The Mail on Sunday JANUARY 24 • 2010 EXCLUSIVE: Harold Pinter’Sformer Secretary Lays Bare the Cruel Legacy
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22 V3 The Mail on Sunday JANUARY 24 • 2010 EXCLUSIVE: Harold Pinter’sformer secretary lays bare the cruel legacy S THE patrician tones of Lady Antonia her generation, was, according to Anto- Fraser drifted across the airwaves, nia, an attention-seeking neurotic with Sheila Hughes’s stomach turned in the guile of a ‘serpent’. shock. She had once been familiar with By Antonia Hoyle Antonia insists that Vivien and Pinter the unmistakable voice, but had not had been living ‘essentially separate heard it for many years. Now it was lives’ before she met him. back, talking about the husband Sheila says Sheila. ‘She didn’t mention Vivien once. It She insinuates, too, that the drinking had also known well. was as if she was trying to sweep away her exis- problem that would eventually kill Vivien AIn saccharine detail, Antonia described Harold tence and reduce her role in Harold’s life to a foot- was not caused by Pinter’s infidelity, and Pinter’s genius as a playwright, his passion for note. I don’t even known why she’s decided to that she was already ‘on her way to being politics and the uncompromising love that made write this book so soon after he died. a serious alcoholic’. them such a unique and special couple. She talked ‘All I can assume is that she wants to be back in Antonia chooses not to record Vivien’s of the poems he wrote for her and the glittering the public eye, no matter how much she claims to death two years after her divorce from figures who formed their social circle. hate the Press attention, or how many people she Pinter, nor the fact that Daniel was so It was, Sheila concluded, a familiar display of will hurt. I haven’t read the book yet. I can’t bring traumatised by his father’s betrayal and self-regard from a woman she had long since myself to read it.’ his mother’s demise that he refused to talk decided was interested first and foremost in It is probably for the best that Sheila – a friend to his father after 1995, changed his sur- herself and her relationship with Harold. of Vivien’s who worked as Pinter’s personal assis- name and now lives as a recluse in a But as Lady Antonia continued to read extracts tant for nine years and witnessed his relationships remote Cambridgeshire cottage. on Radio 4 from the book she had written about with both Vivien and Lady Antonia – has not The version of Pinter’s life that Antonia Pinter, who died just over a year ago, Sheila’s studied the somewhat melodramatically titled has chosen to present is a personal eulogy scorn turned to anger. Must You Go?, which was published this month. in which the two main characters dominate There was no mention of Vivien Merchant – the When Antonia does mention Vivien, she is dis- and other people have walk-on roles. It is wife of 24 years Pinter had left for Antonia – and missed as a burden who tried to stand in the way for this reason that Sheila has finally not a word about their only son, Daniel. of the great Pinter-Fraser romance by dragging decided to reveal what she witnessed. ‘Hearing Antonia talking in her sugary way out divorce proceedings. Vivien, despite being ‘Vivien would be horrified about the way about her pretentious book made me feel sick,’ regarded as one of the finest stage actresses of she has been portrayed,’ Sheila says in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday. ‘She and Harold were very much in love when he met Antonia. He adored her and she worshipped him. ‘Vivien and Harold liked a drink, but they didn’t have a problem Novotel winter deals with alcohol. Vivien only started to drink heavily to ease the pain of Harold leaving her. It choked me up to see her so destroyed. at novotel.com ‘Although it was alcohol that killed her, I believe that ultimately she died of a broken heart, driven to destruction by the affair. When- ever anyone talks about Harold and Antonia, they never mention the fact that he was happily mar- ried before they met. I am the first person to do so. I am doing this HITTING BACK: Sheila Hughes is interview for Vivien and Daniel.’ critical of Antonia Fraser’s latest book Sheila was married to Only Fools And Horses actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, and When Sheila went to work for Pinter, her daughter is actress Emily Lloyd. Daniel was seven. Sheila recalls a soli- Now 70, she first met Vivien in 1967, tary boy obsessed with his teddy bear, when Sheila was a dresser for the Royal Tessa. ‘He was a bright child, but seemed Shakespeare Company. Vivien was a lonely,’ she says. ‘So I befriended him. prodigiously talented actress from As he grew up, he would read Philip Manchester and a muse of Pinter’s who Larkin. Harold was very proud of him.’ appeared in a number of his plays but The irony of Larkin’s famous line on par- was best known for her performance in ents – ‘They f*** you up, your mum and the 1966 film Alfie. She had married dad’ – is not lost on Sheila. Pinter in 1956 and Daniel, their only ‘Daniel would wander up to the study son, was born two years later. when Harold was away and ask me for It was Vivien who recommended a hug,’ recalls Sheila. ‘They weren’t a Sheila to Pinter and persuaded her to tactile family and I felt he was deprived of physical affection. He needed laugh- ter and normal conversation. He was closer to Vivien than Harold. They both ‘She had been flirting, loved him but their work often made them distracted. throwing herself at him’ ‘When he was 17, he developed a bit of a crush on my daughter Emily. He would write her long poetic letters. He work for them as their personal assis- was a very gifted writer. Antonia wasn’t tant. Sheila would, they agreed, work really interested in Daniel. She already WINTER DEALS AT CONTEMPORARY 4-STAR HOTELS weekdays from 10am to 3pm, organis- had enough children of her own.’ ing Pinter’s schedule, typing his screen- Pinter’s work took precedence over Northern England Southern England plays and helping Vivien as well. ‘I felt parenthood. He wrote in his study on London from* & Scotland from* & Wales from* privileged to be asked,’ she says. the sixth floor at a green leather-topped Sheila recalls turning up at the desk with a lined pad of yellow note- London City South £109 Edinburgh Centre £69 Bristol Centre £69 Pinters’ six-storey Nash terraced house paper permanently open, waiting for London ExCeL £89 Edinburgh Park £69 Cardiff Centre £69 in London’s Regent’s Park the following inspiration to strike. Sometimes Sheila London Greenwich £89 Glasgow Centre £59 Ipswich Centre £59 week. ‘It was like a stately home,’ she typed out his notes but often Pinter says. ‘Chandeliers dripped from the would dictate his dialogue direct. London Heathrow Airport £59 Leeds Centre £59 Milton Keynes £69 ceilings. There were Francis Bacon ‘He paced up and down like a lion,’ London Paddington £109 Liverpool Centre £69 Plymouth £59 paintings on the walls. The whole house says Sheila. ‘He spoke in a bark. He London St Pancras £109 Manchester Centre £69 Reading Centre £69 seemed hushed.’ didn’t waste words. If I dropped some- Sitting regally on the chaise longue in thing on the floor, he’d simply point at it London Tower Bridge £109 Manchester West £59 Southampton £69 the 60ft living room was Vivien. ‘Harold until I picked it up. He didn’t shout but London Waterloo £99 Newcastle Airport £69 Stevenage £59 put her on a pedestal,’ says Sheila. ‘He everyone was in awe of him.’ London West £99 Sheffield Centre £59 would cross the room just to light her Pinter, who had a complex relation- Silk Cut for her, before he even thought ship with the women in his life, liked York Centre £79 of lighting his own Gitane. He bought and respected Sheila. He and Vivien her gorgeous lace underwear and made attended Sheila’s marriage to Roger Midlands from* European City Breaks from** sure she didn’t want for anything. Lloyd-Pack in 1968. Pinter would often ‘Vivien would fix his tie and buy him find work for Roger. Birmingham Airport £69 Paris Est €113 silk socks. Every lunchtime, Harold Pinter, meanwhile, mostly surrounded Birmingham Centre £69 Berlin Mitte €87 would ask me to bring up crystal himself with his literary peers. ‘Once Coventry M6/J3 £59 Amsterdam City €90 glasses of champagne for them both. there was a writers’ conference in the Nottingham East Midlands £59 Brugge Centrum €108 She would tease him coquettishly while house,’ says Sheila. ‘Simon Gray and they drank it.’ Samuel Beckett were there. The ashtrays Wolverhampton £59 ...and many more Yet their seemingly harmonious in the drawing room were overflowing. lifestyle hid a deep deception. Between I don’t believe in being awestruck but it 1962 and 1968, Pinter was, Sheila later was an exciting time.’ discovered, having an affair with BBC Pinter was at his most unpredictable novotel.com Designed for natural living presenter Joan Bakewell. He was also, when he’d had a few whiskies. On one Antonia alleges, enjoying a liaison with such occasion in the late Sixties, Sheila another woman she has called ‘Cleopa- had been for dinner in Hampstead Accommodation and breakfast free for up to two children under 16 sharing their parents’ room and having breakfast with at least one paying adult.