I wonder how many of the silver-haired ladies who applauded Diana Athill with such enthusiasm during her recent appearance at London’s JW3 cultural centre would have welcomed her helping herself to their own husbands . . .
Alive, Alive Oh! (the title of one of Diana’s most recent books) was one of the last events in the Ham & High week-long book festival, and the hall was packed. It was also stiflingly hot. A thoughtful person invited us all to disrobe, in so far as we could, before the talk began. I peeled off my socks.
Most but by no means all of the audience was my kind of age, which is to say, old — but not quite as old as Diana, with whom I had shared an office for more than twenty years — and it was almost entirely female. I expect that for many of them it was the first time they had seen and heard Diana ‘in the flesh’. They would not have been disappointed.
For a start, there was no ramp, so this fearless nonagenarian — as we were to learn, even Death does not frighten her — had to clamber from her wheelchair onto the platform. Completely unfazed, she even managed to make a joke of it, which had the audience — in sympathy and admiration — eating out of her hand: as did the reading which followed.
She had chosen a short chapter which describes her re-awakening to the joy of sex when, abandoned by her fiancé and convinced that her life was over for ever, she met a tall, handsome army officer, and found that it wasn’t.
And so began Diana’s long career as The Other Woman. For the officer was married.
With characteristic honesty, Diana went on to tell us that if she could have broken up this marriage, she would have but, in retrospect, remains grateful that she didn’t find herself the wife of a schoolmaster — albeit a public-school master — for that was the glamorous office’s role in civilian life.
From then on, blooded, as it were, by that first life-affirming affair, she went on to others: her many liaisons carried on so discreetly that wives were unaware of their husband’s infidelities and their marriages remained intact.
The candour with which Diana, richly elegant in old age, recalled her colourful past was awesome. Not a trace of guilt. And this though she has had so many lovers that she counts them, not sheep, to get to sleep!
As we filed out of the auditorium, I couldn’t help wondering how many of the women in the audience were feeling, as I did myself — momentarily — that we had been missing out by being married. Or were they quietly hoping a Diana had never happened to them — for how could they be sure? — and would never happen to their daughters.
The one thing I can be sure of is that no one had been bored.