More Fool Me (29 page)

Who was there? Well, a load of old Tories really. Michael Heseltine and his wife. They turned out to be enormous fans of
J&W
. ‘We’ve got a butler who absolutely bases himself on your Jeeves,’ trilled Mrs H. ‘Lah-di-fucking-da, darling,’ as I stridently didn’t say. Peregrine Worsthorne and his wife Lucinda Lambton, who came in the most extraordinary Union Jack frock, Alan Coren and his wife Anne, Terry Burns of HM Treasury, Debbie and David Owen, the latter hot-foot from his notable failures in Switzerland.
^*
Jane Birt and self made up the numbers. I like Jane I must say – American, as is Debbie Owen.

Pretty good time had by all, though the event is significantly less moving in the flesh than on TV. Secretly I felt it all rather anticlimactic, as if I had been expecting some other element that actually wasn’t present. We dined afterwards at Launceston Place, the Owens giving me a lift in their brand new Volvo. Rather comical actually. They argued about absolutely everything. The way to the car, how to get to the restaurant, how to park once there. I said, ‘Well, if you can’t decide how to walk to a parked car, no wonder there’s such hell in Bosnia,’ a bit obvious, but really … U.N. negotiator and he can’t negotiate a one-way system.

Sat at one end of the table flanked by Lucinda and Lady P. She’s all right is our Lucinda I think, in a batty aristo way. A professional enthusiast, and therefore slightly overdone, but I think not a fraud. Home to bed at two-ish, my latest night for a fortnight.

Today I went to the Portland to inspect young Rebecca Laurie, who is stout and sweet. Jo, poor thing is absolutely knocked out, pneumonia, the works. She’s got either a nebulizer or an oxygen mask on at all times. Hugh showed up and seems, for him, rather confident about the novel he’s writing. I bet it’s blissfully funny.

Strange things, private hospitals. You ring a number on the phone and get the answer ‘Room Service …’ I had noticed a TVR parked out the front which had the number plate A1 OB ST, which turned out to belong to Mr Armstrong, the consultant who did Jo’s Caesarian. He turned up too, all jeans, Kickers, navy blue Guernsey sweater, your casual Home Counties weekend uniform.

Then back home and a bit more work on the nov. I
think
I may be able to do things here. I damned well hope so. Only a thousand words today. A lot of fucking about with the formatting of a couple of faxes that are contained in the novel.

Well, it’s past midnight and I’m for sleepies.

MONDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 1993

A quiet day. Barely stepped out of the flat. A lot of letters to get out of the way, which I managed. The world has gone wild today on account of the PLO Israeli agreement being signed in Washington. Henry Kissinger and other so-called wise old birds are being very cautious. Not surprising, really. A lot of work to do yet, if right wing Israelis and nationalist Palestinians are to be quietened.

Worked on a different kind of chapter of the novel. The third person narrative of Michael Logan’s upbringing, vaguely based on my grandfather’s life. Where else would I get the idea of a Hungarian grower of sugar beet?

Not much else to report. Still trying to eat well, but it’s so hard not to raid the fridge. Must buy a set of scales, that would help.

TUESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 1993

Up early to sit for Maggi Hambling again. It started badly, both of us a little nervous. She grew in confidence however, drawing with a stick of charcoal that was roughly the size of a milk-bottle. Amazing implement. Christ it’s a chore standing stock still for so long. Towards the end she played some Ink Spots on the cassette player and wanted to draw me as I danced, a procedure she finds endlessly amusing, as does anyone fortunate enough to witness so rare and unwilling an occurrence. A car came to pick me up at 12.45 to take me to a studio in Islington for photographs for the
Radio Times
. All to do with
Stalag Luft
whose screening date they really can’t decide upon. I think it’s back to late October again now, having been the 8th at one point. The photoshoot, by Brian Moody, absolutely sweet guy as a lot of good photographers are I’ve noticed, was followed by an interview. Reasonable outcome I hope. Must say I felt good all through, despite longing to be at the keyboard novelizing. The Grayshott effect still keeping me relaxed and cheerful.

More work in the evening, hours of it. Continuing the chapter in which we go back to Europe to see Michael Logan’s father as a Hungarian Jew.

WEDNESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER 1993

Another sitting with Maggi. She wanted me to bring a DJ this time, more consonant with whatever image she has of me. As we progressed I realized these sessions weren’t enough for her. She has a large black canvas she wants to paint in oils, and we clearly didn’t have time to get near it. I suggested another couple of sessions and she was clearly relieved. Next week then.

Back home for more work before Kim could arrive to accompany me to the Coliseum for the opening of
La Bohème.
Helen Atkinson-Wood
^*
rang to ask if I would talk into a cassette for a boy who is a friend of her family. He had a cycling accident and is now in a coma. Turns out to be a huge
Blackadder
fan. Said I’d do what I can. Naturally I have now discovered that I have no recording facilities here.

Kim arrived looking well and smart and we shogged off to St Martin’s Lane. What a disappointment! Dreadful production, simply dreadful. The work of Steven Pimlott. Chorus abominably handled, no interval, which enraged Kim who thought it made the thing stink structurally. He knows it better than me, so I took his word for it: very short evening even without interval. I would otherwise have assumed that the opera itself was a structural mess. The Rodolfo was ghastly, barely audible above the band, and the whole thing sounds so foul in English. Mind you, I wept like a baby at the end, who couldn’t? Saw Melvyn Bragg there: he’s lost a ton of weight and looks twenty years older for it. His chubbiness was what gave him the boyish, almost cherubic look for which he is famed. Jeremy Isaacs
^*
present also, and Anna Ford and Frank Johnson and assorted Mediahadeen. Kim and I went to The Ivy afterwards. Saw Harold and Antonia, Mike Ockrent (also looking older for weight-loss)
^†
and Tim Rice, mercifully at full weight.

Back in time for bed.

THURSDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 1993

Sue Freestone today! Great nerves. Final checks, then a print out. She read half before we went to Green’s for a quick oyster or two. Then back to finish. She seemed immensely pleased. Great relief. No real criticism. I worked on her as regards the title
Other People’s Poetry
and she seems to be warming to it.

At 5.00 I trotted off to the Lauries’ to inspect Rebecca again and deliver my nebulizer, which Jo and Hugh feel they ought to have on hand, given Jo’s recent pneumonic state. Stayed for supper and
Die Hard 2.

FRIDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 1993

Frustrating morning wandering up and down Regent Street and Mayfair looking for a tape-recorder. Maddened by being ignored by the five or six staff at Wallace Heaton in Bond Street. Can’t kick up a fuss or they’d think I was annoyed because of ‘who I am’. Eventually had to go all the way to 76 Oxford Street, where I got a Sony Professional Walkman. Wrote and delivered a monologue as Melchett for the boy in the coma, printed out the novel thus far for Anthony Goff my lit. agent and got a taxi to deliver the tape and the manuscript. Anthony said on the phone that Sue sounded frankly ecstatic about the work so far. I MUST NOT LET THIS DIVERT ME FROM CONCENTRATING.

Then, down to work. It all seems to be coalescing in my head, and as always when things are apparently going well, elements I had put in the novel frankly on spec early on in the writing, when I had no idea what the plot was doing or what the outcome would be, suddenly make absolute sense and look natural and right, as if I had always known they should be there. What does that mean though?

Heigh ho.

SATURDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 1993

Mostly work, as usual. Had an idea that each chapter should be headed with a verse from Eliot’s poem ‘The Hippopotamus’. It seems so appropriate. I know the poem is really supposed to be about the C. of E., but it fits the character of Ted to see him as an apparently mud-baked hippo who is in fact more likely to rise and be washed by the angels and martyrs than anyone else. Should the novel itself be called
The Hippopotamus
? Is that over-egging the pudding?

Skipped around St James’s and the Burlington Arcade, trying to find a present for Alastair’s b’day. Ended up getting a rather splendid dressing-gown at Turnbull & Asser. £390 odd but worth it. Kim and he held a party at their place in Dalston. Nick and Sarah were there, but Hugh never showed. Trevor Newton back from his year’s sabbatical in Australia, teaching at Rochester again. He seemed good, if a tad subdued and self-conscious. Strange: at Cambridge he was infinitely more urbane and polished than any of us, but since he’s become a dominie he’s grown away from London; it must be hard for him now that Kim is doing well writing for Ken B. and Greg Snow (also present) is getting on with things as a writer. Why a schoolmaster should feel inferior … yet we know they do. We are the ones who should feel inferior.

Kim and I talked a bit about Oscar. K is getting on with the screenplay for Ken. They showed the Peter Finch film this afternoon, I was writing, so I’ve recorded it to watch tomorrow. Bet he’s unsurpassably good: it’ll only depress me to see him.

I had some lines of coke for the first time in months and months. Weird having that old feeling coursing in the blood again. A large hammer of guilt was banging away in time to the accelerated beating of my heart. All that health and weight loss at Grayshott and now I was guzzling pink champagne
^*
like a beast. That’s the trouble with the old nose-candy: it may suppress your appetite but it sure as hell increases your intake of alcohol. Still, one night in five hundred can’t be fatal. Fuck me, it’s appealing stuff though. Simply too gorgeous and delicious to be trusted. I could fall back into my old ways oh so easily.

Stayed and chatted for much longer than I otherwise would as a result of the Charlie. Ian, Ceri and other of Alastair’s Oxford friends made up the majority of the guestage. Quite fun. Got back at two-ish. Not an excessive amount of leg-thrashing, skin-twitching insomnia. Probably clocked out at three.

SUNDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 1993

Awoke at 11.00-ish feeling worse than I have for ages. But not a massive hangover. Knew I’d be able to work when it came to it. Took things easily and wrote two and half thousand words … not as good as I have been, but that’s understandable under the circs.

Watched the Peter Finch Oscar. Christ he was excellent. Terribly moving. The witty lines excellently thrown away. How will I ever beat that? Lionel Jeffries splendid too.
^*
Very painful.

So far we have 69,009 words for the novel. Have written a diary entry for the queeny character Oliver Mills who gets ‘cured’ by Davey rather as the horse did. Decided against actually writing the scene itself.

The thing seems to be taking shape. Oh God, it’s so hard to tell any more. When you’re inside something for so long, what do you really know about it?

Humpy-hip. Beddly-poos.

MONDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 1993

More work. What else can a chap do? Again, seems to be proceeding all right. But Christ knows if it means anything.

My taxi returned from the garage, new radio and cassette fitted, the kind with a removable front. They’ve done a lovely job on the cab itself, but the fucking radio is dead. Boo.

At six-ish Kim came round, with a line of coke for us each to enjoy before the theatre. While he was chopping up I printed out the horse-fucking scene for him to read. He seemed to take to it well: really liked it I think.

Fortified artistically and nasally, we trolled to the Duke of York’s for the first night of
Oleanna.
Rather ordinary first act, which disappointed me and then – kerboom! – the thing exploded and you had the ordinary nature of the pre-interval set-up reinterpreted in front of your eyes. Wonderful stuff.

Never seen so many people streaming out of a theatre
talking.
Everyone had something to say. I discovered that I was sitting next to Edwina Curry of all people. She, naturally, had
very
firm ideas about it all. Piffle, as you would expect. ‘He failed her.’ What, so he deserved to lose his wife, house and job, did he? What would Edwina’s life be like if she was punished for a sexual indiscretion of that kind?
^*

We avoided the party afterwards and wound our way to the Brixtonian in Neal’s Yard, where Alastair’s friend Ian Poitier was having a birthday party. A sweet poppet from the W. Indies, Ian was at Oxf. with Al. and says he’s a cousin or nephew of the great Sidney. We left there, however, and went to the Ivy actually to eat. Bumped into Simon Gray who, natch, hated
Oleanna.
Then home for kip.

TUESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 1993

Sat for Maggi
again
all morning. She has started the big oil now and I hope will be done by Friday. It’s fun but intense. Nipped back home for a spot of work and then off to Mount Street to see Dougie Hayward the tailor to be measured for a suit. He’s going to make a dark blue job. Never had one that colour before, but it could work. He makes for Michael Caine and John Cleese (who recommended him) very much
the
man of the 60s along with Tommy Nutter, tailoring for Terence Stamp and those kind of people. Not sure my bulk will bring out the best in his snipping, but we’ll see.