Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (83 page)

Prince Edward, all informality, comes across and talks to us quite chattily. He’s got this thing together himself, and I feel quite touched by his ingenuous resolve and complete innocence in the face of many hardened fund-raising wheeler-dealers, some of whom are represented here.

The Prince makes a short speech and attempts to explain the proceedings on June 15th. It sounds either like a complete nightmare of embarrassment and potential humiliation or a surreal experience of hallucinatory bizarreness, according to how much you’ve had to drink.

I get my head down over ‘
AF
’ at nine, emerge for an hour’s lunch at one, then a more or less uninterrupted run-through until half past six.

By evening the curious east-coast micro-climate has produced low, sweeping trails of mist, only as high as the water-tower some of them, which reduce Southwold to a shrouded silence, like something out of the ‘Ancient Mariner’. Potter forth with my little mother into the vaporous evening. Welcome at the Crown almost better than the food, which is oddly tasteless tonight.

Celebrity for the evening is Maureen Lipman, looking wonderful and expensive in a big black and white patterned number with nice, crumpled hubby Jack Rosenthal and two children in tow.

Maureen’s
Wonderful Town
has finished (early, I would think), but she says the pleasures of being thrown in the air by six Brazilians every night were finite – especially when two or three didn’t turn up.

To dinner with Barry Cryer and Alan Bennett. Organised by Barry again – and at the same venue, the Gay Hussar. Alan arrives clutching his back and front bike lights, which he secretes beneath the table. He drinks only Perrier; Barry and I have wine.

We catch up on the news. Alan waxes lyrical about ‘My Life as a Dog’.
¹⁵⁰

Barry has become friends with Ben Elton. He says Elton commented once on how much Barry smiled. ‘None of our lot smile much,’ he’d said. Elton thinks that we’ve lost the art of story-telling – this clearly is why he likes Barry!

Alan is still in trouble with his plots, he tells us, as he unchains his bike from the railings before cycling back to Camden Town.

I’m home by half past eleven. Angela is staying with us until the end of the week. Notice that her hair is greyer than I remember, but she looks as neat and petite and tidy as ever. Tomorrow she has some work at the BBC.

Angela left for the BBC this morning in quite a funk, but survived in the Duty Office until half past seven. But she doesn’t think that she is confident and composed enough to work there yet.

Helen and Angela go to play tennis at Parliament Hill. When they get back I hear from an admiringly disbelieving Helen that Angela has defeated her. She ran everywhere and quite took Helen, who has been getting cocky recently, down a peg.

By seven o’clock I have assembled the new ‘
AF
’ script. What it needs now is another dispassionate read through. But cannot do any more good to it tonight, so let it be and have stew with Angela, Rachel and Will and then out to see a film with Angela.

To the Classic Tottenham Court Road to see
Desert Bloom
.
¹⁵¹
I like it a
lot. A family saga of quality and sensitivity with an attractive re-creation of Las Vegas in 1950. It is about madness, fear and families, but the happy ending makes me feel less anxious about Angela’s reaction.

She enjoys it too.

I am up at seven o’clock. A lovely morning helps. Sun rising visibly and generously. Have read the new ‘
AF
’ through yet again and found a couple of scenes to take out; so a very productive last read-through. By half past ten my two years of writing are over and the year of acting lies ahead.

Then say goodbye to Angela, who disappears up the street in her hired Volvo about 11.15. She never seems well in the morning and, once again, before she leaves, makes it clear that we can never understand how awful she feels.

Helen tells me that she sounded an even more chilling warning than usual and, as I drive down to some shopping and the Python office, a real fear passes through me. Still, she is on the way to her psychiatrist and she has shown a remarkable ability to function perfectly well this week. I like having her to stay, though she does have to be pushed away from a tendency to want to just ‘lie and curl up’.

To Holloway Road to find some clothes for Ken Pile [my character in
Wanda
]. A wonderful Jewish men’s outfitter called Garman. The manager and owner serves in the shop and chews a cigar. It’s all very Broadway. Quite like old times with Hazel [Pethig] – very jokey and relaxed.

Am in my study making my lists when Helen calls me downstairs. It’s between 9.30 and a quarter to ten. ‘It’s Angela … she’s done it,’ is all I need to hear. Then I speak on the phone to Veryan, who confirms that Angela has killed herself. She went to the psychiatrist, then saw Veryan at lunchtime, and seemed on good form, telling him all about her week with us. She returned to Chilton, and there, at about the time Terry and I were chasing around a squash court, decided to go to the garage and asphyxiate herself.

Helen, very composed, though her eyes stare helplessly. I ask her to ring my mother. I’ve never asked her to do anything as important in the whole of our life together and she copes with it unquestioningly. I decide that I must go to Southwold straight away. As I leave, all I ask for is a couple of the green apples that I like to see me through the journey. But Helen had given Angela the last two.

I am up at Sunset House by ten past twelve. As I drove I was not taking much in. I knew I didn’t want music or to hear anyone else’s happy world still going on. I suppose I wanted to be sorry and that’s what I was doing.

Ma in very good shape, considering. A little shaken, but it seems not to have caught her emotionally. She had seen it coming too. There is not much to be done tonight. I ring Aunt Betty in Australia. Hear myself saying (because there is a real danger using equivocation to an aged lady 18,000 miles away) ‘Angela is dead. She took her own life this afternoon.’

As I settle into bed soon after one o’clock, in the same air of unreality, I pick up the bedside book – a collection of
Spectator
competition pieces selected by Joanna Lumley. Inside it reads ‘To my brother Michael from sister Angela, Happy Birthday 1986’.

After a broken, unrefreshing night’s sleep, am up at 8.30 to face the practicalities of the day which will, I’m sure, keep all of us from digesting the full impact of what has happened. Mum seems still to be in complete control. The tendency to incomprehension which Angela found so irritating in her, is in fact a strength. I don’t think it is lack of comprehension anyway. I think it is an ordering of priorities which comes from an instinctive awareness that survival is the most important thing. No wonder Angela could not respond.

Phone calls come in and the vicar calls. A short, well-meaning little man with a seraphic smile and an arrangement of very fragrant white flowers, cut by his wife.

He brings his particular brand of soft-spoken solace which seems quite at odds with the business-as-usual atmosphere of the flat. He holds my mother’s hand solicitously (she won’t even let
me
do that for long) and stares at a photo of Angela.

After this well-intentioned little charade is over, I get on with the more painful part of the day – to ring Veryan and then to break the news to various relations – Hernes, the Greenwoods. The task is made easier by the fact that everyone knew she was ill, so there is no sudden complete shock to confront.

Lunch with Ma and at two o’clock I leave her. She does not want to change her life or routine. Sticking to it is her best way of managing.
And the old ladies downstairs have both been assiduous in offering her company and sympathy. In fact she’s been completely dry-eyed about the whole thing.

Then the journey I’m really not looking forward to – from Southwold to Sudbury. It’s a beautiful afternoon, softly warm, and the Suffolk fields and woods and ochre-washed houses look their best.

First to greet me at Chilton is Camilla, then the two boys. All of us on the edge of tears, but controlling them. Great comfort in being with people who you know are feeling the loss as intensely as you are. Veryan is mowing the lawn. Tomorrow there was to be a local walk, meeting for refreshment at Chilton. They have decided not to postpone it.

The children make some tea and we sit in the small yard at the back of the kitchen and for two hours chat about everything but Angela. Jeremy’s Jane arrives. I think it helps them all having outsiders there to distract from their grief. I feel very close to them, which is a warm and satisfying feeling, an unexpected bonus of the tragedy.

Drive back to London, still numbed, and by the time I’m home am able to sit and talk about it, over a glass of wine, matter-of-factly.

Nor do I feel any need to cancel our dinner with Terry and Al. Quite the opposite. I want to see people. I want to talk about Angela. I don’t want to sweep it aside or under any carpets. And of course Terry is just the right person to be with.

We eat at 192 – a bright, trendy, new place in Notting Hill. TJ anxious and full of touching sympathy, but articulate and sensitive. Al too, though at one point she breaks into the sort of tears I’ve kept at bay all day. An excellent evening altogether, and I shall never be as grateful for the Joneses’ company as I am tonight. And for Helen’s strength and common sense, too.

Refuse to accept complete desolation. As she was unable to.

Still some more phone calls to be made. Betsy-Ann [cousin on my mother’s side] says, apologising in advance for saying it, that she thought it ‘a very brave thing’ that Angela had done.

After the phone calls, another side of me cries out for satisfaction, for a dose of revitalising normality. The day at Abbotsley proves to be just that.

And what a day – warm in a gentle way, soft and summery – the garden
full. The hammock is slung, football and cricket and rounders played. Gardening done and a copious lunch. The best of days.

At Chilton for lunchtime. Helen, I think, more tense than I am. This is the first time she’s been to Chilton since Angela’s death, and she and Angela had become much closer in the last few months – talking in the kitchen, shopping at M&S, tennis, etc. I think Helen saw herself as a lifeline and in a way she feels more affected by Angela’s death than I do.

Piers [Veryan’s brother, a barrister] is there, with stories of his chaotic but busy life. His three-piece-suit – originally well chosen and quite stylish, is turned up at the edges and a little creased from over-use.

We set out for Colchester Crematorium – Marcus, Veryan and, in our car, Piers, Helen and myself. The crematorium is within shouting distance of Colchester Barracks, where, in the autumn of ’82, I was screaming at a squad of recruits and actors for
The Meaning of Life
.

The innocuous collection of buildings where the cremation is to take place make no special impression. Somehow I don’t want to remember the place. One or two other people – I remember a woman in a flowery hat – walk by, otherwise we are left very much alone.

The efficient and discreet funeral director, who seems to have one eye missing, checks we are all ready and then we make our way to the door.

At that moment, Angela’s coffin, on the shoulders of four men in dark raincoats, is carried past us.

We then form up behind the coffin and make our way into a small chapel, whilst pre-recorded organ music sounds, tastefully, from somewhere. It’s all quite strange and disorienting to think it’s used all the time – rewound and used again. It’s like sleeping in someone else’s sheets.

The presence of Peter Hollis, a priest and friend of the family, a sane and sensible man of no pomposity and a tough CND pedigree, makes the whole tawdry occasion special. He asks us to he silent for a while and remember Angela in our own ways. Then he reads some simple prayers – never over-sentimental or over-emotional, but one felt he shared with us all something of Angela.

Then, with the words, ‘She is at rest’, the curtains draw across (I find myself fascinated by who causes this to happen – someone listening somewhere pressing a button – are they automatically triggered in some way?) and the coffin slides away. I am dry-eyed, mainly because I don’t
look at the coffin, nor do I want to let my grief out in such an anonymous place.

We shake hands with Peter Hollis and then an awkward moment of not much to say in the car park before Helen and I leave for London.

We talked there and back about Angela.

Park by the Serpentine Gallery and walk down to the Polish Club in Exhibition Road.

Always struck at this time of year by the sheer weight of greenery – the thickness of the crowns on the trees, the lushness of bushes and shrubs, the deep, thick pile of grass cover. It’s June, it’s raining, and England puts on its own impression of a Continental rainforest.

At the Polish Club I sit with a Perrier and wait for Tristram. Dark, smiling eyes of the girls at the bar – friendly, curious. It is like being in a very benevolent foreign country.

Hardly anyone else dining there, except for a few very smart, grey-suited Polish men, well preserved, with interestingly aged faces. Tristram tells me that they’re the Polish Government in Exile.

Excellent borscht and then dumplings/meatballs and sauerkraut. Some good talk on ‘No. 27’ and
American Friends
.

In the evening to a PEN club function at the Zoo restaurant. Myself and Charles Sturridge and Dorothy Tutin have been invited as special guests to thank us for our help in last year’s fund-raising effort ‘The Sentence is Silence’.