Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (77 page)

We talk about the screenplay. I know as I descend the steep steps into his writing bunker that the news will not be good. And for some reason it all seems to fit Al’s mood at the moment. There’s hardly a glimmer of light in the picture. His criticism is pretty comprehensive. There seems nothing, at first, that he likes about it.

We go for a walk, round a wildlife reserve which is deserted by all wildlife on this bitterly cold morning, except for black-headed chickadees tame enough to take crumbs from the hands of three parka-ed humans.

After the gloom of the ‘hold’, we talk constructively. I realise where I’ve gone wrong. It’s too wordy (I knew that), too much reported speech, and the ‘incidents’, such as death of his mother, blackmail, Symes’s seduction, are perhaps too strong, too dangerously melodramatic. A simpler telling of the tale seems the solution.

At two I leave for New York. For the first few miles drive in a melancholy mood. But I put the radio on and soon the patter of music, ads and the endless traffic flow anaesthetises all but the most basic senses.

TJ tells me he’s read
American Friends
. ‘Tell me the worst’ is my (post-Levinson) reaction, but it turns out most gratifyingly that he enjoyed most of it, and once or twice was moved to tears. He has criticisms, such as predictability, therefore tediousness, in the early setting-up of the stuffiness/priggishness of Ashby, but he is the first who’s started his criticism by saying he liked it.

We repair to the Flask. Squally showers whip across Rosslyn Hill as we walk up past a well-advertised
Mirrorstone
window at the High Hill. Heard from Don at the Belsize Bookshop that he had sold all his copies – ‘And we took a lot’ – so something is happening.

Over a pint we talk further on
American Friends
, then turn to
Erik
. TJ now feels that there is nothing much in the way of making the picture. Lisa Henson and Warners are very keen and quite anxious to close a deal.

Talk about casting, and to my honest surprise TJ names me as one of the two or three names for Erik. The others being Harrison Ford and Michael York. But, as TJ is very keen for the film to be primarily a comedy, it does suddenly seem very plausible that I should play the lead.

Encouraged by TJ’s comments I’m resolved to treat
American Friends
as a working project, but there are rewrites to be done and there is a time problem in shooting the Alps in summer, when I’m officially committed to John’s
Wanda
project. So it seems quite attractive to set aside autumn and winter ’87 for
Erik
and have my film ready to roll in early summer of 1988. If JC’s works out too – a nice continuity of work.

By taxi to Harrods. Meet Richard Seymour and Rachel Kerr, Jonathan Cape publicist, in the book department. There follows a disappointing
Mirrorstone
signing session from twelve until 1.30. If the Harrods staff hadn’t rallied round it would have been near disaster.

Then home and almost straight out, despite misgivings, to a misbegotten Camden Council cock-up called ‘Citizen Cane’s Christmas
Cracker’. This involves me standing in Father Christmas outfit in a cold, draughty, empty warehouse as it is getting dark, rattling my money box and trying to solicit funds for homeless children from charity-battered punters. Abused by most people ‘Where’s your beard?’ (it was worn this morning by Ken Livingstone, but wouldn’t fit me).

I am one of a number of ‘celebrity’ Santas. Monsignor Bruce Kent is to do a stint after me. There is no publicity as to who the Santas are, or a hint that there might be anything special about them. In fact the whole occasion makes one’s heart bleed for our borough – and for substantial amounts of our money – that both should be in the hands of such basically decent, incompetent folk.

At nine o’clock Cathy G, Granny P and myself drive round to Abbotsley Church for the Christmas Service. We would have walked, but for the problem of getting Granny P over the stile. The service is held in the chancel only. A number of rough-looking lads seem to be officiating, together with a myopic organist with Brylcreemed hair combed sparingly away from a low brow. The priest is of that waxy-hued, rather baby-faced complexion – as if he’d been brought out of cotton wool only very recently.

But there are 35 souls there, and I feel it a very satisfying continuity with the past to be standing next to my mother. She complains about the modern language in the service.

Full of virtue we file out, after taking communion, at a quarter to ten. I tell the waxy-faced vicar that I was married in this same church 20 years ago … and am still married … ‘To the same woman,’ I add, which Cath thinks very funny.

I have an idea to take Tom P for a driving practice to Ely, with a visit to the cathedral my reward for sitting with him. The idea spreads rapidly and is soon a full-fledged expedition, involving all of us except Rachel, who watches
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
on her own.

Veryan rings. Angela is back in hospital. She took an overdose of pills, but is now back and her condition is satisfactory. Veryan tentatively suggests that perhaps the hospital was irresponsible in sending her home
at the most dangerous time of the year. They sound to me almost sue-ably negligent. But it’s a measure of how desperate she is.

Enjoy the drive across to Stowmarket, very easy on the eye. Then onto the new, improved A45 to Bury and find myself tensing in preparation for what I will find at the West Suffolk hospital. Long, low, modern building, quite carefully and thoughtfully landscaped.

Park and walk in through the main entrance to find myself completely alone. No-one at Enquiries, no-one anywhere, and no plan of the hospital or indication of where I can find Ward F8. Eventually, at a chocolate slot-machine beside an AIDS warning display, I find another visitor who knows the hospital better than me. She directs me upstairs.

Ward F8 is the medical ward where Angela has been put temporarily after her overdose on Saturday. This afternoon she is to be moved back to the psychiatric ward, where she has spent most of the last five weeks. I’m directed vaguely and find Angela, a slight slip of a figure, apparently asleep in a chair beside her bed. The bed has been stripped and on the mattress is her case.

Angela isn’t deeply asleep and opens her eyes quite quickly. Her hands are hot, her eyes dead and limpid. She talks slowly in a monotone. At first it’s as bad as I feared, but gradually she revives and the blanket covering of negativity lifts every now and then. She knows that hospitals don’t particularly like ‘overdosers’ – thinking of them as people who abuse drugs – but the nurses and staff seem kind and cheerful enough. She’s brought some lunch whilst I’m there, which she eats with enthusiasm.

I stay for an hour or more. Have never hugged my sister as much as I do in the ten minutes or so before I leave. But my reward is to see her smile, make some quite bright small talk about my coat, etcetera, ask about my plans.

I leave her, a frail figure waving at the end of a hospital corridor. Have to walk very slowly to let my emotions sort themselves out. When I do start back for London, I drive straight back without stopping for lunch. As I drive I feel sure I did some good to Angela, feel encouraged by the spark still glowing at the back of a fire that at times seems to have completely gone out, guilty that I didn’t stay longer and determined to do all I can to get her away from the hospital.

I decide to call Richard F and Susan H together before the year’s out, hopefully, and tell them that I cannot continue as Chairman for much longer.

The chairmanship of T2000 was good and worthwhile as an experiment, and an experiment which could only take place in the deliberately time-marking, low-profile two years I’ve just been through. There really is no place for these experiments if I am to make films as well. And one thing I am sure of, after tasting various alternatives in the last couple of years, is that I want to make films.

Within 15 minutes of arriving at Sunset House I have rung Angela at the hospital and arranged visiting times.

An hour and ten minutes’ drive; the hospital car park is packed, but then public transport is almost completely absent in Suffolk. Am parking when we see Angela waving vigorously from a ground-floor room opposite, a completely different person from the drowsy, slurred, almost helpless figure I left here eight days ago.

She meets us at reception and writes her name in chalk on a board – ‘Angela Herbert – out with family’. Hers is the most elegant and controlled script.

Then we walk to the car, drive into Bury, walk some way to a wholefood coffee shop, where we have tea and a talk. Be positive, don’t raise anything complicated, keep cheerful, burble on.

But with Angela today it is hardly necessary. She is much more aware and alert. She has had four ECT sessions this week and they seem to have pulled her sharply out of the depression in a way in which the drugs never did. She laughs quite easily. But I can see that the limits of her composure are still narrow.

She tells me, when Granny is in the loo, of how she nearly killed herself twice. Her tone is alarming – it’s almost one of pride, as if to say ‘Now, that’s something I
can
do.’

But she is responsive and good company throughout. A cold walk down to the car, dropping in at an antique shop on the way she notes down details of some library steps for Veryan. Her hand is steady, but her memory has suffered. She doesn’t remember me going to see her last Sunday week at all. And I was there for one and a quarter hours.

We drive back, Mother and me, twisting along the friendly 1120. I’m optimistic in the short term, very concerned in the long term. Mum just feels that we must get her out of ‘that place’ as soon as possible.

The snow, ice and chaos forecast have not materialised. A cold, but benign morning with weak sunshine. I’m offered the lead in
Bulldog Drummond
– a new Stephen Fry treatment for Chichester, and
Me and My Girl
in the West End … !

To lunch at Langan’s Bistro to tell Susan and Richard that I can’t continue as Chairman of Transport 2000.

Richard, shrugs off the problem and immediately suggests that we should appoint another Vice-Chairman, besides himself, possibly Harley Sherlock, and that the two of them should run things for a year until I can come back.

He and Susan both feel a departure would do unnecessary damage to T2000 at the moment and that the members are so pleased to have me as Chairman that they would rather do anything than see me resign.

Up at eight and after breakfast begin work on a transport article. Susan Hoyle rings to tell me that she has been shortlisted for a new job, and would I be prepared to give references? Pleased for her, but can’t help feeling that this news hard on the heels of yesterday’s pleading for me to stay cannot be coincidental. They must have both been aware of the considerable extra pressure which will have to be borne by a Chairman when the Executive Director resigns. Feel a distant twinge of righteous anger.

To Cambridge Gate. Meeting re Prominent Features. John C is happy to put his film through PF, but doesn’t want to be a director or have anything to do with the running of the company. Eric is brisk, organising and pays for this by being voted Chairman. Terry J is uncharacteristically quiet, TG the most visionary.

Many questions raised. How big should we be? How big should the launch be? Who should we employ? How will the launch be run?

Off by taxi to Walkden House. Today is the first of our new, extended board meeting days – another measure of the extra work the organisation has taken upon itself in the last twelve months.

Steer them as best I can towards finance, etc, but have to end at 12.30 for our ‘celebrity lunch’.

A big, amiable-looking man with very fair hair and pinkish skin stands awkwardly in our little office. This is John Palmer, Deputy Secretary at the Department of Transport and our first ‘informal’ lunch guest. First impressions lead me to think we have chosen well, but once we have collected our sandwiches and our glasses (I stick to orange juice) and begun talking I realise otherwise.

He maintains, I think, an almost scornfully Mandarin vagueness which I feel is an insult to the generally good and balanced questions that come from our members. He talks slowly (maybe this is deliberate) and everything is approached with a caution that could be taken for ignorance, except that he has been the man in charge of surface transport planning at the Department for ten years.

Back to our board meeting at 2.20 after seeing Mr Palmer off. ‘Do you want any more of our chaps?’ he asked.

The ‘Winter of Misery’ (LBC this morning) is into its fifth day. Snow remains uncleared in Oak Village and there is no rubbish collection again.

Don the gloves and woolly hat and run into the bitter wind. Plenty of children on Parliament Hill sledging on everything from proper sledges (very rare) to plastic red and white striped barriers pinched from road-works abandoned during the bad weather. Arrive home glowing.

Rendezvous with our T2000 delegation. Susan has been unsuccessful in her application for a new job, but is taking it philosophically. We walk through Euston to the new British Rail HQ in Eversholt Street. Two of our members manage to lose themselves in the Euston concourse for five minutes.

Small, plain meeting room. No concession to art or decoration. Chris Green from Network South-East is our first speaker. Greying hair growing tight across the head, a broad head, like a ram or a rugby player, which puts me in mind of Al. Like his head, his approach is solid, factual, no nonsense, no frills, no rhetoric. He is forcefully impressive. A touch of impatience establishes his superiority comfortably. He knows the facts,
we don’t. He runs railways, whilst we talk about it, sort of attitude.