Liberation (14 page)

 

April 16.
The
Apollo 13
astronauts are wobbling back toward earth. For the past two days we have been watching their troubles on the telly—or rather, we have watched various types of grim ham reporters telling us about them. If this produces a really violent reaction against these money-wasting public circuses I suppose it will have been almost worthwhile. But what a nightmare way to die!
⁵⁷

Yesterday afternoon I took a walk right up to the crest of the Old Buxton Road. There was a strong wind and the grey clouds streaming across England, the Cage against a yellow steak of light, the chimneys of Manchester like huge mysterious monuments in the blue beyond. I told the shaggy horses in the field that Kitty is coming to be with us again.

Later. 6:30 p.m
. Back at Moore Street, to find a cable from Don saying he'll come immediately the director says yes. Am disappointed of course, because I'd felt sure he would come anyway, but it's the only sensible decision unless he feels he wants another visit here. Because it's by no means certain that Chetwyn
will
say yes, and if he says no I may well be on that plane home on Sunday. The great thing now is to get a definite answer from Chetwyn, so I'm pressuring Clement to make Chetwyn's agent say how much Chetwyn will cost, if he
does
say yes; there must not be any last-moment backing down because he's too expensive.

Meanwhile Nicholas Thompson, who has done absolutely nothing for us, is leaving for New York tomorrow. Fuck all agents[.]

I'm having supper with Richard Le Page tonight, chiefly because he made such a thing out of it and is coming up to London on the train to see me (well, partly at least).

Spent much of yesterday and the day before reading Kathleen's diaries for 1936 and 1937—all that sorry tale of my efforts to get Heinz a new nationality, and of how Kathleen was induced by me to pay the thousand pounds to Salinger to give to the Mexicans.
⁵⁸
I must say, it now seems to me more probable than ever that the money ended up in the pockets of Salinger and Gerald [Hamilton]. Oddly enough, Richard rather opposed this idea and kept raising points to prove that it couldn't be true. His points were all based on ignorance of the facts; it was his attitude that interested me. Goodness knows, I don't feel particularly vindictive toward Gerald—and as for Salinger he was punished by other circumstances, far more than I could ever have wished.
⁵⁹
I was a silly little ass, anyhow, thinking I could fool around with these sharks and not get nipped, and it was I who made Kathleen go through with it.

Kathleen disliked Heinz, because he was socially unsuitable and a nuisance. She really hated Olive Mangeot, as a domestic subversive influence. She had a life-long feud with Nanny. She latterly referred to Amiya as “that bitch”; she also disliked Richard's “adopted aunt,” Miss Colvin. She was very impatient with me when I got so ill in 1937 and writes that I behaved like a pasha or sultan, I forget which. She deplored Wystan's untidiness. She mistrusted Edward. Perhaps Britten is the only one who gets her top marks as a guest.

In a way I'm rather sorry I read these two diaries. They disturb my image of the younger Kathleen and also that of the old woman with whom I became affectionate again from 1947 onwards. They remind me of the mother figure I often hated so much throughout the twenties and thirties. And I want to forget her. I have no use for her, whatsoever; she doesn't come into the scope of my book.

Before I left this morning, Dan Bradley told me that he expected Richard would have a big booze-up tonight or tomorrow as a release of tension after staying dry during my visit! The joke is that I too was staying dry during my visit to Richard, not to impress him but just because it was a convenient excuse for taking a rest.

This morning saying goodbye I was struck once more by the sweetness and innocence and real goodness in Mrs. Dan's face.

Patrick Woodcock has just (7:50) been by to see me, to hear about the latest developments connected with our play. He doesn't recommend Gielgud as a director (this was an idea of Clement's) because he's losing the power to concentrate. Noël Coward is far worse; when he starts out alone to visit someone he often arrives not knowing who he's visiting. He can't remember who he had lunch with, that same day. The experts, Patrick says, recommend giving the ageing brain cells a workout by learning something altogether new, like a foreign language.

Patrick quite approves of another idea of Clement's—that we should try getting the play put on by a theatrical group—like the Hampstead Theatre Club. They have done good things and they often go on to the West End.

Patrick says he is anxious to reassure people about dying. He hates it when he hears that someone “died in agony”—“that's nonsense.” He thinks lung cancer is the best, today he told a very intelligent patient (sixty-two) that she had it. There is no pain and no breathlessness.

I feel a great warmth from Patrick, nowadays. He says of himself that all he cares about is intimacy.

 

April 17.
Last night I had supper with Richard Le Page at Odin's. David, Peter, Kasmin, Ossie and [Celia]
⁶⁰
Clark and a lot of others were there. David was drawing them and giving away the drawings; he gave me one of Peter. Then Wayne Sleep arrived. The other night he was at Odin's with just a few other people—I suppose it was very late —and he got drunk and stripped all his clothes off and danced stark naked on the tables. Too many strangers were present for him to do it yesterday evening, however.

Later we all went back to David and Peter's flat, where they presented me with an album full of pictures taken during our tour in France and stay at Tony's—a marvellous thing to have. I believe I can give them a suitable counter-present; a copy of the big illustrated book on Klimt.
⁶¹
Kasmin was very drunk and desperately eager to belong to the gang; he wanted to strip and dance with Wayne!
^*
[Don's friend] was also there, but we avoided each other except for polite smiles at parting.

It was so late that I urged Richard Le Page to stay the night, which he willingly did. There was some necking later, also quite willing on his part, though he obviously didn't want anything beyond that. We parted very friendly after a sausage breakfast.

Am now reading
The First Circle
with much more pleasure. It seems to me to pick up at chapter 34 with Nerzhin's interview with his wife Nadya; and all the stuff about the daughters of Makarygin, the State Prosecuting Attorney, is interesting so far.

 

April 18.
An old lady, hobbling briskly along, said, as we passed each other on the street this morning, “Isn't it awful, getting old? I'm absolutely worn out. How old are you?” “Sixty-five.” “Oh, you're a baby. I'm eighty-five.” I said: “Do you think they ought to finish us off?” “Oh, I shouldn't like that at all! Well—at least we can laugh about it, can't we?”

Later.
Have just had lunch with Robert Medley. He told me that Eliot sent Rupert Doone an earlier draft of
Murder in the Cathedral
which was in prose and Rupert told him it was a bore and why didn't he write it in verse, since he was such a good poet! Also, that Eliot once told Rupert that he was a genius.

There is a bitter layer in Robert. He talks bitterly of Keith Vaughan, how prim and cagey he is. Robert is lonely of course, but he says he finds his relationship with Gregory [Brown] and his wife satisfactory and permanent.

I have cancelled my flight back to Los Angeles for tomorrow and indeed I really believe we have got Robert Chetwyn; the only remaining obstacles are financial. After talking to him at some length yesterday, I'm now at least ninety-five percent convinced that he's the right man for us, intelligent and cooperative and not a trickster. Now the question comes up, how soon can I risk telling Don that it's okay for him to take off ?

Supper with Neil Hartley and Bob last night—at Odin's again, I seem to live there. I didn't get drunk but I did drink too much, which I do so loathe doing; it results in my not remembering anything that was said. All I have left from the evening is an impression of Neil; very weary, really worn out by his life, gentle and rather beautiful in his (perhaps terminal) exhaustion. He alluded to Tony's cantankerousness—Tony was in one of his “anti-Anna” (O'Reilly) moods. Neil said he didn't want to see Tony while he was like this, but of course he has to be with him constantly. On the other hand, I felt great warmth toward me from Neil—perhaps a kind of fraternity in decrepitude, but anyhow pleasing because I am really fond of him.

 

April 19.
It's an unsatisfactory day. Phases of weak sunshine followed by sunless cold. Have had to switch on the heating. But the tree outside the window is in leaf.

Have talked to both Clement and Bob Chetwyn (he wants to be called Bob) this morning, trying to get them to commit themselves sufficiently so I can tell Don how soon to come, when I call him this evening. I now believe that Bob
does
mean to go ahead; Clement refuses to commit himself until he has talked the deal over with Richard Schulman tomorrow morning.

Richard Le Page was here again last night. David had invited him to come to the ballet and when he showed up he had his overnight bag with him and made it clear he expected to stay with me, not with the friend he has in Clapham, where he usually stays. However, after the ballet, and supper at Odin's, he decided to go off to a party—one of the dancers in
La Boutique Fantasque
(Anthony Rudenko) who came to supper with us, had invited us all but I didn't feel like going. So I didn't see Richard again until this morning, when I fixed him scrambled eggs. I like him, and could easily get to like him a lot more, but I rather doubt if I ever shall. Circumstances are against it. We may see each other in California, however, when he comes out to lecture at UCLA, later this year.

The ballet seemed insipid. Not one of the dancers appealed to me especially. This is the touring company; the regulars (including Wayne) are off in New York.
From Waking Sleep
features the Buddha;
Lazarus
, Jesus.
⁶²
They are both deathly respectful and serious but, at the same time, their style is essentially campy. That's what is wrong with them, I guess.
^*

I gave David and Peter a copy of the Klimt book. Peter was annoyed with David during supper, and no wonder. David keeps retelling, somewhat braggingly, the story of how they met, to semi-strangers at table, and then fondles Peter with thoroughly self-satisfied possessiveness. He also announced that, when Peter goes to California, he'll go too—although Peter doesn't want him to come, as he freely admits. Once, when David put his arm around Peter, Peter jerked angrily away. Sooner or later, David will have to face the fact that their relationship is in quite considerable danger. I have seldom seen such a clear demonstration of the very mistakes I have made—and still sometimes make—with Don. Ought I to speak to David about them? Probably not—unless Peter asks me to.

 

April 20 [Monday]
. Peter did sort of ask me to, but not definitely enough, in the middle of a supper party at Patrick Woodcock's, last night. He repeated that he wanted a separate place to live and he again referred to the unsatisfactory sex situation.

Actually the party was quite a success, although Patrick had invited old Gladys Calthrop and two Frogs from the French embassy. Poor Gladys got a terrible headache and had to leave, but the Frogs were nice, even charming, Jean-Pierre and Odile Angremy; she was both attractive and friendly and he was blond, plump but sexy, and quite intelligent—by which I mean, among other things, that he admired my work. He is a writer himself, and has published what he claims is a pornographic novel.
⁶³
He greatly recommends a modern writer named Bataille. He spent several years in China, and is preparing an anthology of writings about it. He hadn't heard of
Journey to a War
.

John Gielgud and Martin Hensler were also there; John as amusing as usual, and so genuinely benevolent. Martin was in an exceptionally gracious mood and made himself very agreeable. David was David. Tonight we are going out to dinner together again, with the novelist Julian Mitchell.
⁶⁴
I sometimes begin to wonder if David proposes all these threesomes because Peter and he quarrel when they are alone!

When I called Don yesterday I told him the situation between Clement and Bob Chetwyn and we've agreed that he shall book a passage on a plane leaving Wednesday, the day after tomorrow, and arriving early Thursday, the 23rd. Meanwhile I have to send him a cable as soon as possible, either confirming this or telling him to wait. At present the situation doesn't look good. Richard Schulman, Clement's partner, feels that Bob Chetwyn is far too expensive. They are obviously going to bargain. Bob's [. . .] agent Elspeth Cochrane has lost his former contract and another copy of it has to be picked up and copied for Schulman and Clement. So nothing can be settled till tomorrow. Of course I
can
still reach Don in time but I hate to make such a cliff-hanger out of the proceedings, when the delay is all due to the inefficiency of this [agency]. Clement said to me on the phone: “It's a war of nutrition.”

An attractive dark lank-haired young man from Hull, with a high forehead, crooked teeth and a tape recorder interviewed me for two hours this morning to get material for a thesis he is writing on four novelists of the thirties and their attitude to political questions—Edward and me, Anthony Powell and Henry Green. His name is David Lamborne. Then a big fat blond pleasant but unattractive young German-American named Otto Friedrich followed him immediately, with questions for a book on pre-1939 Berlin.
⁶⁵
Mrs. Gee
⁶⁶
contrived to interrupt us several times; she comes in very quietly unannounced, often startling me violently. I want to kick the shit out of her—there's something masochistic about her attitude—and yet, whenever I settle down to talk to her, she's nice and very sensible.