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During these times I asked Charlie about himself. I could only do this in brief snatches, as I sensed it bored him. He must have been asked many of my questions hundreds of times. Once, in the
South of France, he showed me the beginning of the autobiography he’d started to write. All I can remember was his description as a child of seeing the sea for the first time. He went down a
steep hill, and there was a wide strip of blue before him, like a wall, and he thought it was going to knock him over. He asked me what I thought of the few pages, and, honestly thinking they were
good, I made respectfully encouraging noises. I asked him if he would like to see what I’d written so far about him, and he said, ‘Read it to me.’ So I did. ‘It’s
almost too flattering,’ he said, but he had a purring expression, and the ‘almost’ was exactly what he meant. ‘Are you in love?’ he asked suddenly one day. I said I
wasn’t sure. ‘Find out. Love is the most important thing in life.’

That winter, Oona wrote to me, asking Nicola and me to come for Christmas. For some reason, we couldn’t go. Letters passed between us, then suddenly stopped. I wrote twice to her and she
didn’t answer. Somebody told me that Charlie got jealous if she had close friends – even a woman – and that was the end of our relationship.

There was an unfortunate coda to all this. When I sent in my piece to Terry Kilmartin, he rang to say it wasn’t what he’d
expected. He came to see me about it,
and his complaint was that I hadn’t written about Charlie’s political opinions. I hadn’t because I thought that was the dullest part of him. What
was
interesting, and what
I’d written about, was the way in which he worked, how he dealt with his immense notoriety and his large family life.

Terry absolutely disagreed. We had a long argument. ‘Put the political part in,’ he said. I refused. He was seriously angry. ‘Well, I shall see to it that you never write for
this paper again.’ I never did write for the
Observer
again. The piece, which I still think was a good portrait, was lost. I was inveigled into sending it to some magazine that was
starting in an Indian ashram: they published it, then refused to pay me, and I never saw it. In those days I was careless about copies.

I think it must have been the same summer that I went to Greece for the first time – spent four or five weeks on the island of Hydra. It was a quiet, simple place, inhabited – apart
from its small Greek population – only by a few writers, mainly Australian. It had been the island where prosperous Greek captains had retired and there were some fine houses. The painter
Ghika had a house there about a mile from the port, and there was a monastery high up on the mountain above the harbour. The agora – the port – was paved with pink marble. There
wasn’t much to eat: a grocer sold macaroni and tins of corned beef, sardines, rice and tinned milk. Occasionally I’d see small goats being driven to the abattoir and everybody rushed to
it for a share of the carcass. There were wonderful tomatoes, olives, feta cheese and onions, and sometimes the grocer provided thick slices of streaky, very fat bacon that was delicious.

Bathing wasn’t easy, but there was one rocky inlet near the port. Old men, crippled from sponge diving, sat on hard wooden chairs outside the grocer’s shop with a can of retsina and
pieces of bread. The whole village was built on a vertiginous slope as the mountains rose straight out of the sea. From a distance in a boat, the houses looked like handfuls of sugar lumps.

I fell in love with Greece in those weeks on Hydra. I’d hardly
travelled anywhere – a few visits to France, to Spain, and the two trips to America – so the
impact of Greece was intoxicating, and the effect much like that of a first love affair. The sheer, continuous beauty, the purity of the light, the air, the amazing clear, clean sea and the long
heroic sunsets were mesmerizing. The perfume of hot thyme, the excitement of finding small pink cyclamen growing out of the rocks, the absence of cars, the sound of little tapping donkeys’
feet, the generous courtesy of the Hydriots – all of this seized my heart.

Two small pieces of chance or coincidence occurred. One morning, when I was bathing, I’d noticed that a ship had moored offshore, and shortly afterwards a group of people came to bathe
among whom was Cecil. He seemed both unsurprised and unpleased to see me. It was like meeting a familiar stranger. Then, some weeks later, Laurie suddenly turned up. He was on his own, but he said
he had been with a very young girl who had got too attached to him. Could he stay until he caught the next boat to Athens? He had a fever, and an epileptic fit followed. I was rather frightened as
I’d never been with him during a proper fit, but I managed to stop him falling off the bed. Afterwards we had a friendly, quiet evening and the next morning he was gone.

On Hydra I’d been working on the New York section of
The Sea Change
, but I decided that the next part of it should take place in Greece. I know now I am not a true traveller, but I
like going to a place – preferably not a city – and living there. I could set some of my novel in Hydra, because I felt I’d got to know it a little.

Back in London in the spring of 1958 I got jaundice – not the terminal kind, clearly, but the next worst. I was taken with a very high fever in an ambulance to a
hospital. Nobody seemed to know what was the matter with me, until my own doctor, John Allison, who was also a friend, told me. The moment he left, a nurse arrived with a tray on which was a fried
egg and chips. ‘I don’t think I’m meant to eat that,’ I said. I couldn’t face food of any kind.

‘Don’t think we can do special diets in
this
hospital,’ she said, and flounced out.

Nor did they. For three weeks I lived on grapefruit brought by friends and water. When I was through the yellow stage, I was allowed to go home, feeling weaker than ever before in my life.

While I was in hospital, my father wrote me one of his rare letters. Wasn’t it funny, he said, that the whole family should be laid low at once? My mother had broken her sternum, Robin was
having his tonsils removed, and he was himself in hospital having examinations because he’d been feeling rather rotten lately. The last time I’d had him and Ursula to dinner, I’d
made a great effort to produce a rich three-course meal, I remembered, and I saw my father, suddenly rather grey in the face, saying that my pâté was delicious, but he couldn’t
eat any more of it.

It took me weeks to recover. At first I felt so tired that if a fly landed on my forehead I was too feeble to brush it off. Anthea and James Sutherland kindly lent me their cottage in the Isle
of Wight to convalesce. My father wrote to me again there. This time he was in King Edward VII’s Hospital for Officers, having treatment. Treatment for what, I wondered. It was a shaky little
note, but cheerful. He said Myra Hess had come to visit him, and that Matron had been most impressed. As soon as I got back I went to see him there. My aunt Ruth turned up, and when we left
together, I asked her what
was
wrong with him as he didn’t seem to want to talk about it. ‘Cancer,’ she said. He was having radiology. ‘They told me that they
couldn’t save his life, but they could save him a lot of pain.’

When he came out of hospital he went to stay in a friend’s house in London, because he and Ursula had moved to a house in Hawkhurst in Kent. I remember looking up Mrs Beeton and making him
beef tea, and taking it in milk bottles to Chelsea. It looked awful, a thin browny liquid, but he seemed pleased. Then he was well enough to go home, which he longed to do. I rang at intervals, but
always spoke to Ursula as he seemed to be asleep or
resting whenever I telephoned. He was doing very well, she said. I thought then that whatever my aunt had said, perhaps he
was going to get better.

I was short of money again, so when Beatrix Miller, editor of a newish magazine called
Queen
, offered me the job of book reviewer I was grateful. I went to Peter Peters to tell him about
this: he didn’t think it a good idea. ‘You should be writing your novel.’ I said I’d go on writing it; the magazine was published fortnightly and they only wanted about
1,200 words. ‘Well, don’t do it for less than a thousand a year,’ he said. That seemed like a fortune. It was agreed: my first proper job with a decent salary.

Then, my aunt rang up suddenly one day and said she and my uncle John were going to drive me down to see my father: they’d fetch me after lunch. In the car they explained that my father
had been asking for me. ‘Is my daughter in the house?’ he’d said, and the nurse had gone to the housekeeper and asked if Mr Howard
had
a daughter and once told, my aunt was
called to fetch me.

I asked if he was very ill. ‘
Very
ill, poor old boy.’ There was a long – interminable – silence, while my uncle drove with my aunt beside him. Desperate to break
it, I made one of the two most crass remarks of my life. ‘I’m earning a thousand a year,’ I said. I saw them look at each other with a kind of weary distaste. They didn’t
reply. The moment the words were out of my mouth I knew what an awful thing I’d said. I felt bitterly ashamed and wondered why on earth I’d blurted it out. Now, I think I was trying to
prove defiantly to my family that I could manage my life since they’d ignored me for so long, but that was no excuse. It just sounded as if I didn’t care for my father – only for
myself. This wasn’t true: I
did
care about him, and I realized that he must be dying.

When we arrived I went upstairs to see him. The nurse gave me a small bowl of cotton wool soaked in cold water. ‘You can moisten his lips with this,’ he said. He was a kind young
man, and immediately left us alone,

My father lay on his back, propped up by pillows. His hair was
brushed and he’d been shaved; there was a faint hectic flush on his cheekbones that now stood out in his
thin grey face. He looked at me with anxious, frightened eyes and tried to smile. ‘Hello, darling.’ I kissed his hot dry forehead and pulled a chair right up to the bed. ‘I
wasn’t sure – afraid you might not—’

‘I came as quickly as I could.’ I took his hand – a weak, dry collection of bones. He turned his head towards me and fell asleep. For a long time we remained like that. I
noticed that his mouth was so dry his lips were cracking, and I used the cotton wool. His sleep was fitful. Every now and then his eyes opened, unseeing, and his hands picked weakly at the sheets.
He didn’t say anything more until, what seemed like hours later, I heard people coming upstairs and Ursula and the doctor came into the room. The doctor bent over him. ‘How are you
feeling, old boy?’

‘Bloody awful.’

‘I think I can do something about that.’

Ursula motioned to me to leave the room. I picked up his hand and kissed it. He smiled then and tried to put his hand to his mouth to blow me a kiss. That was it.

Some time after that, and before my brother Robin and I left to drive to the Beacon for the night, I found my father’s chauffeur, McNaughton, hanging about in the hall. He was absolutely
devoted to my father, driving him to and from London every day, carrying his guns on shoots, cleaning his shoes, and generally looking after him ‘I’ve cleaned all his guns,’ he
said. ‘Last week he wanted his medals cleaned. He said the King was coming to tea with him.’ Tears were streaming down his face.

I can’t remember much more about that day. I know Robin and I had a good cry in the car. We spent the night at the Beacon where our aunt Helen now lived and she was very kind to us. But I
lay in bed that night thinking about that almost silent vigil with my father, and wondering if I’d let him down by my silence. I might have talked to him, told him I loved him, given him some
affection and reassurance. I knew that he passionately didn’t want to die: that
he’d endured months of pain and illness and fear of death in silence. He was
certainly too ill to talk to me by then, but he might have
heard
me, and I’d said nothing. This feeling, that I’d somehow failed him, had let him down when he was dying, was to
recur for me with other people. I was recognizing another fault, a weakness, and resolving to learn from it yet not learning.

Going back a little, I worked throughout the winter of 1957 on
The Sea Change
, able at last to live every day for it. It’s a strange life. Many writers go through
these reclusive periods. I’d wake very early each morning, sweating with fear that whatever had made me able to work the day before would have vanished, and that I’d go to my desk and
find myself paralysed. And occasionally, after weeks of steady work I’d suddenly see the whole book as though it was already finished, and then when I wrote I felt wonderfully free of
myself
, as though I was simply translating to paper something that was already there, outside me. There is no experience to beat that – it’s like a celestial visit that
can’t be predicted or sustained. For me it’s a rare occurrence, but the desire for it is what makes me want to go on trying to write.

Working at that pitch precluded social life. Once or twice I went to parties, but found I had nothing to say, and would end the evening lying on someone’s bed asleep, apparently drunk: not
so, I was as empty of drink as I was of everything else.

I reviewed books for
Queen
in tandem with finishing my novel. I was working under Francis Wyndham who was the literary editor. He was a very easy boss and gave me complete freedom to
choose what I reviewed. It was overwhelming. The limited space I had meant that I couldn’t review more than three or four books per issue, yet I was supposed to cover everything the readers
might want to read. I’d go to the office every week or so to look through and choose books to take home. I read far more than I reviewed,
but it was impossible to keep up
with the steady stream of new publications. I never reviewed a book without having read all of it. I worked on the principle that there was little point in writing about any book I thought bad
– it would be like telling people how not to get to the post office. Reviewing is not literary criticism: a reviewer is there to tell people what they might like to read and why.