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I feel the ending will be the most inspiring part to write.
    Woke up with more than usually acute worries about Don and his future. From a “sensible” point of view, I really ought to die now, while the going’s good. It would be a bad jolt for him but better in the long run. But it’s no good talking like that, even to myself. We love each other in spite of all our conflict of wills. All I probably can do for him is to turn more and more toward God. (“More and more” sounds outrageously complacent; in actual fact I don’t seem to be turned one millionth of an inch toward him right now.)
    We heard from Clement a few days ago that the whole Leicester project is off; not a big enough audience in the summer. So that will no doubt mean that we won’t get Bob Chetwyn after all, because soon he’ll be going to New York. And that will probably lead to other jobs.
    We saw Harry Brown last night, with a moustache. He is getting sick of Mexico. The only thing he cares about is his young son Jared, he says. He drinks again but not much. Why is he such a deeply depressing character? Because of a built-in and almost subconscious self-pity. For the first time, last night, I realized the power of his mother over him. She is dying now. The other day she told him she could never forgive him because of the terrible language in his new novel, part of which was published in Playboy.
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    July 12. Finished chapter 15 today. Maybe only two more, or, if there is a third, it’ll be quite short. So it still seems possible to get through before my birthday.
    Am happy working, as always. And happier than ever with Don. He is seeing a lot of Mike Van Horn, drawing with him and going dancing and to the club, all of which is good; Mike is a sort of ideal friend to have. So ideal in fact that we both find him a tiny bit mysterious.
    A disturbing letter from Bob Chetwyn, telling us that it wasn’t the fault of the Leicester theater at all, that the deal fell through. They were ready to come up with an adequate sum of money, Bob was quite satisfied with his share, but they did ask for two hundred pounds from the producers, and this Clement and Richard [Schulman] absolutely refused to pay! My God, we’d probably have agreed to raise the money ourselves if we’d been given the chance. But we weren’t. Now we start to wonder, should we refuse to renew Clement’s option when it comes up in a month. But how are we to find anybody else, from six thousand miles away? Meanwhile, Camilla Clay is very sweetly agitating to get the play read by Bill Ball of San Francisco. 12
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    July 19. It turned out that Bill Ball is away, so Camilla said we should show the play to Ellis Rabb. (We have always supposed that Ellis read the play a long time ago and didn’t like it, but Ellis told Camilla no, he had never even heard it existed.) So I made a great fuss with Chartwell to get them to xerox some copies in time to give one to Ellis last Monday, the day before he returned to San Francisco, and I talked to Ellis on the phone and he declared he was longing to see the play and—since then, not one word! Even Robin French hasn’t condescended to call and tell us how he likes the revised version. However, Ellis returns here this coming week, so at least we’ll hear something from Camilla, who’ll be seeing him.
    We never replied to Clement’s letter, to punish him a bit. Since then he has written another, obviously feeling a bit guilty, to say that he has sent the play to Paul Scofield, now that Scofield won’t presumably be playing Diaghilev in the Nijinsky film (since Tony Richardson is no longer directing it). (Which reminds me, Neil Hartley wrote and asked if I could “use my influence” to get Woodfall [Productions] the film rights to Passage to India ! 13 )
    Kathleen and Frank drags on. My unconscious resistance to this long chapter of copying letters and diary extracts is