Diary
Iread in my New York Times that the disease Aids has inspired a wave of plays on the New York stage. There is, or has been, a choice between Robert Chesley's Nightsweat, Stephen Holt's Fever of Un- known Origin and Larry Kramer's Normal Heart. 'The enormity of the tragedy is so great,' says Holt, 'that there will be many artistic responses.' As Kramer has it on the lips of a dying man: 'There's not a good word to be said for anybody in this entire mess.' Playwrights obviously have more talent than journalists. While attending the Democratic Convention in San Francisco last year, I went to observe a huge Sunday parade of homosexuals from that sad city and other parts of the West Coast. They were wheeling the Aids victims along in bath chairs. I found it difficult to compose copy about this. Now I am left speculating, after reading the New York Times, how this apparently compulsive theme for play- wrights would have struck Noel Coward. Because he had been a neighbour of mine for many years, I visited him in his Les Avants chalet not long before he died. Resting in bed after his annual tour of the New York and London theatres, he spoke glowingly of Broadway and its fountain of ideas (rather less glowingly of London's fountain). Now the fountain of ideas seems to have moved on. Would Noel Coward, With all his attachment to privacy in sexual life, which Rebecca West among others so much respected, have taken this one on? I think the answer can be a confident 'No'. Aids would not have drawn his 'talent to amuse'.
r Mahathir Mohamed, the Malaysian Prime Minister, talked good sense about the modern Commonwealth at the banquet he gave to Mrs Thatcher. 'The Commonwealth as originally conceived is a creature of the past.' He is right. No snub there to Mrs Thatcher or anyone else. But he went off track about sentiment, which he implied counted for nothing. Mrs Thatcher, disagreeing with him tactfully, attributed the difference to her sex. 'I think it is because you are a man and I am a Woman. So sentiment means a little bit more in my life than in yours.' After these exchanges, I turned up vol. IV of Winston Churchill's account of the second world !var. Malaya was invaded by the Japanese in December 1941, the month of Pearl Harbour. From the British Empire, then and later, came men from India, Australia and Great Britain. They helped to deliver Malaya back into rightful hands, now those of Dr Mahathir Mohamed. Not far from him, incidentally, stands the Common- wealth war memorial with its last line: 'For your tomorrow, we gave our today. . No, Prime Minister, with respect, senti- ment has less to do with your sex than with your age.
1-"N uring the Easter holiday I travelled
past the old home of Hilaire Belloc in West Sussex - no, I think I will not give its precise location. I had visited it earlier this year - a working mill, a converted cottage shop and a chapel - and felt a warm regard for the young kinsman, one of Belloc's great-grandchildren, who has chosen to live there and keep it like it was. The main living-room, for example, crammed with books, prints, furniture and curiosities is pretty much as it was when Belloc lived there. After passing it this time, I fell to wondering how many people read Belloc today. Well, try to buy from any bookseller a copy of The Path to Rome, and you will get the answer to that. True, his writing was uneven and a lot of it is not worth reprinting; but the best is. Politically, of course, he was an oddball. He sat as a Liberal MP (and was literary editor of the Morning Post at the same time, 1906-10); but some of the things he said and wrote would greatly offend the liberal conscience of today. Liberal publishers too, I suspect.
Aweek or so ago a friend lost a dog in Islington. It went out for its morning walk, failed to return. This was Saturday. Losing a dog casts a heavy cloud over family life. Neighbours, police, dogs' homes, all likely sources were canvassed. One, two, three days went by without news. The heaviest burden then is wonder- ing what the dog's fate may have been. The loss, was advertised. People are amazingly kind in situations like this. The day the advertisement appeared several rang up the family before breakfast, greatly desir- ing to be helpful but without the dog. Then
a member of the family sensibly went to the Battersea Dogs' Home. There was the dog. It had been observed and picked up by a policeman in Moorgate, which is not a great doggy distance from Islington, and conveyed to Battersea. On payment of an extremely modest sum for the dog's board and lodging — and an omnibus injection — the family and the dog were reunited. Joy unconfined. Why do I tell this simple tale? First, because I am fond of dogs. Secondly because I think the Battersea Dogs' Home gets too little recognition for the patient work it does. Thirdly, because in times when animal welfare seems to provoke human behaviour more suited to the foot- ball grounds, it makes a change and lifts the heart a little.
There is nothing Fleet Street can do to 1. raise my eyebrows, but they twitched a bit at a headline last week - 'Tories Adore Miss Floggie'. The Daily Express story opened:
Upper-crust Tories see Mrs Thatcher as a sexual fantasy figure — a `Miss Floggie' resplendent in leather boots and wielding a whip, according to Labour's Denis Healey. He offers his theory in next week's May issue of the 'girlie' magazine Penthouse.
At first reading, there seemed to me • limited mileage for the Labour Party from
this line of country and! wondered if Denis Healey had come off his trolley. Next day I read in the Guardian that he was very angry with Penthouse. He accused them of 'quoting without permission'. On behalf of their staff journalist Cathy Galvin, Pent- house denied Mr Healey's claim. Well, they would. What leaves me baffled is not Denis Healey's flight of fancy - I can hear him saying it - but how such an experi- enced old hand got caught up with Pent- house in the first place. Some years back Jimmy Carter got caught by a 'girlie' magazine and was persuaded to make an ass of himself with some Freudian self- admissions. It did him not much good. The right answer, though it is too late to help Denis, is to raise your hat, smile politely, say: 'No, not this afternoon, thank you very much,' and walk on.
An old Parliamentary friend of mine, still in the House, once declared to me that, walking down Piccadilly one sunny afternoon, he did just that to a woman who approached him with a glad smile. Twenty yards on, he realised that she was the Woman Vice-Chairman of his Conservative Association. Social dilemma: walk on, or walk back and say: 'I'm sorry I mistook you. . . .' He walked on. What happened, I asked, when they next met? She was all smiles, he said. She was not quite in the high summer of her life, and may very well have felt. . . . But if I go on, I shall be in dead trouble with the Equal Opportunities Commission. Work it out
for yourself. '
William Deedes
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