Angus Mackay Diaries Volume VII

No. 69 – 79 (1986 – 1987)

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 69

August 15 1986 – September 17 1986.

Friday August 15 1986

In the morning, yesterday, went to the opticians. More preparation for the Nicolson. Saw the same comic little man (comic to look at, long face like Robertson Hare, big ears), but a dear. Loves birds and motorbikes and has my views on medical things exactly. Said, after looking into my eyes with that light, ‘Thoroughly good healthy eyes’ as he always does, and that my sight had scarcely changed since 1974 when he first examined me.

I have now found the bit of paper onto which I copied his, K’s letter to Simon with the first IM tape. Every word is precious, to see him writing to someone else. I expect he would be cross, but I don’t care.

Dear Simon

Enclosed is the promised tape. As arranged, I shall hire the equipment for the week Saturday 3 August to 10 August, but this time I shall only hire the bare bones of what I need so that we can get right down to the essence of the composition and save money. We can sort out the ‘sound’ at a later date.

It was such a pleasure for me to be working creatively with you – all your ideas are slowly but surely (sic) becoming part of me, and I look forward to bodying them forth for you.

Love, Kevin

Moving to me because there are three phrases straight from me, ‘Bare bones and ‘essence’, ‘Such a pleasure’, ‘Bodying them forth.’

Imagine K five yrs ago saying ‘such a pleasure.’

And Edna told me that his letter to her, that I delivered from Ed’s, finished,

‘I think of you and hope you are well often. Love as ever.’

Perfect.

I had been expecting Paul Ryan back from Spain on Tues. But he stayed longer, and started rehearsal sooner. Never mind, I was going to ask him for tonight if he were free. And he rang and said What are you doing tonight, so round he came. Isn’t it awful, I half expected another scene and was half disappointed it didn’t come? And very ashamed I feel. At any rate, he’s made up his mind, if not his heart and body, to give her up. Well? I think he must. He was very sweet speaking some Spanish and enthusing about his holiday. At least he was actually staying with some Spaniards.

K with Sharron tonight and they were going to a barbeque at Phil Lawrence’s. Ah. I used to go to parties at Phil’s with him. Of course it’s much better for him go with a girl-friend so that beady-eyed Clare can stop wondering whether he didn’t sleep with her at the RNCM because he’s really gay! And equally, of course, all three parties were agonising occasions for me.

But I felt a pang.

Saturday August 16 1986

Started painting, or preparing to paint, the French doors on the balcony. Have learned to about page 10. out of 30.

Sunday August 17 1986

Neil was coming round at six to go over his South Bank Show and the new mini-series Murders in the Rue Morgue. So I rang K to see if Fri was all right to offer him.

Nigel answered. He’d got Carol round. K was out ‘picnicking.’ Oh, and he and Sharron had called in at N’s pub after the pictures on Tottenham Court Rd.

And yes, I did feel bitter that I get four hours, she gets three days. Quite right of course, rationally. But I got over it quicker.

Neil came. So slim. Very sweet now he's got a job. We ran over the two scripts. What a poor sight reader he is! Can’t hold seven words in his head. Turned the page too fast for him once or twice. Good at accents. I think he's a star, not an actor.

Later. Quite comfortable now.

Later still.

He rang at 9.15. They'd been down beyond Tunbridge Wells. He was going to bed! He was knackered. Well. He sounded cross, and didn’t seem to attend to my instructions. (Forgot to say that Simon rang to arrange a prod. conf. at Offstage on Sat so I really can’t go to the wedding.)! But we must meet therefore one afternoon, so as to be ready to record Neil, which by now I’d arranged for Friday.

Later, later still.

He rang back at 10.30. He’d been to the pub for a quick half. So not so knackered. ‘Yes, all that fresh air.’ Perhaps they were late at the barbeque, oh no, that was Friday. Anyway, I’d said he’d sounded vague. And he said that’s why he was ringing back, because he’d worked out his week, in the pub. Offstage Wed. Tues. he was doing the wedding music with Cliff, that black friend of Phil and Colin, who’s going to be best man instead of K.! Better black than long hair. So I’ll see him three days running. That’s something.

Must write a bit more about the row tomorrow.

Monday August 18 1986 Tuesday August 19 1986

Monday was quiet and good. I actually did Lalla’s income-tax in the morning and felt virtuous all day.

Today I'm sitting outside a pub in the street by the left hand side of Selfridges. Went to the new dentist recommended by John. Rough and ready in comparison. Like going for a commercial interview. 2nd floor, small waiting room, rapidly running out of chairs. Other customers included two fairly raffish-looking boys, a middle-aged lady, and a girl of about 22 with a very pleasant open face. She turned out to be going to the same dentist on the appointment before me at 11.30. It was now 11.50. Never mind, I got in and the nice girl said it was very rare for them to be late. He laid me flat on my back, niceish young Australian, and – amazing – there was nothing to be done, after two years. But I must see his dental hygienist. Obviously he doesn’t want to waste time just cleaning. So, to her tomorrow and had to pay £17.

To Neil and Linda’s at 6.0, tail end of Lucy’s b’day party. Thank God I missed that! Wrote her a little poem for her to read later.

Wednesday August 20 1986

He rang at 11.30, ‘something’s happened, we can’t do the Offstage this afternoon.’ He was shivering uncontrollably and could hardly speak for his teeth chattering. He said he couldn’t get warm and was going to ring Sharron and get her to come and give him a cuddle, but he didn’t say it lightly. He was bad. I downed everything and went there. S was already there and is capable and sensible but inexperienced. She was looking down a list of doctors in the Yellow Pages, rather hopelessly.

K was huddled under six blankets and the central heating on. He was shaking quite frighteningly. I gave him a couple of Nurofen, rather good aspirin type affairs, but not aspirin as his tummy was upset too. He was v. pale and damp, tho’ not sweating. Sent Sharron out for various things including a thermometer, took his temperature, it was 102! His pulse was fast, well over 100. He was quite ill. I felt a perfect calmness, not the spasm of terror that has run thro’ me imagining him ill. The shivering eventually died down and there was an hour or so of sleep. Then he got hot, then shivery again. The second shivering was almost worse, lying curled up on himself knees to chest, arms wrapped round himself, trying to keep warm and still. I sent S out for some more things, Evian water, orange juice and a hot water bottle. He came into the sitting room an hour or so later, looking like a conventional Jesus with his hair down and near beard. He said he felt better enough to have some Weetabix, so he did. I had to go off to the dentist and Offstage which took me about two hours. When I got back, he was back in bed, feeling even worse, having squittered out the Weetabix. He had another hot fit, and she sponged him down. Now he was shivering again. Nigel from upstairs called in – I’d left a note – and confirmed that Doctor Jacobs was their doctor. I’d been over the road to Kate’s and asked if she knew a doctor and one of her housemates had said Jacobs was round the corner). I rang him and he agreed to come. K wanted to ‘go’ again and I had to help him he was so wobbly. Had a pain all round his back, he said as well as a bad headache and the other symptoms. On the phone, the Dr. thought it was food-poisoning. Black Griff called round with the amplifier. K had started to feel ill by about 6.0 but gone on working till 10.0. Cliff is going to be best man, so long hair is worse than black.

The Dr. came and was black, too. Seemed very pleasant but I never trust doctors and kept a watch round the bedroom door. K was sleeping just in the black kimono I gave him, but although it opens completely like any gown, the Dr made him take it right off, - all it covered was his upper arms! Just like a doctor, so K had to struggle about. Then he said ‘Turn over’, so K went to turnover, the doctor had meant Turn right round in the bed. So there was K with his feet on the pillow end and his head at the bottom of the bed. Dr. felt his stomach, asked various questions. He wrote a couple of prescriptions (I had brought a sort of aspirin Nerufen or something, and some Lemsip). He said it was a flu virus and food poisoning. K certainly felt as bad as I’ve ever known him. She went out yet again poor girl – thank goodness she had the car – to get the prescriptions. Antibiotics and an anti-nausea pill. He took them and slept for quite a long time. I'd made some dinner out of what I found in the fridge. Tagliatelle, mushrooms, a tin of tomatoes, an onion, some mince, a pepper. Wasn’t bad. So we had a long talk alone for the first time. I do like her. Her face crinkles into a smile delightfully, she is better informed than K (which isn’t saying much!) but not as intelligent and certainly not as delicate. But equally certainly not stupid and not insensitive. She even recouped the last time she came here saying she was in a real muddle at college. She talked almost entirely of her career – I don’t mean any more self-centredly than a young person should. I think she is probably very practical, but I can't honestly say I saw any sign of real talent, but of course it is not an area in which I have any valuable judgement. All the same, I seldom miss the temperament of talent. I would say she’d finish up as a competent but fairly humdrum part of a humdrum design dept. That does not take away at all from my liking her.

Forgot to say, that before settling him down, I’d re-made his bed, helping him out. Helping him onto the chair, it was one of his wobbly moments, (at this stage the wobbliness and shivering are both frightening and outrageous!) He said, as only he can ‘thank you for helping me.’ I gave him a kiss and hug, poor little boy.

Yes. Sharron and I got on really well, she picks up my humour and wit. Only one jarring moment and only v. slightly when I said Would she be all right when I left, and had she nursed anyone before etc. She said ‘Oh yes, I let you get on with it because you were so good at it and knew what you were doing.’

She said over dinner – oh, youth and its naiveté – ‘How is it you cook so very well? and pursued it!

While we were sitting after dinner, window open, I heard him call at least three times, she said no, it was outside. There is a lot of traffic and my hearing is not what it was under such circumstances. So I thought I was wrong, but felt I was right. And I was. Wanted the loo. But how interesting. I couldn’t miss his voice, and didn’t, but the combination of my ears and not wanting to put her in the wrong, made me act as I did. But she hadn’t recognised his voice. She didn’t talk about him much, didn’t have to, didn’t ask me anything about him. More amazement. She has no key. I used mine because I didn’t know she was there. She embraced me most warmly when I left, with real gratitude and pleasure.

Thursday August 21 1986

Up and off at 9.0. Bought a chicken and bacon and one or two things for dinner. She was looking a bit hollow-eyed, don’t suppose she'd slept much on that little bed, and K with all the blankets. He wasn’t much better. She'd given him some weak tea. The doctor had said he could eat normally. I went out to do some more shopping and to the bank. I'd spent about £60 by this time! Got some pears, peas, beans, potatoes etc. She then went out to the laundrette with the sheets, and was gone about an hr and a half. When she came back, we sat with him for a bit, and he was really tetchy, about the doctor and his pills and his pains, a good sign. She seemed v. dashed by this, and didn’t, or perhaps couldn’t, deal with it, and remained silent. I was reasonable as I always am with him like this. And he knows. She had told me before that she was going at 2.30 and wasn’t coming back. ! Again, amazing. Possibly he told her that this was to be our Romeo & Juliet evening. I don’t know. I gave her the tickets to give to someone. She kissed me, hugged me with such warmth and said ‘I hope he cheers up’, as it were, leaving me to a difficulty that she couldn’t solve and was above her. Well, she can’t love him, not by my standards, one way and another. I settled down to learn my quota of lines. He said later that he heard me and found it quite soothing. His ears are extraordinary, I was really whispering, in another room down a 20 foot passage, with a lot of traffic!

He got up about teatime, 5.30. Cross with Nigel for having done none of the cleaning of the flat for his mum and dad on Sunday to stay. He was still very weak and very wobbly, his stomach all odd and painful. I started getting the dinner, he said he could eat ‘Have I time to ring home?’ He did so and had a talk with his father which finished very badly, ‘I’ve got food poisoning, really, so don’t wind me up dad, it’s still possible I won't get to the wedding.’ He was pale with angry upset when we sat down. I’m cleverer now, and said nothing. I just watched his pale profile as he ate. First meal, apart from a boiled egg and thin bread and butter (dainty invalid cookery) at lunch. He ate three good pieces of breast, some mashed potato, some peas (‘oh great’) and runner beans. Still lost in his row with his father, he idly helped himself to some more potato and veg and gravy. And again, he never said delicious or anything, he just ate. I had tears in my eyes that I’d cooked and he’d eaten and got better. He went to bed again, I washed up, sat with him. We didn’t talk much, he was still ill. Twice diarrhoea. At 11.0 I left him just back in bed from the loo.

On the way home, two strange omens? I was left alone in the tube with a man whom I suddenly realised was Alec McCowen, an actor I do not at all admire, oh how the wheels are seen to go round, but the purveyor of one man shows! Then as I came out of B.C station, a big fair young man came across the road, with a girl clutching his raincoat belt from behind. Before I’d got far, he came back out of the station, hotly pursued by the girl, screaming ‘David, come back, come back.’ Oh, yes.

He said as he got back into bed, ‘You’ll come back tomorrow?’ As if I wouldn’t!!

What will the third omen be?

Friday August 22 1986

To K’s about 10.0. I went to the bedroom, but there he was on the loo. ‘Where else?’ he said. He was still pretty weak and had to keep sitting down. He amused me by his outrage at how his stomach felt bloated and painful and churning – a typical stomach upset! So I put on an old t-shirt and took off my trousers and scrubbed the kitchen floor and the bathroom and brushed the edges of the skirting boards and washed the light switches and cleared up the bedroom. He sorted all the objects out, and hovered and re-arranged, in fact everything he could do without bending down. Even so, as I say, he had to keep sitting down. I cooked myself some lunch, he just had a half an avocado that I bought yesterday. (Oh, he had a pear, a William pear, after the chicken yesterday, ‘I like a nice pear.’)

Sharron arrived about 2.0, to take him in the car to buy some black shoes for the wedding. His mother had sent him £20 to get them. I was going with them because I said I’d buy him another pair for ordinary life. But he said ‘No’. I don’t know why. And I thought she deserved to be alone with him, and I didn’t feel like being a gooseberry. So I left. I felt all right.

Saturday August 23 1986

But I wasn’t all right later on. But then I’m a foolish drunk old man! At 8.15 he rang up to say he was quite better, that he and Sharron had ‘finished off the cleaning’ – doing what? and were going off to buy a pair of trousers at somewhere that sounded like Flit. I bore that well, considering he'd bitten my head off at even considering a date next week, But later I’d and even more so, when I’d suggested going out for a meal, he’d snapped ‘God, no.’

But when I was on the phone to Jon at Flex, suddenly just as I was telling J how ill K had been, K and Sharron walked in. Apart from anything else I felt a bit of a fool. I wasn’t, it was just how it had gone. He was better and had been ill. Of course, they went out. It was just my ill luck that he was still ill with me. And he rang!

Nevertheless, I was drunk and lonely and went out and walked round and cried. Like a fool. But think how much less often! Perhaps never, one day. I was ashamed this morning. But still, thank God I said nothing to him.

Later.

Can't I love him enough for that, to give him up one day?

Sunday August 24 1986

Yesterday, at 2.30, was the production conference for Nicolson. All good and solid save for Simon’s lack of method. He has an off at tangents mind. So have I, which is exactly why I have never dared to direct. I know I could not attend to everything equally, or be interested in everything properly. He was, not methodical, stimulating of course, but that’s not everything. Happily, the stage-director (I expect he’s called something else now) Mark Shayle, seems organised. Tall, hair almost as long as K, cheerful, chirpy and, – one mark of a good stage-manger, does not leave a point until it’s settled. Sarah Cook, fair, calm, I feel we’re already friends. Had a long talk to find sympathies. Altogether a good afternoon. The space is good, with the seats definitely ‘over there’, unlike so many fringe theatres. Forty seats, should put in another row. We can wallpaper the actual walls. Good. I can supply quite a few period touches, towels, sponge-bag, blankets etc., ornaments? I like the theatre.

Simon and Bruno came to lunch. I haven’t described Bruno Santini properly. Physically very medium, neat, dark, typically Italian regular features, olive skin. I think if I had to pinpoint one special characteristic, he seems always pre-occupied. As if he’s always waiting for something, there is somewhere the sense that everything you’re saying is an irrelevance until he – what? So like so many designers I've known, because talk is of no interest. Modern manners again. In the middle of me cooking, before it had got very hot he opened the window! Yes, his detachment is such that I was quite surprised he’d liked the meal! They brought the dog with them, and Bruno was quite surprised I forbade the dog the garden. ‘Why, what would he do?’! He enjoyed the balcony. And is very biddable and Pluto-like.

Oh, the third omen. In the Offstage bookshop, there was a mint copy in dust jacket of Agate’s Contemp. Th. 1926 my birth year, for £8. My copy, almost the first th. book I bought, is imperfect!

Monday August 25 1986

Hideous bank holiday.

On an idiot talk prog. – no, ‘phone-in’ (sic) prog., yesterday, a DIY man (sic), sick, said ‘A feature wall in a lounge.’ Ah.

Did nothing, saw no-one, spoke to no-one, except learnt my 4 pages. But was not discontented or unhappy.

Later. 11.45.

He just rung. Poured it all out, although so late. Got a rather late train that got to Tisbury at 3.0 ish. It was delayed by engine trouble, and got to T at 3.20, wedding at 3.30! He saw the church across a field, and the road curving right round. Should he get muddy or run? Wasn’t late. Just.

I said about the Offstage and R and J, and he said ‘I’m free this week, all week’, completely carelessly. And I’d seen his full diary when he was ill. ‘Thursday? I’ll put Stan off.’ That’s the other French musician.

He’s got Sharron with him, so he's been able to arrange that! Ah well. Despite telling me off for even thinking of this week. Ah well.

Wedding better than his worse imaginings. ‘My little family came out of it better. Phil awful.’

Tuesday August 26 1986 Wednesday August 27 1986

Quiet day, working, alone.

Wednesday, today. Met K at Offstage. Or rather, got there at 1.15, and went for a drink at the Monarch. Strange, serving meals, – I see it’s quite a nasty pub, without him in it! Glass of white wine, warm. £1.

Went to Offstage. Sat in Bunny’s office and wrote my CV. Mark arrived. K arrived. Buddy saw him first and said That can only be him. ! We went down to the theatre. ‘Sweet’ he murmured. We ironed various things out and came away. He was a bit black. I told him I’d paid the water bill (threat of legal proceed. when I got to his flat the first illness day). ‘I’ve paid it, I told you’, he said, quite nastily. Turned suddenly aside to a cheap china shop ‘how much were those wine-glasses you gave me?’ ‘I can’t remember, why?’ He gave me a haughty look. ‘I need a few things, is that all right?’ meaning Need I account for my every move. Well, some people would say yes, since he depends so much on me. But I know better now. We got into Marine Ices. I ordered a glass of wine. ‘For you? ‘No, I don’t want anything but water’ he snapped, quite nastily. Later, he ordered a glass of red wine, without any comment!

I don’t quite know what sparks this irritability, which is always at the beginning of our meeting. It may be his expression of his impatience at having an elderly friend at all. It may be his fresh consciousness of his debt and debts to me. It may be, this is the best that he has, frustration and irritation to express and god knows, he has, and can express them to no-one else. Quite a lot of friends depend on him, and he depends on me. At any rate, it all vanished.

‘Well’, he said, with a wry smile, ‘What a shambles!’ ‘The wedding?’ I said. ‘Yes’. First I said how had he felt in health. ‘All right, but I was going carefully. The train I got was due at Tisbury at 3.0.’ (Now he wasn’t taking such a late train - the wedding was at 3.30 – for the usual reasons. He may have been as well! but mostly he didn’t want to be there with Phil, a moment longer than he had to.) ‘So there I was, in the front of the train, cos Tisbury’s a short platform, and there was a terrible smell of diesel. Two boys looked out and saw a great gush of petrol coming out!’ How dangerous! So the conductor was told, and the train stopped or slowed down. He said to the conductor ‘How late will be?’ ‘Oh, we should get to Tisbury at 3.15’. ‘We got into Tisbury at 3.22.’ I ran past the barrier, don’t think I gave him my ticket, I could see the church just across a big field, quite near, and a wedding car drawing up, but the road went all round.’ He ran and got there, into the front seat with Marjorie and Ernest, Phil just in front, so I was able to say about the train so dad and mum didn’t notice, I only spoke to him once again in the line-up.’ Awful, but I’m not surprised. ‘What was your mother wearing?’ ‘Purple with blue spots. Wasn’t sure about it at all. Oh, the choir were very old, but rather sweet, but the vicar, oh, he was so dull and pompous, even Nigel noticed! So then the reception in a marquee.’ ‘What was the house like?’ ‘Oh, nice. Big, a long hall with two rooms off each side and they opened into other rooms. There wasn’t cover between the house and marquee and it had been raining. This was the shambles. The line-up was very slow, partly because the buffet was a lot of silly girls, sawing away with one knife, not able to get the meat cut. Then there were hay-bales to sit on in the marquee, but the rugs and blankets promised to be covering them, didn’t turn up, and several suits and dresses were ruined. The speeches were so awful. The master of ceremonies had a terrible, affected voice, and all the speeches were dead and clumsy. And Phil used a posh voice none of us had ever heard before. Then my uncle Allie? (I think that’s the one in Sunningdale) got up at his table, as Phil’s godfather, to propose his health and was so real and genuine, that everyone leapt to their feet, quite changed.

Then the disco was so awful, and their friends so stuffy, that Ernie went and got a Black Lace tape from the car and all our side started conga-ring and knees-upping and others just faded away. This was about 11.0. Oh, Nigel brought Carol and, as he was an usher, he said Look after her for me! How? I did say Are you all right occasionally, and she said she’d found some people to chat to. They went off somewhere for a couple of hours, they said to a pub.! Almost the last thing that happened was Glynn’s father came up to me and said ‘Kevin, I really admire you for not cutting your hair, it’s your decision and you stuck to it.’ (or some such phrase.) You can imagine I’ – and he made a gesture of tears spouting. Glynn’s father and mother are Ern and Marj’s best friends, and Phil and David, Glynn’s elder brother who was killed, were best friends, and of course, Kevin and Glynn. So it was an emotional occasion for them, as David might be getting married too, by this time.

He said how lovely and quiet the hotel was, zonk and asleep. They drove up the next morning. In the afternoon they went down to St Catherine’s Docks. He'd seen a line of warehouses on the river that looked more or less derelict, that he thought might be going cheap. Sweet, innocent boy, they went the other side and lo! they were being turned into the nastiest little flats. Well, of course, anything with a riverside ….

We then embarked on the Nicolson, and I told him about the production conference and the omens and so on.

He suddenly said in the tube-station ‘Oh, I’ve left my Time Out in the theatre. There’s a programme of films at the ICA which sounds wonderful.’ I looked dubious, thinking of our recent experiences ‘No, really.’ Raymond Red. (When I read the report later, I agreed with him, tho’ it was Tony Rayns! - so I pray – he goes with Sharron – I pray he is thrilled by them. These poor children must have something). He got out at Kings X on his way to T. Court Rd to look at equipment. He’s still worried that the sound is going to be too bland. He pressed my hand and vanished down a passage. As my train moved off, he re-appeared, looking puzzled and smiled and waved.

Forgot to say we talked of my talks with Sharron, and my good remark about giving way to what’s under the surface of yr. mind.

Also I said, as we arranged a date, Oh, it’s your father’s b’day on Friday. He didn’t react at all. As we were leaving the Offstage, he said Lend me your pen and wrote, ‘Dad’s present’ on his list of things to do.

Thursday August 28 1986

To market for salmon. Cooked it, and put it to cool. Had my lunch and settled to some learning, knowing he couldn’t be here till at least three, after the shop. He arrived at about three! with my typewriter, the IM script etc. etc, and Peter Hutchinson’s synth and synth stand. Had some bread and cheese about four. Said peter was picking up synth at 6.0. P.H. rang at 5.30 and came round. Absolutely as before, I’m glad to have resumed relations. Up to a point. As long as he doesn’t draw K into any more third rate crowds and circles. Oh Barbara de Vries went completely bust – those men backing her and the great place K saw in Covent Garden, either went bust and withdrew their money. She’s in California! So you see – after P.H. had gone, we looked at one another. K said ‘He’s nice tho, isn’t he?’ I said ‘I’m just as bad a judge of character.’ K agreed fervently. We had another drink and went off to the Lyric, Hammersmith. Veronica Roberts sitting behind us, very pleasant. Set unpromising. Scaffolding – oh, the daring. Upper level about 15’ flight of stairs on either side. Planks. Balcony sort of canvas bath with the side cut out. Matching something, a parapet? the other side. No colour, scaffolding au nature, floor dirty, cream with splashes of blood, looking like the remains of a careless decorator painting the dining room. Play opened with ‘I bite my lip at you’ from two girls. Oh dear, only about 14 in the cast. No dance. R and J alone on stage for first meeting! Perfs. Ken, good, clear witty at moments, musical, slightly embarrassing when trying to show real as opposed to commented upon feeling. If only everyone had been even half as good. Two girls just embarrassing. Ian Targett whom I have seen decidedly good as a student, on this showing, cannot play Shakespeare. It’s not just gabbling, it’s really inadequate diction. Mark Hadfield has no conceivable qualification for playing Mercutio. Nor for playing Friar Laurence. Which unbelievably he doubled. Even if F.L. didn’t appear till M was dead, it would be an impossible and absurd double, like a penny gaff. But when M.H. went off as Mercutio, and came more or less straight back on as F.L with no more change than the throwing on off a cassock – his head and face completely unchanged – I felt serious disquiet with Ken’s judgement and indeed with M.H. in accepting it (he is a character actor and his distinction, such as it is, goes completely when he plays straight.) This particular double would be completely unacceptable under any circumstances, but was doubly so in a production where, despite the tiny co., there was no establishment of doubling as a feature of the production.

Simon Shepherd was more spirited than I expected, but his punch face tho’ superficially good looking, is not really pleasing. Juliet was a size too big. Heavy shoulders and arms, snub nose, big mouth. Didn’t speak badly exactly, but was a bit too old, not exactly in years, but as Peggy A. kept being too young for parts. Fay Compton being virginal, long after her thousandth taxi driver.

Anne Carroll, (from Meet Me by Moonlight all those years ago), was diabolically bad as the Nurse. Half-audible, running wonderful lines together, ‘cos the stupid bitch hadn’t understood them. I wouldn’t have believed that anyone could have caused the Nurse to go for more or less nothing. But she’s always been an amateur. The balcony scene just worked, because of Ken. But of course the stairs! Ken shinned up one of the uprights and touched Juliet (which of course no Romeo should in that first scene – has all common sense vanished from all the world?) and of course you just thought Why didn’t he run up those nice convenient stairs? I was, as always, moved by the words, and cried during the balcony scene. We came out, got our drinks. K fixed me with that stare and said ‘Well I’m bored.’ I could tell at once he wanted to leave, and the idea rather appalled me, since I knew it would lead to a final breach with Ken. And the greyness came over me again at the thought of K seeing another great play execrably done. He is, too, on these occasions, as I am, more violent in his denunciation at first, to get his point over. All I have just written was my exact opinion then, but I was hoping against hope that this new venture must be better than it turned out to be. We left.

He attacked the play. I defended it; back at the house he said ‘It’s just that I can't bear to see you so defeated’, that your theatre has let me down, he meant. He was right. ‘I couldn’t believe you were being moved. But I suppose you were remembering other productions.’ (All this said tenderly.) I said, ‘But could you - ?’ ‘Oh, yes. That’s why I leant forward so much, because I feel every turn and nerve.’ He said about Ken, ‘Well, he didn’t answer yr. letter about M. Youth, or your first-night present, and now he’s going off filming till June. I don’t think he cares about you at all.’ Right, of course.

Other things. I told him Sharron was thinking of getting ‘a pub job, two or three nights a week.’ ‘She never told me that. I must ask her about that.’ Only a comic edge.

As we got up from the table, ‘Now that I’ve put my suit on for the wedding, shall I put it on again and we’ll go to the ballet? It might be better than a play.’ And he put his arm around me and gave me a squeeze. Delicacy. A reference to that Covent Gdn night all those years ago, artistically so satisfactory, socially so disastrous – for me!

Suddenly, over dinner, ‘How are you getting on with the cleaning? It’s six months. I was wondering’.

We also, this afternoon, had another chat about the wedding. I said Whatever’s happened to us, we’ve always gone forward. I don’t why, yes I do, because we do go forward. I felt closer to him today than ever before, which is saying a Good Deal. Over Peter Hutch. K said, ‘Yes, but he doesn’t know how we tell each other everything.’

He held me closely for a long time and kissed me.

Friday August 29 1986

At Gerard I’s in Brighton. Shoehorned myself into my suit etc and got myself to the Offstage at 10.30. I had asked for 10.30 because Bruno was coming to lunch at 12.0 to look at furniture. Of course, he rang at 11.45 last night to cancel!

Had talk with Buddy, and that funny little man, Alec?, came and ‘snapped’ me. Can only hope cameras are so automatic now, that it will be all right, as he seemed to know nothing about it!

Back at the house, washed up his dinner things, left his napkin where he’d draped it over his chair so that I’d feel closer to him when I came back from Brighton. Got myself to B. In taxi-queue. Michael Jayston! Cried, ‘Angus, come in my taxi.’ Fancy him remembering my name, a nice wild creature. But Gerard came up, and we walked, – a good ¼ of an hour with a very heavy case. And lots of (fascinating, I mean it) architectural and historical information. Very pretty house, and because Rose saw to its conversion, not ramshackle as G would have made it! But typical Irvine that, although it is in a charming line of Regency houses, it faces across a pretty busy road down to the sea, a hideous modern office building and the motor entrance to Waitrose supermarket. (‘Very convenient.’) Well, yes… Oh, what a fascinating town! And how strange to go back at this time, to almost my beginnings. There, in the drawing-room, was the sofa I slept on for six months? in 1952. The house from top to bottom. A large attic room with twin beds. Steep stairs to Rosemary’s floor. She’s had the house for 16 years and has lived there permanently for four? years and now Gerard has retired, he’ll move in 3 weeks or so. Rose’s large bedroom, with G’s old bed with the great curtains, but no crucifix! Very nice med-blue bathroom. First floor, big L-shaped drawing-room, double-glazed huge bay window, the double glazing an exact replica of the big square panes of a Regency window. A glossy version of G’s tattiness. Snuff-box with ‘a lock of Sir Walter Scott’s hair’, William Morris on the furniture is out of period, but still not in tatters as it used to be (and as mine still is!) At the back of the first floor, ‘my’ room and ‘my’ bathroom. Bed with a four-foot high head and foot board. Two life-size putti either side of a window with rococo-draped curtains, a crucifix on the window-sill. A three-tier brass what not as a bedside table, a tray by the door with a silver teapot, silver milk jug, silver sugar bowl, two candles with a bit of paper with Assam on one, and which China tea? in the other. Also a biscuit-barrel. All under a tea towel. A hanging bookcase. No writing-paper! Ground Floor. Handsome conventional dining-room with a panelled glass door to the hall and a hatch to the kitchen. At the back, under ‘my’ opening on the garden, the library. Lined with shelves, two comfortable armchairs. In the basement, Gerard’s rooms. Biggest front room, his bedroom. Wonderful bedside table. A pedestal oblong table, which at a touch, turns into a three-tier table. The coal hole under the area stairs, is to be his oratory! He showed me the cellar, with a least two hundred bottles.

Tonight two funny old ladies and a young (30-ish) man came to dinner. The two old ladies were elaborately, very cheaply dressed, in the old style. The young man was in a short dark suit, good shoes, white shirt, (um) gold cufflinks. Poor man’s Warren Beatty. Lives in Rome and says he’s an actor, musician and writes musicals and ….. Not an obvious fantasist, but I fear he is one. Richard Berkeley. The two old ladies were boring, I fear, tho’ I would have been fascinated thirty-five years ago. I had little to say to them. I could get little reality out of the young man. I ended the night full of wind and indigestion, from the poorly cooked main course, a nasty crystallised so-called sorbet. Good wine. How quickly the Irvine’s eat!

But after all that, how little they’ve changed, for all their maddening qualities!, in their innate goodness, and trying to help.

Saturday August 30 1986

Up at 7.30, for dressed breakfast. Cornflakes! Baked egg! Croissant and marmalade! More indigestion, but I couldn’t have spoiled their fun. No wine at lunch! Gerard and I to new Ayckbourn play at T.R (oh, how tackily the foyer is painted, and terrible Boots-type reproductions of royal portraits! What would Binkie say? Play decidedly poor. Dream fantasises almost worthy of Barrie. Jo T. goodish, but mannerisms. Julia McKenzie brave and good and vital and consistent. Can't tell which way the critics will jump as they have now no standards. But certainly has the potential to be a sensational disaster! No wine at dinner, though gin before.?

Rose is getting a bit odd, and her judgement is deserting her. Told some story. Gerard whispered while she was getting the coffee, that it had happened to him and she hadn’t come into it all. Oh yes, it was about their mother’s jigsaw puzzles. G. whispering like that before he's even moved in, bodes ill, it seems to me. Not so indigestible tonight, though it was turkey in batter.

‘My’ bathroom has a tiny little three-cornered basin and an arthritic bath. And the water was cold, and Rose washed up in cold water twice. Ugh. It’s such hell drying up.

Sunday August 31 1986

To church at ten. A huge handsome church, St Michael’s. Very well kept, beautifully polished floors etc, unusual for nowadays. Little side-chapel has a three-panel Rosetta window and a side window by Morris. At the other end of that aisle, two rather insipid Burne-Jones. Rather on the lines of someone showing you a favourite TV prog. and ‘It’s not quite so good this week’, the priest, small, mild, bearded, northern and gay, came down into the aisle and explained the service and the vestments in a very simple and colloquial way. I cannot think Gerard relished this much. And how strong is the urge to destroy the dignity of ritual! As always, I became gradually impatient with the show and superficiality of it. And the ritual and readings and so on, so badly performed anyway. And suddenly I saw in the programme that you make a sign of peace to your brothers and sisters! Even Daddy would baulk. So when G and R turned to embrace and kiss me and I had turn too, as it chanced, two young men,!, I think they were all, in different ways, considerably astonished that I refused their advances. But how could I make any gesture within the framework of the following words,

Christ is our peace He has recommended? us to God In one body by the Cross We meet in his name And share his peace.

Well, you know, I don’t.

A child had hiccups throughout the service.

But above and below all the absurdity and meanness and so on, Gerard is one of the best and least prejudiced and most virtuous people I have ever met. He is just the same as he ever was, which implies, with all the changes of the 35 years I have known him, a great spiritual progress.

Easy journeys, under £8 for both ways. Opposite me tonight muscular young man with calm, mild face and a cat in a basket. He let it out, and it curled up beside him like a dog. Both slept. Neither moved, except to twitch.

Monday September 1 1986

The first day of The Small Problem ep.6. Pleasant, utterly undemanding, authors think I’m wonderful. Good. To pick up my watch and picture framers. Watch £28 for cleaning and oiling. Pictures £30, for D’s music cert. and reverse, and Ian and Hilary’s poster.

Back home, a lot of messages incl. one from K, re his question. and all the refusals he’s had, and what about the shopping precinct at Hammersmith? Ring as soon as you can. So I did, at 5.30. We had all that out and I asked about the ICA films. ‘Disappointing, but Evelyn Waugh marvellous.’ Wonderful, the opposite way round from what I’d thought it might go. Then they went to see Aliens. ‘Well, I thought it was about an hour and half, turned out to have been two hours ten. So it must be good.’ Yes, they’d been to Jon and Rachel. I mentioned Michael Clark. ‘Oh, I’m going to that with Jon.’ I was cross for a minute, because he'd forgotten, but I also remembered he’d thought our ballet evening was Covent Garden.

Sharron isn’t taking a job, she goes back to college in a fortnight.

Hazel rang to say they weren’t taking me out for a drink. What a relief.

Tuesday August September 2 1986 Wednesday September 3 1986

Irritating morning. Giles’ telephone man arrived about 11.0. Lent him keys, as he was in and out. While I was out shopping, he finished. Left one key in the hall and went off with the other. Took five calls and five explanations (‘my name is Mackay, 12, St Dunstans Rd ….’) to get it sent back.

Settled down to study. K rang at 7.0. Stan rang the bell before he’d said a word. Then Derek-next-door drove up in a bright yellow Reliant! ‘I got your postcards, was there a third one?’ I did laugh tho’ it was a joke spoiled. (Forgot to record we went over to Arundel to that Potter museum, Kitten’s Wedding etc. I sent K three cards, with a message split between them, Before you start any five-some – anthropomorphic argument, I want you to know that all these animals were – dead, by natural causes, before being stuffed.’)

Then an important point. The sound-effects records are out of the library. ‘Can I do anything with the BBC?’ Well, I’ll see. Not thro’ this lot, but David Martin?

When I told him how they were raving about the music, he said ‘No don’t play my tape. But say, but you could do me a favour? ! Scheming little creature. About tonight (it’s Wednesday now), suggested we went to the Marlow Musical at the Kings Head and ‘had an evening up here for a change.’ Aquilino? Dear little thing. ‘I’ll sniff it out when I go to Raper & Wayman.’

Got to the Angel about 6.10, so decided to pick up the tickets if he’d booked any. It turned out there was no-one to tell me. Till quarter to seven. What if anyone wants to book a seat? It’s no use, I don’t really like the Kings Head. So back to the Slug & Lettuce and there he was with Phil Lawrence. He’d been recording an audition for P.L. to send to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra! And they'd been taking the equipment back to Raper & Wayman. That’s why he was in time! First and foremost, I was struck by two differences, first in Phil, who is much subdued by his settling down with Clare. He is no longer showing off or loud or aggressive and after two drinks, went meekly off home! Second, I was struck by the change in me, that I didn’t feel the evening threatened at all. The contrast in my certainty of him was startling, even before he said in front of P.L., ‘I’ve got two things I want to talk to you about’, without saying what they were. P.L is always affectionate, said he would send me a card for my first night and ask me round to their new house! He and K had an argument, out of which I kept, - was it faintly nuclear? – poor Phil, K ran rings round him and was in snubbing mood ‘You’ve really been very stupid Phil.’ ! But it wasn’t serious. We were ready for another round and I heard K say ‘Do you want another or have you got to go home to your lady?’ ! He did have another, just the two, as I said, and off.

I got us another and said to K ‘You were a bit harsh to him, weren’t you?’ K just smiled and said, ‘Well less distractions now.’ He confessed he had no money at all, and was rather embarrassed. ‘I thought I had £10 but it seems I haven’t.’ After reading the crit. of the Kings Head musical, he decided he didn’t want to go, so we went to Aquilino. It must have been unlucky with Simon, as this time there was no music, as usual. I asked him in more detail about the ICA films. One was a bit better than the others, but the music and sound – and dubbing – were awful. I asked if Sharron had got any more out of them and he said Not specially. Tho’ we’re quite good at interpreting each other’s art. If it’s more visual, (i.e. has some visual merit, she says. If it’s more musical, I say. That’s sounds good, but in this case I wonder if she suggested that one was better, unconsciously standing up for her art. It must have been a funny old Saturday. After the ICA, no good, they went off to the Drill Hall, where they were possibly going to hear a singer that night who K thought might be interesting. They heard the singer rehearsing through the doors and he decided against going at all. Then they went to the Evelyn Waugh. ‘Marvellous, yes, no, so clear, we saw it twice, and we made other people laugh too. I don’t think they’d have laughed if we hadn’t shown them.’

He saw that E.W. had some relation to D and me. And it was against that background they went to Aliens, faute de mieux. He said it was well done, but was quite dismissive about it. Also the cinema was packed, which is itself enjoyable. On Sunday they did go to Jon and Rachel.

Oh, while I think of it, he apologised for being irritable when he was I'll. ‘I was really ill. I had to make myself a bit better for the wedding – that’s why I got up so soon and went out that night.’ As if I cared that he was irritable.

So Jon and Rachel. ‘The room is so small, Jon made it sound much better than it is, the various bits aren’t separate enough, the kitchen is one end and the bed the other, but you sit on the bed to eat out of the kitchen.’ Practically. I think he was shocked. He was certainly shocked at £60 a wk. And I think at them being cooped up together in such a small space. We discussed Zentapuss, K was good and responsible and sensitive and sensible about Jon. But I don’t know that we got much further than deciding to do nothing at the moment! ‘But we’ll give him a joint kick up the arse eventually.’ He discussed it there, too, of course, and used a phrase that thrilled me. ‘Jon, them all, knew I was speaking for you’.

Thursday September 4 1986

Still so euphoric last night, we were so merry and happy – and drunk, a bit. He went off to the loo, at the very end, and, in the light of the streetlamps, his face was all streaked with red marks, like a rash. He said, not as a joke, that it was alcoholism ‘like Robert Stephens.’ ! It was more of an allergy, more likely the prawns. But it didn’t seem bad, and he felt all right, and it was gone today, though he still said it was an alcoholic flush.

Rehearsal this morning, I was a great success. Nice little girl, Cory Pulman, loves Josephine Tey, and thought Room with a View awful, and the young man in Brat Farrar. She has all the right instincts.

K rang in the morning to say he was going to be at the Lyric Ham. and he'd come round in the afternoon, seeing sound men at 2.30. Of course, the sound men droned on till 4.40, when he rang and said he had to be at Raper and Wayman at 5.0, so he couldn’t etc. Not his fault remotely of course, and I can never tell him that from 3.0 on, all I did was watch the corner. So my study went. But that’s not his fault.

K is supposed to be refereeing a football match between Nigel’s pub and the Nat West Bank. Where Carol works, I daresay. Peter Hutch and I that night both said to him he was mad, he’d be knackered, the referee had to be fitter than anyone because he ran everywhere. And I said Look how stiff you were at Easter in Liverpool, after half an hour panting about with Nigel. So I suppose tomorrow ….

Friday September 5 1986

Found someone who might give us sound effects for nothing, from Simon Thornley’s Christine. Also found that something had gone wrong with their marriage. She just said Ask Simon. He’d left a message on the machine and I hadn’t got round to ringing him. Did so. Even standing in the office, he told me they were selling the house and separating. Well! It was only in May that I was at the house and they were showing me the garden, proudly planted out. I wonder what the particular stumbling block has been. The possibility has always been there, because he was so much more in love than she. And of course, his weakness and whinging may have become too much for her. So I find I am not surprised. I’ll have to spare him an hour or two on Wed. Bother. Poor silly boy.

To Charlie Girl with Paul Ryan. That’s the last cheering up he needs. Show an extraordinary museum piece. Cyd Charisse an extraordinary museum piece.

Café Fish after a success. Paul is a very nice-spirited boy.

Saturday September 6 1986

Usual Studio Day. IDIOT audience. Tension for nothing. Back home in seconds thank god nowadays and shoot myself.

Sunday September 7 1986

Long working day. I thought.

He rang – no, I rang and said about Neil.

So he said We’ll come round, Sharron’s got the car.’ ‘Afternoon or evening.’ ‘Evening’ I said.

(Sarah Wickham round in afternoon, and K sorting her out.)

When they got here, K was yawning, and for a bit with a bothering stomach. When I said to S. What have you been doing, to her, he’s exhausted, she said, Nothing. Of course, it was coping with Sarah.

But the whole evening was v. interesting. From v. early on when he said Why are you looking at S? Are you just etc etc.

I couldn’t believe that he was quite cross I was facing towards her! I am too drunk to chart it all. But there were at least three times he used ‘we’ about him and me. That must have roused her. Why? Oh, I hope he’s not going off her. She’s so good and true. Of course, I want him for myself alone but I know that can't be, and can't be for his good. But if I were she, I would be depressed by tonight.

Monday September 8 1986

In Marine Ices waiting for him for a recording session in the theatre, and feeling nerves already.

Yes, it was interesting. That they came at all for a start, and they arrived at 6.0! Catching me quite unawares, with the Hoover in the drawing-room. He said You got and fiddle with the dinner. I’ll Hoover. It needs it.’ When he’d finished, he brought it down, put it away, and brought my coffee-tray down. She was in the loo quite a time, until I suddenly realised she was thinking of her lettering and the light etc. We had a great laugh watching an owlet chick lumbering along in the Arctic. Funnier than any Disney. I did the runner beans, halfway thro’ he took them from me and finished them. We had to go to the shops ‘You go with Sharron, I’m going to have a long shit.’ So off we went, discussing lettering. She is very easy, as Marj. said on the phone earlier, ‘She’s silent when she wants to be, not out of shyness.’ He hadn’t shat when we got back and was feeling quite off in his stomach. Again. And he is never constipated. However, it obviously went off later – as he ate a v. good dinner with second helps. Cold roast beef, one of his favourites.

The writing of my little legend, she’d done was perfect. Just as I’d pictured it.

They'd been yesterday to an exhibition on the South Bank at the Hayward. Free, but it was disappointing. It was the sort of London on Holiday Day – ‘the fireworks were good’ and all the more annoying that it was an opportunity to catch people who seldom never go to a gallery. He said ‘I saw two Cockney girls with mud on their high heels, you know, coming out and saying ‘Well, what was all that about?’ Photographs as well, Karsh, Man Roy etc. Um.

I started about Charlie Girl ‘Oh, what was it like?’ Thinking he knew enough about it, to start with, not to mention me - I turned to T.S. on the red sofa – he certainly doesn’t give up his favourite and more comfortable seat to her! – and started to set the scene. To my amazement, he said ‘Why are you telling her that, is it because she won't see thro’ it etc etc’. Not truculently, but a bit seriously, almost as if he resented not having my undivided attention. Of course, it might be his thinking I was being insincere and trying to press something off to her, while really saying it to him. Not so. But I certainly sensed a stronger reaction to me than to her. For parts of the evening, he was absent in that way he is sometimes, and coming early – I hope it doesn’t spell boredom. He packed up later, but then we were talking almost exclusively. And at least three times he said ‘we’ meaning him and I in an excluding way. He half alluded to how well ‘we’ manage ‘our’ money. Oh God. How little he tells her, I find, almost nothing.

Her lettering was beautiful, perfect for the purpose. And she offered it with satisfying directness. They left with very heavy hugs.

Later.

Oh what a wonderful day.

Met in Marine Ices where I was quite surprised he had agreed to meet me! But he is very supple and compliant these days. He had already taken his stuff to the theatre. Sharron’s car! Got up to date. I told him about the TV. He told me of his w/e, they went to Thames Day or some such title on a boat on the Thames or South Bank, of which the Hayward was a part. How ghastly! It was all a frost except the fireworks. Was it her idea? Surely not. Was it his idea? Surely not. The result of no money.

He said after his fusilli carbonara, that his tummy being rumbly was probably the result of only cold food for three days. He listed it! Sat. lunch sandwiches in the car. Sat din Scotch eggs and pork pie on the boat. Sunday. bits and bobs and Scotch eggs in the car. And then cold beef here! ‘The potatoes and vegetables were the first hot things I’d had.’

So, off we went to the theatre, meeting on the way Jenny Lippmann! And the girlfriend of the good drummer from the awful group.

Omens, omens. At the Offstage, Mark had set up, to K’s terrific surprise. We got going. No what? The centre-thing on which you put the reels. So we rehearsed and rehearsed. My BBC talk, recorded it and analysed it. Funny little Alec is Buddy’s husband and came back with the goods. Neil arrived. Covered in paint. Half an hour late, very sweet and humble and worked hard for an hour and a half. Mark S stayed round, (tho’ saying he was going) till the very end and carried the Revox to the car, again to K’s great astonishment. He hasn’t seen the shape of stage etiquette yet. He rang Phil L. quite shamelessly to run us home (Where was Sharron?) We dumped everything and went to the pub. (Partly to give Phil a drink and send him home!) In the pub, there is a new landlady who said brightly and loudly – to K, ‘Hullo, so has your Giro come that you’re buying? (to another customer) He’s an out of work musician.’ Even K’s generous unembarrassed spirit was repelled! ‘I don’t want everyone to know.’ What a world for a fine-edged young man of talent. We talked. K told Phil of his survey and scheme for eliminating the middle man in the record business. Phil retained his pleasant impersonation of a man who’s just been hit on the head with a large blunt instrument, but is being good about it. I removed myself from the conversation.

K said ‘Well, back to work.’

At the flat, he said ‘He really has got a hole in his head, hasn’t he?’

Just as with the Thames Holiday, I now have finally arrived at not saying I told you so. Don’t think I didn’t always know it was stupid, but I couldn’t give up anything to get closer to him. Now, I am closer than ever, and he knows it and loves it. We had a good work time, doing my radio talk again in the bedroom, less noise. And the last one was really good. We were just having a cup of tea/coffee. He said Nigel would be coming back, he’d left a note saying he was bringing some food back so I said was he coming to dinner with us and K said ‘If that’s all right. We’ve nothing else to talk over, have we?’ I think almost for the first time, I felt pleasure at a third person, because I have the confidence. At last. How often I’ve written that, but not meant it till now.

It was the row. Odd. But very like both of us.

So N came in and off we went to the Upper St Fish and Chip shop. N is funny, but it’s difficult to tell how much on purpose it is, as his funniest effect, which is interpolating a remark of startling irrelevance and non-sequiturishness, might also be the result of extreme youthful egoism. But we had a merry time. Back at the flat, he read us a bit from the Polytechnic Students Handbook, which was such hilariously awful jargon. K made me record it in my snootiest voice. Only phrase I can remember ‘triple sandwich mode.’ Pathetic if you let yourself think about it seriously.

Beautiful day. I am so lucky to have him for this show. Couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it without him.

Tuesday September 9 1986

He rang at 10.30. They're doing the survey at the Kings Mall at H’smith. Could I send a cheque to Raper & W for £13.80, which he forgot last night. Yes. Might see him at the Mall for a minute.

Mark and Sarah, ‘my’ stage-staff came round to inspect furniture and props. I like her more than him, but both are dears. He is just a little too sure for so little experience, but both seem efficient. They drink and have a sense of humour and are easy. And found a lot of stuff. I hope I can depend on them. I shall have to!

Walked to H’smith to bank. No sign of them in the Mall. Well, 12-3 is long enough. Quite glad not to interfere and seem to be following him everywhere. Went to bank. Studied. Dinner. TV. Bed.

Thursday September 11 1986

Study. TV. Bed.

Friday September 12 1986

To K at 3.0 for recording. He’d rung up three times yesterday with good ideas, ‘It’s going good.’ He was in his underpants as usual. I gave him the new sweater in a bright jade green. He’d like one somebody’d left behind, and I liked him it. He put it straight on. At last something that brings out the colour of his hair. Sharron was out at the library and tried to get some more sound effects. He’d been cat-sitting, she’d been in Nottingham. Very funny about shutting the cat in the bedroom, away from the recording. He escaped! ‘I was going spare thinking how upset Sharron would be. So I looked everywhere, and suddenly there he was in the garden, so I let down his basket hoping he’d get in. He thought it was a game! I kept getting up in the night to try and get him. He was on the roof of Derek’s now. I tried to reach him, but gave up. I was just going to borrow a ladder in the morning when there he was on the window-sill. He’d not only jumped about ten feet, but sort of round the corner.

He took me through all the sounds he got from the Wardour St man. He said he was there two hours. There was a huge catalogue, endless A4 pages, closely typed each page line representing a whole track! ‘So I just grabbed what I could by the title.’ He’d got what we needed and we had a rather hilarious time. He’d recorded himself some creaky floorboards but they sounded like someone rocking backwards and forwards on creaky floorboards.

‘That’s exactly what they were’, he said with a grin. Also hilarious when I sang him two terrible pop songs of about 1946 Your are my sunshine and Let the rest of the world go by, to act as the pub’s coming out.

We went off early for dinner, 6.30 ish, as he wanted to work and I wanted to get to bed early. Sharron left after she got back with nothing from the library. She is certainly not, on the surface of it, at all possessive and doesn’t seem to mind being told to go!

Gave him £50 from the unexpected £600 I got this morning. He gave me £10 back when I said I perhaps might need more for drinks, taxis etc. ‘But don’t be short.’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll ask with absolute sunny trust.’ So he didn’t want to go to Aquilino for some reason. Pity, as we went to Uppers. Looks all right, typical ‘bistro’ (sic) but very lax service, food eatable. At the end, the girl swore quite nastily that she’d brought the bill five minutes before, when she obviously hadn’t, as another girl brought it as she spoke, a long quite complicated computer bill which couldn’t have been ran off in the time! No tip.

He was so sweet. I’m going to buy you some shoes ‘for IM rehearsals’, and I know you don’t like me to be seen buying them, so I’ ‘I don’t care. Why don’t we buy them Tuesday morning on the way to rehearsal?

Lovely.

Grim hippy drunk in Slug & Lettuce drove us away by talking. Long filthy dyed blonde hair.

Saturday September 13 1986

Edna’s 84th b’day. Longer talk than usual this morning. Undiminished intelligence and courage. Has so little to talk about except books and TV as nothing happens to her. Not even people much. What a mistake it was to retire to Wimborne. And yet I suppose she’d be dead if she hadn’t, by now.

Sunday September 14 1986

What a trying end to a good day. (Incidentally completely forgot to go to the B. Pym unveiling!) K rang a couple of times about the tapes – ‘6.30?’ ‘Yes, that’ll be just right.’ And it was. He was just at the end of recording and did the mix straight on to me reading it. The first half’s only 30 mins! Still action will add another ten. 2nd h. same! Tho’ it looks so much shorter. Sharron stayed in his room, doing my lettering, until we finished at about 8.45! She is an obedient girl! and good-tempered. I like her very much – the only things I don’t like are she is a bit too fat, (but that’s my taste) and her really ugly diction, not voice, diction.

He was a bit tetchy when I got there as he just is sometimes, but the work went well, and I am thrilled by the ideas and idea of it. Whether it will work practically remains to be seen. So, off we went in S’s car – I’d promised the night before to take her out as well. Difficult on Sundays. We went to the Pelican. He said ‘Oh, well, all right, with Sharron to put it right.’ Again, all was merry. Except he reacted a bit too much, when I said What do you want, children? ‘Well, Daddy – There are jocularities within brackets he has yet to learn! We had a nice meal. Two good bottles. After the main course, he got crabbier and crabbier, just expressing his dislike of the restaurant mainly and going on, (as he did in Liverpool, for instance) till it wasn’t either open telling-off quarrel or keep quiet. As she was there, I kept quiet. I was glad of her, because the last thing I wanted was a row this night of all nights. Was he drunk? I don’t know, but certainly he does this sometimes, apparently for no reason, just moodiness. They were going to drive me home, but I didn’t want to be provoked into anything. So I paid the bill, and in the street said Well, I going on the tube, kissed her and put my hand on his shoulder – he made a slight move away – and said See you after Hammersmith tomorrow. When he’s in that mood, anything you say is wrong, so I said nothing. Good, eh?

It’s just mysterious to me because there seems no reason for it. Whereas my losses of temper always have a cause, whether justified or not. His seems to be moods. Do you think he imagined I was talking more to her again? I did talk to her a lot – she knows more names.

But no, I don’t know why. I expect he thought he was pursuing truth.

Monday September 15 1986

11.30pm.

To Truelove & Hanson in the morning for writing-paper, combined with possibly getting the invitation cards for Nicolson.

Alas, no At Home cards! – old-world – and invitation cards £6.09 a packet. Got some tolerable ones at Rymans.

He arrived at about 20 to 5. A bit hang-dog, but as usual not apologising. Which is often such a relief. Just saying you decide tonight, as last night was such a disaster. I said v. mildly, Well, it was all right, till the last twenty minutes.’ Yes, he said. Also mildly I said it was due to him. He simply repeated mildly his strictures against the restaurant, - and its prices! – odd, I suppose he still doesn’t quite know he made the evening ludicrous and mean for me! Well, I have taught him honesty is all. I didn’t go into it any more. I haven’t the strength now, and it may be I’ll get at the truth of him more if I don’t go into it. We slackened off and soon were there.

He didn’t want a film. I didn’t want a film. So it was Wine Galleries and – as from the outside, you’d hardly believe – endless easy light and profound talk. As with his work, there is something to be said for lack of pre-occupied academism – Delicious food there as usual. Back here, I read a bit – a lot – from Hart Davis – Lyttelton letters. (He took them to bed!)

He asked me before dinner, How are you feeling, and went into it.

Oh he never lets me down with the real things. That’s why he had tantrums last night, because he has a whole three weeks of looking after me.

Three apercus from the other day, I’ve only just remembered. When I asked him about Sharron doing my bit of illumination and what she thought of it.

‘I haven’t talked to her about the writing she’s doing for you!!!!

About B’mouth. ‘I was in the sea, frozen, my willy this size = tiny, just my head out of the water. I looked at the beach. You were leaning over talking to my mother. Sharron was lying asleep. The three people I love, and my willy this size.

Interesting that it seemed to centre round his willy.

I may have recorded this before, but it’s worth it again, he went right through his diary the other day, and said Just let me know when you want me and when you don’t, and even when you don’t, – I’ll cancel anything.

It’s not wonder last night didn’t upset me, nothing from him now can. On the stairs, he said ‘Oh, that’s what it’s like when you’re working – one whisky and off.’ And those cool moist pale hands were in mine for a moment – for a long warm loving moment. And he’s asleep downstairs.

And I’m terrified.

Tuesday September 16 1986

A strange day made up of omens.

Back on stage. Strange, footsore free.

One of the other candidates in the by-election in the Nicolson in 1946, picture on front of Times, dead! Only letter, from Sharron! Sweet, meaning well, but interfering between me and him. ‘I was very angry with him’ etc. We will take you out to dinner next time!! With me paying, poor girl.

I didn’t show him the letter, I hadn’t enough mind or heart or spirit or body to be anything but terrified.

All the way there, put it out of my head.

Lovely day of hard work. Simon ideal. Not shirking anything.

(K walking around and talking too much, for a moment or two. He repudiates fiercely that he hasn’t theatrical knowledge, but of course in lots of ways, despite his extreme sensitivity and quickness, he can’t have.

He decided to stay on and wire up tonight. I thought we were having a drink at the end, but we couldn’t. So showed him S’s letter then. He said Sweet and gave me an eye. And said of course Ill ring you later.

Good. He did. ‘Why didn’t you show it me before? I’d like to have seen it before.’ That’s what I mean about ‘theatricality’. I couldn’t have shown it him before. ‘I didn’t apologise to her for anything but her. I didn’t apologise to you. And I didn’t apologise to her for my behaviour to you.

I still don’t know what I’d done! But let that go.

He said she was wrong. Poor girl.

Wednesday September 17 1986

Tired, but all right. Finished plotting this morning. S went off to be interviewed by Women’s Hour, mentioning me at the very end as it turned out. K arrived at 12.30 as promised. Looking a Mess. Just up, as he afterwards said. I don’t care.

Finished rehearsal, we’d really done the second half with plenty of small ideas. I was looking forward to the afternoon with only the first seven pages to do.

Only!

‘Shall we go to lunch?’ ‘Yes, I’m starving. Haven’t eaten yet.’ So we went to Marine Ices. It’s restful. Thank God. What a blessing for a crisis. And £11.75 for two. We had Fusilli Carbonara. I had Escalope Milanese. Of which he had a wedge. ‘I spoke to Sharron this morning. All she meant to say was, she was so worried she hadn’t taken you home.’

That’s all right. So I said, I understand. Let’s forget about it all now. Only I said it better than that. And we had a happy and merry time and laughed a lot. (But there is that residual worry of her last phrase ‘We’ll take you out to dinner next time.’)

I don’t mind the ‘we’. I don’t mind anything, provided, he tells me. And has told her truthfully.

This whole tiny upset has resulted from him not telling her enough about me, (or him!) and him not telling me enough about her (the events of the actual Pelican night were just him and me, of course.)

When the moment comes when she or whoever it is, can write a letter telling me what he thinks and feels with his consent, and for my information, no-one will be quicker to respect that. I don’t know how I’ll suffer. But I hope my love will be big enough for that. Because for instance ‘we’ll take you out to dinner’, means I’d pay half. Only she doesn’t know. I quite see. But it mustn’t be. He came back. Edward Hardwicke in rest. !! Sweet. Hopeless. K left early says But pleasing to me. I’d introduced K. At end of meal, K said I’ll go back in case you want to talk to him again. How well he knows me! Of course I did for quarter of an hour.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 70

September 17 1986 – October 14 1986.

Wednesday September 17 1986 (cont.)

Got back to Offstage at two-fiveish. Simon due back at 2.45. So I went thro’ my lines and moves, with K in the sound box, fiddling about with the levels and my talk etc. I got really into one bit, and did it again and again, and to my surprise, found I had forgotten K completely. Blessed work. Fist time I’d done that. S came back on the dot. Most fruitful terrifying afternoon. Working thro’ one patch I really didn’t know, tho’ I’d learned it the same as the rest. And when he said We’ll run it, I was stunned and only just got thro’.

And yet bits were better than at the work thro’. So I thought Yes I can still act. Home in S’s taxi. V. tired. K to Sharron and Peter Hutch tomorrow. But the weekend is mine. He’s tetchy with me. Of course. ‘I told you that.’

I don’t think he plays the part of a son. I think he is a son. Contrary to his wishes.

What I’ll carry away from today is Pat Phoenix dying – not that I ever saw her in that TV, – Simon’s unfailing good humour and tact – and us alone in the theatre ‘plying our crafts.’

Thursday September 18 1986

A very good savage morning’s rehearsal. I knew the lines perfectly on the page but so much crowds in when you stand up – But S was supportive and inventive and challenging. Not so after lunch. Various reasons. He’d bought the Financial Times, which had a dreadful notice of his Welsh Amadeus. I can’t think what the FT was doing there. Poor Rupert Graves, getting sat on for being inexperienced, when perhaps it should have occurred to the FT that he’d gone to Mold to play A to get some experience. But S did mind. Well, he’s a novice director.

Another reason, Bruno arrived, had a little scenic conference, took Sarah away, and left the boxer behind!! Imagine if I told anyone but K! As we went on, S slackened, laughing at me instead of my perf (I don’t mean jeering, I mean stopping providing that strict audience before whom one has to do one’s professional best that is the essence of being a director vide Roger thing at Cheltenham!) – he laughed, as a friend, inviting jolly chats, as for instance, when I said seriously ‘I’m chary of going to the table again so soon.’ ‘Yes, but are you tably of going to the chair.’ A good joke, and I laughed a lot. I’d rather have rehearsal.

10.30pm

K has just rung up, and I haven’t answered. I couldn’t, I’m too tired and must sleep. First time. More tom.

Friday September 19 1986

I couldn’t have spoken even to him cos of not sleeping early enough.

Very tired.

Lunch with reporteress from Hampstead paper. Nice, mild undirected girl. S very good today.

‘I’m going to give you really close? harsh? something violent anyway? Direction.’ But it was only for three sentences.

As always they miss what I’m thinking because I can’t express my thought, till the outside, the words, my face etc are right.

Got an address from Buddy for K’s rehearsal church hall. He’d rung last night 3 times. So I rang Gerard, Rose I, and Sally Blacking. ! Lovely talk. Perhaps she sees her husband is a drear by this time, she was much more forthcoming. K so sweet and dear. And is coming this w/e. How strange that we’ve got to this point, that he’s a prop. I’ve no-one else to count on. Odd. But lovely.

Work good today despite what I say about S. A couple of run-throughs tomorrow which frightens me. Can I do it? And K will be there. Yes, but that’ll spur me on. Because I don’t really care what he thinks of me. At this point.

It is very difficult, just the energy. But also the finish I like to put on.

£548 cheque today. Good.

Saturday September 20 1986

2 run thro’s. One halting but good bits. The second more fluent but less magical.

Since lunch he has been with me and stays tonight and tomorrow and all is fluent and magical.

Sunday September 21 1986

There’s no-one like him.

No-one.

I am ashamed that I have never mentioned him to anyone else.

Monday September 22 1986

He took me out to the river. We ate at Riverside Studios. Jazz band. Watched Revenge of Pink Panther. He cooked dinner. Did three lots of washing-up, including baking-tin in fridge! So two baking-tins. Washed up his breakfast while we were waiting for taxi.

Whole weekend restorative and calming.

Tuesday September 23 1986

Simon still good, but wants to ‘talk it all through’ and reacts when I say I want to ‘get a run on it.’ I don’t want to talk about it, it’s confusing.

Simon on Wogan Monday night.

So we left him at stage door, K and I had two drinks in Bush. K going to S’s to talk about Infernal Machine and hear a compact disc of Greek music. K has addressed and stamped 50 leaflets about Nicolson.

Technical rehearsal really useful. That’s all I want, just find out exactly what I’m doing, and then I’ll act.

K is my lifeline.

Wednesday September 24 1986

More detail. I have been too tired before. K and I had watched S sign autographs at the stage door of Wogan, and felt sorry and admiring at how patient he was with them. Then we had a chat in the Bush, two drinks, I left to go on working and tape the Wogan. It is so lovely now to have K to sum up the day with, and trust – I can’t believe it. Wogan was awful. It turned out to be the 250th and David Frost turned up! So poor S was between those two power-mad self-congratulating monsters, and did not manage a word about any of the 3 things he’s involved with – the only reason for him doing the wretched thing.

K told me today he’d hugged S when he came into the pub, because he looked so wretched. They went off and had a very good session. K giggled as he said ‘So now I’ve another whole tape of ideas in the air. But it was good – than ancient Greek music is like mine in quite a lot of ways. S had said this, too and said how warm K had been about Wogan, and wonderful about the music. Well, of course, his music is like the Greek, that’s his touch of genius, grabbing the right thing out of the air, without ever having heard it. Where Stephen O would have been careful to hear it, and equally carefully imitate it. Not the same. They went to a Chinese restaurant, S ordered ‘as otherwise it takes so long.’ Pekin. K ate with much appetite. Good. Finished at 1.30. So he’ll need the taxi money back! He’d rung Sharron to say he’d be later. Another time he must arrange S nights on a non-Sharron night, and stay here and save a big taxi-fare.

Very good rehearsal this morning, working slowly and carefully thro’ Act 1.

We were both good. Forgot to record that on Monday’s Tech run, I changed into pyjamas on stage, thus taking my pants off for the first time onstage!

Rang K this morning from theatre to say don’t lunch as we were going on till 2.0 and then lunch. He was coming in at 2.0 to help with painting and papering the set. Oh that boy, the dearness of him. I hope he doesn’t make anything fall down. After lunch I had a word with him as he started. We had a number of points to go over. He said we talked about the Nicolson for the first hour – I won’t you how, till it’s on. ‘Oh, was it bad?’ I said nervous. ‘No, not at all’, he said with a grin. I walked off – my foot is a bit sprained and painful, makes me limp. Why? Being on it so much? Surely not. Apart from the pain, it is not so bad for the show, as I hardly walk far enough to show the limp. I don’t know whether I can bring this off. I am terrified.

On Sunday his mother rang. I had told her how good he’d been. ‘That’s a change’ she said. How long is K’s image of careless selfishness going to last? I heard him say ‘I’m round Angus’s. I’m looking after him through his important show.’

Thursday September 25 1986

Writing in Pelican. Arrived in v. expensive taxi for 10.0. Stage staff said ‘Oh Simon’s said we can have the stage this morning. Rehearsal’s 1.30.’ ! So, bad foot and all, I legged away here, to sit and have a quiet coffee. Cross tho’.

I am much blessed with my friends. Edna, Mary, even Prim, John N, Neil, Roy M, Paul Ryan, Jon H, Sharron may one day be a real friend, depending. (Oh, that reminds me, he told me over the weekend that she’s come off the pill. ‘She’s never liked the idea, and I’m happier now because she feels better about it.’ He went a bit pink. ‘We’re careful or I wear a Durex.’ How are the mighty fallen. I didn’t remind him he said he’d never use one. I was so glad he told me. Why, by the way? Let’s hope it’s not because she’s pregnant already and he’ll tell me when the show’s on! Or was it because it’s bugging him a bit really? Tho’ pretending not, out of loyalty. With his sensitivity, he can’t like Durex.

It also quite practically worried me, tho’ he is v. good about being careful. Though v. passion. and potent, he is also, I’m sure in control. But, no-one can control the fact that there are sperm in that first drop or two that oozes out long before you come, and with his sort of sexual record (7 a night) you’re not going to tell me he doesn’t ooze.

Bother.

Later.

S joined me in Mar. Ices, for lunch. He’d done sound with K. They seemed to have got it straightened out. K arrived, gave me £50 out of his dole, as I’d said about my temp. cheque- book. S went to make some phone calls. (K paid for lunch – I let him as it helps his pride tho’ it’s really me paying. His dole is a little going to his head, at the prospect of his 1 March fee looming up!).

K told me he’d rung TDK about his scheme, they’d given him a verbal concession on 200 tapes at a time, without having had the scheme put to them! Good, so far as it goes. But I must put the brake on tactfully, so as to prevent any possibility of embarking on expenditure without capital. Especially as Peter H is raising the capital. I fear I have no faith in anything of Peter’s, except his amiable charm. But I must let K find that out all over again for himself. If only K had enough work, he wouldn’t need these schemes. I don’t mean his ideas aren’t good – they are, but he himself has no gifts for carrying them out, and at the moment is not a good enough judge of character to choose the right lieutenant, or – dirty word – middle man.

He went out later on and bought a pair of headphones (which he must have) for £57. The pair he really needed were £77! What it is to have a lot of fine ear and no money. I went at 6.0 after an excellent rehearsal. ‘Oh, can I borrow some money?’ !

Friday September 26 1986

When I got into rehearsal today, Sara told me that K hadn’t stayed all that late, because Sharron had been upset. She’s seen a man throw himself under the tube at Leytonstone. Poor girl, poor girl. (Poor man!) It’s such a negative thing to happen, nothing good to be got out of it at all. Just a memory coming back with a shiver of horror. She just saw this blur of blue, and then he knelt in the path of the train, bending his head towards it. Ugh.

K came in about 11.30. Said she was all right. I wondered if I should ‘let him off’ coming tonight, but he seemed not to expect it.

A really good rehearsal, tho’ S didn’t think it as good as I did. But I knew how I was feeling, and that it can come out. And I was fluent, only came to a halt once.

Got K some sandwiches and a banana, as he was too busy to come out to lunch, because of going off early last night. Poor Sh. these things come on us so often at the wrong time too, which doesn’t make it easier. Went to K’s flat after haircut, and moustache-trim! at Austin Reed to have a bath and change as it’s so much nearer here. Am now in crowded pub, by Saddlers Wells. Huge queue for returns round the corner for Michael Clark! Good. Hope there’s some excitement.

1.20. There was none. Stale camp. I said to K and Jon H When is yr. generation going to produce some excitement.

Too tired for more, but it was a lovely night for me. Never has he touched me so much. In every sense of that verb

Saturday September 27 1986

Sharron rang while I was there. She didn’t seem to know he was going to be out this evening, and said she’d had a message left from Kim about a party. I didn’t think till I put the phone down, that perhaps it was a message from last night. Because they went round to Sam Browne of which more later. So I got to Saddlers Wells in a taxi or mini-cab I rang from K’s little tag of mini-cabs. Arrived exactly at 6.30. £1.20. Tho’ a long way round. Huge queue for returns. Had a couple of gins in the pub round the corner, hung about the crowd at the front of the theatre. A really sharp crowd, with a feeling of excitement. No-one under 30 except as usual me. (Of course, not literally.) But that’s what led me to say ‘perhaps at last’. Suddenly there he was. And been there since exactly the same time that I arrived at the pub! Well, he said he’d be pushed to get there at all.

So we stood about, and he went back up to the circle bar, and got us a gin and tonic in three nasty little glasses, and time went on, and Jon still didn’t come. Eventually K said, ‘You stay out here, I’ll go, and stand on the stairs where I saw you.’

I must emphasise that it was a great big, excited crowd, dressed up and showing off to one another, quite in the old way. Jon didn’t arrive still, so I left his ticket at the box-office, in front of two or three hundred outraged return waiters. So just before the lights went down, there was Jon, black-leathered and puzzled looking, entirely on the wrong side of the theatre. We waved but he hadn’t his glasses on. He sat down just in time. Can’t bother to describe the perf. any further. Company I’ve always hated, and the modern version hadn’t even the widest acceptance it used to have.

So out we come at the second interval. (Idiot fans snickering and whinnying on the other side of the dress circle.) So we walk up to the Fish Aquilino at he’d presented it. He and Sharron had been, delicious house wine, trout pink like salmon. He couldn’t remember the name, - of course – I’d rung Aquilino and said Have you got a Fish branch. No idea. So I booked at Villa de Pescatori three or four doors away. When we got there, on no this isn’t where we came etc etc.

Eventually we went where they did go. ‘Same menu, same ?’ ‘Yes same written menu.’ Not a fish place at all. Just the up-market version of Aquilino. Double the price for the same menu and dinner-jacketed maîtres (Why does he dislike Pelican so much!?) So in the end, we had a goodish meal. No, the house wine wasn’t sensational! Jon H was subdued and defeated, and sweet.

Why I let him come, cos he doesn’t impinge. Not enough. Any minute I’m going to have to do something about him not impinging – To dart forward, tonight the only thing virtually K said of Jon was, ‘I couldn’t believe he could go right through a whole evening without mentioning Zentapuss.’ Yes.

So, at the first meeting, K had said, in answer to my asking how Sh was, she’s back at my place or will be later. Should be have her to dinner, too, as Jon’s here as well – I haven’t said anything to her! Amazing. An almost overt reference to the nature of our exclusive meetings. As Jon is there, too, it isn’t an exclusive meeting. So we can include my girlfriends. But perhaps he vice-versas this. How?

I said it was expensive. ‘Forget it’ with utter relaxation. From that moment he forgot her, I suppose. Certainly never have I seen him so animated. Full of ideas and schemes over dinner, intent on teasing me – never has he touched me so much. My arm, my hand, my face. I wonder. When we came out of the restaurant, he stopped on the pavement, putting Jon and I into the first taxi, after 15 mins wait, tho’ Sh was waiting at home in a state. And during the evening he seemed utterly careless, and not missing her at all. Nor has he seemed to, thro’ all this.

Two things. He has been much more physical in the last week. He may be falling in love with Sharron. Which spills over. He is seeing me really stage act for the first time, in a really testing part. Yes, that would affect the artist in him deeply.

And him staying with me. Monday and Tuesday are yours. He is riveted. What pleases me is that he’s riveted to our (very imperfect) stage process, not just my return to the stage.

So this morning, despite him being rather high last night, there he was in the box at the theatre when I got there at ten past ten, turning me off the stage for the sound! Looking fresh!

Dreadful run-through, stop and start. Endless paraphrasing. Only two halts. After nine days and first dress-run, I don’t know. I have terrible apprehensions of a dead first night.

Later. Second DR. golden. Good. K said Well done, but he said that for the first. Poor boy.!

Later still.

Poor boy, I meant. Because why should be have to cope with me.

But he does. Worked like mad all day at the sound. I left him at 6.0, saying he’d be an hour behind me. I did the shopping – oh so exhausting, and he deliciously turned up in the middle of a telephone talk to George Rowell. Smoked salmon. He asked Steve W round. Nice half hour. Exactly stimulating not exhausting. Off they went to the pub. And are still there.

11.45. Oh, I am so glad I didn’t have to have that talk about Nigel, which was the ostensible reason for the talk. K really likes talking to Steve because St. hangs on his words. Quite right. But alas, Steve is not the man K thinks! That’s one thing. And should K talk about Nigel to Steve? I only ask. As far as we are concerned, he just came in, and it was ‘we’. Took his shoes and socks off, put them on again to go to the drinks shop – I’d told them Kevin was coming in. Went off all right.

He was so into me, I wondered why we’d spent so much time arguing and quarrelling. Its my acting. He susceptible thro’ that. But his warmth and merriment and physicality are utterly intoxicating.

I am so glad I am not arguing about LIFE with Steve Wilson.

Sunday September 27 1986

Just a scribble. A good night. First with audience.

I rose, and it did fall into place. All sorts of things.

Quick resume.

He came back from Steve. Sat on my bed, for an hour holding my hands tight all the time, keeping hugging me and kissing me on the lips. And comfort and warmth and love flowing out.

So after the show he came and was moved. We had a drink in the nasty pub, two young men, and a girl came up and said marvellous things. Gentle, touching. (As Matt had said ‘enlightening’ the other day. We got a taxi with Simon. At the house the cold chicken came out, K busied himself with the vegetables. Then turned and said ‘Now we’re alone’ – wrapped himself round me till I cracked and burst into tears of relief that I was over the first hurdle. How extraordinary, for ages, he wouldn’t touch me. And now –

We ate. The chick was delicious and juicy. He made coffee. We laughed a lot. I got to bed early, ish and he’s asleep downstairs.

Monday September 29 1986

K went off to get the car before lunch and came back with it and my shirts from Harvie & Hudson. He’d rung from the shop, quite fearlessly. How intimidated at his age I was by shops. He’d cashed my cheque for £30 to make up the money I got from Simon, and got the money in 50p pieces. Proceeded to pay a bill of £89 at an exclusive Jermyn St tailor, with £30 in 50p pieces! I was desperately nervous, shaking and sighing. But I can’t think about tomorrow. He had to go to the theatre at 4.30 to do the sound. So I went on the tube. Just as well, as he got stuck in the rush hour, and it would have been worse later. DR awful, flat and boring. Buddy out front. Poor K, sitting through it again. I’m amazed at his dedication. But I think a flat DR is my sop to the gods. He talked about Sharron a bit. Said her nose in profile wasn’t attractive. ‘If we’re together 50 years from now’ – but I can’t remember the connection.

And ‘That’s why we haven’t got further, cos we’ve got separate places.’

I still can’t really tell. Is this last a thin end of the wedge? How much would I mind? Not very much? Not if I still saw as much of him alone. After all, he’s lived with people before. Still I would mind, of course, just envying all that time with him. Especially after these few days.

Later.

I’ll go on writing to distract myself. Forgot to describe Sunday lunch. Simon was coming round to have a little chat and have lunch. I think he wanted a little comfort before the first reading of Infernal Machine. Peter Hutch had come round to discuss the ‘scheme’ – oh dear – with K. He’s a dear for surface purposes – so easy. He and K went downstairs, and K started on the lunch. Then S wanted some coffee – at 12.30! – so K had to do that in the middle of the omelettes and then again, because he put milk in it, and S wanted the caffeine. He really is neurotic about coffee, and liquid generally. Obsessive rather. So we had quite a jolly lunch, Peter having left. And off went K and S. I’d like to have been in IM too, but of course I couldn’t have been even if there’d been a part for me. But K streams towards me, and sees through S and loves him equally as I do. I would have minded 3 years ago. Not now. I’ve already covered the preview.

But not Sharron and K going to dinner with Sam Browne. At last he has seen thro’ her. Good. It was her jeering at him about nor caring about money.

Sharron is a better judge of character than any of his other girl-friends, thank God.

I don’t want to go to sleep, because when I wake up it’ll be the day of the first night. What would I do without him?

Tuesday September 30 1986

One of the nights of my life.

It went v well.

Wednesday October 1 1986

4.30

What an extraordinary day yesterday was!

And today.

I was desperate, and kept holding on to him. He went off at 10.15 to a social get together for IM. He went to the rehearsal room, and it was at the theatre, so he missed a lot of it! Nevertheless he was back at 11.45, with all the shopping, he then made a casserole for tonight, did all the washing-up, got the lunch, and then hovered all three rooms.

Then out we went to go to the bank, to the drinks shop, and to a movie. About Last Night, at the Odeon Ken. First time we’ve been to that cinema together? We had a hilarious conversation about money. ‘I’ve got to buy my father’s birthday present, some pyjamas. Could you give me that? Oh and another £15?’ ‘What’s that for?’ I said. ‘Well, my parents sent me £15 to buy you a first-night present, and I had to use it, so –’ But by that time I was laughing so much, he couldn’t go on. So I bought a bottle of Glenlivet for myself, two bottles of Muscadet for Sara and Mark, and two miniatures for him to give them.

We watched the film, it held me, tho’ I kept gasping and shivering inside, and feeling sick. I took hold of his arm from time to time. It helped. We got to the theatre at about 5.45, unloaded the dressing for the inside of the wardrobe, and then went and sat at the far end of the pub a long way from the nearest person. I had a Guinness for dry throat and mouth. I held his hand under the table, his smooth pale fine-veined hand, squeezing it in agony of mind and body. He was amazingly wonderfully understanding as he has been all through. His sensitive imagination has never betrayed him in the strange milieu of the theatre. He has been by my side in the very fullest sense throughout. I left him walking off to the guillotine, only sustained by his look.

I was in real panic in the dressing-room walking about with nothing on, saying This is awful. I got ready, too soon. He came in just before the house was opened. He didn’t hug me, he embraced me. He held me as close as he could, kissed my cheeks, breathed love all over me. I whimpered that I might make a real mess of it, and let him down. He mowed that down with a flood of love. He left – I stood sweltering in the dark between the two doors waiting for the announcement, which was held up for ten mins. The moment I opened my mouth, I knew it was going to be all right. And it was. It really came off. Everyone was pleased. K said it was very good, not overwhelmingly good! Nor as good as it will be. All true, if a bit hard! But then he has seen it every day for a fortnight!

(But worse was to come. Though all is sunshine now).

Nigel Nicholson came with his son, Adam, and daughter, Rebecca, and another young man, (Rebecca’s?) Something amused me much. I undress in this play more or less under my dressing-gown, but there are at least two seats at the right end of the front row, for which I said we must either paint Danger signs or charge extra, as their occupants might get a glimpse of my parts. The ‘stripping’ was the only bit of the play I was worried about for Nigel N. So what were my feelings to see him in the most ‘dangerous’ seat? Afterwards, he said ‘Yes, that moment did make me a little nervous. My father would never have taken his trousers off in public.’ Adam, his son, v. nice, said, ‘But it isn’t in public, it’s in his cold hotel room.’ N.N. said it was a remarkable exhibition of concentration and memory. I wouldn’t want to alter anything, you must have immersed yourself in my fathers work.’ I mentioned the difficulties. As Adam is also a writer, they really understood, and for a moment, I felt alone with them, at one with them, rather than the theatricals all round. Adam said of the stripping moment ‘I think I saw you and my father brace yourselves for that moment.’ I loved the son and daughter, who were wonderfully enthusiastic. Adam has the Sackville eyes, looks very like the photos of Ben as a young man. But didn’t seem to have any stormy depths to go with them. It was very satisfying.

We left soon after the Nicolsons, and it was lovely just to get into the car and go. The casserole smelt delicious – he’d put it in the electric slow one. He put the vegs on, and we had more gin and tonic, he’d bought a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape, delicious, he started to talk about the show, as I wanted him to; for once, an untutored criticism, - I’d thrown a word into a laugh, - and he was ‘amazed’. Too amazed. I didn’t resist it at all, but I suppose me saying that it was quite usual the first time you put on play in front of the public even with someone as skilful as me. He suddenly got on to the line he gets on, as at the Pelican, that I am resisting him, and questioning everything I say. As if he hated me. This morning I have seen for the first time, that of course, that’s what happens to him when he gets drunk. What ever I say, he can use it to quarrel. Odd. But alas my overstretched nerves couldn’t take it on such a night, as I could at the Pelican. I burst into tears, and cried out in anguish ‘How could you’ etc and went to bed. Came down in my pyjamas saying Since you won’t come and talk to me etc. He was sitting looking very sad. This time he knew he was wrong. (There was a certain bitterness in him too, cos the sound hadn’t really worked, as Simon had set the levels too low for a full house, which absorbs more sound.) He came upstairs, and after a bit more acrimony, he held out his hand, and I said Not just now, so he went to bed.)

I was so tired and so drunk that I did sleep at once. At 11.30 I heard him stirring and went down – he was washing-up again. I thought I’d wait. Eventually he came up to the bedroom. I said ‘Sit down. As usual we were both wrong, I got too upset because of what I’d done, and you were too harsh.’ ‘I know, I’m sorry.’ He came and sat on the bed, and put his arms round me and kissed me.

We talked it out after I’d sobbed from relief and upset.

He just got packed up, and said I’d better go. We got up. He came to me and put his arms round me, pressed himself against me, kissed me repeatedly and said, ‘I’m sorry about last night.’ I did what I’ve never done with him, got an erection, a full one – I was in such a state that a lamppost would have given me one. I hope he didn’t notice – I thought he had a bit of one himself. How strange sexuality is.

I murmured into his cheek, ‘I don’t think you know even yet how much you can hurt me.’ And at last I was able to say to him ‘I love you more than I thought I’d ever love anyone again.’

He waved twice from the car.

Later.

Mary L rang. She came round after, v. briefly yesterday. She said she thought it ‘wonderful’ ! I said I was looking forward to polishing it, the business and so on. ‘But’ she said, ‘it’s so polished already.’ She, like everyone else, mentioned the telephone call. Oh dear, how strange, when she used to be contemptuous of me, let alone my acting. She said of K who met her again briefly, ‘He seemed so gentle and clued up.’ A good combination to see at a glance.

I rested all day after K went. He was not there when I got there, I went to the pub for my one Guinness. In came Nigel, Carol – and Andy, the one I rather liked in a quiet hopeless sort of way. He’s very quiet! Carol is pretty in an obvious shop-girl sort of way, with her mouth shut. When she smiles she reveals rather crowded predatory teeth. I sense a sharpness there I don’t much like. K Arrived from the theatre. I left to get ready. Couldn’t imagine what they would make of it. Of course, they sat in the ‘danger’ seats. Oh dear, Nigel is still so childish. Not that I care, about the seat. There were only eight seats booked, but in the end there were about 17 people. They’d taken the front row away, so it didn’t look too bad. It wasn’t much of a second night. The telephone didn’t ring! Bad. There was a young man sitting with his feet up on the chair in front of him – his feet slipped off with a thump and he ‘smothered an oath.’ K told me what the noise was – at the time I put was off, and dried. Happily it was in the Vita part at the end, where I can easily make a pause for ‘emotion’. But it certainly showed me how different is the concentration needed for this play. Turned out to be the Time Out critic.

Afterwards we went to Marine Ices. Oh it was such a funny meal. A lot of the time we might have been alone. After stammering that they’d enjoyed it – it turned out to be Andy’s first play! – yes, that did touch me, not even a panto, the conversation limped to such an extent that we kept finding ourselves in the middle of a conversation having virtually forgotten they were there. Nigel was sulking, as we’d had a silly talk about their train from Waterloo – some nonsense about their once getting to Leicester Sq., and it being shut at 11.30! Nigel went on about it, K just said Let’s leave it and eat, and N snapped ‘I was only saying’. I do wish non L’s would listen to Londoners. But I gloried in the meal. He was in high spirits. We’d ordered a bottle of wine, he said to the waiter we’d better have two. And then changed the red to a white. And got them to order. And so on. He was showing (and showing off) that he has my complete trust and confidence – he was behaving like a son. He can encompass anything, even being dependent on me. I wonder if Nigel noticed. Probably not.

So off he went to Sharron, who’d been waiting at the flat, even then he drove me home, as he still had the car.

So let me sum up this weekend, so full, so moving, so powerful, so satisfying. (Even the row was satisfying in the end.) When I think of the careless boy I first knew, washing up and cooking and cleaning, shopping and watching over me (‘don’t’ climb up there, you might fall’), and what’s more washing-up as I like it, wiping everything up and putting it away, so foreign to one of his temperament, I am humbly grateful. It isn’t as if he were the sort of maidish young man to whom all this would come easily. If I had ever doubted that he really loved me – and I have! – these two weekends would have convinced me forever. The force and warmth of his love, almost palpable about me, has gone through every moment of this testing weekend without faltering. That is rare, precisely as rare as D. I am very lucky and blessed.

Thursday October 2 1986

Again a perfectly quiet day. I find I don’t want to do anything yet. Not that I’m exactly tired, – tho’ I suppose that’s why it is.

K rang at 12.0 ish. He thinks he may have a rehearsal hall, the space above the rehearsal hall. Good, since it would be free. I thought of the Community Centre. He thought it might be noisy. We laughed at the party last night. he asked what papers I’d wanted for my notices. Ah.

He was spending the day with Peter, on the ‘scheme’. Well, at least they’re working it out beforehand. IM will take his mind off. He rang again at ten to five to wish me luck. Ah again. I suggested he use my answering-machine, not just next week, but all the time, Yes. Good.

Oh the naïveté. He suggested I ask John N if they could use the British Council as an address for people to send tapes to, ‘as we want an address that sounds reliable’! Could I ask John N?! I was a bit shaken at his simplicity. All the more reason for not getting up these schemes, he has no business sense. Plenty of sense, flowing with ideas. Not the same thing. He’d better remain a composer pure. They’ve got a P.O. Box. No. Only £34 for a year.

Friday October 3 1986

Mary L said her friend said when Nigel stood up and put his coat on, ‘Didn’t you say Angus had a brother?’ !

K rang up from Sam B’s. She’s away in Florida and has given him the keys, so he can use her little studio. Told him about show last night and people let in late. Outraged. Seen room at H’smith and he’d be heard by the rehearsals. So it’s either somewhere else or do it at night. Of course, I hope he’ll be there, as he might sleep here! Whoopee! We’ll see. I said about Sat and I didn’t want to be late. He said You’ve still got Sunday to do, haven’t you?

He’s re-mixing the IM for use at rehearsals with gaps. He thinks he’ll be finished in time to have a drink with Colin B and go and hear a band at the King’s Head. Hope springs – Has he ever heard a good band casually?

At the theatre.

I have had the most extraordinary letter from Nigel Nicolson. Such praise as I’ve never had from anyone. Perfection to him. I’ll copy it out later. Oh, when I show it to Simon … and to K.

And it’s, Dear Angus for the first time. It’s always nice to be called by your Christian name from a castle.

Later. Well!

Very good house, most appreciative, best laughs yet, but was not as certain as I like to be. Yet all of them praised exactly that! Neil came round first, with tears on his cheeks. ‘That it’s actually on, after all the struggle.’ He read Nigel’s letter, the only one who did. Then Felix and his dear wife, came round. Then George R tentatively. ‘I knew the funny bits would be good, but I hadn’t expected the pathetic bits to be so good, too.’ !! Things that might’ve been more happily expressed! Went with Felix and Brenda? to the pub, missed Neil and Co and wandered about a bit, came back and there they were! Well, the praise was genuine. That silly bitch, Jenny Lippmann, said the same pretentious thing in different words, or fairly different words, many times, and was responsible for us going to a Greek restaurant. Now I like individual Greek dishes, but the waiter attempted to bulldoze us into having a whole table d’hote. Fatal. Who knows? I had to be sure what I was eating so as to have a good night. Everyone agreed to the overall meal except me; I insisted on the menu, and ordered vegetable soup and red mullet. First, for them, the table was spread with about twelve small dishes of hors d'oeuvres taramasalata, olives etc and a lot of pitta bread. (I didn’t get any with my soup.) Then, with my red mullet, arrived for them two large dishfuls of squid strip goujons in batter. Then as I had more or less finished my red mullet, they were served with what I took to be the main course, vine leaves wrapped round something, I suppose, meat, of 3’ thickness and about as long as this book open, with sauce. I finished my red mullet. They ate and talked. Because of the differences in the shape of our meals and being in the middle of the table, there were five hilarious minutes when I had no food and no conversation. Then to my surprise and revulsion, they got another course, two large dishes with two big piles of chunks of meat in a thick sauce with parsley. It was 11.30 – I fled to the nearest tube station or I would have been up till two, relying on a lift. Guest of honour, indeed.

Saturday October 4 1986

Giles called round, meaning to decorate, but just talked and had a cup of tea. There’s something very endearing about him, and so far he doesn’t irritate me at all. What a blessing!

To the theatre. Lock closed, so went to Monarch! Had my Guinness, and was just coming out when there K and Sharron were coming along. So we went back in. We got up to date. Christine had rung up and sort of arranged Friday. He was most interesting about her, caught the unattractiveness in her voice and manner, but rather liked her directness. I shall be interested what he makes of her. Just like her to ring up and part arrange it! Again I was struck at how little he tells Sharron. I left asking him to come round at twenty to, he came at twenty five to. They’d moved to that café bar on the corner ‘quieter than the Monarch, will do for a drink before or after, no, not for Sharron, the men’s bit - for us.’

He read the NN letter and was much moved. Which reminds me, I must answer it. He said he was quite skint, and had to buy S a drink. So I gave him £10. ‘Can you spare it?’ No, but I gave it him. He kissed me and said Good luck. Eight people in front, incl. K and S. I was definitely good. Pause at end of telephone call had real desolation. Sharron mentioned it. How does one do it? I only thought. How do they get it?

He came round excited ‘Very good – best yet.’ And he doesn’t even know how difficult it is with so few people. We got to the restaurant. He went a bit moody. He’d said I was still a bit pushing it along in the first ten mins. She disagreed, and said ‘it was a bit slow’. He got a bit tetchy with me and I thought Careful. I wonder if it’s really that they need that ten mins for the spell to get going, I mean, as he said too fast and she too slow. Or she was waiting for the spell. He has seen it so often and knows me so well and is so super-sensitive to my mind, that he probably senses that I am still not as relaxed at the beginning as I am after. I think also his mood was partly thinking how to record it, about which we had a chat.

Also said Stan had got to know Thomas Dolby (really, did I get that right?) and they might be able to have the use of a Fairview for month. Selfishly hope it doesn’t come off, as I wouldn’t see him. Whereas at H’smith, I would. Also seeing an Irish bag-piper for I.M! I don’t know whether he restrains himself because of me. All I can say is, he has no secrets from me that she can reveal, whereas I continually have to conceal how little he’s told her. My lists, for instance! Obviously a lot of our relation is unknown to her. Whereas, apart from bed, the reverse doesn’t seem to be true. And I like her so much.

How little he tells her and how forbearing she is.

How I love him.

Sunday October 5 1986

Rang Simon at 4.30 to warn him about Paul Ryan, and found he couldn’t eat after all. Good. He says Observer and Telegraph are really good. ‘We should fill, you should get offers.’ Oh, he’s so sanguine. When I got to the theatre tonight, eight seats had been booked four of those friends of mine! He was just off to the reading of Maurice. ‘Who’s playing Maurice?’ I don’t know, that’s why I’m going.’ !

I rang K about five, to ask how much his mortgage was - £257. Oh dear.

Would I ask Simon whether he wanted him tomorrow, as he didn’t want to come uselessly? I didn’t ring you about the notices, because …. But the Observer and Telegraph ….

What about Christine? Because we never got back to her. He hadn’t much more to say, but we had a good preliminary chat. I said had he been upset by anything at the beginning of the meal. ‘No.’ ‘I just wondered, perhaps you were just thoughtful.’ ‘Well, three is an awkward number.’

That stuck in my mind. He oughtn’t to feel that, ought he? I must watch. After all, unless I can be happy with his girl, and I am, he’ll be miserable and so will I. So, I hope, will she!

Show good in one way. Eight had booked, nearly 30 were there. Three of them were Mike Parsons, Steven Dyke, and a girl called Sally, who turned out to know Paul R. Saw them in the pub before, which I like for a bit of brightness.

I am much glibber with the words – I use the word deliberately about tonight. It was all much smoother, but lacked the centre. That always intrigues and sometimes frightens me. It doesn’t always come. My technique is very strong in the sense that I can reproduce any inflection or timing or moment in an exact and finished way. But if the inner life of the character doesn’t rise and possess one, then the technique becomes glib. Or as S said, when he came round ‘a display of 50’s stage technique’. He was being purposely brutal, and I didn’t mind anything he said, because I agreed with him. The only thing that would trouble me, is if he imagined that I would aiming at, or was too lazy to avoid, the effect he was describing, I think it’s the result of still being, as it were, in the third week of rehearsal, and not having played myself in. Part of the glibness was from relief at being able to be glib! He said I was just giving an illustrated reading of anecdotes, which didn’t come out freshly, that I had lost the drawing them in, and going out to them subtly I’d had on the first night.

So I went to see the young people in the pub, all very critical young actors, not only said Magnificent etc fervently, unmistakably sincerely, and then proceeded to praise those very qualities that S said I’d lost! Most interesting. This suggests that some of the deeper qualities are preserved by my technique – (which is true later in a run, but I wasn’t sure my perf. was quite there to be preserved.) This is not to say that Simon is wrong. For one thing, he has higher standards, and knows how much better it can be. Just as I do. And I am going to think again.

But I also wonder a little if Simon, as a novice director, allows quite enough for his own intimate knowledge of me and the script. I wonder.

Later.

Dear Paul R came back with me and stayed the night. He is growing up, and showing some authentic wisdom. First time I’ve had someone round since before rehearsals. Except K of course. He was very pleasant and soothing company. Terribly bored with his C.S Lewis play tour.

Rang K at supper to say S didn’t want him. Dear sweet mild boy was working on the IM music. ‘I write a wonderful phrase in my head and play it and it sounds like the music under a horror film.’ I reminded him it was my first free day tomorrow.

‘Monday free? Then you can Hoover.’

It is quite lovely the way he’s learnt to tease me, when he didn’t understand our teasing at first.

Monday October 6 1986

My first day completely off since when?

Collapse. Quite thought I’d do something. Had arranged lunch with John N. But no.

Cancelled lunch. Just went to local shops. And nothing else. Only aperçu. On news Tory Conference, B’mouth. Police up and down cliffs and beach. Thought of daddy’s little loud- speaker boats in the 30’s.

Tuesday October 7 1986

Again did little during day, but more than before. First signs of recovery, that I actually got as far as the post-office, and to the bank in the hospital in the afternoon,

Mark came round with the table just about four. Two ‘phone-calls and many unnecessary words, it took him! Beautiful golden autumn weather.

Roy Mitchell’s father has died. I wonder how he’ll cope. He always seems to keep feelings at arm’s length.

Later. In the pub before the show. Yes, I wish he was here just to chat to. Not because I’m so foolish as to be fetishistic. ‘K must wish me good luck or I can’t etc.’ It’s good to chat a bit to get in the mood. I spend all day alone, and – that’s a disadvantage of a one-man show – there’s no-one to talk to. Literally. As the only member of the stage staff is the other end of the theatre, behind a piece of glass.

The lovely golden weather is also humid. I am sticky and can’t decide yet how much it’s nerves.

Just going back to the row for a moment. If, as I now see, it’s when he gets drunk – (it shows the depth of my obsession that I never saw such an obvious fact before) it’s also true to say I think, that it takes the form it does, because of course he must hate owing so much to me, both money and jobs and meals and treats etc etc. It must come out somewhere. It’s a wonder it’s no worse. Can I be better tonight? I don’t know.

It’s as if sometimes something clicks into place and you can’t go wrong. But I’ve never done it by rote. If it happens enough times, you get more or less the whole perf right and then fix it by yr. technique. At the moment I cling to this being the last week of rehearsals! And then there’s the tour!

To add to my wonder, last night, about Simon, I think I sense a deep irritation inside him about directing again, I don’t at all mean I didn’t deserve his notes, but I sensed an extra irritation that had, I think, nothing to do with me.

Yes, I think when this, and Infernal Machine are all over, I must give S my notes for him as director. I think I must, as a friend. No-one else will, I imagine. Bruno might would, but mightn’t know. And as designer, would and probably be too busy to be at enough rehearsals.

Later.

Found a message from him on the machine; he’s arranged to record the Nicolson on Friday and on the last night. Doesn’t look as if we can lunch this week, ‘I’m getting tied up, let’s eat after the show on Friday, your niece hasn’t rung yet. I still haven’t got anywhere to record, ask Neil.’ Also a message from Sharron, can she come to show on Thur. with two others. Rang her first and got that settled. She was at home.

I rang him at ten. We talked for half an hour! He’s calling round tomorrow! he’s going to IM rehearsal, ‘I’ll be round about 4.30. I’ve got several points to go into. First, I haven’t any money. (Oh, I love the way he says that!) Talked more of using the rehearsal room for his music. If at night, will the pub opposite, complain. Discussed Reselection scripts – I said I’d get a couple done. The Fairlight-Dolby studio has not come off, - ‘I’m rather low’ – he didn’t sound it. Anyway, it’s in H’smith, too, so Whoopee again!

We talked and I said all about the perf. and Roy’s father and everything. Oh the joy of his friendship.

Sharron rang back to say I’d said see you tomorrow and she thought she should check.

Later.

Jon H rang at 11.45. Sweet. Can I come to show on Sat? and all over me. And Rachel? No, she’s going to Cyprus with her father and mother for a fortnight on Friday. So he’s off the leash. I observed (to myself) wryly, that she will miss the play, tho’ they could easily have gone it together, before she left.

I don’t think she likes me very much!

Wednesday October 8 1986

He left a message on the answering machine saying meet me at the Lyric, and we’ll have lunch – together. Then called again to say he was already there at 1.40, so I went along. Simon was on the terrace with Robert Walker, and went and had a quick chat. Felt a little bad that I quoted a nice letter from Mike P saying how good I was on Sunday night! I meant it for him, but in the speed of a table hop it might have looked like defiance, so wrote him a note to make it all clear. K had got £10 from the management, but I gave him £15 more.

He’s a bit low, as Simon keeps changing his mind. You can’t treat a composer like a lighting-man. A light-man is an artist, too, in a way, but his equipment is immediately adjustable, whereas K has to write music in a creative mood, and get it together, and there comes a moment when the musician must stand on his dignity.

Also, S told him he wanted him at 10.0, but omitted to say it was at the Clarendon. So there was K, all alone at 10.0, playing the piano. A man comes out and says ‘Would you be quiet? We’re holding a service.’ Then he goes to the Lyric. Nobody seemed to know. That’s what comes of informality. All calls should come thro’ the S.M. He likes the crew.

I’m worried about the M.U. business. It may be all right this time, but he can’t fight something like the M.U. business. He went off to work; as I left him on the tube, I said ‘If I don’t speak to you tomorrow, I’ll see you on Friday.’ ‘It’s not very long.’ ‘It’s too long for me.’

At the theatre.

One seat booked! Well, I found at the Lyric that they had no poster and no throwaways. Buddy said she’d sent them but I wonder. She also said that it picked up next week. I looked at the plans – a handful each night. So now what? If there’s one person do we do it? It would be so awful for them. I might mind that less than five! It’s depressing, that after all those notices, only one person has booked out of the eight million in London.

Oh, he showed me his CV for the prog. of I.M. All right. But he rang me later about one sentence, the one about Visiting Day, partly because he wasn’t pleased with its shape and partly to include Roy’s name. He shows his un-way with words, by not being able to concentrate on one phrase at a time. We got it right in the end. There’s no-one like him, no- one.

Giles K said of him ‘He looks good (meaning virtuous.) And vulnerable. As if people could take him in.’ Oh yes!

Oh, I had a lovely letter – oh, yes, I said, but didn’t describe it, from Mike P. ‘I’ve never been so convinced of someone on the other end of a stage phone-call in my life.’ ‘I felt privileged to see the play, and privileged to know you.’

Oh dear, he’s been thro’ school and college and got a degree, and can still write ‘I may of imagined it’. And then, people say educational standards haven’t fallen!

The landlady in this pub is a scream. Like Angie in Eastenders as far as he make-up goes. And with a quite wonderfully mechanical technique of innuendo and seduction, always leaving her eyes on you as she turns away. ‘A Guinness, please.’ ‘Cold or warm?’ ‘Warm.’ ‘Warm’, as she goes to get it. ‘Shall I pour it?’ ‘No, thank you.’ ‘Oh, but I’m so good at pouring.’ The pub is a designer’s nightmare.

Later. 11.40

I made up, dressed, and was standing at 8 behind the door, and Buddy came and said she’d persuaded the one customer to go away.

I took my make-up off, and undressed and accepted a drink from Buddy in the Monarch. I didn’t want ‘Angie’ to know we’d failed – she’d pointed me out to a customer! I made B buy me a large gin. I got another, nobody else did. Sarah and I got on the tube. She left me at TC Rd.

And here I am, for the first time having not gone on. Except with the King dying in 1952.

I don’t feel depressed. I shall tell no-one but K. Whom I couldn’t ring in case he’s working. I feel grey and empty and old. As if nothing’s any good any more.

Thursday October 9 1986

Ed rang this morning. More forthcoming than I’ve ever known him, v. sweet. Coming on Sunday. Read him NN’s letter. He was thrilled. But ‘will discuss other matters’ on Sunday. Bother.

But he was very kind and generous in his thoughts. As always to me.

K has just rung, 3.45. At S’s trying to find that Greek Music compact disk. ‘There are so many, it’s ridiculous.’ He’d heard about last night, ah. He was comforting, without pretending it hadn’t happened. ‘Not your fault.’ He’d seen a run-thro’ this morning. ‘It ran three hrs. fifteen minutes.’ Golly. ‘What was Maggie like?’ ‘All right. But it was all pretty rough, actually. Boring.’ ‘Well, there you are. That’s what I told you. They’re almost at the point of rehearsal where I had to open.’ ‘Yes, but yours is only a third of the length.’ ‘Yes, but there are more of them.’ !

How funny, he’s there alone again, two years later. He’s got the keys this time!

I’d have felt bad if he hadn’t rung. He is good to me.

Later.

Saw on TV that the new Disneyland video only to be shown at the two Disneylands starring Michael Jackson, and lasting 17 minutes, cost £14 million.

Also there were 90,000 entries for the Blue Peter robot competition. Imagine the viewing figures if that’s the number of competitors.

In the pub before the show. There are 21 bookings already, more than any other night. Odd! Has the tide turned? If we get anything on the doors, it’ll be the best house yet. Good little notice in the new paper the Independent, which I saw before I could stop myself. ‘Urbane’, yes that’s the word I wanted. Donald and Ann, Joe Searby, and Sharron with two friends.

Friday October 10 1986

Forgot to record, ‘cos unpleasant, that during lunch at the Lyric, David Parfitt came up to tackle me. Foolish boy! Predictable conversation. K behind me all the way, mildly.

So to last night. I had just written ‘with two friends’ when Sharron arrived with one friend. Very sweet and warm. Had my little loo text, and a beautiful mounted photo of K with his hair spread out, the one he mentioned to me doubtless. Quite striking. Friend, Donna, sympathetic, we chattered amicably. I went off. House good, in every way. Saw at the back three Lalla -like ladies across the aisle from Donald and Ann. Could have been, but happily wasn’t.

Sharron embraced very warmly, and said ‘Brilliant. Better than last time.’ Donna extremely complimentary. Joe S looking great with his hair longer and sleeked back. D and A also full of (genuine) praise, taken aback by Joe, tho’ I’d told them. He was in a black T-shirt, jeans, and a dull olive bomber jacket. Perfectly conventional, but, I suppose not to them! Most successful meal, when Joe displayed his charm and intelligence. D was a bit better than usual and Joe being intellectual-ish, or the son of one, helped. Enslaved by Ann. D had no cheque- book, - ! And no lift home!! Joe and I had an excellent hour and half. Been out of work 11 months. I said he must change his agent, if only to give himself a new impetus. He is gifted, but also so personable. It’s absurd. Funny gruff boy. I fear he may put people off. I must try.

Saturday October 11 1986

Christine and Richie to show. Which was recorded. Forgot to take books in because K was so emotional before. Affectionate. But mainly. Have no room to say anything but that he said he can’t be in touch again till after I close. He’ll come to the last night, but he won’t speak of anything between then and now or after till next Monday week. It’s no use, it’s AGONY to be without him. She’ll see him. He had a love bite tonight.

Still Saturday. That was, of course, one in the morning, and I was rather drunk. I am not so desolate as I thought. I still wonder why there has to be complete silence on these occasions. He’ll see Sharron (perhaps) but of course more or less only for bed, which doesn’t interrupt his musical dream. But he’ll go to the pub and chat to his musicians. Couldn’t he pick up the phone, and have two words? One day I must go into it with him – it’s the one thing I still don’t quite understand and faintly resent. It’s slightly exacerbated by sitting here wondering how I’m going to pay his mortgage! But I don’t really resent it, because I am well aware that it is because I am the most powerful influence in his life.

Anyway, I got to the theatre about 5.30. He’d said he be there about 4.30, but it was dark. He arrived a minute or two later, with the mikes and Peter H’s leads, etc for recording the show. He fixed the mikes up on the lighting-grid and then had to move them a bit forward, undoing all the insulating tape. I went out to look for new batteries for the mikes. Eventually all was right, and I gave him some loud and quiet levels. I took Peter H off to the pub, with K finishing off and saying ‘Ill have a large gin and tonic – it’s been one of those days.’ Had an easy chat with P.H. – that’s his charm, his easiness, but I fear there is the weakness which so often goes with that sort of charm. K joined us, and said ‘I’m surprised I’m here with half an hour to spare. I went off in the car this morning to Kingston to look at a studio. The man wasn’t there and it was a nasty dirty little hole so I came away. I’d cashed my dole cheque before I left.’ Can’t remember the rest, but it was one of those days, with nobody in and everything going wrong. He was very funny about it. Dear little Cory Pulman turned up with a friend, Rachel. K talked animatedly, and was very funny turning every query about my show and The Infernal Machine, into a disquisition on his music and his difficulties.

I left to make-up. He joined me in the dressing-room a quarter of an hour later, and said, ‘I’m rather drunk’ put his arms round me and said ‘How are you?’ with such love.

He kept hugging and kissing me, told me about not seeing him for a week, and kissed me and went into the audience. It was a good show, though the laughter wasn’t as obvious as I’d have liked for the tape! I forgot the books!! I simply didn’t believe it when I looked round and they weren’t there. I thought someone has move them! Entirely because of him, he had hugged me so much it had distracted me. (I didn’t mean I blame him!)

Christine and Richard were waiting in the theatre. She does look rather gaunt now, and beaky. But saner. We went to the pub, and everyone was full of praise. I’ve never had praise like this. James Roose-Evans appeared and was surprised me by his gentle and sincere and quite awed compliments. ‘Perfectly judged.’ He’s seeing someone from the British Council next week, so – But I couldn’t to on an extended British Council foreign tour – it would kill me, literally.

So off went R & C, with me and Kevin, to Marine Ices. They hadn’t got K’s booking, he was nearly angry and despairing, but just in time, they made space, and made it even better by not charging us for the ices. K was still very lively, he and C talked about Ann, fairly uselessly, I fear. There is nothing to be done, until she asks. C. is better, I can’t remember one big jar, and there’s usually one. They drove me home and we left K in the road to find a taxi, waving. He slipped from my arms, and I got into the car, and talked continued the conversation calmly and cheerfully, and I don’t think either of them knew that I was staring forward into an empty void of a week.

I had a little drunken cry and wrote that drunken entry.

In the pub before the show.

Long talk with a perfectly sober Prim. Is going to give me a playbill of The Way to Keep Him. D sent her a wire on the first night, ‘If you find out darling, do let me know.’ They were both young actresses, having men trouble. She said that there was an ecstatic notice in the stage, with a picture on the front and a big picture in the middle of the notice. I feel quite guilty that I cancelled it a year ago! How good.

Every time he’s been to the show, he’s left his blue plastic case in my room. I’ve liked that because of the intimacy and him having the run of my room. And, quite separately, I’ve felt it to be a bit of him left to look after me. Last night, I realised that that that, too, was exactly why he’d done it. He said ‘I’ve left my blue case in the pub. What shall I leave, a shoe?’

Giles dropped in, decorating upstairs. It’s really surprising and delightful how easy we’ve already become.

What did I do before I knew K and after D died? How mysterious love and friendship are.

12.30 p.m.

Decidedly good audience. To my amazement, there were Pru Scales and Tim West. The same praise as everyone else. Wonderful. David and Patricia Long sweet and so good to see them, I must write.

And Ian and Hilary. Just like me to leave T and P and a very distinguished solicitor and his wife, and go off with an out of work actor working as a Bingo caller and his out of work girl- friend.

Ian gave me at last the video of Liebe Mutter. And I gave them their framed Lennon poster. All this in the restaurant. I think I must describe Tim and Prue carefully as my task for tomorrow.

I was amazed they were there – it makes me feel that it may perhaps be a Success, as opposed to an artistic success.

Message on machine that S is coming tomorrow with Jane Glover.

Sunday October 12 1986

There is something very pleasant to me about my friendship with Ian and Hilary. It never seems to meet a rough patch, but glides in mild shallows of affection. I fear they won’t end up together. Hilary is a very sweet, - too sweet, I think – girl, on the surface, but I think will show the odd misjudgements and oddnesses that lie under the surface. Ian is possibly one of those people who always chooses the wrong woman. But he really loves me and is v. warm in his expression of it.

Now Tim West and Pru Scales. He radiates composed witty comment. She is carefully detached, intelligent, almost too well-informed, and must give great offence to a lot of insecure people by her world-weary air of I have heard it all before, and hope it’s going to get interesting soon. Sad, because I don’t think she means it. There is a great geniality and quickness and wit and politeness on the surface, and I daresay I would enjoy a good deal more of their company. But I sense underneath a lot of churning disagreements.

Had a dream, usual state of anarchy, woodland, like a small war, great danger, searching hopelessly for K and D.

In the pub before show. An extraordinary assemblage of friends tonight. Phil Lawrence and Claire, Steve Wilson and a friend made since he went to London Univ. a fortnight ago, Timothy Langford, Edward F, and Joanna, and A Friend, and finally, Simon and Jane Glover, the conductor whom I have an instinct, I won’t click with. Well.

Phil Lawrence rang to say he was coming tonight. Steve W also. Both had spoken to K! Steve on Sat. n. obviously very short. Phil 3 times. Well, he’s rehearsing and playing next week. So I just must trust him, as I have – eventually – with everything else, to get where we have. It must be that I have so much effect on him that he dare not talk much to me at these times.

Monday October 13 1986

At Lyric Studio!

Mad.

Couldn’t write last night as it was too late or too much.

Perf. went really well, with plenty of laughter, and tension. Afterwards Simon was first round, and was a bit overwhelmed. It might have just caught him at a vulnerable moment, but I think it was because of his company. Jane Glover was so complimentary I was amazed. (Mind you, she may be no judge in the theatre!) Ed and Jo advanced, they were equally quite carried away. So we had all that – how difficult it is to remember compliments. In the shop were Phil L and Clare H. He was warm and admiring, as he’s always been with me in his blunt-edged way. She is a little different, there’s a sharp narrow little cutting edge finding fault inside that pretty little face, that will show itself as the years go by. And outside the shop Steve Wilson and Timothy Langford were hovering looking like a couple of football fans. What a funny life I have. They’re just starting a law course at King’s College? One of those amorphous London Universities that haven’t even got a ‘campus’, let alone an ‘ambience’ or even just a central place to exist in.

So there we were an extraordinarily disparate party. We went to the Monarch where we were joined by Caroline Goodall and Derek Hoxby! So we had one drink, Jo was so sensitive about the programme, saying, and meaning it, that if she did a one woman show, she would die of heart failure during the half. She is of so electrically sensitive a disposition that I really believe she might. It is difficult being the centre of a group like that – I sometimes think that’s why actors get the reputation for being superficial, trying to keep such a group happy with enough attention. Caroline is playing Hypatia at the Barbican and wants me to go.

I made a move to leave and the two boys asked Ed for his autograph – on my programme, of course they didn’t ask me for mine! And Ed didn’t suggest it. We said our goodnights with a little gleam of malice from Claire. Ed, Jo and I went to off to the car. The moment we were alone, they said ‘How very proud you must be. We haven’t said nearly enough.’ Ed said ‘It was an act of such courage to do this.’ Meaning, I knew, that he meant against a background of more or less utter lack of success and no money. We got into the car and went back to them. They had said before, did I mind no restaurant, and I really didn’t. Tho’ Jo was so apologetic! They told me in the car that the old lady downstairs they’ve been looking after had died the night before! Jo had come back from her play at Bath, and said ‘I suppose Timmy’s dead.’ And she was.

We had home-made chicken soup and an omelette. The little nurse was there in tears. They both went on and on about how good I was. He brought me a b’day present, a sponge and a box of Stephanotis from Floris. He opened the usual bottle of champagne! They are both so good and selfless. She was in despair about the play she’s in, the new Hugh Whitmore play, Breaking the Code. Directed by Clifford Williams. She can’t bear him. Nor could I, all those years ago at Canterbury. But he is not without gifts, as D managed to find out. But you have to be as secure as D was to get them out of him. I went down to look at ‘Timmy’s’ dead body. A strong aquiline face, and dignity in death.

Ed put me in a taxi, and said Put it on my account. Imagine, two cars and a taxi account. He is infinitely kind to me, with real thought.

This morning, something lovely happened. Jane Glover rang up and repeated her praise in almost more fervent terms. Then she said would I read Leopold Mozart’s letters in one of her concerts, Reading Nov 10. The other three concerts would be Robert Powell as Mozart. I think what I like best about this, is that I admire her artistry and it turns out she admires mine. I wrote a note to K about that.

I’m at home again now. What a nasty little play! Dishonest and sentimental. Not improved by the author directing and two really bad perfs, Dexter Fletcher survived all this so well that it shows remarkable talent. Or at least there is a potential there. He has some gifts. Otherwise I was alternately bored and faintly disgusted. The woman made the mistake of crying all the time through an ‘emotional’ scene. There was a lot of carefully orchestrated shouting suddenly, exactly when you expected, leading up a particularly loud abusive line; they would then circle each other, and the whole dreary stale ‘excitement’ would start all over again. Bad American acting. Oh it was stale.

Oh, Simon left a lovely message on my answering-machine, saying how good it was, ‘I am humbly proud to be associated with it’.

Tuesday October 14 1986

In the pub before the show. Still no casual booking. Except for someone called Oliver, the bookings are entirely my friends! Nicola Slade and Ben Whitrow, the Pescurds, the Barringtons, Crispin Redman. After all those notices and all that praise, is there no casual booking, no word of mouth to fill the theatre. It’s Buddy of course, she seems quite happy for there to be 20 people. ‘That’s good’. It is to me always a fatal sign if a theatre-owner or manager is not maddened by empty seats.

Both Simon and Bruno rang to get me to tape L’Eternal Retour Cocteau. There wasn’t a free tape at S’s and I presume poor Bruno hadn’t the money or the time or both, to buy one. £5.00.

Just now the barmaid called out ‘And what are you having, Angus?’ I looked up and nearly answered. It’s very very seldom that happens to me. It’s never been a common name, in England anyway, and now is less so, I would guess. Are there any six year old Anguses?

Winnie the Pooh was sixty yesterday. Like the Queen and me.

I miss him already – badly.

Later.

Yvonne was in front. Beautiful; with Judith Harte? Good gracious. Yvonne clung to me. I must see her.

Odd audience, because all my friends. The Barringtons, Jeanne and Richard, Crispin Redman, Yvonne and Judith. Ridiculous. They laughed almost too much. But how generous they were. To supper with Nicola and Ben Whitrow, who gave me full equal professional admiration. Crispin came back for a drink. I must not lose touch with him again. Except that I only want.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 71

October 15 1986 – November 18 1986.

Wednesday October 15 1986

In the pub before the show.

How odd, the last volume was less than a month.

First day when I haven’t felt tired. Wanted to get out of bed. Felix rang at 10.30, accused me quite crossly of not ringing back, when I hadn’t had the message. I could tell he didn’t believe me. He had sent the money, a £500 advance, which I always hope will make him do something. But it never does, as he has Salad Days. Yesterday dear dear Ed had rung Spotlight and got me a list of possible agents. I rang them and with varying degrees of politeness or indifference, they found they were too busy to come and see me. Only Tod Joseph …. whom I already knew. Still … Ed is being marvellous. He’s written to Peter James at the Lyric. No doubt Simon’s mentioned it too, so at least he’ll have heard my name, which is something. I decided to go and buy Sharron’s present, for the car and the loo. text and the photo. Picasso’s Cahiers, £36. Well, a hired car would have been £60 or £70 and its no use saying it didn’t cost her anything. I bet you she was worried K might bash it!

Then I went to Other Halves. Lisa Harrow taking up with a Polynesian punk of 16, and his friends sleeping there and making the house a pigsty and quarrels and love and … well, I saw the parallel. For the first time I got a real whiff of K’s identification with people outside the system. I mean, I’ve got it through him, but I suddenly saw them as him.

Bought the Bob Geldof book in paperback. Have read the first thirty pages in the tube from Tottenham C Rd to here. Like his conversation, captures you at once. A truth-teller, like D, tho’ I am sure his sisters and relations etc would repudiate that fiercely, as D’s did and as Daddy did me, and Lalla still does. If you see more of the truth than other people, you will naturally not be believed when you speak it.

Oh how I miss him for all these events, but the poor boy, I wouldn’t have him come every night anyway.

Later.

Roy M didn’t come. Gerard and Rose, Marissa M, Ron Berglas and new wife! Joan!, & Giles K etc.

Supper afterwards with last. More tomorrow.

But all swallowed up by K appearing to pick up an amplifier. Just a moment, but he met Joan! I put my arms round him, he was gone. But it was like a drink of cold water in the desert. Worth it all. There he was, existing, looking at me.

Thursday October 16 1986

Yes, last night there were a lot of people. Joan for two sentences! Ron Berglas and his wife! Gerard and Rose and dear Christina Muir from thirty years ago, as warm as ever. And Giles K and his brother Peter. As funny and easy as Giles tho’ rather more radical. Thoroughly entertaining supper, both brothers just my sort of humour, what luck. And Giles paid for the lunch meal. At end Peter said Send me the script. Good. As he’s just produced Michael Hordern as The Miser.

K said the machinery was playing up. How can he bear it? Ahs well, as long as it’s not me. But it was so good just for that minute. In my letter about Jane Glover I said at the end ‘Nobody’s opinion matters to me a straw in comparison with yours.’

Felix said was I interested in taking over from Frank Thornton in Me & My Girl, with third takeovers in the lead. No, I’m not. So I must tell him tomorrow. This morning Louise rang up, a film TV interview in Wardour St for Remington Steele. Two Americans. ‘Simon Callow? Oh yes, wasn’t he in Room with a View? Didn’t know he’d created Amadeus. So what chance me? Two nice smooth kindly illiterate ignoramuses of that little American film world. Read it a different way at once when he said. He was impressed. I hope they won’t take me as its rubbish and filming in Ireland. Oh the other hand, we need the money. So back home, long talk to dear Neil. He does love me.

Odd night tonight, the N Croydon Labour Party, six Nicolsons, John and Simon, S Thornley! and who?

Friday October 17 1986

In the pub.

Well, what a lot of people. The prospective candidate was there, a bland blandly-suited man, like me with Mrs Briggs in the show. A lot of laughs at every mention of Croydon. Dear Ben U and two Mackay friends of Donald, no relation. And Vanessa Nicolson, Ben’s daughter. Like Aola and Meno. All three Nicolson grandchildren are not formidable. There doesn’t seem to be, on the surface, any trace of Vita’s passion. A touch of Nigel. John and Simon and Joan were, full of praise heaping it on me. I was specially pleased when John said how many different notes and voices I struck. Just what I hoped, but don’t want laymen to notice!

Dinner at Marine Ices, John paid, all sunshine and easy laughter. I am lucky in my friends.

Today did have lunch with Simon. He’s having a bad time. I am worried, again he’s badly undercast it – he had the Caribbean boy one night, and Lambert Wilson the next, to try and improve their pronunciation, let alone teach them to act. Maggie is just radiating despise of them. She is a silly mean woman, or she sounds it. And S is a great admirer. He cast them because they are ‘exotic’ and ‘different’. Because they gave him a thrill, in fact. If this were a film, it might be all right.

I asked him how much he’d want K next week, only the run-thro’ on Friday. I said about him turning up on Wed for an amplifier. ‘It seems to be going all right’ S said, ‘I had an extended talk on Thur night, he had the viola-player with him, they were having a joint.’ !!

Ha, I’ll twit him with that. Doesn’t worry me at all except that it might mean he’s really worried. More likely the viola-player was worried! I shall tease him.

Oh God how I long to talk over everything with him. And I know I’m going to offer him more time with the equipment!

Saturday October 18 1986

In the other pub before the show – the Monarch! The other one doesn’t open till seven on a Saturday, mysteriously.

So last night. More unreserved praise, and incidentally a splendid notice for me in Punch. ‘Elegant’. So. Hazel and Tom just said ‘Triumph.’ And Roy M was just as complimentary in his more reticent way. Phil Sterio was there with his black girlfriend; I said was he playing for IM (knowing he wasn’t) and of course got the usual ‘chippy’ look. Poor Phil.

In the restaurant all was success. Roy and Hazel got on with much animation, and of course I’d forgotten, we’re all Brums. He convulsed her, - all of us – with his various Brum accents. I’d said in my note, we’d go halves. Oh and Nigel and Joy came. Ah!

In was the best house for laughter yet, some of it actually needed controlling.

He came back, Roy – and stayed the night. Touching about his father. Coughing up masses of phlegm at home, he said, ‘Oh, I’m all right now I’ve got rid of that.’ Smoked 60 a day, dead a fortnight later 62. !

Talked in my bath as it were. I went to the shops and the P.O. and then collapsed.

I called out to him once or twice.

He’s booked 3 seats for, I suppose, him and Peter H and Sharron. So she’ll go back with him and I won’t, and I feel a pang. A ridiculous pang, because in fact I don’t want to go back with him at all, except in my heart. To that flat and the mess and the excruciating boredom of a recording session! At the end of this run, I couldn’t. I don’t think I want him even at home. I suddenly see why he doesn’t want me – the work is too much for an attachment like ours to be at full strength as well. Except when we’re working together. Oh how I love him tho’.

Sunday October 19 1986

Waiting at home, cos he’s coming to wire up the theatre for recording again.

It was a dead house in comparison with last night. I thought I was less good as a result, but the praise was the same! Had a minute with Lalla and Donald, but was determined not to be assailed by their stupid and insensitive remarks. Upstairs had good talk with Simon Stokes and Jenny Topper. She is a bit slap over the wrist, but I like them both. And there they were, and they can’t have wanted to come.

Also dear Kristine Howarth. No sign of Dick Chapman and Ben Duncan, and realised I’d not left them a note saying Wait. It wasn’t really deliberate, but I was glad when I remembered I’d heard no more after taking Ben out. Just like them to come back when there was some advantage.

So off to supper with Philip and Damien D. I am very fond of Philip, despite all his faults and vanities, partly, I expect, because he’s very fond of me. His praise means a lot to me professionally, and Damien’s as being artless. D’s voice has broken, but otherwise he’s not taller or markedly more adult looking. He may be v. good-looking in a perfect blond way, a pity, as those looks always seem to have a bad effect on their possessor. The only think that worries me about him is his self-conscious aren’t I rather outrageous? look, spoiled in fact. Tho’ it doesn’t show in any other way – yet.

Philip drove us both mad by taking three times as long to eat his rice as we did. He can’t talk and eat. V. interesting about Brookside which he’s directing. Two episodes. The smart looking lorry-driver is a pain, head turned. And Annabelle, before he could speak, I said ‘Perfect fool, and can’t act.’ Yes.

It was pleasant and undemanding.

Later. K rang while I was in the bath so I got a sweet message, when he found I wasn’t there. I could ring back any time, as there wasn’t so much pressure as he’d thought. So I did. Heavenly. Hadn’t had a joint at all, but hadn’t liked to say he wasn’t, as she was, and it sounded repressive! So he’ll be there tonight, and we’ll arrange.

Nobody else’s opinion matters a straw in comparison.

In the pub, after all. He arrived on the dot of 7.0 with Sharron, who has a cold and thanked me for the book, with much feeling and rather repetitive words. He’s putting up the wires and I had to have my Guinness at the right time before the show. So here I am in the Monarch because of the music in the Lock, alone, as I am as I stand at the door waiting to go on. So it’s right, I suppose. I mean, he couldn’t come anyway, he’s got to do the wires.

I hope I can be good tonight. For everyone. For Simon.

For him.

Tuesday October 21 1986

I was good, but was too drunk on Sunday, and too tired on Monday, to write any more.

As we packed everything up, and they started the get-out, I felt nothing but exhilaration. Odd. He came round as usual during the half and held me a long time and kissed me. I said ‘Oh let it not be another seven years before I’m on stage again.’ How rare he is, he didn’t say ‘Of course it won’t.’

He and Simon came round smiling involuntarily, as it were. He went and got on with the unwiring. S introduced me to his mother and aunt. All I can say is that his mother seems a polite angel in comparison with his aunt. ‘I never believed for a moment that you would have stood as a Socialist.’ The first broadside delivered after I had glimpsed her ranging about the stage with tight hair piled high. So indelibly aggressive she was that S’s mother was forced to be gracious. Fascinating but a mere scratch on the surface of my mind. Except for S.

I packed up, Peter H and Jon H in their different ways, hugged and congratulated me in their different ways. K was loading up Sharron’s car with all the equipment, it was all all right. Buddy Dalton came out to say goodbye. I must attempt a sketch of her one day – and said ‘What a lot of willing slaves’, and I thought – Yes, here have I got Neil and Jon H and Peter H, all outstandingly good-looking boys, fetching and carrying for me. I kissed him and off we went, and had a very jolly supper with Jon H and Peter H extra, so the cold chicken and salad and Chateauneuf went round very well. Just but very well. And so well did the talk flow and so exactly drunk did I get, that I was able to keep at bay my need of him.

It is basically better, in that I really only yearn in vacuo. Knowing that I will see him forever. Jon H stayed the night and was off early to college. I collapsed.

Today George R comes for his first pied a terre night.

Later. 12.0 ish.

He arrived at 5.0 as he said. Was most delicate in his entry into my life. Was off and out to a lecture and dinner by 6.30. I haven’t heard him creep back in yet.

K rang at 11.30. Working. And Thur. may not work – He’s playing the music to S tomorrow night, and he may have to re-do it (Almost certainly!)

Wednesday October 22 1986

I never heard George R come in. He said he slept well, and I did leave him severely alone for his breakfast. Next time even more as he can use the gas-jets in his room.

Wonderfully considerate and easy. Poor Julian. He mistook his delicate manners for weakness.

Went to see the film Don Boyd returned with, ‘Captive’. Not bad in a showing would-be- fashionable way. I see, he only knows what went last time. Music by The Edge and Michael Berkeley Workmanlike but no originality at all. In fact it made me worried that D.B. had liked K’s music so much! Still it was well finished as a film. So he may be all right as a producer if someone else has the creative force and taste. K is playing the music to S tonight.

Thursday October 23 1986

K rang to say our meeting was probably off, he’d let me know in quarter of an hour. He did, and it was off, as keyboards were coming at one. I took the armchair off his shoulders, metaphorically, and rang the Offstage and Alec said it was all right to leave it for a few days. Then I rang Neil – it turned out he was going to have a van next weekend for himself and Tony Boaden. Wonderful, so it will cost nothing. So that’s that. He was so sweet about cancelling, almost too delicate with me, - I said ‘I always understand when it’s work.’ ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘Well, let’s say 8.0 ish at the Fish and Chip shop. I won’t want to do anything, just a short meal, I’m very tired and might just want to crash out.’ I went to the shops, and to Lyric as K also said Can you do me a favour? Five seats for the 15th for my mum, dad, my Aunty Pat & Uncle Alf. I said I wanted the seats cleared up. To my surprise he’d arranged to go with me to the first preview and with Sharron to the first night. To my equal surprise he at once, slightly irritated, said he’d go to the preview with Sharron, instead, without consulting her at all. Gracious, is he as sure of her as that? Or is she just very undemanding? Observations. The misunderstanding arose, because as ours often do, because we had had a preliminary talk, as I thought, during which I’d said feelingly, that I’d rather go to the first preview than the first night, that I hated first nights. It simply never occurred to me that he didn’t just know that I would have to be at the first night! For Simon’s sake, apart from him. And that I wanted to be sitting with him when his music went under judgement. I expected such an important matter as first night seats would be talked over more definitely and carefully. As usual, we’ll both give a bit.

I think, too, that he’ll be glad he didn’t take Sharron to the real first night – I don’t think she’d like it at all, or any party there may be after. Also booked the five, and three for the last night in the middle of the front row of the dress-circle. In case ….

Yes, I was pleased and amazed at the immediacy with which he turned it round.

Friday October 24 1986

Too sad to write. Not a quarrel this time. Just my depression.

Saturday October 25 1986

I woke up this morning to such a grey load. Yesterday was going to be such a good day, and it would have been but for me. I lunched with Ian Burns at Pasta Fino, - as usual, I took comfort in his company, partly because I have taken on his difficulties, and partly because he is one of the few people who know – really know, how much K means to me. His range of feeling is like mine. I went off to a movie – he had an interview – The Boy Who Had Everything with Jason Connery. I realised who he reminded me of at last – Mike Parsons. He was rather good, so was his mother, played by his real mother, Diane Cilento. I’d forgotten how good and original she was.

At 6.0 ish I was at Tottenham Court Rd. Thought I ought to ring him as I wasn’t going home before we met. ‘Come round now if you want, I’m going to have a bath.’ Got there about 6.45. I’d bought a bottle of gin and some beer on the way. He was in the bath. ‘I’ve brought gin and beer. Do you want either?’ ‘Got a beer.’ ‘How long have you been in?’ ‘Five minutes.’ ‘I’ve got a long wait.’ ‘Be patient.’ A little later, I mentioned my notices. He came in with them, - I felt quite guilty when he got back in the bath. He’d only got three, no Guardian. The F Times was a bit nasty – I was glad I hadn’t read that. I think one answer I’d make to him, Michael Coveney, was that most of the criticisms of me he wouldn’t have made probably if he’d known I’d only rehearsed a fortnight or opened on tour. For example, he said I’d remembered I was cold to explain the way I undressed. That is true, but needs a further gloss, - I wasn’t far enough on the first night to remember everything all the time. Very interesting, it was a notice really unsympathetic to the feel of the whole thing. (I think he must have been one of the ones S meant when he said the critics had it in for him. Francis King sat by him and saw a completely different show. Times grudging, but not too bad.

He came in, dressed – the bed is in the front room again, and ordered a taxi, ‘my feet’, paid me £50 for the tickets, - Simon brought him £400 in notes on Wed night. He said that Simon had approved the music but there were still a few changes to be made. O God I hope S isn’t disappointed. Especially as there was more disquieting news. I cannot remember whether I recorded that S had to spend 3 hrs on separate nights, with both Lambert Wilson and the West Indian boy, just trying to correct their pronunciation. Later, at our Thursday lunch last week, he said ‘It’s crunch time for the black actor, I either sack him, or engage a voice coach and an acting coach and give him a crash course.’ I said to K, ‘I think he should have sacked him. Crash courses don’t work for acting.’ K said ‘That’s what Simon says now.’ I said ‘How was the run through?’ He was going to the run-thro’ at 1.0 yesterday. It was cancelled. ‘There’s also been some disaster with the set.’

Oh dear. And yet, I believe that S will snatch something out of the fire.

So off we went. Halfway there he decided we wouldn’t go to the fish and chip shop, and when we got out, he took me to Young’s, a spacious pleasant Chinese restaurant. Presumably like the one S took him to in the Fulham road. And it was pleasant. Space between the tables, altogether more civilized than Aquilino or Mr Bumble etc. I let him choose.

I still can’t chart exactly which way round things went wrong. He ordered soup for me, and some little rolls of batter with tasteless vegetables inside. (Perhaps it was the batter round no taste which was the first put-off). Then two main dishes with chicken and mushrooms, and beef and something, a bowl of rice. And a bottle of Beaujolais. By the time the main course was served, he was using chopsticks quite well, I was certainly feeling absurdly alienated ‘cos he could use chopsticks and I couldn’t. ‘Don’t be so negative.’

That was the prejudice. There were two other elements. First was the culinary reality. I ate the soup, but couldn’t face the big pieces of vegetable in it, which he speared. I seemed already too full. (I slightly resented, I suppose, that he never fancies a first course. But then he was paying.) The main course reminded me what I partly loathe about C meals – no plate. That awful little bowl in which everything is on top of itself. I had three desert-spoonfuls of rice, and two or three little bits of chicken, with, reluctantly, bits of mushroom-stalks which I didn’t recognise at first, as they were glutinous and tasted of absolutely nothing but glut. I didn’t finish what I tool. But I reckon that I ate about an eighth of what I usually eat for dinner, and my appetite was completely killed. That was the culinary reality, perhaps compounded by the dishes spread out on the table throughout.

But there was another reality. The moment I realised that he had decided on a Chinese meal instead of playing into me in every way, (I don’t mean I resented that, because he wanted to give me a new treat, like swimming) – it suddenly triggered off the fact that I was with the one person in the world with whom I had the right to be entirely myself. Poor boy. Over me swept a wave of the most profound depression. I felt the Nicolson had been useless, that nothing had come of it, told him of ringing round the useless agents. I didn’t tell him that again I had no money and was like Sisyphus, at the bottom of the slope. Apart from that one remark about not being negative he was sublime. He dealt admirably with my childish sulks, and my adult gloom, and my actual descriptions of the my actual difficulties, amid the ruin of his treat. ‘Well, no more Chinese meals.’ I kept sinking into terrible black silences.

The only bright second I remember in the middle of it all, was his saying of the mix this weekend, ‘Tomorrow is my first night.’

Well, I still think chopsticks are inefficient. They could do nothing that a fork cannot and fail at many things a fork can. As witness people holding the dish near their face and using the chopsticks as an inefficient spoon.

I am glad I did not put down my despair. Useless. But I do put down that we parted in love. He had not lost his temper with me, as he well might have done. And he’s said he might see quite a lot of me next week, production week. How wonderful, if true.

Later.

Am re-recording Infernal Machine. Am afraid I think it a great big bore. Let me be proved wrong.

Amazingly forgot to record that when I went to book the tickets, I saw the poster for the first time. Rather silly, looks like the cover of a silly ‘witchcraft-demon’ novel, But on the bottom, there is a tiny little line of print, saying Directed by Simon Callow, Lighting by Geoffrey? Sound composed by Kevin Malpass! That line of print reduced me to tears in King St. All his struggle and suffering in that one line. If I have done nothing else but get him that one line, I have done something in my life.

Sunday October 26 1986 Monday October 27 1986

Deadly quiet day yesterday, Sunday, trying to make myself clear up my desk and clean the flat. Trying. Today I have cleared up my desk, fourteen or so letters.

Barbara Barrington said how contemptuous ‘they’ all were that Julian S was not at Carey’s funeral. Obviously, I suppose, I was excused because of my one man show. What amazed me was that ‘they’ all went. Myles and John managed to get to a funeral, but not to my one- man show. I’m glad they didn’t come really – expect they would have irritated me. In their different ways they are both so ignorant. How negative they all are! I’m sure they slag me off in one way or another, but also I’m sure they marvel that I can face Simon. And K! Malc doesn’t even marvel, he perceives so little. I suppose, with all humility, I experience with all these friends from the past, what stars experience with everyone. That amazement that one can live in a high artistic atmosph. Let alone desire it.

Rang Donald about Trust. Glad to say confirmed Lalla’s idiocy. Said Ann was screaming hearing Lalla’s end of the conversation. But he is little better. Lalla is a living illustration of familiarity breeding contempt.

Richard Smith, that nice plumber, for the second time failed to come. Though bath tap is running so like a tap that I cannot have a bath or wash up. Disappointing.

I wonder how he’s getting on. Three days to mix. Good. But I worry about S and the whole production. If there is something wrong with the set, well … Bruno?!

Tuesday October 28 1986

A job. One by one. The vet prog. BBC 14-20 Nov. £400. Relief. And quite soon.

5.30.

He rang to say ‘I’ll be staying at yours tonight.’

Wonderful.

10.10 rang to say he wasn’t finished, so wouldn’t. Will write tomorrow. All I feel now is he’s not here.

Wednesday October 29 1986

Low. Bored. Not just him. Tho’ that doesn’t help. With the theatre so near, I don’t go out in case he comes round. Silly? No doubt. But you have to protect yourself against pain. And I just know that if I came back from anywhere or anyone and found he’d been round, I would be sunk in depression and I’m in a cleft stick as I’m hard up and can't entertain or get around as much as I'd like, or as K thinks, means that I expect one day he’ll reproach for me a recluse, when its because I’ve kept everything in reserve for him. Irony.

Oh, the bathroom tap running and Richard Smith not coming, got worse – R.S. after being sincere on the phone still didn’t come, for the second time - and the tap by the second conversation had gone to the point that the Ascot was now running hot all the time. So I turned the Ascot off, and then of course couldn’t turn the tap on without an explosion. So, I rang, having been without hot water for the inside of a week, a firm from the Yellow Pages, - she said, ‘This afternoon at 4.0.’ He eventually arrived at 7.45. In a Rastafarian knitted hat. But at a second glance – I mean my first glance is always with, as it were, Lalla’s or sitcom’s eyes, - he was half English with pale brown skin and bright blue eyes, his first words were ‘What beautiful pictures.’ Did the job v. well in twenty minutes. £43. Hm.

Still, one cause of depression lifted!

Later. Oh but God, Simon and him, and the show and I know nothing.

But it’s not his fault.

Thursday October 30 1986

12.15pm

So today I shook myself and went to the Lyric for lunch. I sat at a table in sight of the pass- door. It was really quite tame, like a fantasy come too partly true. K came out and walked straight to me as if he’d known I was going to be just there. Shortly after, Simon joined us, so I had a good twenty minutes. Oh dear. I was little prepared as Robert Eddison had come up and in answer to my ‘I hear there are difficulties’ had said ‘It’s a catastrophe.’

Maggie arrived in tears. Simon said most, of course. And K couldn’t say much, except when we were alone. He’s not too happy either. The entr’acte music (which S described as ‘exquisite’!) is drowned by the noise of the scene change. Also his sound level hour and a half was ruined by ‘someone drilling metal’. Also S said that he’d had to treat K like a sound man, ‘No, turn it down more’ etc. But at least K could smile, so he’s not in one of his negative black moods – yet. None of this necessarily worries me, after all, the realities of artistic life have to be coped with, and especially in one’s youth, you have to overcome unfavourable conditions, and make yr. place and name before you have any possibility of ideal conditions. S said K just couldn’t believe the noise in the entr’acte, made worse, Bruno tells me, because, to save money, they didn’t build the rake in such in a way that the safety curtain would fit flush to the stage, as it should do, to cut out most of the noise. No doubt the noise is bad, and a great distraction from the music and the above reason is a bad one. Nevertheless, I am not sorry that K will learn that, the entr’acte music’s primary function is to cover the scene change.

More serious is the feeling that the whole thing is a disaster. In which his music may be unnoticed, and not bring him any kudos. Like the Studio. S said it had been, without question, the worst week of his life. ‘Maggie has just spoken to me as I’ve never been spoken to by anyone.’ ‘I shan’t direct again – it’s just killed it for me. She is so negative.’ Well, I did warn him, he took her word about Edward and that annoyed me. Rather than mine.

Now what did I feel on all this? That strange and disgraceful faint exhilaration at others’ discomfiture and failure. A sadness at my dear friend perhaps not making it. A selfish feeling that it would hurt his career, and therefore mine. I had hoped I might be in a similar production of his. Also a certain bewilderment as to what exactly was so wrong. Maggie is obviously v. unhappy, but then she usually is. The set’s playing up tho’ I can't get from anyone what’s wrong with it (Bruno said ‘We’re simply doing something new.’ Hm. S said the Actors are finding it difficult, tho’ we explained it and said it was difficult, they still… K was no help!) Maggie’s asked for ceaseless dress rehearsals. Nothing wrong with that from my point of view. And the Caribbean boy is hopeless, tho’ everyone agrees Lambert has improved (I wonder.) Except for the Carib. boy, there’s nothing that can’t be got right, I suppose. And nobody has said anything’s wrong with the play. In fact, nobody’s mentioned the play at all. Tres odd.

Because I think it’s rather boring!

But there you are, it was so lovely to see him, and get rid of my stupid depression. Which I did, completely. And tonight, more amazement. About 10.45, Sharron rang up to ask what was happening about tomorrow. She hadn’t heard from him since ‘before the weekend.’

Didn’t know the preview was cancelled, so had been expecting to go tonight! She’s been worse off than me. That made me feel at once humble and glad.

Friday October 31 1986

Yes, once more his view is turning in on himself when difficulties occur. He won’t talk of them while they are going on. I don’t really understand why he didn’t ring her – I can’t excuse it.

Today I went for lunch at the Lyric in case S had brought the notices etc. tho’ I hoped he hadn’t! Was sitting eating with my back to the counter on purpose. Kept turning round from time to time, suddenly saw K in the queue, looking all right. Turned back again. Turned to him again and stood up. He wasn’t looking. And I sat down, thinking he must come to me if he wanted.

Still don’t know if he saw me, - he’s quite capable of not seeing St Paul’s Cathedral if it was sitting eating beef salad with its back to him. Looked round a little later and he’d taken his stuffed baked potato – I guessed - back to the theatre. I felt no pain, no resentment, none of that, what a relief. That’s all over. Amazing.

So I only felt a faint interest that if he had seen me, he might easily have come over and had two sentences. But even on the telephone, he finds that difficult in some way. I think his concentration is more fragile than mine. The shell of it, once broken, is broken, whereas I can go into the brackets and out it again with no difficulty.

‘Two men’ a German film. Thin. Kept not listening. But it passed the time.

The other element that worries me about IM is that if it’s a failure in a bad way, it may put him off theatre as a medium.

Cooked some Spag Bol for him. I’ve had something for him every night, and laid the table and left him a note. Because I can’t bear him to be without the chance of being looked after if he needs it. Thank goodness he doesn’t know.

Later, I wonder if S or K in their very different ways have any idea how utterly empty my life has been since the Nicolson. In every way.

Saturday November 1 1986

He didn’t come, of course, he has the car.

He rang up four times this morning, very quick ‘Have you got a ticket?’ It turned out he couldn’t get a ticket for Sharron! But two calls later, he got a couple of comps! Last call was ‘I’ll see you in the bar at 7.0, when I can give a 30 second chat.’ Why 30 secs? Is he doing some of the button-pressing? He sounded fairly cheerful. Not that blind flushed anger as sometimes. He had to change, so Sharron’s bringing him some clean clothes. How much nicer for him if he’d been staying here.

I hope I can persuade him to come back for supper.

I am very nervous.

Monday November 3 1986

Well. We were late last night, the play began late. Twenty mins late. Sharron and I came on here and started eating. He didn’t get back till after 12 and picked at his food.

So to begin.

I got to the theatre and found Sharron sitting in the d-stairs foyer with the bags of clothes. She’d brought a pair of black dress trousers in case he wanted to dress up. Some hope. She obviously hadn’t known where to go or wait. I found the man I'd given the note to the other day and gave the clothes to him. We had a drink. She is v. nice. V. tactful and undemanding. And seems to like me! Again to my amazement she knew almost nothing of what was going on. She hadn’t spoken to him since the weekend – she knew nothing. Strange boy. It is of no help for him to pour it out. He finds it weakening in some way. Except, it seems, to me. Sometimes. He arrived looking hollow eyed and no wonder. We sat down, he was bit wild with tiredness and strained, a bit high rather. Sweet. They were in the middle of the front row of the dress-circle. I was at the end of C. I didn’t mind a bit. I could see him and get to the loo easily, which I did three times and wished for more. I was very bored.

First, his music was superbly good. It complemented but also imposed itself without ever intruding. No doubt I’m biased, but it seems to me the best complete thing of the evening. The play ran 3 ¼ hours and every scene is five or ten minutes too long. Maggie is more restrained than usual, no doubt from terror and fatigue. I still cannot take the fact that she’s funny when she wants to be funny and tragic when she has to be tragic, and because she is very gifted, she does both with some intensity. She cannot convince that she is one woman, however. She can carry the audience with her – she has to, as there’s almost nothing else. Robert E. is acceptable and good in the last scene – the only bit of the play that really came alive for me. The three young people are in varying degrees hopelessly over-parted. Poor things, faced with those over-long French disquisionary scenes in translation. Oh dear, it was dull. The Sphinx was a pretty little girl, not bad, I dare say, in an ordinary pretty little part. As it was. I said to K savagely in the interval ‘Why doesn’t she marry that stockbroker in Esher now?’ Lambert Wilson is second to third rate and not very glamourous. The Caribbean boy is hopeless. All in all, I was depressed lest it should drag K down with it. It may in the notices, but at least a proper audience will see it.

Sharron is very sensible and judged correctly. K was adorable. ‘My girl friend and my best friend’. Picked at a bit of salad, left most of Spag Bol. Over-tired, stomach shrunken from not eating. Went to bed reasonably happy, after waving them goodbye. Which is a minor miracle.

Tuesday November 4 1986

To Joan H for lunch. Silverside, a bit tasteless. Sally in great form, off to Australia again on the 12, and after time there is going to attempt to go round the world! She seems entirely to lack any faculty for apprehension.

Wednesday November 5 1986

Oh, what a fully day, Neil had arranged to do the armchair today so I couldn’t say no. Up early to sign on. Then back to go to Jane Glover. She lives in a road that looks like a lot of mansion blocks but isn’t. The flat is pleasant and open but rather bare and anonymous. Music-room with a large black-framed repro of the famous Mozart picture, my one perk from the TV series. She is very gentle in manner, with eyes which are serene limpid, grey shadows under them. Very tall, with a very long neck. A strength under the mild exterior. We first talked of the IM. She’d been last night and I think disliked it more even than we do. She hated the set, ‘and I introduced Simon to Bruno.’ She was just distressed seeing Robert and Maggie ‘struggling down those stairs.’ The black plastic has gone now – she said that Maggie had said ‘Robert and I coming down those stairs sounded like an enormous, toffee- paper rustling.’ She thought exactly the same of the play as we do and we had a really good talk about it. For about fifteen minutes. Then we got on to Mozart, - she hadn’t got a script ready! She did say how badly she felt, she’d lost the script Simon used, but I was a little surprised and miffed. We talked over the material, I read it, and she said it would be in the post today. So off I went, home to lunch, and then out again to the Offstage where I was to meet Neil. Strange to be there with no nerves. There was the chair in what had been that little dressing room in which I felt so much. The move out of the theatre the back way was surprisingly easy, the chair was lighter than I thought, Neil wedged it in the back of his Mini with the soft roof off, and put back on top of it as it had started to rain! N was worried that the chair was blocking his rear mirror, and therefore illegal – at that moment two policemen passed the end of the alleyway. The rain didn’t come to much fortunately, we got there and saw straightaway, as I knew, that it wouldn’t go up the stairs. I said we’d just leave it in the hall. K had said in the morning how guilty he felt not being there, but that he wasn’t seeing the show tonight and might be back at 6.0, So I said and help me haul it up through the window. He rang more or less as we arrived and had to whisper as he was in the sound-box – I thought he was joking at first – and I said I’d wait for him. However, Neil characteristically decided to try and haul it inside. So there we were, with the chair on a dust sheet by the front door, with Neil tying that piece of rope K happily had at hand, round and round that chair, breathing hard and we made the first try. The knots slipped. Then we tried again and got it halfway up and the rope began to break. N had also realised that the windowsill and the little parapet over the door got in the way, so could we get a ladder? We could. I asked Derek- next-door, and he was polite as usual, brought it, and within seconds, I was taking the strain upstairs, N was climbing the ladder supporting the chair, helped by Derek. We’d got it poised on the windowsill, at the moment of maximum strain, and Derek ran upstairs to help me haul it in. He stopped at the open door, and knocked! ‘Come in’ I managed. And in the chair came. And I had still the delightful feeling that I would wait for him to come home and we might have one of our unarranged evenings.

N rang his agent, and his agent rang back, and N had more or less lost the ‘Queenie’ job because they'd cast the ‘Legend’ girl instead of Joanne Whalley, as Merle Oberon. Typical American obtuseness.

K rang again, and, so sweet, said he’d been worried about my back. Also said he wouldn’t be home till after seven. I said I’ll wait, it was then 4.45, - he said ‘Sharron’ll be coming, we’re going to the fireworks.’ ‘Oh’ I said, ‘then I’ll go back with Neil.’

It’s all right. But after all that struggle, I would have liked to have been there to see him, to see his face when the chair was magically there, and to have had a mild evening with him after all this time. But it’s always thus, I do the hard work, and struggle and pay the bills, the others, and not only girl-friends, get the careless times. He rang me at 7.30, when he got in, even then, Sharron was sitting in the chair.

Thursday November 6 1986

Well, that was partly the result of tiredness. Neil went on and on and on about losing that job, for which, he told me now he’d lost it, he was to get £13,000 a week! He sat here, ringing Linda and drinking my gin – he hadn’t had a drink for weeks and got high at once, and grabbed the Queenie script he’d lent me, tore it to shreds, swearing the while, and spat on it. He rang Linda to tell her that he was sorry he’d forgotten to buy any fireworks, to which she responded that she’d brought some. Then he spoke to Lucy aged 3½ to say he was sorry, Daddy couldn’t be there! He could have left K’s a half-hour before he did, and he stayed here at least two hours. I don’t understand quite. Except that of course I know he can't cope with responsibility and that he can behave badly with me because I will always love him.

Today to lunch with John N. Said one word of my money troubles, but no more. He paid for lunch and was very kind as always. What a mess my life is.

Had my hair cut, and went to Moss Bros to be fitted for my tails for the concert on Monday.

Forgot to record that on Monday I went for a fitting to the new BBC wardrobe block, just round the corner from Acton Hilton. Very pleasant and easy and spacious. When I got back home there was a message from K ‘Please ring me urgently.’ It turned out that one of the pieces of equipment had to go back a day early. It had been hired, R&W said. He was annoyed, as he was so busy. ‘Could I do it?’ Of course. But he might get away. He rang back to say he could do it. I said ‘Would it make your life easier if I did it?’ ‘Yes, I’ve so much to do here.’ So up I went in the rain. After all this hard work and up three or four nights, the flat was really untidy – I say that so you can imagine. It was as if half a dozen burglars had gone berserk – the bed in the front room, the bank of equipment in the bedroom with mugs and plates about, from some days ago. Just like me!

I had just unplugged the what-ever-it-was that he had described to me in great detail, when the phone rang. George at Raper & Wayman. The hirer had cancelled, they didn’t want it back after all, until the all the equipment went back tomorrow. Here I was at quarter to four having come up (and to go back) in the pouring rain, to no avail. So, that’s how I know I really love him, my first thought was ‘Oh thank God he didn’t interrupt his work and trail up to B Rd for nothing.’ He was so grateful, and rang so specially, after getting my message, at the theatre, ‘I’m sorry you had all that hassle.’ So sweet when he uses a word like that, to me, it shows he’s moved.

Friday November 7 1986 Saturday November 8 1986 Sunday November 9 1986

To Ciano in the morning for a hair cut for Monday. First night of Infernal Machine. Extraordinary moment. We were going to meet for lunch, which I thought strange, since I couldn’t imagine them being called for the morning, and indeed it proved to be the case. He rang the theatre, so I was paged in the restaurant. I didn’t know that meant you picked up a telephone on the bar. So I went round to the stage-door, and the Liz Charnley-like stage-door keeper said K wanted me to ring him at home. (K told me, giggling, that she thought I hadn’t got the message, ‘cos as above, so he’d described me, ‘an old man, with a bald head and glasses.’ – I said, Well, surely I could still be middle-aged.) So I rang him at home – three sweet messages on the machine – and he said he wasn’t called till 5.0, - Sharron answered, he was out seeing the milkman – so I said After all, what would you do all afternoon till 5.0. ‘Exactly, see you at 7.00.’

And I put the ‘phone down, and thought ‘what would you do all afternoon, only spend it with me.’

But I daresay his instinct is wiser. So there I was at seven, leaving messages at the stage door, only it was locked – on a first night so, back in the bar I gave my note to Simon to Bruno, with his card.

I'd written and rewritten my letter to him.

Dearest Kevin

Your beautiful work is at last in front of a London audience, and I don’t mean just the critics. During this run, a lot of good judges will hear your music – Jane Glover is just a start, and that must be to the good.

All that I’ve given you and been to you, has helped to bring you to this point, so I’m marking it by not giving you a present. (If you insist on, you can say that the armchair and its delivery was your present.) To put it another way, your present tonight is all I’ve tried to do for you, and a wiping out of all idea of owing or obligation between us.

But nothing I have done would be any good if it weren’t for your own courage and remarkable gifts. I have been so impressed all over again by not only the hours of work – many people can stay up all night and produce hysterical work to prove it – but by the control and intensity of your work. One without the other is useless. And all that in a new medium in a production beset by infinite problems. In other words, you have kept your head, and let loose your exquisite music.

I hope you won't think in patronising of me to say, I am so proud of you.

He turned up and said Let’s go somewhere else, so we went to a pub further down. Sharron came again with a friend on some on his free tickets on Thursday. The friend started to talk in the entr’acte. Shar had to tell her. So many people regard music as a licence to talk. As we were going down in the lift, he said ‘Sharron’s been wonderful.’ ‘Helping you clean your flat?’ ‘No, not being angry being ignored.’ Can’t remember his exact words, but that’s what he meant. Didn’t seem v. nervous. Went on not reading my letter. Of course I know why, in case I sat looking at him for reaction. Which I don’t do, but I understand. I went to the loo to give him a chance, but he didn’t take it! He went to the loo and read it there, and said shortly ‘Thanks for yr. letter.’ That’s all I ever get! I really do wonder sometimes whether he hates my letters. A bit. So down we sat in the circle. Well, it was a bit better. They’d taken the plastic off the walls and stairs, so that it looked like stone. Maggie kept the red side of the stole outwards and didn’t fuss so much with it. That sort of thing. But it was a much better night for me, as I could settle down and listen only to every inch of his music. It is really good. Thank God. Not that he’s often let me down in that dept! The play was wellishly received.

(I’m writing on Sunday now, so I might as well say here and now that the Sunday notices have been good, much better than I think he deserves, but I’m not going to complain. I would have felt it wrong if his excellent work had sunk along with the mediocre parts. Now at least he’ll be associated with success. I was struck that we came back after the interval, and all sat there like lemons for getting on for five minutes with nothing happening. K turned round to Peter James (who runs the theatre) and complained. I was amazed the P.J is not at all formidable, and quite smarmily collapsed in front of K.

In the interval, S came up to me and said ‘I wince every time you wince.’ I’ve never seen him look quenched and a little shrunken before.

After the show, there was a rather ghastly little wine –party as usual dominated by nobody- knows-who. The assistant stage door-keeper’s substitute’s relations. I had a word or two with Robert E. I knew nobody else. K stayed at all only because S had asked him to write music to cover the interval, partly because of the aforesaid gap. He didn’t want to, for all sorts of reasons, the main one being that he didn’t want to write a lot of music for people to talk through. Also the equipment had gone back and there was no more money. So they had that talk –standing by the table where Maggie was sitting. It finished, K moved away. Told me later he’d still not met Maggie. Bad. On everyone’s side. I was bored as I didn’t know anyone but Robert Eddison, who is a strange remote figure, I would guess deeply self- centred. And eunuchoid people are always remote, I suppose. It amazes me, by the way, to think of Maggie having had two children.

So we got home. He was a bit distracted and went straight to the drawing-room and turned on the TV. I brought him a drink and left him to brood while I started the dinner. I asked how hungry he was, and would he like an avocado? Of which he’s become very fond. ‘Very, and I would.’ So I took it to him in the d-room. ‘You shouldn’t wait on me.’ ‘Well, you did on my first night?’ I shouted it was ready. ‘That was lovely.’ Why is it so difficult to describe the peculiar warmth and sincerity he can get into phrases like that.

We sat up and drank whisky till 2.45 or so. He talked a bit more about Sharron. In the middle of rehearsals for a week, they had a pregnancy scare. She tried a p-test and it was positive! Then she went to the doctor and it was negative, and she got the curse, ‘but it was a bad week.’ Well, what did I say? ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ ‘Well, I’m telling you now.’ ‘Anyway, it was a bad week all round and I didn’t see you.’

Despite all, it was a good evening, - we are so at one about the play, and more or less everything. How odd.

Later.

I have sat here dreaming of what his future may be.

I think the hardest thing fates to bear about someone you love, are the casual haphazard ones. (Of course it’s silly to dream of imagining fates, but one does.) For example, that young man whose wife had a brain haemorrhage, after four years of marriage and six months of pregnancy. And they kept her alive enough to deliver the baby. Or, if he wrote something that was an unexpected hit, say, one of the revue sketches or songs for Janet Rawson by which he was always irritatingly known. I suppose really I needn’t worry. If he has the genius I think he has, I needn’t worry. And if he hasn’t, I needn’t worry. But he has.

Later still.

Sunday.

I am impossible. He stayed Friday night. And had to get up at 9.0 ‘cos of equipment. So I’m seeing him all day tomorrow and it isn’t enough. Oh let him not find out. I had all those years with D when I never thought of anyone being lonely.

Monday November 10 1986 Tuesday November 11 1986

Well, yes, I feel the same today, tho’ less violently. And I’m poorer today, which cuts down on the emotion!

So yesterday, Monday, was the Jane Glover concert. Well. Well. I had to say to K Could we borrow the car? Yes, we could. Good. Cheaper. So I was all ready at 11.0. He turned up at 11.15. Oh, how I love setting off with him, knowing I'm going to have him to myself, not only for a whole day, but for an acute experience. It was an easy drive, we chatted a bit about I.M, but were silent quite a bit – lovely – got there at five past twelve. Reading quite as dreary as I expected all the dreary drearier for the little pockets of attractive buildings and turnings, blown apart by the modern ‘complexes’ and motorways. Our drive was on a motorway type road to the theatre in the heart of the city. The Hexagon. Great crouching concrete course spider, with huge flying girders to support it. Inside, ‘seventies brutalism. Primary colours, bold shapes but someone who doesn’t understand them. The actual hall, all pale pine and red-linen seats. Soul less. We went and had lunch at a huge hotel in the complex. That’s one thing about these hideous ‘international’ places, lunch doesn’t stop at 1.30 or whatever, or never came on at all in the Britain of old. Grimsby, for instance. It was the big bar, and there was a selection of hot dishes and salads, steak and kidney, pizza, lasagne. I pointed to that and said ‘Good. You’ll eat anything that looks like that.’ ‘Certainly.’ But in the end, we both had the s & k, a good small pie-dish with a thick crust, four or five new pts, some broccoli. Quite generous portions. K went off to get drinks. She said ‘That’ll be £4.’ ‘That’s a bit steep isn’t it?’ ‘Well I don’t think it is for two s & k.’ So much for London and its prices. Without exactly being nervous, I found I couldn’t finish mine. On the contrary, he fell on his and finished and wiped the plate clean, about as quickly as I’ve ever known (well, he was with Sharron last night, but still ..) He was amused. It was still only 1.15. We wandered round Reading, a pleasant market town once, split and ruined by motorways and utterly thoughtless building. We walked across a muddy churchyard, the church shut. Eventually back to the ridiculous split levels and steps and railings that lead unpropitiously to the concert-hall and theatre. Outside the big plate-glass windows of the bars, there is a courtyard, with a large shallow pool, into which two columns of water fall heavily and unmysteriously, making the clouded water foam with a detergent scum.

We went to the dressing-room, quite satisfactory in itself, but opening onto a long passage without a door, off which opened all the other dressing-rooms, so when the musicians started turning up, the din was indescribable. Someone told us Jane had arrived and I took him round to meet her. She had been as amazed as we had by the kindness of the notices, more, if anything. We went into the large characterless concert-hall. There was a little table and an armchair for me, and a microphone adjusted for use whilst sitting. I looked doubtful, and Jane said we didn’t want it. Good. So we did the first three extracts – I sent K further away and he said he could hear, so could Jane. She gave me a desultory wry note or two, and then said she was sorry to have called me so early. Would I come back at 4.0? The orchestra arrived and we went back to the dressing-room. His acute nose smelt that my aftershave had soaked the inside of my case. When I got back from the loo, he’d emptied the case. Nothing was damaged, but, when I looked, I suddenly said ‘Where’s my shirt?’ I’d forgotten it (I’d already found I’d forgotten my braces, and we’d been out to buy some – quite easy.) I couldn’t believe it. I’d put it among my shirts to keep it safe, - and forgotten it. I was in a panic. We went out again, and went to Dunn’s where we’d got the bracers. ‘No, try Littlewoods.’ ‘No, try!’ ‘No, try!’ Five altogether. Even Moss Bros get theirs from London. One old fashioned shop had a shirt with attached wing-collar, but which mightn’t have fitted the waistcoat. I nearly bought it, but he said I will go to St. Dunstans and get it. Tell me where it is. So I started to, in a panic again, ‘Now slow down’ with real authority, such as only real love can command. So off he went, it was 3.10. ‘I’ll be there about four, ring me and set you mind at rest.’ So from four onwards running to the concert hall to see if I were wanted, I rang about four times being absurdly surprised to hear my own voice on the machine. At last ‘I’ve got it’ with such intensity. ‘It’s going to be all right, you’re not to worry.’ I was just trying to leave a reassuring message on the machine, in case I had to start back when you were rehearsing. I may be a little longer coming back.’

I went and lay on the sofa to rest my aching feet. I determined to relax and not wait for him or Jane. Good. ‘Cos Jane rehearsed the music till she had to stop at 6.0, and went away. He arrived back at 5.0 ish. We listened to a bit of rehearsal – he wasn’t all that impressed with the orchestra, except for the strings. ‘And Jane’s big bum, with that extra bit either side.’ ‘Well, Sharron’s got a big bum.’ ‘Yes, but not that extra bit.’ When they broke, he suggested we go and eat – he was masterful all day – so we had a toasted sandwich (‘Oh, only £1.90 for both? that’s cheap.’ The waitress, slightly hurt, ‘I don’t think it’s cheap. You must be from London. Then we rehearsed. I went thro’ it all as thoroughly and often as I could, trying different volume levels and changes of direction, as I went along. So I fluffed a good deal through rehearsing as I worked through.

So we never rehearsed as far as Jane was concerned, all through, nor our bows or entrances.

But I brought it off. The administrator woman said rather censoriously ‘I hear you’re not using the microphone. All our speakers use a microphone.’ She had the grace to come round in the interval and say ‘I’m at the back of the upper tier and I can hear every word.’ (K said ‘You were magnificent’ and confessed that he had been worried when we’d been rehearsing, ‘But you rose to it.’ ‘I was thinking, that’s why I kept fluffing.’ ‘Thinking, that old thing, a great mistake.’ Jane G said ‘You were wonderful.’ I did think she was very good too, the way she kept the pressure up even between the movements, reminded me of the Nicolson. But the programme mostly bored me. The symphony for thirteen wind. Oh the repetitions. I longed for it end. K hated the oboist. And the most of the music. But thought Jane good, and hoped she was playing The M. Players as a stepping stone.

We drove quickly back in torrents of rain, to the Wine Gallery that he'd booked. We were half an hour late but magically a table became available. Red and White, and he had smoked chicken, didn’t he, and I had the roulade as usual, and some rather peppery soup. He came in for a couple of Scotch, and ‘Thus, a perfect day’. ‘Perfect’? Oh yes. I have solid ground under my feet.

Today, Tuesday, took suit to Moss Bros. and rested.

Monday November 12 1986

This morning diversified by Giles’ electricians arriving at about ten. Didn’t make much mess. The older of the two had no roof to his mouth. When a senior man arrived to overlook such a serious matter as a mains connection, there was some sort of a row. Rather purgingly on the lines of ‘We can’t get that model any more, they aren’t making it.’ I’m glad they suffer, too. The no-roof man’s voice raised, was odd. What an affliction, because ridiculous. The two who put the meter in the front hall, turned up only ten mins after the others had gone, so it was all well over before lunch.

I went and saw the film Ginger & Fred in the afternoon to take my mind off my bad money troubles. Quite a sweet film. How skilful my contemporaries are. We have arranged to have lunch with Buddy tomorrow.

Thursday November 13 1986

He phoned quickly to say Was it at Offstage or Marine Ices? ‘M.I.’ ‘Right.’ I wish Buddy had rung me to ask the same. When she was half an hour late, I rang her. Odd, because he’d had a talk about not eating much. She’d still thought it was at Offstage. Pointless.

However, we had a good lunch. She’s cautious but interested, to the point that she made good basic suggestions, we discussed backing and costs, we said we’d get in touch with Roy M, who K thinks should direct it.

K got excited, excited? Incandescent and poured forth ideas and all sorts of possibilities. We both explained the idea of Andy. She did seem to see it. Date, end of March.

We walked away up the road, suddenly K said, ‘Look, the car’s back there, I – must be by myself for a bit, is that all right?’ I’ll ring you.’ So I walked Buddy to the shop and went home. I’d recognised that flushed face and full eyes. His brain was racing, his delicate senses overcharged when he can face nobody, not even me. So I went home, he rang at ten to five ‘Shall we meet, the fish and chip shop? Quite early as I feel I’m going to be tired later on.’ (Young as he is, he’s still unwinding from the I.M) So I got myself up there, quarter of an hour wait at Kings X for one stop! Good creative talk, one of his radical suggestions, meld Jenny and Rochelle. Attempt to make the tone of the thing more surreal, more of Andy’s views. Off to the fish and chip shop, where he paid. Bream and halibut. Paul Masson white, insufficiently cold. Otherwise yet another perfect day. What did we talk about, besides the show? I don’t know. It no longer matters.

Friday November 14 1986

To Neil’s at 12.0 to do his garden.

His newly-carpeted and decorated drawing-room pretty, as he told me rather pointedly and often, ‘because Linda and I have taste, Linda is only from a home in Sheffield’ etc.

Noticed a considerable constraint between them. It transpired they’d had a terrific row the day before. ‘I know I’m very difficult to live with.’ The six-month old, Chloe, still wakes up eight or so times a night, so Linda is very tired, and I daresay N thinks he does his share, but of course he doesn’t. The only saving of their marriage will be plenty of work for him, not just for money, but to release him from that awful domestic routine, - which I would hate.

Rang K at 1.30 ish. He’d rung Buddy to say I’d rung Roy M and had a favourable response. (I’d forgot to record that.) Interesting, no need for him to do that, but I noticed, during the Nicolson, that K had a separate relationship with Buddy, I mean, she reacted to him, quite apart from Simon. And of course he reacts to that. Good, he can manage her probably. So we had all that, and he said he’d ring about Saturday, and the family.

Neil and I tidied up the garden, went to the Garden Centre and bought a cherry tree, a proper fruiting one, and planted and staked it. They’d given me lunch, which Linda was out buying, when I arrived. She took the children to a children’s party about 3.30, so we had a long time alone. He took the usual line, he can’t help it – if I could, I would be richer no doubt. ‘I must have a job, I am hungry for work, I can’t leave it etc etc.’ He came back here for a moment, and said how sorry he was. I said quite sincerely, I’d rather he said it all to me than to anyone else, I knew him as well as anyone. ‘Yes.’ Simon rang up for a chat, as his answering machine is on the blink. Main horror, Jane Glover had written him a fan letter, full of praise. That is so depressing. It is on our own sort that we depend, and to discover that one of us is not one of us…..

K will be upset-ish.

Saturday November 15 1986

Chester

Grosvenor Hotel

What a nice hotel.

The fridge in the room, full of drink – if you take a bottle, it registers somewhere on your bill. But it was the only thing not working, with water instead of ice. I rang down for some ice, and nearly rang down for an undertaker, when it arrived in three minutes. Pretty room. Lovely feel. Page-boys.

Well, what a day. Had to clean up and get ready for the Malpasses, as usual, left just enough time, and Jon H and Rachel arrived at 12.0 to see Giles about the decorating. Jon H had no idea, I’m sure, how completely he’s neglected me compared to before.

Imagine how it would kill me if it was him. As it is, a tiny scratch. Giles arrived after a call from Penelope saying he’d be later. Went shopping for sliced bread and choc. Biscuits as per K’s instructions. Got back, they were still here! Got rid of them, ate, washed and cleaned. Waited for Simon, who was coming around with my notices on his way to Lyric matinee at four. He arrived at 3.35! Five minutes, all I carry away is his annoyance that nobody else had mentioned the music, it’s so unusual to have so much music and it’s so brilliant.

K rang and said they’d be along in half-an-hour, and they were. Marjorie was looking better again, not so thin. K in my, or his, suit. So sweet on these occasions, in trust. One slightly awkward moment, - he was wearing my watch – for once. I didn’t say it was from me, but he had to, in the end. They gave him one, on his 18th b’day ‘and you hung it on your belt and lost it.’ He tried to say he didn’t wear it ‘couldn’t, I get a rash’ but, of course, he has worn it quite a lot lately. I think it was all right. Auntie Pat and Uncle Alf arrived. Now they’re really nice. She’s tall, very pretty and so young, looking about 35 – perhaps she is. Not unlike K. He certainly takes after his mother’s side, - the aunt has a lot of hair. Uncle Alf quick, jocular, but can equally quickly take a serious point. I’d like to see them again. She probably saw K’s childhood more clearly. I left for here, about six, with him about to ‘clear out your gin.’ He came with me to buy some, partly a ploy to say goodbye to me alone. He embraced me closely in the street and wished me good luck. I felt no pangs, just joy as I got on the tube and the train, and I am happy looking at his photo now. Thank God.

He shares with me these rather boring family moments, his parents, going to the play (he was dreading that, ‘that’s why I’m wearing my watch’.) He didn’t even bother to show he was in charge of the flat as he might have done years ago. (I remembered to give him the front-door key for his mother to go out on the level, and he remembered to say ‘I have got one, you know, but I don’t carry it all the time, there’s no point’, in case I minded.)

I would love to have been a fly on the wall after I’d gone. To hear him answering questions about me and the flat, perhaps the most delicate boast.

How odd that that completely independent spirit should be so completely committed to me.

Later.

Neil, Simon, Penelope, Giles, Marjorie, Ernest, Lalla, Prim, Edna, Mary, anyone, everyone I’d give them all for him.

Sunday November 16 1986

Back home. A good day. I am learning how to cope with these beastly conditions, TV and films, I mean. The hideously early start, arrival at the Town Hall only a minute’s walk away – I met dear Tenniel Evans in the hotel – all that I could take easily, but suddenly we had to drive some miles to Chester Zoo, to wardrobe and make-up, ‘because that’s where we’re based’, apparently. Well, I was very car-sick, and dreaded the thought of the drive back. Happily the idiot conditions came to my aid – I wasn’t made-up for about half an hour, which just did it. I have learnt, really, because I no longer resist it. That’s him. I no longer stand up for her and the stage, as I did before. And a lot of good it did me! So back we went, - Tenniel is a very entertaining witty and intelligent companion. Not long ago he was ordained as a non-stipendiary priest – C of E. He is some sort of unofficial link between church and stage. Does quite a lot of coaching in speaking and presentation, and goodness how it’s needed. We agreed that we would settle, at the moment, for any pomposities or booming, or whatever, tho’ quite dreadful, if only they could at least make you listen to what they’re saying. And they can’t. They were filming outside the Town Hall. The T.H. is vast and immensely handsome Victorian Gothic at its most luxurious and solid. How rich England was! The brass and mahogany and marble and stone. The room I sat in, where the wedding was to be, was lined with boards listing the Mayors of Chester since 1081 or some such date. Also the Earls of Chester, Princes of Wales, of course. It was warm and quiet, I was alone and sitting down. On a film that is luxury. Eventually the unit moved upstairs. Dear Andrew Morgan is a very pleasant chap, and I can do my best for him. Such as it was. He paid my favourite compliment, ‘I kept forgetting you weren’t a real registrar.’ Sonia G behind her veil, looked very much the same, tho’ a lifetime has gone by. She wasn’t tiresome once. I fear the ‘star’, whatever his name is, did not endear himself to me. He never spoke or looked at me, or acknowledged my existence in any way. We went on working till after two, till I was faint for my lunch. Perhaps as well, as the catering firm was rather indifferent, also I was finished by then, so could go straight off afterwards. Travelled 2nd for the first time for ages, and found it perfectly possible. With my rail-card the fare was only £8 return. Amazing.

Home by 8.30. Went in carefully for signs of him shutting up the house. There were the gin and tonic glasses he hadn’t obviously had time to wash up. He’d plumped the cushions, but oh, oh, at last, at last, he left a note. A. Hope all went well in Chester. Love K. He had imagined me coming in and feeling desolate. At last. I cried with pleasure.

Monday November 17 1986

Spent most of the day trying to rewrite MY. K rang about various things, including tomorrow, at 1.30, 3.30, 5.15 and 7.15. Seeing Stan about the new group.

Forgot to say, I watched a programme about LSD. A film shot 20 years ago of Christopher Mayhew taking a dose of mescalin. He sat in the same armchair throughout, in a pinstripe suit and tie. He did not look woozy, he could answer most of the questions as when normal, - he perhaps smiled and laughed a little more, was a little slower. But when he was asked to describe his sensations, both then and now, 20 years later, he used phrases like ‘Between you asking that question, and my reply, I have been through months of experience.’ So what? Or ‘How horrible.’ C. Mayhew seems no better or worse.

Two think I disliked intensely. Every time a phial of a drug was held up to the camera, it was against a background of a string quartet in evening dress playing Mozart. Always pleasant associations. And oh the holiness of laboratories.

Tuesday November 18 1986

He rang at ten to one, to say he’d just woken up. Stan was there last night, and he got to bed about one, - and slept for twelve hours! I think he’s still got a bit of a backlog from I.M. He got here about 2.0, very loving. Lunch, and we settled to work. Good. I went thro’ laying out what would be entailed in melding Jenny and Rochelle. ‘It more of less cuts out all the plot’, I complained. ‘Oh, good’, he said. ‘I think it’s better, with Tracy, Andy’s girl, taking up a bit of Jenny’s burden.’

So he told me about Saturday night. Fairly disastrous. Nigel missed the play. Having rung me on Thur, and, I suppose, coming down specially to see the play, as L’pool is fairly near him. There he was standing outside at 11.0. ‘So I blew him up, for all sorts of reasons. His was the only empty seat. He’d missed hearing my music. He went off this morning to see his girl, or some girl, so he hasn’t seen Mum and Dad much. It seems Phil was having a flat- warming party, and N was in a muddle. Trouble was, he said it was all my fault, if I hadn’t grown my hair and upset Phil, the two things wouldn’t have been the same day. Oh dear, I fear I’m not surprised. And poor Nigel, caught as usual between K and Phil. We were making the coffee by this time. K turned from the sink, and said ‘It made me realise how awful it is to miss a theatre and waste a ticket. I mean, I always hated thinking about that time when I, you know, but I just saw it all more.’ I was much moved that he should refer to it at all, one of our worst moments. And the look he gave me. He went off to the Lyric to tape the music for Simon, giving me a big kiss.

Concert.

A.M.

1. Symphony 32 in G 2. Symp Concertante 364 Interval 3. S. 361

Intro.

Paul von Stetten Leopold to Mozarts (Health) debts) 1. Symph (short) Debts 2. Symph (longer)

Jane Glover London Mozart Players

80 per side 180 80 16400

18 8 14400

14400 27 100800 28800 388,800 words. Diary since K.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 72

November 19 1986 – December 26 1986.

Wednesday November 19 1986

Must add to his account of yesterday, that they had a take-away when they all got back to the flat. It’s a moments like this, that I really feel the divide of age and class. I cannot imagine knowing anyone who’d even had fish and chips, at his age! Let alone after a rather gala night at the theatre! Oh, and Neil was there, too with Linda, and charmed them all, of course. I was touched that N left a special message on the machine, late ‘Just to say that Kevin’s music was magnificent.’ K lip curled with amusement, as he told me that Neil had said expansively ‘Wonderful. You should be writing the music for TV series like ‘War’ and …’ Dear Neil. I said ‘Well, now he knows where to place you. He won't expect ‘a chune’, now he knows you’re accepted as arty-farty. Sweet. Of course. I hope K does do a TV series for the money, but certainly not otherwise.

I rang Ernie and Marjorie, only got him, which is always unsatisfactory. ‘Yes, I could see Kevin was quite upset.’ I don’t think he saw the significance of it at all. They seemed to have enjoyed it. Can they have done – really?

Otherwise signed on and spent a day of great financial depression, and loneliness.

Thursday November 20 1986

Suddenly realised I would get a repeat fee from D’s ‘Hedda Gabler’ going out for BBC TV 50th. As it was 1972, the fee has to be renegotiated, and Barry Stokes, the new owner of Green & Underwood, very nice, he seemed, said it would be ‘quite substantial.’ So I suppose it would be £1,000, cos it was a top notch all-star affair, with a big budget, and I seem to remember she got a lot at the time. Also my dole check came, £61, and saved my bacon and my depression.

Went to see ‘Smooth Talk’ new film at the Renoir. Not bad, in a very minor way. Trailer of what looks a terrible film ‘Rosa Luxenbourg’ – that girl! – and subtitles by someone who has no English. ‘I have a feeling, professor, this moral crap will grow into something incredibly big.’

Friday November 21 1986

A perfect perfect day. How lucky I am in my friends! To lunch with Simon. I had pressed the bell on the street. He opened the door instead of pressing the entryphone button two floors up. Had a shower. ‘Do you want to go somewhere upmarket or somewhere simple?’ ‘I’d love to go to the Wine Gallery.’ Sat at the same table as after Reading, Muscadet, roulade of smoked salmon and prawns. Talked in detail about I.M. He and Bruno nearly split up over it. ‘Bruno lost control of it all at one point. At another he chose the wrong material for Maggie’s last act dress - £18 a yard, which didn’t drape properly. I saw it wouldn’t do, Maggie saw it wouldn’t do, - of course. But Bruno blathered, pretending it might do.’ I can just imagine how specially S would mind that for so many reasons. I think they won't stay together, because I don’t think Bruno is fully professional. Happily he’s got very good notices, so perhaps will get more work and remove any financial worries S may have about him. (Incidentally, S slept with Matt last night! He is extraordinary.) He has a quite detached view of I.M. He also told me his side of K’s contribution to the thing.

‘Punctuality isn’t his strong suit. He arrived at 11.0 once, for a 10 rehearsal. Certainly he'd been up all night, but I’d been lighting till 8.0 a.m. and I was there.’ Well, under the mad circs, I don’t take a bad view of that. If he’d been an actor, if would be a different matter. S also said ‘Sometimes he would take an hour over one cue, lost in a dream.’ That shows the silly influence of astrology. S is always saying about K and dreaminess, cos that’s what Pisces is supposed to be like! K is never dreamy in that way. Certainly he is a perfectionist over sound. Good. Equally he sometimes spends too much time, at the beginning on a session on something, but then everyone does that sometimes. He described a time when K was ‘bad-mouthing’ Tristian (‘he’s no good, is he?’) in the auditorium to him and Paul, the chief electric. said he couldn’t have K saying things like that about one of his staff. ‘K was bright red and said ‘Come outside.’ S described this with relish as if of a macho L’pool-boy spoiling for a fight. Oh, no. ‘And once I shouted at him, because he went on and on about something. But that was good. I couldn’t have shouted if I hadn’t known him well. Or hadn’t known him at all. And of course he was an oasis of kindness and enthusiasm and responsive creativity in all that mess.

Altogether I felt proud. Simon didn’t mention the Nicolson. Tho’ he has been sent a new play by John Spurling. (Having had no success for two years ….), about George V. ‘There’s a good part for you as Clive Wigram, his private secretary.’ Tho’ whether he’s thinking of playing G.V or directing didn’t become clear. It may very likely never go on.

Snoo Wilson came to pick him up at 4.30, they were going to Watford to see Pru Scales in The Seagull. ‘I just went too far in my compliments till I had to say I’d see it.’ S.W. came and had a pee and was at the bottom of the stairs when Simon called Goodbye, and did he join in and say Hello Angus and Goodbye? Not he. An ungracious man, on a superficial acquaintance. I stayed in the flat to ring K ‘O, so you haven’t got my message?’ Heart sinks. But no, it’s just about films or plays. The plays at Lyric Ham studio! Mona Lisa? Mona Lisa. It was already nearly five, and it began at six. We got there at six fifteen. Drink in Captain’s Cabin. Told me about going to Offstage to look at stage for MY Sandwich with Buddy in the Monarch. She’s still very much in contention. So that’s all right so far. ‘I think you have a wonderful relationship with Angus. How did you meet?’ He told her ‘And how did you go on from there?’ ‘Well, he straightened my life out, and then I straightened his life out.’ Not a bad description. Well, Simon may find Buddy irritating, but she asked that, one of the few who has, and has noticed that our friendship is wonderful in its depth and scope. Visibly so, what’s more.

Mona Lisa not bad, but if it hadn’t been for Bob Hoskins, it would have been. Not bored – exactly. We stayed. I told him about their title song. It certainly has an almost awesome inevitability. And so to Café Fish. I do like it. Persuaded him to have sword-fish, as I know he likes a meaty fish. I had whiting, not for a long time have I had one with its tail in its mouth. One test of a good restaurant is whether you just forget everything but the food and wine and the person you’re with. Yes.

Talked of the group he’s forming. At last he’s doing what I’ve always wanted him to do. Get a musicians he knows and trusts and can command to play nothing but his own music. So it won't be a group, in the usual sense. Sarah Wickham, a classical singer, Roy Andrews, ex frontline drummer from that Monarch group, Stan, the French boy I haven’t met yet, the other half of Thierry, as it were, that viola player perhaps. Phil L perhaps. He said that he’d played White Stick & Flowers to Stan, and Stan had cried.

Then he said an extraordinary thing. He said ‘Well as you will be at every one of the gigs, I think you’d better be part of it.’ He wants me to be the white stick, to do the narration for Anti-Album and Jimmy Jimmy etc. He went into it in his detail, (not into my detail, which may be a shock to him!) and I regard it as a colossal compliment.

Oh, how difficult it is to describe the whole flowing of his soul towards me on these occasions. So any practical propositions are easily solved now.

MY and everything. So we went for a drink after, cos it was only ten-ish, on his request, eventually landing up on the landing of the Wardour pub. He wants a recorder. Cos he has to go to Sharron’s to reproduce tapes. £200. Well, we had a funny time with him saying he would buy it and me saying Wouldn’t it be easier … cos of yr. mortgage .. etc.

He gives himself to me completely. How lucky I am to be in the same world with him and Simon. But with him.

Later.

In tube on the way home in a dream of

Girl next to me reading Astrology for Lovers, section Leo as a Lover. She looking nervously at him, as it were. Opposite me, a rather beautiful v. fair-skinned real blonde, leaning on shoulder of black, be-walkmaned b-friend. Jet-black, they must look good and XX.

Saturday November 22 1986

There was a two hour review of sport cos of the 50th anniv. of BBC TV.

I watched it, and thought of what I was doing when all this was being shown. Just getting up to date on all the TV hysteria, before I ever saw it. Every time I said 1977, I thought Was she dying then?

This afternoon I went to look at Macbeth St and to check on getting a poster of I.M on sale in the interval. Looked at the rehearsal room. Went on walking. At Town Hall a Physic Fair! Went in for ten min. Oh dear. Sun Signs for Cats. But in that ten mins, anybody having their fortune told, were still having their fortune told. Longer than a doctor. Alas, every practitioner looked either a fool, (for believing in it) or a knave, (for profiting from it.)

Sunday November 23 1986

He rang at 1.0 and 5.0. Told me he and Sharron had been to see Sink the Belgrano at the Mermaid, ‘cos someone had told Sharron the set was interesting. It wasn’t and the set was v. poor, too. But Louise Gold is playing Mrs Thatcher in it, was very good and has a fantastic voice, and might do for Rochelle. Good. At least we know her – that is half the battle of casting, because you can better allow for deficiencies. I don’t like her much, but that doesn’t matter. Oh and Clare Moore put her knee out on stage, put it back, finished the show, and has to lie up for 2 months. Andrew Morgan saw her, not that night, and said ‘She was ‘magnificent’, and I’m sure she is.

Peter H was there, about that tape scheme. I can’t throw cold water on it, but am worried that he can’t carry it thro’, and Peter surely can’t either. K has little business sense, altho’ it is a good idea. He does keep me on the jump. Poor Sharron, by the way. The things she makes him go to, have always so far been duds.

Monday November 24 1986

Rang him after Roy rang to say, could hear the piano-tuner in the background, oh how I laughed. How funny he is, he said repressively, ‘Keep it short’ after one sentence. And I was only going to say two! And why couldn’t he talk with the piano-tuner there? Noise that might distract the tuner? He has to listen acutely to see that it’s tuned properly?

I’m not serious.

Mark Parsons tonight. How can I comfort the hopeless young? He tempted me to talk of K. And I did. Oh what a comfort and satisfaction! No one does! More tomorrow.

Tuesday November 25 1986 Wednesday November 26 1986

Yes, it was pleasant to be asked about our friendship. And interesting too, because I saw it clearer. A straightforward youngster like M.P. admires it, envies it a little. So I need not be ashamed.

So to Tuesday. To K’s at 5.30 to wait for Roy. Flat like a new pin, left over from Mum and Dad. Piano in sitting room, so what, with that and my chair, it looks infinitely cosier. He had a beer at 6.0 ish. I didn’t have a g & t till 6.30. Had a rather funny hypothetical talk as to whether he might have AIDS! His little phase of gayness six years ago. Simon Lee had an American friend! I said, or that man who’s flat you stayed in! ‘I never had an affair with him.’ ‘Didn’t you?’ I said, remembering with such painful vividness, driving past it, and him saying ‘No, it was that man he slept with, not the one who wrote some of Visiting Day lyrics.’

Strange. It’s not dishonesty. Does he really not remember? Perhaps. As I said ‘The virus is in semen.’ He couldn’t remember whether he’d ever had semen in his mouth. Amazing, ‘cos quite genuine.

So Roy arrived, and we started going thro’ the musical. Exhilarating! He’s taken it on, and it was deeply purging to hear him judging between various bits and pieces. ‘Dreaming’ he doesn’t like. Good. It’s an untheatrical number.

(I was amused that K before R came, was, for a time, in his brisk key, over Hywel W. E. whose clip we played. ‘He’s too old.’ ‘Oh, you can take off years on the stage.’ ‘That’s very vague, Angus, you must be more definite’, he snapped. ‘TV makes you older than anything.’) When Roy arrived and we watched the clip again, he said exactly the same as me. And K remained silent. I gave no hint of I told you so!

Oh, it was so purging, after all these months, having Roy go through the script and say ‘That’s OK, I don’t like that. I think you’ll have to …’ etc. Of the numbers, he doesn’t like Dreaming. Well, it’s always worried me, as I realised the moment I said it. It’s a good song, but not a very theatrical song. He accepts that we throw Rochelle and Jenny into one, that alone will mean a lot of re-writing. But it was a night full of ideas and creativity. K had done his, (my) steak casserole, and nice veg. and wine. We all got very drunk, it seemed, but I got home all right. Roy stayed with K. Why is it always me who goes home alone? Roy came round and stayed here Wed.

Thursday November 27 1986

Trying to re-write the script is like going back to my own sick.

Friday November 28 1986

That mood, tho’ with less violence, has persisted, and I have done nothing.

On Thursday Roy, K and I had lunch again with Buddy at Marine Ices. K had said to Buddy when he arranged it ‘I’ll pay this time.’ ‘No, we’ll go halves.’ Get her, with a boy of 25. He rang me on Wed eve to say he’d run out of money, so could I bring some? All his I.M money is earmarked the moment it arrives.

So there we were. Roy repeated his Tues. night remark that it’s the numbers that will save it! I said to K that had made me smile. He said ‘Well I did wonder.’ I said ‘Well I did write most of the lyrics.’ ! Buddy was a bit downbeat, but all right, no decision, wait for the re- writes. After she’d left, we talked thro’ them and Roy scribbled them into my script. I said we’d need at least a fortnight to re-write. K had rung on Wed to say he was seeing Colin Booth that night, and could we decide when we needed the computer and w-p to re-type. I’d said at least the fortnight, perhaps more – ‘Well, say the last weekend before Christmas.’

Now K said that this weekend was Sharron’s b-day, so it was that, and a lot of other things, including Stan on Monday. ‘But after that, I’ll be able to give you the whole week.’ I didn’t like the phrasing of that, as if the re-writing was something he was condescending to. But I’m sure that was me, for by this time, a black wave of depression had swept over me. Quite illogically. But what’s the use of that? The thought of re-writing …. Roy went off to Waterloo, we had two stations together and then went our separate ways at K’s X. He made to hold me, I didn’t repel him, but just touched his hand. ‘Are you all right?’ Lying, I said, a little sharply – how sharpness can hide pain! – ‘Perfectly. I’m just thoughtful.’

The disturbing thing is that it wasn’t leaving him or the re-writing. The depression seemed causeless. I saw Highlander was on at 3.10. Got out at Picc. Circus. Spent empty twenty mins in Claude Gill,- nothing I want – Highlander got a few sparks of invention, tho’ I don’t know why Roy recommended it. Came him after a black walk thro’ the park, another blackness. Did not drink more than usual, but became much more drunk than usual. Had to ring him, because of Peter H – more later, and because that little restaurant near the Soho Poly doesn’t open on Saturday!! Suggested Wine Gallery. Then expressed some despair and wished I hadn’t – even said about back to my own sick. ‘Was that why you got drunk?’ Very kind. ‘Just think of Tuesday.’ They were going to the pub to join Chris Parsons, whom he’d seen again. Poor C.P. had a series of breakdowns and went back to live with his parents. K has been good to him, I’m sure, but I would rather he were out of our life really. I don’t wish him ill, but if fear he may always be more trouble than he’s worth to K. I don’t want to involve him in my middle-age despair. I’m sure he can’t understand why I don’t just sit down and write, like he does with his music! Well, there’s a difference – I’m 60, he’s 25, he’s a professional composer. I’m an actor who helped him out with an amateur script at a bad moment. I always hoped he’d write most of it! With all his ideas.

I’m so afraid of letting him down – already it’s ‘all right except for the book’ as he’s always had before. He’s so good.

Saturday November 29 1986

So we were off to the Soho Poly for Sharron’s birthday. I got there first, – of course. I’d rung Aldo & Aldo, that little place we went to after Roy’s reading, but found it closes on a Saturday! And when I got there nearly all the pubs were closed too. Shows what a completely business area it is. Went to pick up the seats and found they were only two. Symbolic, but tiresome. K and Sharron drove up about ten minutes late. We did get a return and went to the one pub that was open. There was a dog standing on one of the banquettes, looking out of the window round the edge of the curtains. And was still there when we came back in the interval. K had given her a big black briefcase type bag with a shoulder-strap, and had bought a similar bigger one for himself, but hadn’t brought it. I felt a pang, about him spending money we can’t really afford, but how could he not? He I couldn’t have stopped him. Tho’ outsiders might think I should. I was struck by the make-shift look of the Soho Poly, compared to the Offstage, all those beams and pipes to bump your head on.

The play ‘Last Waltz’ was indifferent. Some nice bits of comic observation, not difficult in the closed atmosphere of an Army camp. Two Army wives, one 30’s and disillusioned, the other 20 on her honeymoon. So we go thro’ the years and the balance changes. Guess what. I fear the bones of the thing were quite humdrum. It doesn’t seem to me at all the class of thing that Soho-Poly should be doing. I would recommend the author to settle down and write a good commercial play or a TV sit. Com. That’s where her gifts lie. As for the acting, Celia Imrie was pretty good. Tho’ I would have cut out one or two figures. Alexandra Pigg, from Letter to Breshnev, is potentially good, there is something there, but she lacks technique, moves her head meaninglessly most of the time, and is monotonous. But I’d certainly like to see her again.

So off we went again in the car, to the Wine Gallery. He became a bit awkward, talking about the I.M. last night. He’s going on to Nigel and Joy’s flat-warming afterwards. ‘I may not even want to see the play, and there’ll hardly be any time to come round to you.’ ‘But I booked seats a month ago.’ He got a bit hard, as he does when he gets a bit drunk, - challenging. I went a bit silent, but not badly so. Only to stop it heightening. Earlier there’d been a patch where Sharron had complained of the cigarette-smoke from the next table, a little foolishly, as if she were really expressing irritation about something else. And there was another patch where she was explaining something to me which didn’t need explaining. I love her basically, but she is at her best reacting and expressing her very sensible judgements shortly. At this moment, the combination of her unpleasing accent and, as it seemed commonplace mind, came thro’ to me and it was one of those times when I felt him seeing her thro’ my eyes. At another time he was a bit silly – I forget why! We did not fall out but he did not get out of the car at the house, so I just hugged her when she changed seats.

I went in feeling all right, thank god, but envying them simply the distraction of fucking.

Later. New number hopeless.

Sunday November 30 1986

He gave me a tape of the new number last night, Held Back By Time. Just shows what drink can do, or not do, for you. It seemed the same dreamy thing again. But as I listened to it all day, I realise how interesting it is, and more vividly than ever, realised that it’s his signing that makes the songs sound the same, or a bit the same!

I started trying to write the lyric. No luck. K rang at 1.45 from Sharron’s, off to Phil Lawrence. Very loving and said it was Stan tomorrow, so Tuesday, ‘I want to really go at it.’

Back to the lyric. It started to come. It’s no use pretending, when he’s there, he makes sense of everything.

Monday December 1 1986

Cary Grant is dead. One of my acting idols. I’ll never forget how we were excited by that scene in Indiscreet, the morning after, at breakfast, Cary Grant just looking at Ingrid.

A rather grey dull day. When is that money going to come?

Tuesday December 2 1986

To a commercial interview at 10.50 in Bruton St. Trustee Savings Bank. Funny scene in waiting room. It’s to be all couples ‘Your partner hasn’t arrived yet.’ It was a bit like a marriage bureau. Eventually my partner did arrive – Irene Sutcliffe! We burst into delighted reminiscence, which lasted into the interview, which was video recorded. The Director, Richard Lester, bald, long black hair on either side, smartly dressed, did Help with the Beatles. Humorous, courteous, made me hope to get it from that reason alone.

Message on answering machine from him, saying Offstage wanted him ‘to sort out the sound! So it’d be two.’ Good. Now she’ll have to do the musical to pay back.’ He was here at two, rather contemptuous of the director etc. Lunch. And work. And good work. We went thro’ the whole thing and portioned out bits to work on.

Eventually at 6.0 I went and bought the dinner. Chops. Went on after dinner. He does feel the heat. He took of his sweater before dinner and his trousers after. Finally his socks!

Sat up drinking and to bed in a glow such as I have seldom felt.

Look, I’m scarcely drunk,

Wednesday December 3 1986

I wonder if he knows what it means to find him asleep in his old room. There is after all, a great compliment in going to sleep in someone else’s house, - it’s trusting, at its lowest! I didn’t wake him till I went to the shops at 12.30. ‘Do you want some tea?’ ‘I’ll do it.’ When I got back, he’d washed up.

Again, we got going. The melding of Jenny and Rochelle has been fruitful in quite a lot of ways. It has certainly solved more problems than it’s caused. He’s had a good idea for the break-dance no. He kept being impatient again, and shouted at me a bit. How I used to mind, but I know now (What I have always known, is that he can only work in his way, so I have to too. I don’t want to cram it all into three days!) He thinks of things, a lot of them impractical and useless, but seems to expect me to write down every word and, if not act on it, at least have it to refer to the next day. It never seems to occur to him that sometimes I haven’t written it down because either I think nothing of the idea, or I don’t agree with it, or it’s so vague I haven’t realised it was meant to be an idea at all!

I was also affectionately amused when he suddenly said about six, ‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’ll stop now and go out to dinner, talk over the shape of the show, and the frame, which Andy makes. Can we afford it?’

So we went to the Wine Gallery, tho’ we couldn’t really afford it. Had one or two good general ideas. Came back here for Scotch, he went back home. At one point, I said in context, ‘I hope Sharron suggests some play or film to go to that you really like – none of her suggestions have been any good.’ (I didn’t phrase it as badly as that.) He said ‘Don’t forget Sharron’s very young.’ ! He’s 25, she’s 22! He said ‘Come round tomorrow at 1.0.’ ‘Cos we need the piano.

I sat up and scribbled something for the new number. Verse all right, but I need a real idea for the chorus.

Thursday December 4 1986 Friday December 5 1986

Another wonderful day. Got there at 1.0, he was out shopping. He hadn’t slept well either, this sort of thing really sets yr. mind buzzing.

He did those little pasta shells carbonara. For a change. We worked very well. We cracked the new number. Tho’ I say it myself, the new chorus fits the music very exactly rhythmically, and is a really good resolution of the mood and meaning of the song in its context. Oh, the bang-bang of us both, funny and angry.

We had a talk about Saturday, which nearly came to grief. I’d shown him the tickets and so on. He told me he and Sharron were going to anther flat-warming party before the show. ‘Another?’ I said. He flared up ‘I told you Angus, I told you we were going to Nigel and Joy’s flat-warming after the show. Don’t you ever listen? And you made such a scene.’

I was hurt by that as I didn’t think I’d made a scene, as I wrote, ‘went silent to stop it heightening.’ I remained silent for a bit, and then said ‘I don’t think I was so upset. I was disappointed.’ ‘Well, you know what that expression on your face does to me!’

By the time we went off to the Offstage, it was all forgotten. It is very interesting how we flare up and are back to normal minutes later. It is certainly different since our separation, as if at once we trust one another more and are more aware of what we could lose. He was as soft as silk with me after that. We got to the theatre, and went to the old familiar table in the old familiar (awful) pub. So strange to sit there and have a gin and tonic and be nervous.

We went down and sat in the second row. A play by Neil Simon. I Ought to be in Pictures, its premiere in London.

We really enjoyed it. It is always satisfying to see a play which is, on any level, thoroughly done. The construction and running gags and one-liners were really satisfying. The acting was excellent in one case, serviceable in another, irritatingly but not fatally flawed in the third. The man, Manning Redwood, was v. good, the mistress serviceable. The girl should have been advised to cut her perf. down by half, certainly in the first half. It was also really funny, and I cannot believe the word of mouth won’t be good. You never know with the fringe, it is so dependent on Time Out and City Limits, and with such an obvious boulevard play, you never know which way the poor things will jump, sometimes for reasons quite unconnected with the merits of the piece.

We had a short drink of warm white wine with Buddy, who seems still quite sanguine about the musical, or at least not at all cold or withdrawing. We went off to Marine Ices, and had more talk of the outer shape of M.Y, the ‘frame’ which Andy must be, so that the show is seen thro’ his eyes. He had a good idea that A. should hum a phrase from the song at various moments. I think that might work.

Wandered about a bit for a taxi, went back to flat, got a bit drunk and had a taxi back here. Very extravagant, but then we lead extravagant lives. I can’t remember what we talked about, but it brought nobly to a close three of the most wonderful days of my life. I was too drunk to write last night, and today have done almost nothing, from tiredness, but write this diary, or dairy.

Saturday December 6 1986 Sunday December 7 1986

He rang about 12.30, ‘I’ve had a set-back, I’ll be with you about 2.0.’ When he arrived, I asked what the set-back was. ‘I didn’t wake up.’ It sounds better, certainly!

We did the final titivating touches and recopying, of which I still had more to do when Sharron arrived at 5.0. She dresses nearly always in black. Cleverly, as she is shapely, but has very big hips. She could look quite awful bodily in the wrong clothes. She is humorous and sensible when she stays on the fringes of the talk, but, I repeat, more commonplace when she talks at length. She shows sense in remaining silent so much. One cannot have everything – she is so far an excellent judge of character. They went off the party at the back of the Lyric. It was Anthony Sycamore’s, the man who once said he could use the Fairlight at Oxford – little we’ve seen of that. Well he certainly never told me about that party!

I finished MY and went to the theatre, a bit late. Oh, I must chart Peter Hutchinson’s involvement in this evening. He has irritated us both by ringing both of us about the seats far too often, - K found it especially irritating that Peter had rung me at least three times to say ‘Kevin says you may have some seats for the last night.’ He even did it again after I talked to him for half an hour about his schemes, and made it perfectly clear that I had booked three seats weeks ago for the last night, and that it was to me a special and private occasion. But obviously it didn’t at all get home to him. K had said, in the argument about perhaps not going to the play at all, ‘I certainly don’t want to sit next to Peter Hutchinson.’ ! So K got him a seat. By an odd chance it was only two away from ours, and Peter changed places, so he was sitting next to me in the end. I didn’t mind but ‘cos I did like him. I minded the pushing. There’s more.

So. Sharron was already there, with a glass of red wine and K had gone off to get the reel to reel tapes with his music on. So she and Peter and I chatted. Suddenly my ankle was grabbed through the staircase. Simon. I’d crept past Bruno holding S’s mother and aunt in conscientious conversation in the foyer. Turned out they’d been to the matinee, and the taxi was late. No, I’ve got the sequence wrong. We were chatting and K came from backstage with that tight pink look that goes straight to my heart. I know that only comes from some professional betrayal. Right. ‘The reels aren’t my property. I can come back and borrow them in a fortnight.’ It’s that fucking Tristian. Peter was silly and giggly. Sharron was non- plussed. I calmed him down for the evening.

So to Simon. We recapped a bit and then he told me a very welcome bit of news. He and Snoo Wilson are doing a musical about Freud and want K to do the music! That will be a full-scale affair, I presume, so it will be real money. I can’t imagine S means a musical in the usual sense, not from those two! It will be more of an opera, I’d think. ‘Almost continuous music’ S said. Marvellous. Of course I felt a faint pang that I wouldn’t be associated with it, too, but thank God I love him enough. But it’s so like my life that the Nicolson should be upstaged by IM, and now MY by this. Both my things have no money in, both things I have nothing to do with, have! And of course K getting money helps me.

So I didn’t tell K till the interval. I sat through it very reluctantly. Maggie acquired a fatal degree of confidence, she is such an opportunist. Every line is approached separately, and with no connecting link of a real person between. For instance, her fussy over-elaborate gestures remain the same when she’s doubling the peasant woman. And beneath it all, she has such talent. I cannot say genius or great, since no genius or great actress could be capable of such vulgarities. The rest of it was its inept self. The scene between Sphinx and Oedipus is of extreme and painful tedium. Oedipus, Lambert Wilson, goes off down the hill (into the pit) and when he returns, some minutes later, cannot give any illusion whatsoever of having come from anywhere but under the stage. K was suffering worse that I was, of course, and said at the interval ‘Bring your coat.’ I was glad, as it meant we would leave and have plenty of time for a leisured supper.

By the way, in the theatre I noticed, to my surprise, she was stroking his thigh during the play. So strange, as I was in the same position as with Janet that time. It is the first time I have seen Sharron touch him like that. I was surprised really. I thought she was more fastidious than that. It is also odd that such behaviour has always been a sign of the beginning of the end before. But surely not? Why it offends me is because it’s in a theatre, first. But it’s interesting. Also interesting that none of his girls has made him behave any differently to me.

We went to have our drinks. Simon had said see me in the interval. I’d said it was good news but hadn’t told him. He came back pink and excited and was skittish and young for the rest of the evening, which always delights me. But unlike K, when I first knew him, he was not carried away by the job, after so many disappointments. Already, over supper, he was saying ‘If it ever comes off …’ Well, indeed. I have certain doubts too. I don’t quite know what sort of show it’ll be with those two writing it about that. ‘Snoo has had the idea of making all the little totems Freud kept on a shelf in his consulting-room as triggers for his clients, into the chorus.’ I can’t believe they could write a ‘musical’. I find it difficult to believe they could write something that would attract any sort of big backing. I mean Snoo hasn’t even had a play on in the West End, or anything approaching a sizeable audience yet. So where? The RSC? The National? Perhaps ‘almost continuous music’ means a big music budget. (Memo. Make K insist on a proper budget.) I don’t know. What audience? But Simon never thinks enough of that!

Happy supper, with a lot of helpless laughter. We were in high spirits as I’d heard on the answering-machine that I’d got that commercial. When K and Sharron left, she went to the loo. He held me and said ‘I was wrong. Thanks for arranging tonight. I wouldn’t have been without it’. She kissed me. He kissed me, and I shut the door with scarcely any more pang than a real father.

Later.

Two things I’d forgotten. He hadn’t told her we were coming back here after the show. And, while he was out of the room, she said What was Roy Mitchell doing with MY. ‘He’s Directing it.’ ‘Oh.’

He is extraordinary in that way. She is clever to listen so well. I think she really likes me.

Monday December 8 1986

K rang at 4.30 – Stan was with him. We’d spoken briefly at 1.30, for one or two words about the script – he’d already delivered it, rather to my surprise. Oh, yes, I rang to say send it to Roy, he’s at home with his mother, in London, I mean. He’s still worried about feeling so tired, and having diarrhoea. I tried to persuade him that it was still his reaction to his father’s death. Two things. Well, three, his father was, I believe, the most important person in his life, he’s deeply admitted to that, as he has not deeply admitted to so many things, so I expect he has not deeply admitted to the death. And he is a hypochondriac, so he will go to a doctor perhaps instead of grieving. But I do love him.

K rang at 4.30 to sort of chat, and suddenly I said, ‘I must meet Stan.’ ‘Stan, do you want to meet Angus? What are you doing tonight?’ So it was yes and see you at seven. Oh, how such moments transform my life, and everything seems possible.

Another message, when I was out at the shops, ‘We’ll be in the Montague Arms.’ Oh, that’s what the pub’s called.

So I got there at exactly 7.0. K was playing pool, in his nice empty pub. Sitting in the corner was a small dark youth with that curious ovoid head, thick dark eyebrows, huge sad (sic) eyes, so typical of southern France. (From films.) There was a certain amount of self- consciousness at first, from the language and age-barrier. And later when we talked, or started to talk, of the music, there was a sticky patch when I thought he had a strong resistance to analysis of any sort. ‘Just listen and go with the music’ etc. And as he’d suggested the 20-minute number, I thought that was pretty silly if it was to have any words. But I’d got him quite wrong, he has really no interest in creativity. He is a nice amiable undirected and, as far as I can see, harmless boy of 21, who K has taught 9 bass riffs to. We went back to the flat for a bit for K to tape ‘the music.’ To my amazement, it was not only like, as it might be Offenbach for silent films, but only about five minutes at the most. Well, Stan is a slow learner, and he’s been learning all those nos. So he got a cab!, paid for it himself!, and we were at Olga’s. (She’s off having a thyroid op. Oh dear!) Stan has nothing creative to offer. So, not to be rude or waste time by including him in our conversation, I engaged him in rather basic talk to get to know him, to be able to vet him for later. K switched off, unnoticed by Stan, because, when I set out to engage someone, they only notice me! As K knows. Some half an hour later, Stan said to K, as I let go ‘What have you are you thinking of?’ K said, surprisingly, ‘Sex.’ First time I have ever known him pronounce the word – almost. Did he mean he was thinking of Sharron, but didn’t like to say so, ‘cos it’s a bit crude, cruder than saying ‘Sex’? It suddenly strikes me that K is at a unique sexual moment. If and when he leaves Sharron, he must chose his next sexual partner in a way he never has before, vide. AIDS.

I said one or two good things – at one moment K came to and said, ‘That was very good.’ Not often nowadays.

Came out at 10.15. Just too late to go back to the flat, once I was there, I would be thinking of going, without another expensive cab. £10. Also I felt they’d both, in their different ways, had enough of me, and my middle-age. And, mainly, I was a bit bored at the thought of an extension of the threesome. Rather useless. I wonder sometimes how completely he sees that my entire talk to Stan was only for him, that I give him my whole attention all the time. Part of the reason I hurried away, was also because I had a tape, and an idea for a number about fruit-machine gambling, with a list of vogue words.

Tuesday December 9 1986

Today I thought, wrote, felt, did nothing except read a lot of Shaw.

Wednesday December 10 1986

Another empty grey day until he rang at 6.45, and said What was I doing tomorrow. It’s terrible that I can only see him, it’s so bad for him, because I depend on him too much. Talked so tenderly and subtly and sensibly of Chris P whom he’s seeing tomorrow.

I repeat, the moment I hear his voice, all is resolved.

Have started on the lyrics.

Oh, his voice when he said How are you. Done scrag end of neck for Sharron.

Thursday December 11 1986 Friday December 12 1986

George R arrived on Thur. morning just as I was leaving to go to the bank. I heard that the Hedda Gabler money will be £2500 odd. What a relief. Rang K to tell him. Still asleep at 12.30! But sweet.

To fitting at Bruton St. I was called at 3.45 and found two youngsters who’d been called at 3.0 still waiting. Irene S there, she had a dinner party tonight and kept saying so. Finally made quite a scene and to my surprise, kept on making it, uselessly to the three young people ‘running’ the fitting – I use the term loosely. The clothes were all on the floor in the big room looking onto Bruton St. Thro’ large uncurtained windows, straight into a large well- populated office on the other side of a not very wide road. And it was there we had to change, down to our underwear. Irene stomped off into another room. It didn’t bother me remotely, but goodness just imagine some other actors of my age, or almost any other profession! There’d be a strike, at the indignity etc. !

I saw Irene as much more like B. Lott and so on. ‘Johnnie Warner’ is a location that is a giveaway. She said she had a lot of young friends. Hm. I expect they’re 37 and things!

Eventually got to K at 5.15. Upstairs door locked. Unusual. He was working something out at the piano. (The piano being in the sitting-room and my armchair have certainly cosied up the room.) I saw at once that he was in a mood. Chris P hadn’t come. (his mother rang to say he’d got a migraine.) I’d just taken my coat off and was looking forward to a sit down – there’s nothing hotter than a fitting – when he shrugged on his coat, and said ‘Let’s go to the pub. I must get out of the flat.’ I know now. So I avoid him snapping my head off, except when I said We don’t have to go to this play, you know. He snapped ‘I don’t know what I want till I’ve had a drink.’ Whereas years ago, it’d be all snap for a bit, he pops in a sweet remark in between now! We waited for the bus a bit. Snap. ‘Let’s walk’, as if it was my fault.’ Snap. ‘Angus, here’s the bus,’ And I don’t even know which number to take!

To think I once minded! So we had a drink at the King’s Head. Rather pleasant for once, empty, with a big coal fire. So we went to eat first, as fish and chip shop shuts at 10.0. Had delicious halibut. Huge party came in just before we left. Nice to escape the noise. He was entirely sunny by this time. Back to the King’s Head, settled down to drink. There was Vivian Heilbronn! So she is still with David Rintoul! Who’s playing Morell. Have I said it was Candida we were seeing? Well, then. She was so nice, I’d forgotten. Joined by a friend of hers, a middle-aged actor called Burgess? or is that because of the character? I am always more lively than I need to be with actors, when K’s there, so as to protect him from not knowing what they’re talking about, and so that he can opt out if he liked. But I must stop doing that now. Gradually.

Performance definitely good. Very well-cast except possibly Candida. Tho’ Maureen O’Brien is very capable and didn’t miss any of the points, she hasn’t the effortless serenity. She is too small and perky. Prossy excellent. D Rintoul is Morell in real life! but takes it too fast on stage. The surprise was Rupert Graves. I thought the part had become unplayable. I have to say that he was perfect. The waves of emotion washed visibly thro’ him, throwing him about the room. He never came near getting an unwanted laugh. Clothes, white linen suit, inspired. I was much impressed and moved.

I was amused that K, while perceptive as ever, was a bit bored by the play. It seemed odd to him, tho’ there are ways in which Marchbanks is him, seen by Shaw 100 years before! How pleased Shaw would be! We had drunk during the show. Back to flat, and got v. drunk. We both had a good old grouse about our careers and the theatre. I cried, K comforted me and said some lovely things about my work. I went home about two. And felt fine this morning. George took me off to the Wine Gallery, booked by me. We went Dutch. Hm! After all, two nights anywhere where he pays, would be more than the W.G. bill. However, I must enjoy the wild undemanding talk. What a tiny gentle unreal world, poor George lives in!! I hope it isn’t visibly shattered. Well, I suppose it is by that man at the University making him retire early!

Oh, this afternoon, I went Snoo Wilson prospecting. He’s written a dozen or so plays, the only one I’ve heard as having any sort of success, was Song of the White Ant. Strange. And he’s written a musical with someone called Kevin before about the Kray brothers, never done or published. Nor did French’s have any of the plays that have been published, so they’re out of print, I presume. Not a promising outlook – not even a success on the fringe. And yet he has this reputation. Of course I saw that Reno thing that S directed. Well. Very uncertain tone. Didn’t come off. For anyone.

Saturday December 13 1986

K rang at 4.30. Down. He was with Sharron last night but she went off early to college. She’s working so hard, it’s her last year. How are you getting on? ‘Oh, I’ve done a few bits and pieces – nothing really.’ ‘I’ve got a chicken for tomorrow, do you want to come and eat it?’ Do I? ! ‘I’ll come a bit early and we’ll work.’ ‘Good.’ ‘Why are you down?’ ‘The state of the theatre, what we were talking of the other night.’ ‘Be cheerful.’ ‘I’ll try.’

Never never have I had such a strong, overwhelming clear picture of him needing me in the middle of a dead afternoon, of knowing that he can tap a great fountain of love, that here is someone to whom he and his problems and feelings matter more than anything else or earth.

I’ve never felt his need of me stronger.

Sunday December 14 1986

Two instances of extraordinary delicacy and protecting me. When we sat down for the last night of IM, he knew I must sit next to him, so he covered it by saying ‘I’ll sit in the middle so I can cry on both your shoulders.’

With the coffee, ‘We don’t have sugar’, then, ‘Our generation don’t have sugar.’ In case I should feel shut out if I thought the ‘we’ meant him and Sharron.

Monday December 15 1986

Got there yest. at 4.30. He was a bit subdued but perked up when we began to work. The lyric may work. It’s v. difficult and I have a sneaking feeling he won't really like it when it’s finished. He does realise I write better when he is there, not because I like him to be there personally all the time anyway! But I think he faintly resents it as well, as me being there doesn’t help him to compose, rather the reverse! But after all he is a professional composer and I am not a professional writer. However I got enough done for him to tinker with the music, today I hope. Sharron arrived about seven, I went off to get some drink (‘Will you be all right?’ – imagine the anguish a few years ago!). When I got back, she’d gone off to work for an hour. He doesn’t really know what she’s doing. I certainly have no clear idea of her work or her future. Again, I’m struck by her charming dimpling smile and apparent humour, but a more extended response is a bit of a disappointment. She is certainly a bit better informed than he is, though that wouldn’t be difficult! I included the word Hun in the lyric and he didn’t know what it meant! And he doesn’t care which is so good. Like D, his mind is above general knowledge, - it’s given to his music.

He served up the chicken without letting it settle, and carved it badly. I didn’t say anything, as I would have done years ago, I’ll show him next time. He got a bit silly over dinner about the tape scheme and Peter H and the ensemble. He revealed deep disquiet about the money needed for equipment for the ensemble. I was challenging and irritating and in complete control of myself, partly because of Sharron, purposely made him crosser. He went off to the loo. I smiled at her to show all was well and said something like ‘I’ll haul him onto dry land.’ I wished I hadn’t, as it might be misinterpreted by her as she doesn’t know me all that well, and he seems to tell her so little. A young girl might think I was cynically manipulating him to be what I wanted. I don’t think so. Anyway, I did bring him to a more sensible view of it. But I am a bit worried that he seems to have little plan for Friday.

We had good talk after that and he kissed me as affectionately as ever. I left about 11.15. Got to the tube, where a plump smug woman ticket-clerk said with a great complacency that the last train to go to Barons Court had gone. Amazing. Went to the two telephone boxes outside to ring K for the number of his car firm. Both ordinary box and the phonecard box were out of order. How can that be, I don’t know. I thought the phonecard boxes didn’t attract vandals as there’s no money in them, and it looked all right. I kept getting K’s voice for a few words and mine, too, I found after. Eventually, I set off down Holloway Road. I did not like to go back to the flat and interrupt two young lovers. I quite underestimated K. When I got back to my flat eventually at about 12.40, having walked as far as the Angel before I found a taxi, I found two messages on the machine. The first said ‘I suppose that’s the machine you were trying to use. I presume you got a cab. Hope you’re OK. Phone me immediately when you get in to confirm. Bye.’

There was an urgency in immediately that was worth everything he never says or writes! So I rang straightaway. He snatched the phone off after one ring. He’d been down to the phones! I couldn’t believe that, I couldn’t believe any of it. Lovely. Incredible.

So after that long walk in the frosty air, I felt hungry. I had some crumpets downstairs, so toasted two, went back to bed and ate them. They were so delicious, I went down and toasted the other two and ate them and had another large Scotch.

Later.

I wish I could have written that bit more accurately, - I mean to chart my deep emotions more exactly. I know I shouldn’t want things stated. He hates that. But that inflection on ‘immediately’ solved me.

Still later.

Rang Roy to see if he was there and he was. Didn’t speak.

Tuesday December 16 1986

Letter from Simon expressing pain and rage about last night of IM. Painful. Wrote at once. Of course I could not say I left because K could bear no more, in case S might despise me for being influenced and K for being wanton.

Also my letter could not make any more criticisms of the play so I could not say I was more or less driven out by Maggie S. K rang at 12.0 and said ‘Now we’re working today.’ Told him, read him the letter and my reply. He was so good. At end of talk said I’m doing a sausage casserole for a crowd tonight – why don’t you come along? If you feel like it. ‘Cos I’d said I couldn’t work, cos I kept thinking about S’s letter.

Rang an hour later to say I would come, - Nigel answered, sounded better. He rang a bit later to say Sam Browne’s brother, Peter, has a recording session at Power Plant for a group called what?

Would he play keyboards? No money. So he’s going. I said How odd if they’re a group with a name, they haven’t got a keyboard player of their own. ‘Well, they probably found, when they got in the studio, he was a good face and could play the guitar a bit.’ Now I know he’ll enjoy it perhaps, and be distracted and possibly get stimulus from it, even if it’s awful But should he do it? In his position? With his talent? Genius?

Won’t P Browne think less of him for being an easy touch? Or doesn’t it matter what P Browne thinks?

I hate him doing these dogsbody jobs. At least in the theatre what I do with a part is distinct.

Went to see Spring Awakening at the Young Vic. A dreary long play drearily acted. Left at interval.

Wednesday December 17 1986

Yes, it was badly directed, so that they all spoke up loudly and clearly and all at the same pitch and pace. The result was to make the worst of everyone. It wasn’t exactly bad, - it kept a full house, to my surprise, full, held and amused. It is, by the way, a perennial amusement to me, that frank sexual references still, even with a presumably sophisticated audience, get giggles and even squeals. Of course, as so often the more ‘realistic’ sexual effects are, the less they are. A young man wanking on a loo, inside his trousers, stopped halfway tho’ the speech I presume, as he thereafter showed no sign of erection or come. On the other hand, the main character turning onto his stomach in the hay-loft to hide his erection from the heroine as she came up the ladder, was infinitely more effective in making you believe he actually had one.

Timothy Whitnall who I’d partly gone to see for MY, ‘cos he sings, is quite wrong for us. Personable, but poor vowels, so his ear is poor, he should have corrected it by now, it’s an ugliness not an accent. People who can go on saying ‘eout’ for ‘out’ make mistakes on bigger inflections.

Today I felt alright, but not keen to work on the song at all. I’d half-expected him to end up in the spare room, as Power Plant is much nearer me than him, and he had to be at H’smith at 12.0. ‘They paid for a taxi.’ ‘Well, it’d be much cheaper to here.’ He hadn’t thought of it, silly boy, he could have stayed in bed much later. ‘How was it?’ ‘Rather dull.’ ‘When did it finish?’ ‘Three, from three p.m.’ One number! Modern music-making. ‘It’s a guitar-band, you can’t do much with the keyboards but give them a backing. I’m not particularly good at that.’ Precisely. Peter B was just making use of him, I’d say. But he must see it himself. He always does. We had lunch, cold lamb, ‘this is luvly’, and salad. ‘Coffee?’ He looked a bit red and hollow-eyed, but not bad. Upstairs I showed him a diary, with its little pencil binding the covers together. ‘I knew it wasn’t you, but it was the only green one!’ He mentioned a small ‘filofax type’ hastily he’d seen in Jones Bros. Oh how I teased him ‘cos we’ve so despised filo-fax types. That and the remark the other day, ‘It’s only a demo tape.’ Oh, I teased him unmercifully, so that he was rolling round the sofa, giggling helplessly. And even the mini-filo-fax is £20. (To be fair, it sounds more like a rather elaborate loose-leaf notebook.)

So I said I didn’t feel like working, and he said he’d go back to Holloway and get in a couple of hours at the piano. Right I said so what about the sausage casserole put off from last night? He said ‘Oh, yes, that was tonight wasn’t it?’ and looked a little thoughtful, and said ‘The thing is Sharron rang this morning. It was ten and I wasn’t awake. She said she was doing something on Thursday and Friday was our ensemble, and she was going home for the weekend. As he was going to L’pool on Monday, tonight would be the last chance to see him. I said ‘Of course, you must ask her over.’ He was, or seemed, quite prepared for me to hold him to our arrangement. I wish I understood their relationship, or didn’t have to find it all out for myself! He kissed me – oh she rang up and they spoke briefly to arrange – and I let him go without the slightest pang. (Soon I shan’t even be recording the absence of a pang!)

What really stuns me about this, is Sharron. As this rate, tonight may be the last night she seems him for perhaps ten days, if he stays over the New Year, as he thinks he may. (‘With these three possibilities with Snoo Wilson, the ensemble, and MY, this may be the last time I have a chance to spend any extended time with Mum.’ I reminded him of saying she was fading away. He characteristically denied it and then reiterated it!)

Can she really love him? I said ‘The weekend?’ with surprise. ‘I know’, he said, with a distinctly rueful look. Doesn’t she want to spend the last evening with him? Well, perhaps she’ll come back on Sunday night? Or perhaps he’ll go on Tuesday instead. I mean just the fucking alone ….

The contrast, for me, comes with me having cancelled Simon Thornley for tonight because of a comparatively casual invite from K ‘You always come first.’ I wonder if he – I’m sure he did. I let nothing but professional necessity get in the way, nothing.

Oh, pray let her not be another who doesn’t know how to value him. Perhaps she thinks he should cancel Friday. Surely not, she has been so good over all that.

What right have I to speculate? Or to compare us? Yes, I can, in here. It’s not my idea of loving. We’ll see. I'm grateful of have him a bit longer. Before Christmas, I mean.

Later.

As it was, I wasn’t alone, as Neil said Come round and see the new sofas. Later Linda rang up and said Would I eat too, only cold chicken and salad. ‘Ooh yes.’

So round I went. The sofas are very comfortable and covered in rather a jolly broad green and tawny pink striped glazed chintz. But alas the curtains behind them are in a rather dirty pink and a very small damask self-pattern, that neither contrasts nor matches. Bother. Dear Neil, poor Neil, even I had no idea how insecure he is financially, till I heard him say quite twenty times during the evening. Linda is tired still ‘cos of the child waking so often every night for the last six months. Neil is between jobs and therefore beside himself. (He also told me the other day, and meant it, that he isn’t going to sleep around anymore because of AIDS. That won’t help.) It was a pleasant evening, even tho’ they had quite a bicker, well a quarrel. ‘I like socialising.’ ‘We’ve already spent £30 this week on baby-sitters’, sums it up reasonably. I was on balance, flattered they’d done it in front of me – I may be wrong, but I sensed they wanted me to judge. As if it were one of their fathers. And Neil took it from me because of course I had to come down on the side of the children! She is a marvellous girl.

Thursday December 18 1986

First thing to say is that Buddy says No. Stupid old bitch.

And last thing.

Friday December 19 1986

A.M.

Almost as much as anything, I mind about it being turned down, because yet again, his author has let him down. (She liked the music!) And also it turns off, at a stroke, that beautiful vista of working days spent together. It made me bitter to think of him having another disappointment. I’d been out having my hair cut for the commercial, which I got, by the way. I popped in to see the new Green & Underwood. (Have I recorded that the fee for D’s Hedda Gabler repeat will be £2,500 odd!) Nice girl, Louise Hillman, daughter of Jackie Stoller, - so now casting agents are founding dynasties. She is still un-agent-like. Spent two years as assistant to Jeremy Conway. Left because he doesn’t delegate, she would have got no further. He has 130 clients, and some of the younger ones who don’t make it at once, do get neglected. Joe S seems to be veering towards him – I think unwisely. She went on, most revealingly, ‘I didn’t realise until I took this on, what hard work it can be. At Jeremy’s we made almost no outgoing calls.’ Just as I always thought, and Jeremy C is spoken of everywhere as one of the best, most caring, most conscientious agents around. Which isn’t saying much. I took her to Ian Burns’ film, Liebe Mutter, in case she might be interested in him. I liked her, within limits, – she’s just beginning and has every reason for working hard.

Happily Paul Ryan was coming to dinner, and he distracted me from the bad news. Even as it was, I got more drunk that I thought. I think he sensed it was a bit odd. But he’s a dear sweet-natured boy, and he was a great help. I hope I didn’t use him. He is quite happy again. Thank God.

Off to the first meeting of Ensemble tonight, after the filming.

Saturday December 20 1986

Last night was fairly disastrous. I must not go out after filming. I’m too nervously tired.

First to the commercial. Thank goodness it was with Irene Sutcliffe, a merry companion. There was the usual three or four hours of waiting – happily only from eleven in our case. I was rather amazed when they announced there was no catering. I firmly said we ought to go back to Holland Park to that big pub. (We were in a strange area off North Kensington, all council blocks and areas surrounded by corrugated iron, nasty small shops and so on, two minutes from one of the most expensive bits of London.) No, I shan’t keep up with Irene. She’s in the John W. camp, stuck back about 20 years. Went on about the music in the pub. ‘John G isn’t the actor Larry is etc. etc. No doubt she found me wanting. I was grateful for her company. About 4.30 we looked at one another, and said This is an insane profession. The effect was of two middle-aged tweedy people sweeping down to a hotel on a flying carpet. And the flying carpet was an exact three D mock-up, embossed figures and all, of a TSB credit card, the size of my drawing-room. (Confusing. I wrote the Friday entry during the filming, so I am now writing about last night.)

Got to K’s about 6.45 or so. Sarah Wickham there. She the one he two timed Sue Bird for at college. V. pretty in a mass-of-hair-small-nose-white-clothes-v. slim sort of way. Bit obvious. Not much more to her, I’d say, but nice and responsive. We got on, on the surface v. well. She laughs readily. The others gradually arrived. Phil L as per. Liz Kitchen! Viola-player, intelligent. Stan, v. silent. Wine, avocado dip, with carrot-sticks in a basin of water, sausage rolls, v. sensible. I waited impatiently for us to start the business of the night. When he did, I was amazed that they began with ‘You know Angus and I have written these songs.’ Never has he given me any reason to believe I was going to be as central as that. I was at once shy and disappointed. Since my presence there must have been strange to them all … He then gave a little exordium of such vague and feeble nothingness, and then proceeded to play two year old numbers including, All in Vain. I wanted an inspiring vision, a new move forward, a laying out of a new road. I was deeply disappointed. There followed a ‘discussion’ of such banality and nothingness as I have seldom heard. Liz Kitchen became offensive about Bradford and Brussels without having heard it. I was offensive back, as I can't bear him taking rudeness like that.

As a last straw, the bell rang and he let in Sharron and put her in the bedroom. As he cancelled our last evening ‘because it’s her last night’ it put me right out for that reason. But apart from that – I’m sure he didn’t lie, as I might once have thought – you cannot have someone waiting in another room if you’re having a serious professional talk.

I left shortly after at 10.45. I saw no point in going on.

There was a message from B’ham ‘Peter from B’ham. Can I stay?’ P. Henslowe. Well. So he arrived. 18. More articulate. V. fresh and well looking ‘I can’t stand B’ham any longer’ on the doormat! I don’t know what’s to become of him. He is so simple he may get away with it – he’s almost half-witted. It’s fascinating, the adopted child of intelligent parents whole three blood children have all gone to university etc. He is thick. In a nice way, but … His father was a circus acrobat, his mother a nurse. His day was a series of disasters. The friends he came up with, at 12.0, weren’t at their phone number till 6.0! So he wasted the day till a quarter past three, when he went to the shops by himself. Then he went to South Ken station ins. of High Street Ken. They rang me twice. But eventually all was well and they got to a place in Stockwell and it was great. Lots of bands. Never heard of it. Oh, it’s Sunday now. Sunday 21st. And I’m off to Simon Thornley’s lunch at the Pelican.

Later.

Most enjoyable. For myself, I’m glad he and Christine split up, as she never quite saw my point. With defective sense humour, she was always imagining I was ‘insincere’ or something.

His other guests were all women. His sister Sue, whom I liked least, tho’ quite a lot, – a bit suspicious. A lovely warm Italian girl with perfect English, off to Rome for Christmas. And Simon’s current girl? who came to the Nicolson with him. Really intelligent and perceptive. Will transform our meetings if they stay together. Lots of wine, but I wasn’t drunk and I was, I think, a great success. I needed it after Friday with those musicians. Forgot to say that Chris P was there, still on the wagon, not fat, quiet, good-looking, utterly subdued. I have never seen such a change in anyone. If only he can practice! That he was there at all was apparently a miracle.

K rang yesterday to arrange a night before he went to L’pool. Sounded a bit distant. ‘I’ll see what Sharron’s up to.’ She’d obviously gone back. Odd. Lunch on Monday on way to L’pool. Café Fish. Daresay he’s cross with me.

Monday December 22 1986

Agonizing lunch. He reproached me with ‘not presenting a united front’, and he spoke so badly because I hid my face. Defended Liz K to a point by saying, ‘She hits drums very hard for a living. How can you expect her to be quiet and gentle? If you’d left it alone, she would have belted on and finally up. As it was, you left and she’d sort of won.’ A certain truth in that. He defended it all as far as he could, but I think it was due as much as anything to his hatred of really planning and organising ahead which you have to do to carry people with you.

But I always underestimate how agonizing such times are. I could not eat my lunch, and was grateful for the wine. We had sort of made it up, when I just couldn’t say goodbye again at that awful station, so at the corner of the Square, I made to shake hands. ‘No, no’, and embraced and kissed me most warmly.

But I have such a long time to think of it, with all these utterly empty days ahead of me, and walked away feeling very low.

He’d also decided to stay another day, so Sharron did get a lot of him. Jealousy and envy are terrible scourges.

Tuesday December 23 1986

All the same, such times are not so bad as they were. Isn’t it odd? My certainty of him is at a much deeper level.

Listening to LBC, as I do off and on most mornings, one reporter or whatever said ‘At the end of the day’, enough times for a fortnight.

To Joan Hoar’s for lunch. As always beautifully undemanding. Except that I was going to take her to our usual Refectory. Lo, the first blow of this wretched season, it was closed. The better one was full. The Brasserie was not to our tastes. So we bought a couple of plaice and cooked them at home, very satisfactory.

While I was having my aperitif, I picked up Brewster’s Book of Phrases and Fables or whatever it’s called. I looked up various things, and came on ‘St Kevin.’

Kevin, like St Senanus, retired to an island where he vowed no woman should ever land. Kathleen loved the Saint and tracked him to his retirement but the Saint hurled her from a rock. Kathleen died, but her ghost rose smiling from the tide and never left the place, while the Saint lived. A bed in the rock at Glendalough, Co. Wicklow, is shown as the bed of St Kevin.’ Fancy.

Oh, watched the Royal Variety perf. Bits of. Thank heaven for the video, you can watch bits. Elaine Stritch still supreme timing in a number. And how comic, they all sang Jerusalem as the climax!

Message on machine from Simon. Loving as ever. Spoke. Lunch. He has good news for me as well.

Wednesday December 24 1986

To S’s. Faint constraint for a moment, then ‘I had a present for you, but couldn’t get there before Christmas.’ Undid it. A whole case of Gordon’s, 12 bots! Nearly £100. Also a strange little story. The Lloyds Bank commercial he did with Leo McKern, paid very well. Later they said could they put out a leaflet with his name on? This they had negotiated with Leo McK, but not with S. ‘£2000?’ Marina. ‘No. £4000.’ ‘Right. But, look, this is a payment outside the budget, so we’re sending it you in cash.’ £4000 in cash with the clear implication that it is cash-in-hand, and not to be declared, from Lloyds Bank’s advertising agency! Qual monde. ‘Well, this is £4000 from nowhere. So I’m giving you £1000 of it.’ I just cried – it was such a relief.

We went off to lunch - he wanted to take me to a rich lunch – but, although we walked a good way up the Fulham Road, we had to come back to the Wine Gallery. It was the only tolerable place open. This hideous season!

He and Bruno had come back early from Tunisia – it was snowing.

I left him in a glow. We had made it up without a word.

Now I face a long desert.

Later.

Neil rang and asked me to go round for a C. Eve drink. So I’m not to be asked to go and play Trivial Pursuits on C. night? Just as well. But aren’t people strange? They quite forget that perhaps a pre-dinner drink is not really worth it if you have a twenty-five minute walk in the cold both ways! I went, such a strange collection! Neil’s mother, Stella, whom I hadn’t met. Very pleasant and sensible and bit defeated. Her accent settles once and for all the Dicksons’ class. Also an LA publicity man, about 50, balding, not assertive. After I’d been talking to him for a paragraph or two, I realised I must let him talk to me. He couldn’t see a single joke. Let alone a verbal play or twist. Even I kept getting caught out and falling into the hole where the laugh ought to be. I thought I must just shut up or we will come to grief – even he will notice and ask me to explain ….

Also, a young dark rather South American couple, who seemed rather deprecating and unsure. Never spoke to them. Lucy handed round the smoked salmon canapés etc, very nicely.

I enjoyed my walk home actually, and they did offer to drive me home.

Thursday December 25 1986

Had fish for lunch – Arbroath Smokies. Cried over the Queen’s Speech. Rang him just after as ordered. I’d sent a letter with his diary by Sharron, but of course he hadn’t got it, as she’s not there yet. (I’m writing a bit later, as I was unable to make myself write for some days from inertia and depression.) We had a yes and no talk. ‘Have you made it up with Phil?’ ‘Er – yeah, well, no!’ ‘Is your mother worse?’ ‘Yes.’ Mentioned P Henslowe, and would Nigel find some addresses? He was so sweet and warm and kind it almost made everything all right. But only his presence can do that.

And he still means to stay till after the New Year. Forgot to record Simon has never heard of Colindale!

Friday December 26 1986

It is very strange sitting here hour after hour, listening, if I turn the television set off, right down to the bottom of my ears, to the silence.

I might be at the cottage. But no D to come back to.

I miss him. It’s the distance.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 73

December 27 1986 - January 27 1987.

Saturday December 27 1986

Neil rang and came round for a drink. He said he was elbowing Tony and Caroline out of his intimate life. Not before time. Tony I’ve always thought crude, - I liked her, up to a point, but of course, they’re only money-minded. Oh, the two young people the other night asked themselves, and he couldn’t remember who they were until he saw them. No wonder they seemed rather uncertain! K rang up while N was still here. N. was very sweet about K. seeing - at last - that I was good with young people and had young ideas and that’s why.… Oh, the simple boy! He might as well have said, ‘Oh, I thought you and K. might have been having it off together, but I’ve suddenly realised we’re quite close, and you’ve never had it off with me, so….’ !

So I rang back.

He was able to talk - seemed to be alone. His mother is yet more crippled, and ‘there’s a look in her eyes.’ He is going to try to stay over the New Year. And Sharron may get there; she’s visiting a friend in York. Good. That’ll be a diversion for the last lap when one’s nerves start to snap. I said ‘What have you been doing?’ ‘Nothing’ ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘We’re going to have a game of Cluedo.’ ‘Mum’ll win.’ I can’t remember much else, except the overwhelming sense that he was really missing me – missing our way.

Watched This Happy Breed. How good Celia was. The scene where the son was killed - white face and burning eyes, all shrunk. Just acting. The whole film was better than I remembered, the bickering so good, and so much better without Noel!

Sunday December 28 1986

A quick call at 5.0 to get the address from Nigel for Peter Henslowe. N. quite efficient for a surprise. But oh dear, his speech is bad - I think it will be a real disadvantage, it’s so thick - It suddenly occurs to me that perhaps that’s why he’s a bit crude and coarse to go with it, as it were, so no one expects him to speak properly.

He said he’d got the script of the Snoo Wilson thing, and read it a couple of times, ‘and I don’t know, I’ll read it again. I’ve bought a biography of a Freud.’ Poor boy, what with Cocteau and Freud, he’s certainly having a baptism of literary fire! I said I must try and read it before I see S., as I am the only person who can give him the insights on it without disturbing his natural response to it. ‘Well, I was going to get it repro’d but L’pool isn’t the best for that.’ Told me Sharron would be at Leyton tomorrow.

Later.

Roy M. rang. Certainly doesn’t think MY should be abandoned. He had been to the King’s Head, and the man who runs it, bounced up to him and, as far as I can follow, more or less asked him to suggest something. Yes, well, one of his own plays perhaps, but the temperature might change if it were some unknowns’ musical.

Monday December 29 1986

Rang K. 11.15. Got him out of bed! Didn’t know he stayed in bed so late at home, bet his mother hates it. ‘Just a quick call to say I am taking Sharron out.’ There’d been some question whether I could fit it in (or afford it!) and the news about Roy and the King’s Head. Although it’s only an idea, it’s good to tell him stuck up there. He was pleased.

And rang back later to go again thro’ the Snoo W. I’d told him I was seeing Simon again. He’s sketched in what was needed from him, - now he went into detail, so that I would know what I was talking about.

‘There are seven points of music in Act I, and 4 in act II. Act I. 1. Opening music. 2. Under dialogue. 3. Song. 3 verses. 4. Funeral music. 5. Song. 3 verses. 6. Song. 6 verses. Sons of Freud. 7. Reprise of the above - 4 verses. Act II 1. Sons of Freud 2. Scene Change 3. Scene Change. ‘Then, Angus, 20 pages of dialogue, and 4. Reprise of S of F. ! Oh dear, it does sound a bit depressing and pretentious. But I’ll wait.

I had rung Sharron at Leyton. I said What are you doing tonight? Very quickly, ‘Nothing!’ ‘So’ I said ‘Think what you’d like to see?’ She didn’t ring back for some hours!, so I did. ‘Either Brighton Beach Memoirs or When I was with my mother I would scream and shout, with Julie Walters and Geraldine James. (It turned out she never got to that Neil Simon at the Offstage that we were enjoying so much - the play I say K. had enjoyed as much as any since he’s known her - he hasn’t sat out many - and she didn’t go. Odd.) So we decided on the Whitehall. Booked the seats by ‘phone - the Independent is good, not only does it give the box office numbers at the end of every review and has a complete list of films and plays, - it also has a little square against each, whose shading shows whether they’re sold out or part sold out etc.

Picked up seats and went across the road to the pub in Whitehall. Quite nice, sat in big red armchair and wrote a note to K for her to take to L’pool with his new diary, saying how I miss him and hate being at any distance.

Back to the theatre, met her and went back to the pub, and the red leather chairs were empty, so we got rather hot. Theatre sold out, our seats L10 and L11, Returns? Good middle–way audience, obviously under the impression that they were at an event of penetrating significance and daring. Oh dear, I was bored. As Sharron so rightly said, It probably looked so much better in the Bush. Perhaps it was scaled better for a smaller place. That doesn’t alter the inaptitude of a play that hardly engages the characters with one another at all. Mostly they stare out front and embark, in the time-honoured art-play way, on a monologue beginning ‘I remember my mother telling me’ and off they go for fifteen minutes, and nobody onstage registers how odd it is to have someone starring at the front row of the dress- circle for so long. It was well acted, especially by John Gordon Sinclair, who actually had a bit of dialogue. I was much bored especially by the second half. Why was it so full then? Ah, well, two famous young actresses, one with actual real talent. Geraldine James seems very bland and pedestrian for me, so I was amazed to hear S. say G.J. had been at Drama Centre with him and done some ‘wonderful things.’ I didn’t believe it - she’s a nice phlegmatic girl. And they’ve seen them both a lot recently on the tele.

But mainly what’s selling it, are the scenes where they suddenly become pubescent school- girls and talk about -sex. Oh god, the orgasmic screams when she said ‘It was purple.’ I remember D. saying that during a party after Wildest Dreams in Stockton-On-Tees. She was asked her about her first experience ‘I knew it would be big but nobody told me it would be purple.’ She’d only seen little boys and statues. White. That was 1961, her audience were chorus-boys and girls who might have known better, and I remember being annoyed then by the wild unbalanced screams as of an unthinkable taboo broken. Oh, when I think of some of the taboos I would like to break.

We agreed, as we left, at how bored we’d been. I said how sad it was that we should both find it boring, at our different ages. At least she should have been enchanted, and I should have been outraged. She said, quite wishfully, ‘Yes, I wish I could see something that I think really good!’ So off we went to the Café Du Jardin. Only chosen because it was open! This hellish season! Well, it was just passable, but the moment I saw the printed menu, I knew it wasn’t the same place - it was now perfectly ordinary. And I shall never go there again, willingly.

So what do I think of her, spending an evening alone with her? Well, it was a completely easy evening, we never faltered for something to talk about. For example, sitting in the theatre, waiting for the curtain to raise - it was fifteen mins late, which even impinged on idiots, I wondered if they were distracting from the shortness of the thing, we were out even so by 10.0! - she laughed so much at the funny names in my family’s life that her eye make up ran.

She has always seemed to be fond of me, she certainly embraces me really genuinely warmly. She is composed, humorous, sensible, but I do not sense creativity. I sense prosaicness, a possible business capacity. The very thing that makes her pleasant as a companion, her lack of self-assertion, is the quality that makes me think she isn’t creative. The only moment when she showed any sort of ‘turmoil’ !! was her slight envy of K’s and mine singleness of purpose. He had to be a musician. I had to be an actor. The general overall impression was how little she gave away. Although she is quite interested enough in me to come out for the evening, and I think thoroughly enjoy it, she didn’t ask any more about me - well, that would be exceptional at 22 - but she didn’t ask anything about him. This last is understandable but not asking anything is quite interesting. She is certainly not remotely obsessed on this evidence.

We left the restaurant about time for the last tube. On the way there I pushed a £10 note in her pocket for a taxi - in case.

I wonder if she is careful about further commitment. Anyone might be these days. It certainly fits with the way he talks. I mean I wonder if they know how they feel.

Tuesday December 30 1986

To wander round the bookshop as I was meeting Roy. Brought a remaindered Vita and V. Woolf letters. American. No index! Met Roy at the Metro and we went for a drink at the Blue Posts, ‘one of my favourite pubs’. ‘People think I have so many projects and do so much – I don’t do anything.’ He certainly seems to watch as much television as I do. To ‘Explorers’ an agreeable slight little affair. How scornful K. would be in the wrong mood! I can’t always keep to his level! To Café Fish, he’s sanguine about MY. Though off to Barbados for a week next week, with David Threlfall. Oh dear, their relationship, Northern mates still. I can just see them, sitting eyeing women in the bar. That’s what it is, however you dress it up.

(Inserted note)

Dec 30th

Came out of the tube and felt grateful for the cool! Left my coat open.

Dec 31st

A tiny fly landed on my glasses this morning! ______Wednesday December 31 1986

Edna back home today. Rang Dorothy Fontaine before I rang Edna. ‘I see a great change. She can hardly hold a tea-cup. She’s always given me a diary, and she seems to have forgotten it. She doesn’t eat nearly as much. She forgets things, and looks strange around her chin.’

We exchanged concern and ‘You will let me know if…’ ‘Yes, the moment…’ Then I rang Edna, and was positively disappointed to find her as bright as a button and not seeming to forget anything.

But then she didn’t send me a card or anything, for the first time, and only just mentioned it. Didn’t seem to mind, which is so unlike her. She just threw away she hadn’t got out. All she had to do for me was to put the cheque and card in an envelope and get someone - the warden or whoever does such things for her - to post it. And she has been more forgettable lately. I had a patch of wondering what I could or should do. Nothing, unless she asks. After all, she’s in a sheltered flat and hasn’t asked them yet. She’s going to loathe anyone taking over. She must be allowed to decay in her own way. As I would want.

Later.

She said he’d said he might come back today, cos he’d had a turn up with his mother about stamps for sending me the script. After his p.m. call to me yesterday I suppose. I said to her if she speaks to him before I do, tell him to try and stay, ‘cos he said he would, and in the end, he’ll be glad he gave that time to his mum. This was this morning when I rang to see if she’d got home safe. ‘Yes, it was the last tube.’ I half thought she’d say ‘I’ll send you back that £10’. But no. ! Of course that’s why I wanted him to stay in L’pool, if he is there tonight, so that I wouldn’t have the pain of being without him tonight for the first time in London.

Later still. After midnight.

Went out on the balcony to hear the bells before ringing him. Bewilderingly a neighbour answered in a very bossy rather off putting way, saying K was dancing round a lamp-post. The sort of next door neighbour who knows K better than I do. He rang seconds later to say he’d gone out to be first foot and had to sing Auld Lang with the other first footers. The torture of living where everyone knows you. He thanked me so many times for my letter because he knew the need and felt it himself. He was so warm and living and near and loving that when I put the ‘phone down, I walked round the flat in a pleasure and agony of delight and huge energy. I couldn’t sit down, I rang Neil and Linda, forgetting they were in Spain. Got Neil’s ma, we had a good talk, ‘You’ve been such a wonderful friend.’ We had a good agreement that Linda is too soft with the children.

But it was him. I could have talked to him all night, and so warm he was. I don’t care that he’s not here.

I love that boy so violently.

Thursday January 1 1987

He rang to say he’d come here on Sat. and stay the night. For ‘our’ Christmas, as it were. Lovely. He’d got to sort Steve W. out Fri. night.

Later.

He rang again to say Sharron was coming back on Sat. night, he’d forgotten she was going to York. ‘Oh, I thought you had Steve W. to sort out on Fri.’ ‘No, I’ll come to you on Friday.’ Well, the sooner the better. And he hasn’t had a fuck for ten days. I presume! Funny, I don’t mind being ‘pissed around’. It doesn’t matter, when he’s so sure. (It is ‘time’ isn’t it, he’s got so much more, there’s always another day.)

Friday Jan 2 1987 Saturday Jan 3 1987

Could not have written last night, too happy, even tho’ he didn’t stay the night. He arrived with a lemon and a bottle of tonic ‘to go with your case of gin’, and wrote his card onto the cellophane still round it. I didn’t give him anything, because of the stuff we’ll buy in Tott. Court Rd. when the money comes in. He said the girl in the shop said to him, ‘This’ll go with your gin.’ How did she know him?

When he made to write, he found he’d lost the bottom half of the pen I gave him. He’d clipped it to the side of his satchel, but the outside! I’m not upset, I’m just pleased he’s kept it so long. And he went so red and said ‘How stupid’ so many times and so passionately that it quite made up for it! And with the money coming, I can buy him another.

While I was out getting the ice, he must have read my dramatic diary from 1947 on The Old Lady Says No. and said I’ve read your diary about Snoo. I was rather frightened because this dairy was on the floor and I don’t want him to read this - yet. Quite sharp of him in one way ‘cos ‘Old lady’ was very in choate, like Snoo! But also amazing that he didn’t notice the date or the change in my writing or the shape of the book!

He said did you get a card from David Gilmore? No. Well, that’s it isn’t it? Fancy him remembering. He certainly has a reaction to D.G. apart from the musical or anything.

We went through a few dates. ‘Sharron’s got a filofax’ with a wry smile, opening the diary I gave him. So funny, now his girl-friend has what he said he’d give somebody up for!

I told him about the DJ on LBC saying the Pet Shop Boys should come out of the closet. He said Nigel had told him the tour he might have gone on, was cancelled!

We talked of L’pool. ‘Phil spoke once or twice, and wished me good luck for my future projects.’ But it was obviously as cold as ice. Just one story illustrated what he’d suffered. His mother’s rheumatoid arthritis precludes her eating salt, ‘She seizes up an hour or two later.’ We sat down to Xmas dinner. My mother took one sip of the soup and said ‘You haven’t done what I told you, have you, Ernie? (poor Ernie.) ‘Yes, I have’, and so on, until Ernie admitted that he’d put some ham stock in it, the salty bit. And, having made an uneasiness about it, she then ate it. Again, she said she couldn’t go to neighbours to eat. ‘I can’t eat certain things, and I couldn’t say to people I can’t eat this and I can’t eat that. I’ve known them for years.’

I said ‘It’s the stupidity, isn’t it?’, and he actually agreed. ‘I’ve really finished with mum, dad and Phil.’ Oh, my prophetic soul.

‘How did Sharron get on?’ ‘I think she was bored.’ (Only think?) ‘The only reason she came up was to take photos of Liverpool and the weather was wrong.’ ‘Did you sleep together?’ ‘No, separate rooms. We tried making love one afternoon, but someone shouted out and we stopped in the middle.’ He mentioned S’s sinus. ‘Haven’t you noticed it? I keep trying to get her to go to the doctor, it’s so bad, sometimes she has to stop to blow her nose in the middle of making love.’ I was interested, questioned him a bit more, I think she gets it when she minds.

Roast rib of beef - he eats with much more appetite than a few years ago. He left on the last tube to turn out a friend of Steve W’s, whom he doesn’t much like.

Sunday January 4 1986 Monday January 5 1986

Sunday, a blank. My lord.

On LBC, the news started at 8.30, that police raids on the pornographic shops in the west end, were to begin at 9.0. This was quite carefully pointed. I should think half an hour would be long enough to get everything put away.

George R. arrived for the night and we had a good old gossip, Duncan Ross is dying. What funny little memories that conjured up! That red-haired phony was principal of the Bristol Old Vic School, when they moved into the new premises, brought with the O.V’s ½ per cent of Salad days. They asked if a room could therefore be named the D. Reynolds studio, as there was a J. Slade and D. Carey studio, - of course. D. said ‘Certainly, provided it always remains locked to demonstrate my disapproval of drama schools! Naturally there is no D.R. studio. However, Duncan Ross showed D. round when it opened. Previously, the school had been in a run-down church hall opposite the stage door. Now it was up in Clifton, seven miles away. D. Ross showed D. round, and at the end said ‘Now all we need is our own theatre, and none of our students need go near the Royal.’ So it was no surprise at the end of the season, and the student-show was Twelfth Night, guess who was playing Malvlio?!

George also told me a bit about Richard Aisley, appointed to succeed D. Ross, when he was past it, owing to war wounds etc. D. Ross left his sister-in-law behind, Gwen Wynne Davies, as an unpleasant legacy, as Secy. She ganged up against R. Ainley, with Daphne Heerd, to get him out, which they succeeded in doing. Of course he should have gone, but not like that. G.R. saw a lot of it as the drama dept. worked most closely with the school then - I don’t quite know why not now. Anyway, Nat. Brenner was appointed, and quietly got rid of Gwen. She married the head of some huge firm - he was one of the Governors of the Old Vic, and he’s just died, leaving her £1000000. There’s no justice in the world. She does sound nasty, ‘but always perfectly turned out.’ Exactly.

I didn’t tell him that Nat. B. seemed to us a v. poor choice except for admin. A stage- manager. And I didn’t tell him about us having to break off relations with him over David Gilmore. But I will!

Oh, had premonition on Sat. morning at 2.30 a.m. sitting up in bed drinking, that Edna had died. She hasn’t yet.

Tuesday January 6 1987

Have been in limbo still waiting for every sort of money. Today I rang K. ‘cos I can’t wait to see him without or with the money. Sharron answered, so she’s still there, lucky girl, I wish I could have a long w/e with him, just sitting. But I can’t expect it. And they were apart over Christmas. We had a good chat, ‘He’s on the toilet’, - I wish we could get her off that, and holding her knife the wrong way – I asked how was L’pool. ‘Oh, it was nice.’ She wouldn’t have anything quick to say. I said I’d read the Snoo Wilson. She said, ‘I read the first page, that was enough for me!’ She is extraordinary. I can talk that, after a lifetime’s experience, but she mustn’t. And apart from that, doesn’t she want to throw herself into what he’s having to cope with? It’s no use, I can’t understand that. Doesn’t she want to talk to him about it, and perhaps be able to help? Even with one word? Obviously not. He arrived, I said I must talk to you about it. He said Well I want to get the flat back as I like it. What are you doing tomorrow night? So I said See what you want to see. Good.

In the drinks shop I said to the girl ‘So you mentioned my case of gin to Kevin?’ ‘Oh yes’, she said, ‘I recognised him from Coast to Coast at once, by that big mole below his right eye.’ Quite bewildering, don’t know how she worked that out, - and yet she did speak to Kevin. My brain reels.

Wednesday January 7 1987

Woke at 12.0. Haven’t done that for ages. Didn’t dress and shave till 3.0. Have felt tired lately. That’s no work and no money and inertia.

Got to Leicester Sq. cinema at 5.45, and there was already a queue nearly to the other side of the square. I got the seats, £5.20 each, he arrived five minutes later. I thought he was a bit cross, but he wasn’t. We had a drink in the cinema bar, and went in to the back of the circle- it was entirely sold out - the last time was Hannah and her Sisters. The 8.15 perf. was sold out before we even got there, and the first week ‘broke all records.’ After all that, a very mild little film crawled out in front of us, with very little original about it. It’s only charm was simplicity. K was v. savage as we came out, ‘What utter rubbish.’ Too much, but he is still young enough not to appreciate the charms of simplicity. He questioned me, fiercely as to why I’d suggested it. ‘Well, it sounded better than that.’ ‘I knew from the critics etc. etc.’ ‘Yes, but I don’t trust the critics either way. And when something is as popular as this is, - and I still don’t think something can be popular as this, through hype - I want to see it.’ He remained a bit stroppy, - again, he’s still young enough to react too much to any suggestion of having to see something because it’s the thing to see! We got to the Amalfi, which I’d booked because of good notice in the Time Out guide. Alas, the front is that dreary fifties Italian look with chianti bottles etc. We turned tail. He said were we rich enough to go to L’escargot - I said ‘No, and he wasn’t dressed for it’, so he said Shall we walk to the new Café Des Amis Italiens in Charlotte St.’ I remembered it as Bertorelli’s. We went to the restaurant at the back. Front just like Café Des Amis, back, proper rest. with t-cloths and napkins.

Very empty and very cold, something wrong with the heating. But there was a proper waiter and good spinach soup and quiet and privacy, and we didn’t feel the cold till after the coffee.

We talked of L’pool. He said how negative Glynn had been with his parents. I said Well, yes, I did tell you.’ ‘Yes, but I didn’t think he’d be negative.’ He is rather. If their friendship is to survive, it will be because they are both exceptionally mild and considerate people. But with so little in common except child and boy memories, I don’t think it’ll survive, except for one meeting a year.

We talked of the New Tate site, all those beautiful ware-houses. He was very silly for a bit about it all, raging away about the terrible cheap shops and cafés in the development. ‘The sort of people who would go to the art gallery would be put off by those shops.’ ‘I don’t think so, - if the gallery is of the quality it’s supposed to be, that is, a gallery to be of international repute to equal the original Tate, which it could easily be just by using the Tate’s spares, as it were, the visitors would swamp the area with their overwhelming demands. You may find those tacky shops are on short leases till the gallery opens.’ ‘You’re missing my point.’ But I wasn’t, it’s that K. still hasn’t that knowledge and awareness of the power of the artistic establishment when it really exerts it. But he went on and on. Well, of course he was drunk, dear little thing. And his unworldliness comes out. And his bitterness with life a bit. Then we talked of Sharron and I was able to say that I didn’t want to find out about her entirely by myself. She’s staying so much partly because her place is so cold, only one bar electric fires, and she has her ‘thesis’ (sic) to finish, and such a lot of work generally. He described her this morning as leaving after an hour of working, just saying she was leaving, he didn’t know why quite. He was in the sitting-room, she at the desk in the bedroom. I’d said something about having quite a lot of room, oh, I know, it was Peter Henslowe saying why did I need so many rooms?!, - and K. said ‘She went I think, because we need more space.’ So she can’t work well with him right along the hall, I suppose. Or she felt she was in his way. Certainly he doesn’t want her there 24 hours a day, – he mentioned D and I, and our two sitting-rooms. The nearest he came to a statement of his feelings, was a murmur of ‘I’m very fond of her.’

Then the talk turned to the eternal question of how much you tailor yourself or your work to the audience. This was begun because we talked of Sons Of Freud, The Snoo Wilson ‘musical’ (sic) which I have now read. The usual uncertainty of tone, as if he’d just blurted it all down and hoped it would fit. Chorus of Eunuchs in first Act, who seem as if they are to be a frame work for the whole play, vanish in act II, when the dialogue becomes plainer and more straight forwarded, less pretentious, in fact. If only I could believe it was all intentional. ‘You acquiesce in our intimacies.’ Jung perhaps did talk like that, but Snoo does not persuade me he knows that! Any chance of K. making money out of it faded with Simon saying The Almeida, and now that I’ve read it….

He was very sensible about it, as he always is about his actual work. About gearing things to an audience, I still have to haul him on to dry land. He persists in jumping down my throat as if I were suggesting compromise. Youth. I must say to him ‘You wouldn’t write for nobody would you? So you must have somebody in mind.’ It’s not so much the writing as the presentation.

By the time we got to the tube, where it was warm, we were in full flow of excited agreement and discovery and stood in a corner at the bottom of the escalators - Leicester Square, what a lot has happened to me at this station - for some minutes more, and then a hug, and a parting of the bloody ways. We really have the most extraordinary relationship.

On the machine a message from Simon. See me for tea on Fri. Snoo is in USA seeing Roy Davis of The Kinks for quite another project. Yes?

Thursday January 8 1987

To Joanne David’s, to a mini-conference. I was under the impression I was going to talk about helping adjudicate etc. It turned out to be an idea put forward by the head of the Webber D, Rafael Jago, to bridge the gap between the young actor going on stage, and getting some proper experience. Certainly I am much concerned that young actors no longer go into a proper company, as we all did, and get a wide range of work among other actors of every age. Thus is experience and tradition handed on, and on that the business is still living. As Annette Crosbie (!) said harshly ‘How often is one in even a TV where young ones have no idea of the amount of energy necessary to drive even a TV from one end of the play to the other. And in fifteen years time, it’ll all fall apart.’ Yes, I agree with that. But when Rafael Jago got going, and suggested sending ‘6 or 7 students along to Nottingham under some scheme or other, and then they could do bigger cast plays, which are so difficult now because of expense’ etc. etc. I was amused that he said to me in the preliminary chat, ‘Huw Wheldon was a hopeless chairman.’ 25 mins later, when he was interminably emptying his windbag, I almost felt like digging up old Hew. There is no possibility of such a scheme being at all possible. Equity et cie would simply say, if there is money for seven students, there is money for three extra actors. Some years ago, they got rid of the acting ASM - much more’s the pity - but still how could we possibly turn the clock back that much? We all made lists of ‘names’ we could contact, and I thought, how absurd the whole thing was. I was amused that Ed stayed entirely out of it all. When the discussion faltered, Jo said to me, ‘Ed is aching to see you.’ ! So I poured it all out to him, and came back, and just talked to the only youngster there, Paul Flask. He’s in ‘Breaking the code’ with Jo at the Haymarket. I was depressed that Jo had got Annette C and me, and two members of her cast, and the head of Webber- D. The other one of her cast was a nice dim north country actor whose name I never caught. But he was a sweet simple 32-year old, calculated to produce a series of red herrings.

At the end of the tiresome time, I told the two young ones about my life and they blossomed. What a waste of time. But Joanne is so good and true – I will try and go on in some way with it. I went away in some pleasure. Rafael Jago lives at 7 Margravine Gdns! But I think he’s wary of me. Good.

Friday January 9 1987.

Giles’ gasman came at 11.15. A gas inspector in a coat. He converted Mrs E’s meter in two minutes. Rather a disappointment to G, who thought it would be a big digging-up-the-floor- affair.

Philip D. rang about my talk. Arranged that, and then said had he had ‘Reselection’. Yes, he had. ‘Oh, I am sorry.’ When I said, ‘Well’, he said it was a diary entry, and needed selection. ‘Tell K. a doodle on the keyboard needs thinking about and expanding, and then, a little while later, harmonizing and orchestrating.’ Now, allowing for P’s usual crudities, I see what he means. I am in a unique position over this. It is his first attempt at a serious play. But he told me the whole tale in just the same detail the next day. So I am almost as close to it as he is. I do see, reading it again, that it needs concentrating. When he confers with Glyn, I will put it in his mind to get the maximum material, and put in the minimum time.

Neil and Linda back, Neil rang, most loving and most puritan. Little dear, always goes to extremes. Now he’s not going to socialise!! At all?

Rang K. at 2.15 to ask whether we’d meet at the weekend, which he’d suggested on Wed. Snubbing. In that way I must stop him doing. ‘I’m typing Sharron’s thesis.’ Well, I didn’t know I was interrupting something so important. And so any chance of a meeting was brushed aside. And yet of course I know that it was party because he was actually irritated by what he was doing.

So got myself to C. Pelican for Simon at 5.0. I was there for 4.35, and wrote in here, and enjoyed myself. Had a cappuccino, and then two, and five o’clock came and went, and it was 5.15 and 5.25 and Oh how I wish - this is live - I could be late for someone. How I wish I didn’t care enough to throw away twenty-five mins of a dears friend’s company.

But he was so dear. And counted out the £1000 in £50 notes from a huge bundle. I said ‘Thank you, Mr. Bernstein. Last night was wonderful.’ Well, it’s guilt. What a relief.

So to chat. Simon Stokes and Jenny have split up. He’s gone off with their publicity girl?? Gwen? He left at 6.30 to meet Matt. Oh dear, can that be for good of either? Yes, they’re both so young.

Saturday January 10 1987

To the matinée of The Women. Rion B and Elizabeth there, which put me off. Happily the whole thing was sub-standard, so I pretended to them I was only seeing Act I on purpose. Oh dear, it was poor. Only Maria Aitken had the right amount of cheek. As for the look of the thing, when I say that half the young women were wearing strap-over shoes, which in 1939 would be the very epitome of dowdiness, so much for the design.

What an odd thing to revive. So esoteric.

Later.

I looked forward to an old age where my ideas would be accepted, – so that I could coast along. ! I have had to fight all the way. Against my parents, against school, (no, not against Cambridge) against D., against the 60’s, and against David Gilmore, and in some ways, against K.

No, not - yes.

Why can’t they see I’m right? They always do in the end. But the struggle.

Sunday January 11 1987

Could not record yesterday’ pain. Geraldine has died. Staying with her parents - parents? She hated her mother - she walked out on the dunes on West Mersea island in this bitter weather and froze to death.

I can still feel her huge swollen stomach with the twins moving inside. She held my hand on it - Poor girl, how unhappy she must have been. But the moment I read it in the D. Mail, my first thought was, oh poor Gerry, she would have a bizarre death. Certainly her pregnancy was a last throw. And when she said, ‘Well, now you’ve got me’, although it was completely sincere, it was hardly realistic, as she was then pregnant with twins.

Didn’t ring K ‘cos didn’t want to be snubbed again.

Monday January 12 1987

K. rang 1.15. So sweet and loving. He cannot be that, I suppose, when he’s busy! Got Nigel and Andy staying, ‘so I’m dealing with him tonight.’ ‘But I’ll come round tomorrow. What’s happing about Roy?’ ‘Well, he’s supposed to be with us on Tues.’ ‘Well, anyway I’ll come round tomorrow. My restart course is tomorrow, so I’ll come straight to you.’

Bliss. With that good wodge of fresh raw experience. I said, ‘Do you have to do the course?’ ‘No, ‘cos Andy refused it. But, after 4 years out of work, the man said, Well, if you have had four yrs. out of work, you keep saying you’ll take anything, so they might…’

I’m glad his examining the possibilities. And sweetening them. We can get him out of it.

And he may get a song out of it. And he’s ‘dealing with’ Andy tonight. What boy of 25 gives himself to a child of 18, to try and solve his life?

Well at least I’ve given him that.

As for the typing, he finished at 12.0 last night. ‘Thur. Fri. Sat. Sun. I’m really annoyed with Sharron because she hadn’t got a fair copy going’ - I said ‘You mean you said you’d type it as she had to spend the time finishing it.’ ‘Exactly!’ Her term starts today.

He said that Sarah Wickham, if it worked out that she came to stay, would mean he had £80 a week, if the Restart scheme might possibly give him money for his tape scheme and pay his mortgage.

Might that happen? It might. But what would Sharron think if v. glamorous Sarah W. – P.R. stayed there, ex-girlfriend etc etc. layered tipped hair, and so on…..

He would say ‘I have no….’ but would Sharron…. ‘cos Sarah is pg. 2 material. But that might be all right ‘as only a student would find her attractive’. But it is a change in mores.

Tuesday January 13 1987

I can’t write of the deepest agony of my heart.

Have I got to give him up forever? Yes!

Think this moment I must. I cannot subject him to another night like tonight. Wednesday January14 1987

Yes, well… I was drunk; it wasn’t nearly as desperate as it sounds. So to re-chart the day. He’d rung to arrange and I was quiet expecting him to cry off, as Roy had. But I noticed an extra something in his saying ‘Well, I’ll … he brought my Christmas presents! A Nicolson poster, framed, and a box of 12 tonic to go with the Simon’s gin! Perfect! Cheap, but infinitely personal and thoughtful. For the next few weeks I shall think of him with every gin and tonic and not have to carry the tonic. (As If I didn’t think of him with every gin and t anyway!)

So first he told me about the restart course he was bidden to by the DHSS, cos he’s been (to them) out of work for three years. Interview at Job Centre, but this at a special place for it, show your pass at the door etc. Room grey, no windows. About 39 others. First thing to say, thank god is that he wasn’t at all depressed by it. For or in himself, that is. The others were all, as far as he saw them, intelligent and talented Plumbers, dress designer, potter, electrician, – some of them had already had their own businesses. So he thought the choice had been sensible.

First thing. A rather fat man gave them half an hour talk on facts of the course. (It was incidentally called awareness day!) Man thrown if asked a question. Then they had a coffee or a tea and biscuits.

Were called back from that rather schoolmasterly by – a school master. 60ish. Hm. He talked for three hours! And really just more facts about running a business. (If he’s so good at it, why isn’t he running a business instead of instructing?) Made amazingly tasteless black remark with a wave to a black in the audience. He learnt nothing or almost nothing, except by default, from this man. He learnt one or two things from the others, and their questions. And the man being so rude about co-operatives - how any ‘businessman’ dislikes co- operative, ‘cos antagonism and cut-throat competition etc etc. are the breath of life to any proper businessman. It was by no means a profound experience. He, the Cockney ex- furniture remover who’d been ripped off by his partner - ‘never have a partner’ - and a girl fashion-designer, all despised him, and opted out after lunch when they found there was to be more of the same, with no individual counselling. How stupid these people are. They don’t understand young people at all.

We had dinner, grilled dabs, delicious – he liked them! Nobody is more satisfying to cook for. Told me, rather worryingly, that he’d lost his driving-license. Oh dear, more upset. As always, made the ground give under my feet. I just want one moment when he has two driving-licenses, as it were! Ah well, it certainly upset my vision of the weeks ahead, and the Reading concert. Edna’s visit, and the Liverpool talk. But I swallowed that down, not too dog-in-the-manger, I hope.

Then he started to talk about back from L’pool, and The Phantom of the Opera and the Les Bubb Sat. evening performances. As so often, he jumps on me a sudden change. Glynn and Sarah are coming to both. And Sharron! Now I could quite take Sharron. Though I had thought as we are collaborators and went to the others, ‘Song and D’ and ‘Star. Exp.’ together, so we should to this, as a serious artistic decision, and without distraction. Sharron is one thing, tho’ he should have asked, but Glynn and Sarah! Laymen, and stupid laymen. Glynn, who said ‘Oh, you’re so critical’ to us, after ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ for all the world as if he was Lalla!

So the argument got - no, not quiet heated, but cold. I set, at him having so miscalculated. At one point, I said, after I’d said I didn’t want to come in that case, and we’d talked of it for a bit, and he saw, by my ‘set’ look - oh, that ‘set’ look - that I was hurt. Later I said, ‘You will be feeling something intensely and I shan’t be there.’

Anyway, on the door step, as so often, he made peace, ‘Don’t let’s fall out over Lloyd- Webber.’

Yes, but how could I make peace when I had been deprived?

Met Paul Ryan at Café Fish, 6.30. Still intensely cold. Block three away, running with water from roof to pavement, tank obviously burst. Water bouncing off awning, freezing into stalactites. To Peggy Sue? mild little copy of ‘Back to the Future.’ Fought sleep. Deer little Paul. He is a dear sweet true soul, and I must try and push his career more, he should never be out of work.

Thursday January 15 1987

Still very cold. Lot of ‘phone calls that made me bit late, and he rang me at 11.0 to say when and where! Got to Café Italien neither of them there, thick slushy snow. K. arrived first! Still a bit cold in the proper restaurant. There are skylights, and it was exceptionally cold, still, the draught was worth remarking on to the waitress, who said brightly, ‘Yes, it is very draughty.’ And whisked on. As always, K didn’t want any lunch at all, having just got up! And didn’t have nay wide, but did in the end have a large plate of lasagne. Roy was in great form, having his week in Barbados with David Threlfall, showing us his blistered limbs, the little innocent. But he certainly seems quite better. He reduced us to complete hysterics by describing his mother’s visit to London, in the train of his father’s death. Somehow his mother’s total deafness made this funnier. There were two people to lunch? Dinner? Mother: ‘Do you want best butter or margarine?’ Roy: ‘What do you mean, mum, best butter? Best butter? There’s no such thing now. Best butter?’ To guests - ‘Well which do you want?’ Mother. ‘We haven’t any margarine.’

And she did it again with the sauce. ‘Daddies or H.P.?’ ‘We haven’t any Daddie’s’. ‘Well, I wanted to give them a choice.’ I think, as it were inside, I understood her better than they did, it wasn’t so purely funny to me, it was genteel, polite to offer a choice, even at the risk of absurdity! Nevertheless, Roy’s delivery, B’ham accent-command, and natural playwright’s gift rendered us both speechless, helpless, speechless and screaming at the same time, in a memorable laugh.

That did not distract me from being amazed that, when I eventually mentioned M Youth, which the lunch was all about, Roy revealed that he only knew the man who ran the lunch- time King’s Head. And only a few sentences about it at all. After the coffee! Always after the coffee. And a £45 lunch! Ah well. I’m a fool.

So off K and I went in the slush, and my shoes with a hole in, to buy him his Christmas present. A new cassette deck. Aiwa F770. We went round and round Tott. Court Rd., that area so associated, so saturated in him.

Back and fourth, and back to a basement where it was, I think, twenty pounds less, £295. I gave him the £250 which was his present. And I was amazed. He bargained by saying ‘I’ve got £250 in cash.’ (We’d been in once before and got it down a bit by mentioning the shop on the other side of the street!) In the end he said ‘£260.’… ‘I’ve only got £250.’ ‘Can’t your dad lend you £10?’ (He was Pakistani, as the whole Hi-Fi thing is, odd). To my amazement, he came to me on the stairs and said ‘Dad, can you lend me ten pounds?’ I found out afterwards, that he’d thought I’d heard the salesman. Nevertheless he said it quite straight. When we were in the taxi on the way to his flat (‘I thought we’d go back home.’) he mentioned it, I was able to touch his arm, to show how much it had meant to me even in half fun.

Back at the flat, he started immediately to unpack it. (The flat was immaculate - that shows how idle and unhappy he’s been lately.) And oh his pleasure in it was worth -

Andy came in. He looked quiet different, plumper, longer hair, hopeless, some people might say ‘lazy’, but still with that unmistakable air of waiting for something. After all, here he is back again. Why? We had (K and I, I mean) a short brisk political argument, engineered by me, (imagine him going along with it, a few years ago - I don’t nearly often enough, remember that he has to trust me emotionally, too.) The discussion showed, rather quickly and crudely, that, I was on the ‘right’ side, as I’d suggested to K. I had Andy over on sat.

K. is quite ruthless with his young guests, ‘Angus and I are going out for a meal’, knowing that Andy, with no money and no other friends, was condemned to an empty evening. He did say something about going to see his brother who is an Economics student somewhere.

So off we went in a taxi ordered without asking, by him! To, in the end, the Aquilino. The Minogues or whatever it’s called, the new Irish place was closed. It was nice being in the Aquilino again, after a year? Very pleasant associations. Pigeon? He said with a smile, And I did.

We talked, at last, a bit more of Sharron and her future. He got quiet boiled up at me (mainly because he was at the height of his drunkenness, which generally comes about just before the coffee!) because I said lightly, after he’d described the poor prospects, ‘We’d better get her out of jewellery.’ Irony is sometimes dangerous. He came off, and agreed that it was a poor prospect, and yes, she was envious of our commitment to our work, because it was clearer! I fear he may be disappointed at what a hum-drum job she may settle for, the reverse side of her common-sense.

Forgot to say, that over lunch, he revealed he has an honorary ‘Auntie’ in Holloway for murder, whom Marjorie has been to visit!! What a scream. For us! Forgot to ask him about it again.

Oh, and he played me his new song. Fascinating. Rather Chinesey. Again an advance.

Friday January 16 1987

Lunch with dear John. Still terribly cold so didn’t attempt to go to Goldsmiths and see R. III. There is still chaos on the rail and road, and half the New Cross line is shut.

Saturday January 17 1987

Andy arrived. Plumpish, smiling, quiet, a great feeling of hopelessness, - well, two years out of work in Liverpool. He’s very much better company then I expected, a keen sense of at least my sense of humour. And a very keen appreciation of K. ‘I’ve never had conversations with anyone except K. I went back to L’pool and tried to have some sort of conversation with other people, and it didn’t work. With anyone except, now, you.’ I imagine that no one listens and takes him seriously for a start. I was much interested that two or three times, for instance, when I said ‘Oh I wouldn’t call you lazy’, ‘That’s just what K. said.’ And time and time again he said ‘No, K. hasn’t told me to do so and so.’ ‘No, K. hasn’t said I should go back to collage.’ He might redo cars and sell them, starting with a Mini in his dad’s garage. Tho’ it sounds very clapped out. ‘No, K. didn’t…’ It is wonderful how little K. judges people. I sometime wish I could be more like that, and I have got more out of people, incl. K. himself.

Such good company was he that I said Let’s go to a movie, and took him to dinner. Nothing I wanted to see, so chose a ‘road’ film The Wraith about a ghost bike-rider who magically destroyed a gang one by one. Absolute - and loud- crap. If he was the sort of boy he seems to some people he’d have like it. He saw it was crap. I didn’t say so. Over dinner he started coming thro’ his face, and knew it. A tender gentle chap. Anything?

Sunday January 18 1987

He phoned at 7.0ish an ‘arranging’ call. ‘Bill Robinson is coming and Stan is back, so I want to do a bit of jamming, and work on Simon’s thing for a bit. So if we could put the D. Tutin thing on to next week, it would make my life much easier.’

Oh, and a meeting on Friday with Roy about ‘M.Y.’ Sweet.

And yet sometimes I think, does he suddenly want to be free for a few days?

Monday January 19 1987

Went out to post all those letters at 11.30. Young man passing belched. I snorted. We laughed.

Tuesday January 20 1987

Took Joe Searby out to celebrate him being taken by Green and Underwood. He chose The Mission. We ate first - at The Wine Gallery. Downstairs for the first time, because there was a private view upstairs. (I remember once going with K, and we spent the first hour deafened and looking into peoples waists.) Downstairs many tables are uninhabitable, - there are curved cellar ceilings, - I would have bumped my head sitting down.

‘The Mission’ was a beautiful nothing. He felt exactly the same. How many, far too many, ‘acclaimed’ films and plays are frauds today.

Joe is gifted, no doubt.

Wednesday. January. 21.1987 Thursday. January. 22.1987

Stayed in bed till 2.0, both days, and didn’t dress or shave.

Some random observations. Will they be?

Simon rang and made a date for K. to meet Snoo on Sunday. As I said, I changed it at least to three, so K. had a chance to drive me to Reading. That’s why I’m hiring the car. K. was irritable at being even perhaps hampered in responding spontaneously to Snoo. (Some hope!) I just thought all I have is this one little thing and Simon hones in on even this. But not so, of course.

Later.

70 working-class families living in Buck House instead, wouldn’t help.

Later still.

There is going to be a huge battle between art and sport as they, pathetically come closer together.

I feel some much at the end of so many parts of my life.

Friday January 23 1987 Saturday January 24 1987

K. rang quite a bit one way and another. Roy had had diarrhoea, but would come anyway, and drink water. (In the end, he went right thro’ all the drinks and the fish and chips and whisky and stayed the night with K, so no more of that!) We had one or two more argys about Sunday, because it is bad that he is not driving me, because that’s why I hired the car, and I don’t want to inhibit his first contact with Snoo. (Tho’ I must record I can’t believe S. is very spontaneous, and I must stop K. thinking spontaneous reaction to someone is so wonderful!) He is a bit nasty about it, as he always is when he feels cross ‘cos he minds about me! Later he rang again, to say Roy was seeing Rochelle at 4.30, so why didn’t we meet at The King’s Head all together at 6.0, or whenever I got there, and why didn’t we go to the fish and chip shop! (Less effort for him, more expense for me!) Very unlike life, they were already there, at 6.0, Roy looking in rude health. K. unshaven and spotty. It’s odd that he gets a little bit of a rash when he doesn’t shave. Sparkling conversation. I am always struck by how marvellously he and I sparkle in company. More and more as time goes on in private, too. But it is important to record that sometimes a friendship can be built from the outside in as well. Despite the other night, we certainly present a united front. The combination of Roy and K., certainly brings the best out of me. In a superficial social sense. We went early to the fish and chip shop because K. said Stan’s girl-friend was bringing round a Porter Studio, at ten, so we must get back. So off we went. Olga greeted me with ‘Hullo, Angus.’ I do admire that, deserves success as a restaurateur for that alone. She consulted me about her voice. Its sounds alright, but often her thyroid’s up. She has been advised to go to a speech therapist. Her voice seems to ‘go’. Well, I’m not surprised – she’s always doing the very worst thing, shouting above a din. I think I gave her comfort.

Hilarious dinner. Roy sprinkled two sauces and vinegar and salt and pepper on his excellent fish and chips (it was his first visit) without tasting it, then ate it like a dog, not managing his knife and folk much better than a dog!

Back to the flat, we had a bit alone. I said, ‘Where’s Bill Robinson?’ (Oh, I was a bit miffed when K. rang and said Bill R. hadn’t arrived and nor, I think, had Stan, so he’d put me off for nothing. Except he hadn’t, ‘cos he went on Monday to see someone Sue Bird gave him an introduction to,- I still haven’t caught his name, he operates at Music House, wherever that may be, is black, used to run K.P and Burton? Did I get that right, was the biggest something? Sold it (why?) and is now, - what?) He was with him 2 ½ hours. He’s into supplying background music for in house movies and videos - ‘he’s set me two tasks, a 12 minute piece of background and a short film about Midland Bank- wants to see if I can write to order, last thing he said to me was, don’t go behind my back and sign on with anyone else till…’ Oh, dear, I don’t know. Dear K. he still takes people at their own valuation. ‘He knows George F.’ Does he? Did K. mention him first? Still, K. always has that last bit. ‘He was most interested in Lands End – he likes my ‘classical style’, so if he says my ‘tasks’ aren’t commercial enough, then I’ll know.’) So, where’s Bill Robinson? Well, he did turn up, but alas, got very drunk, and attacked Sharron. Of all people. Verbally. Because she was calm and solved. He looked round at me ruefully from the sink - I wondered if he was thinking of me attacking people when drunk. But then I only attack people who deserve it! The flat was immaculate, so he hasn’t been working much! He’s also recorded the Snoo Wilson - Freud song with Sarah Wickham. The MS was on the piano. I played over quickly to myself and suddenly realised I’d never done that in front of him. I think he was a bit stunned. He really didn’t know till then that I could read music even that much.

Eventually Roy got round to MY. How true is D’s dictum, ‘only over the coffee.’ This was over the third whisky. At least he is still behind it. Two good suggestions, don’t specify the break no. and put back the ‘dream sequence’ but just make it Andy saying to Arthur, ‘So I said to this manager’ and the manager comes on and he says it to him. Simple. Dream sequences are old hat, I knew, but could not solve it. I suppose he’s enthusiastic. I wish I was. I cannot get excited again. I must talk to K. when we have our car trip.

Stan’s girl-friend arrived. Thirty three! small, dark, soignée with, yes, I’m afraid so, that ‘indefinable chic.’ No doubt that she ‘made the best of herself’ in a quiet a superior way to a comparable Englishwoman. English excellent. I talked to her mainly, - I didn’t think K. reacts to her all that favourably. Roy did. I went off the tube with her, rather tight. She is very cordial. On the whole a satisfactory day.

When I got back, I was drunk, of course, but also a bit concerned and a bit cross in equal proportions. He had been so picky about the car ‘I can’t stay any night! The week’s filling up’, changing the Wednesday, and then the finding out that Bill Robinson hadn’t arrived to jam, etc! So I made careful notes, saying that every day seemed difficult, so I’d cancel the car. I don’t think I was irrational about it. He certainly wasn’t, he was at his blazing best, clam, sweet, sensible. ‘I want to see Edna.’ ‘I may be able to drive you to Reading.’ He assured me completely. And I didn’t feel guilty about it.

Today was less good! He was working hard to finish the song to play to Snoo and Simon tomorrow, laying down the backing tracks this morning (I don’t quite see that as it was just Sarah W. and piano, still…) He’d hoped I could pay for the car and collect the keys, but of course I couldn’t. So he rang back and said he’d see me there at 3.0, so he could then have a long evening session after. Sensible. Met him at his scruffiest. I was standing watching the other exit of the tube. He called ‘Angus’ as he sometime does when we meet, a bit impatiently. I suddenly saw perhaps why. I’m sure I stand and wait for him with a naked expectancy, a helplessness, that at once touches and irritates him. Not ‘irritates’ exactly, but makes a claim on him. And he wouldn’t look like that for anyone. So we signed up and joked, and had a bad moment when we were asked for identification because his driving license is the only thing he has and it’s lost! But it was alright, and we got in, and he came back again to tomorrow, and said ‘Why did you say on the phone etc. and made me say I didn’t mind. I tried to keep all minding out of my voice. You want me to be able to go on if Snoo wants to? I did convince him. He drove me home, and we parted warmly.

But I did feel sad, that I’d just paid £100 for a car, and he drove off in it, leaving me to an evening alone. Of course he’s working, I know, I know. It’s my bad luck again.

Sunday January 25 1987

A radiant day. I was just ready to go out at 4.25, case in the hall and everything, and he rang. ‘I can drive you to reading.’ Oh, I was so relieved, just practically! But for every other reason too. He drove Simon home first and got to me at exactly 5.0, we were in Reading by six, or rather before.

He was looking his best, he’d shaved, his hair washed and brushed - it has a beautiful light in it then – and it was one of the days when his skin looks different and it glows. Is it in his spirits? I suppose it must be. He gets plenty of sex all the time, for instance, and food and drink!

He was brimming with something, obviously, ‘I didn’t tell you when it happened, I wanted to tell you face to face, not to be missed!’ ?! ‘Glynn has asked me to be his best man. ‘Do I have to cut my hair?’ ‘No way.’ Oh, how I laughed. And laughed and laughed. ‘Will Phil be there?’ ‘Almost certainly.’ Of course, it’s Glynn’s father, Eric, who congratulated K. at Phil’s W’ding for sticking to his guns. ‘After all, I wouldn’t be angry with Glynn if he had said it’s an RAF wedding, guards honour etc. so long hair …. My only worry is that I have a fantasy that all those RAF types get drunk on the stag-party, and hold my head down over the loo and cut my hair.’ I fear that too, - they will get drunk, especially Glynn - that seems to be the point of these barbarous occasions - and I’m afraid such a thing seems only too possible, especially as K. does to occasionally seem to rouse violent feeling sometimes - vide that time in Manchester for no apparent reason, still, all the way round, I’m glad that Glynn has been that strong, after being so negative over Christmas. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Eric had a word with him. I hope the worst that will happen is a few snide remarks. Oh dear, yes, think how he hated the people at that ball. How many of them will be there, laughing at his long hair, as they will? And it may be counter-productive with Phil, who may feel it’s provocation on K’s part. In Sept. in Birmingham! Oh, and we’re a bit sad it’s Sarah, who is so nothing. So am I still glad all the way round? Not really! It seems another bit of a mess for him.

So to Snoo. His rueful grinning ‘Well’ said a lot. He got there before Simon and had ten minutes alone with Snoo, ‘I didn’t feel as awkward as I expected from you and Roy - I think he isn’t rude, he’s in a dream and not seeing you and muddled. We talked of the play by ourselves. I said I didn’t understand it. He said that wasn’t surprising, but if there was anything definite he said, it was that he just wanted to finish Freud in everyone’s mind. He also said, or indicated, that the play was still fluid, which was a relief, as it is! K. also asked why the eunuchs which seemed to be the framework for the first act, faded out in the seemed act. ‘Oh, but they’re still there at the side.’ Well they are, because some of the wretched musicians are also eunuchs. (I must register how very little I would care to be in a play of this kind, and dread perhaps not being able one day to refuse. The opportunity for making any sort of personal impact as an actor is minimal in this sort of play, with v. rare exceptions. And discomfort -!) This was very much a preliminary talk artistically, but they got as far as Simon saying ‘What we must do next is raise some money for Kevin.’ Good, as I said to K, S has plenty at this moment, and he must have at least enough for his mortgage and some equipment. ‘Oh, I won’t need much equipment if it’s going to be live, just a Porter Studio. But I’d like to hire a new piano.’ It was a pleasure to me when he said ‘Your present was well and truly used this weekend - I couldn’t have done those tapes without it.’

He played them the song and S. said it was dead right, was v. impressed. He played it to me in the dressing room, and although Sarah W. gave a rather pedestrian perf. – oh dear, she is a classical singer - it catches exactly the tone required, as S. said, Weillish, full of accidentals and ‘unexpected’ changes of key. He is a clever boy. Even I am surprised that he can catch the feel of things so exactly, as with I.M. Oh, Snoo had said at one point the fourth movement of Mahler’s third symphony is played exquisitely. Accordingly K. queried whether his musicians were to play it, in which case he’d need a 35-piece orchestra, or play it on record and risk it disturbing the whole scale of the music. In the ensuing talk, K. said he didn’t quite see why that movement, and, having got it out of the library!, played it, and Snoo said ‘That’s not the one I meant.’ And Simon said Surely you mean the beautiful fifth movement in the fifth sym.’ And hummed it. K. said That’s the fourth! Snoo said, picking up an LP saying The best of Mahler, ‘I got it off this.’ ! ‘Is he musical at all?’ ‘I don’t think so, for a moment.’

To sum up, K. was amused, pleased at the discussion of money, interested at Simon’s suggestion of a workshop for both play and music (Snoo wasn’t and no wonder while a lot of stupid actors suggest changing his play!) and altogether appreciated Snoo’s wild imagination - Simon said quite seriously on the way home, ‘Its totally mad’- but with his eyes wide open at the faults of the play. Snoo, and Simon’s ‘wilder’ flights.

So to that hideous Hexagon. They weren’t expecting me, but found me a dressing-room, where the manager also changed! But with so little time to pass, it was much less of a chore. We wandered out to get K. something to eat - ‘I’m ravenous’ - nowhere open nearby. ‘Lets get in the car.’ ‘Don’t you come. I might get lost.’ Well, I mean, as if… We ended up the only place open was Mac Donald’s. ‘This’ll be your first time, shall I hold your hand?’ Well, I was glad I was with him, as it’s a bewildering production line. Uniformed youngsters behind a strange shaped plastic counter, with spaces for trays and cash-desks, and behind them the kitchens, with all the food, all already packaged sliding down little ramps, almost as soon as you’ve ordered it. Even if it’s cooked you wait for it. It looked like a modern version of those cartoons where hens are laying eggs down tubes. I said Why don’t they make us sit underneath the chute so that the food will go straight into our mouths? I just wanted a snack, so he got me a small bag of chips - and they were very nice - he had a big bag, and a box of chicken McNuggets and a pot of barbecue sauce - choice of five sauces - two plastic cups of coffee, everything in bags and packets, so it was ‘take away’ automatically. ‘There’re no knives and folks’, he said, with amused, would-be rueful, protective love that I so love, when he’s initiating me into some possibly revolting aspect of modern life.

The lighting was relentlessly bright, the seats bolted to the table, and certainly not comfortable enough to linger on.

I looked across the room at a young couple, he rather spotty, her with a bleached punk-style with shaved temples, they were cuddling on the plastic chairs in the relentless light. I hoped they were enjoying it. And the memory came back to me of cane chairs, and black-dressed, white-aproned waitresses, napkins, white tablecloths, three courses for 5/. , a dance-band, every man in a suit, every woman in a hat and coat and skirt. Lyons Corner Houses after a World War. And every bit as cheap comparably as McDonalds.

Back to the Hex. I changed, he got his ticket. I had two words with Howard Shelley, a nervy thin startled looking man, who was the solo pianist/conductor. He said I mustn’t be surprised if he forgot to give me a bow! As it was, he nearly started two concerts without me. Really these musicians. I must say the programme consisting just of three Mozart concertos, was decidedly indigestible. K. came round in the interval, and said ‘This is pretty terrible. The piano needs tuning, and he brought them in half a bar early and every body winced.’ Sure enough, the tuner was out in the interval, although he had tuned the P. for ¾ of an hour from 6 - 6.45, thus preventing me rehearsing. The only rehearsal was reading it aloud to K. in the d. room!

K. stayed in the dressing-room for the second half. ‘Perhaps it’ll sound better on the Tannoy.’ (It didn’t) We dashed away afterwards, started out at 9.40, and were at The Wine Gallery by 10.30.

We talked more of Glynn’s wedding. I said it was another occasion for Sharron and I to go on a date. He said ‘It’ll be in September in Birmingham, you may both be invited, if she and I are still together.’ That was the second interesting thing he’d said about their relationship. It is so extraordinary that such a feeling boy seems to reveal so little deep emotion about her.

Otherwise that meal at The Wine Gallery, was so light, so merry, so delicate, so loving, that I have written all this in a trance of delight.

There is no one like him.

Monday January 26 1987

D’s b’day, 74. Did not feel melancholy, at least not for that reason.

Suddenly realized that the first episode of A Small Problem was going tonight. So rang K. for a really quick call, especially as he wrote a signature tune for it. Rang him throughout the afternoon. Should say that he left me to go to Sharron, but he always goes home. Then through the afternoon, there were more and more reports of a terrible accident in the Holloway Road. I got the atlas out, to see why he might have been at that particular junction at that particular moment. Eventually I rang Sharron to ask her. I got a rather cross young man, who said ‘Sharron’s boy-friend was in the Leyton Arms.’ So I left a message, limp with relief that he was alive. And then suddenly, blessedly I remembered. He was going to sand down that chest of drawers for her Christmas present. (I was worried by the thought of him spending the entire day in what he’s described as her cold rather nasty digs. I waited all night for him to ring, but he didn’t.

Small Problem was a disappointment. The music was awful.

Why didn’t he ring? Oh, well.

Tuesday January 27 1987

I forgot to record that I much amused him at Reading, by telling him that, during the last concerto, in C, K. 467, when the Rondo struck up, how all the heads came up and the dentures flashed at the recognition of a ‘chune’ that they knew.

Later. 12.15.

K and Sharron have gone. Quite a significant evening. I had said about Brighton Beach Memoirs. He’d said Sharron wants to see that. So I said She can come, too. The seats were £40-50. I said we’d have dinner here because three out for diner is so much more expensive. So he rang and said 7.0. And I rang and said 6.45. Sharron arriving at seven. He was punctual! Perhaps because of the car. (I must record yet again, what a splendid free quick recklessly safe driver he is!) So I said how did the sanding of the chest of drawers go. ‘Very well. Do you want anything like that done, because it’s really good?’ Sweet. (Incidentally, the only change lately is his pronunciation, he’s started saying ‘It’s really gud’, like the Duchess of York.)

We were in the bar at The Aldwych, with that unique open ceiling to the foyer. So if you think the play is awful, you can commit suicide more easily. Sharron arrived, looking glowing and beautiful, her skin! We were at a table with a long curved settee on either side, so no room for her to sit and face us. We both stood up, but she stood, saying she’d been sitting all day. (K. had described at Reading her sitting so close, on both sides, to the other students, working on jewellery, so that she’d got to get on with her neighbours.) So in we went.

Up went the curtain on a real 30’s doll’s house set. Four rooms in view. My heart sank slightly, as I immediately pictured all those scenes finishing by people unnaturally falling silent or lying down whatever, so that the lights go up on another room. My h. sank further, as a teenage boy started narrating. The actor (Steven Macintosh), was good, very accomplished, too accomplished. Poor Neil Simon, nothing wrong with an autobiographical play, but couching it in an elaborate pastiche of a ‘30’s Guild Theatre play is wrong. I am thankful both K. and Sharron found it second-hand, ‘I’ve seen it all before’ etc. K. ‘gloomed’ and only just came back because I said I must stay. I must try and stop him getting so cross, in the wrong way, and for a time, ruining an evening. Such a blight did he cast in the car on the way home, that I said, after a long pause, ‘There’s no starter, it’s beef casserole.’ etc etc. in a slightly jocular way. He turned on me, and said ‘You disliked the play just as much as I did. Why are you calming me down as if it was just me?’ So I left an even longer pause. He must find a

Jan 27 ‘87

Tore page out for K. to write down a musical idea in The Aldwych bar. For his Midland Bank thing!

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 74

January 27 1987 cont. – March 12 1987

Tuesday January 27 1987 (cont.)

Less selfish and disruptive way of expressing his displeasure with a play. I might have replied, ‘If I expressed my dislikes of the play as forcibly as you, - and Sharron did, too, we’d all stomp off in opposite directions.’ But I wasn’t seriously discommoded. I really love it that he feels so strongly. He must learn to express his displeasure more within the confines of the social evening we’ve got to go on with for some hours! As well as that, he drove due North up Tott. Crt. Rd. smack into the shut Marylebone flyover! Tho’ it wasn’t Westway that was shut, only the M. flyover. So, at home, he bustled around getting drinks, telling me that gin and tonic was not a good pre-dinner drink!, but quite amiable now. Dinner was good, steak casserole. Oh, he said over coffee, ‘It was ‘Dorothy’s b-day yesterday, but I didn’t ring.’ ‘Well, it’s ten years in April. I would have rung you if I’d felt bad.’ Which I didn’t.

I told him about Edna and the Nicolson, like Ian Burns and I.M. They think they’ve said it. I didn’t even realise till lately that Edna hadn’t commented on it! K. said at once, ‘Well, I’ll ask her What did you think?’ He hadn’t told Sharron about visiting Edna! At least very sketchily.

At the end of dinner, - he wolfed the casser. –‘This is luvly’- does he say that to her? I hope not, for her sake, there was at last a glimpse of tension. (I was really getting worried that it wasn’t real.) He argued with her friend, Donna (‘my dear friend’) about feminism, - we were talking about feminism lightly. ‘Oh, yes’, he said, smiling with meaning, ‘You were dim’ said Sharron quite heavily. I can just imagine. He got going, and she didn’t like it. I hope I find out more. It’s about time they had some disagreement or even upset, if they are to go on!

She embraces me so warmly. Like all his girl friends, she senses the bond! They drove off in my hired car, and I slept well.

Wednesday January 28 1987.

But it was different this morning. I wandered around the flat calling to him and wondering what fate had decided this difficult wearing struggle.

Neil rang up, and said a hundred times, with new discovery, ‘I want to work Angus! - leaving little time for me to reply the same.

I wished K. lived here, as I do a hundred times a day. I wished it, but hated myself for such stupidity and selfishness. Went out to day to buy the smoked salmon £9.75, stem ginger, £2.45 and champagne £14.50 for Edna tomorrow. How expensive the old life is! Came back home and he still wasn’t here! Had also bought Mahler’s 5th ‘cos of the Snoo play.

Tonight he’s having a talk with Peter Hutch and Sarah Wickham (‘she does P.R.’) about his tape scheme. I have no confidence in any of it. The idea is excellent. But Peter H. is a broken reed, Sarah W. might be good, commanded by an unbroken reed, I didn’t know, - K needs a huge benevolent god to put his business ideas into action.

Thursday Jan 29th 1987

A sun-shadow day of quarrels and joys, and glinting dazzling happiness. Edna. ‘She’s adorable’ snapping at me for reading the map wrong. Dinner with M. and Ernie. Quick notes.

Marj. Sharron is so good for him, - I saw her kick his ankle to stop him saying one of his outrageous… Lots of good about Sarah and Glynn.

Best of all, in the foyer, K. saying thank you for bringing up about Glynn and Sarah.

Good talks with Ernie.

K. looking at me as only he can look saying Thank you, you gave them a great time tonight.

Friday January 30 1987 Saturday January 31 1987

I feel dead.

But when I got up, today, Saturd. how strange. The deadness was strangely shot through. Out of Marjorie’s thank you letter came a cabinet-sized photo of Kevin Paul in 1963 at an open French window at a wedding. 2½, there, in 1963, when I was at Cheltenham, was that little time-bomb with that fearful direct gaze.

Why do the two people I have ever loved, attack me so fiercely?

Sunday February 1 1987

Sunny intervals were interspersed with quite bitter fault-finding. As often with certain accusations of dishonesty. I cannot wearisomely describe them in detail. It spoilt the time, and we parted apart.

I do not think I deserved any of it, at least not the anger, especially as so much of the rest of the time was so deeply intimate and satisfying.

I am not as upset as I expected, because I think the underlying irritation is from them being so beholden to me. What can I do?

Monday February 2 1987

I have looked and looked at the beautiful picture. I am quite sure, if I had never know him, I would say, what a remarkable child.

Later.

Ben U. rang, talked for 20 mins. Paying, and said he was running out of money. So we never arranged a meet. And I never heard the pips! Very warm. I was touched. Is still doing his film course. ‘When am I going to see you?’ told me about Jon H. ‘Jon’s all cosied up!’

Julian S. rang up, quite compos mentis. Told me more of Julian Sands. J.S. stayed for ten days, over the film awards! ‘Perfectly calm and as usual, strange.’

They suffered badly during the cold, even with everything on. ‘Our very expensive central heating.’ Where? I’ve never seen it, let alone felt it. Of course her senility got worse with slower blood. Julian Sands’ divorce is going forward, but J. didn’t think she knew he was in the house, so he was rather startled to hear her say, ‘Well, what’s happening about the divorce?’ Julian Sands’ wife, who is a journalist, was coming to interview J., so he said hastily, ‘Well, she’s coming to tea next week, I thought it would be nice.’ ‘Oh’ said may, ‘so Mrs. Simpson’s coming to tea next week is she?’ Now that is just the sort -

There are so many parts of my life that seem to be coming to an end. Perhaps all I can do for him is to die while there’s some money left.

Tuesday February 3 1987

Peter Henslowe rang yesterday to say he was coming to seek his fortune in London, and would turn up at 2.0. He turned up at 12.0 when I was still in bed, and a mountain of washing-up. He is so fresh-faced it is almost obscene. He is innocent, guileless, artless, to the point of parody. I wish him infinitely well, but I would strangle him if he remained long. Especially as he betrays all that puppyish need to sit at my feet (and in my armchair) that I always hope for K.! To ‘Boy Soldiers’ a film at the Metro, by my bloody self, to get away from him. He’d brought a lot of food, huge parcels of wet ham sandwiches, wrapped in Chinese leaves, four or five tins of baked beans and their variations, and a huge bag of Mars bars. He’d brought the food mainly for himself, so as not to bother me, but also a bit to offer me, so that he gave a bit of a yelp when I said I didn’t eat Mars bars. He also brought a jar of jam from his mother. Alas, it turned out to be chutney, rather sloppy chutney, looking like early spring shit.

He had one of his tins for dinner, and stayed in! On his first night in London to make his fortune! Alas all he seems to want are clubs and discos.

Wednesday February 4 1987

There was a message from Irene Sutcliffe - she’s up for Black Comedy and had I got a copy of the script? I couldn’t find D’s, so on my way to Colindale I dropped in on her the volume of plays and players with it in. She lives in a big block of flats over the shop where I bought the camera and William page, this end of Ken, High St. A well appointed block, porter, v. clean, brass polished etc. She made quite a lot out of being in Coronation St., I imagine, but still it’s quite a rich block and I expect the service charges are high. Her flat is small and square and characterless in form. Crisp, in perfect order, but as with so many people, she cannot place furniture. Coffee, goodish chat, mostly about the J. David scheme and the business generally. About 12.0 I set off for Colindale. I was surprised to see I last went there in 79! Well, I haven’t had any mind over since! Thank god for my rail-card, otherwise it’d be £2.00 each way. There it was the great factory-like place, exactly the same inside. How strange it must be to work in a place which by it’s very nature is unchanging and permanent as far as one can look ahead. The first reader I saw was an old lady leafing through the Melton Mowbray Gazette of 1862. Why? Got myself to a desk and waited, of course I’d forgotten that a lot of papers have gone onto micro-film, and all mine were, so I had to transfer to a projector. A third of them were entirely out of order, and the one I eventually secured had no automatic winder working. So, comically, it took ten minutes and a sore finger to turn from Dec 1 to Dec 23 1926, instead of 2 seconds if I had the bound copies. It takes about 10mins or a quarter of an hour for your orders to come through, and then there’s the search and then copying it out. I finished the Liliom notices, and started on the ’33 Vic and got through about four papers on one of the fire shows. I reckon I need another two days.

There’s a sort of canteen, but only supplied by machines, and the most substantial food being sandwiches and rolls, quite eatable. You put it in whatever the cost, the big drum of shelves revolves, the doors open and you take your sandwich. The silly thing is, sandwiches are not all the same on each level, so there is no way I could get beef sandw. which I wanted, - I had to have the salmon and cucumber which appeared first. A plastic cup, which I could only just carry to the table as it was so hot, a pale brown very sweet coffee? Reminds me of years ago.

Mike Parsons had rung yesterday to say he had tickets for Faust at the Young Vic. I said ‘Yes’ very quickly partly because it would be cheap, partly because I wouldn’t have to sit and talk to Peter H., and mainly because I have never seen Faust. And it sounded possible. So off I went. He was waiting outside – to that rather bleak pub for a drink. To the studio, arranged round three sides, usual dry ice, and crashing ‘weird’ sounds - would that K. had done it - my heart slightly sank at the archangels, though at least they spoke up well, and were not ‘doing’ anything. Then on came Faust. Medium height, strongly made but not heavy. Looked fifty-five, in a Tudor cap. Wonderful voice, with endless power in reserve, lyrical, pulsing, (so rare for an American, as he turns out to be, though there was no trace of American accent.) He has a stare that is full and deep, there is range and depth and possibilities in him - Jonathan Epstein. It’s his first appearance on a London stage, - his programme note said he was ‘honored.’ Boston and Harvard. He could make ‘philosophy’ live and speak. As the young Faust the appearance was less happy - a cap of rather frizzy devilish reddish hair with no skull shape, a face like Jose Ferrer, an 18th Century coat, which was a size or two too big - I sympathise with the mistakes the designer made (or perhaps the hire people had no other) - and a rather too conscious grace.

But he has power and size and I’m not sure we aren’t to look forward… Mephistoles, v. good casting, crisp, energetic. Girl poor as usual. Production and décor passable, but poverty- stricken. Still I was uplifted and stayed till the end.

I must say I was relieved that this was only part 1, and that it lasts over five hours in the original. This was just over three hours, and quite long enough. Gave Mike P. £5 for the seat, as he has no money. Had drink after with Steve Dykes who’s also in it, and is rehearsing Danton in Danton’s Death as the next play. Alas, he was mealy-mouthed about Jonathan E. with that unmistakable note of envy that marks the second-rater. Bother. I hope I shall get to judge his acting properly. He was talking like an amateur. Bother.

Made an excuse to get away, as I couldn’t afford to take them out.

But I was glad to get home. Although I am not depressed yet, - odd - I will be later. I suppose I do know now.

Thursday February 5 1987

Neil rang for a depressed chat, and incidentally said what was I doing tonight, would I go to the play in the Lyric Studio, Milk Wood Blues. ‘Yes.’ So we went, with Philip Sayer, nice man within limits.

Left play at interval. Two main reasons – the relentless jokey cleverness of the wretched (young, I hope) author. Oh, how I longed to sit on his brains, as he poured forth a ceaselessly irritating stream of allusions and puns and word-play. And the Dylan, played by such a violently Jewish-looking actor as Allan Corduner, is further obscured by his monotonously aggressive short-phrased delivery, as if D.T. were nothing but a cross drunk. Has he never listened to the plangent orotund self-indulgent melancholy of DT’s delivery?

Minor reason was Peter Robert Scott’s (an actor I remember from Salisbury 25 years ago) perf. As Douglas Cleverdon, someone I actually knew and D. worked with. P.R.S. looks almost supernaturally unlike D.C. and traduces him with every sentence, tho’ I must say I can imagine him keeping the MS of Under Milk Wood perhaps disingenuously, because of his collector’s instinct.

Maddening smug perf. as R. Burton by ? Saw in the programme that he’d been Lee Turner for eight years. Exactly.

Later.

I am still numb from his bad temper and irritability. But only numb.

Later.

If I had to pick my best time with K. I couldn’t. Nothing occurs to me. Because it’s all one arc.

Later.

What is he doing for money, poor little boy –

Friday February 6 1987

Another day of absolute inertia, - all morning bed, all the rest of the day in front of the television set. And I have despised drug-takers.

In the evening to Voyage of the Narnia the Dawn-readers, or whatever the stupid thing’s called. Very poor plot and narrative and Paul a very poor part as the same character. No wonder he doesn’t want to do a long tour. But he is gifted, a stage actor, with a lot of stage experience for one so young. Gave him a few notes which he can put into practice because no-one will notice! – clothes good, (not his!) and whole thing nice and energetic and up. Just the script, ‘Why didn’t the producer give the author a kick up the arse?’ ‘He’s her husband.’ He came back for supper, I find him warm and cheerful and increasingly sensible and perceptive.

Saturday February 7 1987

K. rang at 3.45. Invitation from Bunny to go to a play at Offstage. ‘No, I don’t want to.’ We were polite and crisp and short. But with a future.

Does all this pain and agony register somewhere? Does it? Or does it just vanish?

Sunday February 8 1987

Your anger with me is largely irrelevant. I don’t deserve it. You should just reason about it. I have not been dishonest.

My anger with you has been largely justified – from the reneging on dates and promises, from frightful friends vide Amy Hobish, Bob Marsh, David Kitchen, Roy Burdis, Chris P. etc etc etc etc.

Monday February 9 1987

Nil. Nothing. Net.

Tuesday February 10 1987

Ditto. Ditto. Ditto.

Wednesday February 11 1987.

Bruna rang. She has arranged for me to see a voiceover woman. Who’ll ring back. I’ll go to the studio with her on Saturday and record some – I presume, - mock voice-overs. She rang back. A delightful, on the ‘phone, Scots girl, who saw exactly how she could use my voice, she said. Would I make a tape of a hard sell and soft sell, and chat about myself. Then I’d go into the studio with her on Saturday and get some stuff together. Good. It can lead to so much money, if it turns out right.

Ian burns had rung to say come his thirtieth b’day party on the weekend. Also Joanna D. to give us a ticket for her play Breaking the Code at the Haymarket. So I rang K. still a constraint, but getting better. I think he’s feeling contrite. So I said I didn’t want to go to Ian’s party. (Especially not with him, because I just want to talk to him all the time, or hear what he’s saying to other people, and even then want to come away after an hour and there’s nasty wine to drink etc etc and it’s miles away.) So I said perhaps he and Sharron might like to go. Yes, he said, if she has the car. I said what about Friday for the H’market. He said he thought he was doing something and went away to look. Came back and said that would be all right. But I knew it was just that he hadn’t put down whatever it was in the diary and couldn’t remember! Just as I thought, he rang back later and said could it be Thursday? ‘I’ll see.’ He has no conception, I think, of Joanne as a well-known actress - and wife and mother - with a very full and important life. (Well, neither has Joanna!) I left a message at the theatre on Tues. and today rang during the show. Not because I thought she needed pursuing, but knowing how even the Haymarket wouldn’t have the solid sensible stage door keeper we had years ago. And when she did ring back, it turned out she only had the latest one. She said her aunt in the Lake District had died. She had to go up there on Friday, catching a train at 7.0 am, ½ a hour there, ‘making arrangements’ that is, calming down her maddening mad mum, and coming back again’ for the show, 4 hrs each way! And yet you know she would have done tomorrow. ‘Tho’ I wanted to take you out to supper and I wouldn’t enjoy it…! He said he was going out to the pub when he last rang at sevenish, and said Ring at 11.30 if you can hear anything.

Later.

I feel cold and sick. I told him it would be next week. Tues. Right. So what would you like to do tomorrow? Look, I’m up to my ears. Can we leave it till Tues?

But he isn’t so up to his ears that he can’t spend the whole evening in the pub. Why doesn’t he just say he doesn’t want to see me. In case we have a post-mortem, I suppose. Cold agony.

Thursday February12 1987

I sit here, with lead in my stomach again, arguing the case backwards and forwards, and the one fact. I shan’t see him till Tuesday, and then not alone and with someone who’s a stranger to him.

Later.

It’s no use I must write to him. I cannot be treated like this. At any rate it’ll be cathartic.

Odd, there is now underlying the pain, the certainty. Odd. It used to be the other way round. I’ll send it this aft. Or take it over the w/e.

Later.

Can’t find my stamps. Must record poor dear Neil came round. Yesterday and today. He has been banned from driving, and leaves his bicycle in the hall and gets the tube. Much boiled up over his career. But pleased about my voiceover chance. Joan Collins has been over, and has got him an interview for part in Dynasty, only 3 eps. I advised him to go to L.A. before this expenses-paid interview and flight - £1000, no, dollars. And Joan C. is putting him up in her guest bungalow or pool-house or somewhere and lending him the indispensable car. So he’s going tomorrow till Tuesday – I hope at least he’ll enjoy the change. They’re still selling the house. Good. It’s not all that nice.

Later.

At last I’m so low I’ve done something, cleared out and up the bathroom shelves. Good. And turned out to make more space, those art catalogues etc. that I never look at. I thought Sharron could have them.

6.45. Oh, the joy. He rang to tell me the results of his interview with ‘Midland bank’ and Lands End man. (I must write down his name.) very favourable. Land’s End and Land’s End sequel, ‘knocked him out’, ‘and ‘Midland bank.’ How long will it take you to arrange it?… Well then, March 2 to record? How many musicians?’ ‘Well, it would be nice to have some strings…’ ‘How about 8 violins?’ etc etc. He also said, when K. said about Fairlight or whatever, ‘How about (whatever the next one up is - £150,000?) No problem.’

What makes me think this possibility is any better than all others that have collapsed? I don’t know, except that he’s fixed a studio date, not far ahead, and has a sense of urgency. I didn’t send the letter.

Friday February 13 1987

I am sick of everyone on TV just asking for ‘more money’, ‘more money’, ‘more money.’

To Colindale by 11.30! ‘Due to serious staff shortage there will delays in…’ The delay turned out to be a wait of ¾ of an hour! Still, I got the ordering going and didn’t waste much time. Found some good stuff on the ‘59 King Lear. At the end of the day started on D. again! Her first job at Cambridge, she told me she travelled down on the same train as the P. of Wales on his way to George V’s deathbed. All I could find evidence of was the PoW and prince George flying to an airfield 15 miles from Sandringham. I thought how like her luck it was to have the King die just then, but of course, the next King died in my first week on tour! But she didn’t tell me, amazingly, that her first appearance on the professional stage at the festival, by then a fairly obscure weekly rep., coincided with the glamorous opening night of the New Arts Theatre, with Vic-Wells Ballet and Margot F. and Robert H. All the stranger, as she saw Margot so often then, odd. But then she was so unworldly in some ways, and concentrated, that she may not have known about it! Her first notice said her French accent and movements were good, but her face looked a bit frozen. I had a good time.

Later.

I don’t know that I can bear this loneliness forever. I have serious thoughts about selling and moving right away to somewhere cheap like the west coast of Scotland. I think I might have enough money to live on. If I have to be alone, as at the cottage, it’s all right.

Saturday February 14 1987

St. Valentines day. Sharron sent me a Valentine - how dear. She drew it herself, - the heart looks more like a rather hot twisted bum. A sweet thought. Surprisingly I forgot to record that. in my wild euphoria after his call, I rang her. I’d found all those art catalogues in the bathroom shelves and thought she might like them. She would. She was going to Watford to get a the repaired car, and she might drive over to pick up the art books - they’d be too heavy, a carrier-bag-full to give him on Tuesday.

My euphoria was not quenched by finding she knew nothing of his good news, and little even of ‘the venture’ at all. I know it is contemptible to be cheered by that. Then I’m contemptible.

So last night I rang him about six-ish, after trying Sharron’s digs, and being given the wrong Watford number, to tell him that she mustn’t come tomorrow (today) because I’d be at the V.O. recording. I never get need to his snapping ‘I’m working, Angus’, as if I’m going to say more then two sentences. And in any case, why does he answer the ‘phone at all? ! But I don’t really care.

Later.

Badly down again. Went to the V.O. place, a rather tatty little basement. Megg Nicol very nice and encouraging, but I found it was me making the tape to take away and give to Bruna. They aren’t an agency at all.

Then when I got home, Simon had left a message on the machine - I’d left so many messages about our plans, that perhaps he chose the time purposely, when I was out - to say he was off to Lucerne on Monday and gradually worked around to our not be able to meet after all. He sent his love to K., and finished by saying could I get the Laughton notices to him before he left…..

In his full life his imagination fails him in not realising how few people I confide in, and how empty and disappointed my career is. On that level, of course I know I must be a depressing companion for him now, but it was an evening I was looking forward to so desperately, as some sort of a catharsis and now he’s going away for six weeks. But worse is the fobbing off of K. with just love. He’s seeing Snoo tonight, so he has a chance to recoup. But if he went off with no direct word to K. I’d despise him. K. expects to go to More Light with them both, expects to have another meeting with them before S. leaves, expects that meeting to result in a sort of work schedule with Snoo, and expects some money. That is what S. said. In the circumstances, the request to bring Laughton material at some trouble, is a bit insulting. But then, of course, that’s his coarse streak coming out again.

I sat and felt crushed by the difficulties of my life.

Most interesting, completely different from the other pain.

Saturday February 15 1987

Rang S. at 10.0 - he’s finishing a radio play – just as last week he learnt German - and said about K. I cannot have him hurt if I can respectably avoid it.

It does make me quite nervous to think I might find out all the people Simon had dinner with, this last three weeks, when he hasn’t been able to find time to see me. It might mean the end of our friendship.

Later. K. rang at 6.30. to ask how yesterday went -! Imagine. He’s browned off with the music - of course, but now he’ll be starting arranging, and that’s more creative. I told him about Simon in full. I talked non-stop, and it was very purging. Sharron’s got the car for a week, and will pick up the catalogues. She wasn’t there. They went to Ian B’s party. ‘It was awful, but don’t tell him that.’

Oh, I am such a fool ever to doubt him. He is, within his human limitations - oh, yes, he has them – completely behind me.

Later.

Watched Joan Hickson as Miss Marple. Margaret Tysack in the cast. What a mad world of values that MT was ever valued by the RSC etc etc. with her empty narrow sentimentality, and JH has been more or less ignored by the ‘highbrows’, because she’s so delicate and unobtrusively real. They are so crude.

Later still.

Simon is in the balance with me. He must deal with me, in little, and K. in big! Otherwise…

Monday February 16 1987

He did. He rang from the airport. He’d worked till 3.0 every morning on the Laughton and a review of the Cocteau, and he hasn’t read the book. He’ll ring K. tonight. He’d completely forgotten about going to the Snoo with K. as well.

I must remember that he does get exhausted, and I represent a threat that needs his best.

He said More Light was still in a bit of a muddle, ‘Simon (Stokes) was looking so thin, and of course his passion for detail and lack of capacity for broad strokes is exactly what Snoo’s plays don’t need.’ I said, ‘Poor Simon S. he’s no one to look after him now, and perhaps no regular life or meals.’ ‘Yes, I told Snoo to give him plenty of vitamin pills.’

Vitamin pills!! And then people ask me why I’m always well.

It’s no use. I miss him as much as ever. Every minute.

Tuesday February 17 1987

3.0 a.m. He’s driven me home. Joanna gave us dinner at home. When he went to pee, she took my hand and said, That is an exceptional human being.

Wednesday February 18 1987

Yes, well, a night to be remembered for me. We met at the Captain’s Cabin. How nasty all the pubs in the West End are! For one thing they are always so full, uncomfortable in itself, but also making the staff, as a rule, careless and cynical. I was there for about 20 unpleasant minutes by myself, having one more drink than I meant. He arrived looking a bit transparent, and every unpleasant thing in the universe went out of the door. (I hope he knows I feel, too, his slight impatience, at having to meet me in a busy pub, where we are to that v. conventional audience, an incongruous couple, but it is only the meeting.)

We had twenty mins. and the intervals to get up to date. He has practically only been working. I told him about stealing the spoons. Showed him his baby picture, ‘Oh, that one.’ I got straight the name of the library music man, Aaron Harry. His previous films were KPM and Burton. And the £150,000 instrument is called a Synclavier. All I hope is, he’s not a crook.

We went to the theatre, he suggested another quick drink before the show. Seats H9 and 10, house seats, house full and fairly smart, difficult to find anyone else English there. No wonder plays and acting are valued all wrong. Set an enormous wall of green corrugated iron, following the lines of back wall and wings. Girders overhead with the lights on them. Small opening in the back wall every now and again, to reveal static cloud effect. Two doors in the back wall in the c-iron. Thirties and fifties furniture dumped in the middle of nothing. Every now and again one of the characters sat at the side, against the back wall, facing inwards.

There was no convention in this, it was quite arbitrary, as a gesture to unconventionality. (sic)

In the interval, K. said he supposed such a big set would turn inside out and upside down and become the universe or Russia or something. But it didn’t, so it might just as a well be a nice naturalistic drawing room from the start, and then Isabel Dean could have been comfortable. (She is stuck in the 50’s, and has become much enfeebled.) The play was not without its merits in the writing, but the plot was a mess and the subject, homosexual spying, boring to me. But the acting, oh dear. Derek J. is a great mountain of over-acting and self- consciousness. He started almost every line with that sudden access of volume that is thought, of, (I suppose) by bored and inattentive audiences as giving a perf. ‘excitement’. He included some ‘character’ touches, a stammer, biting his nails - no doubt taken from his own life, it’s a real-life story - but all signalled and over stated, so that the dimmest Brazilian can see he’s ‘acting’. He’s never off and never stops talking, so of course gets an ‘ovation’ from the audience, who are determined to have a great performance for their £13.50. Michael Gough passable. Jo - perfect in a nothing one-dimensional part, - a lesser actress would have ‘made something’ of it. Her ‘50’s clothes perfect, being what a lady might have worn, instead of the usual front-page-of-Vogue-essence-of-the-‘50’s exaggeration.

Little Paul Slack quite good in an easy part. Didn’t see anything special in him. Went round, Jo adorable as ever, one stocking on. Almost at once, a nice dull family came round, whose daughter Jo was trying to help into BBC makeup! K. had Sharron’s car, so off I went in Jo’s and he followed. He loved the flat, within seconds he was at the grand piano, a Bechstein. I said to Jo, he plays the harmonies round the tune. He doesn’t know any party pieces, thank God. Scrambled egg, Soup, etc. Three bots of wine. Talk took off. We talked absol. frankly of the play. A relief to hear, I think. (I’d told her, by the way, that K. knew little of my money troubles.) She asked about us, we replied. How well we talk to other people, our friendship must seem very remarkable them, vide Bunny. He and Jo got on so well - I sat back and glowed with pride in them both. And gratitude. And Tuesday’s entry is a perfect coda.

But on the doorstep I did make one reference to our last disagreement. I said Don’t accuse me of dishonesty, wrong, yes, dishonest, no. He said he was just trying to encourage me and it made him angry that I was discouraged. His birthday? I said last year he was working. ‘Was I? Well, we don’t mind about dates.’

I think that remark and ‘Oh, that one’ about his baby photo, set me thinking about his remarkable fastidiousness. No mention of ‘How amazing that my mum should give you that photo’ etc etc. So equally, when he says ‘I can’t see you till…’ with such definiteness, it’s because he knows we always meet. I am sometimes aware that he is pacing us over the years.

Wednesday February 18 1987

I heard that song Newton B. used to play at the piano late at night at parties, and copied down the end of it. All I can remember from then, was

Tired of life, I lay down in the gutter, was joined by a little pig, who didn’t at first realise who he was associating with, and, with the music picking up pace, the pig sang, You can tell A man who boozes By the company He chooses And the pig got up And quietly walked away.

Thursday February 19 1987

On Maria Callas’ Award programme, Thomas Hampson, a lovely young baritone.

Friday February 20 1987

Ian and Hilary to dinner, to celebrate me not going to his 30th b’day party last Saturday. (Oh, K. and Sharron went, and he said on Tues. ‘It was awful!)

It wasn’t a very successful evening from their point of view. Hilary is emerging as the type who finishes up making hand-beaten jewellery in a back street in Wales or handing out pamphlets for lost causes. She let off about one of the actors, ‘He doesn’t join in the improvisations properly’ etc etc. ‘Perhaps he isn’t helped by improvisation.’ ‘Yes, but the company….’ ‘Is he a good actor?’ ‘Yes, very.’

She devotes herself to a cause, without stint and without much brain. And her little girl breathy voice will be very irritating as her sex appeals fails. In fact, I fear the sighs of irritation in Ian, are already appearing. There were one or two arguments, about South Africa, for instance, where she offered a really silly and illogical series of assertions. Challenged, I quickly pointed out the holes – and it was Ian who snapped at her, and said ‘Don’t be idiotic.’ He then went to the loo, and she burst into tears. I thought it was the result of having been worsted in argument three times running. But no, perhaps there was another reason for her being irritating. She stammered over her pudding, ‘he’s told me he’s been unfaithful - twice, and I can’t take it.’ Oh dear. Poor girls. You would think they could take one look at a boy like Ian and know he could never be faithful for long. When she went to the loo, he told me he was in love, with a girl in Harrogate. And she’s not even in the theatre! Oh dear dear. Ian is such a fool about woman. Cf. K. Oh, they told me their side of K. and Sharron at the party. ‘They’d been to When The Wind Blows and were a bit shattered by it.’ I bet they weren’t! It was the party.

Oh, how that would have upset me, finding he’d been to a film without telling me. Ah well. Good.

Saturday February 21 1987 Sunday February 22 1987

Oh, Hilary told me the constitution of the company. Hilary, Dan (22-23, ‘Great’ O.K.) Jason (24, the one who wouldn’t improvise freely), Liz (she’s leaving) and Katrina, (bass-player, the other half of this lesbian couple.) Dick Bird, director. Plays: Confederacy of Fools, Noonday Demons.

Did I record Beryl Reid talking about a Birmingham landlady?

‘My husband was known as the Balsall Heath Stallion.’

About her eating pattern, though she was immensely fat.

‘Well, you don’t fancy it, when you’ve cooked it yourself. But I force down bacon and egg. Then I have nothing till ten o’clock. After that, not a morsel passes my lips till eleven o’clock.’

Asked Mike Parsons to go with me to the private show of Prick Up Your Ears at the Curzon. (K. wouldn’t want to, he couldn’t bear the artificial audience, let alone the 10.30 a.m. on a Sunday.) Mike is a good boy, absolutely genuine. So, I knew I could rest in him. Film, brilliant surface script v. funny. Too much sub-porno gayness, but Peggy R’s influence gives it a certain distinction and reality that S. Frears doesn’t usually reach. My line half-drowned.

John Schleringer greeted me, after 20 years, and no more parts. And no wonder. Here I am with still just one line. I don’t think I can bother to be depressed any more.

After, to the Wine Gallery in Westbourne Grove, on the strength of the leaflet on our table after the last Jane Glover. Same menu with a few omissions, and the whole place slightly down-market, mainly because of the clientele, but no worse for that. Mike P. is very restful to be with, without being at all bland or time serving. He is really true, that’s why he’s restful. We walked thro’ the squares and crescents of Nothing Hill to tube. And to an empty night.

Monday February 23 1987 Tuesday February 24 1987

Nothing again. I looked at the map of Wigtown and Galloway again. That’s all.

Wednesday February 25 1987

Oh, well, it takes an outside event to bring me to life again.

I had to sign on and George R. arrived. George had said he was chairing a talk at the Society for Theatre and Research, on J.L. Toole. My period. So I said Yes, especially as he said we’d have dinner at The Garrick. So off we went, in our suits, back in time. We met the committee in one of the bars of the Hotel Russell, now with the dead hand of Trust House Forte commercial travellers taste. Little peppery red-faced man turned out to be Jack Reading, the chairman. Mollie Sands, a pleasant wholesome laughing grey hair of 79? Two or three others, all of whom severally asked if I were the speaker, who, when he turned up, was quite 25 years younger. So we walked round the corner into Queen Square. Mollie S revealing a very badly swollen ankle and foot (‘I wear a man’s size 10 shoe’). The Art Guild has a small hall, with a glass roof, hung with a lot of sub-famous artists, William Frampton, Arthur Rackham - the chain of the Guild and something red makes them all look like mayors.

The lectures was respectable from the narrow scholarly point of view, but very poorly delivered and without much insight, to solve the factual problems. He made some wrong conclusions from sheer banality of mind. Heavens he was an actor for a bit! So we chatted for a time, but by 9.40, we were in the supper room - alone, for quite a time. Large round tables for two, a long way apart. Menu so me. I liked everything. I had Duck Terrine and sea bass. Nobody I knew. But nobody who impinged as remotely unpleasant except basically. Dear George, he is getting visibly older. He puffs out his lips, in an unnoticing way, and as far as I can see, without any reference to walking upstairs or breathlessness or whatever.

On the tube on the way home, I saw a young man opposite reading Lake Wobeg on Days, and smiling, and then reading the same passage again, and shaking with laughter, putting the book down, and shaking again. The coincidence was odd, and became more so. I spoke to him, and we felt the same. He got out at Baron’s Court, and has a room in Talgarth Mansions. Well. So I said You must come round, and we exchanged addresses.

I think George was at once fascinated and a bit frightened. He name is Terence Gerona. Tall, gaunt, hallow cheeks, dark, humorous.

Message on machine from K. ‘My b’day’ lunch. Ring tomorrow morning. Lovely.

Thursday February 26 1987

His 26th b’day. He suggested Tutton’s ‘for just an omelette, I’m still so busy.’ ‘Well, and your presents, we can do it all in two hours at the most.’ So that’s what we did. There’s no downstairs at Tutton’s anymore, and it’s a different menu. He was on the dot, as he has work to do this afternoon, the wretched sod. (It is fascinating, how completely his work comes first.)

He was utterly open to me. He always is to me. It’s my insecurity that clouds it. It wasn’t a good meal, he had to have avocado and prawns, a starter, as his main, - I had what was very ordinary fish and chips, but it didn’t remotely matter.

He told me the composition of the orchestra for the library music. The BBC symphony orchestra!

4 1st violins 3 trumpets 4 2nd ‘ (1 piccolo) 2 violas French horn 2 cellos Flute Percussion (it’s Roy!)

Guitar, Bass and Piano as The Band, a bit separate, as it were, for some bits.

Off we went to his presents in the rain. He imitated the Cockney drummer very exactly. ‘It’s really great that you remember me.’ We went to Smith’s. ‘I want exactly what you bought me before, a red one.’ We got one more curved then the previous one. As it was teeming, he tested it at once, and said it was better.

He’d said over lunch to my great amusement, ‘There’s another thing I want. A stop watch. For the session.’ ‘Cos, of course, it’s timed to the second, being commercial. We went the round of Denmark St. music shops, to see about hiring some equipment. The young man he spent most time with seemed to me to be rather inept. But then part of the keynote of these modern instruments, is that their vagaries escape everyone. So much for progress. Lastly to the pen shop, for a new fountain pen. He was so sweet because he was so humdrum, and because I knew he would have taken the time off for nobody else. Even as it was, he felt guilty for taking the lunch and taking pressies and going off. But then he took me to the music shops. What other young man would take, as it were, his father, to a serious consideration of professional equipment, in the sort of shop where I have never seen anyone over 40? His last words were, ‘I’m sorry.’ But they needn’t have been.

Later.

He’s just rang 9.30. Sharron was too busy to come round till 9.0 (I forgot to say, he’s got Sarah Wickham as a lodger, since last week. How odd modern youth is. She is the girl he two timed Sue Bird with at college, - since when S. Wick. has had a five year affair which ended badly, and she consulted K. and Sharron about it! Nevertheless, if I were Sharron, I would prefer her not to be there! I cannot believe that she has not a residual feeling like that.) So he rang to ask what the Time Out guide said about the cheap pasta place in Liverpool St. (I’d told him how awful Giles K. had said Minogues was, where we’d thought we might go after New Year.) Had a talk to Sharron about the catalogues I’d given her. She gave him ear-phones. Not very personal, but necessary. So I suppose the three of them went off to eat, as Sarah was certainly there. Ah well.

Later still. And I didn’t mind at all. Yes, I see. He comes out to lunch and I buy him presents and he is perfect - and rueful.

And we have a long detailed talk about ‘arrangements’. Phantom of the Opera etc. ‘You must ring Clare and Roy and deal with it.’ Is this a sop? Yes and no. But also because I can. There is no-one like him for trust and honesty!

Friday February 27 1987

Neil came round for his farewell visit (tho’ he didn’t think so) before L.A. We watched the big AIDS prog. together. One side had a fortyish actress rolling a condom over a dowdy doctors raised fingers. The other had Ian Dury rolling one on an erect plaster cock on a human torso split down the middle. All white, D would recognise it! Neil is I think, half convinced he’s got AIDS.

Tho’ I fear that’s only part of Neil’s fascination with himself. Which will probably make him a sort of star.

He told me, under strict secrecy, that Geoffrey Burridge is dying of AIDS. G.B. is Alec McCowen’s ‘long-time’ boy friend, tho’ I doubt if they’ve made love for some time, so perhaps A McC is safe. G.B. played the lead in Salad Days in some big tour of the 70’s.

He is/was what D. and I thought of as a little thing. He would flirt with a chair. He had plump thighs and an obvious sexuality. Neil says no one was more promiscuous. So sweet that Neil swore me to such secrecy - As if lots of people don’t know.

For one thing, N. saw him walking in Richmond Park, ‘looking ghastly.’ Well, perhaps, others did, too!

Saturday February 28 1987

George R. left at 10.15. Like Edna, it takes him over an hour to pack an attaché case and ‘clear up’ and leave. Not that I mind, I don’t have to witness it.

I didn’t tell George that I’d asked Terence German to lunch! I’d asked T.G. if there was anything he didn’t eat, and being American, he told me. ‘No wheat, and no dairy foods.’ So that means only no bread but pasta. No butter, no cheese, no milk, no cream. Also it turned out – of course – he didn’t drink either. ‘A salad?’ ‘That will be marvellous.’

At first he was a little withdrawn - not surprisingly, after a pick-up on the tube, - but he ate the salad with appetite. ‘Malvern water, by appointment’, and accepted a cup of black coffee. The effects on him of the two-thirds he drank, was extraordinary, if that’s what it was. He became quite different, animated, effusive, standing for minutes together, pouring out his plains and ideas. Has written a play on the fringe in N.Y. about salesmanship. Got ten salesman to talk about their work, on the condition that each of them got ten of their customers to come and see the play every night thus ensuring the theatre was full for the entire run. Which had been the hurdle which had been the inspiration of the piece. He also has an idea for the play about Pinocchio’s life as a man! It’s not his nose that gets longer. He stayed till five. Oh dear, I fear he is another disciple. In part. ‘If I were encouraged as you have…’ etc.

To John and Simon’s.

Sunday March 1 1987

My evening at John and Simon’s not as restful as usual. My fault. I am so poor that their safe prosperity and settled happiness made me a bit impatient. I left at 10.40 because of the tubes on Sat. But I could have stayed the night. And it’s no use pretending that I wasn’t bursting with wind. As, oddly, I always am there. I associate John’s table with a feeling of fullness and indigestion. Sometimes, it’s been the seasoning, or the emotion, - or too much drink. But last night it was simply that if I’d stayed another minute, I’d have poured out my poor little worries. Sticking my sole on to keep the rain out. The loose covers in tatters etc. I cannot do that in a social evening. But it’s coming so that I can’t not.

And another half evening tonight. Jon Henson rang last night to ask me to dinner tonight - ‘I don’t suppose you’re free’ - Paul Ryan went there last week, and said J. was going to ask me but he wanted me by myself. So it proved. A strange amorphous road, off the Wimbledon Broadway. A lot of bomb damage? A bit of a factory, a pointless block of flat, a Victorian house, an open space. J’s house with odd back wing, and over-run garden. V. warm. The moment we were inside, he said, ‘Come here.’ And embraced me most warmly. If Rachael had been there….! Not that I care for J. at all. If she knew.

Breast of chicken. Broccoli. Nice meal, lots of wine, they’d been to France for the day. He is very happy at the Art school. Showed me his costume designs for a Feydeau Farce. All different scales, no overall colour scheme, no room for the fabric samples, etc etc. At the moment, not enough talent or sense. He seems entirely unchanged by his settling with Rachael. She was working in the restaurant round the corner. I left at 11.15 -, as it took me so long to get there. Sunday, you see. Left her what I hope was a jolly note. But of course she - or he - wanted us not to meet. Jon is not an accurate observer. It may be he who thinks she doesn’t like me. Not that I care.

At the very end of the night, he said ‘And I meant to get round to Zentapuss.’

What is it about Z that he finds so difficult?! I don’t follow. Why doesn’t he just say, Let’s think about in June?!

Message on machine from Roy. He was watching a film The Long Arm and said Which is Newton Blick?’

I was touched.

Monday March 2 1987

To ‘Gothic’ at 5.05. Left at 6.10. What rubbish! I didn’t mind the money. I don’t even mind the films of Ken R. being a soft porn success. I do mind him still commanding any sort of consideration as a serious artist. Julian Sands simply can’t do it. Message on machine from K. It’s 6.10. Going out to get drunk, it’s all been such a hassle. The recording’s been put off till the 20th. So shall we meet tomorrow or the next day.’ He’d gone! So rang Roy, and got his flat-mate, Ron Donachy, whose bed I slept in before he did! Nice. And then the bell rang and was Roy! To see the Tale of Two Cities people. One drink and off. He came back 10.30 and is staying the night. A lot of his plans have collapsed. Terry Johnson has been tuned down for a A C Bursary at B’ham - I can’t believe the idiocy. We watched Edna Everage a bit - we do scream together. Lovely.

Tuesday March 3 1987

The labour exchange rang to say they were sorry, owing to ‘an administrative oversight,’ they’d forgotten to send my dole. Imagine they rang and admitted it, and offered that I could call round.

Finished the changes to MY. Enough for tomorrow.

How I love that boy.

Wednesday March 4 1987 Thursday March 5 1987

It might be thought, I suppose, (as it has certainly been in the past) simply a sentimental indulgence to say yet again, ‘never have been so close.’ ! But realism forces me to say just that. And after all, any friendship worthy of the name, must go forward into greater depth or retreat into the shallows.

He rang at 12.30 to say he was at Music House still, and when had we said? ‘3.0’, ‘Oh, well, that’s all right then, anyway, you’ve got your key.’ Imagine.

He was on the ‘phone, still arranging musicians, - it turned out to be Phil Lowe. He turned from the ‘phone grinning. It seems the BBC symphony can’t do it anymore because the studio dates have changed for the third time. But it isn’t a cause for concern - real studio space is a premium. And the two trumpeters engaged are apparently the names in the trumpet world, ‘and poor Phil is shitting himself at the prospect at playing the rather difficult cadenza I’ve written for him, in front of them.’

‘I’ve had a lot of hassle, but not nasty hassle. I played the tape to them, and Aaron was pleased. But Robin, the money man, said at one point, after the second Lands End piece, I think, ‘We must get you out of this romanticism.’ For ‘romanticism’ read originality.

They keep saying You’re going to make a lot of money out of this. ‘But it can’t be till this time next year, with PRS.’ ! As they walked out past the secretaries, Aaron held up the tape and said, ‘welcome to Music House.’ It’s in Newburgh St., parallel to Carnaby St, ‘lovely offices.’

Oh, and when the money men said what he said, Aaron was silent, and then disagreed. And said Robin was wrong.

On the way to the office, he walked thro’ Golden Square (half expecting to see Linn and all at Granada) ‘You know that shop, Mosquito? There was Kevin Gould, sitting at the telephone, obviously the manger! I couldn’t catch his eye, but on the way back, he was still not looking - wearing a hideous satin suit, and showing off.’

Oh, how good he’s out of out lives.

Altogether I am still fairly hopeful about Music House, at least about earning him some money. But he must get the contact for royalties settled. I must push him for that. Aaron is certainly skilful enough to see the merit - and an efficient recording - and then nothing? Caution, as it is only money. So far.

Then he said Let’s work. We went thoroughly through MY again, he liked my changes, we made some more. I wrote them out, he cleaned the oven, ‘I haven’t done this for three weeks.’

We went off to the fish and chip shop in Upper St. –‘Lets go to the Slug and Lettuce, it’s not so trendy lately.’ It’s true, it was emptier and less tiresomely glossy.

We had a huge frank passage about his visit to Glynn this weekend, and his discussions about the wedding and him being best man. He has some deep misgivings. In no particular order, first, about taking part in a religious service without being a believer. Second, about making the best man’s speech, ‘People expect a lot from me, and I don’t know whether I can do it, I might chicken out.’ Third, he doesn’t feel sure that Glynn really wants to marry Sarah, i.e. it’s the other way round. (The ‘chickening out’ is all the way round.)

I disentangled all these issues and said I’d help him with the speech, and that taking part in the service as the best man, was not to make false promises. It is not more in kind, than sitting in the congregation. (Not that just sitting in the congregation, might be argued as impossible on principle for both of us by the strictest standards.) I’m touched that he should feel vulnerable about the speech - he doesn’t often! As for Sarah, I said only he could broach that to Glynn. I said ‘He really loves you.’ ‘I know’. How strange and alien to me, is that from the pram friendship! I don’t mean inimical – I think Glynn’s devotion to K. is immensely naively touching. ‘Well, we’re bound to get drunk - I’ll ask him, one way or another, whether he has any misgivings.’ Never has he put his relationship with Glynn so entirely in my hands. Given up so entirely any privacy of that friendship. ‘We may talk about ‘Reselection’.’

So we went to the Fish and Chip shop and there was Olga, as warm and tactful as ever. We had salmon - at it’s best, and her husband came up to talk about it, ‘cos he has a passion for fish - indeed, we saw him sitting eating some at another table, for the first time. And we talked about the one woman show I hope to write for Claire M. He was very good about it, as usual an immediacy, and – well, I won’t put more or I’ll start to write it.

Back at the flat with a bit of whisky.

‘Sarah’s never here from Friday to Monday night, she goes home. I don’t charge her anything, It’s only a little while. I moved the books down here, to give Sarah a bit more space. She’ll type MY probably. She and Sharron and I had an argument one night, about subsidised theatres. I said it wasn’t the point to go pouring money into them, and quoted you. That it might be better if they had to struggle to get people to see the shows etc etc. I knew, and he knew that I knew, that he had been being me. ‘They were really cross with me.’

I gave him a newspaper paragraph recommending the Briti. Standard for condoms to go by, in view of the AIDS boom in, no doubt, mushroom condoms. He took it in and said a little later, ‘Sharron doesn’t want to have children. Nor do I.’

Making it separate. I left it saying I was incandescent, with the Claire M show.

I wrote him today copying out all the best man etiquette, and thanking him. I put two pounds in the envelope, neither of whom he will probably see! Best Man Rules O.K., and Try reading this before Reading.

In it’s humdrum intimacy, last night was getting near my ambition and fantasy, but also it was nearer my honest feeling. He said idly, ‘I’ve decided never to have a child, and so has Sharron. We’d talked of condoms.

Friday March 6 1987

To the second Actor’s Meeting. This time in a strange little conference room in the Gloucester Hotel, decorated in that dreadful style that impresses commercial travellers by reminding them of a style they never understood but were impressed by as expensive. Hideous.

Star names, Angela Thorne, Gwen Watford, Alec McCowen. Only bright spots Colin Reese, a great grasp of political reality, and Vilma Hollingbery, who with her husband, Michael Napier-Brown, run Northampton. And dear Paul Slack, and Jo D.

Otherwise it was empty guff. Next time it’ll be ? Richard Eyre, Terry Hands and the Drama Director of The Arts council. Hm.

Home alone.

Saturday March 7 1987

Forgot to record - not suppose, surprisingly – that Ian B. rang on Thursday night to say that he is such a fool over women. ‘I’m in love with a girl in Harrogate - she designs bedrooms,’ Oh dear, oh dear, why oh why did he join in a mortgage with H? Now it’ll be easy? It’ll be agony getting out of it. But I do find H. tiresome. Ian B’s lovely warmth has its difficult side! But I shall stand by him,

And he had Bryony with him, as if life wasn’t difficult enough! He is so immature when women are concerned.

Vide K. He said I wish I could come round, so you could give me a cuddle. Ah.

To Secret Garden tonight with Paul R. Poor feeble old-fashioned affair, only saved from commercial failure, I’d said, by the fame of the book. The music even feebler than I expected, pastiche Victorian of course, well what else could it be, but without a particle of originality or gift for a tune, even. Flute, piano, cello and oboe. Three musicians. And the wretched thing was badly under-cast. The lead was a squeaking ingénue, industriously pretending to be 14 with a voice like a saw. Madeleine Christie and the maid good. Others really poor, disgraceful. It was the last night and the director, Joan Kemp-Welch, and of course dear Peter Moffatt, her rather younger husband. She must be nearly 80, but seemed, in a rather bossy way, to be still full of energy. She looks rather awful, tho’, as her hair is now very thin, absurdly bouffant and dyed bright yellow. Looks exactly the hair of a cheap doll. A very pallid affair. Back here to dinner, guinea-fowl with espagnole sauce. Delicious. Dear little Paul, he is a nice chap. Stayed the night. He’s really good company.

Sunday March 8 1987

Rang K’s parents. Got Ernie, and found that Marjorie was in hospital. She’s had another operation, this time to replace the knuckles on her right hand. She had a local anaesthetic – they must be mad to use a local on a nervous little woman like her. ‘I hadn’t any pain, but I felt every stage of it.’ And the poor woman has the other hand and the other hip still to be operated on.

Ernie asks after K’s plans so pathetically. ‘He rang us about a fortnight ago’, and was pleased to hear about Music House. And, of course, he didn’t know he was with Glynn. Told me that Nigel had been down at the weekend, to fetch his passport and birth certificate. ‘And Marjorie had cleared up his room, and he couldn’t find them and was furious at Marjorie moving things round. Then he went back and found them in his room at college!

Seems I’ve heard that sort of story before!

Monday March 9 1987

Listening to the agony uncle Philip Hodson on LBC while washing up. An insipid sounding woman, with unknowing good timing.

‘Hullo, Brenda.’ ‘I’m not getting on at all well with my daughter.’ ‘How old’s your daughter?’ ‘Thirty.’ ‘Why aren’t you getting on?’ ‘Well, Philip, she doesn’t come round now, and I don’t like to go there.’ ‘Have you any idea why?’ ‘I think it’s since I started to feel sexually interested in her.’ ‘Ah.’ Slight, slightly stunned pause.’ ‘How old are you, Brenda?’ ’54.’ ‘And have you given physical expression to that sexual interest?’ ‘Oh, no, but my son I don’t see either.’ ‘And have you felt any sexual interest in him, too?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Have you felt sexual interest in anyone else?’ ‘oh yes.’ ‘Who?’ ‘My father…my mother..my in-laws…well, everybody really.’ ‘Your husband?’ ‘Oh, no.’

Those radio progs. are extraordinary. ‘I’m suffering from premature ejaculation and I can’t talk to anyone about it.’

But I can talk to the 500,000 who are listening to this program.

Have just read Lolly Willowes by S T-W. Beautifully done, bad end.

Later.

He rang 9.45. How was Glynn? Oh it was so dull. Hm. Told him about Margie. ‘Have you got more L. tickets?’ So that’s settled. I thought we’d eat at yours. Why don’t you do something easy – steak casserole.’ ‘Yes, it’ll only take me three hours.’

Told him Nigel story and the sex girl. Shrieks. ‘How about Offstage?’ ‘I’ve got really embroiled. I’m writing 20 mins of music - easier than choosing Mozart’.

Can we have half an hour before the Snoo W.

‘I’ll have Sharron with me.’ ! ‘That doesn’t matter.’ And the director of the offstage thing arrived!

Dearest little boy.

Tuesday March 10 1987

Terence Gerona rang up at 11.45. Hasn’t eaten since Sunday, ‘You said you’d feed me.’ Did I? Still I said come to lunch though I’ve dinner for four to get ready. He’s certainly very thin, gave him arbroath smokies, beans and pots. He didn’t seem ravenous, but then your stomach shrinks after a few days. He was touchingly grateful. Giles’ electrician put my bell on. V. smart. I might be a dentist.

Wednesday March 11 1987

I’d said Let’s have half an hour but hadn’t reckoned on Roy being free much earlier. He came round at sixish, so we arrived later than I wanted to so that K. and Sharron were there! ‘Yes, the w/e was really boring, we listened to about seven albums of Level 42 on the Saturday night. We went to a fancy-dress party – you had a go as something French, so Glynn had a striped Tee-Shirt, but he’d forgotten to tell me about it so I had to go as ‘myself’. Obviously nothing real happened at all. Poor K., it’s all going even quicker than I predicted. Told Sharron my funny Brenda Story. Thank God she’s got a real sense of humour. Roy was in good, and later, great form. We saw Snoo W. who looked straight through me, as usual, and it’s no use saying he’s lost in a dream - he spoke to plenty of other people. K. told me later that he was ‘very offhand’ to him.

So in we went. K. and I found ourselves in the loo, Sharron and Roy had gone in. I’d been thinking about thinking about the best way of sitting next to him, it really isn’t sentiment, tho’ that comes into it, - it is vital to sit side by side, and judge. So there we were, and there we stayed. Oh, it was dull. And bad. I found More Light alternately boring (that mainly), trivial, cheap, constantly (and unwittingly) inaccurate; I was sitting in front of Marina Martin; she tittered constantly, evidently pleased that she was picking up all the Shakespearean and theatrical allusions. I of course didn’t laugh once, not did K.

(Oh, I forgot to say, when we got, in Roy and Sharron were sitting on the backrow, with no space for us. But space for three or so in front. But Sharron didn’t move, and after the interval, though Roy didn’t come back, she didn’t join us, tho’ it was only the row in front, nor did he suggest it. I think she has quite a good idea of our professional closeness, that sometimes it comes first. Good.)

Now Marina M tittering self-consciously, no doubt partly because Simon is directing the next Snoo, and us not, shows that there is something wrong at the centre of the play. If you can call it a play. I found the air of adolescent daring extremely tiresome, as always, because he is constantly, ‘excitingly’ breaching barriers that no longer exist. Roy and Sharron and K, all under 30, were more bored than I was; Roy didn’t come back, as I said. ‘I can’t see all that again.’ He was right, of course. There were passages of writing and certain flights of imagination which contained the quality that have earned Snoo his reputation.

But the acting! Quite the worst I’ve ever seen at the Bush. One perf. in particular, Irina Brook as queen Elizabeth, had me gripping my overcoat until my knuckles were white, trying to stop myself groaning or even shouting out. It is that feeling that feeling that you passionately want them to know that someone knows that they are untalented, complacent, oh that terrible sixth-form play sing song! She wasn’t anywhere near professional standard. I believe she is Peter Brook’s daughter. He and Natasha P. should be ashamed of themselves. It made me really angry. The girl who played Shakespeare! - and what a stupid little play that was, like a dull revue sketch, oh dear, the cheap obviousness of the jokes - was badly miscast and kept bending vehemently forward from the waist. Then there was Karl Johnson a nice mild refugee from ITV sitcom rather low down in the ratings….. If only everyone had been Stewart Wilson, who had all the qualities that you need to convince the audience that something is happening when it actually isn’t.

By the way, I am convinced that Snoo’s particular lack of sense of proportion is due to him being deeply religious. I bet he’ll become a catholic or something. That is the only deep reason I can find for the fascination that non-existent rules, outworn rituals, and imaginary issues have for him. There are passages in his work which reminds me of my father’s sermons, the muddled thinking, the inaccurate facts, the smudging of reality and fantasy because disentangling entails real concentration.

Simon said that S. Stokes’ obsession with detail was wrong for S.W. Perhaps it made it seem, by the careful naturalism of the costumes, more of a boring historical documentary than actually is. I still think it’s a big perverse bore.

K. said after, he’d been intrigued at the interval, but he’d been wrong. I said ‘Well, you’re going to work with him, you wanted it to be good.’

He drove us back. I wish they didn’t jeer at his driving - it makes him worse, it is odd how fixed everyone is that he is to be teased about being ‘wild’ or ‘disorganised’ or etc etc. Look at the flat, which he’s run without disaster for three years.

We did have steak casserole. He does like it, and said so, in that extraordinary way he says without saying, so, to convey that ‘This is the original, so much nicer than mine, and had two and a half helpings to prove it. Before dinner, - it was only 10.45 - Roy was at a peak of comedy, describing the Australian soap opera, Neighbours. It would be impossible to try to recreate the flights of caricature, exaggeration, mimic, and sheer fun, which he used to get us all rolling, screaming, shrieking and weeping with laughter.

And again many times after dinner. I do so love to see him helpless with laughter. And it’s so nice that Sharron laughs, too. And seems to like it all, unlike some.

Over the coffee, K. and Sharron on this old sofa, (where he’s sat with so many girlfriends!), - I forget why, but she pulled up his sweater and patted his stomach, perhaps fingered his navel. (his stomach is rather slack now! Oh, he’s going to look like a soiled sagging cherub, by the time he’s 35?) She felt him again later, (the can’t keep her hands off syndrome again). Now I know he hates it - I think anyway in public - but I know certainly that he hates it in front of me. That is not because of my love for him, but because he knows D and I never touched one another in public in that rather coarse way. That is the only thing that worries me about Sharron, that she has a coarse streak, not just physically, but as represented by that note in her voice that she has not felt she must eliminate because she has not sensed our reaction to it. I don’t mean we’ve winced! But K. has responded to the finer things in my voice and vocabulary, without losing the lovely bits of his Liverpool accent.

I found a moment to say, ‘I supposed you’re going into purdah to write the Offstage music.’ ‘Well, yes, but it shouldn’t take long. Think about the weekend. I might have a night. I’ll ring.’

‘Did you see the play?’

‘Yes, it’s all right. An hour and ten minutes. They knew the lines. The director is a wimp/wanker. Said Mack and Mabel was a wonderful score. Something like that?’

I said ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Something classicalish, to link the scenes.’

She embraced me most warmly, thanking me for the dinner. He shock Roy’s hand and wrapped himself round me. I let him go reluctantly.

Thursday March12 1987

Re-run last night of First Aids. Facts. 50,000 with Aids virus. 30 deaths a month. As many woman with the infection last month as in the whole of last year. Someone from St. Stephens. 50,000 infected. In 2 years time, there will be a million, it is doubling every ten months. There is a real possibility that there may never be a vaccine.

Later.

Mike P. rang up about his audition. I dictated a passage from Sam Shepard's La Turista, last night, and he’s also learnt a speech from Rich III that he was going to do in America. The audition was for a Sam Shepard play for some little company.

They didn’t let him do either - they just got him to read! And he thought it went well.

This late afternoon saw film She’s Got to Have It. Made for 125,000 dollars. Is it a black film? I mean, black with a capital B. It’s all black actors. An anecdote, very slight. We’d have thought it thrilling for a minute in the 40’s if it’d been French. No weight. And a lot of blacks in the audi. Just as a lot of gays when it’s a gay film. Oh dear.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 75

March 13 1987 – April 8 1987.

Friday March 13 1987

I have finally split with Lalla. Tho’ only the letter to the solicitor has yet to be sent. I am too old, too tired and too busy, to be distracted, irritated, by such complete and small-minded irrelevance. I shall look after her materially, but that is as much as I can do.

To a commercial interview at that strange place in Park Village East. No.1. Like a small church. Spiral staircase, big Gothic doors. There we all were in our city suits.

Ronnie Stevens, dear good man and fine artist, didn’t like to ask about his son with that strange disease, in case he was dead and that wouldn’t be the moment. Allan Cuthbertson, Ian McCulloch, like a time warp, asking me about David Gilmore & Richard D-D, by their Christian names, tho’ they’re been out of my life for ten years or more. So has he!

To the West End in my suit. Felt quite falsely, flash, and very hungry. Took myself to Café Fish. On the way a girl pressed into my hand a strip of paper, inviting me to lunch for the opening of Pasta Marina at 10, Irving St. 50% off! Nearly went.

Rang Ian B. and Joe S. to have lunch with me. Ian B. not in, Joe S. I woke up at 12.15, and sweetly said he didn’t want lunch and to do a film. I would think he is down, I don’t see Joe in bed until 12.15 much. He is probably in a bit of a crisis. Tessa told me he’s moving around various friends. She said they’re not splitting up at all. He said it’s on and off. Fancy.

Later.

I enjoyed my Café Fish lunch thoroughly, but afterwards I experienced that oh so usual despair - the film was over, I was too tired to sit about – where? till a play without anyone, So I went home…

I talked too long in the shops….

And here I am…

Crushingly, emptily, finally, feebly, frighteningly, hellishly, hideously etc etc.

Lonely. Since him it’s loneliness - I used to love being alone, now - and it’s no fault of his.

Saturday March 14 1987

Determined to pull myself together, and gardened this afternoon.

Everything seems to have survived the cold well - I have not lost anything, but the Camellia looks rather sad. Twisted dry leaves tho’ still green, frosted buds tho’ it may only be the outside. But it’s still alive, and the leaf buds are normal. Odd, because Manchuria Rd. Cam came thro’ both v. bad winters without a scratch. But it was the variety Kimberly, which was reckoned to be very near the wild variety of C. Japonica. This one is C. malhotiana alba and is very double, and white varieties always seem to be more delicate.

I moved the big border around, dug up half the Siberian iris and C. maximum, re-arranged, released the roses and hydrangeas. Good.

Sunday March 15 1987

He rang last night about 6.30, having a beer and ‘knackered’. He’s done all the music, and a session for Jez from Sydenham, happily at the studio in Liverpool Rd., for which he got paid. But he’s pleased with the music, ‘four hours sleep last night and three the night before’. He can’t see me till Tuesday. ‘But we’ll have another night this week’ as well as the Offstage. Sharron would come as well on Tuesday. The only misgiving about that is that I don’t – I can’t - start taking her out as well. Awkward, but we’ll solve it. Lovely long talk. He’s simply too tired to go out. He’d rung me first.

Later. 7.0.

He’s just rung to confirm that it is 8.0 on Tuesday. ‘I’d got it a bit wrong - Tues is the first preview and Friday is the press show. So perhaps you could come to one and Sharron to the other. That would be nice.’ Oh the delicacy, he knew when he said about Sharron coming, too, that the moment he’d said it, he’d involved me in paying for her dinner, and this is his way of resolving it without saying it, which would be clumsy. ‘Well, I’ll see what Sharron’s up to.’

Monday March 16 1987

Well, what a little turnup. He didn’t ring but then it was technical day and DR. But at 10.45, Sharron rang. ‘Do you know where Kevin is?’ ‘No. But he’s probably in the pub, talking about the show.’ ‘Will you give him a message if you speak to him before me.’ ‘Well, darling, he is ringing up to tell me the arrangements – he thought I might go on Tues. and you on Friday.’ I suddenly realised she was a bit troubled. ‘Where are you?’ ‘At home.’ ‘What’s the message?’ ‘Tell him I can’t make it tomorrow, anyway. My aunt’s died, and I’ve got to go to Watford and I want the car.’ Poor girl. ‘I hate to see my mother crying.’ It’s her mother’s sister. She must be quite young.

I rang him every quarter of an hour, just in case, as time was important. Got him at 11.45 saying two sentences on the off-chance that he’d not rung. He might have got caught up not by a ‘phone. But he had happily. Poor girl.

Tuesday March 17 1987

On ‘Cagney & Lacey’, L. was reading Shakespeare, and had to cancel a visit to the RSC on Broadway. ‘But Cagney, It’s Derek Jacobi, one of the greatest actors in the world.’ !!’

12.45 a.m.

Show not bad, as a fairly humdrum but respectable documentary.

But K’s sound and music certainly signified something. I’m amazed that he fitted it so exactly in such a short time.

‘So am I’. Too tired now. Marine Ices. All golden. More tomorrow.

Wednesday March 18 1987

Yes, well, got to that rather horrid pub. They’d taken down a partition, a minor improvement. But the door at my end wouldn’t close, and the chairs and tables were arranged in such a way that there was a wind not a draught, from which it was almost impossible to escape. I went on scribbling, I’d managed to do the synopsis as he’d asked, though it is desperately sketchy, and not really worth showing anyone yet. I suffer from his bursting creativity, it just bubbles out of him, why not out of me?!

He arrived across from the theatre on the dot of 7.30 in tearing spirits ‘a large gin & tonic.’ We had hardly time for a word when we were joined by, in quick succession, the designer, the director, the director’s friend and the designer’s friend. Designer, a neat-featured rather camp little thing but intelligent and agreeable. The director, recognisable at a glance, ex- Oxford with a gift for weakly getting-on. ‘Weak’ being the operative, vide his attitude to the music. Equally he was suspicious of me. Both friends were actors and I didn’t really do more than exchange conventional actors’ screams of welcome. To my amazement K. said, lavishly, ‘This is Angus, you know, the person I told you I write musicals with.’ ! And said it again & again to each person who arrived. I think it was one of the most extraordinary personal lifts, I’ve ever been given. It made me immediately quite drunk. The designer & K. have struck up a friendship. Fascinating, K. didn’t know enough that it was because the d. was attracted to him! K. said I must have a shit, and I thought he meant in the pub, but of course I didn’t notice him going to the theatre! However, we got there, in the third row, K. had kept a seat. Bunny in front of us. Like the idiot she is, she hadn’t filled the theatre, - only 40 - and it was half-full?

So there we were in the Off-Stage again, place of many emotions, - the set was good. Beautifully simple idea, well executed, perfectly proportioned to the space. Blank cinema film unrolling to form the background and floor, with the sprocket holes as a frame. Workable. Production humdrum, without any angle or special imagination. I would think it had been mainly contributed by the actors. Not that I despise a straight-forward production these days. How one longs sometimes – most times - for people to keep their imaginations quiet!

Play plain near-documentary, not specially illuminating, could have been much better, but had certain merits. Nobody upset me, as at the Bush, though the two youngsters were substandard, and the character woman could have been better. Conversely, I don’t know how you’d have got a better C.W. for that poor part, but you could have got better young men. The man playing Pasolini, Kevin Moore, has mild slightly chinless appearance, and at first I wasn’t sure. But once in dark glasses and wide-lapel black and white pin-striped suit, he’s mildness was hidden, and his thick lips told the story. Derek Smee, well, beautifully clear, as always. Patricia Samuels, an only just not ludicrous character actress. Two boys a bit below par. All the same, as K said, nothing and no-one made you wince, unlike the Bush! The direction was, as I say, fairly unnoticeable, the lighting rather flat. His sound - first, it was perfectly judged to support the play, but it was so perfectly timed, under some of the scenes to accompany them, even with short bursts of sound between short sentences of two or three words. It was a remarkable exhibition of skill and precision done in three days and mixed. And a session for Jez.

Buddy her usual gloomy self, ‘I’m feeling grotty.’ We went to the pub for a couple of drinks. I talked to Pasolini and the character lady. She sat at my feet - metaphorically. Old enough to know you, you see. Adored D. I said we had a table booked and we left in a blaze of suavity. He really doesn’t seem to care, - after all, Sharron will be with him on Friday - and burst into ‘at last, we are alone’ talk about the play. We discussed it from every angle, especially the music. ‘I don’t know how I did it either. I’m impressed. And it’s the first play I’ve done without you or Simon.’ !

Dinner, that perfect amity, kept taking my hand in agreement. Golden. I am so lucky. Last seen walking wrong way twice, on KX platform!

Thursday March 19 1987

Met Joe Searby in the Captains Cabin last night. Looking good, still with longer hair. Also less fanatical, ‘haven’t been to the gym for a year’. I love his sudden laugh like a bark. He’s a withheld boy, which probably doesn’t help him with some people in the profession, at interviews and so on. He’s had much more interest from the new agents I got him, but has had two bits of bad luck. Two biggish C4 movies. Down to last two for one of them and the backers backed out. In the other, they liked him but he couldn’t be blond because the lead was. He doesn’t even come out to me much, not until the coffee and then only a sentence or two. He’ll probably leave Tessa - amicably. Not that he said even that. I don’t think he comes out enough for himself really. It even quenches his v. considerable sex appeal. Café Fish.

Friday. March. 20.1987.

Sent Nigel a card earlier this week for his 19th b’day. His card said Lust! Filth! Decadence!, but I couldn’t resist another one, because ‘you are the only person I know who’d be tasteless enough to send it.’ It said on the front ‘You creep’ and inside, ‘into my room and I’ll give you a big surprise.’

A busy day! To lunch with John N., - whole day made more tiring by having to wear my suit for the recall for the commercial. John N. so dear and kind. He’s off to Poland with the Cheek by Jowl Co. Odd little coincidence as I went off to tea with Paul Ryan, who’d auditioned for them the other week. After lunch I took his letter up to the Off-Stage, with the drinks and so on. I’d hate to be at another first night of that kind, K, I and 20 critics! and no one ordinary there at all. So I found myself at the offstage at 2.45 in a show shower! Rang Paul R. to say I was on way to Ealing, first cashing a cheque at Camden Town, knowing we were going to have to come back to Camden Town to go to Regents Park advertising people!

Got to Ealing Common at 3.45, no Paul though I’d said 3.30 - it was snowing again - and I thought it was going to go wrong again. But he came panting up, and we walked across the common in the snow. Very pleasant, I was surprised, the quiet side of the Common, past an antique shop, wide road with a little triangular green at the bottom, first floor room, fair size, very neat, h&c ‘Tea or coffee?’ He’d bought a tiny little pot of coffee, out of his dole, and choc. biscuits. At five we went off to Camden T. and P. waited in the big ‘country-house’ lounge hall, with its double-sofas and it’s cats. I was with that actor who last time gave me ‘Jill’s regards’. He later revealed that their eldest child was 23, and that I hadn’t seen Jill since we were married, have you?’ ! And we weren’t even lovers!

I don’t know, I have a sneaking feeling I might get it, - especially as it entails having to go under water. ! In a heated tank.

(Forgot to record that K. said, at the end of dinner, quite passionately, ‘If you’re frightened, tell them you insist on your swimming instructor being there, and I’ll see you’re all right.’ Dear little boy.)

So out into Camden Town, where Jill’s husband was loitering rather miserably. Why? We jibbed at dinner - so many of those places are poor in food and clientele! - so we taxi’d off to des Amis, where I took P.R. the very first time. Seemed just the same, food gone off a bit? Perhaps. But useful.

Paul is so unlike Joe S., so open and artless and cheerful. Also out of work. Very funny about his family. And about sinister lodger upstairs, who offers him stolen goods.

Saturday March 21 1987

Terrence Gerona came to lunch again. Didn’t seem all that hungry - I must watch him! Good company, tho’ full of mad ideas. On the phone he said he was a qualified foot- masseur, and went and looked for work at the Royal Ballet School, as it’s just across the road!

Today it was a film based on ‘one of my favourite books - you know I used to be a professional golfer - Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom - and I read in an interview that it was one of Sean Connery’s favourite books, so I wrote to him, saying I’d do a screenplay. How can I get in touch with him?’

Playing him some Ruth Draper, of whom he’d never heard, tho’ American. He seemed knocked out. I hope so. You must be able to recognise genius.

Later.

Went over to Earl’s Court to get some more money, and look at the papers. Only the Times, not bad and the last paragraph all K. So rang him about 6.30, and he was actually glad and talked for some time!! He seemed to be alone, said he’d felt tired and had gone to back bed and slept this afternoon. ‘I can’t understand why.’ It might be writing 20 mins of music in 3 days! Or it might be that he’s 26, and has found a bottom to his bottomless energy, for a moment! He hadn’t seen the Times, the only one with a notice, so I read it to him, he was pleased. ‘Did you get my letter?’ ‘Oh, oh yes, that’s why I didn’t say, that’s how tired I am.’ ‘Have you started work yet?’ ‘No. The parts only arrived this afternoon.’ ‘Are they O.K?’ ‘One looks a bit rough, but otherwise… I’m starting tonight.’ Then ‘How are you?’ and went thoroughly into Reading, ‘Surely you can get someone to give you a lift home.’

Back to the show. ‘It was all right, - the acting was a bit off. Buddy seemed pleased though, - she rang up a while ago. The Sundays aren’t coming till next week. Last night it was Times, F.Times, Telegr., Guardian and Independent. So don’t bother tomorrow.

There was an American composer there, who came and praised my music. Mildred something. Good. It will all add up. Slight argy about Chris P. who is ‘much better than you gave Malcolm to understand.’ Hm. Dear innocent K, thinking Chris is all solved.

(Oh, again during dinner, he told me Sharron’s having a bad time with her work. She’d been given some inferior gold, and it had fallen apart - ten days work gone! Is that possible? 9 carat gold has something else with it, but might it not be her inexperience? I only ask.

Thinking of my letter, I wonder if he has any idea of how passionately I have ached all these years for a letter expressing his love for me, that I can read again and again.

He said, ‘I think I’m too tired to work tonight. I tell you what, I’ll do these tapes for you.’ I said I’d ring him after Reading. I’m very happy.

Later still.

Watched a new series about a young doctor. Very unlike the usual hospital really very good.

I see why we are the worst things for medicals. Because we remind them too much of feelings.

Sunday March 22 1987

To Reading for Jane Glover again, but this time alone.

I have just spoken to him, and put down the ‘phone in such joy as I have seldom felt. But first to the day, partly described, as I did to him, to make him feel comically guilty. I started off with my case in the rain. Got a train at 5.35, 25mins, and a return fare of £2.65! No taxi at Reading, so had to walk. Then without him, I couldn’t find the staircase down to Stage Door level. This time there was a dressing-room, with my name on. It was 6.20. I changed into my dinner-jacket at 7.0. I can’t do up the top three buttons (yes, buttons) of the trousers, but the jacket still looks good, - if I remember to hold my tummy in. Of course, it was a superb suit, and still is.

Concert was more interesting. For a start, symph. 39, 40 and 41 are a lot meatier. And they were all written within seven weeks. The letters were from the same period, and it was indeed poignant to read painful begging letters to full house of 2000, with standees. I looked at the comfortable middle-class audience, and wondered how many young composers they were allowing to die from lack of comprehension and interest. ‘Only 200 years behind the times, I thought.’ I’d ordered a taxi, as the last through train was at 9.53. I ran to it at 9.40, and just got the train, or rather another one half an hour late. In my dinner-jacket, I sat down in a crowded carriage, next to a dog.

I got back here and poured myself a gin and tonic. I saw myself in the mirror, in a dinner- jacket with a drink, like all the light comedies of my weekly rep. days. Then I rang him. He was waiting for me. He asked in bit by bit detail about the evening. He cried with laughter when I tried to make him feel guilty. He’d done my tapes. ‘What else do you want?’ I can’t think. I’ll look next time I’m round. I’m still a bit tired, I’ll got to bed after this. Oh, I saw a bit of the Brit. Academy Awards. Dorothy Tutin was presenting one. She was so nervous, she wasn’t too good. And Bob Geldof had a very funny time with Ronnie Corbett, who only comes up to his waist.

‘What about your work?’ ‘I’ve cheeked all the parts and corrected some and re-arranged others. Now I’m psyching myself up to think I can conduct.’

‘I’ve had an insight into a conductor’s qualities by sitting with the orchestra, by seeing what Jane Glover lacks as well as has. I do see there’s a lot of concentration needed to draw them altogether apart from simply giving them the beat.’ ‘Well, I shan’t be giving my lot a beat, a lot of the time. I mean, that won’t be the important thing, with the drum-machine in most of it. It’ll be a matter of drawing them to me.’ ‘How important conductors must be to musicians. I’d hate it if the director was at every performance, imposing himself.’

‘Well, I think musicians are rather passive people.’

I told him that I’d had a chat with his friend, Nicky Thomas. I’d said it was sold out, and she said, ‘Why?’ I said ‘How long does it last?’ ‘About two hours of this.’! And she mimed a dead right-angled mechanical beat. Jane Glover is not popular. He said ‘There’s not much there.’

(Do you know, most interesting, I have just realised that for the very first time, I have failed to record an evening with him. We went out on Thursday night, as we hadn’t been alone the last twice. We went to Screen on the Hill to see a dear little film recommended by Sharron, Coming up Roses, a Welsh Ealing comedy. A little slow, but gentle and sweet-natured. We taxi’d down to Marine L’ces, tho’ he’d turned up his nose at it at first, ‘cos of not wanting veal again, - he had chicken tho’ he’d also said, ‘We can’t afford to go out tomorrow, so I’m doing a chicken casserole’, after the press night.

A very funny moment, I said I could see what Tim Luscombe would turn into. ‘Who?’ he said. ‘Tim Luscombe.’ ‘Who’s Tim Luscombe?’ ‘The director you’ve been working for the last week.’

Again. ’Did you speak to Howard Snell?’ ‘Who?’ ‘That actor you know in the cast.’ ‘Derek Smee?’ Now both these remind me of D. quite acutely. She is virtually the only person I’ve known who genuinely forgets, and of course unless it is absolutely artlessly genuine, it isn’t in the least funny, He also said with that taking responsibly air that I so love and respect, ‘We shall have to have a session on Life Goes On, shan’t we? For you to bounce ideas off me.’

Yes, it is interesting that I forget it, - I described Joe’s and Paul’s nights - I think it is a significant stage in our relationship. For the very first time, I took him for granted. The evening was so easy and open.)

But the talk tonight was the most open I’ve ever had, when I felt more overwhelmingly than I’ve ever felt, how deeply he loves and how much I matter to him. It’s so like him to be bad on the telephone as a rule, and then so wonderful when it matters. Tonight was a professional occasion and he was perfect. Yes, he’s pacing us. He’s an extraordinary person. More than he knows even himself yet. How lucky I am that I met him so soon in his life. How lucky to help someone so rare, how lucky that he loves me.

Monday March 23 1987

Last night’s happiness has spread over the whole day. From an unexpected £100 in the post, and the contract for the TSB thing which suggests it’s going to be shown, to Bruna ringing up to say I was on hold for the Bradford and Bingley commercial, ‘we’ll know tomorrow’, and Mike Parsons ringing up to fix Danton’s Death tonight, I could see the omens were good. So I thought I would do nothing difficult or unpleasant, and just enjoy my happiness. For once.

I am sick of talk about healthy food! The fat is what makes food taste, and salt. I’m still waiting for them to ban something that doesn’t taste delicious.

I must try and make this more of a record of the weather and the garden. That will help me. Well, it rained all day.

The food thing comes from all these stupid scientists, who imagine that minute analysis can solve even such a poetic and emotional problem as eating. Anything can be bad for you if you make your mind up firmly enough. The food trendies are so busy and puritanical and sure their narrow little theories are the eternal truth. But they never take into account that once ‘a scientific enquiry’ has ‘established that something is harmful, simple people start being made ill by it. I dislike intensely the interference in the natural capacity of the body to demand what will be good for it.

There’s a good clump of primroses out. The Bleeding Heart has a clump of buds, and the Anemone Blanda one small flower. The Ribes nearly out, the Mahonia Bealei out, for a week or two. Camellia mat. alba has suffered greatly. All the buds frostbitten, and leaves curled though not dropping off. I think it’ll survive, but I think it needs a little help, since its leaves are not the full deep green they should be.

Food again. They’re actually suggesting pearl barley, that ghastly harsh stuff.

Play about AIDS on TV. Intimate Contact. Dear old bumbling Dan Massey and ‘self- contained’ Claire Bloom. Ha Ha.

At last they’re seeing that their pitch pine kitchens are not the best place to go mad in.

Whuur’s yer Penny Horner and Michael Korda noo?

Thank god the ‘60’s are being shown up at last

I told him on Thursday that we would go out on April 7. And then no more. ‘That’s the 10th anniversary and after that, she’d be cross to think I was going on with it.’

Thursday March 24 1987

2.45a.m. Blackbird singing all-out.

Wednesday March 25 1987

Well, that was early this morning really. Blackbirds belong to the same family as the nightingale. I suppose.

Yesterday I went to lunch with Joan Hoar. It’s so pleasant and undemanding, and she doesn’t seem to mind cooking. We had black-skinned plaice, and tinned apricots and egg custard. An old-world meal. Lent me the new V.S. Naipaul and William Golding, neither of which I am remotely looking forward to. On the way I bought the Guardian for Pasolini, not bad, and mentions the music with the set, for giving the show what vitality it has. Rang him quickly to tell him, he was pleased, then said see you and rang off. Dear little hard-working thing.

Wandered round Hatchard’s, got back to flat about 4.15, on machine message to ring Bruna. Wanted for a recording for B&B commercial at the Tate Gallery?. The Tape Gallery. So up I dashed. Usual air of glossy rather smug ‘in’ chaos. A shoot had be ruined by a scratch on the master. Apparently the processer had ruined no less than five masters, by failing to thread the film round one of the rollers. He’s been sacked. Well, yes.

So nice Peter Webb, the director, said that the client was a little concerned I was a bit too posh. So would I make a tape brisking it up a bit. So I did, reading with him and it was all over in ten minutes. £80 just for that. He made it perfectly clear he thought the client was an idiot.

Outside I met Tim Pigott-Smith. He was as always, affable, incredibly affable. He is so flattering to everyone that it’s suspicious. Maggie S. is leaving the National earlier than they want her to. Bad notices, you see, and I bet she loathes the place. When I left him at Picc. Circus, I suddenly realised that I hadn’t got my cheque book. Had I left it in the Tape Gallery? Dash to the T.G. No! So dash home, it’s now 6.30, pick up book. Get to pub near Young Vic, having met Steven Dykes on the tube. I think it’s a fair coincidence to be on the way to see Danton’s Death and to come face to face across the tube carriage with Danton at Piccadilly Circus.

He was with another actor called Andy Wincott, tall, handsome, dark, with flaring nostrils etc. A slightly off-putting air of superiority about him. I couldn’t think what it reminded me. Then I opened the program - of course, Oxford!

Mike was in the pub. There is something so solid and good about him, despite his youthful uncertainties about himself. His sister joined us - a bit older but just as pleasant and sensible. Plainer tho’, so common, and bad luck - I mean, common that brothers are better looking than sisters. How often the girl resembles the big craggy father, and the boy the pretty mother.

The play was a bit ropey. Faust is a poem, and they’d found an acceptable way of treating it. Alas Danton’s Death has a much greater area of naturalism, which shows up the poverty of the company. The whole evening was far more like a student production than was comfortable. Some very poor perfs., especially from the women. The strident French singing, coming between every scene, is unimaginative - ‘we’ve had no director’ said Steve, and the staging generally is clumsy. Yes, I know it’s difficult play. Mike said 700 people applied to be in it - they auditioned dozens, and look what they come up with?! Some of them were strange-looking but uselessly so. Even Mike couldn’t act, his looks should have taken him in - after all, some of them can’t act and don’t look like anything. St Just was effective, slim, gaunt, mocking, powerful in a speech to the Assembly, but was too conscious for me, and even his passion only stood out because of its absence elsewhere. Name, Nofel Nawras. Looks vaguely middle European? Actually Iranian.

Steve D. a sketch of a perf. All his v. good qualities, power, voice, stature, clarity. But he has had no direction and nobody much to play against. He has his moments, but Act I was taken too much one note. And alas, afterwards, he blamed everything else, just as he denigrated the Faust. I fear he is a bit of a whinger and it’s never his fault. Not the mark of talent. Though he has it. He took our criticisms badly. We went off to Pelican. I had booked at Wine Gallery but it went on too long. Pelican was still full and alright – just. But the clientele are going that way. I don’t think I’ll go there again for dinner.

Back here, - he stayed - we had good solid talk. He’s in a young muddle, but he won’t be. He has a bottom of good sense, but still has to find it among his stir pot of influences. His Nicola is a great help. I said a few good things. All he needs from me is faith. One revelation came out of tonight. ‘Only you and Nicola believe in my acting.’ Ah. He’s now working with mentally handicapped people in drama now. It may be that he will go that way for good one day, - I think his family have a strong feeling of service - which his sister reinforced – but he must work through his feelings and his lack. I fear he is much dependent on me. I must be careful. I only have so much room.

Thursday March 26 1987

Still about Wednesday. Hung over. We’d sat up till 2.45, as I wrote. To sign on at 9.0, having said goodbye to M. with a big hug. (He told me that Dick B. made an ‘approach’ to him while they were sleeping here! I was quite ‘What, in my house’ for a minute!)

Raining.

When I got back to bed, Bruna rang. I’ve got the commercial. 4 days at £200 a day. And a lot of royalties. The water scene on Friday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Three days in Derbyshire. That solves a few problems, like K’s mortgage.

Voice over £80 Concert £150 Chance Million £2000 B&B. £800 TSB. ? Supp. benefit ?

Julian rang twice interminably, about S.D. at Festival Hall. Heard on phone-in prog. ‘Come in, Brunnhilde from Watford.’

Later.

George R arrived and went out to meeting of Garrick Library Committee.

Rang Linda and told her about commercial. And at 6.30 Neil rang, long and long, from LA. It was 10.30 and he was in the dressing-room. But close.

He’s all right.

At 9ish rang K. to wish him luck for tomorrow. Lovely. I was all set for 2 secs. Not at all. ‘It’s 10 tomorrow when I’ll be raising the baton. I’m starting out at 8.0! I’ve got Clive with me, you haven’t met him yet. Yes, I’m nervous.’ And he was. The studio’s at Wimbledon.

I told him about the commercial. He was reasonably thrilled. ‘Yes, it’s all right about Friday.’

Really supportive about the tank.

Giles on Law prog. tonight. Taped it.

Oh God, but my whole evening was made by his call.

Now it’s about Thursday. Strange day. Dear George R. is such an anachronistic delicate figure, - I feel protective – so that he can pursue his charming little round, -just as I would wish to do myself! More irony, I am enabling him to live the life I had a fantasy of living. It pleases me that I can allow this tiny little corner of scholarship and mildness to go on. More irony. I can just do it, because he costs me almost nothing. More tantalisation. How strange that I never knew Tantalus was my god.

So off he went to cash a cheque in H’smith and do a bit of shopping. By the way, he always, scrupulously makes up for his time here. A Garrick dinner. This time, a big bottle of gin, which probably, as he never drinks spirits, was quite daring for him to buy. ! So that was something. So off I went to my fitting at Park Village East. When I saw the buffet with infinite sandwiches and little pies and wine and grapes, I knew it was a ‘session’.

Three or four nubile girls, in their various guises as wardrobe, unit manger etc. encouraged Raymond Mason, dreary R. Mason (who’s quite nice) and me, to strip off. So we put on our all-black suits and were Polaroided. Then we dragged on huge rubber wet-suits for the water scene tomorrow. It was like a claustrophobic torture. And, faintly, the embarrassment of baring my sagging middle aged body in a roomful of young people. My wet suit was much too small. When they zipped me into it, it was so much too small, I literally couldn’t breathe, and even after they un-zipped it, I couldn’t stand quite upright without bracing my back.

If I’d spent a day in it, I would have been aching in every limb.

There is a lot of money about this thing. I am frightened of the water, but after that is over, the time in Matlock will be all right. The director is mild and cultivated and my sort. All the same, I felt smirched. I walked to see ‘84 Charing X Rd’. Sentimental. Cannot think Helen Hanff liked it. I cried at life. But – despite the embarrassment, and the fitting going on - I was going lunch at Marine L’ces and to ‘Salvador’ at Screen on the Hill, but realised early on I must abandon that. That is one thing he has taught me, to go with what can’t be changed.

So I got home, and there was Giles, with the stairs cleaned. Moving in this w/e. Looked round, sweet. Preparing for tomorrow. What will get me thro’ it is him, and the possibility of paying his mortgage.

Friday March 27 1987 Saturday March 28 1987

Still very tired, but yesterday was ‘irradiated by an extraordinary experience.’

My taxi came at 7.45, and I was at the place by 8.15. ‘Relax, Angus! Raymond turned up, and I must say straight away I was very grateful for his uncomplaining good humour and support. We were made up first in complete black face, head and neck. Black gloves, thank goodness. She used the black shade of a range from Innoxa, not a film make-up, which is designed to cover part white stains, scars and the like. It was really dense thick black black, very effective, but difficult to get off of course.

We struggled into wet-suits and the black suits and bowler hat and brolly. Down in the studio there was the big tank, now surrounded by very well done grasses and bushes and so on. We got in, the water came up to my chest. We started. I had told Raymond I couldn’t swim and had never put my head under water. He told no one else, but kept asking me in just the right way, if I was all right. I did get used to it after a bit, and only choked once. Even when they put a weight on me ‘so that you can stay down longer,’ I didn’t panic. That’s what I was almost fearing most, losing control and gulping water. We did 27 takes, and by the end the strain was very bad, trying to keep the rhythm of breathing. The water was warmish, the only chill coming when we stayed standing up too long in the wind machine’s way. By lunch time it was over. We got changed and dry. The catering was excellent, chicken with an Italian sauce, baked potatoes, salads, fruit, really good wines with years on them!, and all served in the big room where they auditioned us, on the side-table, and a proper table and chair to eat it off. I ate very carefully, not knowing what the afternoon might hold. It wasn’t too bad in comparison.

Before we went down I rang him at 2.00. Thank God he was there. ‘Is tonight still on? I’m at my thing.’ ‘Yes, of course.’ ‘I’ll come straight to you, and have a bath.’ I told him of the 27 takes. He was really shocked. ‘Are you all right?’ ‘Not really.’ ‘Shall I cook something here?’ ‘Oh no.’ Just hearing him gave me strength to go on. The first shots were matching us exactly with the logo. They did that by posing us exactly to match the silhouette - ‘raise your left shoulder a quarter of an inch etc – and then we turned out of it. They could then reverse it, so that it would look exactly as if we were turning into the logo. It was a bit humiliating, but painless. Then we put the wet suits back on under our clothes. We sat on two blocks meant to be the gate, and said a couple of lines and then a plastic trough-full of water was thrown over us, as if splashed by a passing motor-bike. That was about 14 takes, and it was about 5.30. They finished. I have never felt such relief. I rang him and said I was on my way. Steve W. answered. I hoped he wasn’t going to be there. I’d got most of the make-up off with difficulty, but my hair was still black, and my eyes ringed with black and my skin generally messy. I rang the bell, not using my keys in case Steve was there. I went in, he came running down the stairs, a thing he never does, saw me and said ‘Oh you poor thing’ and took me in his arms, with a look of such love… even I didn’t realise… In the flat he actually said, ‘I put the ‘phone down and thought He’s doing this to pay my mortgage.’ I went to him and took his hand and said ‘But yes, yes, that’s exactly what kept me together.’

Then I asked how his recording day had gone. ‘It was a disaster,’ he said, ‘I was so worried you were going to ask me at lunch-time, and I didn’t want to tell you in case it should upset you.’ ‘Well, tell me.’ ‘We only got two pieces on tape, one other with three instruments, as the others had had to go. There were three people to blame, Aaron for not giving us enough time, the fixer for pooh-poohing the difficulty of the music and getting brass that couldn’t quite hack it, and me for having Roy the drummer, who couldn’t keep the tempo from section to section so when we came to edit, the sections didn’t match. The studio was too small.’ He played the pieces to me, and the balance was all wrong. But I loved the arrangements - he has genius. If only he can get people to do it. I wondered for a bit whether he’d judged the situation right, and they might be going to give him up. But Aaron had introduced him to the other three composers, two of whom had played in them, and said how much they liked his music. And his having a meeting with Aaron and the fixer on Monday.

I had a bath and shower. He’d brought a quarter bottle of gin and a tonic. And had no money. I sat down with the gin, and that’s when he played his music. What could be more wonderful than that after the day I’d had? Sarah arrived back after a bit. The ‘phone rang and he was about 15mins, talking to Clive, the chap who helped him programme the synths. (‘He stayed the night and smelt, like some people do.’ I was glad he had a person with real technical knowledge, to talk it over with. He ordered a taxi, and off we went to the fish and chip shop. I daresay Sarah thought it odd we didn’t ask her to join us. He said ‘She would have chattered on without noticing that she was interrupting anything. Oh, Sharron sent me £5 ‘for a stiff drink afterwards.’ Sensible girl.

Nigel and Joy were in the fish and chip shop. What a coincidence! They were with two friends, at one of the long tables, so there were two free seats. But my luck held - there was a table for two free, and K. said ‘Do you mind if we don’t join you? Angus and I have some business to talk over.’ Imagine him even knowing to say that, five years ago. When N and J left, he said Doesn’t her hair look old fashioned? She still has that v. short square style. 2 years old. Fancy! We went back to the flat – Sarah had given him a bottle of whisky - and I got quite light-headed - Steve W. came in with Andy! Steve looked very bright and handsome. London will suit him. Andy looked the pudding he isn’t. Did not come out to me at all, as if that evening had never been. And left quite sullenly, no doubt kicking himself for his shyness. I was very very tired by the time the taxi came. I held him close and said ‘I don’t know what I’d have done if I hadn’t had you to come to tonight.’

Today, Sat. I’ve been v. tired and done nothing except rest. And think how lucky I am to have him as my best friend.

Later.

Rang quickly to say it was Mother’s day tomorrow, and the clocks went forward tonight. Rang off. A few minutes he rang back, and said ‘Sharron says you’ll laugh and I must hold the telephone at arms length but does the clock go forward or back?’ Sharron was right. I roared. To my amazement we went on to talk for twenty minutes. They’d been to see ‘She’s Got to Have it’, and he’d liked it exactly as I had. Good. ‘Are you still tired?’ I said I’d been to the shops, so as to stay in the rest of the day. ‘I had quails eggs and smoked salmon for lunch - I felt I deserved it.’ ‘Right’.

‘So what did you do? Watch the boat race?’ So we talked about that for a bit, and I told him, to his amazement, that in the old days, everyone wore a dark or light blue favour on Boat Race Day.

‘What are you doing tomorrow night? I’ve got a mound of mincemeat, and Colin’s coming over. Do you want to come to dinner?’ Do you know, I refused. That’s the very first time! Because of the journey and not getting drunk and the simple expenditure of vitality. The very first time. I said had Sharron registered the new Tate Gallery for Turner. ‘Yes, she’s been puking over the television.’ I screamed ‘Isn’t that architect a creep? He’s another Ken Russell. The arrogance! If Shakespeare had left instructions, they’d ignore them just the same. Turner’s pictures are mostly luminous gold and oatmeal-colour. So, on the red walls he wanted, his pictures look like golden windows.’ I went on to say more on the old line of ’60 and ‘70’s people being unable to say they’re not modern anymore. They cannot see that they’ve been left behind already. I recommended the Houseman’s Tale and left him.

I have seldom been so happy.

Sunday March 29 1987

Still tired.

On an animal programme, an idiot woman with a pet monkey, said ‘And, of course, it doesn’t make her any easier that she’s Gemini.’ !

Giles has moved in, and I daren’t ask him or go up there. I wish I were a better driver - driver! Traveller. There is quite a drive from the hotel to the location. That means no breakfast. Nobody else seems to understand, let alone feel the same. But it has ruined many a day out, and is the main reason I don’t enjoy filming. The irritating part is that I never seem to stay in a hotel except for filming, so I can’t enjoy any of it’s services. Part of it is claustrophobia. There was a patch when I went on the tube and always felt sick, if the carriage was at all full. Once it emptied the pressure was off, and I was all right. And D. was becoming ill….

Rang him at 5.30. ‘Don’t know why I’m ringing except to be wished good luck.’ ‘Good luck.’ ‘If I drop dead, you’ll have to pick up the body from the International Hotel, Derby.’ ‘The International.’ Then ‘Roy’s coming round to hear the damage.’ ‘Will you have to tell him you can’t have him next time?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh, dear.’

The next two days written on Wednesday, for obvious reasons.

Monday March 30 1987 Tuesday March 31 1987

I had elected to travel up by train. Partly because of my railcard, - the fare was only £10.25 return! – but also partly because I couldn’t travel in the char-à-banc for that distance with any comfort either to the legs or the stomach, and even more acutely because I hate to think of being thrown together with ‘everyone’ any sooner than I need be, in a journey taking 3 ½ hrs instead of 2. So I arrived at Derby station at 12.26, after a journey in a rather full train, partly full because one whole carriage was booked by a huge school? party, going where? Sheffield? all armed with those formidable backpacks, and a lot of noise. I was glad I wasn’t in that carriage - oh, I suppose I couldn’t have been - but I suddenly felt a pang - and thought that might be him on that trip to Germany, with the MYO? Even without them, I did the journey in my ear plugs, - the third class seats are much closer together - and in the next two seats, were a slightly overblown - Patsy Byrne-Rosemary-Leach- I am sincere-because-I- have-leant-to-live-with-my-unattractiveness type’ and a ‘slighly-thin-‘arty’-Flower-Power- type-if-it-suited-for-a-bit-but-it-won’t-do-now-but-I’m-taking-another-track-now.’ They both talked absolutely non-stop from London to Derby, where they got out. The fair one had a script, so I perhaps they were off to the Derby Playhouse. I felt, as I sometimes do when two women friends laugh consumedly and constantly, that giggling girls really are a bit different vide. D. that night in Balsall Heath. But no doubt men are just as bad. But I never remember doing that to anyone.

So, I got out of the train, and was greeted by Irene. A modish, streaked would-be attractive to all men, Irene. She had an immensely chic car, which was never used for me again. She reminded me of the girl who was so nasty when I wanted to get back from Penshurst after the dog commercial, to him at RSJ. She drove me to the location, - ‘can we go to the hotel’, ‘no, they want you there like now’. Exciting. (sic). She is exciting herself ‘cos of it, and girls are worse in authoritarian organisations, I think. Ask Sharron.

So I got there. A wonderfully beautiful valley, with all the attributes of the Derbyshire Peak District. The shape of the country!, round the corner from Dovedale, and mostly, beautifully, empty and silent, except for the splashing of the streams, at times seeming to be at the edge of every field. The base was an old mill just at the gates of a big house, with a coat of arms over them, - no sign of the house, only miles of sheep-nibbled parkland. The mill was also beautiful, lawn and mill-race and daffodils, though it was entirely unconverted and unoccupied, though not at all derelict. One corner of the big downstairs room had been roughly boarded off, with some old chairs in it, round a dusty old ‘thirties dinning-table. This rather mystified me, till I saw a type’d sheet pinned to the stairs, Shooter’s Party. There was also a sale poster propped against the wall, 1961, Osmaston Manor. The big house? We weren’t based inside, just around it. A big unit, fifty or so. We were in a big Winibago? that’s how they pronounced it, an elaborately fitted-up caravan, or trailer. We had lunch in the big char-à-banc with tables, that the others had come down in, as we were not yet made up. Irene had said, they were ‘wonderful’ caterers. I thought they were reasonable enough, but that’s all. Beef bourginon and rice. The calf’s liver looked authentic. Only Perrier water. Brrrr, for it was cold, and I was very glad of my old ‘location’ double-lined coat. It was a lovely-looking day, with a good deal of sun through the white clouds. We were made up by the v. pleasant debby make-up girl, Bean Ellis. Her real name is Harriet, but she doesn’t like it. Tall blonde, long oval face, long nose, smiles a lot, a ready laugh, real humour, we got on well. Thank God. She did the hideous make-up, and we put on the thermal underwear over our own. Then a black shirt and tie and the quite lightweight black suit and bowler. That’s all, to face the march weather. A little way along the road, was a high back bridge over the many steams, perhaps a minor river? Here we had to stand and appear to play Pooh-sticks, while they filmed first from a scaffolding tower about forty feet high erected in the field below us, then from a camera on a enormous crane, swooping over the river to get a full frontal view of us. We were put back into our coats from time to time but not often enough not to be very very cold, by the end of the afternoon. The director, Peter Webb, is nice enough to talk to, but has a streak of fanaticism as a director, as witness the 27 takes. He is tall and gangling and single-minded - it is easy to see what he was like at 12. I don’t think he finds it easy to be happy. He wasn’t deliberately thoughtless but he does make that dreadful mistake of saying ‘Just one more for luck’, or ‘Just one more’ and then doing seven more. This is psychologically idiotic as a treatment for actors. We went on till seven, although the lighting man murmured to me that the last hour and a half had been useless ‘cos of the fading light. Back to the hotel, I worked for ¾ of an hour to get back to some semblance of my usual appearance.

Going down to dinner, was an experience. ‘International’ is hardly the word. It’s more the suburban villa of the fiftyish woman from Ruislip, who fell in love with Spain in 1952, and then cross-fertilized it with some musical set in Mexico. The owner at least has some individuality in having applied his or her (and if it’s ‘his’ he’s gay) fearful taste to every square inch. You can barely thread your way thro’ the big arm-chairs in the lounge – of the sort with big plastic filled cushions resting on a row of plastic covered thick-sprung wires, between which the cushion immediately sinks lop-sidedly, - and the small ones which are low, armless, with rounded backs, all upholstered in eau-de-nil velvet. Myriads of infelicities abound, crusaders set against a background of ‘native’ tiles, baskets of artificial flowers on wrought-iron brackets. At least it’s not automatic Trust House Forte. (They had a built four hideous square boxes onto one corner of a pretty old house, going down the side of a hill, in another beautiful valley.) There was a little cupboard in the room, (which, apart from it’s décor, was perfectly adequate, and included such unexpected details as clean face-flannel on the bath, and a hot water bottle in the wardrobe) marked Cocktail Cabinet (sic) with various miniatures, beer and so on. I had two gin and t’s while washing. Another unusual detail, a fridge on the landing, ice 24 hours a day. That’s better that bad room service. Menu, dining- room and food absurd. Had fried fish always safer since people who can’t cook actually like it themselves, and it will perhaps be eatable. ½ bot of rather sweet Graves, being careful to under eat, ‘cos of the early morning drive.

Even so, and sitting at the very front, and it was only 20 minutes, I felt uneasy enough to burst into conversation with the 2nd assistant, the real dogsbody of the unit, the go-between who gets all the shit, Terry Bamber. Slightly balding, 28? knock-kneed, fresh-faced, always smiling, he made a hideous experience as bearable as it could be. He never forgot us for a moment, ran to get us out of the food queue, always brought us our meals wherever we were, remembering throughout how I liked my coffee. Guess what, he comes from the theatre, and can’t wait to get back to it! Had his own children’s theatre co. Tuesday was as bad as Friday. It was much colder, much, no sun and a strong wind, spots of rain, and towards the end of day, horizontal sleet. Up the hill, the other direction, the Winibago was parked in the Cold Comfort farmyard, with a smell worse than anything I’ve smelt before. If it hadn’t been fairly airtight, and the location had been nearer, I would have been sick from it. The location was a five-bar gate with a field sloping away behind, in the full force of the N/E wind on our backs. We were stilling on two platforms padded with foam, but even so they bit into my legs. They left us up there much too long, - I got colder than I’ve ever been in my life, I dropped the phone at one point, - yes, I had a phone! And some tricky % type dialogue. Eventually I was shivering so violently that I could not control my arms and legs, or my voice. We went back to the Winnie, climbing up a mud-bank thro’ a gap in the hedge. But the moment we went back I was just as bad almost immediately. I’ve never known before what it is to ‘feel ill with the cold.’ They don’t think - they’re all twenty years younger. (I suppose I should be relieved that I obviously don’t look as if I need treating at all carefully!)

After tea, we went back down to the bridge, where poor Raymond had to do his ‘big’ scene - both are 30 seconds long, but the stupid ill-written words are easy to muddle, especially when you have to say them so many times. The air coming off the water was icy, and indeed I found back at the hotel that my elbows were chapped inside my suit. We finished a little earlier, ‘cos the light was even worse, but they were getting worried over not getting it all done. We were back in the hotel an hour or so earlier, but called for 6.45 in the bus. ‘Well, it’s the last day’ I thought. I’d been v. careful and, joy, felt nothing on the bus. Which proves, as if I needed proof, that it is largely psychological. It was pouring down. Hugh Walters was made up - I can’t be bothered to go into him - one shot and he’s been waiting ever since we got here. Many conflicting rumours ran riot - at first it was said we would not be used at all, then that we would just do a wild track for the sound man, that we would do two close-ups on the gate!, and try to finish the bridge scene, both under tarpaulins. All this interspersed with Cassandras of various hues coming at us from various angles. ‘You won’t be used at all today.’ Our favourite. ‘I’ve known Peter W. film in prissier weather than this, using more lights than you’ve ever seen in your life.’ !

‘They’re going to get Hugh’s stand-in for the line-up.’ Two hours later. Stand-in. ‘No, we haven’t shot anything - we’re still lining-up.’ It’s still pouring.

We’ve been made up all this time. Finally about 2.45, Terry says ‘Abandon hope all ye - it’s a wrap.’ Heaven. So at least we’re warm. Re-shooting? Nothing will make me miss tomorrow night with K, not to mention that I can’t stand another day of this immediately, so I say firmly, I have a production conference. If it weren’t for the royalties (which I won’t miss now after all this agony) and Raymond, who has a wife and three sons, I would say No altogether. Nothing is suggested before we part, however. I have arranged to stay over, because I could not face trying to take all that filthy thick stuff off, in that cramped trailer with limited hot water, having brought all my luggage down as well, and then rush for a train, still black. Raymond did all that, and sat in the coach, getting to Park Village East at I suppose, about 7. And then on to Barnet. If it had been a filming day, he’d have done all that, five hours later. The bus dropped me off, I sank into my bath and shower and had a heavenly afternoon and evening - I hadn’t read a word since the journey down, or written in here. A long slow deep wink. Dinner had the plaice again, and a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse, which turned out when they brought it to be Pouilly Fumé, most acceptable. Got drunk, of course, from relief. 2nd episode of Strong Poison. Alas not nearly as good. Many miscastings. Edward still very good.

Rang K. on Monday night. Great comfort. Completely there for me. Sarah W. was taking him out for a Chinese meal at that place Simon took me to, ‘So ring early or late’. The parting with Roy was amicable, thank God.

Couldn’t ring early or late, of course, though I was still awake at 11.15 but I thought it mightn’t help me, as so wretched by that time I might have been more depressed by him not being there. Rang him tonight, Chinese meal had been a success, – (does Sharron really not mind? I wonder.) He’d seen Aaron, and has three studio days. 14th. Backing tracks. 21st. Drums. 22nd. Orchestra. That’s more like it.

So Aaron does see the point. John Cameron writes for them, who is ‘as well-known as George Fenton,’ – not by me – ‘and he’s about your age.’

When I told him all I’d gone through, he was really angry, and to my amazement reminded me I got £200 a day for the dog commercial, so surely I should get more for this and the make-up, and the tank. As always with one you love, he got a bit angry with me! For a bit. Oh, I am so lucky.

Thursday April 2 1987

I was glad I decided to stay on last night. Got down to the station for 11.35 and lunch, but felt a bit queasy, so waited for the 1.35. Dining car almost empty, so thought I’d be all right. Had a bad attack of panic, and nearly got off at Leicester. It’s odd, it must be ‘psychological’, for I did drink the half bot of wine, and ate the tomato soup, and the plaice but no pots or vegetables, and a cup of black coffee. I didn’t exactly feel sick, more stifled. Why?

Back here, there was another chance royalty, £445. Good. Rang him about 4.30. ‘Come round about 6.30. I’ve booked a table for 8.0.’ ‘I’m working on something actually. I can’t make it for 6.30.’ (Funny, always that voice as if the whole world should know he’s working!) He turned up at 6.0! just as I was going to have bath, so as not to a lose a moment of him. He wanted some beer, and as there wasn’t any because of Derby, he went to get some. ‘Have you any money?’ ‘No, I haven’t any money at all.’ So I gave him a handful. His first remark ‘Well, you look the right colour.’

I got back from the bath, and he produced a tape. ‘Where’s the cassette player?’ ‘In the bedroom, or the dining-room.’ …(calling down stairs) ‘Or the bathroom.’ This made him giggle a lot, and was the first laugh of a hilarious evening. He said ‘Listen to this.’ It was an interview with Claire Moore, on her taking over the lead in Phantom of the Opera. I could see it had quite deeply troubled him, and I leapt ahead to guess why. Sure enough I was right. Gone was the brassy Bolton forthrightness, in its place was a breathy ingénue, overwhelmed by the honour she had been given. She said thrilling it was and how wonderful ‘Andrew’ had been to her, and how wonderful he was - and how wonderful his music was, and how wonderful it was to sing. She also threw in that she’d got married last week.

This last is the least of the worries, though you might expect that a friend of five or six years standings, with whom you once did a cabaret act round the Manchester clubs, to whom you gave her first major pro-chance when she was still a student, not to mention with whom you had an affair, and with whom you have been in continual musical touch since coming to London, might have told you about the wedding, or even asked you to it. I don’t think he had any idea she was thinking of it.

But of course it’s not that. It’s the putting on a front, which he would be utterly incapable of doing. And worst of all, the saying that the music is good, when he knows that she doesn’t think so. That is the unforgivable sin. He said he’d speak to her after Phantom. But it won’t be much use - I’ve seen this too often. I didn’t like seeing his expression. He is too sensible, and now too experienced!, to be upset, - he has often been let down - but this is the first time an intimate professional partner has betrayed their joint musical principles. I’m sorry. There is nothing to be done. Vide David Gilmore. Usually.

He told me all over again about Aaron in more detail. We were at dinner by then, - Wine Gallery - we were a bit high by then, but delightfully, because he had been comforted that I saw C’s interview as he did - alas, one of the few who would – and that I was safe and sound and I was happy that I wasn’t sitting on that gate and I was with the person I love most in the world.

I can’t quite remember, but I think it was John Cameron’s name he forgot ‘Who?’ We became helpless with laughter, and so remained so for the rest of the night. He taped a George Fenton musical to ‘analyse the songs, they’re so bad.’ I don’t know what we talked about- we were so happy.

Friday April 3 1987

Rather hung-over. To an interview for an in-house film - silly little affair, it seems. Bunny Fildes again! Bruna tells me Wed, Thurs and Fri. are pencilled in for the re-shoot. Brrrr.

Felt I had to spend a bit of money as I earned about £1000 last week! Went to Harrods, and bought two paper-backs, some manage touts, some salmon mousse, some lemon ice-cream, and a duck from the butcher here. Ben V. arrived early, with a bottle of wine for the first time, not so eccentrically dressed, not so leather and studs at a glance, and the suede winkle pickers have obviously worn out. The hair still long and bleached, but remained tucked under a woolly hat throughout. He looked grubby, but halfway through drinks he realised and went and washed. He is long and thin and boney, like a Rowlandson, with a keen mind, ill-stocked but quick and full of wit, and will make his way, I think. He’s already less wayward and careless. Got up at 11.10, saying he’d got ‘to get up early to go to work.’ ! He’ll be changing nappies next.

I was still very tired, and wondered if I could keep up for Ben, dreaded his sitting up late.

Saturday April 4 1987

David Bowie has brought out a new single called Day In Day Out. I think I must try and write a portrait of Raymond Mason. I owe him at least that. I can imagine so many actors I could have gone thro’ this deeply humiliating experience with, would have pushed me one way or another, to defiance or panic. He has done neither. Partly because he looks on work as I do, and we have progressed down the road together, to find ourselves involved in absurdity and degradation, without quite knowing how, except that we go through a part and take it on and do it.

So. Raymond Mason is short, rather heavily built, with an innocent surprised expression that suggests youth tho’ he is, as he reluctantly confessed, 62. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’ ! He is a bit of a fusser, in no irritating way, tho’ I am glad I’m not. He is, like so many actors, child-like. Some are great big babies. He is child-like. He confides something to you, which seems of special value, till you hear him confiding the same thing in the same words, to the driver of the coach taking us home. That ‘openness’, that ‘directness’ is dangerously near incontinence. Reminds me of Neil. Well? At one point he said with all the air of a genuine discovery, ‘I cry sometimes about being out of work.’ Yes, so do I, but don’t tell someone I only met two days ago.

But - he’s merry and can endure and can laugh helplessly in the middle of disgust at the absurdity of our situation. He can swap story for story, and laugh and rage and be kind to me in the pool. He is married, as I’ve said, with three sons. The eldest, Ben, got 10 O levels and six A levels, went to Oxford?, is now trying to get a demo tape together, musicians all work for one another without payment, isn’t it wonderful?’ The second son, Joseph, is the problem, and he is a real problem. He’s already got a criminal record, kicking a shop window in, fine £400, also possession of cannabis. He’s squatting. He comes back to them and makes his room a pit. He came round the other day and took the contents of the larder, and when remonstrated with, threw the stuff round the hall, and fought, physically, with Raymond. Difficult. After all Ben squats, K. knocked down a petrol pump and had 60 or 70 pot plants, he’s been very selfish sometimes, and I hit him without proper justification. Hm. I’m afraid I might be maddened by Raymond as a father. Ernie? ‘Yes, I’m a good handy- man. Perhaps I’ve done too much for them.’

One memorable laugh. We were sitting in one of the interminable waits, in the Range Rover, wearing our ebony-like makeup, over face, head, neck and hands. I said, ‘Tell me about your youngest, Matthew. What’s he like?’

‘Well’, said Raymond, ‘well, he’s my colouring.’

Later.

My TSB commercial went out tonight. Nobody, not even K. would know it was me, unless he knew, and not even then! But I’ll still get the money for repeats.

It’s been so dark and wet and a yellow-grey sky - I turned the lights on at 4.30. So it hasn’t mattered so much being tired.

Sunday April 5 1987

Terence Gerona rang at 1.0, has no money. All going wrong, could go to Brighton but has no money. I cancelled tomorrow night, said I’d give him fare to Brighton. Rang again to say could he come here and do some washing? ‘No, I haven’t a washing machine.’ ‘Oh, that’s really bad.’ He rang again, to say he had to go to Golders Green to see a solicitor tomorrow morning, and he only had a zone 2 card. So I said Come straight round and I gave him £10. That would do for the launderette and the fare and something to eat today without being silly. I think he’s straight. But soon I must see some of his work. He said his solicitor was going to introduce him to Michael White. ‘Who’s Michael White?’ !

Rang K. at 5ish. ‘Not out in this lovely weather? Spring?

‘I’m cleaning the flat.’ So said it all. ‘Nigel’s at the match.’ ! He’ll ring you when he comes back.’

‘Let’s go to Phantom. And I’ll go off and leave you with Claire.’

‘That’s what Sharron said.’ So I didn’t remind him that we’d been going to it together. I said, ‘Well, I’ll take Sharron off and do something.’ ‘All right’.

Later.

Nigel rang. Less brash, read the letter to him. Seemed more interested in the labouring he’d done before. Never heard about that much, but it seems that’s the only thing that made any money. Little blinkered boy. Didn’t ask to speak to K. Again first time!!

Monday April 6 1987

I thought over our talk about Claire, and saw I had a bone to pick! He said ‘If you didn’t come round, it might be awkward’. !! What about Ken Branagh etc etc? Now it’s his friends, and he sees the difficulties.

Later.

Out to H’smith to get some money, and no fish. So got mushrooms for an omelette. Because of Terence Gerona’s vegetarian non-gluten diet. He arrived rather earlier than he said, after ringing to say that he was half an hour away. I started the lunch, he read me a passage from a critical book by Keith Johnstone, while I was doing the omelette. It was quite a good passage.

The black telephone engineer arrived with the answering machine. It was the outgoing tape that was ‘defective’. So, tho’ it was still on guarantee, he had to charge me £6.99 for the tape, and £10 cash (‘it’s ordinarily £18), the £6.99 going to the firm who originally provided the recorder. He’s sweet, was 2 years with National Youth Theatre.’ ‘Who can you ring to ring back to see if it’s working?’ !? Nigel answered. ‘He’s gone to the launderette.’ (He’s really clearing the decks for his studio days. I told Nigel about the new temps agency opened in H’Smith market.

So that was all over. Terence not only had a mushroom om. but a slice of bread! He told me he was going to Brighton to two friends who will give him his fare to The States. His step- father is really ill, and his mother rang him at 3.0 a.m. (6.30 her time) to tell him, drunk. Not drunk alcoholic. So we had all that, and I said some quite good things. Then George arrived. Sweet. He can deal with young people. But went on a bit too long with Theatre History, considering. But not for an American!

Later.

Went to see the new Eric Rohmer film ‘Green Ray’. What a disappointment. A monologue for a girl who keeps dissolving into tears because she’s lost her boyfriend and is lonely, and she’s lost her boyfriend and is lonely because keeps dissolving into tears….

She is a real pain. And it’s improvised!

Later still.

Giles rang from upstairs about the dustbin. Aah!

I still think of him every minute.

Tuesday April 7 1987

D. has been dead 10 years.

Beautiful perfect evening. Film to judge. Aquilino. Salmon. Chardonnay.

Nigel back at the flat. Memorable Laugh.

Described D. over dinner memorably, only neither of us can remember it. Perfect day.

Wednesday April 8 1987

Don’t know that I can add to that description by expanding it! My description of D. was at least adequate and he was much moved, emotionally and intellectually, by it. And said so. You can scarcely have a more extraordinary testimony to his unusual qualities than to realise that he wanted to talk and hear me talk, about a woman he’s never met because she matters so much to me, and the reaction is perfectly real and genuine in him. And it completely satisfied me. I said to him this morning that he had given me something that no one else could.

We met at the Slug and Lettuce. He was shaved and looking his best. He remarked on the huge windows - it’s true, they’re as big as a shop. We got up to date. The Peter Browne day, 2 – 2 a.m., went really well. A group of Scots boys, ‘all v. young (?!) 20,’ called The Super Dragons.’ He really enjoyed it, and they liked him. £150, and there’ll probably be another session. ‘Can I get them to send the invoice to you, for you to accept, otherwise I’ll lose my dole.’ ‘Yes, tho’, as I said this morning, when I rang him quickly, would he get them to put for services and not mention keyboards, otherwise my accountant would wonder.

The studio was in Kent, ‘a two-hour drive from my place, the equipment was old, and bad speakers, and so that wasn’t too good, but it was lovely to walk straight out into the orchard.’

So off we went to the film across the road, Personal Services. Well acted, good material, but too slow, both in movement of the story, and the editing. A pity. He didn’t like Julie W. as much as I did. To Aquilino, and discussed it and D. What could be better than evaluating a work of art together on such a day? Salmon, two steaks!, he didn’t quite finish his. A bottle of Chardonnay, called Fontanelle, so I said about my head closing up late. ‘That’s why you’re so intellectual.’ A bottle of whisky and back to the flat, where Nigel and Sarah were, she a bit tight. She’s been to see a flat and been appalled to find it was a Co. let, and a deposit of over a £1000. She soon went to bed, after K. had given her a cuddle, giving me an ‘isn’t she a bit of a drag’ look over her shoulder. (He’d given me one glance when we arrived, in case I minded us not being alone. No more! I know now.

Nigel convulsed us both again - it is his running on that’s so funny. K. rang Sharr. about tonight, quite off-hand, possibly because we were there, but there was a note in his voice, which reminded me that he’s said of Jon H. quite scornfully, ‘Rachel’s really got him hasn’t she?’ He never mentioned her tonight, except that when he said ‘A tenner wouldn’t go amiss - I don’t know where it goes, Sharron and I always go Dutch.’

He told Nigel all about Glynn and Sarah, which he’d obviously never done, and about the place Glyn has in his life - a bit. Well. More and more I see how fully and completely I am his friend.

Fri. 8.30 - 5.40 Mon. 8 - 8.30 My film times.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 76

April 9 ’87 – May 2 ’87.

Thursday April 9 1987

A.M. pre-filming.

Nigel came to stay. So much improved.

A horrible day. I'd thought N. was out and he was here when I came back at 8.30 exhausted. I was all right to him.

I HATE FILMING.

11.50.

I didn't ring him of course. I must do the last bit alone but I longed for him as the only person who understands the outrage and humiliation.

Friday April 10 1987

It was a pretty horrible day. I was determined not to ring him.

The car came at 7.50 and I got to the wretched place at 8.15. About 9.0, a new make-up girl came up, very pleasant, thank God, and the lovely Friday wardrobe girl. Both were a real help. On went the frightful makeup, no less bearable for being rather tentative, not her fault. Upstairs dear Greg brought me hot roll with bacon, egg and sausage in it. About ten thirty we began, on a stunningly accurate reproduction of that bridge. It was a bit hot this time but otherwise painless. The Afternoon was a different story. After another excellent lunch, again with dated wines, though I couldn't enjoy them because I had more of dialogue (sic) in the second one, we went down to sit on the gate. At least it wasn't in a NE gale. But that's all. There was an ominous spread of plastic around the gate, teetering and wobbling some 12 feet above. We did the same wretched scene and then started to use the machine which had been laying innocently on the floor. It consisted of two 10-inch very narrow nozzles, set one above the other, attached to a compression cylinder with a funnel on it. There was also a bucket of very dirty looking water (no doubt it had been made dirty with something clean, still...) My seat on the gate was not secure, so young Greg covered himself in plastic and knelt down in front of me gripping my ankles in case the force of the water knocked me off. The first blast was so nauseous and cold that I just burst out 'That’s disgusting'. Which got a nervous laugh. They tried it three time more but it was so cold and so powerful that it always took my breath away so that I couldn't say my line in time, or at all. They decided they'd got the splash and did the line by pouring water on our heads from a watering-can. By this time it was 6.30 and we were soaked to the skin. Even the wardrobe girl didn't know there was to be another water scene and had no wet-suits. I had of course brought no clean underwear, and had always meant to take the difficult make-up off at home. I quickly got out of the my wet clothes to the skin, with no privacy, and put my clothes on without underwear and I was expecting Greg to come up and say our taxis were on the way. Not at all, 'we're going into Regents Park to do some wild tracks.’ So, in black face and no underwear, we went with the very lesbian sound pair, Martine in gaiters and boots, short hair and as flat contours as she could manage. Actually she seemed rather nice. The other more feminine one with long hair and gypsy clothes, and as deep a voice as I've ever heard. And I'm afraid she smelt powerfully. By this time I was in a cold rage, though not with them. And in the end, it was only quarter of an hour. I was in the taxi for home. The few people who passed us in the park, did they wonder why we'd put on black face to do radio? No, the public don't wonder.

To my dismay, Nigel was in, watching TV. I'd thought he was going out. And after film days, I am bursting to relax, either alone or with K. But he didn't impinge, and asked what he could do. His rough manner hides a nice boy, - where did he get it? I went and started cleaning up - there seems a time when the black goes everywhere and you feel it will never come under control. It did, I had a gin and tonic, he'd eaten, so that was no trouble. While I was in the bath, he'd arranged to go for a drink with Andy at 9.30. A relief. Got quietly drunk, and no more despondent than my drunken note.

Rang him at 1.30. I thought he might have mistaken the day, but no, straight away, ‘How did it go?’ He was upset when I told him, and went quite silent. ‘How did you get on with Peter?’ ‘We had a short meeting.’ ‘You alright?’ ‘Yes but I'm working on the library music, and it's pissing me off.’ ‘You're going to The Pasolini tonight with the boys?’ (Which Nigel had told me.) ‘Yes.’ ‘I told N. you must be doing that to see that the sound was all right for me on Sunday. Will Sharron have the car on Sunday?’ ‘Why?’ ‘Well I thought we might go to the other Wine Gallery, and not Marine Ices.’ ‘We could take a cab, but anyway, I haven't asked Sharron yet. She doesn't like last nights and all that.’ ‘Oh, I'm sorry, I was looking forward to taking you both out.’ He'd said he'd see. How odd. When has she been to a last night except half of The Infernal Machine? I didn't quite like the feeling of repudiating 'theatricals'. After all...

And it is the end of a work of art, at the lowest. And a little band of people who have come together to create something. Still, he's going and I'm going. I'll cling to that, and see.

Later.

To The Pelican with Mary. Thoroughly enjoyable evening. Good Meursault. Service could be better as ever. It's the space I like, K. can't help it. She is such good company now, isn't it strange? I don't think it's me who's changed! She is not touchy any more, and of course she still has the intelligent humour which made her for a time D's closest friend and flat mate. She's a vegetarian now! First course, vegetable pate, cheese and beetroot in layers. She ate it all. Then a vegetable something that looked much the same. Oh dear. I had salmon mousse, a bit bland even for me, then partridge, casseroled tender and tasty.

Parted most amiably at elevenish. Curiously dense crowds in the tube-station - first flash of Americans etc. But altogether, I suppose fresh out of the theatre. On the platform dense for another reason, someone had thrown themselves under a train at Caledonian Rd. They must have shut L. Sq., 'cos no one else came down, as the platform was dangerously full. Everyone crammed on to the first train that came - I knew that that sort of hold-up gets back to normal quickly, so waited and got a seat comfortably. Home by 11.35.

Later still.

Nigel came in about 12.00. Didn't think the play 'was as much held together by the music as you'd said.' ! Family. 'Anyway, it was mostly sound.’

‘But we had a bit of a disaster afterwards. We went to one or two pubs, and Kevin and Steve were playing the fruit machines. Andy asked for a light, and Steve held out his gas lighter, turned up tall and it flared up more and burnt Andy's eyebrow, and nearly burnt his eye. He went to the gents and bathed it. But it watered very badly after that.’

Oh dear, more nails in Steve's coffin. I'm beginning to feel sorry for the too-sharp little tyke. I've always said 'He's like a breath of fresh air.' He knows better now, but I'm glad I didn't see K's face when it happened. He would mind most.

Saturday April 11 1987 Sunday April 12 1987

Cleaned the drawing-room in the morning. First time I've felt that energetic for ages. In the evening Linda took me out. She was looking lovely, so slim in a skin tight suit. But not at all vulgar. Lucy is thinner too, 'cos she's taller! We walked to the restaurant as it was just at the end of Munster Rd. in the Fulham Rd. She told me it was where Carlo's Place used to be. I suddenly remembered being driven there in the '60's when the Fulham Rd. was a desert, more or less, and we were rather cross at going on and on down the F-Rd. miles from any other restaurant. It was all done up with a lot of huge black pipes 'exposed' as if it were a functional heating unit. But I think it was only empty ornament. It's certainly the sort of place I was thinking of for M. Youth. The new place, Chez Claudie, is genuinely French, in waiters, feel and food. Not that I've tested them much. I had the smallest fish platter, just right, and Merlan en papillote which was delicate and good. Two bots of wine. I was rather drunk. An adorable evening, celebrating our ten years of friendship, and not talking about Neil too much. Only marred by one very awkward moment. She said, with that little toss of the head that is so charming, ‘I just know he’s never been unfaithful to me,’ ! Thank God I’m an actor, I was amazed, and even my jaw dropped a bit. When I think of all the things he’s confessed to on my sofa, - let alone the ones he hasn’t! But I thoroughly enjoyed myself - it’s so rarely I don’t pay!

Oh, Marjorie rang up about 4.30, still the expensive time, and talked for 20mins, mainly about her hand and her pain, until Nigel suddenly came in and had a chat. He said after, that she didn’t sound at all like herself. I think that’s one of her troubles, that she takes it out of herself, keeping up a front.

Oh, last night when I came in, N. had locked himself into the little front hall, and was lying, with his shoes off, across both front doors, wrapped in some of the dirty laundry. I had to reveal to him that there were keys under the mat!

K. rang this morning, Sunday, and screamed with laughter. Concerned about his mother. No restaurant tonight as Sarah is doing a leg of lamb. ‘I forgot.’ Well, it wasn’t an á deux even, anyway, so that’s really better, and cheaper. Also I’ve three restaurant meals in a row, and was a bit dreading the fourth. And the postsynching tomorrow. The third rest. meal was Hazel and Tom at Wine Gallery. Gorgeous word-swapping. They hung on my blow by blow a/c of Bradford and Bingley. They loved the place, and the Mick Jagger waiter. I said ‘I see him politely but wearily refusing admiration on every side.’

Oh, K. told me he took the day off from the Music House production, and he and Sharron went off to Essex! To Maldon! Sharron saw a sign saying Ind. Est. ‘Inland Estuary’ she cried. ‘Industrial Estate’ actually. ‘I laughed so much we lost the way completely.’ Why Essex? So much of it is industrialised, and as flat as Norf and Suff, and no other extenuating beauties as they have. Another unsuccessful outing!

Later.

The last four pages were written in the Nicolson Pub, waiting for K. and ‘Pasolini.’ An lovely evening that has ended with a stupid (oh his part) disagreement. Anyway. He arrived on time! Showed him the Claire Moore article - he was suitably repelled. Said again that he would have a real go at her ‘all evening’, when we go to Phantom. I wonder if he can, - where will her husband be, and mightn’t it be at the last minute, ‘I can’t come out for long- I’ve got an early call/someone important coming round etc etc. I mean, I hope the interview won’t be more of a disappointment than the first article. He was in high sprits when he arrived. He’d worked in the morning, and early p.m. and then gone to Stan Loubiere’s restaurant for lunch, - at 4.0! I suppose, after the guests had gone. Roast beef etc. They were a bit high from the meal, but he said, in the loo, he wasn’t really, they’d ‘not drunk much.’ So we went in and saw the play, pulled together and firmed up. Yes, it’s slight and when I met the authoress, a tall silly girl called Behr, I saw why. But it’s a respectable standard, and I still think the set and the sound lend more than it’s got. Graham Wynne was there, very spruce in a smart blue jacket, bow tie, fawn trousers and proper shoes. He is neat, dapper, with small pretty features, just like a designer in the old days. Could be a Cecil Beaton acolyte.

Buddy, as always, had a blunt-ended touch. ‘It’s very good of you to come again.’ Just as on the first preview when I said I was coming to give K. support. She had the impertinence in both senses of the word, to say, ‘I don’t think Kevin needs any support.’ Apart from the insensitivity of coming between us, as it were, she also showed her lack of basic wisdom. Everyone needs the support of their nearest and dearest. We had a short drink, and then went back to his flat. Sarah was in a great fit of show-off sulks, - it was now about ten, so perhaps it was partly ‘cos she’d been out of it all, - but she made the occasion of it, ‘I’ve had the meat and potatoes on at no. 9 for 4 hours (or something), and they’re still not – etc. etc. So that we all had to look. And then she burnt her hand. And then she spilt all the potatoes on the floor. She is a silly girl. Slopping all over Sharron, ‘My friend’. Sharron received the overtures with a collected smile.’

K. was in high spirits throughout, more boyish than of late, and so got a bit more drunk than usual, - I think. So a political argument started, and he then will not leave it. So it was police corruption. Yes, I resist the idea of police C. because of my age and wishful thinking he doubt. But I chiefly protested because none of them have any evidence. K. was actually quoting a girl he’d met ‘about four times’ at Phil’s training collage! when I struck, and went home saying you mustn’t believe what people tell you, unless you know them much better than that!

I also said earlier that mugging came in with the west Indians. Nobody could examine that statement dispassionately. Most young people are just as prejudiced as their parents, only the other way round. I didn’t say they did all the muggings. Or that they did any. I heard of mugging and the West Indian immigrants more or less simultaneously.

And, of course, the refusal to break down crime figures by colour is because they know certain offences are overwhelmingly black. And we do no good to anyone by not knowing the truth. Sharron said quite rightly, that they did it because they were poor, didn’t they? Well, yes. But… I believe they do comparatively few burglaries. Why? Oh dear, darling K. He’s not a good arguer. I’ve come home calm. !!

Monday April 13 1987.

To post-synching that wretched commercial, in some alley-way in Soho. Arrived at 11.23, in the usual bloated-leather-furnitured reception, with two prettyish girls chatting in between answering the telephone. Relax, Angus. About 11.37, the authors (sic) arrived, patronisingly. But I must record, as we were alone in a studio (for some time as it happened) I saw through bumptiousness into their poor little souls. ‘No, I think it’s stress thro’ working on three campaigns at once.’ ‘That’s why I gave up teaching but…’ ‘Oh, I don’t think they’ll….etc. etc.

Poor Raymond was delayed on tube. Happily one of the authors lives on the Northern Line, too. ‘It’s off, because of a failure at dreaded Kennington.’ Poor man, when he arrived, I put my hand on shoulder to comfort him, and, through his tweed jacket, he felt like a radiator. He’s such a conscientious chap - already I am poised between compassion and irritation. He arrived nearly an hour late. Of course that helped me, because I could sublimate my irritation and rage into calming him.

So we did it, and I remembered the idiot little technique ‘Your cue line comes from right and Raymond’s from the left.’ I am one further on from D’s hating it. I can do it better than they expect. And when I had to do four different versions of one percentage, and one of the versions had at least twice the number of words in it, they were amazed that I could do it in one. Then the machines switched off, and then they came on and I heard an acrimonious ‘Well, I didn’t write it.’ - .. ‘I told them etc etc.’ ! We finished.

I had purposely dressed quite well, to be quite sure that we wouldn’t be dunked or frozen or black. We walked to Pasta Fino - never mind, Kevin, I knew an unspoilt family man like Raymond, would find no fault in a meal someone else had prepared. (I was sad that he produced a bottle of white wine - quite nice - for me, at the end of the meal. I know it’s more blessed to give than to receive, but it’s also easier! We enjoyed our meal, but it was considerably marred for me by R. saying that the school-master author had said they were going out this weekend - god, how quick, it shows how quickly all these stupid technological processes can be got through if they need to be - and that it might be the beginning of a long campaign. ‘We’ve already got a number of scripts ready, - the first is a rollercoaster in Spain.’ Poor Raymond, he kept returning to the possibility during the meal, because he had sensed my deep unease, despite me trying to brush it off, in nothings. He obviously deeply needs what? – the money? The fame?! The what? He didn’t at all disgust me. He praised my courage over the water no more than it deserved, for instance, to persuade me that I could face the roller coaster! So I left him and wondered round the West End, and bought Tony Thwaite’s wife’s biog. of Goese for £4.95. And spent the evening with Nigel. It’s always ironic, getting glimpses of him through that blunt little version.

Tuesday April 14 1987

12.30. Andy to dinner. Gary? was going to come as well. Andy rang during the day to say Gary couldn’t come till 8.45 then said when he got here, he said Gary wasn’t coming at all! I was delighted. Huge piece of rib of beef, £10? lbs. Delicious. And Andy is better on his own, - he retreats into yobbish fatness if others are there. Very successful evening. Nigel is enough like K. to fit in, and not exuberate. But I am still troubled about Andy. He has the sensitivity to turn to us, but has he anything else? And if so, are we right? He left, he’s working in some sort of students’ hostel. ‘I made 30 beds this morning’, and nearly the last thing he said, was ‘You and Kevin are so much alike.’ That is partly because he’s never met anymore like us before, but still…

But it was a satisfactory evening and distracted me from his studio day and me walking out of the house without looking at him.

Wednesday April 15 1987

Joan H. rang last night to say did I want to see Anthony Quayle’s Lear at Richmond. Yes, I did. Because I know A.G. is a half-personality, but yet any company he directs will give an account of the great play, so that it will get to the sort of novices it should get to i.e. the Haymarket prod. of Cherry Orchard getting to K. There must be a straight forward version done as well, if the classic plays are to keep their currency. Why I hate the national and RSC is that they are a closet collector’s item clique.

Rang K. at 3.0. Sat looking at the ‘phone, and finally said ‘this is ridiculous, I must not be timid about ringing my dearest friend.’

‘I’m working, I’m in the studio again on Friday.’ This in answer to me saying ‘A quick call, just to ask how it went yesterday, and also to make it up, quickly, if that’s possible.’ A faint satire on the last four words, because for the first time for? - it was his fault. Or just that I’m calm. So he said he was busy, but mildly. And of course, he would never answer directly to ‘making it up’, just as he never answer my letters!

But he said we’d meet over the Easter weekend, and I said I’d ring tomorrow sometime. That he was working made it easier. Andy is right - we are alike, why have I never seen it before? We were both turning it aside in the same way.

Later.

So to Joan’s at 6.45. First time I’ve been there in the evening, and as an escort, well… But she’s quite delicate too, and didn’t put a foot wrong. We had a bottle of white wine and some Brie, and then walked to the theatre. Beautiful position, hideous fifties cupola-decoration-á- la-Carl-Toms outside. Otherwise pleasant physically.

Now as to the perf. Well, see the previous reference. It was a fairly humdrum production, but no more than the Benson or Wolfit Co’s which were effective enough to create the audience which the wretched theatre chiefs of today depends on without knowing.

Yes, it was pedestrian (or straightforward, with Kate O’Mara as Goneril, straight from Dynasty, but why not, as she is of old theatrical stock, looks dead right, (scornful parts) and is much more capable than a lot of supporting players at RSC and Nat.) and yes, A.Q. gave excellent natural readings lacking a couple of dimensions. But the story, the plot, the lines were there, unimpeded by some stupid ‘overall concept’ supported by ill-written, under-re- searched, over-financed programme notes.

Tony Britton was good, really true. Peter Woodwood was just as showy as anyone anywhere, in the Olivier manner. I was moved now and then. The house was full. They cheered. And when did we last see a 70 year old Lear?

Left Joan to go home - we’d had some, oh yes, I said. Oh the tube, Vernon Dobtcheff, who’d come up and spoken in the theatre, joined me. Of course, it’s absolutely typical that I should just have written to S. and said I hadn’t seen him for ten months! So there I was, subject again to that curious, intelligent, tasteless, intrusive, caring grilling. The only counter is a gush of apparent frankness. And getting off at Baron’s Court!

Thursday April 16 1987

11.0 p.m.

Lovely wonderful evening. Andy is right - we are alike, K and I. Odd lunch with S. It’ll be tomorrow now.

Friday April 17 1987

Lunch with Simon was the usual kaleidoscopic three hours. When I arrived, half an hour later than we’d first arranged after a fevered call, from the Ritz, ‘a working breakfast,’ he was on the ‘phone, and reminded so, on and off, either speaking or replaying the answering machine. And sometimes talking to the people he’d had breakfast with. That was one crisis. Then there’s another with Marina’s mistake over his royalty for A Room With a View. He was amazed when I told him that I already knew about it, before he finished the sentence. ‘How could you, Marina’s only just…’ But he told me, before he went away. She just never put the clause in the contract! He was looking as really worried and tired as I’ve ever seen him. I think the thing that had upset him most was a row half caused by Peggy R! She had been raging away about her firm in general and her second in command in particular, Tom something. Simon, in the interest of truth, and common weal, said that some of the authors had complained. ‘Which?’ pounced Peggy swiftly. ‘Well, Martin Sherman.’ Peggy immediately took it all back, and caused great offence all round – and it’s all S’s fault! Oh dear. However, he’s so good at leaving things behind. I suggested Chez Claudie, but he wanted to try a new place opposite Brompton Rd cemetery, called, rather wittily, Italian Restaurant. It looked quiet smart, all Perspex and lights, and pretty china and napkins. There was nobody there when we left. That’s often awkward, but we had so much to say it didn’t matter. As for the food, he had a chicken salad, which doesn’t tell you much. I felt I must have something off the plate du jours, and the only one I liked was lamb cutlets. They were properly done and very tender. The vegs poorish. The only other thought was how much food they must have wasted just that lunchtime.

Lucerne went well, v. well, ‘It’s the only other production I’ve been satisfied with. ‘Nicolson’ is my best production. This comes next.’

Well, Nicolson was the best cast.

His four days in San Francisco were to cast the Kundera Play he translated, that he’s to direct there. He auditioned 82 people in those 2 ½ days, and was dazzling describing their frightful fitness, painful willingness and fearful brightness and even more fearful incomprehension. The immediate ‘Yeah. Right. Right’ to any request for change or development, combined with the compete inability to do it. ‘Tell me the story of Hamlet.’

I wondered where his rosy vision of the optimistic students he lectured to, has gone. Ah yes, but he didn’t ask them to act. So back he goes for eight weeks. And he hasn’t even rang K. told me that the raising of the money is going ahead, so very soon after that, he’ll give K £2000 to go ahead. Of course, he may have done to give me the chance to tell K. He should have rung himself. We had Chablis.

Oh, the breakfast bill at the Ritz was £25 per head.

Back at the flat, waiting for Nick Hearne of Methuen to bring the proof of the Laughton, - oh, I forgot to say that Nick H., whom S. brought to the Nicolson, and who didn’t say anything about it at the time, has now said he would like to publish it in a series of gay plays. Strange, as it’s never mentioned and is by no means the main spring of it. Hm. Didn’t think Nigel N. would like it!

And on the way from the restaurant, we called in at Bruno’s flat. I didn’t know he lived so near, in Kempsford Rd. just by the restaurant. A basement like Julian’s but smaller, and decorated like an Indian seraglio, all small-figured paper and pierced screens. Some people would hate it, but I like dark places. And it’s so easy to make a basement look like a cellar if you paint it white.

So, back at S’s flat, while we were waiting, I said ‘Now that you’ve got so many CDs, perhaps you have one or two cassettes.’ I was expecting six. I got 146. They rained down from the shelves into three jammed carrier-bags. Arriaga, Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Bliss, Chopin, Handel, Mozart, Puccini, Poulenc, Wagner, Walton etc etc. So typical of him.

‘What a wonderful clear-out.’

I had to have a taxi home, especially as he gave me the typescript of the Laughton, a hefty affair. I started on it in the afternoon, and read 45 pages to get the feel without thinking of corrections. My first impression is that the stuff of the book is excellent, but that the arrangement needs adjustment. I think the opening is too abrupt. There should be some form of introduction, and the childhood is not adequately covered. Then the paragraphing is show- bizzy, - at least seven or eight a page, some a sentence long. And the diction is occasionally cheap. (I remembered that he’d never heard of Colindale!) I shall settle to it when Nigel has gone., as it has to be done in an uninterrupted sweep. Oh, and George R. sent me the Terriss. Excellent, talking of control of material. A lesser man would have written a longer book. It has a charming inscription, and most flattering paragraph in the acknowledgments.

There was a message on the machine from K. ‘I’ve finished my work. Ring me and we’ll do something.’ It turned out he’d half promised to see Andy, and give him a meal. ‘Before…’ would I mind that? ‘No, I’ll take you both to the fish and chip shop.’ ‘Oh, that would be really good for me.’

(Because of the money? Because of meeting me with someone else so that it’s easier?)

A little while later, he rang to they’d be in the pub. So that’s where he was, sitting behind the door, with Andy buying. He gave me a long straight look, and that was it. Oh, I suppose I gave him a long straight look. I watched them play a game of pool. Yes, I do see now, it’s such a very simple game so that you can still play it almost however drunk you get! Wonder if K, who’s quite good at it, would be any good at snooker? Shouldn’t think so, as I don’t think he’d plan ahead enough! By this time, we were sparring and teasing as lightly as we ever have. We went to eat early thinking of his studio day. And Olga greeted me with a mention of ‘no black paint.’ Amazing. But even more amazing was our treatment of Andy. I think we do not encourage him too much, only to go on trying to find himself. But it was the way we thought and spoke and felt, with one thought, and one word and one feeling together. I suddenly saw what Andy meant. We are alike, inside, in our deep feeling, our vitality, our quickness, our lightness of touch, and especially, our insight into and understanding of, others’ feelings. I know that sounds vain, but it isn’t. I cannot pretend that I don’t see further into others’ minds and hearts that most people. One of our first bonds was that we had both been the recipient of so many life stories!

We are both artists, and both try to serve art and not self.

But last night we talked as one person, without effort, without strain, from a deep centre of shared assumptions, and feelings. I don’t mean we haven’t done before, but, Andy having said what he had, I noticed it. And gloried in it.

Home at 10.30.

Tonight, Friday, to Prim’s for dinner. Thank goodness, she was entirely herself, looking well, not too bloated, charmingly dressed. Delicious dinner, Lobster!, veal, sausage, tomatoes, kebab, strawberries. Perfect. Playful reminiscent talk. She showed me an extraordinary letter and card from Vivien Carver! Mentioning ‘Doro’ !! A rather vulgar card about a dicky bird, and some private joke, obviously, about D. The letter exhaled disappointment and emptiness. When she rejected D and Prim and Mary, she went down a road that must lead to unhappiness. I sometimes think she can be summed up by her mother once saying to D. ‘Where did she get the idea of having an all-white bedroom from?’

Walked back to Victoria through the unusually balmy night, with pleasure in Prim’s company, and deep joy from K.

Saturday April 18 1987

Went out shopping partly for the Easter weekend, and partly because Nigel had said he wanted to cook me dinner on Sunday evening. He is still at the stage of simply not knowing the effort that goes into any meal or running a house or whatever. He still leaves all the washing-up, and then does it in a way to make more work. Another way to put it, is that he’s still a bit of a child! He doing a labourer’s job, it’s true, but still… He’d gone out to work before I got up, so I was surprised when K. rang at 11.30 to say he was supposed to come to lunch. ‘Ring the moment he gets in.’ Oh, I’d left a note for Nigel to take to K. last night. I mean, to take it to him this afternoon. He’d got it thro’ Steve. How? I’d sent him £20 for taxis to the studios, which I’d promised him on Thur. but got a bit too drunk to remember, ‘How about Monday?.’ Oh.

So told N. when he got in and heard one Malpass ring another, so that the muddle was kept within the family! Went off to see Blue Velvet, but forgot my railcard, so what with K’s £20 and Nigel’s dinner, I had 50p too little to get home again as well! So came home without the film. But bought instead an anthology of dramatic criticism, - straws in the wind, going back to 1956, and putting a lot of my points.

So N. went off to have a quick drink with K. before going down to Farnborough to see his girlfriend, Noureece (sic). He’d left a note for me, to say would I take a note of the train she was coming on. But no, he had to go to her. And when I got back from the shopping, he was in the bathroom door in his underpants, looking desperate. ‘Rudi wants to come to dinner on Monday, not Sunday. Have you brought the dinner?’

Well, yes. But it can be cooked on Monday!

‘Nothing has gone right today’

Later.

He came back, all the way from F’boro about 11.0, and I’d thought he’d stay the night with her, but ‘I’m working.’

And I thought of all the people I’ve had staying here, I’d have liked them to come back as late as possible, and never unexpectedly.

Except one, except one. Only one have I always waited and hoped, listened. Never too early, never too much. Oh, I hope I haven’t oppressed him too much. Love is very difficult to regulate.

Sunday April 19 1987

Being with Nigel is like reading the sixteenth reprinting of a pirated edition of a favourite book on wartime paper. K. being the first edition, I mean. Actually, I think he is a bit put upon by his friends. They put him off and demand he goes to Wimbledon and then take a train somewhere else, and put him off and so on. Hm. He ought to make them come here a bit more. Even the friend he’s giving dinner to, put it off from Sun. to Monday.

Neil rang. He’s back from L.A., just the same. I love him very much, while at the same time, feeling somehow sorry and apprehensive for him. What is there for him when his looks and energy go? He is troubled and restless enough now. I fear he will never have enough success to satisfy him. The TV movie he’s come back to do, is a Barbara Cartland script! And it is a dreadful sign of the times that the cast includes Helena Bonham-Carter, Christopher Plummer, Anna Massey, Dianna Rigg! And Ed. That is indeed depressing.

He’s getting £15000 for 10 days work. Opposite Fiona Fullerton. I’m afraid he’ll have to go to LA for more or less good.

Nigel said he would have dinner. So I cooked it, - he loved the cauliflower, and had three helpings. He was going to a friend in or beyond Wimbledon, called Skinhead, and in the Malpass fashion, was sitting there in perfect calm eating, at 8.20, - at 8.21 on the way to Wimbledon, going to be late for 9.0. I sank delighted into an evening with Evelyn Waugh. It’s no use, I don’t think ordinary people reading from the novels, non-actors, I mean, is a good idea. They have the accent, but usually nothing else. Not that the one actor, Nigel Hawthrorne, was any better. I would give a good deal to hear Waugh himself read the extracts.

Later.

Nigel had to get me out of bed to let him in!

Monday April 20th 1987

Goodness, Nigel does eat. He finished the Weetabix and most of the crumpets, which I’d brought for me!

Oh, Mike Parsons rang last week, to say that he’d been taken on to train as a clown in a clown company (sic) ‘Weekends from May to August’ and ‘I may get my provisional out of it.’ That’s really good news. I can see a clown m-up on that wide mouth and flat planes of the face. He is broadly made and with a lowish centre of gravity, should be a good tumbler. I cannot remember whether I recorded that he told me Dick Bird made a pass at him when they stayed here that time! He told today when he rang, that two more of his co. have left, so it’s only Dick, Hilary and one other. Oh dear!

Later. I ought to be more upset only somehow I’m not. I’m happy. No more now.

Tuesday April 21 1987

He rang to say he was behind with his work, ‘if I have to change a chord, it has to be changed in 20 parts.’ So would I mind going up there, again? ‘Find somewhere, - Aquilino? and I’ll see you there at 8.30.’ So I got up there at something before 8.0, to look round as it was Easter Monday. Very little open - isn’t it odd it’s all business really – except Pizza Express, the Dome, and the Slug and Lettuce - very full. Wandered backwards and forwards as usual, and the last time - we said we’d meet at Aquilino, and it was quite cold – went on round the corner, and there he was in the Dome, that used to be that dreary back room of that pub. He said, ‘Why didn’t you ring?’ Ah, well, he was working! So, when I said there was nowhere really open, he impatiently said ‘Let’s look at Serendipity.’ On the upper floor of the Camden Passage Antique ‘Barn’, as it were. He went once, with who? Simon? It was closed. The Dome? ‘I’d rather go to Uppers.’ So we went there. Su Pollard and her gay husband were at the next but one table. She was all right, but a bit loud, and talked too much to the waiters. We had shark steak (me) and – I can’t remember what he had, because of what happened towards the end of the meal - he brought up Sunday, which of course he couldn’t do on the Andy night.

How to chart all the wayward and confusing feelings –

The first thing he accused me of was not raising it myself, ‘as you never do.’ Well, hm. Think of all those months and years when he forbade me to go back at all. Well, he’s grown up that much. ‘You had to make me look a fool in front of my friends.’ A naturally continuing refrain, which is difficult to forgive myself for, despite the fact that I thought his arguments so primitive and useless. ‘You had to go out in glory.’ ‘No, not in glory, I had to go out without saying any more in front of them.

Start again. I was faced with being with a motley collection of people, and then he appeals across them for my real opinion on a real issue, and I am helpless and furious and hit out. Yes, I know, I should turn it off with customary suavity. But when it’s him, I am helpless.

But I must admit I did feel a bit triumphant when I left, and not at all upset, until now.

We went on a bit, and then I got the bill, and we were out in the Easter Monday Upper St. I had lost the initiative completely, so I remained silent. ‘Do you want a Scotch?’ ‘Well…’ ‘I do.’ So we went to the dirty old Irish pub, which is ‘a pub’, as I have always known it, with feature walls and chairs and tables, and pretty empty, so that you can have a decent row in privacy. Oh he went. ‘It’s as if you want to prove you’re no. 1 with me.’ Oh dear, how discerning love can be. That observation, while painful, also pierced me with a sort of pleasure – he couldn’t have said it or thought it if he didn’t really care. I was a bit miserable, but not wretched, as in the past. Tho’ it was a miserable end to an evening. To my amazement, when we got outside, he said, ‘come back to the flat?’ Once there, I said, having said very little, ‘Yes, I suppose, apart from the horror of disagreeing with you, I do want to show I’m No.1 with you. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, who says you’re not?’

That was almost thrown away.

After that, tho’ whether because of that… the thing was over, he was at his sunniest. We talked about Nigel (‘I haven’t got round shoulders, have I?’ leaning back and raising those very square shoulders) – I don’t care what we talked about, we were happy. Oh, dear, the taxi-man does get an earful of high sprits on these occasions.

It wasn’t all that late, but anyway he’s not in the studio till 12, (Why?) today.

Tonight I took Mike Parsons out. I’d arranged to meet at Café Fish, but then remembered I’d snapped the manageress’ head off last time, and there hadn’t been time for her to leave! So we went off to Café Italian. While I was waiting for him, I looked at the house immediately next to the Comedy Theatre. It’s painted a peeling med. blue, has a (closed) shop on the ground floor, is apparently unlived in and unused, and has been ever since the war if my memory isn’t at fault, - certainly for thirty years. Considering it must be worth, as a site, and conservatively, about a million, what is the reason? Even if they’re waiting for the house next door, - by the look of it cheap flats and a tired little café–restaurant, now quite out of key with the area, as these side-streets used to be much more obscure than they are now – and then knocking both down etc. mightn’t they have used the house and shop for something for thirty years? Wouldn’t that have been better than just paying the rates? Mysterious.

Café Italian O.K. except for deafening jazz of v. poor quality. My hearing is certainly not what it was in company, tho’ still perfectly all right tete á tete. Mike P. tells me Dick Bird’s company has had two more renegades, so reducing the Co. to three!? Mike is still in the process of finding a way to get his prov. Equity card. And I still haven’t written to Northampton for him. He has vision, that’s why he wrote me that touching letter ‘Sometimes I just feel I must talk to you.’ And I think I talked tonight in a way to give him strength to go on. He has a fatalist streak in him which I hope will not be strengthened by adverse events.

Wednesday April 22 1987

K. in studio with the orchestra today, studio in Engineer’s Way, Wembley.

George R. arrived this afternoon, and after a little persuasion on the telephone, I gave him dinner, best end of neck. Oh dear, he’s is so funny, with the nervous delicacy of another age, ‘I wonder, do you think – that is, would it be a bother, - I don’t want to be a nuisance, would it inconvenience if I made a telephone call at 4.30 tomorrow afternoon’. !

But we have a very agreeable mild scholarly time. He is strange in that he seems to have no strong sense of a central body of opinion for his ideas or against them. For instance, a book by the Ifor Evans surveying a body of dramatic criticism, from ’56 to ’80 has a slant in its comments and arrangement very sympathetic to my view of the theatre. The ‘60’s and RSC and the National are by no means an unmixed blessing. Yet I couldn’t interest him. After all, it is in the past…

I wonder how he’s getting on. I follow him, so far as I can, so vividly thro’ all his struggles and difficulties.

Thursday April 23 1987

St. George’s day. Shakespeare’s Birthday.

Well, what a day!

George had a working lunch, at Magno’s Brasserie! Which he asked me about, as if it were in one of the outer galaxies, and even then he missed it, and finally went to Bow St. Police Station to find out where it was! His host was a 26 year old ‘editor’ – female dread word – at Croon/Helen, never got the publisher’s status really straight – they are commissioning him to oversee and partly write a history of the English Theatre. Christ! So they’re talking about five years. George took that with quite harsh professional aplomb, I’m happy to say, because he’s also got the Old Vic to do, because the Vic–Wells Association and Trust has deposited their archive at Bristol. So he’s going to stay there.

He came back to have a bath – ‘I wonder, would it be’ ‘I’ve turned it on.’ So there we were in our glad rags, and oh dear George’s clothes! He’s never caught on what sort of shirt, or suit – or tie. What standard? ‘It’s Malk’s,’

So. To the outside world we were two identical ‘gents’ etc. Embarked for Covent Garden. When we got to Russell St. – there was Tutton’s with all its powerful associations – it had those waist-high barriers all up and down its length, so that approaching from the Market, we had to go into Bow St. and turn back. There was quite a large crowd, six or seven deep either side and opposite – I think it’s the policemen and the danger generated by royalty.

The situation was further diversified by a huge poster – and I mean huge – covering the entire buildings opposite the entrance, - Friends of Covent Garden, protesting that the extension of the Opera House would mean the demolition of the Floral Hall, and some listed buildings in Floral St. and the row of buildings the poster was hung on. (Maxwells, - is this awful, my mind rushed at once to that waitress who picked him up, ‘are you gay?’ ‘no’, ‘and in half an hour she was giving me the best blow-job…’ well he was 18? 19?) So funny, they’d be protesting equally if there were no scheme to extend the Opera H. Inside the usual ‘smart’ all-glass doors, like a super-market, was Roy. How long since I saw him? 15 years? At least. There he was, smaller, shrunken, too thin, with that silly Bruce Bairnsfather moustache, and a horrid suit of dull browny-green or greeny-brown, quite nasty. But ‘Angus’ and that immediacy, ‘Well, I never thought we’d arrive at this night – I never thought it would open.’ I introduced G. and we went in. Quite a large space, dominated at first by the angel off the top of the Gaiety. But there, so my head was on a level with it’s feet. Behind it, across a ramp were two boxes from the Glasgow Alhambra? - with elephants, anyway – over-gilded and too near. But I see the need to make a ‘dramatic’ statement – alas, by dragging a part of a theatre-building that should hang in the air as part of one’s corner of the eye, into being a big statement. The over-gilding is almost certainly as per, and would look perfectly all right, seen as a glimpse and only touched with light.

From that entrance, there are two long ramps, between low grey walls, entirely bare. We joined a very slow-moving queue – it turned out through bad management, the slowness was due to a visitors’ book poised at the bottom – I said, ‘I’ll sign it on the way out’, but alas, others…. – So we embarked on the Gielgud Gallery, the Irving Gallery and the picture gallery. Now, before we go on, I cannot make any judgment on a night like this. Far too many people, trays of champagne, and white wine, and good ‘light refreshments’, - delicious little sandwiches, v. good canapés, smoked s, caviar, etc etc.

And also, George, oddly talking much more than looking. And moving so maddeningly slowly. We could have talked to everyone he talked to and seen all the exhibits, twice in the time. And his slowness was fascinatingly showed up. After all he asked for a large envelope to keep his invitation in, for the record, but if it hadn’t been for me, we would have missed the actual opening. G. had said it was 6.45, so I made him go back upstairs, slowly tho’ no one else seemed to know where it was to be, and certainly the majority of people were still in the galleries when Princes M. was cutting a cake in a sort of gazebo – is it a theatrical relic? – behind the two erections previously mentioned when you came in. The gazebo is part of the restaurant. So we stood on the ramp – I saw Penny Keith and husband, dressed as if they’d stopped in the street to look – and watched P.M. walk away from cutting the cake. She looked in good health, thick 50’s pancake, rather brown, slightly lighter than her natural younger colour, vide Follow that Girl, in 1961, - because of course, she has no one in her life to tell her that that colour makes her look older, not younger. She was also wearing a shiny dress of rather spiteful emerald-turquoise. I know you have to be able to spot them quickly… There was a comic moment when Felix Aylmer’s daughter, who’d presented his makeup table to the museum, was presented to P.M., who was up four steps at the corner of the picture gallery. Miss A. came up to the third step, curtsied down to the third step unexpectedly, and nearly carried the P.M. with her. Fortunately the definite colour of the P.M. kept her upright.

Incidentally the pictures in the gallery (sic) are a terrible job lot. Like the siftings of the Garrick cellar. A few more recent, Martita as The Madwoman of Chaillot, skied behind the bar, and I’m glad she’s dead, a bad copy of the Lawrence Kemble, lit to show the altitude of the various corrections in the vanish, and a painting of Vivien in Streetcar, that is a passable picture of the last act dress, but whose face is almost supernaturally unlike Vivien’s after all rather distinctive face. And neck.

So. I saw Peggy A. on one of the banquets with Joe Mitchenson, - he’s a shadow of himself. He was always rather big and broad, and made more so by Raymond being shorter and slimmer. But he’s shrunk to a wand. Peggy looks, at 80, as she always has, smiling, complete, serene, but utterly uncomplacent. She has certainly benefited, made utterly the most of having had about the most incredible luck of any actor of the century, combined with genius.

I envy her. Not many people, but her, I envy. She has never had to do any but the best work, and has had to make no bad acceptances to do it. She sat in dignity, until she stood up without any expressed difficulty, and left without anyone, - I think - noticing, except her immediate circle, - and me.

Then, across the room, an old man, with thin grey hair scrawled across his scalp, his cheeks unhealthily puffed, his body scrawny, gestured to me. Julian. He must be ill again. It was gruesome. The puffy cheeks are cortisone puffed, I presume. Poor love, what is to happen to him? I think he can’t decide whether to die now to get out of it, or after May dies. Either way, it’s hopeless.

So. We went off to the Garrick, where G. had booked a table in the supper room? It was 8.30, so we had to have a drink, - the supper room doesn’t open till 9.0. At 9.0 we went along – a door opened at right angles to the supper room door, Donald Sinden appeared, waiters went in, and there’d been a private party off the main landing. So I wasn’t in the least surprised to hear the waiter say ‘The chef, can’t serve till 9.30.’ Well, you know, the Theatre Museum doesn’t open every day, so, of course, it will weigh on the Garrick. If it had been a restaurant, depression would have spread on the widest scale, but – the head waiter sent a waiter to us, so G. could order a bottle of wine and some delicious bread and butter to stave off the pangs. And notwithstanding that a huge elaborate construction of an ice-pudding was carried through to Donald Sinden’s party, a waiter came with a menu. I was just considering, when an elderly couple – my age! - came up. Glynne Wickham, George Boss and his wife. Hes short for Heseltine, real name Margaret? Mudford. She was 60ish, easily subdued, - I was not surprised to hear from George afterwards that she ‘wants to stay in Bristol.’ He is spare, jumpy, frenetic, repetitive, cultivated in a way, but I couldn’t at all present him with the whole spectrum of my life. Like George, but worse, he expected me to have the same prejudices. Certainly he was amusing and certainly he is retiring, so it’s an odd moment in his life, but still, I am amazed at the way most people expect you to irresistibly go along with them, or they can’t get through the evening. I thought him very light weight. I was amused that G. saw him thro’ my eyes suddenly.

A bit later.

No, Glynne W was just a man out of his time. I’d like him much if times were different.

Odd experiences. One of the little spaces lighted up in the wall had two objects in it, with beautifully printed details either side. One of Julie Andrews’ dresses from My Fair Lady and the piano from Salad Days. Hadn’t seen it 1960. Funny feeling.

Later still.

Rang him from Garrick. Phone box by porter’s desk.

From the Garrick! Think of the outburst, years ago. He’d had an extra day in the studio. He’d just got back 8.15. He was all right. It’d all gone well. That draught of reality carried me through. ‘Come round about 1.30.’ Imagine, he could plan.

Friday April 24 1987

Got there about 1.40. Beautiful day. Hot. 70º. He said ‘Let’s go and have lunch - there’s a nice pub in Barnsbury, you can eat in the garden.’ At that moment, a taxi drew up next door to drop off the old Eskimo, so K. engaged it through the window. Slightly mad, or deaf, driver – three times didn’t turn when K. told him. The Albion in Thornhill Rd, in the middle of smart Barnsbury. (He stopped first at a very dreary Albion, without instruction.) It was v. pleasant, with a large garden, full of people eating outside. We ate inside, - I think it would have been too hot outside! He told me all about the studio days, strings rather poor this time, old and uncooperative and mechanical. He met John? Pearson, Carson, ‘the John Gielgud’ of this sort of thing. Came in and listened, was v. pleased when he saw K. had written out the parts, and was a trained musician, and had planned the arrangement, and not improvised. ‘He’s one of us.’ And later he mentioned the music to someone else favourably, - ‘which he never does.’ And I could see K. was really pleased.

We walked back home, stopping at every drink-shop, so that K. could replace the bottle he bought nearly illegally from the pub. We walked through the very hot sunshine, hardly talking. Back at the flat, he rang Aaron to see when the tape was coming, ‘I’m leaving at five o’clock.’ He said it would be here by five. It’s just was. He’d rung his mother, and said he’d be home by about 9.0. ‘Ernie would come and meet you.’ She’d rung me and I wasn’t there. ‘Of course he wasn’t. He’s here.’ So I talked as well. She sounded just as usual to me, but remembering Nigel, I said after ‘How did she sound?’ ‘Low.’

I waited to hear the music, but as time went by, I thought I wouldn’t be able to. He said well, I’ll go by an earlier train. The messenger came at exactly five. So we set off for Euston. He produced his Walkman. ‘You can listen on this.’ He put it on and listened as we went down the street and on the tube. He nodded in approval almost at once. ‘It’s good.’ At Euston, he handed it over. ‘It’s one of the lightest newest Walkmans, Aiwa, with those tiny headphones, just a scrap of sponge-rubber apparently, so the effect is even more startling, the clarity, the brilliance and the volume. I’ve worn headphones often but never in a public place. He said later ‘Yes, it’s your own little world.’ Yes, it is but the startling thing is wondering why everyone doesn’t turn round to listen to these ringing trumpets blaring through the station. Very good arrangements, he’s very clever apart from everything else. I must make M.Y. go, for him at least. I think this Music House is all right, after all, it hasn’t cost him anything. ‘I trust Aaron 80%,’ and although I think it’s disgraceful he hasn’t had even expenses so far, he says he will stand out if he does any more. At least there the offices are, and the backing tracks were recorded at the large house with studio of one of the other three composers on their books. He’s obviously made a lot of money out of it, and would surely have warned K if he hadn’t. And then there’s John thing. So I think on balance it’s ok. One thing I can count on him for, is that he knows exactly what sort of work it is, and will never pretend. He put his arms round me at the barrier, and said ‘I’ll ring you when I get there.’ The long warm afternoon had been full of silences, while he pottered about and packed.

I am rather ashamed to say that this afternoon was the first time I stopped grabbing at the moment, just living in it instead. As I can do so easily with everyone else! I didn’t feel melancholy, let alone despair, as I turned away.

I am quite tired, after my visitors and social life. ‘I know where you are and you’re safe, so I’ll rest and garden over the weekend.’

Saturday April 25 1987 Sunday April 26 1987

Which is just what I did. I have got the garden in as good order as it’s ever been. The rain last month and now this sun, the growth is rather forward. The climbing is hydrangea is now twice the size it was last year. The anemone blanda has taken, the Bleeding Heart is a bit bigger in only its second year. Beautiful big clump of Primroses. No Cowslip yet. Everything survived the winter, except alas the camellia; covered with buds, it is now twisted and brown. The chrisy survived tho only just planted. I should have covered it a bit.

Monday April 27 1987

I was so sleepy last night that it seemed another day altogether. On Friday night about 6.45, I discovered the ‘phone was out of order. I rang the exchange, who said bluntly, that they ‘couldn’t do anything until Monday.’ Isn’t it wonderful? With all those profits. So he did ring to say he’d got there safely, but of course couldn’t get through. Imagine, I wasn’t upset!! I had a short chat to Ernie yesterday; K. was driving Nigel back to his college! Clever. That lets him out of the whole day more or less - I said I’d ring him tomorrow about six. Realised this morning, after the ‘phone was back on, that I would be at the theatre museum. So I rang, and lucky – got him at 12.0, in the house alone. ‘How’s your mother?’ ‘Bad. Her hand is pretty useless, and she’s in a lot of pain. She was actually at the hospital, having physio, I suppose. She won’t have the other one done, or her other hip, he doesn’t think.

Two funny things. (oh, by the way, he chattered away, well, you do, even he does, because of wanting an us-ish talk in what have become alien surroundings.)

Nigel drove the last bit to show them Redcar? And drove the wrong way up a one-way street! Picked up by a Policemen, or traffic warden? And fined £12. ‘And he was really nasty about it, so I was amused that he never picked up that Nigel should have had L-Plates on and didn’t notice the car was automatic. So he could be had for that.’

‘Also, Angus, my mum said those trousers could do with a wash, and made me put them straight in the machine. My return ticket was in the back pocket, and it was destroyed. Very unlike me, to put it in there because it was the only pocket with a button on it, for safety. I was just thinking my punishment would be to go back on the bus, when Nigel gave me his push-bike, so I’ll have to come on the train.’

Very Jolly talk. I was, for some reason, - association of Liverpool, I suppose – struck by the way his speech and vocabulary have changed, for good or ill, all those ‘terrificallys’ and ‘awfullys’ and so on, weren’t there, - weren’t there! were mocked!

Yes, I felt him relax and expand, ‘This will make you scream.’ etc. etc. Because he has accepted that he has a different viewpoint now. Ours.

To meet John N. at the Theatre Mus. for a private view. An amusingly down-market version of the night, no champagne, much simpler food, - silverside sandwiches! Ian Richardson but no other faces I knew much. Sarah Woodward, looking much less puppy, much more mundane. Affable.

At this slightly closer look, but I must come alone – I feel it’s a bit scrappy – nothing to do with not being ready – there just aren’t enough first-rate things, or if there are some first-rate things, why aren’t they on show at this first glance? It’s got a long way to go. I mean, the Julie Andrews dress and the S.D. piano is a crude little exhibit making a poor use of the space.

We walked back to British Council. ‘Have I ever taken you to the garage?’ ‘What a treat.’ It was just like the venue for the end of a violent thriller. We picked up Simon at the flat, and on to the Wine Gallery. I think they enjoyed it, - they had fish cakes in lobster sauce, but their low vitality and being a bit spoilt makes it hard to tell. Sign of the times. We had a couple of bottles of the Californian White. John said ‘Could we have a bottle of mineral water?’ They only had Perrier. I first ordered a glass, ‘Could we have a bottle?’ said John, with a rather self-conscious and assertive air. And drank it all, along with the wine. Barbarous. ‘It stops the dehydration.’ I’m disgusted with this obsession with health. Self- preservation should go just so far.

But I had a pleasant mild evening all the same!

Tuesday April 28 1987

So George and Nancy R. have, I suppose, gone to Crete, despite her brother being more or less on the point of death.

Re-reading Evelyn W’s letters. Screamed with laughter. ‘He called her Mrs Broadbent throughout the visit and pretended she was Japanese.’ This of someone’s son’s new fiancée. On radio advert, ‘Nothing sucks like an electro lux.’

Went the shops mid-afternoon, came back to find him on the machine. ‘It’s 4.30, this is just to tell you I’m back.’ (Is that the first time? I think so.) Rang back. He’d ridden the bike Nigel gave him, back from Euston! Good. Exercise, to get rid of that slack tummy, and save money!!

As the ‘phone was still on, I rang Edna, after I’d rung D. Fontaine. D.F. said she was even frailer and v. slow. Her immediate memory is poor, and she insists on drying, and ‘does it so slowly that she keeps saying you’re not using enough water – this plate’s cold.’

I rang Edna. Sounded vital. ‘I’m very worried about Dorothy’s cough.’

Certainly her memory is going, but she can still read, thank god.

My D. always complained of Edna’s cough for being so loud and unrestrained. K’s seeing Sharron tonight.

Wednesday April 29 1987

The beautiful weather still goes on. Giles was to go out to dinner with me, to celebrate his moving in. He rang from his chambers to say that he has too much work to come tonight. So we fixed Monday.

In Jack Tinker’s notice of Antony Sher’s Shylock, ‘Returning to the RAC, scene of recent glories.’ Poor Sher, forced to act in a garage.

Thursday April 30 1987

Oh dear God, how silly is sounds to say how wonderful the even. has been. ‘Better than ever.’ But it’s true. It’s true. He comes close to me, closer than anyone.

Got there about 6.15. Tube stopped outside K X for ten mins. Bike in the hall with racing handlebars! When I got to the sitting-room, the Nicolson was on speakers – he’d remembered to do the tape for Hazel. I produced the Flour tin to match his others. He was intrigued and amused. Put it straight on the shelf. We looked at Time Out, he thought My life as a Dog at The Renoir might do, but it was just a bit too soon. Teased me for arriving late!

‘Well, we’ll keep it for another time, isn’t it awful, scraping for something to go to.’ I told him John N., yet another generation from either of ours, had said there was nothing in the cinema or theatre he wanted to see. I said what was the Star Trek movie like? ‘Boring’ he said, ruefully, ‘First hour was all preparation.’ I said ‘I hope it didn’t happen the same with you as me over the meal,’ and reminded him of Chris not having enough money at Café des Amis, and saying Oh Christ when the waiter asked me to test the wine. He grinned. ‘He took me to a Burgerbar.’ I did laugh. ‘Well, he was tired, and the film was 8.30, we were both hungry so we ate before.’

What an evening out. They went to the Empire, ‘We looked for the Dolby Sound.’ Alas, he saw the models through my eyes suddenly, ‘little models that might be someone’s kitchen table.’ So we decided to go to Serendipity, that brasserie in Camden Passage above the Antiques hall. We got a taxi in the H. Rd., while he had started to tell me about Liverpool visit. His mother is bad. He stayed with her all Monday. In the afternoon she had to put a sort of harness on her arm and hand, and it obviously gave her great pain. She could, by the way, get a made dish out of the ‘fridge or the oven, ‘but couldn’t peel a potato.’ The forefinger is more or less paralysed as they cut the tendon during the op. He said, ‘I talked hard for an hour to try to take her mind off the pain but I couldn’t.’

They have more or less decided to stay at Leyton Close. Ernie has itchy feet, but she wants to stay, and have a lift put in. It can be done, and will cost about £4-5,000. The DHSS has already offered to put in a downstairs loo, which wouldn’t cost much less, so they’re hoping to get the DHSS to help with the lift instead. I asked how Ernie was. ‘All right, coping.’ ‘Well, he’s got to.’ ‘He’s had a bad time at work. He was hoping for a promotion, and it went to someone else. He’s bound to be made redundant, or retire in two years anyway. He’s been 20 years there, and obviously there will now be no promotion. So he may well take early redundancy.’ K, and Marjorie talked of that, too, and M said Ernie loved working round the house and in the garden, which he only just had time for, having to do so much for her. He would find new things to do, once he retired. K. had said to both, he might have a lot of money by the autumn, so he could help in all sorts of ways. I said that you never know what sort of dreams Ernie has, if he had a bit of money for a new green house, or whatever. K. said Ernie torn a strip off the manager, ‘very unlike him.’

We’d gone to that nothing pub, where we’d had the unexpected Scotch and row the other night. I must try and get over to him how period that pub is, and that every pub was once like it! He even sat at the same table, - on purpose, I expect, to exorcise. I still don’t think they’ve any idea of how difficult it’s going to be for E. and M.

We decided to go to Serendipity, a brasserie over the antiques hall-thing in Camden Passage. Mostly glass-roof. He’d been twice before, but had never suggested it because of the very loud music. However, he said ‘Some nights I can’t bear it at all, but sometimes I don’t mind so much, and tonight is one of those nights.’ I said Well, you haven’t been working. Tho’ he did play me the Music House tapes on the big speaker. Really clever, and the cleverness is apparent because it was conscious.

He said ‘I’m seeing Stan tonight, - I want to talk to you about that later.’ So we ordered. They brought me a single gin and tonic, with the whole of the bottle of tonic, up to the top of one of those tall thin glasses, which I sent back, but otherwise I had no complaints. Really delicious pea-soup, K. had duck paté, which he couldn’t finish because it was so rich – I tasted a bit, it was genuine – I had sweetbreads in a little pastry envelope, - what do you call it? – he had trout. A bottle and a half of Macon-Lugny Charmes. A success. Oh, I must say, he was able to pick a table right round the corner up a long alcove, so that the music was much muted.

So to Stan. Stan has saved £1000 and wants to buy a sound sampler for ‘them’ to use. So he’s still going on with that - ‘I do like working with him, he produced a really good etc etc.’ He admitted that Peter H. was a broken reed, but Jezz and Phil Sterio and so on had real ability. True, but the danger is making use of them, as he did with all of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t all feel a bit aggrieved somewhere inside. A big talent like his, often needs a side-kick to give them a springboard, of course it’s easier to work with someone else to ‘inspire’ you, but it’s not much fun when the finished work is just Kevin, as it’s bound to be. He still doesn’t face that, - quite. However, he’s much nearer it. There is a S.S. on offer at R and Wayman, at reduced rate, £25 a week. I did work hard at stopping him let Stan do that. It would oppress them both, and be so unfair to Stan. More library music, the Snoo W., perhaps MY, and who knows what else – and there’s most of a year at £25 a week wasted. That he should even think of it -! Funny, this wanting to work in this amateur way sweeps over him from time to time, but the waves get further apart and weaker. I suggested that we investigate a loan from the bank. We went into it in detail – ‘The last thing I want to do is upset Stan.’ ‘No, but it would be so much better if you owned the equipment, and then –’ And didn’t go on to say that Stan could not then be disappointed or resentful if K. didn’t have time to work with him. He embraced the bank-loan, because of course it releases him from ‘commitment’ to Sam. We came to a really good compromised understanding.

There was, once that was decided, a really hilarious moment. We were talking over our joint financial situation. (I must just chart that, as his remark about the muzak shows, he was in his most open warm giving mood.)

(More of that when I understand it better.) I actually mentioned, in view of everything else we were adding up, that I’d given him £2000 odd for his mortgage, - he looked quite surprised, and said ‘That must have been years ago.’ I said, just before I went off into screaming hysterics, ‘Oh, well, that makes all right then.’ Yes, interesting, now I can hardly imagine I mentioned it, but it was all right. So, good for the restaurant, bill £26 odd. Excellent. If we can sit at the same table – again.

We bought a bottle of Scotch and back to the flat. No ginger-ale now! Sarah W. was, of course, there, on the ‘phone. He is getting weary of her now. Of course, for a short time, she’s quite good fun in her self-absorbed monologue. We had a lot about how hard worked she is – and she is – but imagine him or me going on about it for more than three sentences except to nearest and dearest. But then the Sarahs of this world have not real conception of ‘nearest and dearest’. Later she became amorous, saying how frustrated she was. She made up to both of us, stroking thighs, almost touching cocks, but not quite. At K’s feet, holding his thigh, she more or less said, What about it?, well, she did say it in words, but whether she really meant it is another matter – and he said, ‘Sorry, I’m spoken for’, the phrases he knows! I’m always surprised. Then she sat on my knee, and crushed my cock, and enveloped me for ten minutes? A display of would-be randiness? Goodness knows. We were both much amused. Oddly she’s much the same shape as Sharron, short in the leg with delicate wrists and ankles but otherwise almost spherical, with very big hips and behind. Odd, I wouldn’t have thought with his strong sexuality he’d have needed such an over-exaggeration of the female form. One is stupid and the other intelligent…. More fascination.

I left about 11.15. He said ‘I’ll come to the tube with you and bike back.’ ‘Well,’ I said. So we summed up Stan, and I drove the last nail home. And we giggled about Sarah. It’s odd about money, it is a bond if you don’t care about it – the whole talk tonight tied us together materially even further, I hope he doesn’t mind. I don’t think he can!

He gave me a big hug, we talked some more, I gave him a big hug, a kiss on each cheek, he got on the bike, went round the traffic-barrier, sat in profile for that second, smiled , waved and bicycled away!

Friday May 1 1987

Neil rang and talked a long time. Can’t stand Diane Rigg. Interesting that Helena Bonham Carter is one of the lads. He has yet to like anyone with real star quality. Chloe is 1.

Two tiny things about yesterday. He’d had to buy a new saddle, indeed, two, for the first replacement was also wrong. He showed me the original racing saddle, not only was it very long and very sharply narrow, but also quite rigid, as if made of wood. He had ridden from Euston and bruised his behind, ‘not my coccyx, but those bones inside your cheeks, I’m still feeling it.’ So he’s just got an ordinary broad soft plastic saddle, £4. Cheap. I suppose those racing bikes have saddles like that for looks, as the racers never seem to sit on them.

When he stopped in the road, with one foot on the floor, to smile goodbye, and then rode off, I was struck seeing him in that new position, how well proportioned he is. Long legs, broad shoulders. Sitting there smiling at me, he was certainly radiant youth with a vengeance.

And he waved again at the traffic island. And again just before he went round the corner.

Saturday May 2 1987

About 11.30, the bell tinkled. Giles, in a bright green sweater, and checkie trousers. ‘Thought I’d just call.’ Then modestly confessed it was his birthday. 27. And he’s got to go to the office and work till the evening, when ‘someone’ is taking him out. Who? Because I said I’d found some keys on the mat the other day, ‘Ah, yes, those were from Penelope, - we’re having a trail separation.’ Good. I don’t think her possessiveness will do for him.

K rang at 3.15, ‘how about Sunday?’ ‘cos I’d asked him and Sharron to Sunday dinner, because it’s Bank Holiday. Hope she doesn’t feel it’s like dinner with the parents. Tho’ of course it is a bit. He’s rung the bank! Oh he’s so good at seizing time’s forelock. ‘Well sort it out tomorrow.’

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 77

May 3 1987 – June 2 1987.

Sunday May 3 1987

When he rang yesterday p.m. he also said that, when he got back from seeing me off at the tube, he found a cheque for £50 on the table, and Sarah in bed, her own, I presume. So he assumed that all her talk about being so busy was partly to say that she hadn’t got any further with the typing of M.Y. He said do the MY and no rent. So with the £65 I gave him, for his fare etc., that’s £115 in the account which will help his chat at the bank. He rang back to say John H and Rachel couldn’t make Mon. so could I – No. So he’ll have them another day.

Piercingly cold, comparatively. Getting Simon’s letter ready, on the Laughton. Hm. He’s gone with her dear her – but still the deadly emptiness. I want him to be with her – I do. But still there is the nothing after.

Monday May 4 1987

It was a very successful evening. They were ten minutes early! ‘You say every time that’s the first time you’ve ever been early.’ He helped me to move the radiator down to the cellar ‘to mark the coming spring.’ She caught on at once, when I said if we were alone, we would put on special costumes and do a dance to the Goddess of Fertility. We waited uneasily for Bruno who was coming to pick up the Laughton ‘at 7’. He came at ten past 8, just as we sat down to the first course. I’m glad K saw me suffering (lightly) because of the dinner ‘The cauliflower’s on, so we’ve reached the point of no return.’ He went, looking rather young and thirties in a trilby. It was quite an hilarious dinner – we all got drunk quite quickly. K and I went on getting drunk but Sharron didn’t have any more after dinner because she was driving. He’d brought the lyrics he’d begun - sketched – a few weeks ago, on the fruit machine idea. Could I look at it.’ We also discussed his visit to the bank manager. I never mind discussing these things in front of her, as she never uses them, or interferes. Even when she said she wanted to see Prick Up Your Ears, and I had to say ‘Come too’, I didn’t really mind except purely practically, - and financially! Three’s a crowd to pay for as well. Dinner for three is always a bit more than half as much again, because of two bottles of wine, for instance. He is fully aware of that and solved it by saying we’d go back to the flat after. She doesn’t impinge, she’s very good. It’s just that I do like to sit next to him at plays and films for important artistic reasons, perceptions flow between us, as can easily be proved if you don’t sit with your partner. And it’s sometimes awkward to arrange. I think I must just say why. And of course I’d rather go with him alone. But I must try to be good about it, no, I am good about it. I think I will always want the best for him, even if isn’t always the best for me.

They left about one – he was quite tight in a mild way. I was rolling. I zonked straight out and came up through the deepest sleep to hear the bell and knocking. It was him. He’d left his keys behind. Although I was dead, I still noticed how tentative he was, so unlike himself, because he was so upset at having woken me.

He rang this morning to apologise, which he seldom does in so many words, just is extra- tender, as a rule. I said why didn’t we have lunch tomorrow, as I’d got a commercial interview at 11.20, in Newburgh Street. He was seeing the bank manager at 11.00 and Arron at 3.00 so – ‘Good thinking’. I hadn’t woken up till 12.00, very unusual. Was still in pyjamas thinking of having my morning wank, when Neil rang at 1.20. Weren’t you coming round at 1.0? What a nerve, seeing that he’s never been less than ¾ of an hour late for me and has often not dropped in after all. They were giving me a glass of wine and some bread and cheese so I took a cab, like an idiot. Linda said ‘Oh I’d have fetched you in the car.’ Yes, but she didn’t! A few mins after I’d got there, Caroline and what’s his name. She is having a baby any day now and looks pretty terrible, blotchy, swollen, put on 3 stone. I don’t think she really fancies the idea of having a baby – I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that she was terrified and disgusted inside. Neil gave vent to my feelings in his own nasty ‘macho’ way. ‘Some women look more attractive having a baby. Huh. I wouldn’t like to be there when those waters break.’

We staggered round the garden centre, in that suffocating atmosphere of bank-holiday – young marrieds and children, that is so tiring. Tidied up their window boxes, advised and left at 4 exhausted.

In evening took Giles to Chez Claudie. C is small, busy, fortyish. Not sure about it, but it’s certainly good value. I’d ordered a taxi for 7.45 and asked Giles for a drink at 7.00. He is tall, sandy haired with sharp-cut features, glasses, looks like a young Michael Frayn but it still staid enough-looking to make it amazing that he’s almost the same age as K. However, he proved himself to belong decisively to the same generation as K by ringing up at 6.0 and saying ‘It’s tonight we’re meeting isn’t it?’ I reminded him of the time of the car, and he said No, don’t change it. I’m in Oxford now, I’ll be there.’ And like K, he just was, driving up as the cab arrived.

I didn’t really find out much more from a nice boozy dinner. He’s having a trial separation from Penelope. Perhaps good, not that I know her well, but I did think she was a bit more possessive that she knew. Certainly he isn’t ready for her.

Back here he brought down some malt whisky and the ghetto blaster his mother gave him for his birthday. Played a few tapes. Enjoyable. After he’d left, I cleared up and cracked my head open on the mantelpiece. How scalp wounds bleed! Soaked two hankies.

Tuesday May 5 1987

To my commercial interview, Newburgh St just behind Carnaby St. Small early-Victorian- Georgian type houses. All low so the sense of two or three village sts is quite strong. My interview was in a very smartly got-up house, much more than usual. A story-board of a lot of violently angled shots of quite a young man with hair, flourishing various equipment. All mime with a French voice over! Not my line at all, and bravely said to Debbie McWilliams and didn’t go in, as I knew it would depress me. Talked to another bald actor. Nice. Most interesting that it was exactly opp. Music House, which has, like my film co., the whole house, 4 floors. Smart as paint. Two smart young people in the office downstairs, he in a grey flannel suit! I should have come and looked at it long since, as there is no question of anything fly-by-night. I quite see why he has had a lift from them taking him on not so much on artistic lines, as that, if they etc. he is obviously a commercial property, that he can make a living.

Wandered off to Café Italian and waited for him, curious to see what costume he would choose to persuade an assistant bank manager to lend him £5,000. He was wearing ‘my’ suit, black patent leather shoes and a white T-shirt! He’d shaved.

It had gone reasonably well. I think we’ll get it, with a CV, letters from Patricia, Simon, Aaron etc. ‘We don’t like loans on houses, because it’s so bad for our image if we have repossess them.’ What absolute rubbish. The vast majority of loans are made on property. He exhibited signs of the rather wild impatience which is one of the few remaining immature streaks in his character. But I think I smoothed that away.

I had grilled sardines, he had lasagne. As usual said he didn’t want much, could he have the starter size portion. Settled for the main course size and ate it all with great speed and appetite. We talked all round the loan with great thoroughness.

At another point, he harked back to Liverpool. I said he’d be having the wedding conference soon. He said Glynn’s parents seemed easy about it. ‘Well, they’re not organising it, are they?’ He was re-arranging his hair. I said he couldn’t cut it before the wedding now, as that would be an even sorer insult to Phil. ‘I wouldn’t cut it for my brother, but I will, for my best friend,’ ‘Right.’ Aunty something had said ‘When is it going to be your turn?’ And he’d said, ‘I don’t think I’m the type for that sort of thing’, or some such phrase which made me say ‘Goodness, that really would make them think you’re gay.’ Aunty B? said ‘What about your girlfriend?’ We don’t even live together, and we aren’t going to. I like my space.’

I walked with him to Newburgh St. Unusually for him, I could tell he didn’t want me to come to the door with him – so I said I wouldn’t shame him. (Far from minding I am often impressed by his lack of self-consciousness in going about with me.)

Went round Waterstones, and did the shopping for John N. Veal and avocado and melon, not very ripe. We watched the Britten tape – we especially relished the Queen opening the Maltings. No one else in my life sees the joke of the Royal Family in the same way, richly absurd, but loveable and admirable as well.

He left about 12.30, for we watched the first reel of the Evelyn Waugh Arena. Very late for John. But it was soothing.

Wednesday May 6 1987

Another row. Blast. He started it – suddenly. ‘Don’t get at me thro Sharron’ in the car, without warning.

Will write tomorrow. Not very upset.

Thursday May 8 1987

Yesterday went to sign on and found the office closed because of a strike. Got my benefit this a.m. One day early! So to yesterday. Met K and Sharron at the cinema, they were in her car. I’d got the tickets thinking that it might be very full. £5 each. So we had half an hour for a drink. I’d got the cinema wrong and rang him three or four times on Tuesday p.m. up till John arrived. He’d said he was going home after seeing Aaron, but I supposed he was in the pub. I would have gone on ringing him after dinner as it was rather vital. (Rang Sharron in case I didn’t get him). But about 9.15, just as I might have tried him again (and not have got him again, as it turned out) the ‘phone rang and it was Simon! From L.A. He talked for nearly half an hour! From L.A. He’d got my Laughton notes, and had had a sleepless night. Good. He should. The changes are as important as that. Nobody else had said anything about construction not eve Nick Hurn. It turns out, as I rather thought, that the long sections describing the films, was on purpose, but I had purposely missed that to get over to him that it must be made much clearer what the pattern of the book is, or it will seem like a badly constructed conventional biog. The paragraphing was the work of Ann Jack really! It was a very satisfying talk that made me realise all over again the special place I have in his life. ‘Whenever I write about the theatre, you are always hovering at my shoulder.’

So back to yesterday. He saw Aaron, who now wants another piece of 30 mins – Industry and Atmospherics – they sat for ages trying to name his pieces! to hire them out, and there are 400 tapes there, and it took Aaron a couple of hours to name five! K suggested me for titles! Seriously. Then they went to the pub and stayed and stayed. ‘I was pretty drunk, I had five pints, Robin Millar and two others were there, then we went to an Italian restaurant, and had some wine.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’ ‘After four hours with them, I thought I’m not really enjoying this at all.’ ‘Were they talking about business and money?’ ‘No. About nothing. And Aaron passed out. They got him walking and asked me if I wanted a lift. I went on the tube. It was about 11.30.’

Well, there’s a good reason for taking him out a lot, so that he’s used to it. A. is giving him a letter, and could give him an advance, but K would lose his sup. benefit. So no money again!

We went into the cinema; he jumped up and down on his seat and said. ‘Daddy, can I have a choc-ice?’ I think Sharron was a bit startled when I went and tried to get him one! No go.

Quite interested to see the film again. It was applauded at the end. I think it will be a big hit with the smart young audience. I notice it’s significantly only on at this one cinema. Both of them said as we were getting in the car, ‘Slow’. That’s interesting, as that isn’t the first thing I’d say, but then I knew it all before, so perhaps was making allowances for that. Interesting.

Bought a half bottle of gin, he’s got wine and whisky. I’d brought the delicious cold roast beef from Sunday, and it was delicious. We teased one another delightfully, he made a tape of the new music and put Guess Who? On the spine. And so on. She is delightful, serene, funny, not assertive on the surface (no chance, poor darling!) respects our friendship, I think, and is not waiting to swoop. (My only complaints are her voice, though even that’s not basic, and her very squat figure. Delicate hands and feet and face, lovely skin, but almost dwarfish in proportions, with a huge behind. Too huge. They look a bit silly together from behind.) He got quite drunk because of last night partly, and because he’s been released by the fresh commission. We were in the car on the way home after an ideally happy evening, and I was telling Sharron about MY and the script and so on, - I was quite drunk by this time, but only nicely so, tho’ I can’t remember more than the subject of what I was saying – when suddenly from the back of the car, he burst out with ‘Don’t you get at me through Sharron.’ She protested, let alone me. (Earlier he snapped her head off a bit about the fruit-machines lyric, snapping, as to shut her up, ‘We’ll have a session about it.’ Twice. Unlike him.) And on he went, and I lost my temper, and I don’t know what we said, and I don’t think it matters. It certainly is true that in certain drunk times, he gets ‘paranoid’. As he did with Joe Cavanagh that early time, first? he was stoned and thought they all hated him, and were plotting against him. But it wasn’t the drug, it’s the way it sometimes takes him. What a pity! About last night, I mean.

After the last row he said it was always he who had to resolve it, so I wrote to him today, saying he’d got it completely wrong and that we’ll meet on Tuesday, to look at the lyric. So we’ll see. Oh dear.

Oh, was able to tell him that Simon had seen Howard Panter in New York and the funding is going on and K will be the first beneficiary of it. By the way, not that I’ll ever mention it, neither of them thanked me for the cinema. Just chance, I think.

I wonder if he ever thinks, on these occasions, that I go in alone and just have my bitter thoughts when he has a girl-friend to go home, I daresay he doesn’t discuss it much with her, but he has company and makes love, both much more purging expenses!

Thursday May 7 1987

To a stage interview. Imagine. Tom Cairns, assistant at Sheffield, wants me for Serebryakov in Uncle Vanya. Would I go to Luke St, near Old St? I would, because, at the very least, I wanted to meet him. From Old St. I walked through Leonard St. turned down Paul St., and there was Luke St. All round there is still recognizably blitzed. Many empty spaces and certainly no sensation of the whole area ever having been pulled together in any definite way. There are still bomb sites in Luke St. There is quite a large and elaborate church, built flush with the street. Elaborate design buttresses, rose windows. Impossible now to see where the parishioners could have lived. The windows are thick with grime, the paint so dried and peeling, it’s difficult to tell what colour it had been. At first I thought there was no 78. But 78a was some sort of shop, or something, and next to it a very battered door with a rather battered entryphone. ‘Come up, will you? It’s right at the top, it’s rather strange.’

Up four or five flights of iron stairs, through apparent, and, as it turned out, actual, dereliction, to the top. Small neat man with immediately sympathetic face. ‘Can I have a pee’? B’room immediately opposite top of stairs, opening off his bedroom, partitioned off from main area. There was his unmade bed and books and water all on the floor. It is fascinating how they I suppose, have no idea that to most people of my age, unless carefully indoctrinated! such surroundings are deeply disturbing as a background for a - director. A director who has charge of your whole destiny and is always richer and better housed! Ah, autres temps autres moeurs.

He got me a coffee, smelt the milk, and said Do you mind it black? We chatted. Immediate sympathy. In fact so immediate that it made me worry that he hadn’t enough steel in him for his job. Never at any point did he challenge me, and he should have done. When we got down to the play it turned out it rehearsed on Monday - which nobody had mentioned before! That alone – But when I read it again, - and with that very different perspective when you know you are going to have to play it yourself – I realised that I wasn’t right for the part, or at any rate, would make little effect in it. I would do it, - like the Leeds part – if there were a first-class part with it. What’s the point otherwise? I’ll be out of pocket, and with nothing to do otherwise.

I’m too old. I have to confess that I want to stay here with him and not let the garden go to rack and ruin.

Beautiful big warehouse floor, with pale boards and a ‘french’ window – the loading door. All white and space and air. I’d hate it, but many would love it. I love it to look at, but I’d hate to live in it.

I felt heartened by my talk with him all the same. Sheffield has done a lot of big shows, musical etc. which seemed cheap from the outside, but which was apparently deliberate, so that this next autumn, they can, as a result, launch on a proper season, The Cherry Orchard, Macbeth etc. etc. Well, I hope so.

I decided to take myself out to lunch and write to Simon and in here after. I love doing that. I wanted smoked salmon and scrambled eggs. No good. I thought of the Pelican, space and time, but expense. Went to Tavola Calda. Rewrote my letter to K. Stayed until three fifteen, down in a little alcove round a corner. Saw the staff fooling about, because they thought the first floor was empty.

Went to feeble film – Almost You at the Metro. ‘Subtle films are not American specialties. Not so desolate as I expected, or as I would have been a year ago.

All the same, how empty and boring my life is except for him.

Friday May 8 1987

Ian B rang to say he’d got an interview, so could we meet at 12.0 or even 11.30, so he wouldn’t have to wait about in the West End. Suggested meeting at the Blue Posts, because of the lounge upstairs. Got there with some difficulty, at 11.40. No Ian and no lounge, as it doesn’t open till twelve. There were about six people already there, all known to the staff. Ian arrived at 12.30, so we needn’t have changed the arrangement at all. I took him to Tavola Calda, same table! No tension at all. He seems to have settled down with Hilary again and although he’s depressed about his career – he’s even thinking of moving up to Warwick with Hilary on her course, really, that girl is a fool, he’s otherwise all right. He’d chosen a film to see. The Name of The Rose. Well. A sort of medieval whodunit set in a monastery. Sean Connery and an expressionless acolyte. The Holmes–Watson relationship made it just tolerable. But I nodded off once or twice. He took me to Pelican after for tea and a big piece of fruit cake.

There is something very warm and true about him, also something wild and combative! When I got back here, there was a message on the machine from Marjorie. Glynn had had a parachuting accident, broken his leg badly enough to need a bone graft from his hip. Marjorie said it wasn’t too bad. I wonder. Only a very bad break needs a graft and he’s a PT Instructor. I rang K and told him just that. He wrote it down. We were both cool. And even that didn’t upset me.

Saturday May 9 1987

Garden beautiful. Very hot. Cleaned green house. Three bougainvillea still alive.

Sunday May 10 1987

Another quiet domestic day, alone. Wrote to Simon here and there. One passage came out accurately.

‘It’s very beautiful here just now, warm, sunny, exquisite green everywhere – the garden a great joy. Whenever K comes here, he un-locks the kitchen door and walks straight out into it, without a word. All the way round, that gives me keen pleasure, from his reaching for the key behind the curtain without looking, glimpsing just a bit of him through the green, to calling him into dinner.

Monday May 11 1987

Colder. Cleared out his room, re-arranged and looked through all those files etc. that he throws about when he gets here. Found on the top of the book case the front sheet of Visiting Day with my comments. Not on him! Is this an omen? That I disturb those things he disturbed?

But it was good, as I re-discovered – nothing to do with him – all that stuff on the shelves, - the Rey-Slade stuff and got it in order again, and all the other scripts.

What a little revelation it was to me what a mess it was in, and how he stirred up my life. Literally

John H rang up, as bright as a button. Sweet talk except totally soured by him saying K has asked them for next Sunday, my next Jane Glover, when he’d said, and Sharron, ‘Why doesn’t Sharron drive you there?’

Well, after the row? So I can’t say. But would he like me to say?

Oh Christ. With the abandonment of manners, I suppose he’ll be as surprised as anyone, when things fall apart.

Monday May 11 1987

I don’t really mind about Sunday! I was drunk. There you are, paranoia.

The Bradford and Bingley fees came this morning, only five weeks late. Bought some compost and planted up the fuchsia window–box. A cold wind. Went on with clearing up the collection, getting ready to give some things to the Theatre Museum.

Gums sore, like tooth ache.

Tuesday May 12 1987

3.30.

Nervous in case he didn’t ring. But he did, while I was at the bank, this morning. When I rang back, he said he was getting into a bit of the library music, so could I come round about 4.30, because he might finish it, and also MY was nearly finished and I could read it. How like him to mention the cause of dissension! Dear warm boy. I said I’d go at 5.30. Imagine.

Very drunk and very happy.

Wednesday May 13 1987

When I got there, he was still hard at it, with a huge score being scribbled down. I crept into the bedroom with the typescript of MY. I was troubled by the number of misprints in the number itself and thought if this goes on all thro’ it’ll lead to another row. Happily the misprints suddenly got less. He came in after quarter of an hour and said he’d finished. I said I’d be finished by 6.0, just as I’d said on the ‘phone, - it would take me half an hour. And it did – I went back in at 6.0 exactly! I told him how the misprints tailed off, and he said, ‘Well, about then, I went over on Sunday and dictated all the rest of it to her.’ I never got straight where he went, I presume her office, where the word processor is. I was staggered. Although at no point in the evening did he say in so many words, that he had let me down over the typing of MY, he had done little but go into its finishing since the row. As always, on these occasions he was utterly submissive. Oh, that sounds awful, warm, tentative, supple and tender.

So we went quickly through it and he said ‘Want a Gin?’ And there was the half bottle I bought last Wednesday on the way back, happily, from Prick Up Y.E. No more gone from it. Does he save it for me? Certainly never has any drink gone to a worrying point, or even a noticeable point. How awful that sounds too! Any drink is his, but without any strings, of course. But always subtly, never underlined, it’s always been there for me next time. And I’m sure he’s never said to anyone, ‘That’s being saved for Angus, because he bought it’, in even the most indirect way.

Also he never says A pity you drink.

There then took place an episode of the purest comedy. ‘Why don’t we go to that wine-bar we passed after we had lunch at that pub in Barnsbury?’ ‘All right, but ring and see if it’s open.’ ‘Directory Enquiries.’ ‘I want the number of Bunter’s Wine Bar.’ ‘Banter’s.’ ‘Bunter’s.’ ‘It’s a wine bar, say Liverpool Road way.’ ‘N.1.’ ‘N.1.’ ‘It must be there, we passed it the other day.’ He put the phone down impatiently, and we leapt into a taxi. We got there and it was called Tinker’s.

Once we got inside, it looked a bit sleazy. There was nobody there at all, - it was about 7.30. One woman about 35. Rather prominent eyes, slightly untidy hair, intimate manner because she can be really intimate with no-one. It’s very interesting, his submissiveness, as it also brings with it a nice fatalism. ‘I want red, let’s have a bottle of red and white.’

So we talked about the music. ‘I’m finding it really heavy going. Aaron said it was to be on sound samplers.’ ‘What’s the subject (sic) and what sort of tempo is it to be? How do you start?’ ‘Well, Aaron said it was to represent an optimistic future.’ ‘Oh, did he say anything about tempo?’ ‘Of course not, optimistic means a quick tempo.’ Oh we did laugh. But I fear he is already finding it a bit stultifying and actually said he was glad to think that his other commitments would very likely stop him doing another stint after this one, at least immediately.

His afternoon with Sam was ‘good’, ‘We did some good work.’ Fuck. I hate him working with that crass little girl. Just arranging, that’s something. And he’ll get some money. But still – I didn’t say anything. I think to show even him that I didn’t approve. It’s curious that wish that comes over him from time to time to work with his inferiors. I suppose it makes him feel less responsible. Great talent is a burden.

Then we talked about the fruit-machine song. Also about the Jane Glover concert. I think I got the idea for the number clear. But out of both, poor Sharron got a bit of a smack. In the talk about the number, he said ‘That’s where Sharron got it wrong, that it should be matching the pull and swing and rattle round of the machine. The music is about the state of mind of the person pulling! Good.

Not long after, he said that pulling the machine was like boring mechanical sex.

Then about the Jane Glover concert, he was quite ruthless about saying he would just tell her to take me. ‘I asked John and Rachel because I’d forgotten. See if John wants to take you to Reading and then – He was more ruthless about her than I liked.

Then I asked how Glynn was. ‘I don’t know.’ It turned out he hadn’t even sent a card! ‘I just haven’t had time.’ Isn’t that amazing, that he actually thinks that’s true in some way! It takes two minutes! Of course if we hadn’t been divided, I would have found the number of the hospital and then he could have rung. I fear Glynn will be hurt, since of course he has no inkling, I’d say, of any lessening of their friendship. Whereas K has so many inklings, especially after that last weekend, that he probably imagines Glynn is feeling misgivings too, which I’m sure he isn’t. And part of the time was spent dictating MY, partly to make up.

Tuesday he went out with Stan to look at equipment, and went past Chess coming out. (As late as that?) They were all middle-aged and well-off.

I told him about John N offering me two comps for one of the Fischer-Diskau concerts. Or rather two friends of his, who get comps through Mercedes-Benz, was it? ‘Thursday’. Silently he pulled a throwaway out from under the papers on the table, for a musical of - ! Titus Andronicus. ? ‘After looking round for the equipment, we went to a club, well, Stan would expect to – and we met these three girls, and they want us to go to it.’ Now, as far as the F.D. is concerned, I didn’t care, except that he is a great artist, - and it was free - anyway, he quickly got sold on the idea, and said he’d speak to Stan.

The restaurant had been all right, tho’ I doubt if we’ll go again, – he had, I think, some lamb, and I had calves liver. The wine wasn’t bad, and the bill was £3?, with two bots of wine. We were quite drunk, but not at all argumentative. Sarah wasn’t there, back at the flat, and the evening ended perfectly.

I don’t think it would be truthful not to record my impression that he was harsh to Sharron, in various ways.

Think of this, putting down Sharron over Reading; Sharron getting fruit-machine song wrong, too literal, and then, a few phrases later, that a fruit-machine was like ‘boring, mechanical sex’; then going to the club with Stan ‘and we met these three girls’, and obviously talked to them long enough to agree to go to the play with them! All that together is significant. I like Sharron very much - she is serene, calm, humorous, sufficiently intelligent, common-sensical, with good judgment. I would like it to go on. But I think I picked up his signals that it is going to go through a sticky patch. I know him so well, and there was a message on ‘these three girls’ and the other bits. Poor boy, perhaps he’s getting a bit bored.

(Tiny point. It’s his first condom affair - surely that must have an effect, after all the easy sex he’s had, and possibly he associates it with her. Who knows?)

Thursday May 14 1987

Last night Ben came round after a quick ‘phone call – his exams entail taking some photographs. Props are important, and contrast, so he’s taking Wayne ‘and I wanted somebody sophisticated.’ He brought a couple of lights, and snapped me at my desk and in my chair reading. It was funny. Stayed to dinner, and I am amused to see the tide of normality sweeping over him. I think he’s growing out his bleached hair. Well, I’m glad, because I don’t know anyone in the sort of job he wants, with shoulder-length yellow- bleached hair and winkle pickers and black leather with chromium studs. The winkle pickers and black leather and chromium studs have gone, now the hair. I’m also a little sad – conformism. Hm. They have such harsh choices.

And he left at 10.0! Lovely, as I was rather tired after our lovely night.

Today quite a lot seemed to be happening, but wasn’t. I’d rung John N’s friend about the seats and got the husband, who was quite short and said I’d better ring at 10.0 after the post had come, and rang off. So I rang back at 10.0, and he was a little more abashed, but not enough, and didn’t take my number or ask where I’d be, simply told me to ring back after 1.0, after the second post!

Went to the Theatre Museum, with three carrier-bags full. Bunny Danvers-Heron’s archive (sic), the Vaudeville Theatre programme ‘archive’, and the end of the Adelphi ‘archive’, a cuttings book about the two Gatti grandfather and uncle’s funeral, and list of wreaths to prove it, and the MS score of Salad Days. ! Oh dear, how funny and sad it was, ringing Julian to tell him. He seems to have no real understanding of the purpose or scope of a museum. He wanted me to insist on it being a loan in case we want to lend it to Bristol Old Vic for the fiftieth anniversary. !! I explained to him that lending items was one of the main functions of museums. He is extraordinarily ignorant. So there was Sarah Woodcock, more sensible, less eccentric and very much less hockey girl. Alexander Shouvaloff turned up, smooth, good- looking, rather anonymous. Pretended to remember from ten years ago. Took Sarah out to lunch at Café Des Amis, still perfectly workmanlike, especially as we were in a corner and therefore slightly quieter. She told me that A. Shouvaloff had a heart attack exactly six months before the museum opened. Well! So the head of the textile department at the V & A came in as administrative Head. We had a jolly lunch and now she’s less silly, I shall relish her theatre scholarship more.

She went back at about 2.30. I rang John N from one of the Chinese booths near Gerrard St. to get the number of the ticket people, which I’d forgotten. For some minutes I couldn’t get through, for long enough to have to give up the phone card booth to somebody else waiting. Finally got thro’, he gave me the number, I rang it, and got their answering machine. So I left a brisk message, saying We’d better scrub it. Rang K (I was fascinated that I didn’t mind the tickets ‘cos of him, – perhaps it was prescience.) He said, Did you get my message? ‘No, I’m out. I’m sorry to be fucking you up, but I’ve been fucked up myself. It’s all off.’ ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s rather good. Sam’s lent me a drum machine and (I think he said a sound sampler or something) I’ve got other equipment and I’d like to use it, so is that all right? And it was. I was rather glad. I was a bit tired!

I want to repeat again, because it helps me, that I am so thankful that I have reached this stage of not minding if I don’t see him exactly when I expect to. (Odd, ‘cos life gets no longer, and I might …)

I wish I could have charted, or will chart, the stages of this confidence. The ‘utter submissiveness’ I mentioned the other day, it’s not something I impose on him. It’s a decision of his to cope with our relationship, and because I presume, in this case, he felt himself to be in the wrong. (Amusing that he goes ‘into it’ only when he thinks he’s in the right.)

There is solid ground beneath our feet now. And even that, I may no longer have any need to record.

Friday May 15 1987

Gums still sore, aching. To pick up Jane Glover script and, as it chances, the script of a play for reading at the Lyric, sent to me. !! Odd. First glance, strong square Colin Blakeley part. Really. Directors are mad.

Driven out of the house by my toothache to see dreadful film with one or two oddly good bits called Naples Connection. Sunshine and Showers. Garden heavenly. Utter Silence.

Last night Giles came in for a drink. So dear and generous. I am lucky.

Saturday May 16 1987

Went yesterday to pick up Jane Glover’s script. Reasonable. Also the script of a play that is to have a rehearsed reading at the Lyric. The end of the Soldier by Iain McLean. My part – I haven’t yet read it – is perfect, as far as can be seen on a glance or two, for Colin Blakeley, if he weren’t dead. Certainly the description of the character and the few bits I’ve read, are totally wrong for me. How have they got hold of me? Director, Catherine Arakelian. I do hope I don’t like the play – I might be tempted, as it’s at the Lyric, – only two of the readings are at The Lyric, the other two at Battersea Art Centre and Albany empire. Why do I have such bad luck? Why shouldn’t it be a wonderful part for me? Who would write my dialogue?

Today to Prim’s for lunch to do her balcony plants, buying some compost on the way at an enchanting florists in Churton St. A small shop, packed with green metal vases with huge images of perfect fresh carnations and freesias and roses and a ceiling of bunches hanging from the ceiling. And all the flowers superb and thick petalled – not the usual poor greenhouse mess produced ‘blooms’. They offered to deliver the compost.

Got to Prim’s. Still completely herself, though looking older and frailer. And I am much struck that she never has anything new to say, – almost never. I cannot decide, because, alas, she is such a liar, whether that is a result of loss of memory, or hardly seeing anyone. (Oh dear, I tremble to think what she says of me to that friend of hers, Robert Selbie, who was front of house manager at Chichester.) Except that she never says anything nasty about him to me, and he’s good to her – I think. We had a delicious mushroom omelette, little light salad and cheese and fruit. ‘A glass of vino – extra-ordinaire?’ And there is, of course, the charm of recalling the past. Old jokes, which nobody but her and D and me could still see. That is a potent charm.

Did her plants. She has a penchant for putting down her pot plants into a mass of compost into which they become ridiculously inextricably entangled. Put all that right, but with little interest. She has no feeling for plants.

Walked away in pleasure, to be overcome by a need for him. Just that naked sense that he wasn’t there.

But I liked the thought that he was probably slaving away with the equipment.

Later.

As I was walking along the long passage from the Piccadilly line to Victoria line – no, the other way round, on the way back, I looked at the people passing by and thought ‘What would I think of him if I suddenly saw him for the first time? Often I have felt, as I walked through C. Garden, past the Rock Garden, ‘Perhaps I saw him in 1978 or 9….. So strong is that feeling sometimes, that I actually think I did see him. Which is why….. Perfectly possible.

Sunday May 17 1987

In the train to Reading waiting to leave Padd. Rang him to be wished good luck to, and he told me his plans. He’s got quite a lot on – I’ll go into it later - £100 for a day with Sam on Wed., for instance. I can’t believe, some actual money at last.

Agonising moment waiting for the train to start, – for ten minutes. Then it stopped again between Maidenhead and Reading. Worse on a short journey. The taxi I’d ordered wasn’t there, and it was faintly drizzling. But unlike last time, there was a continuous succession of taxis at the rank and I was at the Hexagon by 6.30. Quite early enough. In the same room, despite the large chorus. Whilst I was changing, a girl knocked and without waiting for me to say Come in, came in and said Is Gwen in here? From the London Mozart Players? The room was five feet square. ‘No’, I said. On the door was a card saying Mr. Angus Mackay in quite large letters. I popped in to see Jane, just for a word, as it must have been an exhausting rehearsal, followed by a demanding concert. Overtures, Magic Flute, Clarinet Concerto, Requiem. So I enjoyed it more. The clarinet C. was the best ‘cos of the soloist, Andrew Marriner. What an inspired uniform tails is! Out of them – he looked nothing, fat, and ordinary. In them, and invested with his art, he looked dignified. The Requiem soloists, - the bass was very fat and quite tall, the tenor, thin, chinless, balding, not quite up to the bass’s shoulder. None of the four was better than the third rung, at the best. And, of course, my position among the orchestra, was even worse for this than usual. I’d ordered a car for 9.30 and suddenly determined that I wouldn’t wait on the platform for an hour and a half, as I would have had to do, and asked the firm to take me all the way. Very pleasant jolly young driver. 27, with four sons! I was as if drunk, having faced 2000 people. I talked all the way. £33. Not bad. Rang K at 10.45. Jon and Rachel just going. I think he’d put the phone in the bedroom. I poured it all out - as warm as toast. He asked about everything in a quiet us-ish way, that was very precious and satisfying to me.

These concerts are odd experiences.

Smoked salmon and quails’ eggs.

Monday May 18 1987

Neil came round at 9.15 a.m., by arrangement, to go through the Old Wives Tale again. His egotism just escapes irritation, partly because of my deep and, I think unchangeable affection for him, and partly because he offers it half-comically as an outrageous quality. I am further amused by his capacity to summon the crumbs that drop from my table, to impress the director and producer with his deep knowledge of OWT and AB!

Came back at lunch-time, stayed for an hour or two. V. sweet. But I still worry about his future.

Tuesday May 19 1987

Dear George R arrived for the A.G.M. of the Society for Theatre Research. The Crete holiday was obviously a bit of a disaster. 1st day, lowest temperature for 57 years. 2nd, went two blocks to the bank and had to change to the skin he got so wet. 3rd, Nancie wanted to go home. 4th, they were self-catering. 1 day it got to 70 degrees and they had some nice meals out. Oh, foreign holidays. He’d brought with him the Terriss scrap-book. A huge family bible like tome, heavy boards, thick sumptuous leather, gold edges, – turns out to be a memorial volume. But oh dear, what a mess inside! Ill cut out, non-chronological, poorly chosen. A Mess. What an opportunity missed! How curiously disorganised Victorians could be! Very little of interest. Except the letters which are crumpled over the edge of the album. Still, reading the cuttings passed an idle hour.

He rang at 10.45, on his way out - to Sam Browne’s, so tonight is off. Which I quite understand. And as I’ve got toothache, properly, for the first time in my life, I’m not sorry. Amazing. He wasn’t going today, but has to, so that’s three days this week, £325. I can’t believe it. The only thing that troubled me was that he spoke of moving again. Of course, I know he wants to, because of the noise outside and the noise downstairs, and he’s right. I’m just so worried that it’ll mean him being further away and more difficult to get to – it can hardly be nearer. Equally of course, I can’t expect him to think of that beyond a point. He’d been to see Tom Cairns’ warehouse, from the outside, and naturally didn’t like the district. He must want to move or he’d never have remembered Luke St!

Wednesday May 20 1987

To sign on, - it is good to remind myself of how miserable I used to be. Desolate.

Back to breakfast with George, who told me all about the A.G.M. of The Society of Theatre Research presentation to Kathleen Barker, so that gets rid of her! And Robert Eddison’s lecture entitled ‘Majestic Service’. A somewhat occluded title reference, ‘Her Majesty’s Servants’. Not a success. He’d written it all out in tiny hand writing, and kept not being able to read it. Then after an hour, with a supper and so on, to come, and it was 9.30, he said, with an hour’s wodge of paper to come, ‘Oh, I’d better stop’ and he’d only got to his first few years on the stage, having spent a lot of time on his childhood. George just said, ‘He’s gone very peculiar.’ Just old. He’s 78 or 9.

George off to lunch-party for the Seymour-Hicks at the Garrick, to thank them for their help over the book. He’d been rather stunned by the son’s response to his original lunch invitation just for Betty S.H. and him, ‘Yes, lunch or dinner, and can I bring my son and daughter? Really, people are extra-ordinary – just for the money -!

I went off to Ealing to meet Paul R in the Feathers – nasty expensive pub, Berni’s you see – and then to Pastaficio for a bite. We were in a corner, and though I can’t remember anything we talked about, I do remember encouraging, advising and warning. Like the Queen. No, I do remember he said at one point that he’d told his elder brother Mark, that you must think of the other person first etc. etc. (oh how often I’ve repeated that) and I was immensely touched to hear those words of mine coming back at me across the table. He is a good boy, and is reading quite a lot.

Thursday May 21 1987

10.45 a.m. He’s just rung saying the script had arrived, and could I go round and see if there were any corrections, and if there weren’t, tell Sarah so she could make some copies, and if there were, take the corrected scripts to her so she can make some copies. I had written to him last night saying my meeting with Roy and Graham was off because Roy couldn’t make it. But he was in his brisk snap-yr-head-off ‘I’m working’ mood. ‘I must whizz.’ Because he’s off to Peter Browne today, to that Maidstone studio.

So I was quite amused when he rang about an hour later to say it might be difficult about tomorrow night, because Peter B’s car, with the emulator on board, broke down on the way to K’s, and, I suppose, had to be got rid of in some way. As they wouldn’t get there until later, he thought they might go on all tomorrow too. Then he said ‘Oh, no, it won’t be in the evening.’ ‘So what’s the problem?’ Then he said ‘I’ve just got your letter. Why didn’t you tell me?’ So I had great satisfaction in telling him he didn’t give me a chance! ‘Sorry.’ But seriously I did think it might stop him doing it – I don’t mind any more, but I really think he doesn’t know very peremptory he sounds. I said we’d do the scrip all the same, and I’d come round at 6.0 ish, as arranged.

So I went up to the flat, and there was the script and a note – at last, at long last, it finished. ‘Hope all is well with you, Love. !! Never before has he put a loving message at the end of a letter. Have I ever had a nice letter from him before? I think not. Only letters resolving rows. If then. Lovely.

Ran through it for corrections, tho’ I am the worst person to read proofs, especially my own, as I read so fast. In fact, K is a very good proof-r. because he never reads. Found a pageful of small corrections – letters the wrong way round, things like that. I looked about, he’d put all the equipment in the music-room – how odd that he hasn’t done that before! It was always meant to be the music-room, but I suppose putting the piano in there, was what muddled it.

I got myself to Sarah W’s office – very smart, Broadwick Productions, opposite Café Italien, tall Georgian house, top floor, ‘open plan’, but pleasant. I think I’ve scared her by telling her off about not getting on with the script. She was careful. But then she is that sort of immaculate girl who will either be a receptionist or etc. or etc. or what she’s doing now. Possibly an agent.

Raining on and off. On the way back home, bought Alexander Walker’s new biography of Vivien L. Comparatively properly documented, though paragraphed exactly like S’s Laughton. Poor Vivien, she is still not taken seriously, and I think as a character, she should be. She was not a great artist, she was not a great woman, but she was the biggest star in the world for twenty years just in terms of money, and very much admired by the best judges (Agate, Shaw, Gielgud, me) for certain narrow and slight achievements. And her will to make their outward lives materially perfect, to a degree achieved by few outside royalty, was interesting and deserves analysis of a proper kind at least. Alexander W. is just an excellent journalist. Poor Vivien. She should have stuck with John G. But I shall have a lot more to say.

So back home to wait for Mike P. and Wine Gallery. He told me all about the clown company he’s going on tour with. Alas, he’s had 20 mins rehearsal. I didn’t do more than faintly intimate that mightn’t be a very good idea.

Otherwise we had an agreeable dinner, and afterwards, he talked a lot about Nicola, who obviously has some sort of problem, of which her continuing virus is the outward sign. She has sold a series to HTV at first try, but that has not stopped her going to her parents for the weekend, rather than here. No, of course, that’s an exaggeration, but he said in so many words, she felt our special relationship, and didn’t want to disturb it. Hm. That’s an invention of hers. And perhaps his. I think she is perhaps a remarkable girl. We’ll see. But tonight was certainly not a wasted night.

It sounds bad that I can’t recount the talk. Not so, when it was shaping such a youngster.

Friday May 11 1987

Perfect night until nothing to do with Sharron being there as far as I could see, a ridiculous talk about Zoos. My car arrived, he went purposefully to the loo and, purposely didn’t get back in time to say goodbye. Why?

More tomorrow.

Saturday May 23 1987

Well, I’m sure it was more of a mistake. I’ll describe it in its place.

He was in the big armchair, a bit pale. Yes, he did get there a bit late because of the breakdown, and they worked on until 6 a.m. But got seven tracks done. So I should hope he’d had a really good time with them and had really been given a lift. He played me the rough tapes they’d sent him beforehand so he could prepare some ideas. They were rather charming, full of youthful innocent excess. They’re20, from Glasgow, and they can’t play or sing all that well, and they don’t care. He hadn’t the complete tapes, but mimed and sang the key-board variations he contributed. Because of his enthusiasm, I didn’t mind as I would have done years ago. I see that musicians do these things, but I still want him to be in charge of his music. Which is so infinitely much more exciting than any of the people he’s played for. They’re doing a gig at the Town & Country and they’ve asked him to go to the sound check, and he may play with them just that once. How odd, all his brilliant keyboards, do they just do without them or leave them on the soundtrack, with a combination of mime and live? He was so funny and sweet, screaming through his variations – I don’t think he’d have done that quite like that for anyone else. No I’m sure.

He read me a letter from Nigel which reduced us both to complete hysteria. When I say that the sentence which stopped us for a couple of minutes was ‘I think now that the sensible thing to do’ will show how economical Nigel can be with his comic effects. The good thing about Nigel is that for all his escapades and muddles, I don’t think he’ll ever be a drag on either of us.

He said he wanted to try Minogues, so off we went. It was open. Empty except for one table. Fresh flowers, and embroidered and broderie anglaise and crocheted tablecloths, all different. Rather Sloaney waitress who, when I called her ‘dear’, said it was ‘quite a while since I’ve been called that’. The food was above average. He had a ‘delicious’ beef stew, I had salmon which was memorably good. The veg was lovely. First course, tomato and ginger soup for him, and cucumber and mint mousse for me, delicious.

But we won’t go back. He didn’t like the ‘feel’. He was facing the room, so perhaps it was the other people. Certainly it reminded me of some other restaurant that I have difficult memories of, where? Some restaurant where, like Minogues, the skin was a bit thin. We went back to the flat where Sharron was going to turn up unexpectedly because she’d had to see her mother and was a bit worried. I gathered she wasn’t come back tonight until she rang about it earlier today. So interesting as he said it, (before we went out) there was a faint residual worry that I might mind. She turned up about eleven, – we were a bit tight, of course, but I wasn’t feeling at all argumentative, and I’m always pleased to see Sharron. Believe it or not. The conversation got on to zoos, and suddenly I knew he was in the trying- to-pick-a-quarrel mood. I still can’t analyse it clearly. I get aggressive when I’m drunk. God knows, but it’s always about something vital to me that bursts through. (Like him letting people into our precious evenings casually in the past.) But when he is in this mood, which is paranoia, I suppose, he has to disagree or make you do so, preferably violently. Odd. Does he do it with anyone else? Perhaps a bit. It was exactly like the night at the Pelican with her silent and me trying not to say anything to make it worse (though in that mood everything does!) My taxi arrived. He went immediately to the loo, I said goodbye to her and made my way slowly out and downstairs and into the taxi, and saw him appear at the window as I drove off. (Oh, how many black mini-cab drivers have received a flood of animated vivacious lies in an attempt to hide a bleeding heart!) Actually I was just mildly irritated – it seemed to me he’d had plenty of time to get down to give me a hug.

Well, I rang up this lunch at once, and made it all right. I don’t think he knows how quarrelsome he gets! What does it matter?

Later.

Jon H called round with a friend from college called Jeremy. Jeremy is quite good-looking, and with all the cockiness of 20. ‘Yes, I’m on the design course, but I’m interested in all sorts of things. I might be an actor etc. etc.’ Impossible to tell yet, but other things being equal, I like people of 20 to think they know it all. Jon said they’d had a great time at Kevin’s on Sunday. The significance of this is that K had said it had been such a boring evening, with Rachael on the wrong side in all the arguments, and being repressive. At one point they talked about how they were saving together and Jon actually said, ‘Oh yes, she’s got me under her thumb.’

Jon said ‘What a lot of weight Sharron’s put on!’

Sunday May 24 1987

Cleared out D’s makeup case and dispersed the contents at last. Said to him yesterday that I supposed he was v. busy and this terrible holiday weekend stretching ahead again. He said he was going to be busy, ‘let’s think in terms of Tuesday.’ Well, poor boy, what can he do, more? he has all this music to write, and Sharron arrived earlier than he expected; I must not say I’m lonely. And lo and behold Giles suggested we go out for a meal, and we went to the Pelican and he paid. All very jolly and no strain whatever.

Monday May 25 1987

Cleared out a lot of drawers and found that old pair of army shorts, long and very baggy. Thought he might like them as he specially likes to hang completely loose! My blue shorts for Paul, they’re quite new.

Tuesday May 26 1987 Wednesday May 27 1987

In the morning he asked me if I could bear to go up there again, and I said I wanted to, anyway, to get the new number dropped onto the MY tape.

He was having a pee when I got there, – Sharron’s cat ran out of the sitting room, its shit- spattered box just inside the door. How people can! And I thought bitterly ‘She’s been here since I left on Friday, she hasn’t had a lonely weekend.’ And then hated myself. ‘She’s coming to pick it up later.’ But probably while we were out, as later on our way out, he just said v. carelessly, ‘Oh, I don’t know’ when I said ‘When’s Sharron coming? And she has got a key now at last, poor girl. (Well, perhaps she’s had it a long time, and not used it in front of me). He played me two tracks of the Music House music. I said to him how difficult it is to judge such music, because you don’t really know what it’s for. But the first piece was very skilful, not least for its division into ten-second or fifteen second phrases, for use as quick stings if necessary. But so organically are the pauses built in that you’d never think that’s why they’re there, they’d be just part of the rhythm. The second piece had some lovely bits of arrangement, but a rather monotone couple of chords repeated too often at the beginning and the end. Might be useful, but sounds plodding. He agreed.

He went off to get some gin – and was back in about five mins. I’d forgotten the bike! He’d found a few more misprints in the script and teased me about it, though some of them were apostrophes. I’d not bothered about them. But one, ouxteht instead of ‘ought’ just proved that I’m too quick a reader to be a good proof-reader, especially of my own work! But I am amused to find that his grammar is so good and that he can find these mistakes. So I corrected a script for Sarah Wick who he’s seeing tomorrow night, and for Graham W., who we’re seeing on Friday.

‘Let’s get a bus, I want a walk. The fish and chip shop might be shut – it was when we tried it on Saturday.’ Well, fish at holiday weekends – So we went to Serendipity and the same table was empty – it was fuller than the other time. On the blackboard was sliced avocado with basil dressing and guinea fowl. To our amusement, we both chose these two things quite independently. I ordered Chateau neuf du Pape – I got £384 extra from the Brad & Bing. I ordered a second bottle, and we both got rather drunk. I had Banana Crumble, he was very superior, and then had a few forkfuls.

I’m afraid I told him of my despair, even of my feeling I just wanted to sell up and go away to Galloway where it’s cheap; and perhaps be happier because I would have deliberately limited my expectations. If you know you are going to be alone, you don’t feel so lonely. Vide the cottage. I told him all this, and my feelings my world, of literature and so on, was slipping further and further away with nothing to take it’s place. Back at the flat, Sharron had come to get the cat and gone to bed. Made no impression on me except to think did he want her for that long?

I wish I could describe the tenderness and understanding with which he attempted to comfort me. He kept saying ‘You need to be acting, of course.’ These are the times when I think I am wrong to pursue his friendship, since of course there were moments when he found himself saying ‘Of course I don’t know what it feels like to be sixty.’ No, nor should he have to imagine. It did make me feel better just to say it.

In the hall he held me really really close, pulled me back into his arms when I started to go, and kissed me many times.

Later.

Today was rather a lovely day, rang Paul before the w/e and said What about going to see the play at the Lyric, Mumbo Jumbo. So he came over about 12.0 to the Lyric, and we lunched there. There was a man at the table for four – two twos really side by side – who, far from removing his tweed hat from my seat as I was about to sit down, took the greatest umbrage when I asked him to move it and he kept bristling all through the meal. Then Paul went right off pop in the gents because I lent my forehead against the wall above the urinal as I was trying to pee. And he couldn’t. He exploded with laughter and left without peeing. I don’t know what the other people thought.

Now the play. Well, it was rather good in a fairly conventional, predictable way. An Ulster public-school as a paradigm of Ulster’s difficulties, and their effects on the sensitive boy. He’s also tortured by his sexual beginnings, and there is a graphic and well-presented affair between him and his closest friend, although his real obsession is with the girl next door. Oddly the notices didn’t mention the homosexual content, tho’ I have seldom seen so well presented a straight boy tormented by lust turning to his best friend because he can’t have a girl. Acting decidedly good. Apart from the usual difficulty of fifteen year olds and sixteen year olds being played by actors in their twenties – idiotically they left in a passage of dialogue, while the main boy was trying on his Hamlet trunks, for the matron going on and on about your thick legs and great big feet, whereas the actor had strong legs and quite ordinary feet.

This main actor Michael Grandage gave a performance of exceptional balance. He took the strain of the very centre of the play without any recourse to all the usual artificial injections of excitement (those sudden spontaneously unspontaneous exciting (sic) sudden shouts and ‘explosions of vitality’ and other uninteresting things.) He is to be watched. The other main actor, his friend, was afflicted by the exciting shout, but was otherwise not bad, John Elmes, who, I see in the programme played Maurice in Maurice. Odd, I thought it was James Wylie, who used to share that terrible basement flat with Crispin Redman. I’m glad it isn’t him, because he was so very obviously on the make.

A very small house. We came back here, as I’d said let’s just have a mild evening without any ‘entertaining’. There was a bit of smoked salmon and some sausages and bacon and jerseys. I talked too much about the past, Glynn Cooper etc. I must stop it. I gave him the old shorts, he tried them on. He has the most beautiful fair slightly tanned skin. What a pity you can’t fix people in their youthful beauty. I’m glad the shorts have found a good home – 30” waist and I wore them without discomfort as recently as that dinner in the garden with him.

He went off with a copy of Scoop I’d brought him, and a bundle of books from the pile in the hall.

Thursday May 28 1987

Hung over. I still cannot see the point of my life.

Friday May 29 1987 Saturday May 30 1987

Not drunk when I wrote the above, as, apart from anything else, I have to be quite sure I am digestively all right to go to the dentist. My worst fear is choking, and even worse, would be choking to be sick.

Big ‘apartment’ in a big block just by Marble Arch. I daresay it was thought in its time to be part of the reaction against ‘modernism’, as it might be the Phoenix Theatre. All cream, bevelled cornices. In the waiting hall, all the usual unreadable magazines – it’s odd that there were all the usual mags, various staff walked through, – two of whom carried casual clothes into an inner room and came out un-invested with the mystery of a white coat. Calls of ‘Bye, Marie’, ‘Cheers Bill’, ‘Have a good weekend’, as they marched out. My appointment was for 5.0, – it was now 5.20, a hope bounded in my breast that I could stamp out in a huff at ‘being seen so late when I have a production conference at…’ However, the dead silence was broken by the unmistakable murmur of the dismissal of a patient. A small neat smiling man came and said Mr Mackay. I took to him immediately because he was mild. He reminded me of Ken. And so it proved, he was sensitive, bright and listened to what I wanted and needed. He explained to me how to brush my teeth for the state they’re in, in a way to make me do it instead of resisting it. So he let me go about quarter past six.

Went straight to him. He was cooking, in bare feet, with that closed look on his face which I have long come to recognise as needing more or less silence. We had necessary talk, about the drink and so on. (Again I wonder if he knows how immensely put off people must be when he’s like this – does he do it to anyone else? I’ve never seen him do it, but then he never does it to me unless we’re alone, so I may never know!) When I’d got back from the off-licence, we were more or less silent for the next hour or so. Yes, hour. Graham W. was to come at 7. He actually arrived at 8.45, after we’d eventually had our first course, and a call to his home, and the parents had rung back to say, do get him to ring...

I must just go on a little longer, to try and analyse. Of course it’s partly that ‘if-I-have- nothing- to-say-I-will-say-nothing.’ D. after all. His brooding silence suggesting deep disapproval, may simply be imagined by me because of my susceptibility to him. For, halfway through the hour, he answered the television-set quite brightly, so I took my cue from that!

Of course, it was intolerable G.W. being so late, and we imagined anything. Of course it was just a breakdown. So he was very cast down, but soon recovered. (Oh, it was avocado, chicken casserole, cauliflower with cheese sauce, spring cabbage, carrots and new pots. When we got on to the show, Graham had a lot of praise, and a lot of vivid and valuable suggestions, all of which we greeted with ‘oh, god, why hadn’t we thought of that.’ A very unusual reaction.

Graham is small all over, delicately made, old-fashioned looking, a forties man - and guess what, is father is 70 and his mother 58, – good-looking in that style, small neat features neatly growing black hair. His clothes are colourful fifties, always a tie. The evening was a great success, I thought. On every level, Graham is intelligent and confident. All his suggestions were valuable. We were both thrilled, and I was purged, to have someone at last taking it seriously.

The evening had a comic ending. G.W. offered to drive me home as he lives in Camberley, and has to go west anyway. He said he didn’t know London and he doesn’t. When I found we were in the City! I knew it was serious. The one-ways need great familiarity, and it is not until you lose your way in London, that you realise how badly it is signposted. Wherever we turned in the city, every sign said Shoreditch and Hackney, never Fleet Street. Eventually we were in a one-way system so that we had to go over Blackfriars? Br. and before you could look round, we were at Clapham! and getting lost even on the Wandsworth Road. We got home at 2.30. That poor boy had to drive to Camberley, and go to a wedding today! Youth, youth. I was pleased with the whole thing.

Tired today more than hung over, so tired that I thought I was ill. And remembered that the dentist strings me up, and staying up till that late – the drive back was hardly relaxing – cannot be undertaken so lightly and recovery expected so quickly at 60. There is nobody like him, he was so with me over the show. And so merry. Another element of his silence at first, may have been tiredness. After he’d finished the cooking, when we weren’t exactly worrying about Graham, he said he was going to have a lie-down. He’d had to get up early for the postman. Why? He’d hardly settled when the ‘phone rang. No, not Graham, Glynn. He’s back at his cottage. I saw K wince at the injury; when you know someone as well as he knows Glynn, - he must know G’s body as well as he knows his own, – he felt the break in his own leg. Four breaks in the tibia and two in the fibula. I introduced a tiny note of disquiet purposefully, by throwing away that his difficulties might start when the plaster was removed.

The last interest of the evening was a letter of Sharron’s that I read. Now how awful that sounds! I wonder if he would ever believe - or most of his generation – that it is possible to read a short letter in one glance, without meaning to, when it is someone who reads as much and as quick as I do. I was clearing up the room a bit, only to his standards, not my own – and there was the note she left him on Tuesday. I was amazed. It was abject. Kevin, no dear. She was very sorry that she was so tired she’d stayed. She did hope it wouldn’t be inconvenient. Then some phrase like I absolutely promise, no, not that, an adverb and verb, (it definitely was ‘promise’), that she wouldn’t disturb his time with me. I mean, I’m delighted that she is so respectful in one way, but amazed that the note was not more powerfully redolent of intimacy.

Altogether, I wonder whether my instinct is right, with her staying too long perhaps... Or just a fading.

Later. 12.10 a.m.

Recovered enough to go to see Blier’s Tenue de Soirees with Repardien at the Gate. Passed the time fairly agreeably, but didn’t come off in the end. I wasn’t unhappy, as before, but life is always colourless without him. But how…? If he were still here, we would – no, I would have killed him. Back here, a message on the machine from Giles’ sister Clare, ‘upstairs’. ‘I want a tape–recorder, and I thought you might have one.’ I was just about to have my bath and listen to Karen Allen’s film programme, so did so. Then took it up to her – dizzy, ‘do come up later and have a coffee, I’m staying here the night.’ Then at 10.30, ‘I can see your shadow Angus. Here’s the thing, I didn’t use it. I find I want two, to record from one to the other! Hm. Silly. If only I weren’t so lonely.

Sunday May 31 1987

Rang him yesterday to get his notes on Fri. night. ‘I’m working on something, can I ring you tomorrow?’ Good, I thought he’d be sure to be out.

Today Giles’ sister, Claire, rang down could she record something off a video? I suddenly realised Giles has neither a TV or a video. He must work hard! Just as she arrived, K rang. He had three or four notes he’d taken down and we summed up the evening well. I was glad Claire heard it all, as it gave more weight to me kicking her out as soon as possible. The video was about a false hair process – a direct personal insult! I must say on the evidence of this video, it doesn’t look bad. You saw him swimming – top view of wet crown – playing squash and so on. But then he had a great bush of curly reddish hair. No hairlines in sight.

Later.

D’s cry ‘She’s so young’, when we went to the revival of ‘Ninotchka’ in 1955 is echoed more and more as time goes by. We have the unique experience of being the first generation to watch our idols getting younger and younger. Here, Ingrid 30 years before I met her, in her 20’s, 1945. Spellbound. And it will get odder. K may glimpse one of my tiny bits years before I met him when he’s 80.

Cleaned the loo and bathroom thoroughly. At last. The first time I realised that vertical surfaces could also become dirty, was one of the more melancholy days of my life. Many years ago now!

Monday June 1 1987

That ache came back in my big molar on the left top. But I’ve had it thirty years ago, and it’s no worse so what?

To lunch with John N. How quickly it went! The place was suddenly full of tourists. I did all at once wish I’d been abroad more, because the people in the queue in front of us were so selfish and went on pointing and choosing and complaining. Later John said so fervently, ‘I couldn’t live anywhere but London.’ He’s travelled and come to the same conclusion as I have without travelling at all! Simon is now going to take an M.A. ‘He’ll be free of exams 1989.’ Then he’ll do something else to keep everyone at arm’s length. ! Shopped, and home to clean. George R. arrived. He’s very restful – he’s me 20 years ago, no, more, ago. But it’s comforting to talk to him, knowing he picks up every reference and I clear up the flat, because he’s spoilt by his wife. Nancie’s brother died, and the other sister was a wreck. Not Nancie. ‘Well’, said George. ‘Nancie’s much more phlegmatic.’ Oh, people don’t realise what they’re saying! George hates Nancie for being phlegmatic.

So he went off to see Six Characters. Oh, rang K at 12.0 to say I’d see him at 5.30 instead of 4.0 on Wed. ‘cos that’s all the time we needed, and so he could have a proper working afternoon. Sharron answered. Yes, I do envy the time she spends with him, because I have less of it, - I don’t mean less of him, though I do, but less time altogether. That’s why youth and etc….. She has more time altogether.

George came back from Six Characters. Pretty terrible obviously. The play within a play was Hamlet!

Heavens. Six Ch. is not an affair to be tampered with, as it hardly exists any more as it is. A little girl called Lesley Sharp overparted. Well, who is she? Oh K.

Tuesday June 2 1987

Forgot to say that I found five or six LP’s in the music room from Music House. Each category had a different coloured sleeve. I’ll list the categories and a few titles.

Industry

Jazz Animation Guidelines Power Game Bold Horizons Challenger

Atmosphere

Silent Witness Haze Sun Dance Reverie Reflections

Entertainment

Pacemaker Roller Coaster Week Ahead Speedway Going for Gold Saturday Arena

He said he’d called Tunnel of Trees that because it was ‘Atmosphere’. Aaron put it under Industry. I can’t remember what it or the other pieces are now called. I must ask him. Oh, dear, what would he have said that first year if I’d told him to go to something like Music House? Rain all day. George here. Out most of the time, amusing raconteurs.

Worked this afternoon, wrote about ten new pages and re-arrangements. But the hurdles are the new fantasy and the new member. The creative part, alas. How good he is to me, how good.

DIARY CONTAINS NEWSPAPER CUTTING ABOUT WEATHER, MENTIONING 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF ‘THE GREAT STORM OF OCTOBER 1987’.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 78

June 3 1987 – July 10 1987.

Wednesday June 3 1987

I was sick of the election before it began. Writing in XX. And at the Ayckbourn musical, I was sick of it after half an hour because I saw how long it would take. Joe S. sings a great deal better than I expected. Acting standard goodish for fringe. A boy called Christopher Downing excellent, dry, and witty. Joe is not relaxed enough, even physically. Stands as if he’d still got the coat hanger in his jacket and forces his lyrics a bit. Not because he’s got bad timing, but because he’s not relaxed. Isn’t it funny to think that we thought someone was only not relaxed because he’d not had enough sex. Well …..

Thursday June 4 1987

Yes the most awful thing about it was the visible inevitability, the regularity of pace. Even the snatches of numbers came more or less after a scene a similar length to the scene before. As all scenes were repeated in different combinations. When the lights went up on the second half and you knew you had to go through all the four men, and see the same scenes from their angle, how one’s heart sank. Yes, Joe needs basic relaxation. I’ll see if he wants lunch before, or after the play closes. It was also 20 mins longer than Joe had said, which didn’t help. While we were having our pre-theatre drink in a plain pub with a pool table, K had gone to Le Bistroquet next door, and a restaurant of some repute - Tim Out guide a bit of a rave etc. – and booked a table. I should say he was looking fairly scruffy, hair untidy and more than designer stubble, that dark grey suit jacket over a t-shirt which makes him look destitute. So we went round quickly to see Joe – K was looking a bit more creased at the edges having had five games of pool, stopped and then waited the aforesaid 20 mins, – we said nothing but truth to Joe and to the restaurant. He went in ahead of me, and she was a bit off-hand. Then I appeared and the manager moved forward and said ‘I will find you a really nice table.’ K said I’d swung it. Disgusting. And the restaurant was rather unsatisfactory. K wanted to go there again because he and Sharron went there and were given a £45 bill for a £22 bill and had to make a fuss to get it put right. The waiting tonight was surly and slapdash, the food was only tolerable. However, we only cared in a conscientious way; we had a good talk about the play, about which we entirely agreed. The evening was crowned by Alan Bennett coming up and chatting. Oh, K was thrilled, went bright pink as usual. Alan said, ‘Well, ring up’ So I will.

When I arrived at the flat originally to go through the new pages, he was in a t-shirt and his long johns for some reason. He was in slightly surly and impatient mood, and at one point said ‘I’ve already explained why. How thick can you get?’ in real impatience, so that I felt grey and like giving up for the moment. It is certainly at first that he’s often impatient, but it’s certainly been helped by me deliberately remaining silent when I first arrive and letting him start any conversation there may be. For instance, he was washing up when I arrived and just said Hello. I said nothing and nor did he until he’d finished five or ten minutes later. I wonder what it is, is it embarrassment at possible effusive greetings? It is at first impossible to tell whether he’s in a mood, or just silent! When we did the work he wasn’t easy. I don’t really blame him. Later, when we’d decided to go back to the original ending – after all that work! – we were chatting and he said he’d given Sharron a tape of one of the new library tracks, tho’ he hadn’t given it to me, when he played it to me last week. He saw my face change and said ‘Are you cut to the heart?’ because he knew I was. He explained that it wasn’t finished when I heard it. And that really made it all right.

On the very rare occasions when I have betrayed anything approaching jealousy of his girlfriends, or rather competing for his attention, or whatever, he has always reacted violently. (Which he might, in another mood, have done yesterday) so violently that it suggests he very much doesn’t want to be put in the position to choose, (and no wonder,) so violently that I think he’s almost frightened that he mightn’t choose her. By ‘violent’ I mean of course ‘strong’.

We went back to the flat for a drop of whisky. I was down by this time, what with the musical and Alan B and my lost world, and said I didn’t know where there was an audience for me, even if I got a job. He said ‘But I don’t know where the audience is, if at all, for the music I want to write.’ I suppose it shouldn’t have, but it cheered me up.

He gave me a big hug and stood in the light of the doorway until my taxi drove off.

Friday June 5 1987

Last night, at about 10.30, Giles rang down and said ‘I’ve just come in and I’m going out for a bite to eat – come with me.’ I hummed and hawed a bit as I’d had my coffee an hour before. But I went because it was so easy. We went to the Fulham Boulevard Café, all bright colours and tubular furniture, pretty loud rock music, but I like that now if I don’t want a serious talk, and as usual I was the oldest person by twenty years. Giles ordered a club sandwich, about the size of four ordinary sandwiches. I had a chocolate mousse, as the taste of my coffee was still in my mouth. Then I had a large scotch, then another. Then I thought I felt hungry and had some smoked salmon and scrambled egg and more scotch and felt more or less all right today! Not bad. Can’t remember a thing we said.

A drunk youngish man sitting at the counter, looked as if he head was on the wrong way round, as the back of his jacket was a highly coloured shirt at shoulder level, and then the waist and flies and pockets of a pair of jeans in three dimensions as it were, down to the waist. It was worth the trip just to see him walk to the loo.

This afternoon to Selfridges and an awful film during which I ate two sandwiches. Empty evening, but determined to make my mind up yet again not to be depressed.

Later.

Saw a comedian on Wogan called Stephen Reiss? Rice? He began ‘I dreamt last night that all the babies prevented by the pill turned up. They were mad,’ And again, ‘Came home very late. It was the next night.’ Two mins on Wogan is one thing, a whole movie’s another. But we’ll see.

Message from Malk on the machine. He’s back. There is absolutely no point in doing anything about his time in South Africa, except agree.

Saturday June 6 1987

Writing in Cannon Cinema, Tottenham Court Rd., a cinema of which I have nothing but happy memories and associations. I rang him round one, to say I wouldn’t come up for a drink as I’d said I would, before his dinner with Glynn and Sarah.

Oh, I forgot to record that, when Glynn rang on the Graham Wynne night, K said as they were at Swindon, why didn’t they come to dinner on Saturday, and the last words were, ‘I’ll keep Saturday free.’ So on Wed., partly as a drunken caprice but mainly because I just couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing him till next Wed. when we’ve half-arranged our trip to Cambridge, I said I’d like to see Glynn, and that I’d arrange another engagement to go on to after a half hour drink.

I couldn’t arrange anything, but I made a huge effort to keep any hint of sour grapes out of my voice and said I wouldn’t come. He said he hadn’t heard from them, so it was all loose. Sharron didn’t want to come at all, but she was coming, though not until 8.0. I left it that I might come, and then he rang back. (I cannot get used yet to his thoughtfulness, looking into my life and changing it!) He said he and Sharron had seen a film Desert Bloom last night and thought it was ‘lovely’ and I must see it. So why didn’t I go to that? The film was at 9.0ish with 20 mins of ‘50’s type adverts. ‘Oh’, I said, ‘I don’t like to go to Sat night movies, I’ll go to the 3.40, and come on to you after. ‘All right, but I’d feel so naff sending you away without any dinner. So see the film and ring up when you come out and see what’s happening. I still haven’t heard from them, and there’s no answer from their number.’

So here I am waiting out the 20 mins 50’s adverts.

Sunday June 7 1987

It was a lovely successful evening. I saw the film – it was a tender and powerful film, quite excellently acted. I was glad he’d told me to see it. I rang him at about 6.0 and he still hadn’t heard from them. I said I was up here, so I’d come round anyway. ‘Yes, we can have a couple of hours together. Five round the table would be a bit of a crowd.’ ‘It’s all right’, I said. (But of course my previous behaviour has altered him!) I rang back to say could I bring anything? ‘No’, rather offhand. ‘Yes, you could bring another bottle of white wine.’ Dear little thing.

So I got there in the hideous north-east wind that is still blowing. He was cooking and as mild as milk. We discussed the film, and as usual saw eye to eye. He told me they’d gone to have something to eat afterwards. ‘There’s a Greek place on the corner of Percy St and Charlotte St. It looks like a caff, but it’s really good and cheap. And when I tell you they asked us to move to another table after we’d started our starter, and I still say it’s good, you see? We had taramasalata and kebab – main courses, £3.90 or so – and two coffees, - the wine was £5, the wine is a bit steep, but the whole bill was £15. When we came out of the film, Sharron said Isn’t it nice to come out of a film and not think ‘Bang goes another £3.50 for a rotten film.’ She had said ‘Let’s go to a film.’ They’d been staying in, trying to save money. He can pay his mortgage this month and probably his bills, too. Oddly I’d peered into that very restaurant and thought it looked all right, on my way to the cinema.

Ge rang Glynn etc. again, and even rang Glynn’s father in Liverpool to see if he knew what they were doing! Because they were going to the Prince’s Trust concert. I looked in Time Out and it was Sat. night, but then it turned out there was one on Friday as well, with musicians that Glynn would like more than Saty’s!

Sharron arrived. She told me her final show is July 3 – ‘you’re invited’ – and she leaves on July 10. That’ll be interesting, as it’ll be a difference to their relationship, with no real shape to her day. I suppose. She’s got into some sort of studio somewhere, I must get her to tell me again, so as to know the exact conditions. It’s not too far out, anyway. K told her my dinner was still hanging in the balance, as G and S might still come. Chris Parsons was coming round to collect the usual, and arrived about now, with his father. No wonder K enjoyed those Sunday dinners, he’s the dearest little man. It was 8.30, and we were on wine, but he had tea and Chris had Perrier. I talked to him most and we had a rapport being the same age. It was lovely. They left, after exactly the right length of time, and we decided to have dinner. I’d just put the first mouthful of chicken in my mouth, and Sharron looked out of the window, and said ‘Isn’t that them?’ I was really taken in, as I’d half-forgotten they were coming. He’d done four vegs again. I must try and find a moment to tell him that it’s off- putting to have so much on the table. By this time, he said he was tight. We talked of Sarah, and I said again how unusual she was in looking so bright and humorous and being so empty and dim. To my surprise and part dismay, she said she didn’t like him at all either, ‘he’s a chauvinist’, he’d said something degrading to her. Hm, I think Glynn ought to stay in K’s life, like, one or two lunches a year for old times’ sake. There’s no need for her to slag him off. K sees his faults quite clearly, she doesn’t need to make points about him. And I must register that, at the moment, I think she’s being too negative on most fronts. I wonder if that’s had an effect on him? I think not. At least she doesn’t express criticism of me. Yes, I see, that note in her voice that I don’t like, is the negative note. He’d no more scotch, so I said I’d go. K: ‘It’s quite early, shall we run him back?’ Sweet. Well, it is her car. So we came back here. I took them straight out into the garden and showed them various things – I’d offered her D’s mother’s wedding ring, but she wouldn’t have it, because it’s a period ring and oughtn’t to be broken up – well, it’s just that gold is so expensive and she did take a string of rather uncultured pears, so that was all right.

He was so sweet and open – tight! not specially – and under and through and over this whole time, with the garden and him getting the drinks and the jewellery and the fans and so on, shot through was the knowledge that everything we were looking at and discussing is his, too. When I put the wedding ring back in the box, I said ‘Well, what would you do with it?’ ‘cos he’d said You can’t sell it, and I looked at him and he looked at me, knowing that he would have to do something with it. Yes, she does find fault a bit too much. Still, that’s youth. He kissed me most affectionately when he left.

But what I’ll mainly carry away is his closeness all night, especially when he was showing me the marked Time Out, and five films perhaps possible, but he was marking them for us well, ‘We ought to go to that about computers ‘cos of MY’ and the rest. he mentioned because we can go there after Tott. Court Rd.

Having him here like that is very precious to me, him looking at me knowing it’s all his one day.

Quiet day today. Tranquil. He rang to say he isn’t playing in the gig – ‘somebody forgot to order the organ’ so I’m missing nothing. Marvellous.

Monday June 8 1987

Went to my Restart interview, but there was a strike so it was put off. So I can’t restart till the 22nd!

Nicola and Mike P to dinner tonight. A great success to me tho’ they are more jockeying for position then they were with each other. They are both considerable young people, still hampered by bits of the chrysalis case. I think they are a pair possibly. I must see her alone. So he didn’t ring up of course, because he didn’t play. Of course not. I know. One more day, however, added to those days on which I haven’t spoken to him.

Tuesday June 9 1987

In Wine Gallery, waiting for Malk. Odd. In this familiar place and by one of those familiar coincidences, had a letter from Judith Harte! Offering a S.D. script with D’s notes and alterations. Obviously D’s script was given to her as D’s and Yvonne’s understudy. Malk is one of the few people who would know who I meant. And so she wrote so that the letter should arrive the morning I was seeing M. for the first time for how long? A year? As always when I’m with him, his warmth and common sense and good feeling outweigh his lack of intellectual grasp and - well, just ignorance. I see, at one and the same moment, his simplicity and his blinkered views. No wonder he was such a success in the provinces. Like Reggie, he cannot quite believe in the avant-garde, or any genuine change of theatrical fashion – let alone know about it! Deep down he believes that everything can be brought to the standards he formed as a young actor. If they had been broad enough, it would work. So, although I enjoy his company much, we both know, (or at least I know and he senses it - there is a gaping chasm between us which we can’t bridge, and into which we remain determined not to push each other.)

Back home found a cheque from TSB. £1237. Very stimulating. Rang K about Cambridge. He was about at his most off-hand. The weather has been very poor, chilly, windy and wet. But the forecast is better for tomorrow, and, if it’s true, might be ideal, as not attracting so many tourists whilst not being hopeless. ‘I don’t want to go in this weather’, in that throwaway tone of rebuke, as it seems. I said had he heard from Claire. ‘No’. ‘Can I write to her?’ ‘No.’ He said we’d meet in the evening. I was boiled up for a bit - apart from anything else, there’s never any need to take that tone with me, why can’t he say ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’d be much fun going in this weather.’

The only real pain is that he can give up 5 hours in my company so easily.

Later.

Rang about 11.0 to say did I really want to go, and I’d sounded ‘not sure’. ! Well of course he felt guilty, poor little boy. I’ve had a scotch too many. Oh dear I’ll feel funny in the train tomorrow. Not if he’s there – he makes everything all right – worth it.

Wednesday June 10 1987

12.0.

He’s gone. It was wonderful. Eerie. Extraordinary. I’ll write tomorrow. There’s nobody like him. Or Cambridge.

Thursday June 11 1987

Election day. Huh!

Last night he said ‘When’s the train?’ ‘12.05.’ ‘I suppose you want to meet at 11.30?’ I thought he was teasing me, because I like to be punctual, but he was there before me! Not looking his best, but who cares? He always looks his best to me. He wanted some music mags for the train, equipment mags I mean. ‘I haven’t any money, I’ve paid my mortgage and all my bills.’ So I gave him £10 and he rummaged happily in W.H. Smiths. ‘Can’t get them in Holloway.’ On the train – not first class, as it would be £8.50 second, and £22 first, as there’s no 1st class day-return. I did feel a bit choky and stifled, and yet it went off so much quicker. He read his mags and kept exclaiming on how fast things were moving. Even with his vision, he said ‘I don’t believe it’, as what cost £3000 last year costs £600, this! I started to look out of the window almost nervously, but I had forgotten there are no landmarks from the train.

We took a rather cheeky taxi-driver, - the rank in a sea of bikes, ‘they all need ‘oiling’, – to the Eagle. Almost totally unchanged, – he was delighted with it. There are all the names written in smoke on the ceiling, the courtyard, the pretty roofs. Only difference, there’s plenty of drink! He was delighted with the beer, too, Double X. Cold beef and salad, his favourite. We walked across the market place, past the Arts Theatre, where the Footlights Revue was playing! and I thought with horror of those last perfervid fantasy weeks, that so many round me must at that moment, be living.

We went up Sidney St. ‘Oh, there’s W Eaden Lilley - oh, that was the Dorothy café where we had our dances.’ We looked in at Sidney Sussex, at the peak of it’s beauty; unlike many courts, there are flower beds under the wall, roses, fuchsia groaning with blossom. I said Have you heard of Pepys? He had. So we walked into Magdalen and I said ‘That’s where the diary is.’

Down St. John’s St., and then, as he nearly walked past, it’s so narrow, I said ‘Kevin’ and pointed upwards at the bright coat of arms. ‘A board said ‘College closed.’ I darted in to the porter’s lodge, and said ‘I’m just down for the day, and want to show him my rooms.’ ‘We haven’t seen you.’

Now I’m not going to describe the buildings or the scenery or the gardens – all better rather than worse kept, if anything –, there are the guide-books for that. It certainly is a strange place for nostalgia, as so little has, or can, changed. They had put glass doors at the bottom of the New Court staircase, which was always a howling ice box. ‘Molly coddling’, I said as we pushed through. We had a wee in the showers, not long vacated after games or rowing, the familiar warm damp wood smell.

We looked into my first rooms in Chapel Court. ‘It’s so big, when I think of my little hole at Hartley Hall.’ We could see the kitchen.

Out on to the Backs, croquet. To my surprise the little iron bridge leading to Trinity Backs was closed, as if at night. We went back round through Trinity – a big party of tourists with guide – we avoided them. But the dining hall was locked – which I’d never known before. And so it went on, King’s alas was closed, to be the climax. I suppose they have had to retreat from the openness because of the weight of tourists.

But it had no possibility of spoiling the day. Contrary to the forecast it didn’t rain, there was only the lightest breeze; on the way to Magdalen he’d seen the punts and boats for hire ‘oh we must’… So we did; sitting opposite him, watching him row, going past my old rooms, under the Bridge Sighs: laughing at the (many) Chinese and Japanese going round in circles, tittering, arriving opposite King’s. He rows quite well, and can control the boat. But even with him, I felt nervous.

We had gone for tea at the Copper Kettle, still there, - I looked at the groups of undergraduates as if I were in another dimension. The only reality was him.

He was deeply affected. When I said that to live amid such beauty for three years, just to look at Second Court helped, or the Wren Library, just as looking at hideous ribbon development and high-rise blocks doesn’t help, he saw completely that I wasn’t talking socially, but artistically.

We had another drink at the Eagle – ‘I want another pint of that great beer.’ He said, ‘I think I can see what it was like for you.’

We caught the train back about 6.0. Took an hour this time. He’d suggested going to Chez Claudie. Good. I’d wanted to go somewhere new for him, and didn’t think of it. Seeing it sober and through his eyes and with one oven not working!, we neither of us thought much of it. ‘I thought it was going to be cheap.’

It is difficult to catch the dream-like quality of the day, bringing two ends of my life triumphantly together. We discussed the bank loan which the Nat West has turned down, so he’s made an appointment at Lloyds for Friday. Back here I gave him £100 out of the TSB money so that his account can be decently in credit for Friday. He went off for the last tube. A long long hug. I never thought we would get as close as today shows me we have.

Tonight I went to see the two plays Steven Dykes is in at the Finboro’ Arms. Didn’t care for either of them much and Steven D. is listening to his voice too much. Resonating triumphantly through your nose is physically satisfying to you, not always so much to the audience. And he’s just too loud for such a small place. The Berkoff is the usual over- written torrent of abuse and frustration and hate, poor chap. Girl good. Mild, excellent well produced voice. The Miller needed every device of style and design of clothes and hair and make-up, and distinction, to make it work. It needs a continual play of wit and irony over its surface. It got from Steve much the same rather blunt-ended treatment that he gave the Berkoff. He must soon get a real director. And real competition! He won’t like that. The girl in the second, very good-looing, rather obviously attractive, (Kate O’Mara etc.) - she was all right, but like Kat and Moira R she got better notices than she deserved because of her looks. She was fairly ordinary, really.

Went with dear Mike Parsons. After I wanted to get home to tape the Spitting Images Election Special. (Oh, I forgot to say that K said at Camb. that he was sort of having an election night party. And I’d sort of said we’d go. But I realised quite early on that it wouldn’t be a good idea. By the time we’d eaten and got over there, it’d mean a taxi back and on an election night, like a Bank Holiday or whatever, with all the election parties, it might be so difficult to get one. So I said no. Amazing. But I wanted to watch it as it were, with him.) So, after one drink, I left, partly glad to avoid having to talk about it. To my amazement, (Steven had been having notes) M. came home half an hour later, not having seen Steven D. either. Very rude not to come down for a second and say ‘Can’t come down yet’ etc.

Back here, Giles rang down to say could he come down with some beer and watch the election. Lovely. So I had my own party with no trouble. Spitting Images was v. funny. Possibly funnier to me because I have only seen it once or twice: the Neil Kinnock lost in an orgasmic speech above which periodic cries of ‘nurses’ were the only things audible.

Oh, Mrs Thatcher got in again. How little I understand politics. Of course, I cringe from Neil Kinnock’s manners and speech and mess. But then I can’t stand Mrs Thatcher either. The Alliance? But they’ve failed. I voted Green.

Friday June 12 1987

Took Prim out to lunch at the Wine Gallery. She arrived in her disabled taxi, (only disabled in its availability) brought me some borrowed books back and off we went. She seemed surprised that she had to pay the full price, but as she stood, fiddling with her purse, she suddenly seemed a frail little old lady.

Over lunch, she told me two suspect things. ‘Michael Barrington is desperately ill. He was rehearsing See How they Run and collapsed with a collapsed lung.’ (She didn’t notice the repetition.) He had to leave the production. She gave me the impression that it was quite recent, and that he was dying. And Mary Llew. ‘very bad with her chest. The thing that worries me is that she said Prim, I don’t know how many pills I’ve taken.’ Not very subtle implication that she might make a suicide attempt. Poor Prim. Her overwhelming need to impress, no, rather, her insecurity, her lack of belief in her own self being interesting enough to hold attention without some sensational disclosure, simply results in none of us believing a word she says, and therefore, I suppose, if she knows at all what she’s doing, it will simply underscore her lack of self-belief.

Bought a new pair of proper shoes, £94.95. Awful. Last time they were £5- something.

Rang K 6.30 to say I’d got Roy – he rang this afternoon - and that he was free to come on Thursday. So we arranged that. ‘How were the plays?’ ‘Complicated. I’ll tell you on Monday’. ‘What’s happening on Monday?’ ‘We’re meeting.’ He’d written all these arrangements down on his pad at Cambridge, in that dear way he has, and now he’s forgotten! No, he just said, ‘Oh I haven’t looked at all that yet.’ ! ‘I don’t think I can manage Monday after all. I think I’m doing some recording for Donald, the horn player, and Stan, too.’ ‘All right, that’s all right. How did your Lloyd’s Bank interview go?’ ‘I was two hours late, or rather, I’d put 2.30 in my diary, and it was 12.30.’ Oh, dear, another bank-manager put off.

Later.

Roy M. came round for ¾ of an hour on his way to Tale of Two Cities. Curiously detached about MY but will come on Thursday. Short hair clipped to the skull again, and a suit and tie. So rang K at 10.45 to say it was fixed. To find him saying that Monday was all right. ‘But’, repressively, ‘I don’t want it to be a long evening.’ ! Sweet.

Saturday June 13 1987

Two interesting apercus. Over lunch at Cambridge, I said to him, ‘I think Sharron was rather hard on Glynn.’ And expanded on that a little. Very interestingly he replied, ‘Yes, she is hard on people.’ Neither defensively, nor resentfully, not resisting nor defending, neither argued with me or himself. How amazingly subtle he is, that he could say that so absolutely down the middle of the knife edge line and leave even me not knowing whether he thinks her hardness is justified or her judgments wrong or whatever. Later on when we were talking of her future, and the studio that she can use for quite a small sum a week – in Islington, of course, near him, wouldn’t you know? – he said how small her outgoings were. the digs £5, and I think the studio the same – well, she’s Jewish, they are good at all that – but he said about her room and digs, ‘It’s really grotty, like a squat.’ So that’s why he hasn’t been there much of late.

Sunday June 14 1987

Today it’s five years since he arrived to live here. The most testing five years of my life.

Later.

Sweet evening with Paul R. Indifferent Jane Fonda film Pelican. Slow service. Going off fast. He touches me, because he is happy with his parents, and yet needs me. Confided in me how Steve Colson is getting on his nerves, ‘perhaps we see too much of one another.’ Perhaps, but perhaps S.C. is rather irritating. He is. And Paul is so trusting. Stayed. Gave him blue shirt that came back by mistake from the laundry!

Tried to write and re-write MY. Could do nothing

Monday June 15 1987

Simon rang, ‘meet me at BBC, Portland Place, we’ll go to Piaf.’

Bustled out through the rather sinking ship atmosphere of the foyer, where they are dismantling the BBC shop. They’ve sold the Langham, and it’s rumoured they’re going to sell this as well. I think it would be very foolish to sell this totem building. He’d got a beard again and put on weight again and looked like himself two years ago. I was enveloped in his big warm personality again – I have missed him, and yes, the two shows are on for K. as well as Freud, Geniuses by Jonathon Reynolds and Shirley Valentine by Willie Russell. The first a play about a screen writer, as it might be, attempting to get Apocalypse Now on. He says he’s been pushing it for two years, and all his contemporaries, Denis Lawson etc. have turned it down, because perhaps the star part isn’t starry enough to shine against a Simon Callow prod. Well, perhaps. But it is suspicious that he hasn’t shown it to me. He said he had, and I didn’t bother to deny it more than once. I would say it’s not a viable play. He says Burt Reynolds is interested in it. I admire B.R. (Take off your toupet and be a real actor!) But I am also chary of, to the outside world, ‘fading. film-stars swamping small plays, with their ‘come-back’ or whatever. Poor B.R. would probably attract quite the wrong audiences.

But there was no disappointment when he came to describe the production. Kundera’s Jacques and his Master translated by S. to Kundera and his wife’s great applause. S. said on a TV chat show, ‘Young American actors find great difficulty with masters and servants. They’re much more at home with Masters and Johnson.’ Now that is not only really witty but really true. Any young American actor understands entirely how to rape a beautiful young girl in the most distressing circumstances. But faced with a crisp order to a servant, he is pretty helpless.

So he started out by making them focus only on the words for the first four weeks of the eight week rehearsal period – they had a budget of quarter of a million dollars, and there are four theatres in the L.A. Theatre, all, presumably with a similar budget. He told them that this sort of play is acted ‘on the voice’, – as all plays of manners, no amount of energy can substitute for the right inflection from the right thought. It much upset them, and after a fortnight, they came to him, and said they couldn’t bear it, it was only a reading. He explained and pleaded and cajoled and inspired, with the result that after the last dress rehearsal, when they’d assumed their clothes with ‘marvellous ease for Americans’, they came to him and told him he’d been right and he had passed on to them a precious secret. I was – we were, much moved, but especially I, as that was not at all the way he talked when I first met him!

Told me the centre was in down-town L.A. a Puerto Rican and Mexican quarter – though now we have to call it Hispanic, apparently, odd – and you ‘fell over’ – drug-mazed bodies on every pavement. The tall blond Scandinavian designer went for a breather round the block at 1.0 a.m. A group of 12 boys dashed from a doorway, tore every pocket from his clothes for the contents, then stripped him naked and left him to find his way back. The keys of the theatre building were in his pocket and all the locks had to be changed, which cost him 1000 dollars. The notices were very good, and he’s been very pleased all round.

‘Piaf’ by the way – ‘where’s it gone?’ – turned out to be called La Vie en Rose. Waitress with little English, coped well with ‘Aperitif?’ But then said ‘You want a menu?’ with such an incredulous inflection, as if it were the last thing one wanted in a restaurant.

George R. had arrived when I got back. Seems to be coming oftener, but I enjoy it. To K’s, again did I mind going there - he was washing-up again, as always, just Hallo, and ten minutes silence. Neither of us wanted to be late, so we went to the fish and chip shop. Olga remembered not only about my commercial again, but about my swimming! We had a mild meal with nothing special about it except that I had been careful not to drink much because of the journey tomorrow, and the simplest sympathy between us. With the result that when I left him a little way down towards the Angel to get the tube, he was saying he would turn off to go and see Jez in the studio round the corner, I felt perhaps more, leaving him for two and a half days, and that I wouldn’t have missed the last minute of his company. Not that I blame him! for not feeling what I feel.

Tuesday June 16 1987

Writing in the train on the way to Taunton. One or two things to catch up on. Simon said he thought Bruno and Matt had fucked, as Bruno came back from an evening with him, ‘and I’m sure he was wearing a pair of Matts briefs.’ How old-world, like a farce! But he said it rather seriously, of course. I think it’s probably rather flattering to him, as he’s the common factor. Also probably vanity comes into it, as they both know the other has an exceptionally large cock. Oh and in reference to that subject, he quoted some camp friend, who, when asked whether he wasn’t frayed to buggery said, ‘In the end, yes.’

Prim rang, with a really wicked couple of items. One, that Michael Barrington was ‘very ill’. ‘He was rehearsing See How They Run at Birmingham, Michael Meacham directing, and he collapsed with a collapsed lung.’ (Strange to think that such a witty woman could have come to the pitch of not noticing that repetition). M.B. had to leave the play three days before prod. and Prim left me with the impression that the position might be desperate. Similarly, she said Mary had her chest very badly, and ‘I offered to take a casserole round’ (as if she could at the moment) ‘and Mary said she was too tired to talk any more. And Angus, what really worried me was that she said she couldn’t remember how many pills she’d taken! How dare she imply a day or two later, a suicide attempt! So I left a message on the B’s machine and sent a letter to M to see if she wanted anything.

Later.

So here I am, in this extremely beautifully positioned house, set in a valley, with only a couple of other cottages. The Quantocks in the distance, a stream in the garden, a thatched farm-house built in a right angle. The inside also beautiful, in a plain way, tho’ not the furniture or its arrangement! This is a strange mixture of the most ordinary suburban stuff – in my pretty room, a ‘suite’ of light oak (imitation) long, low with nasty knobs and vile proportions, for instance, and quite the wrong size for the room - and generally there is no eye whatever for proportion. Were all the furniture good of its kind, it would work, tho’ even then more sense of putting the main pieces of furniture where it must obviously go, and building from there, would be necessary. I suppose the light oak etc. is Hazel’s Bahama suburban coming out, though she has cloaked such suburban accent as she perhaps had, in a rather exaggerated drawled V speech, which is fairly convincing, but drove me mad when we acted together at Cambr. Otherwise the whole place is enchanting.

Geoffrey, her husb. whose house it sort of is – what a strange situation – it’s National Trust, so rented, but Geoffrey is the third generation of the family to live in it, and pay for the repairs, thatching etc. and he was born in the village. I don’t know what class he quite is. He went to Camb. of course, and rose to be Managing Director of K Shoes, which, I suppose, accounts for the cubes of K Shoes boxes everywhere and for his lack of class identity, though on the surface he presents himself as a country dweller and pillar of the rural community. He was on the telephone quite a lot during our session about a house that is being restored and converted in Taunton. I fear his wish to be here is only a retreat from an unsympathetic world. They are both Telegraph readers, and make comically rueful faces over it – ‘It was in the dreaded Observer! ! If only they knew!

Hazel met me at the station, and to my fair amazement, we stopped at a country pub somewhere for lunch. It was quiet and pretty and the beer was good, and the food was, or tasted, like the most mass-produced London pub food. The drive was most beautiful and hazel was a good friend, intelligent, amusing, well-read, despite her narrow views.

We got to the house at about three, and worked, - well. Re-shaping the show, including a narrator. Her only drawback as a collaborator, is that she solves difficulties too quickly and only from a literary point of view.

I gardened later on, clearing a bed of beans. They have their own water, and there’s no problem with baths, so that was good. But the evening nearly ended in disaster, for me, that is. Hazel saw that I had my usual to drink, and dinner was eatable, if scarcely more, so I was at least full. The moment it was finished, they said they were going to go for a drive over the moors. And we did, at once. I don’t know how I wasn’t sick.

Wednesday June 17 1987

Raining. Drove into Minehead. Infinitely dreary. Geoffrey said at lunch how accomplished I was at Cambridge. ‘Why have you never played Hamlet?’ Why indeed? He went on to say ‘I can’t understand how you actor chaps can organise your lives with the uncertainty,’ ‘Really?’ ‘Oh, yes, I like to be able to look ahead.’ ‘Do you?’ ‘Oh yes, I like to be able to budget for repairs five years ahead.’ ‘I see?’

In the evening we went out to dinner! at a hotel in Porlock Weir. It took me back twenty years. I was the only man without a tie. We were served with drinks by a middle-aged man in a grey suit, the extremely polite manager, probably owner, of the hotel. He lives on all these Telegraph readers. Goodish dinner. Open-faced boy as waiter, manager’s son? Good. Geoffrey didn’t remember to pour the wine cos he doesn’t want it.

Oh, in the afternoon I had to be alone, so said I was working, and had a lie down. And a wank. I wonder when last there was….

Thursday June 19 1987

No, no, no.

Friday June 19 1987

Another bad row. Or rather, this time it is all him.

Hazel drove me to Taunton to catch the 3.0 something train, and left. We had had lunch at another pub! Which she said was good. Same again. What low standards the middle class (sic) always has! Poured when I went out to look for a phone box. There was a sign saying phone, but I ran quite a way, and nothing! On Taunton station the computerized indicator – imagine a computer on Taunton station, – said the train was 15 mins late, then 27 mins late, then 42 mins late. Happily the ‘buffet’ – what is it called now – goodness knows, something American – was comfortable and empty. (It was too cold on the platform – this has been a terrible summer.) I sat and read and wrote in this diary. The train was an Intercity Express, and picked up a lot of the lost time. Went straight to K’s. He was cooking. Well, that’s all right. On the way to the station, Hazel had driven me to a trout farm and I’d brought two salmon-trout-sized trout for about £5. More than enough for 3. I’d hoped he’d say ‘Ooh’, but he snapped and snapped, saying ‘Just put them in the sink.’ So that shut me up even more than usual. A silence went on. He broke it by stopping cooking and taking me into the music room and playing me the latest. He always forgets I’m not clairvoyant, and started playing me something without telling me exactly what it was or what stage it was at. When I asked, and mistook it, before ‘listening to it’, so as to be sure to know what I was listening to, he tore my head off really nastily again. I swallowed it because of our professional evening. I’d come with all MY re-writes. The music was horn and keyboards (Sue Bird’s fiancé on the horn), his new song. And I’d said Is this for Music House before hearing it. Well, it might have been! He was sharp because of not associating Music House with his real music.

So Roy arrived. All started well. And then, by the main course, with no talk of MY yet – K launched on one of his hectoring muddled political lectures for which he has no gifts or information whatsoever, – as it wore on, it started to be interwoven with all that nonsense about animal rights, and got also more and more attacking towards me, although I remained till I left, mild and hoping to turn aside his absurdity. (It was not really attacking me personally, but he needs to attack someone he knows he can attack, to state his beleaguered opinions. But oh, oh, it was so exactly the wrong moment for such an irrelevant one-sided argument. Roy and I just wanted it to be over before it had begun.

When it more or less ground to a halt, even Roy said, ‘Well, can you discuss the musical after that?’ It was now 9.30, and I suddenly cracked. He had been more or less uninterruptedly unpleasant to me, I said ‘You are brutal and vulgar and cruel’, grabbed my carrier bags and suitcase and walked out, into the rain. But I only felt angry at the waste of time.

And, of course, he has no conception of me being tired, back from Somerset.

Later.

For the first time I didn’t answer the machine to him. He rang at 10.30, 10.55, and 11.30. He’s never done that before. He knows he was wrong.

Friday June 19 1987

To Joanne David’s today. She is so sweet and has little idea about the programme. I must try and work on it. I find it difficult to work on anything. My will power seems entirely gone. She’s got Peggy A.

Later.

I want to say to him ‘You go beneath your best. You are a great artist. Why do you fall beneath your own standard? Think of your work. Why do you fall below the standard of that?

Saturday June 20 1987

Lunch with Michael and Ba. He is pretty skinny and frail. You feel he has little reserve, but he’s not dying. It’s just he only looks ill – he couldn’t play anyone who wasn’t ill. They and their lodger all commented that I wasn’t wearing a tie. I was in a new pale blue coat and pale blue white striped shirt with pockets, Marks, one of four, two striped and two plain blue.

What a strong feeling I get from them as having been left behind, like Malk only not so much so. I have to pull my punches especially with Ba! But they are dear kind hospitable friends.

Wrote to K. Said it all. That is was entirely his fault. That nobody talked to me like that, mainly because I didn’t deserve it. A letter had come from his bank saying he’s paid in my £100 without identifying his account. Had he an a/c at that branch? Also he’d asked me to take Steve Wilson whose term has just ended, because he’s got five days coming up in the studio and there’s all the preparation for that.

So I included the bank letter, and wrote on it ‘I have dealt with this’, and ‘Steve Wilson has arrived.’ That was my only revenge and I am ashamed that I took even that.

Sunday June 21 1987

A quiet sad day. I don’t want him to know how empty and sad my life is without him. How dreadful to sit like this and fell bitter because I want him to be as desolate as I am. Is that love? I ought to want him to be in the pub or in bed with Sharron or playing and composing.

Monday June 22 1987

What a strange day!

George R arrived at 12.0, and went off to lunch. At two, I went to my Restart interview. Sat on a chair where I could fortunately lean against a pillar. Just as well, as my time was 2.0, but I wasn’t seen until 3.0. Others were twenty mins etc. I finally went downstairs with a nice nothing little woman. I’d hardly sat down before she said ‘I thought I knew that voice, I can’t do anything for you can I?’ And I was out, after an hour’s wait, as quickly as it takes to write this!

On the six o’clock news, Fred Astaire is dead. He is one of the few stars who I really thought was immortal! Because of the perfection.

So Steve W. turned up. Yes, he is too sharp. So much so, that he just doesn’t interest me, nor do his opinions. He is making use of both of us.

Tuesday June 23 1987

The only feeling I felt, or thought I thought, was is he reading my letter now?

Of course he won’t answer it. He wouldn’t stoop that low.

Wednesday June 24 1987

The Dentist again. Bad gums. More expense. Some pain, tho’ little in comparison.

Thursday June 25 1987

K’s first day in studio.

To x-ray place. Oh dear, so expensive, how am I going to pay for all this? Afterwards, wandered down Marylebone High St. Had forgotten how old-world English it is. If a fairly cultivated American found it, he might rhapsodise. There are two or even three places to have ‘morning coffee’ and in the one I went into everyone was English! So in the end, to the Wine Gallery to lunch with Joe Searby. Took all my notes, except for the relaxation one. ‘I think I was relaxed the last week.’ !

Halfway thro’ lunch, a stranglehold round my neck, – Simon. Joined him after Joe left. (Joe should have made some attempt to stay.) S. was sitting at one of the little side-tables with 73 letters typed by his secretary, to be signed. We went back to the flat. He said I can give you till the girls arrive to photograph me for Naked London. When they did, he gave me a dozen more cassettes and the script of Shirley Valentine. I came back to read it. Very funny and touching and accomplished, within the limits of a boulevard play for a star. Glenda Jackson? S. could make her good again perhaps?

Friday June 26 1987

K’s second day in studio and no word. My mother would be 100. So Hazel Holt had said she’d take me out to lunch to meet Tom and his fiancée. Would I book an Italian place on the West side of London ‘cos of driving home. She didn’t come in the car! Pontevecchio seemed a good idea. It’s v. traditional with a lot of waiters and full of well-off people, and not too desperately expensive. I would never go there myself - and it was a bit empty! Tom’s hangdog air is very wearisome, especially as he is so intelligent and witty. These qualities, and his ready laugh, just save him. His fiancée is, as Hazel said, ‘an old-fashioned girl’, in a coat and skirt and white blouse. What she hadn’t said is that she’s an old-fashioned suburban girl. She is, as the photos suggested, plain, very pleasant and shy and I’m sure intelligent too, when she can show it. She holds her knife like a pen and seems quite untutored in the way of restaurants. She ordered spaghetti with clam sauce as her first course and then some fairly similar pasta in a dish with a tomatoey sauce – I forgot what – I presume not realizing it was pasta, too. She had a sip or two of wine. Hazel and I sparkled away – she reacted charmingly, but oh so naïve. Where has she been? Child of old parents? I fear she might irritate me unless she can reveal a bit more. After all, she is reading law, she must have some sharpness of mind.

Back to write some letters, and then off to Covent Garden to meet Mike Parsons at 6.30. A drink at that pub opp. Smith’s. Memories. Very warm. To the Community Centre in Earlham St. (What is a Community Centre? Has my community got one? In which case why haven’t I been asked to join it? This one is a club – you can’t get a drink unless… Usual scruffy air of church hall, youth club etc. The room Dick Bird & Co. were acting in was large, basement, with pillars, a lot of assorted rubbish round the walls, an abandoned bar, rostra, piles of material etc. These days you can’t be sure it isn’t part of the show. But it wasn’t!)

About fifty metal framed chairs set up, facing a paper screen. Show a kind of mad rush through every country in the world after a stolen jewel. Indiana Jones plus. I had been expecting a radical tract. Not at all. Very, very funny, and Dick is unexpectedly – how disgraceful of me – a very witty deadpan actor, as well as writer. Hilary was the innocent abroad, beautifully cast, and can play herself very well. Also unexpectedly, Ian B was doing the lights. All round, it only needs a little more polish to be the most delightful rough thing I’ve ever seen. Infinitely better than 85% of what I’ve seen on the fringe. Alas, it was only seen by Time Out etc. with an audience of 12 year olds, whom they have to play to for their grant. And of course the wit and burlesque and irony didn’t speak to them at all. And nobody seems to have noticed its quality. Back here, after a quick drink.

Roy sat with us! He made it all right with me, said he was so used to…. Called back to him as we left, ‘I don’t suppose you talked much about the musical.’ ‘No’. Mike is a dear boy. I’m very fond of him. I wonder how gifted he is, or not.

Saturday June 27 1987

K’s third day in studio, and still no word.

George, by the way, met Steve W. I was slightly concerned that they mightn’t get on. Then I thought I am a fool. George is a don and has been dealing with students for 35 years.

So. At one point I said to Steve, ‘How’s your love life?’ He said, ‘Well, there are about – (muttered count) nine. That’s not including my steady, Charlie.’ There was a respectful pause, and then George said in his dryest voice, ‘And have each of those nine girls got nine boyfriends?’ That gave Steve a jump!

Sunday June 28 1987

George and Steve left. Divine. George back home. Steve to another girlfriend’s father’s yacht for the day.

K’s fourth day in the studio and no word.

Monday June 29 1987

K’s fifth day in the studio and no word.

To the dentist again at 12.0. Injections for radical cleaning. Wisdom teeth to come out next. Oh.

With dead mouth to Wine Gallery to lunch with Mary L. What a merry time we have now. Less and less do I have to watch what I say. We came out into the heat and the antique shops of Westbourne Gr. A little way along, she turned the corner to go back to Bayswater and we were greeted by an amazing sight. Two young Italians were struggling with three or four more than life sized prancing horses in black metal. Looking exactly like those mantelpiece ornaments so common on Victorian mantelpieces, and yet large enough for one of the Italians to mount one and look quite in proportion, the effect was striking. As there was no vehicle still visible from which they had been unloaded, it was just as if they had thundered round the corner and been petrified in mid-gallop. Who would buy them? An Arab?

Back home briefly then to Simon’s for our evening. He was amazingly, a bit low. No proper work. Well I am worried – it’s so long since he did anything worthy of his position and Anthony Sher and Jonathon P are going on adding to their public reputation – tho’ mostly in perfs. Unseeable by me, but that’s by the way. I was taking him out for once. We went to Jake’s. It’s changed hands and gone right down the drain. A jokey wine waiter poached summer in a silly sauce, and the piece of salmon was paper thin. Disgraceful. We left and went to the Brasserie in the Fulham Road, ironically enough under the same management.

S. finding Bruno a strain, I think. Says he refuses to come inside him. Odd, both ways. They’re going all out for Glenda Jackson for Shirley Valentine. S & Bruno had been up to Liverpool to hear Willy R. read it for charity. It seems Noreen Kershaw created it, fell ill and W.R. took over, just reading it. N.K must have been pretty wrong. K might do marvels with it. We must hope. Simon is marvellous really.

Tuesday June 30 1987

Neil to lunch at Wine Gallery. Half an hour late. Getting a certain spurious grandeur in his manner but he dropped that. Told me horrific tales of hysterical behaviour of Ben and Penny Cross. No wonder he’s never let me meet them. Oh dear what a depressing world of material success he seems to be tempted by. And yet he seeks me out. And tells me off for extravagance! Still no word.

Wednesday July 1 1987

He rang, he rang. George for 1 night, Steve back to Liverpool. What irrelevance. ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’ He’ll be in town, too, so ‘let’s meet at Café Italien at 6.30.

Later.

Steve left quite coolly leaving a possible time-bomb behind him. ‘I’ve given the travel firm your address as well, so if the kit arrives, a blazer, three pairs of jeans, four tee-shirts, and shorts, 3 prs of trainers - just send them on to Ibiza!

Shades of Saki and the Metterklume Method and the leopard

Put off dick Bird for tomorrow night.

Thursday July 2 1987

11.30.

So tired. Can I no, tomorrow.

How odd, we’ll never give up. How odd.

Friday July 3 1987

Yesterday was tiring as well as a great deal else.

I took Judith Harte, D’s understudy in Salad Days, out to lunch. She had written me to say she had a script D had given her, probably to learn her part, as there weren’t any spares. ‘There are a lot of corrections and so on, in D’s writing, I think.’ So there I was at Café Fish at 12.30. ‘We have had a flood. Come back in half an hour.’ Oddly enough the basement wine-bar was useable, so we had an unwanted aperitif down there. I forgot to pay, with a certain justice. She is very much the same after 27 years! Rather elegant and cultivated in a quiet Jewish way. And mellower, the spiky touchiness has gone. Or perhaps I am better at not provoking it. It is certainly strange seeing someone after such a long interval. ‘I think we last met on a Saturday in February 1960. What did you do that Sunday?’ And go on from there. Happily she is booky and is a freelance proof-reader for C.U.P among others. And was in the original production at B’ham with Simon of that play where Patti Love came on smeared with her own shit. What was the title? Anyway, she wasn’t very enchanted with him or his and the rest of the casts’ behaviour. ‘Self-indulgent and undisciplined.’ Ah well, I hadn’t known him very long then.

Lunch O.K. New staff again.

Wandered round, bought a book or two, and went to Charlotte St. at 6.00, to sit quiet for a bit and collect myself, in the pub. Thought I would just book a table to be sure, and there he was, in the bar part with Andrew Piddington of all people and another man. Sarah W hadn’t turned up. We talked to A.P. a little and then went over to the Fitzroy. Clever K led the way to an empty basement, no music, and much cooler. We treated one another carefully and kindly. As usual his apologies were implicit, except for one moment when I said You don’t need to say anything. He told me he’d found out a bit more about the swimming from Olga (he and Jez had gone to the F and C shop for a break) and discussed picking me up after the wisdom teeth. The work went very well. He got the film on Wednesday and delivered the music on Saturday morn. having had 4 hours’ sleep in that time. Then the three days with Sam were equally successful more so than before. (Bother, it’s no use I hate him working with her. Still, it’s only arrangements.)

Oh, his accountant had said No to becoming a company. Well of course. £35,000 or over. In 1958 it was £10,000!

He showed me a letter from Simon Lethbridge, Broadwick Prods, where Sarah W. works, who gave him the prod. job. It was more like a love letter. I can’t quote it exactly but this was its gist. ‘You not only brought the score exactly in the time stated, but it was the most aptly fitted and creative and attractive score I’ve ever heard. I congratulate you on your skill. I hope you’ll work with us soon and often.’ etc.

What could be better? I noted that he did betray some concern that he might be tampering with his genuine creative powers, in retrospect. The only danger is if the journeyman work went on too long. I don’t think he would ever deceive himself.

I was much heartened by his misgivings, indeed also by his telling me that Aaron listened to the two new tracks (of which K reminded me. I’d said That’ll do for one) and said That’s library music, I want Malpass, after only a few bars. Good. Perhaps he can really tell.

A great tiredness came over, and I knew, when we went back to the Fitzroy basement, we had made it up between the lines. We were too raw to go into it more, or I was. We walked to Leicester Square, as it was so stuffy and only 10.15. My train came in, suddenly I started to sob, and grabbed him and the harsh squeeze stifled it enough for me to get into the train and hide it.

Tonight, Friday, was not tiring. Specially. Went to Sharron’s private view on her invitation. He’d said he’d see me in the Fryer at 6.30. Of course, he was 20 mins late, rather wearisome. He’d been trying to buy some shoes. We went to the jewellery section, v. full and v. hot. Most of it showy rubbish, drawing attention to the expense of the materials. S’s deep necklace or collaret was easily the most interesting thing there. Surface of the silver matt, in deep scallops like a shell, gentle, soft. ‘It isn’t finished’ she said, all flushed with suspiciously shiny eyes. I didn’t sign the visitors book because the previous signer had been the Mayoress of Westminster, I felt insufficiently distinguished.

K. told me before we went in, that she’d asked if she could come round on Monday night because she was upset she’d not finished her exhibit and had got a 2.2, although she’s been the star of her year, ‘it’s all politics’ she said – um! – ‘so she came round and I could see how bad she was and I said ‘Go on, cry, let it out.’ And she did. She became – what’s the word? ‘Hysterical?’ ‘Yes, I was frightened, and ‘No, don’t cry’, she went wild.’

He told me. That is, I think, the first time he’s told me something adverse and invited me by a look to agree. He told me she had to stay with her jewellery, so we went round the exhibition. Photos fairly predictably goodish because goodish snaps are commonplace. Some of the theatre sets weren’t bad. Most of the pottery was terrible – K liked some asymmetric pots rather more than I did, was it Susan Wood? I got mixed up. On the whole, I felt sad about the whole thing. Sharron had to stay till the bitter end because they have to pack up the whole show every night as there’s no security. So about eight, she said to K and I she’d join us in the pub (I’d written saying I wanted to take her out, so that she wouldn’t feel flat.) She sent us to a pub a few corners away. It was quite pleasant, tho’ the music was rather loud. But alas and alack it turned out to be ‘their’ pub, and as the exhibition closed, they flooded in. It became intolerably full. It was me, K, Chris Parsons, and Paul Cook, a friend of Sharron’s. It took Chris quarter of an hr. to get a drink, and I couldn’t hear a word anyone said. However, let me comment on Paul C and Chris. Chris is so different, and now doing so well, I fear I still don’t find him very good company. What do I prophesy? He’ll become a bit of a business man.

Paul Cook reminds me of an older looking Ronnie. Long head with a flat back and top to it. Close cut orange hair, orange by nature, lean, rather harsh features, which will be much so in later life. I liked him within sharp limits. There is something sexless and detached about him. Malk. We met him in the exhibit and sat in a corridor talking to him. K got on very well at first, well, such half people are often easy to get on with at first, because of the lack of pressure inside them. I was so struck by him giving me at once an invitation to his private view, a photographic and video show. ‘I’ve heard all about you. I’ve heard all about both of you. Sharron‘s told me a lot about you. Both.’

Well. A little later, flourishing his Filofax to K’s amusement, he turned a page of it and there was a pair of condoms. Difficult to imagine anyone who used them, showing them.

So there we were, trapped in that pub, waiting for Sharron. With me trying hard to hear what Chris P was saying about his need to have some sort of selling course! Sharron arrived, wanting to get away. Paul C had a fresh pint and was staying in the crowd. But there was a little moment on the corner when Chris would have stayed, I suppose, but for me. But what can you do? If it’s all young together, it’s easy. But I was taking them out and couldn’t include C.

We went, on K’s suggestion, to Mon Marche. Indifferent, though both of them said their lamb was ‘really good.’ It was a jolly time. I was amused that, when the screw in my spectacles had fallen out, both of them claimed they were too drunk to put it back. Well, there had been wine at the exhib. - of which I’d drunk none – and then he’d had beer, two pints, at the pub. And Sharron had had all that emotion. It was a jolly time.

While we were in the pub before it got noisy, two things. I heard him saying to Paul C. ‘I’ll have been with Sharron two years in November. (Then laughing) Two years – I must be slipping.’ A little later, on the same subject, I said ‘But it’ll be different now she’s left college, – she’ll be free more often, and no shape to her week perhaps.’ He turned to me and said, with an indescribable mixture of affection, irritation, admiration and perturbation, ‘You think of everything, don’t you?’

Because, of course, he doesn’t! Planning and not planning are one of the basic contrasts that hold us together. Outside, a taxi came by. I jumped in, gracefully refusing the lift back, as it cut the Gordian knot. Which is getting less painful. I swept away, feeling altruistic, fairly wise, fairly satisfied and fairly happy that I’d done my best for him.

When I got back, message on machine saying Prim was in hospital, her brother Bill called. Jaundice. Well.

Saturday July 4 1987

Forgot to say K and Sharron decided to go away for a weekend, or rather Sat and part of Sunday to give her a change after all the strain. He asked me where, and I said I’d think. So I did, of Deal and that way, and Chichester and Portland Bill, anywhere out of that terrible rat race to the coast – that’s the only trace of his working-class origin, this urge to go to the sea at weekends! So I rang him to tell him my suggestions. Also that the sea was 55 degrees specially cold. Odd, I didn’t mind. Good.

All the same, when he said, so sweetly, ‘You have a good weekend too.’ Doesn’t he know yet that it can’t be without him? And I hope he never quite will!

Later.

Julian rang up four times about some ghastly man who’d been sleeping on his floor for six weeks. Usual ghastly sentimentality and inaccuracy. Put the Country Cousin on to talk to me. Mad, to speak to a hired helper whom I don’t know. I dare say she hoped to speak to someone sensible. He is so coarse and vulgar in his feelings and perceptions. Had the gall to equate ‘the fat white slug’ – Country cousin’s description – with K. he is hopeless, poor creature. I fear a dreadful conclusion to the situation there. May will go berserk.

Sunday July 5 1987

Went to see Prim. She looks bad. Forehead v. yellow, neck fallen away, vague and frail. In a ward with grey/yellow patients with nose drips. I stayed ten minutes and felt depressed. To the West End to meet dear Paul R. at Captain’s Cabin. It was shut. Can you believe it? Wait around in the heat, wandering so as not be mistaken for the two winos sitting on the further doorstep. Paul came running, a bit sunburnt. He said John H might be at Flex, so we went to see, no, so we had a drink at the Blue Posts upstairs. He bought the first large gin. To ‘The Boy Who Could Fly’. Mild little small-town fable. Failed by harsh standards, but well-acted enticed and scratched my mind agreeably. Paul has simple emotions. Back home for cold chicken and salad. I can see him getting hard up again. He stayed the night. He’s got some work.

Monday July 6 1987

He rang this lunch time ish to say we’d meet outside the Paul Cook exhibit, at 7.30. ‘As late as that?’ ‘Well, Sharron can’t get away from thing. All right, 7.0.’ So I got there a bit early. Next to Soho Poly. He’s said the weekend had been ‘lovely’ but he’d got sunburnt. At last they’ve had a successful weekend!

Five minutes before 7.0 went and had a drink at the pub in sight. Good, because he was quarter of hour or so late. He looked cross, but that was mostly the sunburn. To show how unresponsive he is at first, I said Tell me the sure bits in case I clap you on the shoulder.’ No reaction. So we went to the exhibition. Poor. Largely uninteresting photos and concepts. Paul Cook’s video we caught by chance. He looks vivid on camera – what use is that, he’s not an actor? About AIDS. Fairly smooth, but quite without originality and as a performer, he was a real student. We sat down after – it was now about 7.45. I suddenly felt firm, that I must re-establish my own standards of behaviour. I said ‘I’m going to the pub for a drink. I’ve seen all I want to here. If she hasn’t come, or you pick me up in half an hour, or I’m going to have dinner.’ He gave me a slightly startled but not unpleased look. I’d been in the pub about half an hour, and it was 8.15 when he turned up. ‘Can we go to the other pub’ I said I’d meet Sharron there.’ At the other I pub I said ‘What do you want?’ He said ‘Um…. er I think – he’ll have a large gin and tonic.’ We sat outside at a trestle table with a v. large umbrella over it, just as well. Still very hot.

I said ‘Why did you seem a bit cross when I arrived. Not with me, I know.’ ‘Oh well, it’s just this week is such a mess.’ It seems Aaron rang and expected demos by Wed. I said sharply that he must deal with him sharply. ‘I will.’ He was facing down the street and kept looking over my shoulder for her. First time I’ve ever known him do that, but it turned out he was worried, as she was supposed to be there at 7.0 (How? If she has to clear up every night. Oh, well…) He told me they went to Deal, as I’d suggested, and then a little place called Dumpton, where they’d bathed. One night in Deal and then back late to Leytonstone, so she could get up early for the exhibit. ‘I bathed, and the sea wasn’t cold. Another thing you were wrong about.’ I said I wasn’t wrong about Deal. ‘No.’ ! Sharron arrived and said she’d had one or two nibbles of interest and some sketches to do. It was v. hot and stuffy. Sharon talked of her sinus-nose thing being worse – seems it isn’t just hay-fever – she’s seeing a consultant on my b’day, hope it won’t mean any sort of operation, sinus can be such torture. I said was it an allergy, if not hay fever, house-dust? She said she got it more at her place, not nearly so much at K’s. He said ‘Your place is very dusty, mine isn’t.’ (He said to me a day or two ago, ‘Sharron’s place is really pretty horrible, more like a squat.)

He said Shall we go to the fish and chip shop? It was now about 8.15. I said it was their evening – I wasn’t really meant to be there. But he cleared that up. It began very slowly to rain, with those big round spots spreading on the hot pavement. The umbrella was so big, we could stay dry for some time. It caught us as we ran for the car, quite soaked. At the F & C shop Olga greeted us as usual. Sharron had sat at one of the long tables, at the end. I sat opposite, he sat to my left. Subtle. She had plaice and chips, found it was battered. He had sea bass on my recommendation and said it was delicious (‘What is sea base?’ Well, he is a musician.) Questioned Olga again about my swimming.

He insisted on driving me home. By the way, I paid, partly because of a little dialogue. Sharron. ‘I’ll pay for the F & C shop because you treated me to the weekend.’ ‘You can’t do that, you know you’re broke.’ Back here Jason was still up. (Completely forgot to say that Jason Gilzean – big Jason, whose father has, or had, a yacht – was coming to stay with K for a fortnight or 3 weeks. He hadn’t let K know exact days, as usual. So there was a poor little message on the machine saying he’d been wandering round London with two vast cases. After Paul and I got back at 11.15 ish, he rang again and was so relieved to find someone, it was really quite touching. He arrived at 12.40 very pink and damp. He and Paul got on well. Jason is so big and broad and tall and just as in the cliché, very gentle and quiet.) So that was nice. Sharron sat in the arm-chair and said she didn’t get her whatever-it-is here at all. He wandered into the garden, which is all scents and shapes now. He saw the new TV set, and immediately bustled about with a tape measure to run another aerial conn. down to the dining room. For my b’day, of course, he is a transparent love. Off they drove to their usual passionate bed. And I got into my lonely one. But more tranquilly yet. Thank God.

Tuesday July 7 1987

Not because of that, I fell empty today. As if I’m never going to work again. I can make myself do almost nothing but write in here. Went to a silly film and hated myself. What right have I got want him here? Poor boy!

Wednesday July 8 1987

To get my hair cut for the dentist tomorrow! George R arrived for 2 nights – he is a great comfort to me in a lot of ways. Company, even now and again, and such company, a distinguished scholar in my own favourite field, about which I know enough for both of us to enjoy our talk.

In the evening to see Steven Dykes as Richard III at St Mary Le Bow in Cheapside. Basically beautiful Wren Church, hideously restored and decorated in ‘60’s ‘good taste’ by a ‘church architect.’ Acoustic fearful. Did not literally hear a word of Mike’s first speech as Edward III. As it preceded ‘Now is the winter of our’ and was written by John Barton, perhaps it’s as well. He was pretty awful, holding his face in a strange grimace and sitting in a slump, with his feet at quarter past nine showing an inch of bare leg, finished off by very unpolished shoes – all this on a huge throne in the centre of the action throughout the first scene. Steven D impressive, (tho’ not terribly like R III !) in power and look. Prod. a good jump better than the Macbeth, tho’ often ludicrous in casting and movement and dress. Steven D more or less audible. Only person whose every word I could hear, was the Richmond, the nearest to my accent for good or ill. They were all too carelessly resonant. Had they gone out and listened to one another? No. And of course, the complete abandonment of the graces of gentility renders great tracts of the play unintelligible. I ran away after to get ready for tomorrow. I am nervous, there’s no denying!

He’s coming to pick me up. Dear one.

Thursday July 9 1987

Really completely happily drunk.

George treating me with kid gloves made me drunker for fun. And him ringing up made me happier. And happier and happier.

Friday July 10 1987

I oughtn’t to be happy, as he cancelled tonight. But to recap. The dentist was much much less than I expected. He only did a tiny bit of cleaning and said things were much better. He laid the little tampon on the gums, then the injection on the outer side of the gums, then, rather quickly a much bigger needle either side of the palate. This worked immediately with a slightly worrying feeling at first, that I mightn’t be able to swallow. But I could. ‘Are teeth hard to pull out? How long does it take?’ ‘We’re going to find out.’ He scraped about a bit, keeping his fingers in my mouth. He took them out and it was all over. I had felt no pain of course, but virtually nothing else either. My spirits bounded up and up. I bit on a bandage for a bit. The receptionist said K had arrived and in another minute I was with him.

ANGUS MACKAY DIARY NO. 79

July 10 1987 (cont.) - August 17 1987.

Friday July 10 1987 (cont.)

Even at that moment I was struck by his absolute lack of self-consciousness. In the smart waiting room, panelled, leather armchairs, copies of Country Life, a man in a pin striped suit, possibly a retired colonel, and a woman with faultlessly dressed white hair and a coat and skirt and good shoes, was sitting this stubbled white-tee shirted figure, who’d taken his trainers off. He took my hand and said ‘You can speak, I didn’t think you’d be able to speak.’ He met Mr Harvey, and off we went. I had not so numb a mouth as before and felt nothing beyond the feeling, something was missing. We got a taxi at once and off to Westbourne Grove. In the taxi he said, a little pink, ‘I’ve made a bubu (phonetic only)! My heart sank with déjà vu. I’d booked for the Woody Allen ‘Radio Days’ for Friday - as we’d agreed to go last week. (I think it was in front of Sharron). ‘It seems she asked if we could go to that a couple of weeks ago, and I forgot.’ When he found I’d booked the seats and paid for them, he said ‘Oh, we’ll go then, forget about it.’ I was able to let him and the seats go. I was able to say ‘It’s all right’ so that he could be convinced I meant it. When we sat down I produced the tickets. He said I’ll let you know tonight what’s happening. We’ll have Saturday together, a long evening. Instead.’ I gave him the tickets saying with a wry smile which he echoed ‘You’d better have them, because either way you’ll be going.’ I’m rather surprised at her. She might leave me my few times with him. She has so much of him.

He told me he’d been to see Aaron. He’d played him only a few bars when A. said ‘That’s it. When can you get in the studio? What musicians do you want?’ Eventually they settled on Sept 1. He’s also got another offer from Broadwick. They were doing a video for an Arab firm, budget £100,000, his share £2000. That’ll be in August sometime, then there’s Sam’s album – and Glynn’s wedding! It’s going to be a very busy time.

Suddenly he started to talk about my letter. ‘Yes, you are so stupid sometimes.’ I can’t believe it, we even discussed not saying anything for the first ten minutes. And he said ‘You and Roy talked about books for quarter of an hour (not true) and I didn’t mind.’ But perhaps he did mind, and perhaps that’s why… I was able to say ‘I can’t bear it when you’re so bad- tempered and so nasty to me. I only need one half glance of disapproval.’ I don’t know what we said. (He soon forgot I’d had two wisdom teeth out!) He said about twice in reference to considering me and his life generally, ‘And now Sharron.’ I think they’ve moved to a new level lately. But then he has been affected by the hysteria of the end of term. The nearest he’s come to experience that, as he left before it happened to him. I think there’ll be a little patch of confusion, one way and another. I spat a large wedge of blood into my handkerchief at one point. Only at the last second did I think, ‘that’ll shake him a bit.’

Oh, how he responds to me switching off in agony, as his love is withdrawn. And then it comes flooding back. ‘I know you better than anyone.’ Yes. True. Poor Simon thinks he knows a few physical facts. But K knows my heart.

He sat there and heard me saying I cannot bear you being aggressive, because I love you so much.

I have not at all done justice to this remarkable conversation.

He rang last night about 10.0 to say he would see the film with Sharron and come to me on Saturday. He said again ‘For a long evening.’ ‘And I’ll be seeing the film with her, but we’re not having a long evening.’ I didn’t like that. I don’t want him to please me by saying he’s not spending time with her!

When he rang, Giles was here to tell me he and Penelope are engaged! And that, and everything, had made me quite happily drunk. So I said ‘We must avoid in future any suggestion of me competing with Sharron.’ I wished I hadn’t said competing the moment I said it. But he faced it. ‘You never compete with Sharron, it’s just that I’ve got a head like a sieve and forget. It might just as well have been Jason or Sarah or anyone.’ Ye-e-es, but if I’d said about the Woody Allen early enough... And the last three interesting films have been with her.… But it’s alright.

Saturday July 11 1987

He’s gone. Running to the tube at 11.45. The last minute.

He told me again about his bank loan. It’s probably going to be an extra mortgage from Nationwide. But he has a bad record, so he’ll need £500 temporarily. He’s been back to Lloyds and the Manager had said finally ‘no’ but obviously impressed by the letters and the jobs and him, said ‘If you have no joy with Nationwide, why not get a loan from this firm, they specialise in more unusual loans.’ Hesitantly, ‘Actually it’s my brother.’ That gave me a real laugh.

I deliberately raised the question of his harming his creativity by all these journeyman jobs. He reacted quite strongly as always, as if he’d thought of it all, and as if I didn’t need to etc. etc. But actually I canalized his thoughts. Because actually he has recurred to his fears twice, which he wouldn’t do if he were sure. I’m sure, but I went into it. ‘Would you be satisfied never to have your name known for your music?’ Because he’d said if Aaron goes on as he’s going, I’d be satisfied to do my own creative work with those facilities. Of course he didn’t mean that, even if all went ideally. I said ‘How if the music is used to back up films or commercials you’re revolted by?’ Well, that’s what I’ve got to see.’ But of course he wouldn’t be remotely satisfied to back up commercials and in house films for the rest of his life anyway. While we were having this conversation, I was struck all over again by how slowly his mind moves in argument. To the point that if I ever interjected anything, usually to reveal that I knew the end of the sentence, he said ‘Hang on a minute’, because he can only pursue his own line.

In the course of it, we discussed his full work load again. He said that if one of the sessions cut across Glynn’s wedding, he would have to cancel the session. Goodness. I wouldn’t. But then it’s very difficult to weigh up. I would for him but then I’m 61, and have no sessions! I was surprised.

Many lovely times. We went round the garden. He stroked the pink paint and said ‘somebody should be painting this.’ I talked to him about the plants. We sat on the balcony, first time for two years. Last year no summer. Were going to have dinner in the garden, but a wind came up. Salmon, peas – how he relished them – raspberries. How few he has. Why? They all do. He’d betrayed on Thur. that part of my present was the new aerial. ‘I’ll come during the afternoon.’ I kissed him long on both cheeks.

Sunday July 12 1987

Up and out by 11.30 to lunch with Philp and Damien at Joe Allen’s. ‘Because Damien thinks it’s glitzy.’ Well, it is, only in the sense that there were one or two stylish celebrities – Kenneth Williams and Derek Jameson! – and a certain sense among the other guests that they were assisting at some sort of faintly exciting event. And the amusing insolence of our waitress underlined that. Oh the horror of American taste! I had scrambled egg and smoked salmon. Each ingredient perfectly good, but the egg was on top of the smoked sal. making it tepid. Also on the plate some soggy fried pots with some tomato sauce on a small round bap and a pot of strawberry jam. The chicken soup and sweet-corn was genuine and good. The Draycotts discussed the rival merits of the sickly pudding list with partisan interest. They had three puddings between them, all very gooey and fudgey and chocolatey and many glasses of water.

Philip is quite unchanged. Damien is. Has spikey gelled hair, still small, but getting awkward. While P was in the loo, he showed me two condoms in his note case, and said, ‘I’m a rebel.’ Well, he isn’t yet, he’s only 14. But the rumbles are there. And P is pushing it. How many times he said things like ‘Tell Angus what happened in School last Tues.’ And kept pushing over similar questions, without apparently noticing that D is at the age when he doesn’t want to tell anyone anything. So I wasn’t in the least surprised when we came out into Covent Garden, D unchained his bike, and the following dialogue took place.

P. Angus is going to visit a friend in hospital shall we walk across the park with him? D. I’m going to lie down in Covent Garden. P. There isn’t anywhere to lie down in C.G. D. I know somewhere I can lie down P. (Capitulating on this part of the issue.) Well, you’ll do that hour’s homework, won’t you? D. (idly) Yeah

Philip then kissed him affectionately as he did when he was eight, to D’s disgust, in front of dozens of his contemporaries. Seriously, they’re going to have trouble. Many has married her china man – P says you can’t understand a word he says.

Yes, D has a smarmy making up to you which will collapse into aggression – Julian Firth.

Philip walked me to the Westminster. Prim is decidedly better. A pity. I think it might be kinder if she dies quickly. I cannot feel much happiness lies ahead if she doesn’t.

Monday July 13 1987

I’d arranged to meet Andy – the famous Andy Dickins, - at the Victoria Gate of Kew Gardens. I got there at 2.45 for 3, and he was sitting on the wall. He’s a bit thinner, and his hair is trimmed a bit. So altogether he’s got rid of some of that rather smug look. We went in, to the herbaceous garden, the new combined succulent orchid fernery and Amazon Lily house, and so on. God, how I hate walking round Kew Gardens with anyone else – it’s so tiring! And boring!

He remained more or less silent, so all we had to talk about was the row with K (Andy said in his letter to arrange this, that he, Kevin and ‘Avo’ had had an argument about politics in the pub; Andy felt K hadn’t given him a chance to reply before walking out.) K told me they’d been talking about the election and it turned out Andy had not voted. After all our discussions with A that had upset K, and yet he didn’t at all want to go on into it in front of Avo, whom neither of us have ever liked. So he’d left. Andy wanted a chance to reply. He didn’t think K had been fair. ‘After all, what does he for Green Peace except talk about it? I felt badly and went off to the flat to have it out with him. I rang the bell, but if he was in, he didn’t answer. I went back to the pub and Avo said ‘Been changing his nappy have you?’

No wonder we’ve never liked Avo.

Andy seemed to enjoy Kew and apologised for saying so little. I was glad. Back here we investigated a little. I protested a little against his smug apathy. ‘I’ve done nothing since I saw you last’ and smiled. The idea of restoring that car dwindles into selling it for scrap for only £5. I rebuked his smile. ‘I laugh at anything.’ He now has an idea which will probably equally come to nothing. I had to say to him that it might be that we would become disillusioned with attempting to inspire him, it would be like injecting useless drugs. His response to almost anything is ‘I’m not bothered.’ I asked him about girl-friends. ‘They don’t bother me. I’m not bothered about girls.’ It turns out he certainly isn’t - he’s a virgin. He pretends to his mates.

Talking of which, he very firmly protested that he was one of the first four to come and stay with K (he wasn’t). He has a friend called Scaife that he’s anxious for us to meet. ‘He knows all about you, he sent his regards to ‘Kevin and Angus’ tho’ he hasn’t met either of you.’ We parted warmly.

During the evening a young nestling blackbird landed on the fan light. I just managed to make it fly back into the garden. If it had come in, it might have wrecked the room in its terror. As at the cottage. It was very young. A paradigm of youth, they wreck without knowing why. Andy is 19. I have to remember that.

Tuesday July 14 1987

Roy rang at 3ish to say he wouldn’t be in London for dinner. A bit late but I was relieved.

Wednesday July 15 1987

1.15.

61. Neil rang to say he’d come round at 12.30. Still no sign. If only people with shapeless lives knew…. I want to listen to some music and hoover etc. and can’t, ‘cos I wouldn’t the bell.

12.20. p.m. He went for the last tube. Came at 3.0. Did the aerial – all went a bit hilariously wrong. Paul Ryan came round. Paparazzi. Played Hedda Gabler, saw D., could do that with nobody else. Oh how subtle she was. And is. He played it back again straight away. Marjorie rang and he rang them

Sharron come round at 2.30 after her consultant with bunches of flowers and a bottle of Chateau neuf du Pape. Was sweet. Pure love love love all the way surrounding D and me. What an amazing luck that he is such a miracle!

Nigel and Joy sent wishes, have put off their barbeque till tomorrow for him. He and Sharron have barbeques in her garden – Ugh!

He cast a blight over the day saying he wanted £900, and then at the end of the day at the last minute, said he could get it off his overdraft.

I love him as no-one else.

Thursday July 16 1987

Nothing to add. Two perfect days. He really loves me.

Arrived at Pelican. S. was with a journalist in the front bit, called – can it be? Al Centre. Joined me, looking smart, in dark grey suit, wing collar and red bow tie – made up. All this was for foundation laying of S. Wannamaker’s wretched South Bank Theatre. Missed it cos taxi half hour late and then got completely stuck at Southwark. Odd it all is, heavy rain today and traffic terrible everywhere, but it didn’t impinge on me except visually.

Dear S. talked a lot of Bruno. I think it’s coming to an end; vivid, Bruno wants a home, and family the dog. Last thing S. wants, but can’t quite face that B is tailing away. Ah.

V. sweet about D. and Hedda. Most generous meal. Equated me with him and Jonathon Miller. ‘We would destroy one another with fluency. Left him at 3.10. Back home to change, boiling in suit. Isn’t it awful, makes you feel superior to the tourist hordes. Leeds Building Society Lawyer, no lines. Think I got it. Pity, as it won’t be much money, cast of thousands.

Wrote thank you letter to K. It, and him, were the entire base of my thoughts all day.

Friday July 17 1987

Letter from Graham W who’s got a design out. Rang K, as I’d found the screws etc. for the lavatory-seat in a niche in the polystyrene pack. He laughed! ‘There you go.’

The Duke and Duchess of York too informal in Canada. They’ll regret it.

Have been re-reading Waugh’s Diaries and Letters. No doubt there are resemblances, except in talent. I feel much identity with some parts of his character. Even his Catholicism is like me going to Scotland.

Saturday July 18 1987

Sat up till 3.15 a.m. with Roy. So to recap. Roy rang at 6.35 to say ‘When did you say?’ He was in Peckham and the rain and the traffic were bad. There was a bad water mains burst which flooded Euston tube and underground car park and actually turned off the tube between Victoria and Highbury and the whole Bank line on the Northern. He arrived at 8.25, and I don’t think his lateness was at all due to any of that. So, as usual, I’d had one too many gins. I suppose I ought to get used to this, but I never quite do when a proper dinner is to be cooked. He was in a pinky sort of suit and shirt, very poncy for him.

We had a lovely night marred only by me carrying on again about David Threlfall. Intolerable of me. Best bit of evening, he read right through the script, and all the changes, and was more impressed by the whole thing than before. ‘Much better than when I first read it – without the changes – and very brave.’

Rang K at 11.45. Got Jason, rather drunk. K walked in during the call and we made a date with him and Roy and, I hope, Graham, for a week on Tues. Roy stayed the night – despite much enchanting talk and allusion, how little he comes out to me. I woke at 11.15 – we’d been so late. He left at 12.0. I sank into bed with relief, and then heard Giles going out, leant out of window to say about the gutter and Lalla’s papers. He was obviously going to Chambers and equally obviously was eager to use any excuse to put it off. ‘Why don’t I come and look at Lalla’s papers now? And take you out to lunch?

Delight. Difficulty solved and a treat. Very un-Lalla. Nothing untoward in the papers. Got to Paparazzi. As at Café Fish the other day, in little crisis. They’d got the electrician in and ‘we won’t open until one.’ Went to pub along F. Palace Road. Banquette had large round hole patched with brown velvet. As if someone had sat there with a white hot bum. He had a pint of Guinness. Said it doesn’t really taste the same in England. Back to Paparazzi. Had stracciatella and salmon trout, both delicious. He took comically long to choose and ate too much. It’s good, and two more delightful waitresses. On the way back, he said ‘I think that place opposite is the Hungarian not Polish, church. Went and asked the old man seeing someone off. It is Hungarian and before I knew it, we were inside being told that it’s a Listed building by Voysey, some decorations by Morris, 1891. And the garden. Like a quiet country garden, and so big. How bold, in those ways, this generation are! Giles reminded me of K. How lucky I am! By the way, why can I never have enough of him?

Sunday July 19 1987

Went to visit Prim. Much better. Dressed and completely compos mentis. But she has still outwitted even though Westminster as to what is wrong.

K rang at 7.30 to ask what was our date! So he was drunk. Can we have a date this week? Yes, ‘cos Sam isn’t till Friday. Told me all about the loan. Had he had my letter? ‘No. Yes, but I put it with all the papers about the loan.’ Oh God, will he never learn that my letters are my life–blood, like his music .

‘Yes. Sharron’s here. (‘Cos I said how much I was enjoying her flowers. True.) ‘She’s come to cook me dinner because I was working today and come to a stop.’

I used to come and cook him dinner. I knew it couldn’t go on, nor should it. But that doesn’t stop me feeling awful

Later.

But I don’t think I betrayed it. Rang Graham Wynne, his mother, the operative in his life, gave me the number of the Festival Theatre! where he’s rehearsing. Gave him the date.

Couldn’t resist ringing K for a minute to say, partly with the justification of settling the date, Jason answered and K showed faint interest, ‘I’m making the gravy.’ He must learn to be more flexible. I love him.

Monday July 20 1987

Lunch with dear John N. Apart from anything else, he has exactly the same sense of humour. His poor nephew – what a day they had.

Dick Bird to dinner tonight. First time we have been alone.

Tuesday July 21 1987

He’s very gifted. A shattering evening physically, drinking till three and up at six. I must see him again fairly soon. Hope he sees it that way too. After seeing him off to an incredibly full day, I collapsed.

Went to a French film in the p.m. at Metro.

Another Bradford & Bingley cheque came in for £1000, as well as the PRS for £540 the day before.

Exhausted. Bed early.

K rang while I was out, and arranged Thur. Good. Suits me better.

Wednesday July 22 1987

Felt very indigestible this morning, four Neutradonna didn’t kill it. No wonder. The excesses of Monday were combined with having some peaches and cream for dinner last night. A carton of cream – how many fl. oz anyway, it cost £1.32. After the p & c, picked it up and idly sipped and slurped it until it had all gone! A wonder I didn’t have an Aldons H. heart attack.

Thursday July 23 1987

Lunch with Marjorie. Blanc Pouilly de Fume. Met K in lovely dreary pub. And Aquilino. Only an hour and a half. No, two hours and a half. Like a drink of beautiful clear water after all. There is no-one like him, no-one I want. No-one.

Friday July 24 1987

Heard on the Philip Hodson prog. on LBC Agony Uncle.

Counsellor: I expect you can’t keep your erection in the middle of all this, as well.

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Well, of course, that makes it much harder for you.’

Again:

‘She can’t get an orgasm with my penis, but can with my hand. What can we do?’

‘Off the top of my head, I’d say ….’

Later.

Yes, last night was peculiarly sweet. I do love that dreary pub, because it’s so empty. And it’s just the sort of pub D and I always met in.

He came in, his usual scruffy self, - ah - but tired and with that unmistakable abstracted look. I am sure I am the only person he drops it for. He’s getting on all right with the library music, though the borrowed equipment keeps breaking down and Chris P asked for his back in the middle. (I am amused that he said on the phone that Sam’s whatever-it-is stopped working. So he left it, and this morning it... might be me. Why don’t machines behave like machines? Because two whole generations have been brought up to believe they are exciting, interesting and important.) The work is going all right – as I thought, he’s doing the library stuff while he can, with Sam’s thing in between. It seems the new Broadwick thing is now to be October. Thank goodness, with the wedding and all. We went to Aquilino, he masterfully striding towards it. He told me that track I so loved, now has oboe and drums and all sorts on it. ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, you’ll still get the original as well.’

He’s signed the agreement for the loan. Thank God he’s had enough sense to consult his accountant. He told me the name of the bank, and it is in the phone book. Let’s hope it works out.

He’s started the conversion of the music room, helped by Jason. They started by taking a brick out of the chimney breast. ‘I’ve had to move the equipment into the bedroom – it’s full of dust – we’ll have to get an RSJ’ etc. etc. I shall keep right out of all that, until the house falls down! Can it be a success? His sweet innocence over practical things vide the model railway track and the volcano. Aquilino blessedly half empty and quiet. I had saltimbocca, he had liver. Good. Feeding. I must register that I eat with less appetite with him than at any other time. Strong feelings always go to my stomach.

There was suddenly a moment when I was overcome by how much he means to me. All this week since my b’day it’s been other people. I said to him how different it was to be with him, meeting the only reality worth having.

He met me completely and when he left me, to work, he said how much better he felt. What more do I want?

Saturday July 25 1987

The post this morning hilarious. All K - centred and caused. A change of address – letter from Caroline Goodall and Derek Hoxby. ! She owed me a dinner and asked me to tea! And has moved to 801 Fulham Road. Surely a come-down? A hilarious card from Nigel in the States. Incoherent with culture shock and incoherence. And a v. nasty gold Evening Invitation, not improved by crumpling in the post, Mr and Mrs Churchill request the presence of Angus (sic) at the evening party, somewhere outside B’ham. Although K told me that Sarah had said I was asked to the wedding, you couldn’t tell from the card. And oh dear, these poor little suburban people, getting hold of the wrong ends and bits of all these upper class rituals! What endless failures and embarrassments they cause! Not to me! I am well out of it. As far as he is concerned a photo will be enough for me! He’ll look fairly awful, and the speech will have only a line or two, and he doesn’t want me there. He’s sure to get cross with all those RAF types. So, even if it were next door, I’d have second and third thoughts but outside Birmingham - !

Completely forgot to record that dear Paul R stayed the night and took me to Paparazzi. Sweet as ever. Odd happening. He had a bath when we got in, and came up all hot and glowing rubbing his wet hair. Plumped down on the sofa, and taking off his shirt, said ‘Give me a message, I’m all tense after this commercial’ and turned his handsome back to me. So I massaged him, and thought Good gracious, as his manner was not without provocation. I couldn’t let it go by, so, as it were, made an advance to him. Shocked reaction. I said You mustn’t go round doing this. He saw it, I think. Still asked for massage, so I said Come in the bedroom. In the bedroom, I said sternly ‘Take your jeans off’. So there he was on the bed in his briefs, I gave him a fierce massage finishing by tweaking his cock. And a telling off. Odd, the flirtatiousness of otherwise normal youths. ‘I trust you.’ I dare say, but think of others who couldn’t be trusted.

Later.

He left me at 12.0 a.m. this morning, after an affable talk. As he left, he turned back to give me a firm kiss, to prove that last night’s equivocal events hadn’t made any difference! Oh dear, the simplicities.

To a film he and Neil had recommended, ‘Something Wild’. It was wild. And a bit corrupt. I found myself detached from it as actually immoral. That is, without a moral centre. If that is the case, no film can interest me. It was well acted, but I left before the end because it was as mindless and standard-less as real life. I was dispirited because I saw Jonathan Demmes could only see corruption everywhere.

How the Cannon Tott. Court Rd. speaks to me of him. And happiness. How idiotic. But how can you resist that fierce association

Sunday July 26 1987

Shaw’s b’day. Mild domestic day. Warmer at last. Gardened. Bought fig tree like his for big pot. Wrote to Dick B. K starts with bloody Sam B.

Monday July 27 1987

Had a really good wank twice today. That’s good for 61.

Joanna David came round tonight to talk about the programme. Did a bit of good by saying she must match extracts to performers since she seems to be stuck in a whirl of extract and performers and never the twain… But, oh, she is such a lovely generous girl. On the balcony, - when have I seen her sitting down quietly? – with nothing to do? – she said about Ed. To my amazement, she used my exact words years ago, before I knew her, about Ed. He doesn’t like women much. At all. I’m just a housekeeper. He only likes women to fuck and there’s nothing of that left much! He’d been horrible to her in Dorset, in front of Robert and the children and she’d gone into the garden and cried.

She is transparently honest and true. Her artistic judgment of acting and plays is absolute. I gave her, I think, a lovely evening. ‘I could stay forever.’ Oh dear, I do love her. What will the end be? They’ll split up? She says he’s hard up because of the flats downstairs. And me! K rang at 7.30 to say ‘I’m in a hurry. Have you got Andy Dickins’ number?’ Got my diary, no, but remembered the address in the phone book and looking it up, said the while, ‘How’s the recording going?’ ‘I don’t start now till Wednesday. I’m still doing this bloody conversion in the music room.’ ‘Ah’, I said, ‘I thought it would be a good idea to get others to help as it’s just hard… He snapped ‘Look, give me that number, I’ve got to rush.’ So I snapped back ‘I’m talking whilst I am looking.’ (All the sharper as I don’t think he could talk so much whilst looking up an address in a ‘phone book!) Gave him the number and said no more. He said ‘I’ll be there, when are the others coming?’ ‘Well I told them dinner-time.’ With controlled exasperation, ‘What time did you tell them?’ ‘7.30.’ (When have I ever told anyone any different time for dinner?!) ‘I’ll be there by 8.0. But tell me immediately if either of them can’t come. Poor little love, his lack of organisation works every way! The knocking down of the chimney breast is naturally a disaster. K with an RSJ? Unsupervised? Christ.

Poor love, I said again and again, ‘If you’re recording, we’ll cancel.’ ‘No, no.’

So now he’s in the middle of a mass of brick dust, and goodness knows what else, and it’ll be the night before he goes into the studio with Sam! Perhaps I should let him off?

Oh dear, I do love and laugh over him.

Tuesday July 28 1987

Found a message on the machine. ‘Hoped to catch you before you went to the shops. Certain for tonight. I’m running out of cash. Can you have £50 in cash. If you can I’ll be much obliged.’ The pet. Completely forgot to record my lunch with Mary L yesterday at Pelican. Indifferent. A third empty, and still the service was poor. She loved her vegetarian food. She is a good advertisement for self-deprivation. Like Molly and Mrs E. and Lalla, she has deliberately circumscribed her life so as to be satisfied with what she’s got. When I rang her on her return from Edna’s she had ‘emotionally’ not felt able to talk about her time with Edna. Thus leaving me with four days of worry. She took it back, and partly apologised. Edna is failing. Hester is alright. Though Edna told me Annette didn’t even know her when she spelt out ‘I am a friend of Dorothy Hatrick.’ !

Mary is so interesting – I now seem to have conquered all her prejudices. But she remains what she always was, very perceptive over the tiny area she’s decided to concentrate on. A bad scholar, drawing conclusions from an insufficient basis of material. Like Malcolm.

Later.

They didn’t come. Can you believe it? Tomorrow - I’ve been out Giles K.

Wednesday July 29 1987

Yes, well …. K rang again at 7.40, saying had they arrived, he was starting out. Banging in background. He got to me at 8.20, hair washed, shaved, looking good. We had a drink, I gave him the money. At ten to nine rang Roy. Answering machine. Left tart message. Had dinner. When he saw the size of the joint, ‘shit’. I’d bought nice wine, avocados, rib of beef, raspberries. We said little about it all – I’m sure it sank into his mind as into mine. We enjoyed our meal. On the balcony he told me of the knocking down of the chimney breast in the music room. That is a part of his life that I’m glad not to be a part of! There are 27 sacks of rubble in the front – the mess. In the flat, ‘it’ll never be the same again, there’s brick dust all over the bathroom tiles. I take my clothes off at the bathroom door, and my bedroom is the only room free of it, like a nuclear free zone.’ But it’s obviously going to be ‘brilliant’. The keyboards can be against what used to be the chimney breast – the mixing-desk in the window, – ‘otherwise the keyboard would have masked part of the mixing-desk. Now there’ll be easy room for Simon or you to sit behind me.’ My god, that boy is tactful. He is really miraculous at including me.

Oh, he told me they got some bricks etc. from the ruins of the Central Hall. ‘And Sharron went ape over some tiles there, so we took some of those.’ ‘Was Sharron helping you?’ ‘No.’ A look. He felt guilty about Jason and Chris P working away entirely for him, and when it was obvious Roy and Graham weren’t coming, he said he thought he ought to get back. Showed me his poor hands, scarred and shaking, happily he hasn’t to play, just arrange for Sam B. His face went playful, ‘You’re going to be eating this (pointing to the lovely underdone beef, still about 2lbs!) for the rest of the week. Why don’t I take it to Chris and Jason?’ He rang them quickly and told them not to get a takeaway. We packed up the meat and the remains of the vegetables. Characteristically again, he said ‘Let’s have a scotch and a sit down. Otherwise I shall feel I’m taking the money and the meat and going.’

When he did go, about ten, he said ‘One more nail in MY’s coffin.’ ‘Oh, don’t say that, Kevin.’ ‘It’s mine as well as yours.’ He kissed me and left.

He literally can only have turned the corner when Giles clattered down the stairs and whisked me off to the Fulham Broadway Café again. A lovely distraction, otherwise. Giles is a real help to me. Told him a bit about Julian. Workman still later. How does he bear it?

So to today. Took Julian out to lunch at the Wine Gallery. He was 35 mins late, and contrived to walk into a violent rain-storm. Soaked. On his thin grey hair, streaked across his scalp, he was wearing the same silly little sort of cap as George does, and slightly sideways. An old grey mac over an old grey anorak. A blue shirt insecurely buttoned over his poor flat chest, and great suddenly swollen stomach. He has always managed himself badly physically, and now his illness and his age – he doesn’t look too ill in the face, and yet there is that abstracted puzzled look in the eyes… He pushes his food around as unappetizingly as ever. He drank one glass of wine quite quickly and another not so quickly and the third he had to swallow when we left so… With his usual luck, it poured again as we left. It was quite difficult to make him wait. We got a taxi, saw the film, The Whistleblowers. Passable. He walked home. He said so it wasn’t too grim. He only made one or two really wince-making remarks. His main colossal vulgarity, which I have, as it were, got used to, is his matching of our lives. His mother other equals Dorothy ‘What shall I do if I lose her? You were so marvellous.’ Kevin equals Julian Sands and so on. Poor creature, so much dishonesty, so little courage, so much pain. Would I have done any better?

Rang K at 9ish to see if either of them had rung. They hadn’t. Reminded him about Saturday and asked how he’d got on with John Rae, his old (eighty-something) friend from his school- days. They were meeting at the Café Royal, but it’s tomorrow – ‘I’d mistaken the day.’ ! I told him to take him to Austin Reed’s for tea. A lift etc.

Later.

I think what I’ve liked about all this is the trust. Leaving me early taking all the food and money. I don’t expect if the outside world just heard that alone they’d see it the right way. But then they wouldn’t know about the Sunday before my b’day, and the continuing love. His behaviour last night was of a loving son, who knows he has the licence of love, who knows we go on.

Thursday July 30 1987

To Tony Cruse. He is as sympathetic as an accountant can be, (despite making me listen to his impressions) but noting can stem the depression of £1500 tax. Back to debt again. Bemused.

Later.

George R here when I got back. What with one thing and another, I’d completely forgotten. Neil D came round to go through A Handful of Dust. The BBC are doing it, and - isn’t it strange? – Julian Sands is up for it. J.S. and Rupert Everett loom large in Neil’s hate pantheon. Silly, really, as they are getting on for ten years younger, and quite different. Neil might play Jock Grant-Menz, but not Tony Last. J.S. couldn’t play it either, but probably will. I hope Simon will help N. next month. Ridiculous stuff. While we were going through it, K rang at 3.30, to say he was with John Rae, ‘and where did I say to take him?’ So off they went, I presume, to Austin Reed’s. Neil went, and a little later, John Henson rang up and came round – very jolly. Asked them to dinner on Tuesday. Not looking forward to it much. K round them dull together.

Friday July 31 1987

Julian left a message on the machine before I got up, saying he had two bits of good news, ‘And I know you always like to hear good news’ as if that was a strange perverted private taste of mine. I rang. Don Black had rung and said he’d been awarded the Gold Medal of the British Academy of Songwriters. Hm. I’ve never heard of it, - he tells me it was only founded in 1974. For all I know they award 20 gold medals a year. ‘Services to the British musical.’ I wonder who suggested him. He was pathetically elated, – it gives him something to say. ‘Chris was so pleased.’

Ian Burns arrived at 12.30, and we went off to Paparazzi. I’m so fond of him, but I do worry that his life may crash in some way or other. For instance, he’s going up to Coventry to be with Hilary who’s doing a 10-month course up there. I would call that more or less a year out as far as he’s concerned. He and Hilary were going to see the Mousetrap tonight, as his (tatty) agent, has suggested putting him up for it. Tried to put him off at least the second. Did he want to see a film? Yes, what about Radio Days? So we went, as I saw at once he’s the right person. Well I think K was not entirely wrong, but not entirely right. It is slight and episodic – one of his films simply a series of evocative sketches of childhood his childhood. I knew and could sing all the songs, and most of the atmosphere was the atmosphere of my childhood. Of course that’s no criterion of actual merit, except that I can testify to its accuracy. But it is just its slightness that is its accomplishment. The swift changes are of course the abrupt changes of switching from one radio channel to another. Of course, in addition, K must have as little nostalgia in his disposition as anyone I have ever known! Which is wonderful.

Saturday August 1 1987

3.15.a.m.

He’s sleeping downstairs.

Sunday August 2 1987

10.0 a.m.

He’s just gone walking off up the road in ‘my’ suit.

Rang Simon all through the day after Edward had said he’d left three seats at the box-office, as nowadays I expect everyone to forget everything. K rang to ask what time it was. ‘I’m up to my eyes in it.’ I said ‘Let’s meet at the Blue Posts at 7.45.’ (I’ve decided lately to be more decisive with him, and it’s been good – only for practical things, I mean. I decided I was giving in too much to his convenience, and it actually wasn’t good for him). Later, about 5.0, S. rang to say Let’s meet as soon as possible. ‘Seven at the Pelican?’ So I rang K to say, and he said he’d see us there at 8.0 or 8.10. I knew he wanted to break the Pelican spell, or, if necessary, at the Lyric. S. was ten mins late, and suggested we went to a club he belongs to in that tiny passage by the side of the Coliseum, the Worcester? A smart neo-Georgian door with a brass plate. It was shut! The weekend, you see, nobody’s in London. He said it was a bit yuppy. I’d had one gin in the Pelican, but he ordered a bottle of wine there, after we’d wandered round and not found anywhere else. In the West End! Told him about dick Bird evening etc. K arrived at 8.10 wearing my suit and a white t-shirt. I was so pleased that he’d consented to come to the Pelican, with its unhappy memories for him, combined with the three of us going to the theatre together for the first time since that disastrous evening. They lingered too long for me, and I had to hurry to get to the theatre, hurrying to get a programme and sinking into my seat all hot and bothered. I go to the theatre so seldom with S. that I had not noticed that he’s like Philip D in liking to arrive at the last minute. As a further result, I didn’t sit next to K for the first half, which always puts me in a rage. But I recovered, and made all right the moment the curtain came down. I’d snapped S’s head off a bit.

So to the evening. Financed by one of the Saatchi Wives I met at the Lord Gowrie poetry- reading. The structure of the thing was useless. Unrelenting. For example, the last half was the whole of Four Quartets. Now, if Simon and I can’t follow them, especially when Michael Gough and even Eileen are speaking, then no-one can. I was surprised that the stalls were more or less full.

Michael Gough was primitive. He understood little of what he read, and so neither did we. Even Eileen lapsed badly and often, to my shock, into the voice poetic. But Edward - the power and abandonment and control and passion and skill, matched the poetry, to such an extent that it was exactly as if a better poet started to speak whenever he did. Not to mention the extra clarity and volume from the skill. K was much affected by him. What about that boy sitting through a show that tested me who’d read it all before? Backstage Ed stroked my face after a hug. S and K both remarked on it! We went to see Eileen and her slightly unbalanced husband Bill. Come to think of it, he looks a bit like her, dangerous. Jean Marsh, who’d been awful as the narrator, a subdued little rabbit. Back in Ed’s room, a crowd of UM class. Nice enough, but…. Ed tumbril about the football crowds who had chanted during the second half. ‘I’d have these louts horsewhipped’ to K’s considerable surprise.

Off we went and to the Pelican, further pursuing the breaking of the old mould. S. described his encounter with two girls in Liverpool asking to share his and Bruno’s taxi. It would lose everything in writing down, but reduced K to complete hysteria. S. told us his plans. Glenda Jackson has turned down ‘Shirley V’, which I think foolish of her. She needs a real change, and a return to her native Wirral might be part of it. and Simon might have the courage to tell her the truth about her crippling mannerisms. ‘I don’t fancy being so alone up there for six months.’ Anyway, I’m not free for years! Perhaps not a pity, if she didn’t change. S. is now going quite in the opposite direction, and thinking of Lindsay Duncan. Hm! But she’s stuck in Liaisons on Broadway. All the way round neither it nor Freud looks like giving K any immediate money, to put it mildly.

At some point, K said Have you got my keys with you? ‘No’. ‘Awkward.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I haven’t got the outer Chubb key, and Eliana will be sure to have locked it.’ We didn’t get to the restaurant till 11.30. I am ashamed to say that I didn’t tell him I had deliberately left my full key at home. Every time till now, I have always brought all my keys when seeing him, in case of just what happened. This time, knowing we’d be late, I purposely left them at home, thinking of course, he will have his keys, but how lovely if he hadn’t, and came to stay the night. He went off to the phone about 12.30 to see if Sharron had let herself in as she does occasionally, but she hadn’t. So he stayed, but I felt badly, for the dishonesty, and when I found out how particularly busy he was. He had to get the arrangements of one of Simon’s numbers ready for 7.0 tonight, when Sam and Peter B were coming round to hear it. Back here we had a scotch – it was 2.30 – he said Sam had asked him to do the brass for a Tina Turner no. she’s doing as a cover for one track. She said ‘I just thought you’d like the money.’ I trust him completely not to do useless work. Oh, the Soupdragons have been on to him ‘to do his wonderful string writing’ on their album. ‘I’d love to get their lead singer for a session alone, he’s talented, but can’t read or write music, and I think I could help him without spoiling him.’ Told me John Rae said ‘Well, was I right to tell you to come to London?’

Very moving, to me. When he hugged me goodnight, he gave me that long intense look with his whole self in his gaze and said ‘Thank you for including me in tonight.’ He had been moved.

I took his tea in this morning, he said Thank you in such a delicate tender voice – that may seem a sentimental way of describing - I want to be sure I do it really accurately. His sleepy voice was silvery, very gentle, only using the top of his voice, without all the husky harmonics it has by day! Therefore with a curiously touching childlike quality, exactly matching the helpless trust of sleep. He got himself together, I was still in bed. He came in to say goodbye and for the first time, leant and kissed me as a kiss, apart from an embrace. Why did that touch me especially? Because he and I are especially subtle in these matters, and that somehow represented a further advance of intimacy. A clumsy phrase. I’ll again. It’s interesting.

Later.

After writing that, I slept for another four hours. Really late nights are a strain next day – I must be careful. So – a quiet day.

Monday August 3 1987

Rested. Wrote. Amazing. I earned £18,000 85-6. Where did it go? On him. Watched TV. Ended day longing for him who only gives my life meaning.

How beautiful the garden is. And all the seedlings. Phlox especially good this year because of the rain. Smaller hosta coming back.

Tuesday August 4 1987

Queen Mother 87. Same generation as Lalla! Still reading vol. of Hardy’s letters ’20 – ‘25. Extraordinary, a letter to Mr Mate, then Mayor of B’mouth. And Dan Godfrey. How odd to think I’ve known at least two people who’ve had letters from Hardy.

George R is encouraging me to write that life of Madge Kendal, that I thought of a little while ago. It would be a good distraction at the lowest.

Roy rang up. Back from Wales. He had forgotten. He was abject. After a bit I said ‘No more. We’ll start again.’ He said artlessly, ‘I thought of pretending that I’d been suddenly called away.’ Still, I’m glad he did ring.

On the agony uncle programme. Girl: ‘I’ve no interest in sex at all.’ ‘Have you had any help about this?’ ‘Yes, I’ve seen a therapist.’ ‘Was that a male or female therapist?’ ‘It was a woman, I mean a man.’ Better get that cleared up first.

Later.

Rang him at 6.0. In the bath. Work going well. Seeing his mother and father tomorrow. ‘Yes, they’re down staying with Phil for their holiday. So I don’t think we can meet.’ I had said I’d come up just for half an hour’s drink, which he of course has. And, of course, he sees Sharron, tho’ only in bed no doubt. No, seriously, it doesn’t trouble me any more – only interests me, and one day I shall ask him. Is it, for instance, a good chance to put a little natural interval between our meetings? Am I a real distraction to his work, that is to say, do I stimulate the wrong side of his mind? (I mean, it’s not distracting to sink into bed with someone, quite easy I imagine, not to disturb the state of mind? in which music is written.) And yet I write songs with him! Or is it simply that he just doesn’t want to think in advance at all, because he simply doesn’t know when the half an hour will be, and wants it to be ‘unstructured’ like that?

Jon and Rachael arrived 7.50. With a bottle! Most interesting. I wasn’t bored at all. For a start he said he gave up smoking four months ago and I thought, oh dear another way in which she’s got him under her thumb. Not at all, she’s still smoking. I wasn’t irritated by her – or him, at all. Though I think he’s restive. I gave him Simon’s love. He of course doesn’t know I know he slept with Simon. After that he made three separate quite lengthy references to gayness, the most revealing being about Wayne, a young musician I just remember meeting in Flex. ‘Wayne is very down on gays, talks them down a lot, but talks about them too violently and too much, makes you wonder, so why does he go on working in a gay shop?’ ‘Oh, is flex a gay shop, I thought it was just the proprietors?’ ‘The customers are nearly all gay.’ Fancy, so why did he work there? Also said he’d only met Bruno at the off- stage. Doesn’t know Bruno was on the stairs that night! I enjoyed the evening in a mild sort of way. She has less clamp on him now she’s surer of him. And he does need a strong character in his life. I somehow don’t think they’ll last – they’re a bit young for one thing.

Oh, strange. Jon said, rather seriously, ‘Oh, how are Kevin and Sharron, are they still together, are they getting on alright?’ As if that night at K’s had made him think they might be splitting up. At another point I asked how they liked Sharron, and neither of them were sincere, so I knew they didn’t much like her. Especially Rachael. A pity, as at the moment I think her worth more than either of them. Or Jon might have said it. Thinking I wanted to hear it. In which case he’s wrong. All the same, I’d like to know a bit more about it. I won’t till a real change one way or the other takes place. It’s about time it began to have cracks of some sort, even to go forward. Love affairs are like insects, casting their skin to get bigger, or being destroyed.

Wednesday August 5 1987

Dame Edna Everage on trailer: All these spooky little musicals you’ve got on, Les Liaisons Miserables, put on by that clever little Cameron Raincoat.

One of those days when I do nothing. And even put Giles off tonight, so as to make more nothing.

Thursday August 6 1987

Letter from assistant Bank Manager offering me overdraft in the tamest way. Not because of that, took myself out to lunch at W’bourne Grove Wine Gallery, ‘cos no-one knows me. The empty silence of my life frightens me. Everyone, even he, thinks I suppose, I should work at my writing.

Later. 12.15.

He’s with his parents tonight, who are at Phil’s. Hope all goes well. I think of him so tenderly.

Friday August 7 1987

Up at 9.30 and out by 10.0. When last? Took one of the broken umbrellas to the repair shop in Chiswick I found in the yellow pages. Nice little shop with some antique walking sticks and umbrellas for sale. Turnham Green Station. Chiswick High St. is quite modish. Excellent fish shop in side-road where the tube-station is. Found another Pauline Smith, the Beadle, on the second hand book stall, and Rayner Heppenstall’s Blaze of Noon, - 2nd imp. in a Sue Ryder shop, both 50p. Some lovely leather jackets alas too small, £3 - £4.

He rang tonight, 7.30. Have I got Any Dickins no, again? ‘Because he rang and I said I’d have a drink and I’m in a rush.’ So I gave it to him again and said how did last night go? Meaning his night with his parents. Cross-purposes. ‘We got a bit heated.’ Which turned out to be over his string arrangements. Wed. was his parents, all went well, Phil wasn’t there. Whilst I was looking up the no, he shrieked out to who? That ---- chord? (indeterminate noise).

How about Tuesday? Oh well, so Wednesday and we won’t go to a play.

His taking me for granted is overwhelming and wonderful.

Saturday August 8 1987

‘We won’t go to a play’ is because George R is taking me to the Wandering Jew at the National. 5 ½ hours. ½ hour break for dinner. Daunting. But of course it is a Victorian phenomenon. The cast of 17 play 50 parts, no doubt all 50 without any grasp of the necessary period style or knowledge to make a play without I dare say, any much dramatic life, work, I dread it.

Later.

What would he think if he knew that often and often I call out ‘Kevin’, when I come in, hoping every time he might answer?

I know it’s contemptible by our standards, but then you don’t know what life may force on you.

Sunday August 9 1987

A little better. Started on the cuttings and more or less finished the Nicolson. If only I could write! But luck seems to be against it, what with Roy and Claire and Phil Finch and Janet etc. etc. I shall go on, tho’. He will make me go on.

Saw Kim Wilde interv. on Network 7. I thought she was surprisingly articulate and thoughtful. ‘With people who are rich and famous and beautiful, don’t their partners feel vulnerable because they know that the rich and famous and beautiful are pursued and can always find someone else?’ K.W. ‘Rich and famous – vulnerable? (laugh). I knew I was doing something wrong.’

There was an article by Simon in the paper about a restaurant called Veronicas in W.2 that he’s been to quite often, or it seems so, with Martin Sherman. I suddenly saw his life, of which I’m a rather small part just as, the other day, when he idly said ‘I took Sara Kestelman to Inigo Jones – it’s very expensive.’ More than £100 for two for lunch, I daresay. Isn’t it wonderful I don’t mind.

Forgot to record two films. On Friday I went to see Salvation at the Metro. I do love the Metro, no adverts, a bank of seats exactly angled so that you see nothing but the big screen. Salvation is a nasty little film. Oh dear, the poor little girl director would be cross – it’s one of those films that subsists on its uneasy fascination, with what it’s satirising. And is rather inefficiently made as well. She hasn’t thought it thro’ enough.

Tin Men was quite funny, and quite perceptive, and very well acted, well enough to have lifted it to a higher plane. Of course there is a large body of actors who require respectable naturalistic scripts to display their skill. I laughed and admired and remained detached. It’s simply that it is in films like that that the American norm is displayed, and how deeply repulsive it is.

I walked back thro’ the melee of Tott. Court Rd, and Leicester Square Station, the symbol of loneliness, and home.

Later. Today.

Rang Prim and John N. Got Simon R. The Bucharest holiday with that girl in the British Embassy has been a success? Poor food and hassle from the locals. I wonder what John thought.

Prim so like herself, it was quite throwing, since it’s so long. Edna still claiming to be well. Last week she repeated herself in our conversation. First time.

Planted out snap dragon seedlings in front garden, from seeds in tube-station. Also cleared section for window–box fuchsias, which should have been dwarf but weren’t.

Garden gradually coming into proportion, from planting when I got here.

Later.

Thinking of him recording yesterday and today. And ‘a bit heated’ last time. It is too much to hope that he’ll see through Sam B. I don’t much like the sound of Peter B either!

Monday August 10 1987

Planted out yesterday some of those snap dragons from the seeds off the tube-station bed! Heard Thomas Waterstone on LBC. Had no idea he was a person, but what a lovely one! No wonder the shops are so well run and civilized, with his noble vision of literature. How amazing is the combination of that and a business ability.

George R. arrived, so easy tho’ I didn’t realise he’d come so often, nearly every week. But so little does he impinge that the other week I came out of my bedroom with nothing on and was halfway down the stairs, when George said Good morning, Angus, from the dining-room, happily out of eyeshot. So. And I need a bit of company, and a bit of having to keep up appearances. (How he (K) would hate that expression!)

Tuesday August 11 1987

‘Up betimes’. To H’Smith to buy Prim’s lunch and George’s dinner. Drew out £40 and spent nearly £25 of it. Prim doesn’t eat easily, so got some smoked salmon (only from Safeway’s?) £8.20, chicory, prawns, lemons, raspberries and cream. Dinner, steak (bladebone), carrots, pots, blackberries. Back at home, cooked the casserole, after finding various messages on the machine. He rang to say could we make it Thur instead of Wed. ‘I’ve got hold of a bit of equipment which needs to go back on Thursday.’ I rang and said at once when he has his own studio will that be a thing of the past? In one way, as I said to him, it was better, as today – I’m writing at 4.0 – is testing! And that’s true, in a way. But it’s never good to see him a day later. But I’m pleased for him.

Oh, on Neighbours, that terrible Australian soap opera, a rampaging rich blonde locked her gardener, Shane, in her wine-cellar and when he said ‘Come on, let me out’, she replied with perhaps the last enunciation of a melodramatic classic cliché, ‘If I can’t have you, nobody will.

Later.

The Wandering Jew 5 ½ hours of crushing tedium.

Wednesday August 12 1987

I was dreading The Wandering Jew, and rightly. It was opaque enough for even George and I not to be able to follow it. I need hardly say The Wandering Jew himself was scarcely the centre of the action. If everyone had had the energy, the vitality of Mark Rylance, it would have been more bearable. It was just a great fringe wank. It was unforgivably uselessly long. And only a very young or dim actor would consent to be in it. And that’s exactly what the cast consisted of. Back here for beef casserole and blackberries. George’s conversation is always a pleasure. He is encouraging about the Kendal biography. I had a great boost today for my writing. Simon left a message to say he’d told the Liberated London News that I would write an article about John G, partly because of the exhibition going on at the Gielgud Gallery at the T. Museum. 1200 words by Aug. 20 £250. I hope I can do it well. They asked me to ask John if they could do a new set of photos. So I wrote to him. Strange. Two ghastly old pensioners won £1 million on the pools and the cheque was presented by Imran Khan. Is nobody untarnished with vulgarity now?

Later. Sharron rang to ask a favour. She has a £40 cheque and an overdraft. Asked K but he’s got an overdraft. So could I cash it? We talked a bit about the music – it’s no use. I do envy her being about and hearing it before I do – though she makes nothing of it, happily, as another girl might. She saw him last night and they went to the Magic Toyshop. A failure. So I see. She replaced me on Tuesday! Rather late! She doesn’t care for the Browne’s much either, and doesn’t seem to have followed the rows and disagreements much. She kept using phrases like ‘he didn’t say, but…’ Thank god she’s a good judge of character.

And after all, how I would hate to be there if the Browne’s were there.

Later.

Out with Giles, rather drunk. He is nice but I wish he hadn’t dramatic learnings. I think they’re a mistake.

Thursday August 13 1987 Friday August 14 1987

One more I was too happy to write. Got there at 6.0, he was coming out of his bedroom putting on his trousers, obviously had been lying down. ‘Were you late?’ ‘Not really, three. But I had to get up to go for lunch with Broadwick Prods.’ I was looking at the music room. The taking out of the chimney breast has made a great difference – so much so that it makes you see what a sub-standard conversion it was. It now makes it a perfectly acceptable small bedroom, let alone music-room.

For, I think, the very first time, he greeted me physically. He put his arm round me and rubbed my back! And talked at once! Asked him about the Lethbridge lunch. Japanese, in Tottenham Court Rd, in a basement – judging from the new Time Out Food Guide, it’s Ikkyu, 67 T. CR and there’s a picture. He liked it, and said I would. Portions almost too small! And referred to our disastrous Chinese meal sweetly. (Apart from anything else, I was as deeply depressed, just in a physical sense, as I’ve ever been, that night, and if I am depressed in his co., then I’m depressed – and in that state, finding he could use chop-sticks, for instance, compounded it fearfully. Pathetic). He was a bit troubled because S.L. didn’t mention the music firmly enough. It seems the budget is a bit dodgy, and of course the first thing to go would be the music. It now turns out it was Sarah who told him about it, and I wouldn’t trust her to be practical enough only to tell him when it was definite. She’s too vain. He’s nervous, as his loan etc. depends on it. My heart sank, too. But we’ll see. At least they’re all in Saudi Arabia making it.

He said ‘Don’t let’s go to a movie – I’m rather knackered.’ So we talked of the Magic Toyshop. Granada. He knew the editor, composer (‘my old rival – awful’) – it is obviously a failure. He hated it but said there must be something in the books – I feel there is, let’s try them.’ ! Because of course we hated Company of Wolves as well. Just like that, he said, there were some people couldn’t act at all. Went to the Gate, odd. Camden Plaza much nearer, ‘we only had the standard.’ Then he told me about Eliana. I think she is really going round the twist. She has made the little girl upstairs keep her bike inside her door, and K keep his on that little landing. This means Eira can’t use her bike, unless K’s there, as she can’t get it past his. K wrote Eliana a placatory letter – he’s the last person to be a grudging neighbour – it didn’t stop there being a unpleasant row, – ‘Oh, your patronising letter. I’ve had you up to here.’ And so on. He had pulled away part of her windowsill, saying in his letter, that as he had cement and so on, by him, he would repair it for nothing. She accused him of ‘destroying’ it etc. etc. Horrid. Finally, she actually informed the planning people that he’d made an alteration without permission. The cow. The bitch. She might have got him into real trouble and all she’s suffered is the inconvenience, such as it was, of 27 bags of rubble in the front until the skip came to take them away. Of the banging, only he purposely did it during the day, when she was at work. And all that, and any possible structural worry, should have been dealt with first in the neighbourly talk he had. The planning man arrived. He took one look, smiled and said there was no justification for any complaint. ‘Are you a musician?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘So am I.’ !! And they had a good old natter. Without saying, the man made clear he thought Eliana a troublemaker. The saddest part was when he told me, just after I’d laughed aloud at something or other to do with the music-room, perhaps that the man was a musician, one of the accusations she hurled at K was ‘I’ve heard you up there being happy.’

He said we’d have to wait for Chris P to pick up a bit of equipment. I said to him how wonderful it would be when we were free of this sort of waiting around and staying up until 3.0 until the equipment was picked up. Heartfelt. He rang Chris two or three times. Third time got someone and found out whoever it was knew nothing of Chris coming over here. So we went. But mainly how purging it was to hear him say time and time again ‘He’s so unreliable!’ And he’s teetotal now, and oh what I suffered from him again and again, and K found it so difficult to hear a word against him.

He wanted to try Serendipity again. He and Sharron had been there and found it badly wanting – his was over-cooked, hers was raw, - or something. (I must register that I think she is rather negative in her responses – some of them. That little lift of her lip is suspiciously like the dread ‘I don’t mind’ only in reverse. I noticed he was doing it and told him. ‘I’m sorry’ he said, slightly defiantly.)

Oh, before I describe the meal, I should say while we were waiting, he played me the latest of the library music. Quite intriguing, but I wonder if it’s what they want. A fine line between Musak and Malpass is probably what A.H. wants! Still he can write nothing without a fascinating quirk somewhere. He was in his most melting, melted mood so I asked him how he used these tapes marked ideas. Or rather, how he made them. Did he keep the tape turned on in case. No. Tho’ sometimes he turned the tape on and the idea had gone. I was interested because that doesn’t happen so often with words and a notebook. He said, to my surprise, ‘More often than not, I write it down.’ ‘In notes?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Goodness.’ (I mean, I knew he wrote all the parts out, and so on when he had to, but…) ‘Come to my bedroom. I woke up this morning, and – there it is among the dirty pillows, and the come towels.’ Which it was. A line or two. He still has a wank most mornings despite his affair, as he did the night he was with me. There was the yellow towel in bed with him, without a trace of self-consciousness. Went into the sharp detail over what tracks I hadn’t got.

He also rang Glynn and Sharron. I had told him I wanted him to take my present, but not straight to the wedding! That reminded him to ring G and they had a jokey talk. I fear they have little else now. G said he would come up on Monday and amazingly, said he would turn up at 10.0. K joked back, but when he put the phone down, having agreed to ten tho’ saying If I haven’t surfaced, he couldn’t believe G should suggest ten after K had said twelve. So when I said also I’d like to come up even for half an hour and show him my John G article on Monday he said he’d bring G over and get the wedding present at the same time. And I knew that he was pleased to find good reason not to go on being alone with G.

Then he rang Sharron (this was all during the hour we were waiting for Chris P). ‘I’ve made a bu-bu or possibly boo-boo about tomorrow night. Andy is coming round, so …. But come round later if you like.’ (This repeated two or three times.) In the end she settled for Saturday night, instead of just coming round to be fucked at the end of the pub evening! But of course he may speak to her differently when he’s alone. Oh, he also said to Glynn, he and Sharron might have a weekend away after the wedding. On what money? Ah well.

So off we went. Usual table at Serendipity was empty. First minutes were slightly married for me by three people at next table smirking at my accent. Really! In Islington! Happily they turned out to be members of the staff, so I felt differently. Why?

As for the food and service, it was as before and he loved it. He wanted not to cross it off because he so loves looking at the sky through the clear glass roof. He had the duck pate again, I had the chicken and mushroom soup. Then he had the steak pie (‘delicious’) I had bream. I seldom enjoy my food with him there. Whether it’s because I have more gin – for various reasons - or because I have that feeling in my stomach, by the main course I am a little full and stifled. Not helped by the sweet peach sauce! A delicious relief to get to the coffee. But the talk - there was nothing wrong with that.

‘How was your father and mother’s visit?’ ‘Good. They arrived about 4.0. Without Phil. By the way, they came out on my side, and said it was childish of Phil. Oh (and his face curled with amusement) they’ve built on the field behind their house a children’s playground and now the kids can look into their bedroom from the top of a climbing frame. And they throw pebbles.’ (It is odd that people like Phil who complain and whinge, attract suitable things to complain about). ‘They were really impressed by the music room.’ I expect his father was surprised it hadn’t fallen down. ‘Dad said he was going to come down for a weekend and help me re-decorate after the library music studio days. I’m going to re- decorate the whole flat.’ Ah! ‘I took them to the fish and chip shop. Dad and I had a drink in the pub on the way while mum sat in the car.’ ! (Shall I ever understand other people’s manners?) ‘I took the wine in for Olga to put in the fridge. I told her I was bringing my parents. Straightaway she said ‘Do they know about Angus and Sharron? And what about your work? And then gave a great scream of laughter.’ Isn’t she remarkable? The quickness. ‘They loved the food, ate it all up.’ So thank goodness the whole evening was a complete success.

So over the main course, I said ‘Tell me about the S Browne recording.’ ‘Well, it was difficult.’ (Although he never said so in so many words, I know he regretted it musically really, as well as the other regrets.) ‘We’d done one track and things were a bit tense. Sam and Peter sent the dozen or so musicians out for a coffee break and then they went for each other. I just stood there and left them to it. Later we’d finished the next track and there wasn’t much time and there was a mistake on the cello. Too bad for me to leave. We just had time to redo that and a bit more. Peter and Sam didn’t want to do that bit, not needed, but I said to the musicians Back to letter D and we did it. Then Sam sent the musicians out and tore me off a strip for being unprofessional in overruling Peter and her in front of the musicians. ‘We are producing this album.’ ! In that case, they should have sent him out the first time!

‘So it all left a nasty taste in your mouth.’ ‘Definitely’.

Good. He’s invoiced Sam for £1900 for the five arrangements and studio days. A buy out, of course. The Tina Turner he regretted, more than he expected, I can tell.

Altogether that meal was him opening up, finding my

He opened up so completely because turning back to me was such a relief? Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t see me at these times because….? We bought a bottle of whisky. We talked everything out so gently, so gently. I have never been so close to anyone except her.

Oh, he said he’d be working hard on Sunday. ‘I shall be booting Sharron out.’ I couldn’t decide whether that was the familiarity of love, or of breeding contempt. Certainly the way he said it jarred on me slightly, combined with the earlier ‘phone call. Which, considering that there is a disgusting part of me that wants everyone out of his life except me, is possibly interesting.

I went home on that so often unhappy journey, satisfied and content. He tried to play the piano ‘cos I was interested how soon drink affects the fingers.

I love that boy. As long as I can love him and feel that he loves me back, I can go on. If not, not. For there’s so little else. But I don’t tell him. I love him.

Later.

Notice of Soup Dragons in Time Out. Their most polished to date, a completely professional string section. !

Rang up and read it to him. He received it with his usual apathy where notices and the SDs are concerned! Dear little thing. Still I’m glad the critic could tell. That’s something nowadays.

Saturday August 15 1987

A hot day at last. Must record that between the long entry and ‘later’, I went to see Blind Date, paid £4.50, sat down and got straight up and walked out. I didn’t want to stay, so little shape has my life now got. I don’t think I’ve done that before.

But today I wrote the rough draft of the J.G. article. I have, I think, the shape and bulk now, for re-shaping and cutting. It took me three hours. Even that work made me feel better. I hate cleaning the house.

Sunday August 16 1987

Hot. Tried to work this afternoon. Couldn’t and feel terrible.

He rang up later on to say Sarah was coming tomorrow, was that all right? He and Sharron were painting the music room. So he didn’t ‘boot her out’.

Monday August 17 1987

Did not write last night because it would have been a bitter drunken and utterly unjust entry. Especially drunken.

When I arrived with my article more or less roughly finished, and reading Rachel Roberts’ remaindered diary, Glynn and Sarah were leaning out of the window. ‘How can you read walking along?’ Really puzzled. K in bath, or rather shaving. When I tried to get a second alone with him to say we’d pretend to share the bill, he snapped before I could. Not badly. However, then the announced in front of them, that Sharron was coming too, and that we’d share the bill. Well, all right, but that’s the first time. We went off to the Slug and Lettuce to wait for Sharron. She eventually arrived at 7.30, just as we were deciding to go to the F & C shop. Jolly dinner, and I revise my opinion of Sarah, at least she can laugh. Glynn is such a sweet gentle boy, no wonder he and K were friends. Oh, before we left the flat, he showed me the photos his parents had brought. Adorable, especially the one of him and Glynn laughing uproariously at 18 months. I could hardly put them down and hardly believe they weren’t meant for me, as Marjorie had said she was sending them six months ago and I felt they were mine. All that possessiveness. I didn’t say much, but of course he sensed it and was irritated.

So, the meal was jolly. He and Sharron flirted a bit too much for me, and I don’t think it was jealousy. He is a tiny bit vulgar at such moments – only then - making silly faces etc. I think I’m being objective about that, but not to a damaging extent. He’d gone and got the wine and I hoped he’d say when the bill came ‘I’ll settle with you later’, but no. £33. And he’d added Saran and Sharon! I mustn’t complain. I did offer to pay his telephone bill last time. And I do pretend to be his father. And he called me father at one point.

Back at the flat we had the usual rather jejeune argument. Didn’t join in much. Got bored and left at 10.45, having drunk two whiskies from the bottle I brought last time. When I left he didn’t get up off the floor to see me down the stairs and give me a hug. Apart from missing the hug, I rather despised him for perhaps not doing so in front of them. But of course that is not so. He was tired. The only fair thing I can say is that the air of two young suburban couples was over powering, and he was, I suppose, fitting in with that. If true, a pity. But the bitterness was pure loneliness and bitterness and jealousy not actually of him, just of the why-should-I-have-to-go-home-alone type.

How much more upset I’d have been three years ago? For instance, last night I had nothing to say to him that I had to leave unsaid. He read my article which I’d taken the last three days to write, on and off, whilst we went to his pub and he waited for Sharron, who didn’t come.

He rang this morning and gave further thoughts, all good, but general. There was no point in going over it particularly, as there would be with Roy, over phrasing and so on, or over facts with George. I just wanted him to tell me he was pleased with it, and he did.

It was all painful while it lasted, and mostly my own fault. I say thank god I’m not going to the wedding.