing and old age genteel, are quite superbly good and beyond the scope of most English actors in their accuracy.

What a mess I’ve made of my life.

Oh, left on machine, ‘I saw pinned to the door of the local spiritualist temple in Kentish Town, a card saying the clairvoyant has to cancel her usual consultations owing to unforeseen circumstances.’

Reading The Moonstone, after that biography of Wilkie Collins.

Wednesday December 16 1992

Wrote and sent the letters, telling K I would be away tomorrow. I did not realise till I wrote the letter to K. even, how deeply what he’d said had hit me. Sent them, shopped for tomorrow night and got to Roy and Marion at 7.15. A lovely warm comforting evening, with a delicious dinner, anti-pasta of parma ham, two sorts of salami, fresh capers, olives etc and sliced melon. Then guinea-fowl done to a delicious turn, gratinée, celeriac, apple pie, cheese and espresso coffee. And a new wine, Hochhar from Lebanon! £5 odd but tasting like a £15 claret. A release. I hope poor R. has had a treat or two. K doesn’t need them!!

Thursday December 17 1992

Up at 8.0 having virtually not slept at all, and I mean not at all from me who always sleeps so well. I read till one, turned the light out, but turned it on again at one thirty and read without a quiver of an eyelid till five, read with a doze every now and then till eight. Levered myself up to shave and dress and got to Euston at 9.30. Signal failure at Harrow, but our train left on time and arrived on time. Straight to the theatre through the hideous facilities and infelicities of the area around New St. station, to the foyer of the Hippodrome. I don’t know what it was like originally – or indeed what it was like thirty five years ago when I was here for six months, but now it is a wide passage with no discernible features except glass box offices and posters and sweet stalls and glitz. Some wide stairs, a ridiculously narrow passage to the front of the circle, and the auditorium opened before us. The Coliseum over again in plan, and not all that different in size. Out of that narrow almost one person passage, there was a whole row of seats taken out between two brass-rails so we could get through to a more central aisle – bad design.

The auditorium is well done, in an anonymous discreet brown and grey and beige scheme, which I imagine to be somebody’s discovery of the original as is usual nowadays. Certainly it was pleasant and dignified and made a good black out. We stood in the queue for a little while, but left after realising that some Birmingham resident was inspecting every seat in the two thousand auditorium for a pop concert in three months’ time, and then starting again for another night, and then starting to count the million pennies she was proposing to pay with.

So we sallied out into the mess that is B’ham, to search for somewhere to eat. Everywhere – three places – looked awful. We settled – I wasn’t paying – on a what as it called? Stageland or something like that. It had nothing to do with the theatre inside at all just remotely Louise XIV and ruched blinds, and an enormous ruched blind making a back ground for the chandelier. And an indefinably European maître (sic) perfectly spoilt by jocular insecure B’ham commercial travelers. We ignored that quite easily and were much amused, that when the food didn’t arrive quite soon enough, considering that it was soup of the day, asparagus and smoked salmon and S. called Waiter can we… S. saw the maître through the stained-glass screen, hold his nose and pull a lavatory chain. I’d ordered lemon sole and it was plaice, which is cheaper. Tho’ plaice, especially black skin plaice, is nicer (lemon sole doesn’t have black skin.) But if I’d complained, - Kevin – we’d have missed the ballet! Still, we have progressed. Twenty five years ago, such a restaurant would have offered uneatable food far more rudely. All the worse from a maître who always knows better.

The theatre was packed to the roof. Our seats were £28.50 ‘What do all these grown- ups work at?’ said S.

As good a Nutcracker as I have seen remembering that it has no love story, so the exciting last pas de deux has no other resonance. I think Petipa was right. I liked the designs in proportion, but I didn’t like the decoration of the first. The transformation was thrilling. The Christmas tree grew bigger and bigger and vanished into the flies, - the box of soldiers was suddenly seen to be lifesize, - the fireplace became the mouth of hell out of which the hideous Rat King and his Ratlings leapt while the huge branches of the tree loomed down from above with the candles now the size of men. High standard of dancing. I’m glad in the prog. the O’Hare Bros are exiled here! Rushed to train at 4.18, as S had a S. Times reception at the Reform Club. He tells me he gets £500 a review. Hm. I wish I could think he had really good judgment about books. Acting, direction, design, people to a point. Books, no.

So there we were on a train again, for, I think only the second time in our friendship. The first time being this morning. He, as usual poured out his plans, and as usual, I have remembered little of them because so few of them come off. Not that I don’t admire him immensely for starting so many ideas.

Oh, yes, of course, there’s Carmen Jones on Broadway in May, which is almost fixed ‘And Howard had to arrange a 14-week tour before B’way, but now…’ So much for his complete break with Howard!

We talked on both journeys non-stop of course, and it gave me my identity back again. We were just gathering ourselves together at about Watford when we were suddenly turned out into the cold - and it was cold. The loudspeaker told us to go to the tube bit, so we did… and waited, and a tube came in, and we were turned out at Wembley Central and waited, and an announcer said, rather charmingly, that there was a security scare and Euston was closed ‘Oh it’s just my luck, we’ve got a broken- down train as well’ and from the ranks and crowds of commuters and travelers, a subdued British cheer.

Just before I got off at Paddington to change twice to get home, S. said would I send him a script of the Pym, ‘as I know a young film producer who is interested in small scale artistic films.’ I walked away on modified wings.

I eventually got home at five past eight, exhausted, and turned on my bath and he rang. He hadn’t had my letter, so he didn’t know I’d been in B’ham. (So R hasn’t had my letter either.) So he was accusing ‘it’s a professional matter now. R wants his tools.’ I tried to tell him how I’d been distracted by what he’d said. Hell! But he was good about it. But kept getting it a bit wrong about R. ‘I don’t want to be a go- between’. Well, no. ‘We must talk.’ No I don’t think so. I’ve got to think. Left a message with R’s people to come round tomorrow to collect tools, when I’d be out, as I thought that’s what he might like, if he hadn’t had my letter. Or if he had.

I don’t know why K. always tries to make me do the immediately difficult and repugnant thing, even if it isn’t the best thing. He seemed to want me to ring and confront R., but backed down when I said he might answer in the middle of that kitchen, and anyway, he can re-read the letter. He saw it then.

What is it about me that drives my intimates to force me to do the most repugnant thing? It seems to me that life has forced a good may repugnant things on me. He realised I was tired.

Friday December 18 1992

Exhausted. Crawled out to shop and see a film because it was less tiring than dozing here. At first I thought I was going to be the one person in the little no. 5. Cinema but eventually three others came in, and an usher, as it was the first day of showing of Cool World. All of them left before the end, tho’ it is a ‘teen or early 20’s film and they were that. Pretty silly and disorganised, cartoon and people, too silly – that’s why I couldn’t be bothered to see Roger Rabbit. Like translations, I can’t bear to see the hand not really rest in the hand. It is a measure of America’s artistic poverty that such names as Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne and Brad Pitt cannot see that it’s no good. Brad Pitt’s silly name, is nevertheless a possibly remarkable actor in that US way. When I got back R had taken his tools and left a note saying

Dear Angus

Speak to you later Robin.

No ‘Dearest’ and he didn’t styl, on the other hand, he didn’t leave his key defiantly on the music cabinet, which I had feared he might do.

Oh dear. After all, many estimable people have lost their tempers without the whole world falling apart.

K did say on Sat. ‘We all admire you.’ Why?

Saturday December 19 1992

Really cold. Central London brought to a halt by what turned out to be more hoax calls. I only went to H’smith.

Yesterday was more exhausting than I said – interesting, I forgot it when I wrote. The Alliance threatened the law and so on, because the DSS had not paid. By same post got new pension book with mortgage payments incl. One and a half hours on phone and not necessarily concluded, so more boredom on Monday. Also went yesterday to see Felix just after lunch at Café Pasta, quite shamelessly. Draft agreement, wretched lawyers want yet another document from my lawyers who took 2 ½ weeks to find the last one, thus letting me in for another month’s interest.

So yesterday was exhausting, not least thinking of all those awful clerks doing all this from ignorance and selfishness.

Sunday December 20 1992

Cold. Still no word from R.

K Branagh gets a front-page news report for his Hamlet toe’d up with P. Charles! Just under the title Observer. Is there a plot? Is it genuine? Oh well.

Rang Edna as usual and found she’d fallen out of bed again, cut her head on the bedside-cupboard – she fell the other way last time - and was in hospital. Later rang Deloraine to find she hadn’t broken anything – ‘I’ve been x-rayed from every angle’ – just bruises and very cross with herself. So not too bad, but you never know at that age, what effects a few days might show.

Rang K at 5.30 and although I won’t see him now till after Christmas. ‘I haven’t spoken to Sharron for ten days, I’m having dinner with her tonight and that’ll be it’. I was so flattered that he put me second like that. I mean really flattered.

R. rang at 6.45 when he knew I was in the bath, so I thought I’d leave him to ring back as he said he’d do but he didn’t. So I’ll ring tomorrow. It’s embarrassment as well as hurt.

Monday December 21 1992

Cold. To K’s with the mortgage £253.46, letter to Solicitor and didn’t manage to do anything else, as I’d hoped.

The serial killer turned up to pay the rent and pack a bit to go to his father in St Andrews and then off to New York with his girlfriend. It seems neither Univ. London or Oxford, want him. Well, he does make an odd old-fashioned impression.

Rang R at nine-ish. Not even the machine was on. Oh, dear.

Tuesday 22 December 1992

Very cold. To Chelsea Wharf to get my diary. They’d run out! I fear I must abandon them. New book of short stories by Michael Carson at W’stones. ‘Serving Suggestions’ – he’s good at titles.

Rang and left a mess. Saying I’d be in for R. and he rang and all is well and well and well.

He remained composed and I XX.

Oh I am so relieved. Rang Sharron and had a long sweet real talk. She’s not going to L’pool. And Rang Tim and M. and they’re parting.

R.P. looking after Elfort. So perhaps we both are.

Wednesday December 23 1992

Felt bad this morning, but did the ironing and rang the DSS and the Alliance and got that settled, too. About twelve I thought I might be sick, but wasn’t and went back to bed till three. Well it was a hangover no doubt, but I so seldom feel like that, I think there was more to it. Relief at settling R and the Alliance? Drinking more as a result? Perhaps. But what I drank was over half a bottle of John N’s magnificent present of a dozen 1986 claret, Chateau Moulin Haut Laroque Fronsac. I’ve still – first g&t – got a slight headache, and people do react to claret. We’ll see.

Did most of the shopping except that Safeways and Marks had run out of smoked salmon, which I like for Christmas lunch once a year, to contrast with the past, and Safeways had run out of that nice Australian Semillon.

How odd tradespeople are! I can’t imagine that their store-rooms had run out of either, - or their main stores - wherever that is – but their shelves had by 3.30. Odd. And the fish stall had plenty and much cheaper.

The Sun has printed a leaked text of the Queen’s Christmas message. How awful to be a Sun reader, stupid, grabbing and not knowing when you’re enjoying yourself.

Thursday December 24 1992

Christmas is interesting in its distribution of favours to majorities and minorities. I have been counting up the ad - and disadvantages of being in a tiny minority. For instance, there was no ordinary bread anywhere, but some of that delicious organic stuff.

Later. Will do all that tomorrow. He’s going up to L’pool tonight and there’s freezing fog and all sorts. And I don’t know whether he’s driving – probably not as Sharron’s going home but I hate thinking of him somewhere unknown and possibly dangerous. Even the train.

Had three plates of porridge at 2-ish a.m. and still can’t sleep.

Friday December 25 1992

Oh, had funny little chat with funny little couple in Safeway’s cue. He, with the sharply sunken cheeks and gauntness of the doomed smoker, she, small, dark, humble, sweet smile. He said ‘When are we going to see you again on TV?’ I said I’d been on about five times in the last 3 months. Well, it’s true almost all my last few jobs have been repeated lately. After that we had, at least on my part, an entirely imaginary conversation.

Had kipper for lunch. Saw a moment of service at St. Giles Edinburgh of all places, choir in frightful robes like the crusaders in a cheap Hollywood epic. It looked a little like imitation chain mail. Hideous. Turned on what I thought might be the news and got someone saying We haven’t had a carol yet, here’s Barry Manilow’s version of Jingle Bells.

Watched a bit of a disaster movie called Earthquake, and was pleased to see that the seismological institute is furnished with easily topple-overable bookcases, and a large free-hanging Spanish type chandelier for dropping on unwanted or unpopular members of the cast.

And then they described the lonely and poor at Christmas and a lot of it applied, I’m thankful to say, to me! Rang Mary and Edna in hospital. Rang K. straight after Queen’s speech and after K. had rung from K’s to say Marjorie had had a fall and had to go to hospital for a day or two, like Edna in case she’d broken anything, perhaps her pelvis. In bed for a month. K. came to phone sounding exhausted as he might well be. I don’t know how he got to the train. Still he’ll perhaps have a rest staying till Monday. Told him I’d settled everything before Christmas to set his mind at rest as far as I could.

Oh, arranged to go to R. on Boxing Day with the pheasant. And the video of Tremors, a good making-up, I hope.

So relieved to know K was there, and safe, however tired he was.

Saturday December 26 1992

10.45 p.m. Evening a success, I think, tho’ I shall have to recover the sunny love and simple trust I once had. Got there at just after five, a note saying Have gone for a walk. I wondered but he came in at 5.20. Oh, so nice to see him and give him a hug.

He took a cautious look at the pheasant which I suppose looked like a very dubious- looking chicken to him. Did a bit of vegetable preparing, and got up to date a bit. Did I record that I had rung R. to see what to bring, and said potatoes? and he’d said No, and then realised there was a hundred weight bag of organic potatoes that he hadn’t noticed.

We watched Tremors over the g&t and I was interested to find that he did like it, but found it 20 mins too long. Even he, like K with Strictly Ballroom, gets the sights wrong for judgment. Ah well.

I think R. liked the pheasant – I gave him the breast which is less tasty, oh dear. Sprouts, courgettes, roast p. parsnips! Brought two bottles of John N’s claret. Drank it without ill-effect! Yes, he liked the p. but all the same, I shan’t give it him again for a treat.

Over the coffee K. rang! Because of Sharron’s car breaking down at Watford. Again, So R. might have to rally round and get the car right? Or let Sharron in tomorrow because he has her keys? (I am interested because R. had asked me to feed the cat tomorrow because he’s setting up.)

I was fascinated that R. talked for quite a time to K. and I couldn’t tell who he was talking to at all, but so inhibited is R. that I thought it was Zoe! No clues. I got K. eventually, ‘I’m with relatives, only a minute.’ I said ‘I can do anything the next three days to help.’ ‘We know that.’ Talk of being taken for granted.

I suddenly realised that he finds it difficult to adjust to me in the middle of the ‘relatives’. It’s easier to go on, on the same level. So interesting, because he lives his own life alone, and has never read one of the many novels addressing exactly that difference.

Later. It’s not use, ‘Auntie’s Bloomers’ is just as screamingly funny as ‘It’ll Be All Right on the Night’. I remember watching the first of those with Ken B. and shrieking.

I wonder sometimes why I don’t get drunk so easily – well, age etc – I got drunk tonight because I was so glad to see R and be back together, and we can perhaps go on. And K. and K and K and K.

Sunday 27 December 1992

Rang Mary and she’d rang the hospital and talked to Edna. Perfectly all right, but of course nobody can say when she’ll go home because it’s the holiday.

Read more of the Glendinning Trollope. Well done, but why? I’ve read all Trollope but who else? R. rang to say Sharron was getting a tow from Watford so I needn’t feed the cat. Good. As I never want to go out on Bank Holidays.

Monday December 28 1992

Left a message for Sharron last night, can I do anything and thanking her for card etc. So she rang and we had a long updating talk. K. driving back with Phil and Enceinte. She expected him at 1.30ish.

Janet rang to say she’d got a feverish cold so could I not come to tea? Good. As I never want to go out on Bank Holidays. Cold.

Tuesday Dec 29 1992

Bought J.G’s Shakespeare book Hit or Miss for £3.99 remaindered. A joy.

K. rang tonight. Another joy. Rang again to find out about films on TV

Further joy. If I can read and write a bit and speak to him sometimes, I think I can be happy.

Wednesday December 30 1992

Still very cold. Paid £293 tax, Lalla’s tax and £5 of the other. For the first time for years, I had the money to pay it, so I’m up to date. Except for the £2000 I’m paying off that descended from nowhere! Still, it’s so much better to know. And I owe it all to him.

Oh, and yesterday I went to Selfridge’s and bought some towels and a kitchen mat and a nonslip thing for the bath. The kitchen mat at £11 is cheaper than re-vinyling (as it’s started to split) and the non-slip is for my poor old trembling legs. I am by no means decrepit but I now have found that I can’t so easily stand on one leg and put a sock on, or dry my toes and that is the start of possible falls time.

Selfridge’s and Oxford St. a maelstrom – I now don’t mind walking through the crowd, choosing my space like a revenant.

The putting the sock on etc is partly due to my newish paunch and partly to creaking joints. Some days my knees are quite stiff and very occasionally for an hour or two painful, but nothing to tell anyone else about. Then there are my cracked heels, which are sometimes difficult sitting up in bed… Age is interesting- you suddenly feel as tired as if you’d worked for three days when you were twenty-seven, and you’ve only been to the shops twice.

Thursday December 31 1992

Not so cold. Still lovely and quiet. These three days show that all those wretched men alone in company cars cause the vast majority of the ghastly traffic. The banks and shops and so on are open, but the traffic is more or less an eighth of the usual. Business men – ugh. Shopped for a steak and some skate and a Manx kipper, a little wine, watercress, £7.25. Rang Mary to wish her HNY.

Later. I have been much upset about the swing against the Royal Family. Respect and dignity are valuable public qualities. To allow the majority’s standards really to rule has always been a recipe for disaster. I think the real mistake of the ‘60s was to convince K. that everyone was sensitive and talented as he is, as it were. I first saw it in David G, - the difficulty in making judgments. I’ll go on with that some time. But the Queen – the stupid small minded envy! Do they think it’s easy living like that, being the intense focus of two hundred letters a day? Do they think it’s easy going through days on end perfectly dressed, being cheered and saying the right thing everywhere to people who will remember every word you say till the day you die? That was society and civilisation are forming a consensus that can keep the vast majority of ghastly coarseness in some sort of respectable check, and the ghastly greed of the minority with some sort of compassion.

Oh and a little TV repeat of Alan B’s reminiscing about TV. I hadn’t realised how alike he and David hackney were – of course both from Leeds, not dissimilar in many other ways – until he said ‘David H. said to me, ‘I was drawing W. H. Auden and I looked at that face and I was drawing in all those lines, and I said to myself If his face is like that, what can his balls be like?’’

He also mentioned a burlesque he and Patrick Garland (!) wrote about Northern novelists going back to their roots. ‘Miners’ eyes – that wonderful blue. Perhaps because of the coal dust, but a wonderful blue. And miners very strong but very gentle, gentle because they’re strong, strong because they’re tender. It’s a vicious circle, really, with the viciousness left out. That’s why I live in Ibiza.’

Alan had mocked up the prog. (which had been wiped by the BBC) and the first slot was a BMW drawing up between decayed factories in black and white.

Bad night. Woke at 3.30. Sat up and read – my heels – made some porridge about five, ate it, went back to bed and woke up at ten past twelve. Doesn’t make you any brighter. Bought some skate, and Manx kipper, and some more watercress. Just lately I find it more and more difficult to cook separate vegetables. But that’s because the whole place is upset, because of the greenhouse. But of course it’s my fault it’s not finished. Still… that will be one day. And the cooker is still connected illegally!

So, one way and another, I couldn’t be sure of staying up fruitfully, so I rang K. at 10.20 to wish them a Happy New Year. I think he didn’t mind, tho’ he was a bit surprised.

But I can no longer stay up alone, just to ring. Well, I’ve only done it with him come to think of it. D. and I for many years celebrated NY sitting up in bed reading. That I propose to do again. I love that boy as I have never loved anyone except D.

Yes, except that I did ring at twelve because I was still awake, and he had to get back to Sharron because they were out listening to the bells. Quite right I’m glad I was up.

Friday January 1 1993

Woke at 6.30. Had two boiled eggs and two finger crumpets at 9.15. Read the paper back in bed, nodded off but with no heat in the bedroom, and woke up at 2.0. Decided to give in to this, and had a cup of coffee and two more crumpets and did not shave or dress and am still in my dressing-gown and pyjamas at five to ten. Don’t feel bad about this, but hope this upsetting of my life’s routine will not continue. Now that we are past the turn of the year, and these wretched holidays, I think it’ll be all right. How like Mary L. by the way to be jeering about the turn of the year. I’m riding her carefully and so far skillfully. She is an expert in alienating people – she identifies herself to herself by putting people off. Fancy being her doctor - a hypochondriac who despises doctors.

I gave a little rub over the map of Elfort Rd tonight. Makes him seem a bit nearer.

Saturday January 2 1993

To Un Conte d’Hiver the winter film of Eric Rohmer’s Quatre Saison series. Is this the final one? I forget. Even more talky but I like that, tho’ not quite believable. Nevertheless a happy end and I like that. A turning-point provided by the statue scene from the W’s Tale in French at the T Gerard Philippe. Everyone in Roman cuirasses and Roman buns and draperies. Sounds just as smoothly boring as Racine. Smooth, how the French love smoothness even in percussive speeches.

So sleepy during film – my eyelids kept falling and I had to fight it. Trying. No. I wasn’t bored just nodding off. Bought pheasant. Will have to cut it in half and grill it.

Sunday January 3 1993

Wretchedly cold. The cars in the road looked all day, as if there’d been a light fall of snow. Did not go out at all except to the pillar box.

John on C.4. talking to RADA students. Much older and thinner-looking suddenly, but the same mixture of wisdom, taste, and tiresome self-deprecation, the result of lack of education, I suppose. It takes them one way or the other. Maddeningly the video pooped. Black and white and static. Because of course, he displayed touching modesty and piercing taste.

Message on machine after bath, and after listening to it a dozen times, I thought it was the paper bill. A paki voice said ‘Mrs Rees’ which I took to be the signee of the cheques from S’s accountants. Three months - £125 – that seemed right. Rang S. rather upset. I should have cancelled them.

Monday January 4 1993

Drew out £125 for the bill, after dear S. rang and said he’d send a cheque and he did want to go on paying for my papers. Tackled them in the shop, they had left no message and there was only one month outstanding. So it’s happened again. It can’t be the video because that would be 9 months! What stupid luck.

Took myself out to lunch at Café Pasta. It was empty at 12.15 and remained so until 1.30 when it more or less filled up. Usual, much enjoyed. Back to sink filled to brim with every single plate and knife and fork dirty!

This a.m. thoroughly cleaned bedroom before I went out. Satisfying.

Rang Roy, who said Marian was in a repeat of the Grass Arena. Mark Rylance most moving as a down and out recovering himself through chess. M. played his mother. Interesting, she was catatonic from the start, punch-drunk from the strain. Tried to ring but it was engaged and I could not persist.

Still easy to mistake physical tiredness for interesting subtle decisions.

After lunch to Tous Les Matins Du Monde. Rather trying. Guillaume D. touching but of course he may not be able to act at all – I can’t tell. But he had worked at miming playing the viol de gamba.

Tuesday January 5 1993

To Barbara for lunch. I seem to be getting up earlier, so I found myself doing all that washing-up at twenty to nine. Satisfying.

Out at 12.0 in quite wetting drizzle coming under the umbrella.

Ed Fox’s house shutters up. Filming? In Dorset?

Ba looking rather older, thinner in the face, flies open. I wish I could advise her not to dye her hair that mid-brown. I suppose she must be 70, as she was at Oxford in the war. She can certainly be no younger than me.

Evidence of the extra money the series has brought her. The sofa and armchairs at last recovered and loose covered, which were torn by the cats for so long, with rugs thrown over them to hide the tears for oh at least thirty years. How lovely and satisfying that must be for her. She keeps it all up beautifully – a Victorian hors- d’oeuvre dish with the usual three sections – black olives, peanuts, those sticky stick things – she opened a bottle of white wine just for me, she was having corbieres – lunch in the dining room, immaculate with table-cloth and matching napkins, many ornaments, a collection of candlesticks, my four fashion-plates, a lot of twopence- coloured, a huge Christmas cactus about to bloom, like Penny’s – lunch, smoked salmon, ‘Would you like some more?’ - and when we left the d-room there was 2/3 left! – then cauliflower cheese, new pots and nasty frozen peas – but that was the only nasty thing. She never struck the usual false note and I enjoyed myself. I hope she did. And when I left, she sent me away with three bottles of wine. Came back and sat down. Shopped. Sat down. Sitting down now.

Wednesday January 6 1993

Warm, went out without gloves. To genially ridiculous and lubricious film by Almovodar, of course, Labyrinth of Passion.

Dispirited by the greenhouse leaking slightly, during the almost continuous rain.

No word from K. and don’t like to ring because it looks as if I’m asking, oven, g- house etc. Threw away a bit of pork pie altho’ it smelt alright. Three days over.

Thursday January 7 1993

So Nureyev has died, and it was AIDS. One can’t be surprised. I remember David Gilmore telling us that N. had made an approach to him in the foyer of the Whitehall on the first night of Come Spy with Me in 1967 or 8. He certainly went at it.

I can’t say I was a complete admirer, though I didn’t see him often enough to express a judgment to others. I am interested that a couple of the articles say there were greater technical virtuosos. Great claims are made, greater than Nijinsky? Well, maybe, - few saw both. (Interesting description of N. doing the final jump in spectre, exhaling as he jumped and then inflating his chest and turning slightly at the apex.)

My difficulty was what seemed to me the ugliness of his legs. His face and body down to the hips was one thing – his legs another. The join of thigh to hips, and the thighs themselves, were ugly to my eye.

The films and interview displayed an unpleasant predatory face – to me. But obviously he must have been interesting to meet to say the least. They stress repeatedly the intelligence, the charm, the erudition, the thorough work. Oh dear, the touring till the other minute when he couldn’t do it and people asked for their money back – I find it difficult to forgive that.

The best reason for admiring him is that Margot had him for her partner. But even then I’ve never been remotely moved by them dancing together, only on film, of course. Margot was humble, like John.

Bought V.S. Pritchett’s double autobiog. vol. cheap in Oxfam. A Cab at the Door and Midnight Oil. Just as I thought, it’s a bit dull. The opening went on for most of the book, detailing his really not very interesting parents, when all you wanted was a strong enough sketch of their narrow minded dullness to make you delighted when he broke free. I fear he is crippled by his undiluted masculinity. That also accounts for the stupefying boredom of his travelogues. And generally he has very poor timing – there’s no rhyme or reason in the length of each section of narrative. Oh dear, speculators who are interested only in money, are so pathetic when they start spending it. On the new Clive Andersen show, Jimmy Beament! A Professor and a really funny old thing with wisps of hair and even Clive A had difficulty dealing with.

Friday January 8 1993

How much tireder I feel when he doesn’t ring.

Cleaned the drawing room and the bed-room.

Saturday January 9 1993

He rang tonight at 5.45. He’s been doing a re-mix and his tax. I knew it was something like that. He’s coming to do the oven and the g-house on Wed and Thur. No mention of R. and he hasn’t rung either.

Polished the silver. Made some vegetable stock.

Oh, yesterday the w’cleaner again put a note thro’ the door the same day as his visit. Now I will not have this, and almost went out to lunch to prove it. Another note thro’ door said they’d cleaned the outside front and would be back in six weeks. Is he on his way out?

Warm 52◦

Oh and Mary had the nerve to send me some stamps and a card saying get writing, after her absurd suggestion that I write around for a job. Just as she suggested D. should apply for something absurd. Poor thing. Still, some free stamps.

Sunday January 10 1993

The sad thing is that Mary didn’t know she had a nerve, anymore than she did when she suggested to D. between D’s being above the title in two West End plays, to write for a job at the Open Air. I wish she could have seen and heard D. after she left. It’s all part of her longing for the distant past.

Oh, how I hate wind!

String trio in tube playing Eine Kleine Nact. all Chinese.

Monday January 12 1993

‘One of our Chinese waiters entertains between tables as an Elvis look-alike.’ Decided to go out to lunch and found the door of Café Pasta propped open with a bentwood chair, and someone up steps above my table, redecorating and a notice saying Not opening till 1.30. It was 12.15 and piercingly cold. Went back home, in afternoon to Oxford St M&S to get another pair of the same cords. The H’smith M&S will probably never have them in my size again. But O St. did. Oh, how mysterious commerce is!

Message on machine from Alliance & Leicester would I ring within the next 48 hours. I thought it was the lawyers, and it made me feel sick, and I went over and over and over what I would do and say, made worse by the fact that it is not in any way my fault that the DSS hasn’t paid my mortgage direct to the Alliance as they said they had to do way back in August. I have suffered much anxiety because they haven’t done what they said they had to do.

Message from K. on machine to say can I come round at 10.30 on Wed morning to get new oven.

Little French film Revolving Doors. Remarkable 13 year old Francois Méthe.

Tuesday January 13 1993

Rang at 9.0, Alliance and DSS. Alliance, not the lawyers, and talked to a very pleasant man. Rang DSS and a girl said she’s ring back. She didn’t but the papers arrived by the post a few minutes later. The Alliance accepted the papers’ details and I expanded with relief. So at least that trouble is finally over. The DSS asked for my book in August and have done nothing till now. ‘They don’t know what anguish they cause.’ ‘And they don’t care’, said the nice Alliance man.

Roy had rung last night to ask me to go to Pygmalion at the National. He arrived at 11.30 with an M&S bread and butter pudding, and was rather dashed to find I still had no oven. However, it was easy to warm it up in a gratin. It was good, as was my omelette, - we set out at 1.15 for the 2.00 show and had to run the last bit, which I can’t really do now, and sank into our seats as the lights lowered.

Botched and disfigured, it survived because Shaw, like Shakespeare, does. Both Alan Howard and Frances Barber had their moments, but both were marred by exaggeration and forcing. Her worst fault was a ridiculous walk and pulling out of vowels in the tea-party scene. Eliza’s diction and deportment should be perfect, until what she is saying begins to impinge. Unless her accent is perfect, Freddy wouldn’t believe she was doing the new small-talk. The funny walk with hand stiffly held out to be shaken at an absurd angle, is just cheap, and also shows as so much of this production does, that there is complete ignorance of the most ordinary manners of the period.

Alison Fiske wasn’t bad as a brisker than usual Mrs Pearce – but she put her hand on her hip at one point. Mrs H’s parlour maid was possibly the worst trained in the history of service.

As for the production, the huge open stage of the Olivier, with both revolves in full flow, made ridiculous pauses between the scenes with Eliza rushing about foolishly to keep us happy. She and Mrs Pearce made their way to the bathroom by crossing the bridge over the lake in St. James’ Park. The Ball which was included along with other fragments written for the film, boasted all of six couples, all dancing, as the choreographer had taught them, the newest dances of ragtime, unlikely at a grand ball, with the added absurdity of Higgins fluently joining in. Certainly there was unusual savagery and feeling in the last scene which reminded one that S. was a contemporary of Strindberg, and that the deep feeling in the plays, so often concealed from idiots by the brilliant surface, will gradually appear as the surface is eroded by time. I’m not sure it was the right savagery. She has a coarse streak, which suggests Welsh blood, in appearance and taste. He succumbs to attacks of Olivieritis at intervals, when ‘of’ becomes the most important and significant word in the Eng. language.

The theatre was full. That must surprise some people!

Deloraine rang. She’s found a nursing home for Edna, as she can’t stay in the rest- home anymore now that she can’t walk. In Old Golf Links Rd. Broadstone, called The Delph. No doubt a drunk nurse left off the i. £295 a week. There’s £5000 left of her own money. When it’s gone, the DSS will pay £275 and £12.50 pocket money so there’s only £10 pw to find. I hope she doesn’t live much longer.

Wednesday January 14 1993

To K’s at 10.30 to buy the gas-cooker. Pouring. He’d seen a couple in the Holloway Rd yesterday but wanted to go to Hackney to see if there were any better bargains there. I have lived in London for over forty years and never set foot in hackney. Very typical London. We stopped at a run-down hovel masquerading as a shop. To our amazement there was the same model as my present one looking new and marked sold. To us, a small dark, pale young man with a wary shifty sharp expression and an ingratiating smile, ‘I put the sold notice because there’s a pipe missing at the back.’ ‘And the oven knob is loose’. ‘Ah well, that would be because of the pipe missing’. One way and another we went another way. Further on there was quite a big junk yard, with acres of mouldings, miles of baths and wash basins, anything from old houses, - the marble pillars, sans their angled tops, from either side of a driveway looking like a couple of tombs. No ovens, and everything much more expensive than last year, new management. Still pouring, feet getting cold. Back to Holloway Rd. The one he’d seen was a Parkinson Cowan Acclaim. A bit low, but nice. Grill at waist level, which I prefer and shut away so cleaner. But there is a fold down shelf come-dish-rack up above. The whole thing is much easier to wipe clean, with no nasty spaces to catch the dirt. And it is a tasteful shade of baked-on grease.

Over lunch, we had an hilarious few minutes trying to work out my share of his mortgage. At our different ages and different education, neither of us could work out what percentage of £89,000, was £28,000 and therefore how much I should pay. Sharron who didn’t join us for lunch, worked it out for us. Well, she was at school most recently. Helpless shrieks of laughter.

How cross he’d be to know that I’ve completely forgotten the provenance of a ‘Revusical’. Quite interesting, four people throwing themselves off the Post Office Tower – I had hurriedly to adjust my expression of amusement to his ‘quite interesting’ which actually came afterwards.

Showed me letter from Steven Sondheim in response to the Freud tape. I was pleased that he had no time for the piece itself – some phrase like ‘there can be no conviction without character’. And telling K to abandon pastiche, imitative numbers, because they lack individual colour (or color) and so on. I expect it’s K’s response to a poor libretto. I must copy it one day, but I do remember one phrase ‘and the underscoring, at which you are a master.’

Also told me that Rachel had told Mike Leigh K. might be the person to write the score for his next film. – that’s what an agent should do. We talked for a bit, - I said what a good step it could be if he got it. ‘Even if you don’t, can’t you meet M.L., - I’m sure you’re right for him – next time perhaps.’

Thursday January 14 1993

Up and dressed by 9.0. K. arrived at 9.45 and got going almost at once on the insulation, crunching up plastic and soaking it in a nasty resin to fill in the interstices of the corrugated roof. Painted, and covered nearly all the ghastly pink, tho’ the most important bit under the shelf has to be concreted against damp. I called to him that we’d have lunch earlier rather than later, because they’re delivering the oven in the afternoon, which may mean ten past one. The bell actually rang at ten past one as I was just about to make the omelettes. By a lucky chance, I just stopped pouring in the egg. In it came, a mild ashamed forty-year old, and an idiot silent boy clutching the official rubber tube/brass nozzle connection. Even cowboys and idiots know they mustn’t fiddle about with gas. It was in and working in five mins and we had lunch. Told me about the showing of his Rank advertising theme showing he had thought it was a fait accompli, all forty seconds of it. But no.

The audience was the staff, aged between 16- 32. The management was represented by two older men.

The 48 year old scouser said ‘No, I can’t put my hand on my heart and say this would appeal to 16-32 year olds’. The 70 year old agreed. It had appealed to secretaries, graphic designers etc. How hard and thoroughly he worked.

It was so wonderful to cook a joint again. Oven rather fierce and despite turning down, lamb a little over cooked. Nothing desperate, I like an oven fierce.

Got drunk quicker because tired. So much running about and went to H’smith twice, once for super-glue. Later slipped on stairs and bruised bum and broke a picture, no worse, thank goodness. Luck

Friday January 15 1993

Quite forgot to say that the SK chose Wednesday night to come back for the first time to sleep for three months, and thus be here in the fresh confusion of work on the g’house after weeks of quiet.

When I filled the dustbin yesterday, I saw a good bit of rubbish from upstairs, I thought, but it was the SK’s including the four or five gay books that made me wonder. So I was right, - he’s had the three months with Liz and put the gay phase behind him.

Rather hung-over, but firmly took myself out to lunch at Café Pasta and the moment I began to eat and drink felt wonderful. To Soft Top Hard Shoulder. S. in it to my great surprise, three lines, a whole life in them, but more a part I might play. Don’t remember him doing it, does he know someone in it? Not uncomfortable with my bruised coccyx. Most painful propped up in bed alas. Could not paint.

Saturday January 16 1993

Warm. Bought a wild duck yesterday from Brewer St., so casseroled it. Found there was no onion, but it made no difference. The simmer on the regulo worked perfectly. The oven is a bit low and the automatic lighting doesn’t work, but I can come to terms with that. Starting painting after an early lunch of eggs en cocotte au prawns. Painted half the roof, all the beading and other wood. Beading will need two coats, despite what K said.

Did I say the rose at the end of the balcony was blown over with its trellis in the gales, on Thursday and Friday. Rang R. to chat, as he hadn’t. He was a bit beside himself, doing his tax for the last four years. ‘I’ve never earned more than £3000 or £4000 a year.’ The accts have to be with his accountant by tomorrow. I fear he may be fined for no returns for so long. He was a bit beside himself.

Wrote K quite a long letter.

As he sat down to his dinner after all that work, he said ‘Well happy Christmas or even happy birthday. It’ll be your birthday again any minute’.

To do all that he does and with a light touch.

Sunday January 17 1993

Cooked a Welsh Rarebit a la Robin McDowell and ended up with a rather nasty looking soup. But it has since set into a really savoury soft cheesy dip and may be really delicious tomorrow.

Had two really good wanks today, first time two in a day for some time. Perhaps the last time? I’d love a tortoise again, but I’m too old now to take it for its proper exercise.

Monday January 18 1993

Not so warm. Irritating letter from DSS. Am I to have only £20 a week? It seems a muddle, had to write again. Doled, paid tax and shopped.

Came back and tasted the failed welsh rarebit – delicious, mustardy, sharp. It only looks unattractive because I used red wine instead of white.

Painted the g’house door to the garden inside and the inside of the loo-door. Took the tape off all the windows, and the effect is going to be good, - much more light.

I wonder if future scholars, if any, will search the TV archives, if any, for baby and youth shots of the Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Mozart, de nos jours, if any.

Programme about impotence, girl-friend, ‘I was going down, down. I didn’t know how to handle it’. Woman talking about flasher, ‘it flashed into my mind’.

Tuesday January 19 1993

Edna went into a real nursing-home yesterday. I sent some flowers and Mary said put my name on the card, too! £13 min. at Interflora these days, and £3 costs. She sent me a cheque in an old Equity envelope with her name and no on it. A better joke than she’d expected. The only other item was the Equity letter. Oddly she only sent me £7.50, a pound short, very unlike her and a genuine mistake.

I saw in the Newsletter, that Martin Tickner had died. A funny figure on the edge of the old West End Theatre. Tall plum, short-sighted, camp, he had a certain administrative capacity – he organised and presented Noel’s 70th B’day Gala. Tho’ superficial and predictable in his opinions he did really love the theatre, and in such ways as cherishing Joyce Carey, organising a sort tour of our Jane Austen, editing West End Theatre programmes, and the aforesaid organising, I think he did more good than harm – which of us can say more? We rather liked his boy-friend Ron, was it? A bit of rough, cross-eyed, muscular, rather un-rough really. Simple and warm.

Satisfying day. Ironed all morning. Painted all afternoon, finished the white paint and the varnish on the stagings, second coat. Did all I meant to do, unusual. Rang K. to ask him about patio paint. He pointed out the need for very thorough preparation, expense etc. all all right, but I must tell him not to be so put downy in tone. Otherwise he’s in danger of being discouraging!

Wednesday January 20 1993

A dead day, saved and enlivened by three lovely chats in the evening with Janet, made with S. as usual, as he’s ordered the artistic US Who’s Who, £170 because of the O.Welles, and I know he’ll only consult it four or five times - and he must have it now. True and maddening in its waste.

Rang Tim re Tuesday, just to leave a message and got Mark Cary and had a long affectionate talk, and crowned by ringing R. with a message about his Housing Benefit and to check on the brass chains for the greenhouse and the fact that I had an intimate message for him, and time, meant we were more nearly back to where we were. He’s coming on Tues. to do the trellis and the g’house and go to Richmond in the evening. Another step back to where we were.

Thursday January 21 1993

Actually got myself going to take my cane-bottomed desk chair to the London Institute for the Blind in Kilburn. It is an Edwardian vaguely Art-Nouveau upright chair – two ovals, with the four legs joining them. This is at least the second time the blind have recanted it, - it may be the third. Ordered mini-cab first from the firm opposite H’smith tube that I took a note of – a girl said ‘yes?...’ in a doubtful voice. I said could I have a cab straightaway? ‘Well’, she said doubtfully, ‘I don’t know…’ ‘Oh I said, haven’t you got one at all’. ‘Not really…’ So I rang the firm opposite West Ken. tube station, two streets away. Voice really thick Asian. Rang off, thinking they may not be efficient, then rang back, feeling ashamed of being prejudiced. When I found myself laboriously spelling out the name of my road and where it was, I rang off again. Rang Atlas and a car came in five minutes, with room for the chair, a quiet middle-aged man, quite able to have a sensible conversation which we did, about for instance the blind song. Took us about half an hour to Salisbury Rd, a four-story red-brick affair, built for the purpose, in the ‘30s? or early ‘50s, flat fronted, anonymous but solid. Inside a surprisingly small foyer a glass-box for the porter. Only ornaments, a couple of royal plaques, only the later one from the ‘60s at touch level with Braille as well, and a triangular glass case with screws, valves, joints all sorts of beautifully turned pieces of engineering made in the workshops. Moving. After a few minutes wait, the polite porter’s message produced a tall gangling middle-aged man wearing a sweat-shirt with Head Gardener on it. He was warm and innocent, and I was pleased by our talk. Five or six weeks. ‘You’ve done this before.’ ‘Not a very good advertisement – Ha ha.’ ‘Well it was at least twenty years ago – if not thirty.’

Got cab to drop me off in Kilburn High St. quite considerably squalid. Followed my instinct by walking north – I don’t know why. If it hadn’t been the right way, it would have been irritating, as, without the tube, the jammed traffic would have certainly stopped me getting to Café Pasta for 12.15 as I’d wanted and then to the Metro. But as time wore on and I felt less like it, I suddenly saw Brondesbury in the distance and made for it. It turned out to be that mysterious thing, a North London Line station, apparently unsallied by staff, trains or public. But then I suddenly reorganized the bit of K. High Street from that commercial interview with that nice woman in that big house for a still (and I never got the money!) and there, a little way ahead, was blessed Kilburn station. Home by 12.45.

Pulled myself together in the afternoon again to go out to pick up the tiles from Peter J., calling on the way at J.W. Carpenters in E. Court Road – a sad shadow of a real ironmonger’s. Tiles a ton weight, tho’ only 30 of them. Had to take a taxi home.

So I was glad of the repeat fees. Did I say the butcher saw me in Dick Emery and said I looked well. Well, it was twenty years ago.

Heard that Audrey Hepburn had died. Not an actress of much range, but a rare person, the sort this world can less and less do without. She just was in Roman Holiday.

Friday January 22 1993

To new Izabo film at the Metro ‘sweet Emma Dear Bobe’. Quite interesting showing the disintegration of Hungary since the Russians left. Well, I’ve always marveled at people liking difficulty and opposition and having something to fight against. Badly over-acted

Saturday January 23 1992

Dream early a.m. which I copy from by the side of the bed scribble. Drifting/flying/sliding over country and roads quite a way as it were to Brighton, turning into a series of tunnels and slopes upholstered in silk brocade as on my red sofa and chairs, but yellow, with noises of big shop and me feeling clever for knowing where the nearest exit was. Sensations of first day of any week on tour. In hand, part preliminary puff in local paper and part list of digs. In park bitten on face and leg by small dog which turned out to be wayward child. Further on, child turned up in a secluded grove, hit it with flexible cane. It lay satisfyingly still. Father came looking, threatening. Piece of paper became incriminatingly entangled with child. Tore most of it away, moved away without looking back and woke up to escape the father.

Made myself an egg salad as often. But it was especially delicious today – grated cheese, chicory w’cress, why nicer? Goodness knows. How right Robin McDowell was to say cooking was an art not a science?

Odd. ‘Matlock’ was on TV and left the set on. I have never seen the prog-before, but suddenly Neil appeared. Poor little Neil, he seems to be entwined in my life. Wrote to him. Oh, that fatal self-consciousness!

Dear book, Modern Nature by Derek J. who is lovely when he isn’t twisted by his difficulties, and a real gardener.

Says, from a herbal, rosemary cuttings best just after Lammas which is the first of August. When they’re full of oil.

Oh, bought Dracula in a remainder shop in Shaft. Av. For 99p. Never read it before. Odd, because it’s shape, thro’ journals and letters is rather me.

Sunday January 24 1993

To Earl’s Court to get patio paint, but in the piercing cold, couldn’t quite find it and gave up. Bought a Derek Jarman paperback, At Your Own Risk, A Saint’s Testament. Repetitive and a bit pointless, though quite brave. Have just read Modern Nature, his journals touching and interesting. I’m not sure how good his work is, - I certainly find his films a bit shrill and insular – another, like S. who doesn’t really know how small his world is - which is dangerous if you know and still stay in it, that is one thing, but not really to know…

Came home and put joint in oven. What joy in that simple sentence! Hazel rang. They were nearly flooded – well, they were because the stream under the garden got blocked and the water rose against the house. Jeffrey keeps it all so well, but couldn’t clear it himself and they had to get the fire-brigade. Started Dracula. Rather cumbersome, with that method of indirect narrative. Suffers badly now from déjà vu, and slowness. On cue, the South Bank Show told about Dracula. Oh, dear, also déjà vu and slow and indifferently written like the book. Daniel Farson appeared. What a great fat blond sea-lion he is now and turns out to be a great-grandson of Stoker. Well, there you are, third-rate writing is hereditary.

Monday January 25 1993

Very cold. Forgot to record the first crocus in the graveyard. The rosemary is in fugitive flower, that wonderful grey-blue.

This p.m. went to Felix and signed the SD rights away. A relief. I felt nothing. Went to pick up the Shades throwaway from picture-framers, along with the small picture I broke on the stairs, and the engraving of Miss O’Neill that had slipped in its mount. A delightful chat as always with the two solid cousins who run the shop as their father and grandfathers and great-gr. fath. before them. And I was delightedly surprised to find he’d only charged me £10 the lot.

So went straight to Char X Rd and bought two second-hand books Leonard Woolf’s letters and the William Plomer biography, both for £10. The Plomer shocked me in 89 by being £25, quite a lot now. OUP you see.

On the sex prog. tonight presented by Margi Clarke, had Tony Robinson making a wonderfully straight faced appeal ‘for that beleaguered minority, the uninhibited – you know the sort of people I mean, the couple who can’t keep their hands off one another in the supermarket… so send what you can afford to me, Tony Robinson. David Mellor House, Chippendales Road, Middlesex, FU2 69. Our Patron is the Duchess of York.’

Tuesday January 26 1993

D’s b’day. She’d be 80. Odd thought, would it have seemed odd to others? Who cares, I just wish she was here whatever age or state she’s in.

Waiting for R. He hasn’t arrived. Oh dear, he’s still not forgiving? Goodness knows.

D – 80. Strange. How landmark ages creep up on one. Any minute I’ll be 70 and that’ll give K a real jump. A heavenly eve.

Wednesday January 27 1993

What a relief! He didn’t arrive in time to do any work, but I didn’t care. I was so worried that he wasn’t coming at all. And it had been such a rotten cold wet drizzly day that he couldn’t have done anything. It was about five, he let himself in as usual, brought all the videos back, and we were truly back. Endless play of laughter. Wonderful.

Off to Richmond to see a Penny for a Song. Did not bother to tell R. that I had never seen it, because I feel I have and after it, I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it, many times in the ‘50s. A thin little light comedy with delusions of social significance. Just as I thought, he was a poor little ‘I’m so sensitive why aren’t people seeing that’ whinger. It is a bad mark to Sam Walters that he is one of his early idols. Even at twenty- something I wasn’t taken in by Marching Song, even with Timothy F.A. in it. R. and I are getting tired of the regular Co. except, thank goodness, Tim. The men, except Michael Elwyn, who isn’t in the regular co, are third-rate rep. Sam’s wife, Auriol Ross? Is a mess, hair, gesture, perf. all utterly unfocused and messy.

Tim, contained, clear, economical, couldn’t be bettered. Gave him the Trollope programme.

Back here, the rib of beef, an extravagance at £12.50 in the new oven – between simmer and one, because it had been so fierce - and on a shelf put low – was just done enough on the surface to get enough under-done eatable meat. But I’ll put it back in the oven tomorrow. R. reassumed all his privileges. ‘Can I make some coffee?’ and did so at 11.45.

Now today. I see a passive smoker has been awarded £15000 damages against her employers, a Northern Council, of course. Unfortunately for the anti-smoking lobby, that the plaintiff is a ridiculous hypochondriac well-fitted to play the Fat Lady in a circus. Her ‘bronchitis’ is shortness of breath from fat.

When, eventually last night, at midnight, I looked at machine, message from K. ‘Please ring me’. I thought he might perhaps be saying you don’t need the video. But when I rang at 12.45, he had rung because it’s D’s b’day. Long lovely talk, interrupted by him saying why had I rung in the expensive time. ‘I’ll ring back after one’. And we got the standing orders settled. I shall pay them direct, too and save money.

In p.m. to film Singles at Notting Hill. Quite enjoyable though I am always a little put off by the self-consciousness of American would-be art films. B. Fonda is worth more than she gets.

Thursday January 28 1993

S. rang at 4.30 as I was making a rice dish from the remains of the lamb. In the middle of playing Benvolio in R&J with Ken Branagh! Only on radio happily. ‘Lunch, or perhaps tea according to the schedule?’ Rang K. to say, and got Sharron. He was taking the Rank music down again, - he’s getting a double fee, quite rightly.

To film, the new Billy Chrystal, about a comedian in decay. (What was the title?) He produced and directed some good one-liners as always in Jewish films, but also as in many Jewish films, gross sentimentality and self-indulgence in in- jokes. Also painful to an actor especially, having the failures of our profession so long and so sentimentally dwelt on. Certainly the coarseness and breadth of Jewish acting, as, for instance, the chest voice of a cantor so embarrassing in its naked and primitive crudeness, has made my professional life more difficult. English restraint has almost vanished. And Jewish Americans are more to blame than anyone for that.

I don’t know that the film will go, - it is too long for its matter, ends too many times, and is too show – busy, and possibly too Jewish. There was a Jewish contingent in tonight, Topol etc. laughing in that in-jokes way, maddening whatever its source.

Friday January 29 1993

S. rang at 11.0 to say it’d be 4.0 o’clock at Maison Bertaux. Good. So I was able to go to the Halifax, get some money and go to pay the video-hire payment directly for the first time. As Visionhire has a Nat West a/c I went to the Nat. W in H’smith. All very open plan and a sign saying paying-in slips at reception. At reception there was a queue of seven people. Queuing for a paying-in slip! So rather against my will, went to my own Lloyds and filled in a paying-in slip without queueing, in that very expensively re-designed interior and she accepted it without a murmur, until she said, halfway through stamping it, ‘Have you an account at this bank?’ ‘What if I hadn’t?’ ‘We would charge £3.90’.

‘If I pay it, at the payee’s bank?’ ‘There’ll be no charge’. Well, I’ll go to Bishopsgate once a month, on the free tube. Oh and they don’t charge for closing an account.

Heard Dulcie Gray tell an Edith story very badly with that terrible camp squawk – she should know better at her age – she had her house done up. The decorator found a beautiful Sickert hanging half-hidden in the bedroom. He put it over the drawing room mantelpiece and keyed the whole scheme from it and up to it. When he asked why the Sickert had been where it was, she said, ‘I suppose because there was a hook. It reminded me of D. telling me that, at the first reading of The Old Ladies in 1935, Edith overhead something that made her say to Hugh Walpole, then at the Zenith of his very considerable fame, ‘Oh, is it from a book?’

It was always a pleasure to hear Edith pronounce a double o. And most other vowels and consonants.

To Maison Bertaux, one of the few places that still smells of warmth, of tea, of coffee, of cream cakes, of a tea-shop in fact. S. not there at 3.45, and did not want more than two cups of coffee so came out again and went to that record shop of show-bus. re. The Wildest Dream LP is £17.50! The most expensive I saw. Ha. Hope nobody ever plays it.

Back there again, put my umbrella on one of the un-chic g-floor tables and went upstairs to see if he was there and if there was a free table. He wasn’t, and there wasn’t. Came down again, and found him coming in at the door. I knew he wouldn’t want to sit downstairs and I also knew a table would become free upstairs as I went up, and it did!

Long wonderful amusing moving and revealing chat. First, he had two perfectly good reasons for doing R&J to work with John G., and to find out for himself why or whether he should dislike or disapprove otherwise than from gossip of Ken B. Both motives were abundantly justified. He doesn’t exactly dislike Ken but of course perceived the same coarseness of texture that impressed itself on me. He is a kind of coarse sieve, so many things slip through and escape him. Like his portrait of me in his book. If it had been satirical, I would have respected him more. As it is, any personal flavour I may have, utterly escaped him, as so much does, one reason why he’s been such a success. Poor S. was also repelled by Ken’s jocular amateur-reppy jokes, sycophantically shrieked at by Judi, Derek etc. That is partly because S. has spent too much time in too rarefied circles, so that ‘fuck on and get your laughs and fuck off again’ has a disproportionate effect on him. All the same …

He reduced me to tears describing John’s natural speaking of the verse. Thank goodness he saw it as clearly as if it were D. and didn’t mention Larry. Though the whole talk was in reference to my judgment of L. as always fighting the verse, because of no ear or brain.

He also described K’s perf. without vulnerability or emotion. The only dignified moment, oddly, was over me. Ken said How’s Angus? And S. said ‘Well, he’s had a bad time these last two years, but he’s a man of many resources and he’s well.’ And Ken took that and said he was glad and didn’t say anything jocular or stupidly send his love or anything. I would say he’s probably riled by anyone who won’t approve of him. But I don’t imagine he’ll give me another thought.

Oh, and S told of Harold Pinter. S. went to Othello – whose? Probably some drip at the RSC - and booked for 11 at the Caprice thinking that would be late enough even for Othello, but no, and he landed up in recep. at 11.45 – to meet H.P. on his way out. ‘Where have you been so late?’ ‘To Othello’ ‘Rather long for Othello’. Well, Harold, it was all those pauses.’ (Without irony) ‘Oh, I do hate that.’ I fear H.P. is a touch of a pompous prig, among other things.

First line of a ‘50s sci-fi film When Worlds Collide. Looking up from microscope, ‘If our calculations prove correct, this must be the most frightening discovery of all time.’

Saturday January 30 1993

I think the penis joke came from Nick Revell I think.

Sunday January 31 1993

Went to the huge DIY supermarket, Home Base, in the Warwick Rd to look for the ‘patio paint’ called Floor Paint. I see what K means about the complications and expense. Concrete sealer, completely dust and particle free etc. etc. Anyway I’ll have to wait for the summer to paint the yard. Bought one of those window-cleaners for £1.29. I shall have to get one of the boys to show me how to use it.

Monday February 1 1993

To Selfridge for various things, a new food processor, towels… neither in stock, the ones I wanted. Bought a chandelier spray and some rubber gloves, both necessary.

How often I sit rubbing my hands one on another wishing I had someone to talk to. Despite ringing Roy and even despite darling K ringing to say he’d get a few more smallish jobs so we couldn’t meet till next week now. But we had a long talk and it was very helpful. But I do long for D. of course because we were first to each other. K. makes me as first as he can. He is so good.

Tuesday February 2 1993

Wife of racing driver said, I gave him an ultimation.

Mike Rollins, heavy metal rock singer, tattooed all over, an articulate creature, hopelessly malformed by America.

Felix rang to say he’d got the cheque. Agreed to pick it up on Friday. Went to meet dear Paul at the Baker S. MGM cinema to see Strictly Ballroom again. He was sitting outside a snack-bar, eating an enormous roll-sandwich. He got me a cappuccino and we sat out in Feb. with our overcoats undone. He is, thank God, growing up at least. He’s off to the Virgin Islands on Friday for a week, and then three days in Madrid, for a commercial. Well, he’ll enjoy it! He also thoroughly enjoyed the dear movie, and cried at the end, as any actor must. I’m glad he hugged me when we said goodbye – at one time he wouldn’t have.

Wednesday February 3 1993

Oh, haven’t said that my pension arrived with only £17.85 to cash, tho’ inside it said £35 odd for mortgage and £60 for pension. But the total, £78, that I queried, not accounted for. Rang the moment I got back on Monday and got a sensible young man for once, who asked after he’d looked at his computer, whether I had two mortgages. Eventually he said I’d had too much deducted, ‘Just put your book in the post today.’ Did so and this morning came a request to send the book with a free post envelope. Meanwhile I had only £17 instead of £60 for this week.

To the Launderette at 11.30 and decided to take myself out to lunch along the Fulham P. Road. Saw quite a thick mist round the top few floors of Char X Hospital. I don’t remember seeing a mist or fog up in the air before – I thought it hugged the ground. Drew £250 out of Halifax for K’s mortgage and to get through lunch with Ian Burns tomorrow. Got my usual table at Café Pasta and had cheesy fettucine and a nice salad and half bot. When I ordered a cappuccino, I imagined an egotistic actor bowing automatically to the sound of the coffee machine.

Then to Holloway Rd to pay in K’s money. Goodness, how much tattier that bit of the H. Rd. Shut shops, temporary shops, squatted shops. The Nat. West here also make you queue for paying in slips – happily there was no queue. But the rapid deposit slot only takes multiples of five and ten – how convenient modern inventions! However it went in via the girl with no query or cost. That’s the way. Very cold, by the way – I had to come home between lunch and H Rd, to get gloves etc. and a lovely violent demanding shit. Then back to the West End to see that new French film, Annabelle Partage, in Piccadilly. Heard a bomb had gone off at S. Kensington and there were difficulties. I sat thro’ the first half hour of the film and found all three principals insufficiently interesting to compete with the idea of walking home. Left at 4.45 and was so glad I did. Piccadilly and District and circle closed between HPC and H’smith. Went to Baker St and found the H’smith and city westbound platform already jammed well before rush-hour. Going up the other end, three of us nearly measured our length over a huge suitcase left sticking out by a stupid tourist or provincial who doesn’t know about the rush-hour. Adding insult to injury, had to walk from H’smith home!

Cold.

Thursday February 4 1993

Cold, misty. But the wildish rose in the front garden has little green ears. Poised to go to lunch with Ian, but it turned out he was expecting us this evening, which of course I would never have said yes to. Got it straight eventually, and settled for tomorrow night.

New TV critic of E. Standard said Title was all. Antique Road Show would be twice as popular if it were called Bonnie Langford on the Chippendales. To shop. Found a P. Wentworth, Grey Musk. I don’t think I’ve read it before, 69p in Oxfam shop. Was to make rice dish, but Janet asked me to supper after the show, so left the remains in the fridge. Will try to do it for lunch if I have the strength after picking up the cheque.

To the film, rather sparse audience because there was a gala of Damages. And Janet took me to La Perla after. Veal cutlets with chopped fresh peppers and orange caramel, both delicious. She is a good friend.

Friday February 5 1993

To Felix and picked up the cheque for £16,250. Little anodyne talk then home, lunch and to bank and paid off the overdraft with the something to spare.

So I am in credit for the first time for how many? years. I am so grateful that I have been most helped by the two people I love most. It is humbling and satisfying to find that my heart chooses so shrewdly. K. £28,000, D. only £16,000 but then as she would undoubtedly remark ‘Well, I was dead at the time’.

To Café Flo to dinner with Roy and Ian Burns back on a visit from Denmark. He asked me to his wedding in August. I squashed that pretty fast. Just imagine me going to a wedding of all things, an event I go to under protest when it’s round the corner and I can get away when I like, which is usually after half an hour of the reception. And to Denmark.

Ian is such a warm positive character, too positive sometimes but his impetuosity and humour and warmth make up for much. And his poor judgment is largely confined to his women. Mette seems different from the others, but I scarcely know her. Much amused and disgusted in equal proportions by the news that Myrielle intends to come to the wedding, saying that she ‘likes to see the end of things’.

And how much his warmth and impetuousness is seen in his appearance, black black hair, a very heavy beard, tall, slimish, obviously full of every kind of juice. He bounded to his feet three or four times to act out something, throwing the progressively greyer customers at Café Flo in faint distrustful disarray. Actors will be actors but not at the next table! Much fun, and ‘another bottle of red, I think.’ The third. Home on tube with dear Roy.

Saturday February 6 1993

Quite mild, that nothing weather that suits England. A domestic day, and found energy to do quite a number of necessary jobs.

K. rang at fiveish. Full of work off to M’chester on Tues for day. ‘If this goes on, we can get rid of m’gages. Oh, that boy

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 117

February 7 1993- March 25 1993.

Sunday February 7 1993

K. rang at quarter to twelve. ‘A quick call, what are the names of some Oxford and Cambridge colleges? Know better than to ask why till after I’ve told. He seemed to like Trinity best. ‘Want them for names of bands on the library album.’

Andrew J. was three-quarters of an hour late, but, as I was rather hungover, I was glad to have lunch put off a bit. Glass of white wine. Lunch, him an omelette, me finishing off rice dish, rather good as it’s soothing and easy on the stomach. I had made an apple meringue at last and it was memorably delicious. He ate with great appetite. Had three goes of chicory and watercress and finished the apple m. in three helpings. He did all the sewing I needed, changing the buttons on my Mackay tartan d’gown, hemming one leg of my new M&S cords, and sewing two buttons on my overcoat, if such it can be so called.

He is such good company, and so appreciative of everything. Told him some of my stories. The John G Phyllis Calvert hysterectomy story reduced him to such hysterics that I thought he’d break the chair. Another made him laugh all the way to the loo and back – I heard his eldritch screams rending the green-house.

He sewed for getting on for two hours, and we watched Antiques Road Show from Warwick of all places. I am so grateful that I had so many experiences so early, that give me endless pleasure in being alone and quiet and free by contrast.

Later. Oh, on Sat. I saw Bruce Robinson interviewed by Richard E. Grant, describing Hollywood exactly as I might have described his rudeness to me backstage at Journey’s End in the ‘60s. How irritating they all are, finding things out so late.

Also on Sat. Rather drunk and thinking of the cheque, rang Neil in LA to tell of W.E. John’s centenary. Soon sobered up by the burlesque American cutie who answered. Already.

Monday February 8 1993

The SK didn’t come back last night, again when he’d said he would and eat in, and this morning a letter arrived from the American girl. I know because she’d put her name on the back, and addressed it C/o A.M. Edward Ashe. Really people are illiterate these days. So I left it on the mat outside his door – I always do that, as it’s a bit of a guide whether he’s back or not.

I am still not recording what I read. How odd, since it’s my main activity. Read Grey Mask, P. Wentworth. Very early 1928, with Miss Silver in a drab mac and shadowing no end of people, and no mention of the familiar room or much of the governess image.

I am halfway through Michael Myers’ Strindberg, which I think I did mention. Rather heavy going, not at all because of M.M. but because of my ignorance of Scandinavian life and literature. I feel like K, not being able to pick up references. But I was moved by a letter from Ibsen praising The Father even tho’ saying it was not how he judged such things, he said it would have shattering effect if properly done.

Have now started Leonard Woolf’s letters, as a contrast.

This p.m. to Dracula. Left after half an hour. Yes, it was a little more like Bram Stoker, but poorly acted and misjudged in many ways. I don’t mind a bit of antiquarian leaping about, but Dracula wearing, for his first appearance, a macaroni wig of two huge bouffant puffs and a plait to his ankles, shows the misjudgment I mean. Such a wig is silly on anyone, and trivializing on a proper villain. Then the girls … their skirts were to the crutch and clothes soaked transparent before you could look round, thus throwing away any valuable Victorian reserve that is one of the few merits of B. Stoker’s clumsy piece. When A. Hopkins’ portentous tones began, I fled.

Do you know, I find it quite difficult to get used to not being beleaguered tho’ I still haven’t had my pension book back. How disgusting Civil Servants are – I can just picture their selfish tasteless crass lives in Wigan – Wigan – how suitable.

Tuesday February 9 1993

Yes, I am now beginning to see what it will be like to be old. Sometimes just going to the shops is enough now.

K. In Manchester today, one of my memory places. The Old Midland has gone, but it’s not forgotten by me, and room 393.

Someone has made a novel out of the Gold Blend coffee advertisement films. Now that is decadence.

Went to Selfridge and bought Braun mixer and that blue Hornsea vase, £5.63, beautiful. On to Deep Cover, violent drug film, Larry Fishbourne has a certain gravitas and has escaped being ‘black’ but film bored me and I left after ¾ of an hour. Need fish!

Wednesday February 10 1993

To pick up pension book – of course it wasn’t there. The letters seemed to have corrected the mistakes, but I shan’t believe it till I see the same on the pages. Bought a Manx kipper for lunch, (paid my £5 IT) – went back this p.m. to buy some odd pieces of salmon and halibut at £1.80 1b for a fish pie. Cheese sause, potato mashed, b’crumbs, delicious. Used the Braun, wonderful at the mashing. It is hand-held or in a bowl, so you can mash in the saucepan. I think it will be far more use than the Philips food-processor whose engine has failed and of course, no one will dream of repairing it.

Terrible patronising letter from that poor little Spowart creature at Lloyds. ‘This account must be conducted now in conditions of credit. Please make an appt. …’ Wonder if he – no, of course, he never wonders, that’s how he can be a small minded assistant bank manager.

Sharron rang to ask me for R’s address to send him something, oh yes, a director course at the Donmar warehouse. Cold. And I’m getting a cold.

Thursday February11 1993

Still cold, but not icy. Perhaps my ‘cold’ is always in the ’head’ as opposed to the ‘chest’, those two areas that people who are interested in being ill, revere with almost religious fervour. Think of Mary and her bronchitis! My colds are streaming eyes and nose with that curious slightly orgasmic curdling to a sneeze which doesn’t always come off. Like an orgasm these days. My least favourite symptom is an entirely blocked, as might be, left nostril – no breath and through it from time to time, trickles, entirely without control, liquid. It tickles intolerably and uses up endless handkerchiefs and rubs my nostril and lip raw, during the two or three days it lasts.

Today I tried pushing a bit of cotton-wool up, first time in 66 years. It helped!

This p.m. the window-cleaner came and I had lunch early. The last of the delicious fish pie and off before the wc’s left to see The Last of the Golden Weather, a N.Z. film by a friend of Roy’s. As accurate a film about my childhood, mutatis mutandis and without any lack of charity, of an imaginative child in the middle of a lot of unimaginative people, as I could wish. I often think with amusement that it was all complicated by Mummy and Lalla thinking Daddy was the most creative and imaginative person on earth. Those three were, by and large, here and there as good a comparison of provincial narrow-mindedness, insularity, prejudice and bad feeling as you could find crammed in one house. And withal brave good and kind self- sacrificing people. Oh, life.

Rang Deloraine. M. is right, we can only trust her about how clean the floor is for E., the last requirement for us in an old people’s home, or nursing home. It’s such an easy get-out to mind only about hygiene.

Friday February 12 1993

Cold worse if anything. Went to pick up my pension book and although the letter on Tuesday had the figures right and so had the front of the book, the sum on the counterfoils was still that wretched £17.85 and after I had signed it and the clerk had stamped, we realised it was next week’s!

Rang the moment I got back at 12.15 and used my rage to be pathetic and cry ‘Please don’t get upset Mr Mackay pronounced Kay instead of ie. It turned out, of course to be the computer. Well, they got the paper-work right last week, perhaps the computer this week. Especially as she said ‘I have just worked it out clerically’. Sent my book back for the second week running.

Really spectacular spouting from eyes and nose, specially from 12.0 onwards, plugged nose again. It stopped after g&t and food, tho’ I don’t think that was the reason and it’s 10.55 p.m. but in the cinema this p.m. it was bad and I was glad I wasn’t near anyone, especially as the other effect, when my nose is impenetrably blocked, is that, from time to time and suddenly I get an acute tickle from the dryness in my throat, with, unless I’m careful and make saliva lavishly, the effect of a finger down my throat. Purely physical, of course, but what my hypochondriac friends would make of it! I would have my throat permanently disabled by famous doctors in minutes!

Film was first perf. of Olivier Olivier, combining the charms of young love with incest and a pretender going over the hurdles of pretending to be a long lost child, now grown-up. I wait impatiently for the sequel. Gielgud, Gielgud.

When I got back, there was a college magazine from John’s. Still called The Eagle, many pages, good paper and print. Idly leafed through, - women, a temporary theatre is being made permanent, good heavens, obituary of a questionable looking don, the high points of whose life deserve listing. b. ‘28, his father was killed by a tree falling on his car a few months later. His mother, to whom he was devoted, took him back to her mother’s in Exeter. In 1942 blitz, house and all possessions destroyed. Camb. before Army, (so I just missed him.) Served in Germany where he contracted colitis which plagued him all his life! Fellow 1958, law tutor, and supervisor till death. Moved out of favourite set of rooms so that it could become a reading room for law students.

His devotion and responsibility to his mother was shown by him rushing along on his bicycle every morning to prepare breakfast for her in the flat in Cambridge she moved to in 1975. Bought a bungalow with pretty garden for them both in Barrow.

In addition to college work, committee and secy. of Johnian Society, Justice of the Peace, Assistant Recorder 84, Full Recorder 91, Foundation Trustee of Homerton, Governor of Caterham School, his help with the University of the Third Age was much appreciated – Family Law discussions in his rooms, ‘his help for others was boundless, much kindness to widows of…’, godfather to seven children, ‘brought up a Congregational’, ‘escorted his ancient mother to church every Sunday morning’ ‘loving devotion to his mother… to isolate him and thus produce a lonely soul who needed a personal relationship outside the care of his mother. This… seemed to be resolved when he became engaged to Gillian Boulind… read law, qualified lawyer… Law Supervisor in several colleges … Tragically she died before… John’s mother died in 1989. He occasionally mowed Gillian Boulind’s sad mother’s lawn. His severe depression in spring 92 may have been exacerbated by the steroid drugs … to combat a skin disorder of the leg.

The exhausted reader will scarcely be surprised, tho’ saddened, to hear he committed suicide in 92. ‘He seemed to have no premonitions of his impending death’. The trouble is that no one else had premonitions. Perhaps I should have described them as low points.

I looked through the list of former undergraduates, and didn’t recognise a single name, not even among the obituaries. But I certainly tasted again that curious dead indifference not least in that insensitive obituary. I met no dons except my utterly remote and unresponsive tutor, Guilleband and sinister supervisor, Hugh Sykes Davis. I think I like best as a symbol, that the post-code on the envelope was quite right, but there was no ‘St.’ and my name was spelt Agnus.

It’s the first time I’ve heard from John’s in twenty? thirty? forty? years. Wonder where they got this address.

I can’t even bother to write a contemptuous reply.

Saturday February 13 1993

Even more generous flooding for some hours this morning, I don’t think I could have gone out with any pleasure or circumspection, so stayed in bed, and have never got dressed, a very rare occurrence. Didn’t feel ill, just self-indulgent, and didn’t specially feel like shaving as my face gets sore.

Silly to watch a touching film in the middle of a cold. Roman Holiday is a perfect light comedy, Audrey Hepburn still without fault. The great dignity that she showed throughout her life and until her death last month, is already present. You want to try to be better after seeing her.

I thought yesterday how surprised all my young friend would be, if I put forward the more or less unassailable proposition that almost everything you think beautiful or inspiring, came from the aristocratic way of life, though you know too little of it to realise.

Sunday February 14 1993

Bit of sneezing etc. this a.m. I think the worst is over. Really Saint Valentine’s Day thing has got sillier than ever this year, with a ‘Love Weekend’ on Channel 4, and the C4 logo turning into a heart and throbbing. And those pages of messages in the papers, four or five closely printed pages do the poor creatures have to read every one – I suppose they do. Unimaginable. How insidious it is and how simple people are. Young men now feel they must send flowers etc. and I see some shops are charging £50 for 12 roses this w/e. When I last noticed it all, a Valentine was an unsigned card, as it might be, the office boy sending a card to the unattainable boss’s secretary. Well, it’s like poor K. having to send a card to his mother for Mother’s Day, at the behest, no doubt, of some American card company who foisted that festival on us about thirty years ago. Of course, it’s K’s mother who’s been conned but the result for the card company, is the same.

Rang Edna again and this time successfully, - no she’s not deaf and talked as usual, noticing I had a cold, tho’ she has little recent memory. Mary and I are the only people left from her life. – the theatre, and I must keep that little thread going as long as I can, as it’s her identity. As long as coming to the telephone is pleasant to her.

Monday February 15 1993

K. rang ‘just surfacing’. Might come to dins tomorrow! Almost certainly this week.

This p.m. to The Invisible Man’s last preview at the dear old Vaudeville with Roy, tho’ it turned out with Marion and an actress friend called Nicky. To my slight surprise the bar filled and filled with a smartish young audience, at least two-thirds under thirty. The theatre was full.

Show quite jolly fun in places, though with the usual patchy casting and lack of a consistent tone that is still the hallmark of Stratford East. If only I thought the hit and miss was on purpose, it might be intriguing. Some clever special effects mostly by a conjuror though there is some use of the star trap, which I was amused to see, still gets around because they don’t know how it’s done. Some nice absurdities and by and large they haven’t completely mucked up the fascination of the idea. I think it will do well, and may become a bit of a cult. Much clapping and ironic cheers.

Re-read the book in bed. No comparison. Curious sexual overtones, nudity, voyeurism. Fascinating.

Tuesday February 16 1993

It is tonight. I’ve got the joint happily, so just potatoes to buy! It’s been a little while since I saw him.

Can’t write as usual too drunk and too happy. The great fat thing.

Wednesday February6 16 1993

Yes, well, it was a return to normality and serenity to have him round after a week or two without him. It is so difficult to write of perfect serene happiness, because I rest in him, I depend on him. Oh, I hope it doesn’t oppress him. I never say it.

So let me record a funny moment. He had one of his drunken paranoid moments in the middle of dinner. Shoulder of lamb, courgettes (I must remember he doesn’t like them much) and mange touts. Roast and boiled pots, and gravy. As they have salad at every meal, I thought I’d make a salad for after, but, when I suggested it, he was outraged, ‘How can you imagine I want salad… when have you ever…. What makes you think…’ I said mildly, ‘Well people do have steak and salad.’ And of course, my mouth starts to curl and that makes him crosser. And, equally of course, he does that coming back to it just when I think he’s stopped. ‘Have I ever…’ Nothing funnier. However we passed it off. Isn’t it odd? After all, side salads – absurd phrase – are on every menu.

I quoted to him Margi Clarke on that sex programme – ‘I love lips because they’re the vagina of the face.’ Said in L’pool, as he straightaway did, it is poignant. Said in cockney, it would be squalid. That rising inflection – it’s hopeful.

Talked long and long of his plans. I am so pleased that he still spreads his wings before me. The Motor Show TV Prog. I put out the seven other composers including Richard Harvey, the George Fenton of TV. It’s Granada, and supposed to be a rival to Top Gear.

Stayed at L’pool the other week. Margi’s walking, or rather shuffling, better.

Beautiful over my letter to bank-manager closing the account. Don’t express your resentment – just say whatever will make him deal with the next person more fairly.’

I am guilty of sophistry here, as I know what I think, - the same as he – but it gives me such keen pleasure to hear him say it.

And as final treat, Janet and R both rang and both talked to him. Really solved all.

As he always does.

Wednesday February 17 1993

Our 35th Wedding anniversary.

Paul rang up on his first day back. All went very well, and in great spirits. Asked him round next week. Closed bank account. Up to K’s with the rosemary and bay he cut in the garden, and drunkenly forgot. He heard me come in, I popped the note on the top and he came out. ‘Oh Angus’, ‘Well you wanted it’. And to the door. ‘Is that it?’ ‘Yes.’

Back to West End to see the Living End? Edge? an American ‘art’ film, gay and very very slow and pretentious. Left after half an hour.

Forgot to say that I told K. all about the DSS, and somehow it all slipped into unimportance.

Thursday February 19 1993

The DSS papers arrived, - back to all the wrong figures, so the wretched computer is still wrong. By same post a threat from the Alliance of legal action despite me having asked the Manager of Income Support at DSS in Wigan, whether they were paying the mortgage and they said they were.

So frustrated and inflamed by £600 promised from the Dick Emery show that I decided not to wait for all the other money and delivered letter to Mr Spowart, drew £100 from the Halifax and took note to Tim W. for his first night at the Orange Tree for the Mrs Centlivre. Then walked on to find Café Flo – missed it once but asked a young man opening folding doors on a smart motor saleroom. Alsace wine rather good, salmon tournedos, slightly dry, but a good creamy chivey sauce and spinach oh and vegetable soup. Stopped at sub-post-office and a cross Pakistani said do you want stamps? but was obviously not prepared for more. Walked on thro’ still apparently prosperous Richmond, to the P.O. and got served at once sending letter to Neil and books to Marl L.

Went to secondhand book-shop, but only open Fri and Sat. To Waterstone’s to ask for fourth volume of Holroyd’s Shaw. Blank stare. So to small private book-shop, found it, bought it at £40 and fuck it. And had delightful chat with shop-owner and her mother, an actress my age. Heard on film about prodigy (sic). He’s smart as hell and just as innocent.

Film this week Lorenzo’s Oil about a real-life child with a hideous and rare complaint. Saw the ‘real life parents’, on the TV and the mother especially, was of such dignity and strength that I didn’t want to see even an actress as good as Susan Sarandon play her. And I expect, like all Americans, she made the mistake of meeting her.

Friday February 19 1993

Rang everybody and I think, got it settled and then forgot it. Met R at Café Pasta. That back table. No, he hasn’t withdrawn at all, - he’s been so busy, preparing his seminars, and, it turns out, having a new tooth put in and going to the dentist every week since Christmas. He had the Café Pasta salad, salami etc – with Italian dressing and I had the usual Fettucine Al Alfredo and salad - and a piece of chocolate cake – ice - difficult to say. Lots of coffee, Jacob’s Creek, to clinch that we’re really back. To A River Runs Through It. A touch worthy and the narration from the novel, full of that solemn stuff Americans think is fine writing. Quite indistinguishable from the voice-over in the Waltons. Well-acted all through. Brad Pitt confirmed my opinion that he is one of the most interesting of the young Americans, him and River Phoenix. He has a slight disadvantage in that he is also a terrific charmer, which the critics will probably start to hold against him soon. The direction by Robert Redford was rather unsatisfactory, too many lyrical pans all at the same pace. Good bits, particularly the sudden fight in the inner card room, when, very like life, it happened so suddenly and you didn’t quite see what went on.

Odd little echoes for me – opening shot of father, nonconformist minister, mother, two sons the younger sitting in front of a plate of food until he has eaten it, then kneeling, elbows on their dining-chairs for prayers, sitting in the pew with their mother listening to the father preach. Like watching rugger for a second with the intoxicating conviction that I will never have to play it again.

R. said he could do the trellis next week. And the g’house door, I hope. On the way home, bought two second-hand Clare Curzons at the detective story shop in Charing Cross Rd. Lovely to have them all together, and I do mean all, and a very good second-hand section, which has a really good turnover.

R. is a very valuable friend – I am v. lucky that I didn’t put him off for good. Tho’ after all, there are worse things than loss of temper.

Saturday February 20 1993

To my stupefaction, a letter from James Roose-Evans, asking why I never got back to him, after our lunch at the Garrick about the Pym! Five years ago? Well, for a start, I might say how could I collaborate with the sort of nutcase who writes this sort of letter. I think I shall say It was because you were wearing sandals. Have I ever recorded that, at the 50th wedding party for Sybil and Lewis, I heard Emlyn Williams go up to Robert Morley and say ‘How do you do? My name is James Roose-Evans’ and received his reward in a squeal of horror from his old friend.

Sunday February 21 1993

Father of a dotty American bicyclist preparing fruit for his son, ‘He loves mangoes. When I stuff a bit of mango in his mouth, he will absolutely go bananas’.

Rang Roy to tell of James R.E. and to hear about their two nights in Cambridge. They stayed at New Hall with a friend of his, ‘a rapacious homosexual’ – dear Roy, still so innocent not knowing that has been a description of any Cam. don for a hundred and fifty years, so we need something more specific. Food still good at High Table, even at New Hall. Where did Perterhouse come into it, except that he found out it was the earliest college. Friend has written a book called The Homosexual Experience? Influence? Scene? – can’t remember.

Hazel rang, feeling a bit low, cold etc. Was pleased that I mentioned Gloy, which she’d been trying to remember. I said I had a pre-war glass pot of it with the wooden top and brush. It was always on my father’s desk – I don’t quite know why, tho’ some of my father’s sermons were a bit pasted together. Much amusement, not to say gob-smacked by James R.E.’s letter. She reminded me that he’d suggested getting rid of her and doing it between us. That would be enough!

She told me a friend of hers, Jean Scott-Rogers, had given the Theatre Museum enough money to buy the M S of Educating Rita and only got a typed card of thanks from an assistant director. How odd for a frail elder to give money for such a cause. Of course bloody Willy wouldn’t present it. I’m surprised he hasn’t kept it. She has also been concerned in starting a fund to help Freddie Bartman’s legal fees in his murder trial! So we had that talk.

Long talks with Mar. and Roy as usual. M. says she’s much more wrinkled ‘hands like ill-fitting gloves’. Those horse-injuries in Hampshire – alone! Why has no one mentioned Equus?

Monday February 22 1993

When I rang Mary after ringing Edna as usual she suddenly expanded on how wrinkled she had suddenly got, as I told about her hands. Obviously her body is the same. So I said ‘You’ve lost a bit of weight perhaps’. ‘No, no’ but she has, she’s thinner and paler than last year but has to have her own way! I daresay I shall go the same way in a few years. She said she preferred ‘crumbly’ to ‘wrinkly’ to describe her age-group. ‘People look at me as if I’m mad or perverse when I use it’. I fear it’s just embarrassment at such an outmoded and self-conscious bit of slang. And then poor M. is such a bad actress even in real life! She has that fatal self-consciousness on and off. And has to be right. To be fair, she often is, within her narrow limits, but, oh how I see her manner and her laugh, put people off.

Wrote to J. R-E to thank him for a rather surprising letter… did not think we would see eye to eye… and that Hazel should have little or nothing to do with it. Clinched it… Gracious, he’s a chump.

At about 11.30 I saw outside a middle aged man in a motorised wheel-chair ‘parked’ facing towards Margravine Gardens. I took it that he was there because of the Russian Orth. Church House. Perhaps so. After a few minutes, he was joined by a youngster with the sort of hair that sticks up at the crown and will never lie anyway at the front, sturdy-looking, with a smiling ugly face, and dressed only in a white t-shirt and jeans. It was really cold, with a nasty wind. He stood chatting – I heard only a very few words, but I could tell that man in the wheel-chair was probably a combination of three-parts boredom to one-part ‘interesting character’. They hadn’t met before. I think, as one of the half sentences I heard, when the youngster turned to face the window, was ‘No I’m not at college’. He listened and laughed and looked at the corner, and listened for getting on for twenty five minutes in the cold, until the council disabled bus arrived. They waved at one another and that odd little platform was let down, the wheelchair rolled on to it and rolled into the bus. The boy went back into the house next door but one, with the big extension, bought recently. Now I don’t know what happened, but I think that boy saw that man waiting in the gutter and came out to see if he was all right, and when he found out the man was waiting for his ambulance, stayed and chatted in the cold. His ugly funny-kind face exhaled a strong air of kindness and goodness as he turned to go in. I was reminded of K and that old man in the B. Rd pub.

Hazel, I mean, rang Hazel to tell her Freddy Bartman had been completely cleared and the case dismissed. So she could let her elderly friend know that he’d been granted £50,000 costs. Went and got the E Standard article copied and sent her a couple.

Dear Paul R. to dinner. Gave him the same dinner as 10 years ago, mushr. and anchovies, and escalope de veau a la crème etc. He is a dear boy, brought a lot of photos from his commercial in the Virgin Isles. Chose three or four, and he was rather affected because they were his favourites. I’d chosen them because they were most like him. When he isn’t putting on his ‘chirpy public’ face.

Rather drunk from lack of anxiety. Oh, rang bank to see why my money hadn’t arrived. A deeply phlegmatic voice said This is Lloyd’s Bank, Hammersmith, Elaine speaking, she passed on to Shirley, who told me there’d been a mix-up but there were two people working on closures this afternoon, and so tomorrow…

Tuesday February 23 1993

So I rang them today after both posts. Elaine said wearily ‘I talk to so many people…’ - Shirley said ‘The cheque is in the post’ I wonder if it occurs to them that they are breaking the law in withholding my own money from me. Oh how wonderful to get away from them. And of course ‘Mr Spowart’ has not answered my letter, because he can no longer charge for it.

To Selfridge and bought two more Hornsea pots, pale cream with pale flower border. Will be lovely in the green-house. When I got back, a message on the machine from Deloraine said, in that subdued voice that the unfeeling adopt for bad news that she wanted to warn me that Edna was very uncomfortable and she thought it better etc. etc. so that a sudden message …etc. I rang back for half an hour but she was always engaged. So rang the nursing home and got obviously, the other sister, who said ‘Well, she was quite chirpy when I went in just now. I’ll tell her you rang’ and seemed to know nothing of any serious crisis.

After dinner, a bit earlier than usual, because the SK put his head round door at 7.30 and said Are you going to eat because… Naughty because he knows I always have dinner at 8.0 and of course, it made me feel pushed, especially as I had to wash up Paul’s dinner, after dinner then I rang Deloraine and she was there despite having said she was going out, so more subdued solemnity but a few facts. E’s skin has broken down badly, she’s in pain and on a ripple bed because it’s so painful to move her. The Doctor’s coming every other day, and so on and so on. It seems the cheerful sister I spoke to, Sister Bailey, is not Deloraine’s preferred. The bossy one is to be preferred, Sister Goodic.

We’ll see. The sad thing is that tho’ all this has happened in the fortnight or so E. has been in this new nursing home there is nothing to be done - she is very frail and at the very end of her life. And even if she were 60, I would hesitate to do anything as even then it might very well have upset E. more than it helped her, with her complete submission to doctors and most other forms of authority.

I occasionally listen to a little of one of those radio ‘phone in’ programmes but can seldom listen for long. So many of the hosts are so irritable and no wonder, with so much unresolved argument from people even stupider than they are.

Comic letter from Simon’s accountant for me to sign a share transfer for my one share. One form needs a witness. That is usually the signal for me to see no living human being for a month. Happily Crispin R is coming to lunch.

Wednesday February 24 1993

So he witnessed at once, and we got up to date. He is decidedly less self-absorbed, possibly as the result of his father’s death in July, and possibly the influence of his Australian fiancée, that brisk girl I met at Tim’s in the summer. He’s not working much and has lost even more of his youthful looks, face rather battered and worn, decidedly balding now. None of which will matter if he can live up to the battered look and not cling to the juvenile. He left his agent, James Shirkey who then sacked all his juveniles, and made it look as if he’d sacked Crispin too. ‘I can’t have my reputation tarnished by having people leave’. Smokes, probably too much.

Went to Australia for three weeks to meet his girl’s family. ‘It’s frightening, after a day or so you run out of conversation because they have little or no knowledge or culture. They listen to James Last and read best sellers. No irony like Americans so they think you’re getting at them.’

Paid £2000 into the Halifax.

Clearing up papers for a bit of a new start, came across some ‘lists’. I started looking through a clip of them that kept writing on after D’s death. The book in her hand was a Tale of Two Murders By Elizabeth Ferrars. Not very good, poor darling. Also a list I made or began, of dear Agatha’s illiteracies and especially unconscious use of allied words, that particularly amused D.

‘She sniffed through her nose’. ‘Homicidal murderer’. That’s from Evil Under the Sun, pg. 58 Crime Club. She said coldly, ‘I can assure you I never feel the cold’. The play of Roger Ackroyd ‘Major Blunt (sharply)’.

Slightly different enchantments. Again, Ackroyd, pg. 4 Penguin ‘Hand and Glove with the Doctor’. Blue Train. ‘Any mail, he vouchsafed’. Appointment with Death pg. 63. ‘Addressed’ 3 times.

Rang darling Mairead and she’s coming round next Wednesday. She is a wonderful direct girl.

Thursday February 25 1993

Colder and windier, but nothing extra. Have had one or two chats lately with the SK. He is a hit and miss boy, superficially intelligent probably because of his parents and background rather than himself. He’s now embarked on an adaptation of something from Saki, an odd thing for a young man of 21. Especially one with a rather blunt sense of humour. He so often misses a coarse shade, let alone a fine one. (Oh, yes, I know all about youth etc…)

Like Crispin, who should know better at 30?, he is apt to stammer ‘Oh, you’re so brutal’ at a simple adverse judgment, as She can’t act. I forgot to record that Crispin hid his ears and expressed great disquiet when I said that West Indians talked louder than English people. It’s just the lack of such self-evident truth that bedevils race relations. Just those loud voices have contributed such a lot of difficulty. And possibly our quiet voices make West Indians feel we’re well, I don’t quite know what – because actually I don’t think they notice!

K. is 32 tomorrow. Sent him a p.c. of Arnold Bennett, saying 32 was no great milestone, but 33… Of course he won’t get it, but he’ll like A.B.’s furrowed tired face and the little mystery. I shan’t ring because he’s so busy. Oh, earlier this week I asked him to pay the bill for the cane chair, which was only £37.10 and no V.A.T. because the blind are a charity. And a week early. About four and a half weeks.

A footballer called Bobby Moore died and it was the top story in the Independent. When John Gielgud dies will he get a great band across the top of the front page of a serious paper? No doubt he was a pleasant chap who was true to himself.

Friday February 26 1993

In another Café Pasta, this time in Belsize Park, before going to the Everyman at Hampstead, where I haven’t been for ages. Rather grander Café P than the others, a large lofty room triple fronted and the extra space means that a young man at the next table has been there for half an hour on one cappuccino and its twenty five to two. The previous occupants were a pair of middle aged ladies, Jewish, I think, who fiddled with their sharing of the bill for so long, and then fiddled even longer when the bill arrived, that they certainly lived up to a Jewish archetype and quite set my teeth on edge. The young man, a bit foxy and ferrety has gone right through the racing pages making notes and reading always with his lips moving.

I wonder what K. is doing for his b’day – probably working. Dear dearest of people. It’s funny and sad that we’re bound so close by money now as well as everything. Later there were three quarters of an hour to kill after lunch. I went to the two book- shops – the Flask Walk second hand one is too haphazardly arranged for me to take pleasure in searching for the few books I still want. I can’t really bend to the bottom shelves, and haven’t really the impetus to search every shelf knowing how comparatively poorly stocked such shops are now. Even the excellent new book- shop has nothing I haven’t seen elsewhere since Christmas. I rather wanted to shit and thought I could go in the Everyman, and it was getting a bit colder; I found myself by the tube station and found myself on the train back home. I think I’d rather over-eaten and certainly felt a bit full. Sat on the sofa and recovered.

Rang K. at six in answer to message on machine, finding I wasn’t in. ‘Happy Birthday to me’. Got Sharron first to ask me to dinner tomorrow. Then him, lovely talk, will come and do trellis, tell Robin he’s got an awful cold. Talked of James R.E. – I’ll finish that tomorrow.

Even if I could afford a present – cos I know it would worry him if I gave him anything – I have no idea what to give him now. He’s buying a new wooden filing cabinet, or rather an old one! It’s no use buying him any sort of pretty object, or a plant or a picture, let alone a book! Nothing musical, of course, no clothes, nothing from my collection etc. So what? I don’t know. He said Ring R. – it’ll cheer him up. Also said he didn’t think R was thinking about the greenhouse or the trellis, as he’s got all R’s tools. We didn’t even mention the greenhouse. The frustration is bad, but I can’t tell them, - it’s youth and age.

To me, it must all be put right now because … but to them there is infinite time. And, of course, neither of them have any feeling for garden plants.

Saturday February 27 1993

Very cold. At 11.0 the temp. on the top of the LBC building just down the road was 0◦C.

To shops in a.m. so made a rice-dish at 12.25, took me half an hour, and finally ate it at twenty to two. Delicious. My Braun hand-mixer is going to be wonderfully useful when I get into the swing of it.

To K’s at 6.0. He was there to meet me at 6.45 – ‘I suppose you want a gin and tonic.’ Showed me his new wooden filing cabinet. Consulted me as to whether there was a spring in each drawer in its original state. Don’t think so. I say ‘new’, but it’s like the one Daddy got rid of in 1938, for a metal one. Well, it certainly is more friendly and less suggestive of fierce secretaries. Nigel appeared, looking more middle-aged and like Ernie than ever, and disappeared. He showed me the new kitchen-table, also I suppose, partly for his birthday. Piney looking but properly polished and more likely beech. Quite civilized. Sharron all sweetness – she gets nicer and nicer. Cod, courgettes, mange tout, all properly cooked and ‘roasties’ which I know better than to take more than two.

He showed me the oven lighter when I said it was just what I needed and he straight away rang Ernie and Marjorie to ask them to get one. Improbably he believes that you can only get them in Liverpool. (It turned out that Ernie got them from a caravan shop – well, there are such in London) so I had a nice chat with them, and that was a relief.

I thought over dinner, I’d bring up ‘The Salad Controversy’ to put it away, but, bugger me, he went off again, and, after all, I only offered him a salad because I thought he’d like it. Sharron smiled and we got him off it. She served three or four different wines and we tasted them and I saw suddenly, in a blinding flash, that it is that he likes Bordeaux and not Burgundy.

He asked after James R.E. and told me they’d asked J. if they could go for a long weekend at his house in Ireland, - for which they’ll have to pay! Also asked about John Wells, as he’d been asked to set one of his lyrics for - what? I told him he was one of the Willie Rushton etc. set, which depressed him faintly. To my amusement, he said Coffee in the lounge? (I wish they wouldn’t say lounge)

We talked about Nigel and his curious half-there personality. He called me ‘wise’. Unusual. Oh and I mentioned Graham Fellowes in that zoo prog. looking so middle- aged. He said ‘It’s just an act’. Well, it is, but I am an elderly actor and can recognise youth and make-up better than he. He’s also forgotten what G.P. looked like, a tame giraffe.

Put a bit of Bert and Ernie on for me, the very bit I’d most loved, of Ernie not recognising Bert dressed for a party with his hair brushed flat. When Bert comes back as Bert, Ernie says ‘Oh there you are Bert, you’d better hurry up and change or you’ll be late for that party’.

I told him that, even if I could afford it, I could not think of a single thing he wants. He said there was something he’d given me, that I could give him. Not that he meant the very one I’d given him. It turned out to be the ice-bucket. ‘But they’re all so horrible, including the one I gave you’.

A good crisp talk about the washing machine. For the moment I decided against, as the greenhouse is not yet finished and the four bags of rubbish are still immovably there, how many months later?

Wonderful evening. I am never with him but I go home feeling life is worth living again.

Sunday February 28 1993

Very very cold. At least I felt it as such and wore all my winter undies.

Struggled to the Odeon, Kensington to see Leon the Pig Farmer, 2.00 in the Standard. No it’s not on in the afternoon, not till 4.30. But it says in the Standard … ‘Yes, a lot of people have said that.’

Monday March 1 1993

Bomb on Warrington Gas Works the other day. A present from the IRA. How odd a place to bomb, Warrington, I mean, not the Gas Works. Where darling D. did twice- nightly, twice weekly and wrote Small parts leave me too much time to think.

To the Troc. and actually bought a ticket after some struggle and found the minute cinema repellently full except for the side of the front row. Walked out and down what seemed like seventy flights of stairs.

Tuesday March 2 1993

In Army drug programme, ‘Sheep and goats were used as guinea-pigs.’

Big raid two or three streets from Tim in Stoke Newington. Lots of Semtex, which is good, and they think it may be ‘the London cell’. Isn’t that a strange word for a nest of terrorists? When they all ought to be in one.

Of course, one can’t believe a word of a newspaper report of such an arrest, - or indeed, anything else written by people usually renal and ignorant in equal proportions – so I hope the description of the Police breaking the bay windows of the house in question and two bays on either side, was untrue. Perhaps the Police are now so well paid they couldn’t believe it wasn’t all one house.

Houses rather early Victorian terrace, definitely Victorian, but retaining a few faint Georgian features such as the plain stucco surround of the front door and the indoor window shutters, full size, closed after the broken window.

Later. Eventually got to Leon The Pig Farmer but first lunch with John N. I see him so much less than I used to, that in between, in the last two years, I sometimes have wondered whether he was tailing our friendship off. But in my unhappy isolation I find it easy to overestimate at once, the full timetable of ‘the Director of Corporate Management’ as he was still detached enough amusedly to tell me, and a man of 46 in the middle of a strong and secure and deepening relationship – I think – of course has less time. But the good thing is that this lunch showed me he is exactly the same. The very quality that made me ring him the night D died.

Very interesting about the Coliseum. Yes, it really is £25 million to refurbish it over the next two years. I had a good look at just the foyer while I was waiting and of course, even that is immensely elaborate under its fifties-sixties cloak of creamy-buff urns, swags, in panels all no doubt, needing gold leaf somewhere, let alone getting back to the plaster.

Also interesting, ‘We need a really high powered name to chair the appeal committee. I can’t tell even you who it is. One distinguished member of the board will resign if he isn’t appointed, and Lord Harewood will resign if he is.’ Great fun.

Before lunch bought the Trollope short stories and Marion Fay, thus after many years, I have all the fiction. Interesting that Trollope’s fiction is now all in print, and three major biographies. I think him a greater novelist than Dickens.

John had an aubergine dish with a spicy tomato sauce. I had black bream in a shrimpy sauce and allumettes. We both had the lentil soup. And he bought me a whole carafe of white.

After lunch I got myself to the dear Tott Crt Rd. cinema, with which I have nothing but happy memories and at last saw Leon the Pig Farmer. Rather a disappointment. I quite liked it, but I hardly laughed. Two reasons, it was a bit too Jewish – there were several allusions and words I didn’t catch, but most of all, as an actor I had a very strong feeling that they had all laughed uproariously while making it. Janet Suzman rather poor, over-characterising like M. Leighton, from a lifetime of ‘leading ladydom’. Likewise Mark Frankel that ‘perfect man’ of that absurd play at the King’s H. But no reason why both shouldn’t be better, if somebody will say.

Wednesday march 3 1993

12ish.

Mairead and Tim have just gone – I don’t care what K says they are dear sweet honest people.

Mairead came to dinner alone, as of course, he was in The Artifice at The Orange Tree. She was a bit late, but no more than I expected. She poured out the story of being offered a tour by Ned Sherrin and ? and John Newman !!! £250 a week for 16 weeks and ‘Was I right to turn it down?’ She described John Newman exactly from a standing start all these years later. Also auditioned for Juliet in the Park for Judi Dench ‘And it went very well, I know it did, and she knew about Adrian Noble’s praise, but I heard from her assistant after, she wanted someone younger.’

M. is 26 and radiant. Also born to play Juliet. Corn chowder soup, M&S vegetable lasagna, M&S apple meringue. Me, most successful. Lovely evening, she is a true honest girl. Long talk about her flat-sharing with Yum-Yum. Oh so usual. ‘Y.Y. is on income-support, tho’ I guess her family has money. And it’s my flat and I buy all the basics etc. and I’m not mean etc etc. and Y.Y. doesn’t etc. etc.’ And indeed she hasn’t a mean bone in her body, so she is feeling guilty, as any generous soul does when it is forced to realise that a member of a company is not buying his round, for instance.

Tim came at about 11.15, and ate the hotted-up lasagna, and finished all the apple meringue out of the dish. He has that glowing lean look of someone in the middle of hard rewarding continuous work. This play not doing so well as the others, not perhaps surprisingly. The Artifice would be a beguiling enough title in 172?, but not now. Still they’ve never done less than 50%. ‘Rotten house tonight though, very hard work’. Dreading it a bit, as I’m getting rather tired of that company.

Thursday March 4 1993

To the wilder shores of Kilburn hoping to pick up the cane chair. How difficult North London is with all those straight crossings. Lots of traffic at about 3.15 and lots of taxis, but when the three I hailed, all with their lights on, said they were on the way home I lost heart and put my tail between my legs and came home. What a blessing, the travel permit is, otherwise I would have wasted what? Getting for £5.

To the film as almost usual. The Scent of a Woman. A grossly sentimental film, but two splendid perfs all the same from Al Pacino, and a new young man, Chris O’Donnell. Bravura stuff. What must that youngster have thought when he read the script and found himself in dialogue with Al P for virtually the entire picture! Very beguiling girl in the tango scene, suggests potential. Gabrielle Anwar.

J. showed me a letter she wrote to Marina, S’s agent, making crystal clear who should who and when, about S’s work. Marina being what she is, would undoubtedly otherwise attempt to attribute any mistakes of her own to J.

Friday March 5 1993

I notice ‘cheers’ is used by the young as a synonym for ‘thanks’, as in ‘I’ll come with you, if you like’. ‘Oh, cheers’, or ‘Great’, as in ‘You got the job.’ ‘Cheers’.

I was thinking yesterday that I have at least experienced a real theatre audience, before television, and with the full force of a civilisation behind it. Not possible now. It was the end of a culture.

Most interesting ‘Talking Point’ on the one o’clock news. They have discovered the gene that causes the hereditary form of Motor Neurone Disease. The hereditary kind is uncommon, and I presume D’s was the common kind, not that is at all common. The latest figures are, it seems, 1200 diagnosed and 1200 die every year. Very neat for an incurable disease. Of course there is still no cure, but this is presumably a step nearer understanding what it is, and therefore a step nearer a cure. They think it may be allied to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Saw someone with it, which made me more grateful than ever that she died when she did.

They dragged the poor old Duchess of York out to promote the discovery. I wonder if I’ll live to hear of a cure.

Rang rubbish people. Private now, of course, to take away the four sacks of rubbish as goodness knows when poor K. can! £4.50 on Monday. Good.

Saturday March 6 1993

Warmer.

Sunday March 7 1993

Rang Edna, and got the nice sister at 12.15. ‘She’s very poorly, she is eating a little, but mostly dozing and drifting away.’ Good. Rang Mary and went into it. On something like this, my goodness, we see eye to eye.

To Homebase and bought the patio paint at last, Willow Green, only £6. And of course, the various bits must have been sealed or that ghastly red would have lasted so long. Also garden ties at last and a maiden hair fern reduced at the check-out, to replace the one I saved from S’s that has never recovered. And compost.

Oh, and Ernie and Marjorie sent me that gas-lighter as a gift. Excellent, and wrote an affectionate letter. It saves me bending down. Oh, and a little plant for the copper pot.

Rang R. again and said ring Janet and poured out about the trellis and he said he’d do it. What relief – this week, I hope.

I am in a strange sort of state with all my relief – it makes me a bit light-headed. I am held together by thinking what he’d like me to be like.

I am so lucky. I have loved and been loved

Monday March 8 1993

At last did pick up the cane-chair. Same dear man brought it down. I said it had been repaired 3 times in 30 years. ‘Next time it’ll be 2013’. So it will. A dear taxi-driver, who said at the end ‘Very good talk. My daughter has an old wicker chair she likes that belonged to my grandmother – I think I’ll take it there’. They said five or six weeks – it was ready in four, £37.10. And now it’s back in its own dear familiar place. Me and Queen Victoria…

In the p.m. to the City to see if I could find some letter files, tho’ nobody seems to know what they are. Box files 6 ½ x 9 ½ , for letters. Well no one writes them anymore I suppose. I got out at Mansion House, and walked to Leicester Square, by way of Bow Lane etc. and was interested to be reminded what a cosy little world the City is still, despite the recession, with glittering little luxury shops. A really swish butcher for example. But I walked that entire distance without finding one specialist stationer, until a rather small ordinary Ryman’s in Fleet St. I see the D. Express and Telegraph buildings are still to let. Good.

All the same, the black glass of the Express while hideous, still interests me because of Scoop and because of course, it was so in advance of its ordinary business time (Not in advance of art of course.)

On the final leg of the journey, bought the collected ed. of Adrian Mole, pub. 91 for £3.99. I think it’ll be worth it. Not that I’m sure the book really is, but it is a bit of a ‘cult’ and will go on being so, in waves. Books are one of the few things I can leave him – ironic.

There was a travel prog. with a section on Vietnam. ‘If you go now, you’ll find it unravaged by mass tourism’.

I wonder if Roy is depressed by a play on TV tonight, Statement of Affairs by an actor called Eric Deacon. V. slow. I felt like ringing up and saying ‘I can’t watch your friends playing squash’ (F. Barder and D. Threlfall).

Poor football fans rushing on to the pitch. It is further evidence, if we needed it, that simple people should not be allowed to control the occasions of their own pleasure. How I remember D. saying ‘If you make a game your religion, of course it will collapse under the pressure’. I don’t know how life and society and people can be so cynical and unkind to simple people to have piled all this pressure on them and their simple pleasures.

Tuesday march 9 1993

When I got back from my evening with Paul I thought how odd it is that there may be a message saying Edna had died. And there was. Deloraine has been away and got back to find Edna worse. ‘I sat with her for a while this afternoon. She never woke, and later she just slipped away, at a quarter to seven’. It’s too late to ring back.

I feel a sweet melancholy. She was gone, had come to the end of a good life. She taught me a lot about friendship, by example, never by precept. I think her best epitaph is D’s ‘Edna is the perfect guest, because you always know where she is. In the middle of the sofa waiting for another meal.’

And she died while Paul and I were having a good meal in a restaurant in Garrick St.

Wednesday March 10 1993

Feeling again quite light-headed because of Edna’s death. Lots to write about yesterday but not now. R. rang and is coming tomorrow to do trellis.

Thursday March 11 1993

Lovely lovely day with R. in the garden, but can’t ‘recoup’ yet.

Friday March 12 1993

Now perhaps I can. On Wednesday I rang Mary at ten to nine. She’d spoken to Deloraine and said firmly Flowers are for the living and then rang Deloraine at five to nine. She’d had to go up to Caroline’s for some trouble or other and got back to sit with E. for a bit. She hadn’t woken for some days, Deloraine went home and E. died in her sleep at 6.45. The last time she’d spoken to Deloraine was the Wednesday before when she said, ‘The sun in this room is so pretty and they look after me so well’. I shall think of those as her last words, because they sum up her love of light and her good manners which made her such a good guest.

Deloraine said she hadn’t woken this last week and she saw her eyes turning up so she knew it wouldn’t be long.

Oh, I haven’t filled in Tuesday. In the p.m. I walked to Fulham Broadway and visited the second-hand bookshop. Helped a Chinese boy to buy a second-hand English dictionary. I think he really needed a Chinese-English dict. As the only word he seemed to know was ‘publicity’. Bought paperback of Small Talk at Wraylead. I’m sure I had one once, but it seems to have vanished long ago. I must get a proper one, as I think I could read it permanently. Walked back home, and went to meet Paul at the Prince Edward cinema, now run very successfully, I believe as a repertory cinema, different film every five minutes, £1.80. Paul came from the ‘phone box’, I’ve fucked up, it’s at 9.0, not 6.30. So we went and had dinner, first going to have a drink at the Green Horn or whatever the pub’s called. In the middle of a getting up to date talk, P. went to the look, leaving me facing a fat fair American bore whom I had been trying to ignore over P’s shoulder. ‘I have been enjoying your conversation. I’m an actor too, well, an academic actor’ etc. etc. His first visit to London, he’d seen ‘Phantom of the Opera’ and was rather disappointed, going to Murder is Easy tonight and Miss Saigon, ‘cross fingers’. After boring us with his intrusive ill-manners and utter staleness, he went over to introduce himself to poor Nigel Davenport about to appear in aforesaid Murder is Easy. We turned tail and fled to Café Pasta. P. said ‘What a wanker’. In Café Pasta P. tried to phone the latest girl. She’d said Speak to you in fortnight. And hadn’t. I said leave it. And he did. I could see he felt relief. What worries me is that he goes after girls because he wants a girl, not that girl. And of course they can tell. R. also thinks he’s gay. ‘Romper stomper’ is certainly violent but it is quick and cleverly made and acted. Russell Crowe is the young actor from that Australian woman-director’s film about a blind photographer, which cast a curious little spell. We parted on Leicester Sq. station – oh that station.

And back here I was back to Edna, as I am now. I asked Deloraine what E’s Solicitor, Mr Loffet, was like. ‘How old is he?’ ‘I don’t know. He might be 47, he might be 70’. Apparently he has been most faithful – ‘He’s done so much for Edna, he came in and sat with her the day before she died. He came to see her quite often and always brought chocolates and remembered her b’day. And it seems I’m not an executor. Good. Broke it to Deloraine that I wouldn’t go to the funeral or send flowers. Mercy has moved into a new home, because she hated the old one, and now she hates the new one. Deloraine’s bro. Philip is telling us this morning. Goodness.

Later. How curious. Deloraine rang to say Mercy was dead too. Had a stroke after Philip told her, which was Thur. not today. Well. Rang people. Goodness. I bet I’ve sent all my young friends a-fucking by telling them of these deaths.

Later still. Yes, perfect day with R. putting trellis up and new shelf in conservatory. Teasing and loving and funny.

Saturday March 13 1993

I see that ridiculous thing ‘Eldorado’ is to be ‘killed off’ by the BBC. V. funny article by Marcus Berkmann. ‘By now the BBC had panicked. The series was only being watched by an elderly couple in Lincolnshire whose remote control was out of order’.

I expect it took some time for poor old Phil Draycott to realise what a rotten Christmas dinner he’d got stuck to. Gardened, and fed fish. Really warm.

Sunday March 14 1993

Some funny things. In the first extract from P. Larkin’s biog., he writes to K. Amis, ‘I don’t want to take a girl out, and spend circa £5 when I can toss off in five minutes, free and have the rest of the evening to myself’. A.N. Wilson published an article in the E. Standard, (two pages as he’s literary Editor) P.L., the old friend I never liked.

An article in the Independent on Tasmania, where there is as fierce an anti-gay legislation as in the Isle of Man – yes, islands are insular - and some ‘activists’ are applying to the U.N. Usual middle-aged bigot: I hope the State Legislature will tell the U.N. to go to buggery.

We live in a delicate fastidious age. A new New Zealand film has a slogan, ‘So horrific you will spew chunks’. Title Braindead.

Later.

Rang various people and just going down to dinner, when Neil rang. It’s only 25p a minute and we talked for half an hour. Casserole a bit spoiled. Just as usual, dear sweet creature, doesn’t seem bitter or lost. Can’t imagine what they’re living on, and didn’t directly ask. He’s doing The Dumb Waiter on the stage with Nicholas Ball, and directed by Mel Smith. Poor darling, I didn’t point out that it was Mel Smith kindly slumming for has-been and unknown. He told me Julian Saney, despite having made ? films last year, has had to sell a painting. They have a nurse and two gardeners… don’t tell Julian Slade. As if I could be interested enough to tell anyone!

The fish seemed to be waiting in the middle of the pool. But they couldn’t remember from last year. Or at all. Did a lot of repotting, and went to the Garden Centre. So appalled by the prices. Only bought three packets of seeds and they were £2 something.

R. rang about the Gate seats. He’ll give them a cheque – so glad he can still write a cheque.

It’s just occurred to me that deaths are supposed to come in threes. Me? Lalla? No, I don’t mean any of it. I don’t wish anyone dead.

Monday March 15 1993

Edna was buried an hour ago. Odd thought. Brilliant sunshine, 63◦, everything in bud, the perfect day for Edna.

At 12.30 or just before, as it happened, the SK had asked me to look up Parliament of Love by Messinger in the plays bookshelf for an audition for the Drama Studio. Quite right.

8.10 K. rang. With a cold. ‘And is it my World in Action at 8.30’ and it is. But I’m sure it was partly for concern and partly for a bit of comfort and impetus.

Another really warm day, as I said. Bought a cork bath mat at Peter J. £7.95. How cheap. Makes me feel grown-up at last, because a cork mat is for life. Twice the size of the spinster miniature Edna bought for the cottage. Strange to think of her doing all that, but not so strange since my knees got stiff. I will try a sketch of Edna.

Perhaps at the weekend.

Talking to Mary yesterday, I was quite interested that she said she had felt and experienced and agreed and felt more with Edna than anyone else. Rather as she’d said that she only gave Edith 75%, and D overvalued her. I remember Edna felt the same and I suddenly saw Edna and Mary as two narrow spinsters, - in their very different ways – on the fringes of life! Certainly both of them, but in very different ways, felt it a pity D. married and became a star! I must be careful with Mary!

I said to K. that I was very happy and everything was wonderful. Well yes except that it will take me a bit of time to feel it as well as think it.

I have already said to John N. that I think I will retire. Two and a half years hoping is surely enough.

Tuesday March 16 1993

Derek Jarman was interviewed on a new Face to Face effort, with Jeremy Isaacs! He was just what I expected, except that he betrayed his unmistakable upper-middle class origins by laughing deprecatingly at the end of every line. Often quite a silly giggle, out of key with his real personality. Why do they do it? Vide D and Geoffrey Russell’s dear first wife, Sue. Cloudy, cooler. I must try not to feel guilty any more.

Edna’s dead.

How odd.

Budget. VAT on electricity and gas 8% next year, 17½ 95. Grotesque!

Nothing on spirits thank God, but the little creep was drinking whisky all through his speech. Mind you, so was I.

Wednesday March 17 1993

Still warm. I’m in a bit of a strange state, I think. What with deciding to retire, and K. incommunicado at the moment, and no worries, I still feel light headed. I need the burden of guilty and worry! I keep thinking there’s something I ought to be doing, and there’s nothing I ought to be doing.

Animated talk with the serial killer about a Massinger extract he wants to use for an audition for the Drama Studio. ‘It’s a play called ‘The Parliament of Love’.’ Looked up M., no such play. I read them out to him. ‘The Fatal Down.’ ‘That’s the one’. Ah, well.

Read the D. du Maurier biography. Well done by Margaret Forster. But oh dear, the muddle-headedness and complacency of that semi-educated upper middle class. Reminded me of the Slades and one can’t say worse. Poor Gertie. Went to Fulham B’way book shop to look at that pile of Encores, but none that I wanted. Bought another Small Talk at Wreyland which I’ll give to Roy. I must find a proper edition to have as a permanent bedside-book. Its six-line paragraphs with sometimes a follow on and sometimes not, makes it perfect nodding-off reading.

Thursday march 18 1993

Supposed to be colder. Haven’t noticed it so far, 9.50, worked in greenhouse – I can sit in it now and feel comfortable – cleared out window-box and put fresh compost in the kitchen window-box. This year I will plant it with herbs. There will be plenty of flowers on the steps and top of woodshed (sic)

R. was supposed to come round this week and hasn’t rung. Not that I would be doing anything else.

Reading Rayner Heppenstall’s diaries. Much about Joe Barroughs, at Univ. with D. and much talked of by her and Henry R. Fascinating long footnote more or less demolishing J.B. Now goodness knows how trustworthy R.H. is, but I’m also sure that D. slightly hero-worshipped J.B. because he was probably a bit older sooner than her, and probably came from a ‘richer’ b’ground than either of them. Like all generous people, she attributed her own sympathy and intelligence to others. Like K.

Well, Rayner H. was certainly right about Olivia Manning and Reggie Smith. Most undesirable at a party. After all, D. never took them up again.

Bought a chicken and cooked it. First time since the new oven. It’s no good, modern chickens, even free range ‘good’ ones, are spongy and floppy. Marginally better cold. In fact in future, I think I will cook and leave the whole chicken to cool. Better that way. Re-potted the beautiful white geranium.

We keep being promised rain but no. Now I hate a dry spring.

Oh, managed clumsily to tape down the huge pendulum swaying above the half collapsed trellis, which I think was partly responsible for the collapse.

Friday March 19 1993

Mary rang this morning to say she was going to stay with Gabrielle Blunt till next Thursday. She can apparently be quite sure of being warm enough even so. I am surprised she’s gone at such a time. But I have sensed for some time she feels Time’s W C. But I don’t think she’ll manage to die as early as her parents. But I do think she might contrive to go to Denville sooner rather than later.

This p.m. to new N.Z. film, Crush at the Metro. I find it painful when fairly cheap thrillerish material has good acting and good direction devoted to it, without, I think, anyone concerned knowing it was c and t. It just held me, but only just. A good example of the lack of proportion shown by a very small culture.

Card from Sharron saying she’d meant to write at once. One phrase went straight through me ‘I am very sorry you have lost a friend’.

I came across a list of the things I brought back from Edna’s flat when she first went into the residential home. I was quite shaken to find it was 1989. I hurt my back struggling over the bridge at B’mouth station with:-

Silver: half a dozen forks, dessert spoons and the rest of the set’s teaspoons.

Stones: Big and small, black white, like a marshmallow, like a large flat speckled egg etc. Beautiful ammonites in garden and hall.

Shells: Enough tiny delicate shells, all pale colours, to fill the old lidded soap- dish from the cottage and small stone in the Chinese dish.

A piece of wrought iron Tracey E’s brother picked up at Ypres in ‘16.

Cookery books: An old Mrs. Beaton, and a v. useful selection of c. books we gave her to replace our copies, some of which have fallen to pieces.

A soft parchment stamp case. Useless. An even softer pale brown note case. Equally useless. An original little metal box for real French B Q earplugs. Bocle Ques glass-jar about six inches tall and an inch and a half in diameter, full of the prettiest little stones, incl. a top one, like a white foot in a black boot.

Sheets: Linen, with an open-work inset. Small, feminine secateurs. Dictionaries, 1 red, about two inches square, 1 brown suede, an inch and a half square.

Some books, a vellum-bound Mabinogion, privately printed with a dedication to Edna, a Rupert Brooke also pretty vellum with the autographs of her class, and a big leather book-mark which had left a two-inch wide dark-brown mark on the page - careless Edna. V. Sackville. West–Country Notes, big picture- book. Louis McNiece – from D.

Saturday March 20 1993

Sharron said she’d had a terrible cold and now Kevin has it. What a bore when he’s so busy.

I see now why Daddy was so successful in the 1930’s with his terrible blend of comparatively intelligent jocularity. His skill was staying just ahead of his audience. Now instead of fluffing about with religion, in which he did not remotely believe, he would be a TV chat show host or the presenter of a quiz-show, or what is that – oh yes, This is Your Life. Anything time-serving with half-truths in it – No wonder we clashed.

More bombs at Warrington in a shopping precinct – a four year old and a teenager killed and quite a lot of people injured. A rubbish bin again – why don’t they remove them? I don’t think that’s giving into the terrorists.

Rang Janet and talk about S. whose change of address card I got today. Another busy road and Chris is to keep on the studio in the old house. Janet upset because S has neglected Christine, the tart who has been in the Portland for an operation. Now I am as worried about S’s superficiality as anyone, but surely anyone can see he’s outgrown his friendship with C.

Took the serial killer’s washing-up into his room, just after some girl had rung him from Chicago. I have so seldom talked to someone abroad that it always worries me, because of the expense. At first I thought it was whiny Liz and went downstairs and called and came back and then she said it was from Chicago. When I took the mugs and cutlery down, I read a p.c. he’d written but not stamped. As I think I have said before, the age of illiteracy that we are fast advancing into, possibly will make it implausible that I could read a whole postcard at a glance without meaning to. I have little interest in the SK, but still did so. To his father, - this is more or less the text – Dear Daddy, sorry I haven’t written for so long. I’ve applied to UCL and … Oxford doesn’t seem to like me at all. Lots of Love. E.

After all this time? and no stamp? and no phone call?

The Bores Awards, that S. cried off – I think they’ll all be sorry in the future. For bores may take over and I’m not sure that they haven’t already.

Sunday March 21 1993

Decided to write to LK to say I have decided to retire.

Forgot to feed fish.

Monday March 22 1993

When I picked up the post, there was a letter from Lloyds Bank! but for the SK, forwarded from Barnstaple. I went upstairs feeling thankful that I was independent of such a wretched institution - and then realised I wasn’t, if he couldn’t pay the rent.

Another frightful IRA bomb in Warrington, this time in the shopping precinct. A child of two was killed outright, a boy of 12 had half his face torn off and is still critical, amputations and 200 injured, 20 or 30 still in hospital. This has created a fresh shock, that may do some real good. For example, there is a report that the Irish President may go to the funeral. She is a splendid woman, I think, and this is indeed a new move. If ever someone who blows up a child is caught they should be closely interviewed on TV, so that we can see and hear an attempt to make them feel guilty.

Started out to shops, without travel permit or pension-book and got as far as H’smith, so had to pay the fare there and back. Bother. Bought some ham on the bone and tongue – called oddly British Lunch tongue – for after the theatre.

Got to The Grove and bought the seats, only £3, as Monday is the cheap night. We went to the Dolphin pub round the corner, rather pleasant coal-fire, quite a good buffet. Large g&t’s a sausage, shrieks of laughter. (Two ‘a’s in the sausage because it was a specially long one.) Our minds and humour mesh very well. Audience about two-thirds full, - holds about 60 or 70. Well, I wasn’t bored. Really. An adaptation of a Russian novel called Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev, and re-titled Play with Cocaine. That title is sadly indicative of the plodding transliteration of the adaptation. Every now and again it got going and every now and again it didn’t and we were treated to a reading. Or worse, a tract – if only they’d handed these round with the progs. So that we needn’t read them when we get home. Nevertheless there was a certain quality about the evening, by the lean standards of the fringe. It was suitably cast all through with actors who could carry off their parts, either with skill or suitability, in varying degrees. Edward Roule Hicks has a simplicity and straightforwardness that is right for the part, so that he can insult his mother, betray a girl and keep the sympathy of the audience. But his intensity is one dimensional, and the staleness of his inflections most of the time, blunt the response of the audience. He does not sound like life, - he sounds like someone in a Tchekov play: strange face, like punch from the side, rather magical full face with sharp blue eyes. He’s got something, but it needs focusing and probably bursting apart. Michael Warburton, short, plain, bullet-headed, still, might be good. Yum-yum did what she could with a one-dimensional tarty Victorian maid. Kept us waiting rather a time – she was making up again. Gave her Mairead’s tape to give M. and was much annoyed that Y- Y was lightly dismissive of M’s concern over it.

We nipped away and walked to R’s car. I said I’d seen a car just like his in my road, except that it was black. He liked my Sam Goldwyn or was it Henry Ford imitation. Of course, I said it was BMW and went past it again on the way home and found it was an Alfa-Romeo Spider 20.

We had a big hug when L. left. I am so grateful we have got back to the basis of our friendship.

And always when I walk home I think of him working away in that concentrated circle of machines.

Tuesday March 23 1993

Rather chilly wind. Got up late after all that ham and tongue. Sudden chat to SK in d-room about the blitz. Odd. I sense a vacuum in him that needs filling, poor little sod. Bank rang up for him at 9.15 a.m.!

To cobblers and got shoes and left shoes. Sole and heel £9.35, a big increase.

I hate not seeing or talking to him for all this time, but I know it must be for his work.

Wednesday March 24 1993

Good gracious, it’s Donald’s b’day. Haven’t thought of him for months? years? How odd people are about families. How old is he – let’s see, 69. Well. Poor Ann, perhaps now she’s beginning to see what she’s let herself in for. Did I record that how long ago, some months? last September? his elder, Christine, the dreaded Christine rang and left a message saying she’d got divorced and some terrible self- conscious line about ‘your niece etc’ - yes. She’s Daddy’s granddaughter all right. And I gave that nice chap Mummy’s engagement and wedding ring for her! Yes, well, imagine what ‘family’ minded people would make of that, a great deal of emotional capital no doubt.

One of those days when I have so far - and I am sitting in the Gate pub waiting for R before the play – done everything I mean to. Rang Gas Co to stop them sending a second person to read the meter, and the W. cleaner to put him off till next week, did the bedroom, had lunch, after doing the dining-room . Did the shopping, paid the IT, made a casserole for us tonight, talked to the SK whose girl-friend rang up two or three times, stuck the old salad bowl together ready for planting the basil, cleaned the drawing-room, a bit.

Later.

Well, we had a lovely evening again, despite, or perhaps because of leaving at the interval. The play, Snow Orchid, by Joseph Pintauro, was a third rate copy of Tennessee Williams, not even brought up to date, and acted by English actors doing their best. The eldest son is gay and plays a scene nude in the act we didn’t stay for, with his father, I don’t quite know why. Why he’s nude, I mean. Oh dear, it was dull, all that laborious working up to shock moments that didn’t shock. The moment poor old Roger L.P. came on with those baskets of orchid-plants I knew they would be dramatically (sic) destroyed by somebody, and I didn’t care who.

We enjoyed our dinner and talk. I was sad to hear that he thinks he may have to leave his lovely room because the whole thing is too expensive.

Thursday March 25 1993

Paid the Ground Rent of £25 in cash to Katrina upstairs. I wonder what she’d think if she knew I had no bank account now. I sent the gas bill of £88 back, with the real figures and it came back as £96, - I must stop being honest, and pay the estimate in future. There are no films to see just now, - perhaps after the Oscars? I prefer the trash. Rather cold.

Friday March 26 1993

Whew, what an evening. Janet’s birthday and also Paul R’s. Sent them cards yesterday. Mrs Siddons for her, Look Back in Anger at the R.C. FOR HIM.

Rang Mary back from Tunbridge Wells. They picked some primroses under a hedge – oh, that sweet rainy smell.

Got myself to the Young Vic, to find a queue for returns. It was five to seven, so I had plenty of relaxed time to sit and have a drink and a sandwich. Dolphin not too full, found a corner seat, ham sandw. and a large g&t. Am reading Marion Fay the only Trollope novel except the Fixed period that I haven’t read. Only because it was only available in the first edition. After a hundred pages, it seems to me a major novel and I am surprised it has been dismissed in certain studies as inferior.

James Wilby in pub with two middle-aged women. Think he vaguely recognised me, but I avoided his glances, as no doubt he did mine. We crossed swords at Crispin’s some years ago but of course he wasn’t famous then and may be nicer now. His expression is still warily arrogant however. He will probably be one of those second- raters who gets bitter.

Now the play. Well, it was a relief to see a play by a playwright. Whatever else it wasn’t, it was a play. A bit predictable, a bit slight, but well-acted in all four parts. Zac Wanamaker is an original, a small one but it is original. Clarity, and touchingly conveyed anxious pain. Peter Davison surprised me, - I hardly recognised him at first, not from any disguise but because the expression in his eyes was different – a stronger perf than I’ve ever seen him give. Helen Burns as the middle-aged wife, had a crushed puzzled air that was heartrending. It’s transferring to the D. of Y. without Zoe W. Mm. David H took us to the La Rive Gauche, rather grand in intent. Food competent. Coriander and celeriac soup, and lemon sole. A nasty b’day cake for S. No-one else there but Helen B. and two friends. I was quite a success with D. Healy, whose vitality is infectious but would be exhausting for long.

Message on machine from K.