DIARY
VICTORIA GLENDINNING My publishers, with a random sample of authors, have been regaling the book- sellers of Leeds with what they call 'a road- show' — food, drink and a home movie about the giddy delights of their spring list. They really go for it, in Leeds. London, in comparison, is a tentative improvisation of a city. After the booksellers had departed With their doggy-bags of proof copies and assorted bribes, we went for dinner to a Place called Nash's, just opposite the Grand. Nash's is worth a detour from wher- ever in the world you happen to be. It is a fish-and-chips palace, a vast brasserie-like space of dark wood and dim lights, with lovely waitresses in black frocks and white bib-aprons. First course: creamy cod-and- prawn pie, topped with mashed potatoes, and chips, and mushy peas. Pudding: gin- sponge with custard. The sPonge was very gingery and very treacly. The custard was like a dream of my north- ern childhood. To invoke Proust's madeleine would invite a citation in Pseud's Corner and demean the custard. It was like something we used to call Cremo- la, which probably doesn't exist any more (and if it does, I should like to know) — Pale in colour, very sweet, and velvety, not Pasty. The point is that after this orgy of carbohydrates we felt very well indeed and as light as feathers.
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. o Thursday 1 was taken in a party of
six to the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden. It Was. a last-minute invitation, Cherie Blair having dropped out — flu, or affairs of state, or worries over her son's schooling? AnYwaY, I got lucky. It was an evening of Short ballets choreographed by Frederick As, hton. Our host had sponsored the last item, Daphnis and Chloe, so we felt not only lucky but proud on his behalf. Daphnis and Chloe, originally conceived by the scratchy triumvirate of Diaghilev, Fokine and Ravel, was in the repertoire of the Russian Ballet which electrified the Sitwells Just before the first world war, and inspired much of their imagery. The next day I had .to. talk about the Sitwells, apropos the exhi- tion at the National Portrait Gallery, for Canadian television. I meant to mention ,_.the ballet — a topical touch. But I didn't. What comes out of your mouth when faced With a .camera is never what you planned.
, The spirit of the staircase is the only spirit I
have left. Especially since I slipped and fell uowna (short) staircase at the opera house, ,crashing into the back of Lord Gowrie's knees and wrecking my aspirations to social acceptability.
The self-employed and the socially unacceptable spend a lot of time in bed. Let out the dog and feed the cats in the morning, and then you can dive back under the duvet. If you have books to read for review, you can call it working .. . It is cru- cial to take the diary upstairs, or the scheme is ruined when the telephone rings because you have to hurtle downstairs in a rage to get it. And you must sit bolt upright before answering the telephone. Your voice sounds different when you are hori- zontal. They can tell.
0 n Friday night I had dinner with a man who was my first boyfriend, when we were both 16. I use the term 'boyfriend' in the unambitious sense in which we used it in those far-off days. Anyway, he grew up and got married to a blonde Australian, whom I met (because I was living in Southampton at the time) on the day they sailed away to make their lives in Australia. My friend's wife had a brother called Rupert, who was involved in local newspa- pers out there. You can guess the rest. My friend's brother-in-law turned into Rupert Murdoch — well, obviously he was Rupert Murdoch all along, though no one knew what that meant for a while. My friend, who is in business himself, has over the years had ample opportunity to observe opera- tors operating and big businesses growing bigger, and sometimes smaller. My friend's loyalty to and respect for the brother-in-law is total. I did not seek to undermine it. But I did question him about something that has always puzzled me. 'Let's leave the brother-in-law out of it,' I said. 'From your wide experience, in Australia and else- where, tell me how it is that very rich busi- nessmen, who start out from not much, like everyone else, get to be so very rich, some- times very quickly? They obviously don't work, or not quite in the sense that I under- stand work, which means doing something tiring and time-consuming, using head and/or hands, for long hours, in return for an agreed sum of money.' His answer was so pithy, so graphic and so brutal that I can- not bring myself to transcribe it into my diary.
Yet I myself am dreaming of generat- ing large sums of money. On Wednesday, as this goes to press, there is an important meeting to discuss Miss Almedingen's house. This is a burning issue. E.M. Almedingen was a Russian-born novelist, well thought of in her day, who lived in a largish cottage in the Mendip Hills with her dear friend Miss Pilkington. When Miss Almedingen died in 1971, she left the house to the Royal Society of Literature to be turned into a retreat for writers, with the proviso that Miss Pilkington would spend her remaining days in it. Miss Pilk- ington's remaining days lasted until last year, when she met her end by driving into the back of a dung-lorry in the narrow lanes around her home. The RSL has thus come into its inheritance. It is a mixed blessing. The cottage, in a once well- planned garden edged by streams, is charming — but in need of repairs and modernisation. Miss Almedingen, needless to say, left no money to endow the house. I
guess that hard-headed institutions like the National Trust would not accept an unen- dowed property, however important it was (and Miss Almedingen's house is not in that sense important at all), any more than an impoverished Victorian gentleman in search of a wife would accept an unen- dowed bride. The RSL is more romantic, and more determined. Just two or three really sizeable cheques drawn on two or three really sizeable bank accounts would solve all our problems. Maybe we should approach the brother-in-law? •
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