Must You Go?: My Life With Harold Pinter

by Antonia Fraser

  While he was in Paris, and in the Dark Bar, Harold wrote a little piece called Apart from That. It was triggered by his dislike of listening to inanities as people gossiped into their mobiles in restaurants. He decided to read it at a poetry reading held to raise money for the Patrick Pakenham Scholarships for young ex-offenders (my brother, a barrister, had recently died of leukaemia), part of the Longford Trust in memory of my father, which had also funded an annual lecture. It was a two-hander: Harold was looking for a partner and I put myself forward.

  9 May

  Rehearsed Apart from That with Harold, and contested one of his comments. Harold: ‘I am the Director here.’ Me: ‘I am the Assistant Director.’ Still, I think I won’t give up the Day Job. My new project – Queen Elizabeth I – is beginning to obsess me because if you don’t have another book on the go whenever a new book comes out, criticism can be awfully painful and stultifying. But a new book, especially with all the crises of Harold’s health, gives one a separate dimension of hope.

  11 May

  The poetry reading. Harold, Benjie and Grey Gowrie: ‘Three strong voices,’ said Harold later. Matthew Burton read Harold’s own poems superbly and I love all Grey’s poems about heart surgery. Apart from That was announced by Orlando as Master of Ceremonies, as ‘my mother’s professional debut’.

  It was not until late June that Harold told me that the Evil Ulcer was receding and we began to envisage a world without hospital visits. Harold even managed to come to Nixon in China, the John Adams piece we both loved, for the second time, which, whatever it cost him, was a gesture of faith. Adams is worthy to be compared with Verdi in grandeur of imagination (actually I think Harold prefers John Adams!). He also managed to speak at a Human Rights event at the Royal Court, reading ‘Death’ and also – what a pleasure! – encountering václav Havel again. Interviewed by Kirsty Wark for Newsnight, he was accused of pessimism by the frisky Kirsty (whom by the way he likes otherwise he wouldn’t do the interview, despite being furious that BBC 2 ignored his Nobel Speech). Harold replied: ‘Life is beautiful but the world is Hell!’ Which more or less sums up Harold’s philosophy. Prompted by Kirsty, he quoted ‘To My Wife’: ‘I was dead and now I live …’ and listening in the box, I felt the familiar pricking of my eyes when that poem is quoted.

  *

  Our summer holiday at Westbrook House, an eighteenth-century house on the outskirts of Weymouth (dating from the time that George III made the town fashionable for sea-bathing). It was dominated by the question of Harold doing Krapp’s Last Tape. I say ‘the question’ because it was by no means certain that someone who was in a lot of pain a lot of the time and very weak, who also had real difficulty in walking, was in a fit state to conduct a forty-minute monologue on the stage of the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs. Since there are frequent references in my Diary to Harold’s ‘pessimism’, there also ought to be tributes to his more-or-less unconquerable will when he believed he could perform something. In this case Krapp’s Last Tape brought together Harold’s feeling for Beckett with the desire he had had since he was sixteen to be an actor. Throughout all this time Ian Rickson behaved with great sensitivity, privately assuring me that the performance didn’t have to take place – even though it had sold out within five minutes of the short run being announced: ‘Listen, we can always cancel.’

  18 July

  Celestial and cerulean day at Lord’s. Total happiness (of eighteen people). Total cost: £8000. It was Benjie’s idea that Harold should celebrate the Nobel Prize by taking a box at Lord’s – ‘something for yourself,’ he said winningly. And of course for the cricket-loving family. The blue of the sky, the beauty of the vigorous yet serene scene, ineffable. Of the grandsons, Simon Soros and Thomas Fraser came.

  25 July

  Westbrook House: the most beautiful, comfortable, well-arranged house. Lots of ducks led by a long-necked one, which flock across the lawn towards the house if a door opens, asking for food. Many granddaughters staying: hard-working fathers are seen running past in some complicated game of rescue. Hard-working mothers appear to be taking the opportunity to relax.

  15 August

  Visit of Ian Rickson left Harold very exhausted the next day but much less depressed. Ian to me: ‘He worries about whether he’s good enough and I worry about whether he’s strong enough.’ The news from Lebanon in the meantime depresses all our spirits.

  24 August

  Harold’s breathlessness: he pants heavily even to stretch out for a card at bridge. What is happening? Going for a walk is a thing of the past.

  25–26 August

  Edinburgh Book Festival. The frail figure of Harold, who was helped on stage, turned before our eyes into one, or rather two brutal interrogators as Harold did the famous scene questioning Stanley from The Birthday Party, as a prelude to discoursing on his own political views (he says he’s bored with reading his War Poems). Full of force. Everyone felt privileged because most people seemed to have studied The Birthday Party at school … and here was the author himself. I spoke about Love and Louis XIV, which was published more or less at the same time as the Festival.

  Through the autumn during rehearsals there were at least two episodes where Harold got chest pains and had to be rushed home from the Royal Court.

  11 October

  Harold’s Dress Rehearsal was actually a full house of many distinguished people in the theatre such as Caryl Churchill and Christopher Hampton. Harold stuck with his decision to use a wheelchair (despite much agonizing and counter decisions in the middle of the night) since he has terrible eczema on his palms, also the soles of his feet which makes walking the torture of Hans Andersen’s Little Mermaid. He does it, despite wheelchair not always answering to his command, and sticking in the scenery twice.

  12 October

  Harold was amazing. No shenanigans with the chair: the stage arch was much enlarged overnight. His interaction with the tape was consummate: he laughed along with it. And thrill, thrill, Orhan Pamuk has won the Nobel Prize! Harold made a statement to Reuters: ‘I expected him to win last year but somebody got in the way.’

  Friday 13 October

  Was Beckett born on Friday the thirteenth? Ian Rickson says not: he just pretended. Be that as it may, I was walking up the very narrow crowded stairs to the Theatre Upstairs, wondering why no one was being let in. Then a robotic announcement came: ‘Due to an emergency, the theatre is closed.’ Oh my God, Harold has had a heart attack, I thought. Rachel said later that she would have thought it was a bomb, but for me the bomb was Harold. Then Michael Byrne, in the queue, told me it was a technical emergency, the generator had gone wrong and it would be illegal to proceed.

  14 October

  The play itself was sensational! There is no other verdict: the most extraordinary experience sitting so close in the very front row of this tiny theatre so as to be able to stretch out my knee (Harold can’t see me: I checked). He is there. He is not there. He is my Harold. He is not my Harold. He is Beckett’s Krapp. Edward Beckett (the playwright’s nephew and heir) was very friendly. He said he liked the wheelchair (not in the text and thus actually, I suppose, unlawful). His wife queried Harold’s elimination of the bananas. ‘Does he not like bananas?’ Me: ‘He’s allergic to them.’ Hmm … Actually Harold said: ‘I’m not doing the bananas.’ And no one seems to have queried it.

  15 October

  Our friend Dr John Murray has been studying ageing and how to delay it. It turns out that playing Krapp’s Last Tape is the very best thing Harold could do.

  18 October

  Harold has decided not to do three more performances. ‘I’m not in good health and filming it for TV seems a natural end to it.’ It’s true: his poor feet are appallingly blistered. Meanwhile the telephone never stops ringing with people who want tickets. Harold’s mildest response: ‘I am not a fucking box office.’

  Harold’s eczema raging in his foot. Chris Bunker instructs me how to bathe the foot in potassium solution. Bunker: ‘Pale pink like a
Leander tie. Do you know what I mean?’ Me: ‘Yes. Or a Garrick Club tie.’

  21 October

  Due to go to Krapp for the fifth time. I’ve given away my nightly tickets to a few deserving causes such as Edward Fitzgerald. I was tempted by an American who accosted me outside the Royal Court and said firmly: ‘You must have seen this already. How about $250 dollars for your ticket?’ But how could I explain it to Harold?? As it was, I did voluntarily give my ticket to Dustin Hoffman as I thought this great actor should see, as it were, another one. Had to dash backstage to explain. Harold amazed and then very pleased. Dustin and Harold had a long talk afterwards.

  24 October

  Last night of Krapp. Lucian Freud in the audience, who says he wants to paint Harold. I think it was the front-page photograph of Harold as Krapp which got his attention: an extraordinary visionary shot of a man listening to other voices. Orlando’s comment pleased Harold immensely: ‘Harold was like a master batsman, so utterly in control of the situation, and taking his time at the crease.’ And the extraordinary thing is that Harold looks better at the end of the run than at the beginning, so maybe there is something in what Dr John said.

  The rest of the year was dominated by the wedding of Orlando to Clemmie: an event of extraordinary happiness for everyone. To preempt arguments about the dress code, I sent for a pale silk Charvet tie from Paris for Harold which he consented to wear … Immediately afterwards I set out for the US for a book tour in order to promote Love and Louis XIV: as the Senate fell to the Democrats, one sensed the small green shoots of hope as yet invisible to people in England. And I bought a paperback to solace me in my travels, by someone called Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope.

  21 November

  Special lunch for Harold at the British Library to mark the purchase of his ‘Archive’. This includes his collection of press cuttings. Jamie Andrews, archivist, a very nice enthusiastic man, told us that Book One was one of the most borrowed items, with those horrible early clippings about The Birthday Party. As we gazed at them, we marvelled over the one prophetic review by Harold Hobson in the Sunday Times: ‘You will hear more of this man.’

  2007

  1 January

  Harold and I both reflected on what a terrible year 2006 had been for him health-wise – with Krapp’s Last Tape and Orlando and Clemmie’s wedding as the bright spots. Harold’s engagement diary last year morbidly fascinating to him: daily appointments with a nurse to dress the ulcer. But he’s resolved he’s better: and he’s going to walk. He is determined.

  4 January

  This equanimity came to an end when Harold had a bad fall down some stairs when we took a break at Chewton Glen. It was a split-level apartment and it took me some time to awake to his cries: ‘Help me!’ He was very shaken and so was I.

  Harold recovered enough to do a day’s film for the director Kenneth Branagh, a little cameo with Ken himself, in the film of Sleuth. Jude, as co-producer, came to watch. He’s been amazing, did the outside scaling-the-house scene yesterday in ‘towering winds’.

  17 January

  Fabulous occasion! Dominique de Villepin gave Harold the Légion d’Honneur at the French Embassy. Harold was deeply moved by de Villepin’s speech; I did not see his expression as I was standing protectively behind his chair but several people confirmed there was a tear. He looked extremely dashing in his Paul Smith suit, bought up the road on the occasion when he had to meet the Queen to receive the CH. He also wore the same pale silk tie I had had so firmly brought from Paris for Orlando’s wedding.

  We were greeted at the very steps of the Embassy entrance by both the Ambassador Gérard Errera and de Villepin himself. As Rebecca said: ‘In Britain it would be a scrawled notice: WE’RE BY THE POOL.’ De Villepin a marvellous apparition as we ladies were all hoping, exquisite suit, marvellous thick iron-grey hair, patrician nose and faint olive tinge to his skin. Then we were ushered into the library, an austere room full of books that looked false but probably weren’t. The talk was what I used to call wide-ranging when Harold and the boys discussed nothing but cricket for the whole of a long meal but in this case was genuinely so: Venezuela where de Villepin lived for years, Cuba and Castro. De Villepin spoke intelligently and eloquently, not quite lecturing us, and leaving room for short answers by Harold and even shorter ones by me. (Throughout he was extraordinarily courteous in acknowledging me, referring to my works, even in the public oration, primed I am sure by the thoughtful Gérard Errera.)

  Later it was intensely moving when de Villepin said: ‘In the name of the President of the Republic …’ and pinned the red ribbon on to Harold’s welcoming Paul Smith lapel. Huge gathering – the children, including Natasha whom Harold wanted to come from Paris – and French-based friends such as Suzy Menkes and Laure de Gramont, Christine Jourdais from Gallimard and Jude Law who was in the midst of filming Sleuth. Harold had a brief encounter of the sharp kind with Mary Soames at dinner when, with huge blue Churchillian eyes blazing, she criticized Harold’s views on British foreign policy expressed in his speech. ‘My husband Christopher Soames would never have said that on foreign soil,’ referring to the fact that we were technically on French territory at the Embassy. ‘I’m not your husband,’ retorted Harold. Even in her eighties, Mary was nothing if not spirited, giving as good as she got; her granddaughter Clemmie confirmed that she had enjoyed the encounter. In fact Harold also relished her company and it is good to record that they then became firm friends.

  In retrospect, this evening with its magical evocations of Harold’s works, his acclaim in France, and salutation for his political views, was the high point of what one might term his endgame. Medical problems continued, to be counterbalanced by a constant flow of productions, as it seemed. The National Theatre put on The Hothouse, the Donmar put on Betrayal, Matthew Burton did a brilliant production of The Dumb Waiter … and so on and so on, I am glad to say. So we began to say things like: ‘It’s July and, rats, there isn’t a Pinter production in town. What will people do?’ Nor was this flush of success confined to the UK. In the autumn a sensational production of The Homecoming in New York, with Eve Best as Ruth, created a sensation and Harold, although unable to travel, felt a genuine regret for once at not being able physically (not psychologically) to go to the US.

  Our lives became concentrated on the pleasures we could have together: for example we had long been fans of Anselm Kiefer since our ‘discovery’ of him at MOMA in New York: his work with what Harold felt was a ‘literary’ content as well as a poetic one, was absolutely up his street. We managed to get to the White Cube Gallery: the experience was fabulous if short, because Harold couldn’t lean against the walls, which were all part of Kiefer’s installation, although finally a friendly young receptionist surrendered her seat. I decide that I would take the image of the huge uprooted palm with me to Mass on Palm Sunday. Downstairs we saw battlegrounds where flowers now grew. But, as Harold said, ‘for how long will they be allowed to grow?’

  In general Harold spent most of his time in his chair in the drawing room reading – anything, poetry first choice, but also political works. He also spent a lot of time admiring the magnolia outside the window as it flowered, and he declined. And all the time there was the eczema, the irritations, the visits, the check-ups.

  And yet:

  9 March

  Harold played the part of Max in The Homecoming, directed by Thea Sharrock on Radio 3. Gina McKee, even on radio, the slinkiest Ruth yet: I was amused to see how she swapped her trainers for high heels at Harold’s request, ‘for atmosphere’. Now he should do King Lear on Radio 3. Oddly enough Ian Rickson, director of Krapp had already suggested it.

  23 March

  Read in a self-help column by Lesley Garner of the Telegraph, five things to do when you’re depressed. Number One was: Do something. Don’t just sit there. I was low because Harold was having a bad day health-wise so, without reading on, I dashed off to the Philip Mould Gallery to look at newly installed portrait of Queen Elizabe
th I. Solaced myself admiring her pearls which were everywhere. Philip Mould had recently entertained boys from William Fraser’s school and they too had admired the portrait. Philip: ‘I think that object-related history is so much easier to grasp, don’t you?’ I entirely agree. So much of my work is in fact ‘object-related history’. Decided to involve Harold in it too.

  9 April

  Harold came with me on my special ‘Tudor tour’ of the National Portrait Gallery, arranged with Tarnya Cooper. It was a success not so much because it filled Harold with a desire to be a Tudor historian (one is enough in a family) as in igniting his interest in my world. Throughout the rest of the day he kept referring to ‘your world … the word which you inhabit’. And he actively loved the John Donne portrait of which he had previously seen a reproduction. Donne is after all among the many poets who believed in God that Harold (the soi-disant atheist) fervently admires, reads and is able to quote at length.

  After Harold’s death I abandoned my projected life of Queen Elizabeth I. All the same, it had served its purpose: the fascinating research had enriched my life even if I felt finally that I did not want to take the material to another stage by shaping a full-length biography.

  Chapter Twenty

  I’LL MISS YOU SO MUCH

  In the summer of 2007 Harold wrote me a poem. As usual he worked on it not so much secretly as privately before reading it to me. Here it is:

  POEM

  (To A)

  I shall miss you so much when I’m dead

  The loveliest of smiles

  The softness of your body in our bed

  My everlasting bride

  Remember that when I am dead

  You are forever alive in my heart and my head