Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (97 page)

Kevin, whose vanity did not go unremarked in the
New Yorker
, is already in make-up. He’s careful and attentive and gives them advice as to how to darken his moustache. Jamie and John are live by satellite from Los Angeles. Jamie, with her fringe and glasses making her look like someone deliberately not wanting to look attractive (and failing) looks wan beside John, who’s clearly been at the poolside a bit more, so much so that when he smiles he looks like one of the Black and White Minstrels.

Facing Kevin and me on the platform is an audience of some 200 New Yorkers. They ask questions like … ‘I really like you and are you married?’ ‘You look great with hair like that, will you keep it that way?’ Nothing profound and the average IQ of the entire audience would probably equal that of A J Ayer’s earlobe, but it’s a nice, genial show.

First off today is an
80 Days
meeting with Clem, Angela [Elbourne – production manager] and Anne J at Ken House.
¹⁸⁶
They now have a bigger office and one wall is covered with a whiteboard chart. Only the first day is filled: ‘September 25 – 11.00 Depart Victoria, Orient Express’.

It’s undoubtedly exciting to be in the office now the project is official, contracted and under way. They are putting onto the bare bones of the route the flesh of actual trains and vessels. The Orient Express and Venice will be an exotic start. From Singapore to Hong Kong they have us aboard Ben Avon – one of the three largest ships afloat.

A drink in the bar, then drive over to Brecknock Primary School in York Way to present books to the leavers. The school is on the run-down border of Camden and Islington, on an island of houses and shops, triangled by busy roads. Old, stout building of pre-First World War vintage. Inside a good spirit. It’s full of children’s work and drawings and clutter.

As the rest of the school sing a couple of songs the leavers, all of 11 years old, wait maturely and with a right sense of responsibility to collect a book each and shake my hand. After which I’m required to say a few words on the subject of ‘moving on’. Produce a sheaf of notes, then tell them I can’t read my writing and throw it away. This seems to cheer them up.

Breakfast enlivened by some San Francisco cuttings re
Wanda
sent, generously, by Don Novello.
¹⁸⁷
I have already heard via Steve at the weekend that John was extremely concerned as to how I had engineered such a rave review for myself in the
San Francisco Chronicle
– what sexual favours had I granted the critic? How much money had changed hands? It is rather a gushing piece – ‘The comic performance of a lifetime. He’s up there with Sellers, Guinness and Mastroianni’! And that’s even before he’s mentioned John.

To White City to see ‘No. 27’ on the Steenbeck. My first glimpse of any cut footage.

First impression of great pleasure in the lighting and art direction – both nice and carried off with a sure touch, as is most of Tristram’s interesting direction. Seems a little slow at the start, but strong
performances, especially from Alun A and Robin Bailey, draw one in and the story-telling is quite exciting.

Really very pleased, and apparently Goodchild is too.

I finally see Hemingway’s life through to its double-barrelled conclusion. Lynn’s book leaves a bad taste.
¹⁸⁸
Why was Lynn’s work as highly praised as the cover quotes imply? A word-processor job with a few theories about Hem’s mother nailed in there. All seems, like his subject’s life, to have been ended in a hurry.

To a Redwood meeting with Bob and André. Profits around 25,000 this year. Next year a bigger rent and rates bill and we shall need to increase turnover by about 30% just to break even. At the moment it seems alarmingly quiet.

Chris Pearce [the Manager of Delancey Studios] is so prickly – forever shouting at people, even arguing with clients – that Bob and André at one time seriously thought of moving to get away from him. Apparently Tom P burnt some toast this morning and set the fire alarm off. Chris went off as well and began shouting and screaming. I’m glad to hear that TP shouted and screamed back.

Tracey Ullman rings halfway through the meeting. She very much wants me to be on the show. As she puts it, ‘I’ve got four lovely Jewish writers who are just waiting for me to get some English man on the programme.’

Finish our meeting. It’s agreed Tom will be asked to stay on for a second year, which is a relief. André says he’s very good at picking up information, but
as
good at forgetting it the next morning.

Wake Rachel about nine and together we go down to the Marshall Street Baths. The baths, run at present by Westminster Council, are to be taken
over by an outfit called Civic Leisure from August 28th. Present staff will have to go. Socialism rolled back a little bit more.

At the end of the evening Helen and I are flopped in the kitchen when the doorbell goes. Helen urges me to look very carefully through the spyhole before opening it. I look through the spyhole. There, beside the scaffolding, clutching an envelope, is one of the Beatles. It’s George, with the Wilburys’ sleeve notes he wants me to have a look at.
¹⁸⁹
Dhani and Olivia are in the car and Dominic Taylor [son of Derek and Joan] and his girlfriend.

I invite them all in. After all the years of embarrassment about inviting George and him not being able to come at the last minute, this spontaneous visitation is a wonderful relief – despite the fact that the house is in a dreadful mess. But Dhani loves it all and wanders around, occasionally checking with me about details of Python shows. He specially likes the foot on top of the TV [which Denis O’B had given me after
A Private Function
].

Turns out it’s Dominic’s 21st, so we open a bottle of champagne.

Sleep well. Woken by the sound of St Edmund’s clock striking eight. A perfect summer morning, sunshine in profusion, hardly a breath of wind and the outline of the horizon on the North Sea razor-sharp.

After breakfast sally forth to the town – buy home-cured smoked haddock and fresh-dressed crabs and brown bread – called a cobbler – home-baked at the back of the shop.

Return, ready for half a morning’s work, only to find Ma ready to go out to the vicarage coffee morning and surprisingly adamant that I should accompany her. So I do, and it’s worth it. Mum quite a celebrity and much twittered over by various local ladies. ‘We look after her, you know,’ they proclaim over her head, as if talking about a prize vegetable.

Delicious crab for lunch. Sit out on the balcony. Some desultory sports training is going on below us on the Common.

Mum tells me more openly than she ever has before of the circumstances of my conception. She remembers the day exactly, she says. For some reason she knew that she had to do the deed. After years of vacillation Daddy would do nothing. She remembers it well, the summer day in 1942. ‘The vicar and his wife had been round for tea – we’d had tea on the back lawn.’

That night, as if, she hints, at some divine bidding, she tricked Daddy into impregnating her by leaving out her pessaries. There is no doubt in her mind that that was the night and that she knew what she was doing; she remembers every detail of the event, she says, even what was on top of the cupboard! She also knew I would be a boy, though Daddy, to the bitter end, thought otherwise and already had me down as Elaine!

At breakfast Ma says she feels ‘unsettled’. I ask her about what and she dithers a while, as if worried that she has already over-dramatised her feelings. ‘Well, everything, you know … Southwold just isn’t the same …’ Not quite sure if she’s trying to say more. I can’t read the signal.

But she seems happy enough and her sangfroid recovers as I carry my bags down to the car. A letter has been delivered by hand, addressed to me. Quite unsolicited, from the local Tory councillor, quite ingratiating and asking me if I will be the ‘Famous International Celebrity’ they’ve promised will judge some photo competition. I realise that the days of quiet inconspicuousness at Southwold are numbered and I resent that.

To Notting Hill, then Holland Park and lunch with John, just back from the US. He’s relishing having his house back – Barbara having now moved out to a place nearby. Inside there are empty walls (Barbara’s huge canvases having gone) and dusty rings on the carpet where pots and vases have been removed. He drives me the short distance to the Hiroko in his new Bentley. ‘It’s not
new
!’ he insists.

A light, clean Japanese lunch with gossip and the latest figures. They are estimating a 50 million gross and this, together with 20 mill for TV rights and a conservative forecast for non-US rentals, should make my points worth 350,000 dollars.

Our lunch is awfully pleasant and friendly and relaxed and we gently
remind each other of the things that have made us laugh together. I am able to tell him that Helen and Rachel saw
Wanda
on Tuesday and raved.

Back home via shops for two more interviews – the first is with Anthea Hewison. She’s interviewing me for
Here’s Health
, but has just trapped her sciatic nerve and has to conduct the entire interview from a prone position.

To the BBC for an
80 Days
meeting with Clem and Roger and Anne and Angela. Roger makes one or two suggestions with his stolid, commonsensical approach, symbolised by his pipe. He is worried that we may be top-heavy in the early interviews and that some of them may bite the dust. He also has an idea for me to check out garbage disposal whilst in Venice! (Apparently it’s quite spectacular and certainly a different view of the canal life.)

Then to the London Library, where I enrol Will as a member and show him the quiet, woody time-warp of the Reading Room where he will write his extended essay.

In a burst of opportunism, I end up buying, in Jermyn Street, a bag which I hope will be sufficient to take my things round the world. It’s made of a strong canvas and leather and when I get it home Helen’s immediate reaction is that it’s too small. Well, I shall have to practise with it. It’s certainly easy to carry about on the shoulder – as Clem advised.

The
Sunday Times
carries a piece headed ‘The Wonder of Wanda’, an apparently unsolicited gem of a story about how successful the film is in the US.

Spend much of the morning working through the
80 Days
schedule. Play tennis with Helen later in the afternoon, and win rather competently. Back home for gardening and family phone calls to Ma and the Herberts. We plan on a get-together in London before I leave for my circumnavigation.

Reassuringly good night’s sleep and feel quite calm as the first day proper of the project that is to occupy almost my entire next year comes round.

Taxi to Stanford’s, where I meet my
80
Days film crew. Nigel Meakin, cameraman, short, friendly, straight, agreeable and unpeculiar.

Ron Brown, the sound man, is tubby. He seems most concerned about the plans for accommodation in the boats and the hotels and who’s sharing with whom. But he does listen and in between the banter is a considerate and deceptively gentle character.

As we prepare to shoot, a phone call comes through for Ron – ‘The Pope wants you for Friday’. He has indeed been asked to Rome, for he is the Pope’s favourite sound man and has accompanied the great man on many travels.

What with Roger Mills having just returned from Vietnam and Ron Brown talking of the cookery programme they’ve just completed in Hanoi, I’m made clearly aware of my own parochialism. Documentaries are like a club, travel documentaries a club within that club.

Ring Joyce C early to confirm our lunch arrangement for tomorrow. I tell her that I’m enjoying the sunshine. ‘Yes, it’s a great comfort, isn’t it?’ she replies with the impeccable delivery of a great tragic actress.

Tristram P arrives to talk over the future of
American Friends
. Innes has read it and, as he puts it, wants to ‘pick it up and run with it’, which sounds encouraging.

We take Joyce to lunch at Bibendum. I help her up about 20 stairs to the restaurant only to find out there’s a lift. The restaurant itself is of striking design. Very big windows, two of them stained glass. Conran furniture – clean, crisp and fairly soulless.

Rex Harrison is dining at another table. He looks like an old dog, his head nodding slightly forwards, food and drink held close to his eyes. An aged man. Ask Joyce if she knows him and she does. In fact she’s been to see his show in London –
The Admirable Crichton
– at the Haymarket.

We effect an introduction between Rex and Joyce and as soon as he’s
with people he animates and transforms from being merely an old man to a charming, humorous and enormously attractive old man.

His wife, a Swiss woman, younger by far than him, is brisk but friendly … ‘Come on, Harrison!’ she orders. ‘They’re just about to order their lunch.’ ‘We’re just holding hands,’ says he, gazing down at Joyce, who leans back, smiling up at him. He shakes hands with Tristram and me. ‘This is the writer,’ says the umpteenth Mrs Harrison. Rex smiles at me warmly. ‘She enjoyed it so much, you know.’

Joyce reveals that Rex H was in the American production of her play
Sweet Aloes
and it was a disaster. She wrote under the pseudonym Jay Mallory – professionally it was better to be androgynous at that time. A reviewer in Scotland said of the play … ‘Mr Mallory is a most impertinent young man’. She enjoyed that.