On The Road: Michael Frayn and Claire Tomalin
Is there anything you can’t leave home without? MF: Claire, if possible! CT: A book, I have to have a book – even when I take the bus into London. I often take two books just in case one of them palls a bit. MF: A Kindle is a good thing because you can put it in your pocket. I have the whole of Proust on mine, so if there was an appalling delay – like a year’s delay at the airport – I’d be well set up. CT: I have the whole of Shakespeare.
Something you really miss, like your lovely garden? CT: I’m quite glad to get away from the garden. MF: Claire’s cooking. I also miss work – it’s quite difficult to work when you’re away; not impossible but difficult. CT: I love getting away from home. I think Michael thinks I’m very restless and that I always want to be somewhere different from where I am. The perfect thing about going away is getting back to your own bed.
Do you travel light? CT: Michael is a wonderfully efficient traveller and always takes a very small suitcase and does everything very neatly and remembers to take his charger. I’m not very efficient; when we went to Australia for the first time, I bought the largest suitcase which was impossible for an ordinary person to lift. MF: It was covered in labels saying, ‘Do not attempt to lift.’
Favourite destinations? CT: I had three wonderful days in France with my niece who runs a group teaching elderly people French. Every year she takes them to Paris. We went on the Coulée verte, that marvellous path on the raised railway that used to run from Bastille to Vincennes. I have a private rule: always accept any invitation to speak in Rome, because Rome is my other favourite city. MF: I always feel very much at home in Germany. The great article of faith among English people is that Germans don’t have a sense of humour, but they do. I’m a great
expert on the Germans’ sense of humour because my plays are done there, my books are published there and I give talks to audiences and they laugh at pretty much the same thing as English people do.
Early travelling memories? CT: My first memory is going to Normandy in 1938 where I discovered Camembert cheese. I made all the family laugh by saying, ‘Bang, bang, bang,’ over the Camembert because I thought it looked like a drum – ridiculous memory but I suppose it was my discovery of my other country [her father is French]. MF: Family seaside holidays, always in Devon or Cornwall, starting early in the morning with tremendous excitement, the car always breaking down – cars always broke down in those days. You can’t believe how reliable cars are now.
Are either of you travellers? MF: Most certainly not – we’re not real travellers like our friend Colin Thubron, who walks in remote parts of the world with just a toothbrush. I never want to go anywhere, but I do enjoy it when I get there. CT: I’ve been to Morocco and hated it – hated the poverty – it is terribly upsetting: We’d be having a picnic and children would appear out of bushes to pick up any crumb and they’re living in cardboard boxes.
Where did you go on your honeymoon? MF: We worked our way slowly down through France to the Pyrenees. Are you bilingual, Claire? My father spoke perfect English; so, maddeningly, he always spoke English to me, rather than French. I’m bilingual, to read and to understand.
What languages do you speak, Michael? I learnt Russian doing National Service. The British government trained 6,000 of us as translators and interpreters in case of a war, and I did the interpreters’ course at Cambridge a year before I went up as an undergraduate. We worked very hard but it was an extremely enjoyable way of spending one’s national service, rather than peeling potatoes or getting shot at in Korea or Malaysia. I can still read Russian very easily, but my spoken Russian is very shaky. I tried to give a talk while I was there for the rehearsals of ‘Democracy’ and had to give up because it was just so embarrassing and use an interpreter. CT: Michael is very diffident about his skills. When you meet Russian people, you always talk to them in Russian.
Biggest headache? CT: When your husband breaks your hairdryer. MF: I did break your hairdryer and instantly drove to the nearest town and got you another one.
Top travelling tips? CT: When you’ve packed, go back and take out a third of the things you’ve packed which you probably don’t need. MF: When the engines are finally turned off in the plane and you unbuckle your seatbelt, don’t stand up immediately because you’ll stand up wedged with everybody else in the plane for more than twenty minutes before the doors open. Remain sitting quietly and reading your book until everybody else has gone… CT: …even though your wife is insane with impatience and exasperation because you’re not letting her get up and you’re going to be the last people in the passport queue.