by Unknown
Just get the moves right. And, of course, the Mind.
Thats all.
You can write that way. I dont mean Pinter, for God’s sake .. and maybe now[…] he’s gone to bits. I hear so. But he did write like an angel.
I must stop enjoying myself here. I have another fifty three letters to deal with appropos the Holacaust piece and the follow up I had to do. That makes it over 300 now. Terribly sweet, kind, helpful letters .. all offering to help me in my quest for an answer to ‘Why?’ the hatred. And, of course, they cant answer any better than I can.
Some, of my age, now confess that they too were in Belsen, one has written ‘.. we were among the first through the gates of Belsen and the sight that met our eyes was terrible. When the war finished I put it mentally behind me. But in the last few years my mind has repeatedly gone back to Belsen, memories which come back sharper than things which have happened recently. Another thing now is I wake up at three am in the morning and try as I might those memories return to the same place. Old age I suppose. But like you I still ask “Why?”. Forgive me for taking up your busy time …’
So. I have to reply.
What a dreadful letter, Well: you should’nt have sent me an eight foot plant that wont ‘tolerate a cold climate’.1 Idiot girl …
Head full of self. Sorry. Find a theme? Try .. oh! do ..
D.
To Penelope Mortimer Cadogan Gardens
19.9.91
So – you fucking asked! You get!
It’s going to be yonks and yonks before we see this kind of a date again. They tell me. I dont much care, moi meme, but it seems to have a certain significance for the young. As I no longer can claim to be in that league I give not a fig. Figgy-fig-fig.
Finished my proofs. Always, after the very first book, a fearful let-down. This is a wretched little effort. Decently written but dull.
The cover is ‘pretty’ and I did it myself. Quite like the feeling that Graham S[utherland]. is somewhere floating about and probably still saying .. ‘Oh dear! Dont put EVERYTHING into the cover. Let the reader imagine a few bits here and there.’
I ignored him then: at 17. and still appear to at 70. What chance has a teechergot? I do know how to spell that: it amused me to write it so.
Alarm at stinky old autumn indeed. How one detests it. I am swaddled in nylon ropes, cradles, and noisy workmen all flashing Builders Bums at every window. They pray, as I do, that they’ll be finished in a week or less .. so that they can flee to East Germany (if you please) where they work and make a fortune working for Dutch and German millionairs. Dont ask me doing what. I did’nt ask. But a ‘grand a week aint bad’ .. it aint indeed.
So I have not concentrated very deeply .. even on the proofs .. but did enjoy your letter and the flurry of questions and queries.
[…] I dont think all TV is as dead-end as you [do]. For the Dirty Unwashed yes: but ‘T.M.D’1 was written for Channel 4 … and got shoved out as a film in the States by a sort of fluke. Someone saw it and had a bash with it and it raced away. So then they dared it here. See?
I am mad about Juliet S[tevenson]. she is dotty and totally marvellous and was daft enough to come to a couple of my Workshops at the Vic. I must say the humility, with the other lesser mortals, was refreshing.
[ … ] You ask where you can find me in ‘your experience’. Blimy! I dont know. I dont know what your experience is. All I do know is that you have been a bit off-kilter about me from the first, amazing, meeting at home. With two kinds of present, because you were uncertain about which to give me, and both turned out to be wrong. You are a noodle-doddle.
From the point of being a character I can be The Servant as easily as I can be Stephen (Accident) or Von Aschenbach. Also I am wildly loved as Simon Sparrow. A fairly wide range, I’d have thought? And what about ‘Max’ in ‘The Night Porter’ and ‘Gabriel’ in ‘Modesty Blaize’ or ‘Blase’? However you spell it it was a fuck-up. But I had fun and took the Movie. So really, darling girl, I cant tell you more about me than that. If, for example, I DO get to do ‘No Mans Land’ for the BBC, and if Harold does decide to direct it, even if he does NOT, I will play ‘Spooner’. Sandles, woolen socks and Mill Hill Accent. Why not?
Now that I have reached Old Mens Estate I do decline certain roles as unsuitable. I can, alas! no longer yearn for the love of a lady .. well, not decently. And, anyway, I’ve done that in ‘May We Borrow Your Husband?’ (My adaptation. I dont think Greene meant it MY way!)
And I am not desperate to play really old fellows. I mean white hair and stick brigade. OR landed-gentry-wistfully-sinking. A cheap cocky braggert? An elderly wide-boy, a Kray? A loving, tender, Dales-Doctor. Christ! It’s an endless list. I dont always have to wear a tie and look like a cocker spaniel!
In order of your anxiety-questions.
I am as content as a clam. If they are content. Anyway, content. I have come to terms with catastrophe at least, and tucked it all away very neatly into the compost of my life. I have absolutely no fear whatsoever. About anything. Except, I suppose, cancer or one of those things. Senile dementia … but I’ll come to terms with those, I reckon.
If you can come to terms with Senile Dementia?
As I am Vice President of the Voulantry Euthanisa Society, and now lecture on it to irate, pleased, agreeing, disagreeing, cross, calm, women in the National Council of Women of G.B (or something like that) and lecture to 15–18 year olds at Tonbridge and Kings College and, I think next week [ … ] Rochester (Kings School) on, of all things, the Holocaust, as I am also a founder member of BACUP,1 the organization which helps people with cancer, and their families, to come to ‘terms’ with it … as I read for the blind, for the R.[N.]I.B .. and give Workshops at the Vic and Guildhall, write for the Telegraph each Saturday .. there abouts .. and do Platforms at the National every now and again, I really dont feel that I can complain about a lack of things to do! Honestly! I am making use of my life in the only way I can, that is by helping people one way or another without being soppy and pious. I am about the most irreverant fellow you could meet.
But I do love people, and they seem to quite like me. It’s comforting.
I prefer myself at all times to being bored by one kind person or one egobusting-actor (ress), I have a large family of Young, to whome I am always available IF NEEDED. Otherwise I stay away. Firmly.
[…] I have a lot of friends, I stay away from most of the time, because I do honestly prefer solitude, and I am never lonely.
Alone. Yes. There are sagging week-ends … no telephone; but if it rings I quake for fear of boredome, or an accident somewhere.
I actually like me better than I like some others. There are, as you must be aware, a few glorious exceptions to this rule. You are one of them, Robert Fox and Natasha others, my adopted grandson2 of 18, two young you wont know. She was my PA during my years at Chatto, he is a Bowlby of the Norfolk branch, in fine arts with capital letters, I am God father to their first born,3 on whome I slight[ly] dote in a potty way … and I am devoted to my Swiss chap4 […] And his beautiful wife Elizabeth … so there you are. A sort of background? Surely?
It did not just ‘happen’ to me. Arriving back here with a dying man, pretending that he was’nt, buying a house here, realising my roots had been torn up at 66... finding that leaving Provence, France, was not a severance but an amputation .. all that, plus death and fifty years of friendship bumping down a too-small staircase in a body-bag and a swiping stroke on top, did not make anything easy.
The Press sniped. The tabloids shrilled. I crept about my daily tasks, eating, shopping, buying my beer, managing my money, cashing a cheque, in a haze of fear and a terror of shyness.
At first I only went out in the very early mornings, was pretty pissed by noon, slept that awful sleep all afternoon, watched TV and, sometimes, bought the Standard from Europa Foods across the street. Not far to go; no one to recognise one.
And then, as the healing almost started, someone on the Telegraph asked me to r
eview a book. I had never done such a thing before.1 I could just about make a cup of tea .... but I tried. And I won. And I now have a contract with them and almost no time to do all the things I have to do! And I simply LOVE going out now; in the streets I mean, I love people liking me, asking me about .. oh, Euthanasia .. the Holocaust .. or my books. Thanking me for things I had not realised I had done. Gifts I did not realise I had offered. Amazing! I am so wonderfully happy that I know I’ll get clobbered, deserve to, but enjoy it while I can.
You must understand that this was gradual. You either give in or bash back .. adjust or go under. For the savagery of terminal cancer AND Parkinsons, for the despair of a foul death and it’s suffering, I feel I have to bash on to honour the sacrifice.
However daft that may seem, that is what I am trying to do.
Probably come un-stuck. Especially with the Euthanasia thing .. but I’ll fight on until I can fight no longer. And if kids of 15, 16, 17, 18, WANT me to tell them about Belsen, about the Holocaust, about the building of Mauthausen, about hate. Then I will do it willingly. And do.
A letter this morning, one among some 350 I have had, says, in part, ‘I was asked to give a short talk to our local PROBIS (?)2 about the place (Belsen). Like you I could not finish, broke down in tears, and had to sit down, as I thought, ashamed. I was told that my behaviour brought to those listening the whole horror of what I had witnessed. I was so very grateful when I read your article to know that others suffered as I did.’
He signs his name and, in brackets, (Formerly A.D.H. 2nd Army. Lt. Col. RAMC.)
And there are lots more like that: so I do feel I am not just a wimpy actor signing letters to demand Democracy In Russia a good ten days AFTER the fucking coup!
Know what I mean?
If all this sounds utterly nauseating, and I bet it does, it is just to TRY to give you some idea of what I am.
So there you are. I think I have answered all the questions you pose?
No reserve, no suspicion, no need to stay intact or hide. I am me. Wide out in the open. The only thing about which I DO have a feeling of guilt, and it is not that strong, is that a short time after I got back on my feet, moved into this flat, took a deep breath and knocked off the booze, I was pounced upon by my old contemporaries. Some rich, some famous, all hideiously boring, narrow, dull, and marking time into a pit.
I have dropped them all, Deliberatly, and without giving them any real reason. Any reason at all. Dont want ’em. Useless. They drain me .. I have far more to give others and younger ones. And if the tide runs out for me and I am left bereft in a chair, then that’ll be fine. I am very fond of me, as I have told you, and I get on well with me. I make me laugh .. make me shudder at the waste of good food when I cook a meal for six because I cant work out how to modify the recipe for two .. I know I’m a twat. But who cares? People quite like that .. and I just like being kissed by the girls in the shops. Why not? I like people to smile at me, even though they dont address me, I like smiling back, and I love taxi drivers who yell out at me in the street, ‘Okay, Dirk? Look great for your age mate ..’
Yeah. I like that.
Will that do? Impassioned answers impassioned. Okay? If you never write again I’d really understand! And still love you!
D XXX
PM replied, saying she was not entirely convinced by Dirk’s ‘Pollyanna’ image. She was exploring the possibility of writing a screenplay for him, based on his reaction to Tony’s death, as described in the previous letter.
To Penelope Mortimer Cadogan Gardens
24 September 1991
Bloody hell, you are difficult. I TOLD you that you would find my letter nausiating, people like you, those who see everything in dusk-tones, would. I AM a sort of Pollyanna .. and after years of just keeping away from people on account of millions came to me to watch my cavorting, living a secluded life in my small-holding, contented and really not much in the public eye, I suddenly got shoved into FULL LIFE with no protection and in a Foreign Land.
After a time of, shall we say reflection?, I decided that having had one stroke and not much liking the effects, I could very well have another, had to live in filthy UK .. had to live in London .. cant drive, killed a clutch of people with a car, so never again1 .. where better to be than where I started off at 16 as a Student at Chelsea Poly?
Parents had been students there too. And the Slade. I felt ‘right’ in the area. Coming to terms was difficult. To terms with walking quite unprotected in streets jammed with curious people.
‘I think it is. Look!’
‘You ask him. Go on. He cant bite you?’
‘Were you Dirk Bogarde?’
‘Left France, have you?’
‘I remember your face but not the name? Humphry someone ..’
I ducked into my anorak and tried to walk, as I told you, only at dusk or just when shops had opened. Fewer people. No standing with curious, autograph hunting, housewives in lines at the Check Outs.
Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose were soon abandoned. People followed one.
‘He’s buying tinned tomatos.’
‘Thinner than I imagined.’
‘Smaller.’
‘And balding … see?’
‘Pity. But after fifty, you know ..’
‘Could you sign this? Not for me, for my neice, grandmother, wife, son, sister, baby-sitter, cousin Agnes, Eileen, with two e’s please, Anne with an “e” ..... ’
No one, ever, in France behaved like this. Not even in Paris .. unless they were British. I felt, all the time, as if my cock was hanging out of my pants: I hunched my shoulders, wore a Purdy cap, scuttled (as far as I could scuttle with a wonky leg) and my doctor thought that it might be ‘obesessional’. Might it? I’d never had an obsession before, save for lizards, frogs, birds, and those kinds of things.
So I decided to either go mad or face up to it.
I faced up to it. Took off the cap .. walk INTO the Check out .. smile at everyone because they SMILE at me! Memory jogs them .. of some time in which I must have figured in their private lives somewhere .. at any age from 10 to seventy. I have, after all, four generations of ‘Fans’.
My films are always on TV on Sunday. I am counted as a friend.
Okay. I’ll settle for that. It is far better than hiding in this flat wondering what to do, how to die gracefully.
What else?
Now, something you will find difficult, I embrace being ‘public’ .. I just ADORE kissing Angie, Maureen, Isobel at Lees in Cale Street .. and Miss Gloucester (because she lives there) and Anne in GTC … if they laugh, because I am there, I am chuffed rotten. And they do!
Motto. If you are scared of the sea dont go near it. I am presently swimming, crawl perhaps? to Long Island, anywhere .. I like swimming.
RAGE. Yes. You make the general error of thinking that RAGE has to be manifest, that one shouts and screams, bury’s one’s head sobbing with what you call ‘fury’. Balls. RAGE is sometimes inside. Heard of a Rage To Live?
You react to one puny sentence in my letter about fifty years and body-bags on a too small stair-case. Natural enough, it was the only bit of reasonable sentence-construction in the whole thing. And gave you your knee-jerk.
But RAGE did’nt remotely come NEAR the thing.
Acceptance, humility, fear of ‘what now’, relief that three years of almost unendurable suspense, of desperate distress physically, of loss but relief that it was over. Knowing is so much better, I promise you, than wondering: and hope is pretty hollow when it leaves. But never, at any time, RAGE. I now use your words.
No sense of injustice. Why? Belsen was injust NOT the staircase ..
Helplessness, yes. To a point. But one is forced by distress and need to rally. No fury. At all. Why? It happens; we are born to die. From the first heaving yell.
When Anna, the Night Nurse, and I tried to turn the patient he said, and I could only hear by putting my head against his chest and ‘took’ the vibrations, ‘If you did this to a
dog they’d arrest you’.
Right. He was being ‘jokey’. But he was right. Which is why I am now the Vice President of V.E.S … and sticking my neck out against Catholics and British Manners and Members of the BMA. IN public.
But no Rage. I had the most wonderous fifty years of my life. So did my partner. WE both knew that we’d have to pay. And did. Okay?
But never RAGE, fury, bafflement.
I am not appalled. If ‘a faint whirring grabbed’ you, great. Go ahead!
I do suggest that you perhaps try to read the books that some of your mates, and I do count myself as one, write. You rather grandly say: ‘I read very little, particularly of people I know.’
Well sod that old girl. You DONT know me! Thats the rub .. for you, not me. I have come to terms with my life, I only have an active ten years reasonably left. Christ! Why waste them? Eh?
[ … ] I have just written to Radio Drama. TV [sic] and refused, politely, their kind offer to write a play, or a series, for them. I have quoted the things I watched for homework. ‘Tittmuss’, ‘House of Elliot’, ‘Trainer’1 and some dire thing, they adored, which starred my (once) deeply respected Tom Courtney.2 Impossible to believe any of them. Lowest-Common-Watcher. I’d rather stay with my Telegraph Readers. At least they write back intelligently. I’m off to do a bit of Auschwitch again: then there is RAGE. Then, my love. I am not sure that I can do it for Radio 4.. they ask .. but talking to kiddies makes it easier/tougher. When they blub you know your rage was not misplaced. Will that do? Hope that you are not vexed that I shoved R. Fox the Handle?1 […]It’s only a nudge of course. But he’s bright, clever, and very sharp. Also his track record is amazing, and his wife2 is to die [for] she is so adorable, tough, beautiful and can act! Wow!
Love
D.
To Penelope Mortimer Cadogan Gardens
26 October 1991
Never lost a child at the Science Place.3