Any Human Heart (46 page)

I called up Jerry Schubert [Leeping Fils’ lawyer] just to check on the Jan-Carl Lang matter, that he could lay no claim to the Picasso. ‘There’s no contract, no bill of sale,’ Jerry said, ‘he can’t touch you. It was only talk. Everybody talks.’

Letter from Lionel saying he may be coming to New York and if so is there any chance of a bed for a few nights? My first reaction was — of course not. But he’s your son, you oaf, you moron. Why does his coming disturb you so? Because he’s a stranger to me. But maybe it’ll be good, you get on, you might actually like him. Maybe… It can only be his Mountstuart genes that drew him into the music business.

[In the summer of 1960 two young independent film producers called Marcio and Martin Canthaler optioned LMS’s novella,
The Villa by the Lake,
for their Hollywood production company, MCMC Pictures. LMS was flown out to Los Angeles for meetings and to explore the idea that he would write the screenplay. As it happened, Peter Scabius was also in town in negotiations over the film rights of his latest novel,
Already Too Late
(a futuristic allegory about the threat to the planet of nuclear war).]

Bel Air Hotel, Los Angeles. Strange feeling of being in some kind of dream. This hotel is a mini Shangri-La. I feel I only start to age when I cross over the little bridge that leads to the parking lot, and when I return time stands still once more. Perfect peace, low buildings sheltered in lush densely planted gardens, a pale blue swimming pool.

I had Peter here to lunch yesterday and I could tell he was a little put out at the hotel’s discreet splendour. Who’s picking up the bill? he demanded to know. Paramount? Warner Bros? MCMC, I said. Where are you? Beverly Wilshire, he said. Oh,
very
grand, I said, and he was mollified, secure and smug again. He’s so easy to handle, Peter, which is one of the reasons I’m so fond of him, I suppose. He’s developed a truly superb, magnificent ego over the years, breathtaking in its presumption, and the match of anything you might find in this town. When I think of what a nervous little chap he was at school…

The most interesting news is that Gloria has left him for an Italian aristocrat, Count somebody-or-other. He is divorcing her as fast as possible. No problems with the Catholic Church? I asked him. ‘I lost my faith in Algeria,’ he said, looking sombre and battle-weary. He’s in good shape — better than me — tanned, lean, though his hair is suspiciously dark, not a grey hair, most unusual. Mine is now distinctly pepper and salt, forehead becoming more and more prominent.

Meeting with Marcio and Martin at their offices in Brentwood. Marcio is thirty-five, Martin thirty-two. Both genial, both slightly overweight, Martin balding, Marcio with a curly, crooner’s mop. They have paid me $5,000 for a year’s option on
Villa
with the right to renew for a further year.

MARCIO: SO, Logan, how was your weekend?
ME: I had lunch with an old friend, Peter Scabius.
MARCIO: Great writer.
MARTIN: Ditto to that.
ME: And I went to a show. At an art gallery.
MARTIN: We love art. Who was on?
ME: Diebenkorn.
MARCIO: We got one of his, I think.
MARTIN: We have two, actually, Marcio.

This is what confuses you out here. You think you are having a fruitless meeting with two affable numskulls and you end up talking about Richard Diebenkorn for half an hour. They want me to write the script, they say, but they don’t want to pay me until it’s done and they’ve read it. But what if you don’t like it? I say. You’re not going to pay for a script you don’t like. Won’t be an issue, Logan, Marcio assures me. We know we’re going to love whatever you do, Martin adds.

Later I telephone Wallace in London and ask his advice. Agree to nothing, he says, tell them to make all proposals to me. I sense he’s a little annoyed that I’m only consulting him now. I’m your agent, Logan, he says, this is my job, for Christ’s sake.

On the plane, Pan Am, back to NYC. Yesterday evening I went down to Santa Monica and walked by the ocean. I had a couple of drinks in a bar by the pier as dusk fell and the sky and the sea began to look like a Rothko colour field. I felt good, lightly tanned, at ease, enjoying the slow burn of the booze and I suddenly had the fantasy about moving out here — start a Leeping Fils West… As you grow older and your life becomes more ordered, so too a comfortable, temperate, easy-going version of the Good Life becomes ever more appealing. I might meet a nice Californian woman — they seem to have more than their fair share of beautiful women out here. But I realized, as I explored it further, that this was and would only be a fantasy: I’d go mad in a month or two — just as I’d go mad in a cottage in Somerset, or a farm in Tuscany. My nature is essentially urban and, although Los Angeles is indubitably a city, somehow its mores aren’t. Maybe it’s the weather that makes it feel forever suburban and provincial: cities need extremes of weather, so that you long for escape. I could live in Chicago, I think — I’ve enjoyed my trips to Chicago. Also there has to be something brutal and careless about a true city — the denizen must feel vulnerable — and Los Angeles doesn’t deliver that either, at least not in my short experience. I feel too damn comfortable here, too cocooned. These are not experiences of the true city: its nature seeps in under the door and through the windows — you can never be free of it. And the genuine urban man or woman is always curious — curious about the life outside on the streets. That just doesn’t apply here: you live in Bel Air and you don’t ask yourself what’s going on in Pacific Palisades — or am I missing something?

We resolved the script issue: $10,000 payable in advance; another ten if it’s accepted. Wallace did a good job, which made me think: why don’t I use him more? When we spoke on the phone I told him about my idea for
Octet
and wondered if we could prise an advance out of Sprymont & Drew. He told me that Sprymont & Drew don’t exist any more. The company was bought and the imprint is defunct. What about Roderick? He’s resurfaced at Michael Kazin — at a much reduced salary. He suggested I put the idea down on paper and he said he would see what he could do, but added: ‘It won’t be easy, Logan. I have to warn you — things have changed, and you’re not exactly a household name.’ True. True…

Lionel has been here the last four days. He has untidy long hair that hangs over his ears and a thin patchy beard. I could have bumped into him on the street and not known he was my son. He is still taciturn and diffident and the mood in the apartment since he’s arrived is one of self-conscious reserve and scrupulous politeness: ‘After you with the salt.’ ‘You have it, I insist.’ Lionel seems to know a good few people in the city, what with his contacts in the music business. I asked him about his work and he explained, without my taking much in. His first band, the Greensleeves, changed their name to the Fabulairs and made a successful record — just outside the top-twenty, he said. Lionel was invited over to America by a small independent record company to see if he can effect a similar transformation here. He’s very excited, he says: America is the place to be for contemporary music, he claims, just like art. England is filled with pale imitations of American recording stars. I nod, in an interested manner. Lionel played me his Fabulairs hit — pleasant enough melody, jaunty, a catchy chorus. This music does little for me; or put it this way — I enjoy it as much as I would a brass band.
Ganz ordinär.
It’s been worth while coming to know him better but I’ll be pleased to have the place to myself again. He moves into an apartment in the West Village next week.

We’ve had a few meals out together — we must look an odd couple as we stroll the Upper East Side. He tells me Lottie is well, though I sense he sees little of her. Her two daughters by Leggatt — what are they called? — thrive: one about to finish boarding school, one working on a fashion magazine as a sort of secretary. So life moves on.

We sit in a restaurant and try to chat naturally. Try: I wonder if we can ever know each other well enough so that we no longer have to make an effort, so that our discourse is instinctive and thoughtless. But, I say to myself, why should that ever be? I never experienced such ease with my parents: I didn’t expect it and neither did they. Lionel is almost a complete stranger to me as a result of my divorce from Lottie. The fact that he’s my son, product of my union with Lottie, seems almost incredible. I have a far closer relationship with Gail. To be honest, I’ll be glad to have him out of the apartment — glad, but guilty, of course.

Message from Marcio and Martin — they have significant problems with my first draft. I bet they do — but not as significant as mine. Thankless drudge-work: I sense the Hollywood period of my life has just ended.

Saw in the New Year with Janet and Kolokowski. Big, noisy, drunken, depressing party. I popped into Lionel’s apartment on Jane Street for a drink beforehand. He thinks he’s found his new band — the Cicadas, a folk group, a trio. He wants to rename them the Dead Souls. What, I said, after the Gogol novel? What novel? Gogol’s great novel, one of the greatest ever written,
Dead Souls.
You mean there’s already a novel called
Dead Souls?
FUCK! He swore and ranted, much to my delight: it was the most animated I’d ever seen him. Look on it as a plus, I said: if you didn’t know about it, chances are not many other people will — and those that do will be impressed. I think it’s a tremendous name for a pop group, I said. My words elated him and he gave a huge wide smile — and for a poignant instant I saw myself in him, and not Lottie and the Edgefields. I went weak at the knees, feeling a swarming confusion of emotions — relief, then awful guilt, terror and, I suppose, the atavistic stirrings of an almost-love. One of the band members arrived — a sweatered and corduroyed youngster with uncombed hair — and the moment was over. Lionel played me some tape-recordings of the Dead Souls’ music and I made the right appreciative noises. He wants to bring me into his world, to share it with me, and I must make every effort to respond. It’s the least I can do.

At the party I had a tense argument with Frank [O’Hara]. I must say he’s incredibly argumentative these days, quite passionately angry — to the extent that some people are frightened of him. Of course, it was drink-fuelled, like all our disputes. I had said that whenever I was interested in a new artist I always wanted to look at the earliest work of theirs available, even juvenilia. Why’s that? Frank said, suspicious. Well, I said, because early talent — precocity, call it what you will — is usually a good guide to later talent. If there’s no talent on display in the early work it rather tends to undermine the claims for the later, in my opinion. Bullshit, said Frank, you’re so institutionalized. Look at de Kooning, I said: the early work is really impressive. Look at Picasso when he was at art school — astonishing. Even Franz Kline’s early stuff is OK — which explains why the later stuff is OK also. Look at Barnett Newman — hopeless. Then look at Pollock — he couldn’t draw a cardboard box — which rather explains what happened next, don’t you think? Fuck you, Frank railed at me, now Jackson’s dead, cunts like you try to cut him down to your size. Nonsense, I said: I expressed the same opinions when Jackson was alive and kicking. He’s the redwood tree, Frank said, you’re just shrubs and saplings. He gestured at half a dozen startled artists who had gathered round to hear the row.

Met a pretty woman there — Nancy? Janey? — and we exchanged a kiss that promised much at midnight. She gave me her name and phone number but I’ve lost it. Maybe Janet can track her down. I drank too much and have a sore head and a shivery nervy feel to my body. New Year’s resolution: cut down on the booze and the pills.

My birthday. No. 55. A card from Lionel and one from Gail. ‘Happy birthday, dear Logan, and don’t tell Mom you got this.’ I had a vodka and orange juice for breakfast to celebrate, then a couple of slugs of gin mid morning at the office. Liquid lunch at Bemelmans — two Negronis. Opened a bottle of champagne for the staff in the afternoon. Feeling sluggish so took a couple of Dexedrine. Two Martinis before going out to meet Naomi [the woman from the party]. Wine and grappa at Di Santo’s. Naomi had a headache so I dropped her at her apartment and didn’t stay. So I sit here with a big Scotch and soda, Poulenc on the gramophone, about to take a couple of Nembutal to send me off to the land of nod. Happy birthday, Logan.

Profoundly shocked by Hemingway’s death.
⁸
The devastating, sobering, chilling brutality of it. Herman [Keller] said he blew his head off, literally. Both barrels of a shotgun. The room covered in bits of expressed brain, bone and blood. Is that symbolic, or what? All the trouble coming from the brain so disintegrate it. I think of him in Madrid, in ‘37: his energy and passion, his kindness to me, using his car to find the Mirós. I couldn’t read the novels after
For Whom the Bell Tolls —
truly bad work, he had lost his way — but the stories were wonderful and wonderfully inspiring when I first read them. Was that the one moment in his career when he was genuinely blessed? And nothing more after — the Jackson Pollock of American Literature. Herman, who knows someone close to the family, said he was like a little frail grey ghost of a man at the end. Wasted by the shock therapy. Bloody hell: I’ve been to those dark places myself and know something of the torments that can be suffered. Thank Christ I never had the ECT, though. Of course, Hemingway was a chronic boozer, also — one of those who kept himself topped up all day, just over the edge of inebriation but not roaring drunk. Look where it landed him. Sixty-one years old — only six years older than me. I feel all insecure and on edge. Called Herman and we agreed to meet. Funnily enough I want to be with another writer at this moment while it all sinks in — another member of the tribe.