Halfway To Hollywood: Diaries 1980-1988 (Volume Two) (73 page)

The girls run the class, says Mrs Deadman, and Rachel’s table are far and away the most talented. And – some of them – very difficult. Rachel’s problem is that everyone wants to be friends with her, and she is nice to them all. If she was able to be as sharp to them as some of them are to her she’d be less hassled.

Hot night, morning starts cloudy. Am reading
Tender Passion
and making notes when it occurs to me that what I need is some up-front money to tide me through the period of research – in short, I need what I’ve avoided taking on my ‘new film’ for years: a good, old-fashioned commission.

Look at the calendar and apportion time for three projects up to the end of ’87 – the Victorian film, a short film, possibly to be done at the National Film School as a prelude to directing the Victorian film, and some time in summer next year provisionally set aside for JC’s film.

An evening phone call from D Leland awakens my interest in the part of Eric in
Heartbreakers
. It would ruin all the plans made earlier today, but would give me a new direction in acting, to complement the ‘new direction’ in writing to which I’ve now committed myself. Can I do both?

To the House of Commons with T2000 team.

Searching procedures at the door take a while. A man is trying to hand in a small gift-wrapped box with a ribbon around it, which he says is a present for the visiting German Chancellor. The lady at security wants to know what’s in it. He doesn’t know.

We pass through and into the Gothic world of Parliament, winding up back stairs to what could be the maids’ quarters or the room of some demented sister who’s not talked about, but turns out to be Committee Room 17. Inside a panel of ten MPs sit in a semi-circle around a secretary who takes shorthand of the proceedings. Opposite the semi-circle is a table at which currently are sitting four men from the Transport Users’ Consultative Committee. They’re all Major-Generals and look most
impressive from behind. We slip in at the back, where a half-dozen people are listening.

I, who have been quite looking forward to the experience, find it one of the least pleasant of my T2000 outings thus far. The courtroom atmosphere, the ritual, the respectful ‘grown-up’ procedure, the ‘sirs’ and the ‘I beg, Mr Chairman’ – in fact all the quasi-legalistic panoply – make me uncomfortable. I feel as if I want to speak but can’t. Or is it just that I don’t know what they’re talking about?

Rachel is having her tea today when she asks ‘Are you unemployed?’ Expostulate as I do, there is a grain of truth in her question which rankles. Of course I have hardly a spare moment, but much of the time is spent holding on – to friends, obligations, duties such as T2000 – and comparatively little, at the moment, in the creation of new work.

Taxi to L’ Escargot and lunch with Sandy L. I had this morning sent round to Sandy the Victorian film idea, merely for reference. He thinks it has great potential, feels I should go to someone like the National Film Development Fund for first-stage writing money and that I should make up my mind whether to direct or act. More or less decide then to direct. It seems such a short and logical step on from writing and anything that might prevent me playing a sympathetic clergyman again must be a good thing.

To St James’s Square. Slowly because of the heat. All the flowers around the ‘shrine’ for the policewoman shot by the Libyans are dried up and dead as I cross the square and into the time-warp that is the London Library.

Nervous, bookish, soft-spoken assistants with mad clothing direct you to the various areas of human experience. ‘Domestic Servants, next to Dogs.’ Takes a while to familiarise myself with the layout, but soon I’m getting into the swim of turning the lights on and off and encountering strange figures in between Ireland and the Gambia.

Leave with seven books, taxi back home. Driver’s a great fan and I have to talk a lot and sign his book.

Not much time to unpack before Angela H arrives in preparation for
Rachel’s appearance in the Gospel Oak musical ‘Carrots’ tonight. Give her a glass of champagne. Helen rushing in and out, house not very restful.

To the school.

Rachel gives her cheeky Cockney character – Carrots – a hint of timidity and uncertainty which she shouldn’t really have. But she delivers her lines with good expression, clarity and assurance, and once she’s free of the stageful of unmoving people and into one-to-one acting she’s excellent. She sings two solos falteringly and a third very promisingly and robustly.

A very sultry night, through which I sleep with considerable ease, until eight. At 9.15 I am at Acland Burghley School to discuss Tom’s progress with Mr Trafford, his D&T [Design and Technology] teacher.

We talk for almost an hour about the poor funding of the course. Officially he has about £12 allotted per pupil per year for equipment! He manages to augment this ludicrous amount by various devious means – but fund-raising and PR are taking up far too much of his teaching time. Without whingeing, he paints a sad picture of neglect and obstinacy in the education system. He’s not against some form of assessment, but first of all wages and resources need to be improved – morale is very low.

A cool and refreshing day – sun without the sweat. Reach my goal of four hours’ research and reading. Helen rushes around all day buying food for the Gospel Oak school leavers’ party which we go along to in the evening.

Rachel and a few friends produced an end of term magazine today which seems to sum up all the creative brightness of Gospel Oak School. All the children have been happy there and have made good friends. I shall miss it.

The Royal Wedding [of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson] is everywhere. Thirty-one countries have pulled out of the Commonwealth Games. Reagan has outdone Thatcher in trying to clothe economic expediency in moral respectability, calling sanctions against South Africa ‘repugnant’.

A leisurely start to the day, then embark on a clear-up of my workroom, sorting out the piles of books, letters, scripts, papers, many of them sparking flashes of guilt at work not dealt with, an opinion unexpressed, a cause unaided, but I have done so little work of my own these past few weeks that I really cannot feel any great qualms over my inability to respond to everyone else’s demands.

Lie awake and talk to Helen, which I don’t do often enough, of my worries about the Victorian film (am I desperately chasing a red herring?), about T2000 and my doubts which are fast developing into certainties – I’m not an institutional man, a committee man, a board man. I’m a writer, an actor, an occasional visitor – a flea who can sting and bite occasionally. I’m not cut out for Head of House.

To the Zanzibar to meet Michael Barnes, who is taking me as his guest to the Bolshoi Ballet at the Royal Opera House. As I’ve seen neither, this is a double first.

Before the opening of the ballet an announcement is made to try and forestall those ‘who may try to use this occasion to make some sort of protest’. In a very English way the manager asks them not to disrupt the performance but to come and have a word with him at the interval. Obviously he’s referring to those already protesting across the road, outside Bow Street Police Station, on behalf of Soviet Jewry.

The ballet is
The Golden Age
, and an unlikely, but entertainingly odd piece. Not grand or historical, it takes place, almost in the present day, at a seaside resort on the Black Sea and involves healthy undefiled workers’ co-ops and a ‘sleazy’, but rather attractive night club called the Golden Age, where, dressed in dramatic blacks and golds, the bourgeois dance the tango.

Indeed, and most bizarrely, there’s, at the start of the second act, a marvellous Shostakovich arrangement of ‘Tea for Two’. Lots of echoes of American musicals – including
West Side Story
and
Sweet Charity
. I begin to be carried away and from then on the sheer skill, energy and excitement of the music and dancing are completely riveting.

Drive to Oxford by ten and into St John’s. Through two quiet, dignified quads to the library. I arrive at the same time as a bearded American scholar who is there to look at a thirteenth-century illuminated manuscript. Am reminded of the quiet wealth of the colleges – not in their buildings, beautiful though they are, but in cellars, archives, cupboards and chests.

I easily pass three hours at a desk with copies of the Oxford Calendar for 1843-62, and make copies of a number of pages and also of some good contemporary sources. Up above me is a marvellous long chamber with plaster and wood vaulted roof and Archbishop Laud’s bust.

By the time I leave Oxford seems to have woken up and the spell is broken. The college buildings swarm with beefy Americans in Bermuda shorts, all here for some summer study course. One thing these colleges are getting very good at is making money.

Back to London by five.

Just enough time to say hello to Al L who arrived from Brittany yesterday, then off to an hour’s tennis coaching.

Take Al to the bookstores of Charing Cross Road to satisfy his craving for Stevie Smith. Am struck by how rich London now is in bookshops. Despite the cinema revival, four-channel TV, cable, video, booming theatre, a lot more people seem to have a lot more time to read.

Have a half of bitter at the Crown in Seven Dials. Al so full of fears and worries – mainly centring on Gwenola and the effect on her when he goes. He has had two scares over the last two or three years and precious little has gone right, apart from the fact that he has survived, where many wouldn’t, and Claudie, with her plain, philosophical Breton good sense has been a tower of strength.

I take him on an ‘East London’ tour. To satisfy both our curiosities. First to Leadenhall Street to see the Lloyds Building. I like it more this time, perhaps because Al’s so enthusiastic. For him it’s a work of genius. I appreciate today the way it fits in and complements the buildings around. It’s big but light and its lines continuously broken, giving vistas through, across and round it, so at times it gives the impression of
translucence – not a quality associated usually with the intimidating and imperious City buildings.

We drive on to the east and find ourselves amongst the glossy, high-tech of the renewed, revived Isle of Dogs, where enormous investment has transformed Docklands, to the benefit of businessmen and to the detriment of the local people who have found themselves largely unwanted, their neighbourhood swiftly, comprehensively, unapologetically re-ordered by outsiders.

On the Victorian film news is that all goes ahead well. Steve has met with Sandy L and got on well. We decide not to go for an advance from the Film Development Fund. It’s not money I need, and the submission will require synopsis and waiting for processing, all of which will take time away from my vital priority – to produce a script or other evidence by the end of October that we are not all barking up the wrong tree.

Back to Camden Town for a visit to Peter Lewis. He pronounces my teeth in good shape and talks about his Prussian grandfather who broke two ribs putting up a deck chair. Hear on the radio that 63% of callers in an LBC poll want British troops out of Ulster.

Begin work on the Victorian screenplay.

Unsure about the sound of the dialogue – the period flavour – the detail – Latin verse, etc – but once I’m going it doesn’t hold me up and I experience the pleasure of creating characters, lives, incidents; enough this morning to leave me optimistic.

Rachel has gone off for her first day at Parliament Hill, with her new Cahors black satchel, black earrings, white shirt and black skirt.

Ring Ma and Angela. Angela says she’s in the middle of quite a serious depression. She’s decided to be forthright about it and not cover up. Is there anything genetically responsible, she wonders. Perhaps Daddy suffered from depression as well. He certainly took things very seriously, was underpaid and had a stammer, but could this be genetically transmitted?

Cleese calls to say his script is finished. Tony Jay evidently approved greatly – which John is cross about as he’d hoped Tony would suggest the
20-minute cut it needs. I suggest John sends the script to someone he knows really hates his stuff. John finds this very funny. Top of his list is Richard Ingrams, with Peter Ackroyd a close second.

To the Python office to have my photo taken – to help out a student who’s doing a portfolio of writers ‘because they’re most likely to be at home’. Can’t get used to the intrusion of the lens poking towards me. Then an hour’s chat with two very young, keen Python fans, who run a mysterious magazine which, they assure me, comes out about every four years.

After a couple of hours of being famous and unpaid, I meet with Anne and Steve. Their latest reservations concern the extra money needed – over and above buying studio equipment and the freehold to the buildings – for the creation of Redwood Delancey. Costs now up from 48 to 101G.

Rather a gloomy chat. I have the money, but it clearly irks Steve to advance yet more of my money to the project – interest-free. These are nervous times for Redwood. I think we have no option but to be bold and resolute and hope that in ten years’ time (for it won’t be before) it’s all been an amazing success and a nest-egg for old age.

Angela and Veryan round in the evening for Angela’s birthday present – a home-cooked meal. Champagne, tomato soup, chicken and mango, cheese, fresh berries and ’79 claret, all very nicely cooked and served and Angela cheerful for most of the time. She responds to our house like someone warming themselves at a fire.