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One of the rituals was that he would lock me into the freezing drawing room to write while he worked upstairs. On Saturday mornings we’d stop at noon and go to the pub to meet Henry Green
and sometimes Dig, his wife. These occasions were always enjoyable, indeed they verged on ‘cosy’, since Arthur and Henry were very fond of each other. Any propensity of Arthur’s
to turn an argument into a row met with the massive wall of Henry’s innate courtesy and understanding of Arthur’s uncontrollably volatile temperament.

One morning, when I was unlocked, I complained I couldn’t finish my wretched novel. It had been going on for too long and I could see no end to it. Perhaps I’d better ditch it, and
start again? ‘I will read it for you,’ Arthur said. He did. He described my writing as a cross between Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh – an opinion that has both flattered and
mystified me ever since. But the good news was that he told me I
had
finished the book – fifty pages back from where I was struggling, and he was quite right. Oh, the
relief
!

Sometimes my friends came to dinner – always an anxious
occasion for me: Jill and Cecil, Liz and Wayland, Lorna and Roger. On the whole, Arthur tended to dismiss women,
unless he was pursuing them or they’d graduated over the years to being old friends. Of these six friends, he took to Roger St Aubyn the most, although later he ‘chummed up’, as
he would put it, with Liz and Wayland. He also liked my brother Colin, who built him a gramophone, and once invited my mother to tea because, he said, if we were to be married, he ought to meet
her. ‘What about
your
mother?’ I knew that she lived in Swiss Cottage, and that he visited her occasionally, often accompanied by Margaret Stevens, A. D. Peters’ stalwart
partner in the business. ‘My mother is
hell
,’ he said. Margaret told me that he was quite frightened of her.

Arthur was charming to my mother, who in turn was at her best; she was funny, fascinated by him, and she didn’t produce a single snubbing remark.

He got drunk with alarming ease. He disapproved of himself about this, but often to no avail. One hot dusty evening when we had been dining with Martyn and Pinky Beckett, great friends of
Arthur’s of whom I became very fond, he said, ‘I am vary, vary drunk, Janee, but you will see. I drive the car so slowly that nobody will know that.’ The car was ricocheting
gently, at about five miles an hour, from kerb to opposite kerb across the immense width of a fortunately empty Brompton Road. It was about two a.m. He wasn’t caught.

He was the first man I’d ever met who noticed and appreciated what clothes I wore. Shortly before I met him, I’d gone to Paris with Lorna to stay with the Talleyrands at St-Brice,
and from there we had spent a delirious morning on the top floor of Christian Dior where they sold off models very cheaply. I’d bought two dresses, both grey, one in silk organza with a wide
dead-white satin sash, and one of wool and silk that he admired every time I wore it. ‘Vary pretty, darling,’ he would purr, walking slowly round me. I also had a few things made by Mrs
Grodzicka that met with approval.

He loved England. He once told me that when he finally reached these shores and was interned as an alien, he’d written to the Home Office saying that the prison was
like the Ritz compared to the prisons in Spain and in France.

He had – I suppose it wasn’t surprising – an enormous vocabulary in English, that made no concession to accent. ‘
Vy
do you do this? Becose you are
eenfantile!’ he would say. He was irascible, obsessive, infinitely courageous, a manic depressive, and an idealist. Above all, he possessed an energy whose voltage would have served at least
five ordinary people. Energy is always charming to those who encounter it in someone else, but to possess his degree of it was an agonizing burden, at times almost insupportable. Whatever he was,
there was too much of it for anyone near him, with the striking and marvellous exception of Cynthia Jefferies, his secretary, whom he was eventually to marry and who died with him tragically in a
joint suicide pact in 1983.

I can’t help writing about him with hindsight: at the time, I was too raw, too inexperienced, and too
stupid
to understand much of this. In any case, I was a small incident in his
life. He pursued and enjoyed or endured many encounters with women. He loved Mamaine, and I was always told that they could not bear to live with or without each other.

So where was I in all this? I was dazzled: I’d always been attracted to men older than myself. I admired him – his integrity, his discipline with work, and his lack of any
pretension. I learned a few things about him that enabled me to join his life. Often when he became suddenly irritable, it was because, like some racing engine, he needed fuel. I’d post
pieces of salami into his mouth to some effect.

But I couldn’t deal with the bully. I reacted in the worst possible way – became silent, apathetic and, worst of all, a martyr.
He
was behaving badly, but I would not –
resentment, so commonly the weapon of defence, didn’t count as bad behaviour, which of course it is. I could have learned more about that. Once, when we were
staying in a
hotel, visiting Celia and Arthur in Lincolnshire, he began a bullying session in our bedroom. Suddenly, beside myself, I threw a full water carafe at him, narrowly missing his head. He stopped at
once, laughed affectionately. ‘Janee! I didn’t know you had it in you!’ I didn’t have it in me very often, and manufactured rage wouldn’t have produced the same
result.

In the spring, Arthur acquired a canoe, a blue craft capable of holding two paddlers. He couldn’t think what to call it, and I suggested
Blue Arrow
: it had a connection with his
first volume of autobiography,
Arrow in the Blue
. He was very pleased with me.

I think we found this craft at Gamages – a store now defunct – which was in High Holborn. Having bought the canoe, he became possessed with the desire to buy more things. As we
passed through the garden-furniture department, fraught with gnomes of various sizes, he cried, ‘Gnomes!’ pronouncing the G. ‘Janee! I could have many of them on my roof terrace,
don’t you think?’

‘No,’ I said.

He persisted, bouncing about the place, picking one up and trying to cajole me in a studiedly wilful manner, and I sensed I was meant to disapprove. He gave in quite suddenly and never referred
to gnomes again.

The boat could be loaded into the car in canvas bags, and at weekends we went to the river Wey, where she was put together. I have remarked earlier that men are often at their worst in boats,
and Arthur was another example. In spite of trying very hard, I couldn’t do anything right. I paddled too hard, or not hard enough; I was lazy, stupid and altogether a hopeless crew. These
tirades were interspersed with sunny periods, when we ate our picnic and he had a brief nap, when peace and silence soothed him and he would invite me to extol it with him. But they were brief, and
by the end of the day I was exhausted, frightened and withdrawn, and I expect the ghastly martyr put in her appearance.

Once we boated on a lake beside which was a hotel where we could stay the night. It had been a hot day, and Arthur’s temper was
in tatters by the end of it. We packed
up the boat and trudged back to the hotel in silence. After one or two drinks, dinner was relatively calm, and after it, he proposed an early night. In bed he became very affectionate, and
apologized for how fierce he’d been all day. ‘It’s simply that you madden me sometimes, but not always – not now . . .’ I mentioned that I’d better to do
something about birth control and the storm broke. There was no need. When would I
ever
learn? It was the wrong time of the month for me, I always thought I was right about everything, it
was the one thing he couldn’t bear about me.

He won, of course. He was a gracious winner, full of gentle, persuasive charm once he’d gained his point. The next few days were comparatively calm. The following weekend we went to stay
with Celia and Arthur. Celia was having a baby – much wanted – but both Arthurs were worried about the delicate state of her health. Celia told me that she’d told my Arthur that
if he and I broke up it would make no difference to her friendship with me, and she wanted to make that plain to him. That touched me. Things were beginning to feel very crumbly, and I think I knew
it wasn’t going to last.

I was still working at Chatto every other week. Cape had accepted
The Long View
, and Peter Peters wrote to me very handsomely admitting that he’d been wrong about its structure. An
enthusiastic French fan had translated
The Beautiful Visit
, and Éditions Gallimard had accepted the second novel too. All this was reassuring, but didn’t impinge upon my
situation with Arthur. Sometimes I dreaded being alone with him. Sometimes I loved him very much. Always I felt spellbound.

There were good moments: sitting in an armchair, Arthur perched on the arm, looking at a book we had just bought together – ‘Janee!
Zis
is what I really like. So cosy –
domestic bliss.
Vy
don’t we have it every day?’ I didn’t answer because there was nothing that Arthur wanted every day, and I recognized sadly that this was true then.
There were also bad moments: a whole day spent rehanging his pictures in the drawing room. The bullying that this
provoked was as bad as being in the boat, but more exhausting.
I’d stand for hours holding a heavy picture and trying to adjust its position to his command. ‘To the
right
!
No!
Zat is too far – now, up a little – not
enough
–
far
too much. Are you an
idiot
? Or are you simply trying to make me angry?’ And so on for hours. Occasionally a picture was actually hung, and possibly two
or three more, but then something was found wrong with one and they had all to be taken down and the whole business would start again.

And then, about two months after our last canoe trip, I realized I must be pregnant. Arthur had always made it very clear to me that he didn’t want any children. He told me that he did
have a child, by a French girlfriend who’d insisted on keeping it, but that was that. It was never to happen again. When I told him, he was unwilling to believe it at first, but as another
week went by, it was impossible not to. Never mind, he said. He would fix it. Abortion was still illegal then. He would ring his friends, and someone would know somebody who would do it. He’d
drive me to the place and it would all be over in a moment.

I thought about what had happened last time, and said I wasn’t prepared to go to just anyone, they must be a doctor: it was my insides, and I’d be responsible for them. This made him
angry, but indecisive. How would I find such a person? I thought again about the last time: he had been a Polish doctor and had done me no harm. I’d go to him. This was agreed, but there was
a delay: I had to wait until I’d reached three months. This interim period became the last straw in our relationship.

My last evening with Arthur was spent dining in an hotel in Kensington with Henry Green and Norah Sayre – a young woman who’d come over from New York with an introduction to Arthur.
I arrived at Montpelier Square a few minutes late, and could tell at once that I’d incurred displeasure. Arthur didn’t offer me a drink, and it was Henry who offered me one. Throughout
that awful evening – when most of the time Arthur pretended I wasn’t there – it was Henry who kept me going, pouring wine for me and
including me in the
conversation. I don’t know how much he knew but he seemed aware that the three of us were beside an unexploded bomb, and he kept it unexploded.

When the evening was over and Norah and Henry had gone, the storm broke. Why was I late? Why had I walked into the room as though I owned it? Why had I looked so gloomy – like a tragedy
queen?

I said I wanted to go home. I was due to go into the nursing-home the following morning anyway, and I could neither argue nor defend myself any more. I wanted two things: to be alone and to go
to sleep.

Everything went smoothly at the nursing-home, where officially I had a D and C – a respectable euphemism for abortion. But – and I don’t know how this happened – my
mother rang me there soon after I was back in bed. Somehow – I think she’d rung Arthur – she cottoned on to the idea I’d had an abortion and proceeded to talk about it. She
didn’t suggest coming to see me, but asked a lot of questions that I found difficult to stop. Very soon after this call, the Matron arrived, apologized and said I’d have to leave. It
was the beginning of a bank holiday. I knew that there was nothing in my flat – not even a pint of milk – and that I’d be alone. She said I could find a friend to look after me,
surely. I rang Arthur to tell him I was going back to my flat. When? At once. Well, he was going to spend the weekend with Arthur and Celia, but he would drop round before he went. I packed up, a
nurse got me a taxi and I went back to Blomfield Road.

Arthur came. He seemed very uneasy. He, too, suggested that surely I could find a friend. I felt so feeble in every way that I was unable to think of anyone. At this moment I heard a voice
calling me from my back garden. I looked out, and it was Wayland. I must have told him what was happening, but his arrival at that moment seemed miraculous. ‘You can look after her,’
Arthur said with relief.

‘Well, someone’s got to, haven’t they?’ Wayland returned, with some asperity.

‘I’ll tell Liz and I’ll come back for you,’ he said when Arthur had gone.

I stayed three or four days with Liz and Wayland, who were unfailingly kind and calm. Arthur wrote a short note in which he said it would be better if we didn’t meet for a while. I wrote
one letter to him.

I spent that summer in a kind of dazed apathy of despair. How clearly I can see now how these repetitive mistakes came about. But then I thought in extreme and simplistic
terms: either a relationship was my responsibility, and its failure was my fault, or the other person was solely responsible, in which case it was his. Generally, I veered between the two. I
didn’t understand that relationships are a mutually responsible affair. I’d been brought up in the critical, judgemental ethos of my mother, and had neither understood nor escaped from
it.