The Richard Burton Diaries (101 page)

Well anyway, forget that. Ignore that. Obliviate that. Nowt you can do bachgen bach. Honest to God. All you can do is make her rich, Rich. And she is rich, Rich. [...]

Monday 25th, South Moreton
To my delight Emlyn and Molly, both, came to lunch and to my added delight Emlyn and E got on very well. Emlyn was in first class order and as subtly wicked as ever. Age has not withered nor custom staled.
²²⁷
There was a good deal of give and take. It is a hard task not to be overwhelmed by Emlyn. The slightest suggestion of mock-modesty, of false values, of sentimentality and with a couple of words he will stab you right under the heart. But it is possible to retaliate if you keep your wits about you – but – of course they have to be well kept. [...]

So many delightful things happened yesterday that to write it all down would take a tome not much longer than
Paradise Lost
.
²²⁸
We went to the ‘Bear’ twice, the second time with the two Lizzes.
²²⁹
E played bar-billiards with a chap who said: ‘Wait till I get home and tell my old woman who I've been playing bar-billiards with.’ One youngish woman and her husband came up to me in the Bear and said how pleased she was to meet me, but added ‘Do you know Virginia Woolf? ‘Yes,’ I said.’ ‘Well’, she said, ‘Jack or Sam or Charlie (or whatever his name was) saw the film the other night in Oxford, and we thought it was ‘orrible.’ Well there you are.

Brook and I brought back home (actually he drove us) the boss of the Bear to have a frame or two of ‘Pool’ with us. He is as rotund as the idea of circles and handles a deft cue. He did a couple or more shots that put one in mind of Minnesota Fats.
²³⁰
[...]

Tuesday 26th,
Kalizma Last night I went to the ‘Talk of the Town’ which used to be the London Hippodrome and introduced Sammy Davis Jr to the audience.
²³¹
I have rarely been so nervous but managed to get me on with it alright. That kind of audience is a stranger to me and I wasn't absolutely sure that they wouldn't give me the bird but from the moment of the announcement and the reception I knew that I could handle them. I used E a lot. I said that I was wearing her frock (I wore the top half of a costume that I wear in the film – what we call the Nehru piece – with dinner jacket trousers) out of which she'd grown etc.
²³²
Liza and Brook came with me and both were marvellous. Ron and Vicky and Craig were also there. Sammy was as minute as ever and as clever as ever. [...]

Thursday 28th, Dorchester
Michael arrived yesterday after a twenty hour journey from Hawaii. He didn't look at all tired and in fact looked the best I've seen him for a long time. He is now about 5ft 7 or 8 and looks like a very beautiful renaissance Christ. [...] I haven't really had a chance to talk with him yet to find out what's motivating him but I'm not as worried about him as I expected. He has matured vastly.

Despite my protestations E is still apprehensive about Gin Bujold. It is a dangerous situation but the danger lies to Miss Bujold and not to us. I imagine she is going to find it very difficult to go back to Montreal to the suburban house after the false glamour of this particular production. Well hew to my line and let the chips fall where they may.
²³³
Because of my insistence from the beginning that she must be given ‘star’ treatment, she has no idea how disliked she is. Because of their loyalty the lads, Ron, Jim, Bob (but not, repeat not, Gaston) have lunched her and dined her and wined her but they have palpably had it now up to the teeth. They will be as glad as I am when this show is ended and we can fold our tents and creep silently away.
²³⁴
With a loud roar! Oh monsieur, elle est laid. Elle ne pas laide mais chacun a son gout.
²³⁵
I will correct
that French one of these days. As a matter of fact I might get a tutor to refine my French during the next year off – and my Italian too. It will only cost me a few quid a lesson and it will help me at Oxford in ‘71 when I'm faced with all those smart-asses. Nevill Coghill has offered to come and stay with us and bone me up about tutorials etc. The lectures I shall manage. The tutorials are going to be a sod. All those hippy bastards with awkward questions. I hope anyway that I shall in the 3 months at Oxford find out what makes them tick because I'm damned if I do at the moment. I'll do my best.

Saturday 30th,
Kalizma
Well it's over. All I have is a couple of shots left to do and then I'll clean myself and go home and dry. I have rarely been so desperate. I remember waiting for the letter from Oxford and the terror of not being accepted. I remember the torment of choosing between Kate and Elizabeth. I chose the latter and perhaps I shall never forgive myself for it. Though I love them both very badly. E will not believe me but I have never done anything to betray her trust. Michael knows me not to be a liar and he believes me. [...]

G. Bujold is quite clearly a fool. She has upset all of us very badly. So perhaps she's not a fool. She may have meant to upset us. Well good luck to you baby because the only one who is going to be upset is you. Vulgar and rubbish and ambition. And I hate all three. [...]

Sunday 31st
[...] Yesterday was another terrible day. I behaved in a way to make a banshee look kind good and sweet. Insulting Elizabeth, drunk, periodically excusing myself rather shabbily and then starting the rough treatment all over again. Sometimes I am so much my father's son that I give myself occasional creeps. He had the same gift for damaging with the tongue, he had the same temporary violence, he had the same fidelity to mam that I have to Elizabeth, he had the same smattering of scholarship, he had the same didactitism (bet I spelled that wrong),
²³⁶
we wave the same admonitory finger at innocence when we know bloody well when we are guilt-ridden, when we have to attack when we know we're in the defensive position. ‘Banshee’, incidentally, I have used badly – it actually means an Irish or West Scottish faery who screams and laments at the imminent death of any member of a family which she protects. And, despite
Staircase
I am not a faery.

Mike has turned into a very wise man. I believe in love otherwise I'd have to throw myself overboard, but I cannot believe in that massive magician upstairs. At least he doesn't believe in organized religion. He's a lovely boy and I cannot believe I never knew him. I wish he were of my blood but perhaps it's better that he is not. His father is great and a gentleman. And I sure as hell am not.

Time to wake up Maisie. Life is a waste without her.

SEPTEMBER

Bank Holiday Monday 1st,
Kalizma
, Thames

Tuesday 9th, Aston Clinton
Yesterday at last I finished the fucking film. You'd think that would be a cause for rejoicing, but not a bit of it. It all started because of my absolute, almost feminine [...] passion for neatness. The place we live in is so small that all extras must be kept down to a minimum. Gaston came in like a porter from Paddington station loaded down with cartons, bags, a box full of booze. There were several of our own towels when all she has to is pick up the phone and they'll bring her a hundred clean towels. Does she not realize that
we have been paying the Bell Inn an average of £100 a week for a year to keep Gwen in comfort?
²³⁸
They'll turn cartwheels for us if you ask them. Well I went mad which ended up with Elizabeth smashing me around the head with her ringed fingers. If any man had done that I would have killed him, or any woman either, but I had sufficient sense to stop myself or I most surely would have put her in hospital for a long long time or even into the synagogue cemetery for an even longer time. I still boil with fury when I think about it. I took myself off on a long walk to some farms that are around the corner and thought of every possibility and its consequences. I decided that for a time anyway we are stuck with each other. I thought that what E needed was a long rest in a quiet place and that so did I and we might get together again. We are fighting and have been fighting for a year now over everything and anything. I have always been a heavy drinker but during the last 15 months I've nearly killed myself with the stuff, and so has Elizabeth. She has just come out to this minute back room where I type and we're at it again. Neither of us will give in and if one of us doesn't something is going to snap. And I'm not going to give in, I'm too small a man and not feminine enough. I prided myself on not having the shakes this morning but the minute E came out and sat down they started up again. Now what the fuck is the meaning of that? Anyway this naturally is one of the black Celtic melancholy days. I see nothing ahead of me but a long grey waste. This afternoon I may see a little colour in the desert and tomorrow perhaps even an oasis. But at the moment I am in despair. If we cannot understand each other or what is worst not stand each other we'd [better] go our separate ways pretty soon and go back to work ... She'll film again and I'll write.

Thursday 11th, Bell Inn, Aston Clinton
Missed yesterday. I suppose when you reach an oasis you don't write.

The children arrived in a heap and a tumble and we had a faintly hysterical lunch where everybody wanted to eat everybody's food except their own. Plates were exchanged, forksful of ‘try this bit’ were handed around and we generally left the bemused waiters cross-eyed. [...]

I read most of the day and half the night (4.30 am) a book by Carlos Baker about Ernest Hemingway.
²³⁹
I have always loathed E.H.’s writing ever since I was a boy of about 14 I suppose and read
For Whom the Bell Tolls
.
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The gross sentimentality of the man offended me, and still does. I cannot understand why ‘critics’ describe his ‘harsh realism etc.’. It seems to me he was a romantic shit. But this book, though too lyrical at times to be considered a work of scholarship, shows the man was the work. He himself was a shit of the first order and an Oscar winning sentimentalist. And yet everybody I know who
knew him adored him – even the mystic Archie MacLeish. I feel alternately sorry for him and contemptuous as I read this book and still, as they quote extracts from his writings as I go through the book feel slightly nauseated. I'll finish it today. One day, perhaps soon, I'll get all his works in paperback (he doesn't deserve hard-covers) and plough through him again. I'll choose a time when I'm constipated.

My shakes have practically gone! Ah what discipline! What Discipline? You may well ask. Well now, instead of 1
¹
/
₂
bottles of vodka a day, it is now cut down to
¹
/
₂
a bottle. What's the next move? A descent and return to beer I think. Especially as I've lost my taste for it. I wonder if I can find barrelled beer in Suisse to keep in the house. I will ask the lady called ‘Hedy’ in Olden auberge in Gstaad if this is possible. I shall become fat but jolly and not frighten children no more. Any more. No more.

Friday 12th
We leave today for London and on Monday for Paris and on Wednesday for Gstaad. What we do after that it is undecided but deliciously so. If the Med is nice and enjoying an Indian summer we will drive down in slow stages to the yacht at Cannes and cruise around for a bit. We may go to the party for ‘Scorpions’ given by the Rainiers at Monaco and live on the yacht and go by mini-moke to La Ferme, or La Réserve, or you name it. St Trop should be quiet at this time of year.
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Corsica maybe? Calvi, Bonifacio, Costa Smeralda, Cappo Caccia? Potofino, Ischia, Porto Santo Stephano, Positano, Portofino?
²⁴²
Or other places we haven't discovered yet. All fair-weather or perhaps even to Mexico and the old regime. And in the new year, who knows?

Ivor came to have dinner and we ate in Michael Harris’ mother's cottage (Harris is the owner of the Bell) and watched a ghastly but very enjoyable English film with Peggy Mount and David Kossoff etc. about cockneys taking over a country pub.
²⁴³
We had things called Bell Inn Smokies which are pieces of smoked haddock in a sauce with cheese on top in tiny individual casseroles. Mouth-watering. We must come back, if only for those.

Ivor will be coming over to Gstaad around about November with Robbie and the other girl. I must see Rossier in Geneva about getting all the equipment we can find to make life easier for everybody all round.
²⁴⁴
Electrical beds, pulleys and grips and any gadgets which will make everyone happier. If only we can get the strength back into Ivor's arms. He can move them now to a limited extent, which is a miracle in itself. We shall see what the year will bring. [...]

Sunday 28th, Gstaad
We have been here for about two weeks – I will look up the exact date later – and already it has done me a world of good. Shortly after we'd arrived Lillabetta and Brook arrived with Maria. And we, i.e. B and I, have played badminton every day in the morning and occasionally in the afternoons. We have taken long fast five-mile walks and for about a week I was so still that I could barely turn over in bed and my hands shook so badly that drinks had to be held up to my lips by E. Now however I am as steady as a rock and [...] I am infinitely more limber than I have been for a long time. I have reduced my boozing to practically zero – by my standards. A vodka martini before lunch, and wine with dinner. And I frequently don't touch the wine. I have taken up the drinking man's diet again about three days ago. [...]