Browse content similar to Leftover Wife: Caitlin Thomas. Check below for episodes and series from the same categories and more!
Line | From | To | |
---|---|---|---|
because it's an experience in a lifetime | :00:00. | :00:08. | |
It's just that I didn't want to share him with anybody. | :00:09. | :00:14. | |
someone who's made for everybody all for myself. | :00:15. | :00:19. | |
Since he's dead, he's become more and more everybody's property. | :00:20. | :00:24. | |
"I labour by singing light not for ambition or bread | :00:25. | :00:45. | |
"Or the strut and trade of charm upon the ivory stages | :00:46. | :00:51. | |
"But for the common wages of their most secret heart." | :00:52. | :00:57. | |
It's now 24 years since the death of Dylan Thomas, | :00:58. | :01:01. | |
that extraordinary Welshman, described by one of his biographers | :01:02. | :01:05. | |
as the finest lyric poet since Keats. | :01:06. | :01:07. | |
The man who became a legend in his own lifetime | :01:08. | :01:10. | |
as the author of the radio play Under Milk Wood. | :01:11. | :01:15. | |
Dylan died in a New York hospital after a coma at the age of 39. | :01:16. | :01:19. | |
The words on the death certificate were "insult to the brain". | :01:20. | :01:23. | |
In fact, it was alcoholic and perhaps sexual exhaustion. | :01:24. | :01:26. | |
I think it's a good enough legend. It's near enough to the truth. | :01:27. | :01:34. | |
As near to it, probably, as any legend is | :01:35. | :01:37. | |
because Dylan really... fanatically lived up... | :01:38. | :01:42. | |
I think he deliberately created the legend and I followed suit. | :01:43. | :01:48. | |
We both worked very hard at that legend. | :01:49. | :01:52. | |
herself a tempestuous, brilliantly attractive woman, | :01:53. | :01:59. | |
the years which have elapsed since then, angry, bitter, drunken, | :02:00. | :02:03. | |
Peace which, I believe, she's found now here in Rome. | :02:04. | :02:09. | |
She's lived in Italy ever since the funeral. | :02:10. | :02:13. | |
Now, she has an apartment overlooking the Tiber. | :02:14. | :02:16. | |
And for five years, she's been a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. | :02:17. | :02:22. | |
Since I came to Italy, I think I was without knowing it, | :02:23. | :02:26. | |
going in the direction of sobriety and a spiritual life. | :02:27. | :02:30. | |
I didn't want anything more to do with that old drinking life | :02:31. | :02:34. | |
All those old associations, I wanted to escape from. | :02:35. | :02:39. | |
My sobriety in the beginning has been a very bad sobriety. | :02:40. | :02:43. | |
I felt very miserable and empty and in a huge void. | :02:44. | :02:48. | |
Over 30 years of drink, you can't just drop like that. | :02:49. | :02:56. | |
that some sort of blocks have dislocated in my mind | :02:57. | :03:02. | |
and my brain seems to have got a bit clearer. | :03:03. | :03:05. | |
It was absolutely fogged up. I couldn't remember a thing. | :03:06. | :03:08. | |
I can't remember a lot now, but compared to what it was... | :03:09. | :03:12. | |
I couldn't speak. For years, I could hardly open my mouth. | :03:13. | :03:16. | |
And if I can talk to you, it's thanks to AA | :03:17. | :03:19. | |
I like some of the things about the Latin way of life. | :03:20. | :03:27. | |
Chiefly then, I must admit, it was the wine and the men. | :03:28. | :03:32. | |
It was nothing more romantic than that. | :03:33. | :03:35. | |
Now that those two things have pretty well been taken away from me, | :03:36. | :03:41. | |
a new problem has been posed to me of finding something else | :03:42. | :03:45. | |
don't seem to quite take the place of the wine and the men. | :03:46. | :03:50. | |
So you've got another battle ahead of you then. | :03:51. | :03:53. | |
Yes. It does tend to become rather boring, I'm afraid, | :03:54. | :03:57. | |
You know, that chatting that went on, I miss that more than anything. | :03:58. | :04:05. | |
At my age now, I don't expect any more sex life | :04:06. | :04:08. | |
and I can't have any more booze, so I've got to find a substitute. | :04:09. | :04:12. | |
The occupational trouble too, you know. | :04:13. | :04:17. | |
Trying to find something interesting enough to do. | :04:18. | :04:21. | |
I try and do a bit of writing and reading, exercising and all that. | :04:22. | :04:26. | |
You had two Irish parents, but you were born in England. | :04:27. | :04:33. | |
Was it a conventional upbringing you had? | :04:34. | :04:35. | |
It was what we chose to call an artistic upbringing, | :04:36. | :04:41. | |
Which meant of course we never went to proper schools | :04:42. | :04:46. | |
and we had odd, strange French governesses. | :04:47. | :04:53. | |
We never learnt all the things you ought to learn. | :04:54. | :04:56. | |
We were just left to run wild really. | :04:57. | :04:58. | |
What were the things that you didn't learn that you think looking back... | :04:59. | :05:03. | |
but we didn't learn history, geography. | :05:04. | :05:08. | |
All those standard subjects, we just knew nothing about. | :05:09. | :05:12. | |
Or where to put the punctuation, that kind of thing. | :05:13. | :05:15. | |
We were uneducated. We didn't feel it. | :05:16. | :05:19. | |
It was only the boys who were educated in those days. | :05:20. | :05:23. | |
The brother, he had a proper education. | :05:24. | :05:27. | |
But compared with the John children, who we fraternised with, | :05:28. | :05:33. | |
They were even more neglected and more wild than us. | :05:34. | :05:40. | |
They never had any clothes on anyway. | :05:41. | :05:43. | |
Much has been written and much has been speculated | :05:44. | :05:46. | |
about the strange association of all of you girls with Augustus John. | :05:47. | :05:51. | |
He was a close friend, was he? Or was he more than that? | :05:52. | :05:55. | |
He was a close friend of my mother and father | :05:56. | :05:58. | |
and then he came to live near us in the country. | :05:59. | :06:03. | |
We used to go up and down to each other's homes | :06:04. | :06:06. | |
and to parties and all with the children. | :06:07. | :06:09. | |
I had a great friend in Vivian John, the youngest girl. | :06:10. | :06:14. | |
We staged a great escape and run away from home, | :06:15. | :06:20. | |
which none of the parents seemed to notice. | :06:21. | :06:24. | |
and we went to an audition in front of Cockran. | :06:25. | :06:29. | |
I think Cockran was a friend of Augustus John's. | :06:30. | :06:34. | |
Then we stayed in a hotel where her father paid the bill. | :06:35. | :06:38. | |
And we ate there. We had a fine time. | :06:39. | :06:41. | |
But no-one seemed to notice our absence much. | :06:42. | :06:44. | |
He had a desperate reputation, Augustus John. | :06:45. | :06:48. | |
Pouncing on everybody kind of thing. That's right. | :06:49. | :06:54. | |
Oh, yes, constantly. And on his daughters. | :06:55. | :07:04. | |
And on... Well, boys were not immune either. | :07:05. | :07:10. | |
It was just after that that you met Dylan first, wasn't it? | :07:11. | :07:14. | |
Yes, I remember meeting him in that pub with Augustus. | :07:15. | :07:17. | |
There he was, talking away as usual, disheveled, | :07:18. | :07:22. | |
just looking like the parody of a poet. | :07:23. | :07:25. | |
Yes, Augustus had said he knew this livewire of a Welshman. | :07:26. | :07:33. | |
He had just mentioned a few words about him. | :07:34. | :07:37. | |
He hadn't anticipated that we'd get on so well | :07:38. | :07:40. | |
and he wasn't so pleased when we did. | :07:41. | :07:43. | |
Why not? He was jealous, was he? He was. He was jealous, yes. | :07:44. | :07:47. | |
I remember I had on a very beautiful flowery dress | :07:48. | :07:50. | |
My great success with Dylan I put down to this flowery dress! | :07:51. | :07:58. | |
He was very taken with it too and he kind of... | :07:59. | :08:04. | |
He was dead set on you from the very start. | :08:05. | :08:07. | |
Yes. He kind of fell all over me, put his head on my knee, | :08:08. | :08:11. | |
It seems almost immediately that we fell into bed together. | :08:12. | :08:17. | |
as though we'd known each other all the time. | :08:18. | :08:22. | |
In those days, marriage was the thing to do, I suppose. | :08:23. | :08:26. | |
I don't know if it was the thing to do then, | :08:27. | :08:28. | |
but I think Dylan had this idea about the marriage. | :08:29. | :08:32. | |
I think he felt he had to marry some woman | :08:33. | :08:35. | |
and I think he thought I was a cut above the women he had been with. | :08:36. | :08:39. | |
I don't know what exactly he thought. | :08:40. | :08:41. | |
He was very young. Was he very experienced with women at this age? | :08:42. | :08:46. | |
I don't know which of us was more ignorant really. | :08:47. | :08:51. | |
You talk about the drinking, even in those days, he was drinking heavily? | :08:52. | :08:57. | |
Right from the start. I suffered in the beginning. | :08:58. | :09:01. | |
I think I came from a drinking family | :09:02. | :09:03. | |
but I wasn't used to doing it from the morning on. | :09:04. | :09:06. | |
I found it very hard to start just as the pubs opened at 11 o'clock. | :09:07. | :09:11. | |
Clocking in for rows of light ales to get over the hangover. | :09:12. | :09:15. | |
Usually, he had his old cronies round him. | :09:16. | :09:18. | |
He'd stay there all the morning and then in the afternoon, | :09:19. | :09:22. | |
we never had any lunch, we starved to death nearly. | :09:23. | :09:25. | |
At the beginning, I was very hungry and very strong. | :09:26. | :09:28. | |
Then in the afternoon, instead of fading out | :09:29. | :09:31. | |
and waited until the pubs opened again at half past five. | :09:32. | :09:37. | |
It was a complete day in the end. That was in town, in London. | :09:38. | :09:41. | |
In those early days when you were first married, | :09:42. | :09:45. | |
what did he want to do with his life? | :09:46. | :09:48. | |
That's the only thing he ever thought to do. | :09:49. | :09:53. | |
From the very start, he had just the one idea. | :09:54. | :09:59. | |
Poems and the booze. In that order, was it then? | :10:00. | :10:06. | |
Yes. The poems definitely were more important, but, erm... | :10:07. | :10:12. | |
I think he used the booze to wipe out the poems, | :10:13. | :10:14. | |
not to think about them when he wasn't writing them. | :10:15. | :10:18. | |
How did he write poetry? Was it easy for him? | :10:19. | :10:21. | |
He used to go into his little shed and scrape and scratch | :10:22. | :10:29. | |
and mutter and mumble in tone and change. | :10:30. | :10:33. | |
In one afternoon from about two until seven, | :10:34. | :10:38. | |
or taken out one word or put in one word. | :10:39. | :10:43. | |
In his poetry, he seems obsessed with his own childhood. | :10:44. | :10:47. | |
Yes. He was terribly sentimental about his childhood and school days. | :10:48. | :10:51. | |
Sometimes I think he never progressed from there. | :10:52. | :10:55. | |
I don't think he wanted to look forward. | :10:56. | :11:00. | |
he seems to have been obsessed with the idea of an early death. | :11:01. | :11:06. | |
Yes, he was. Neither of us wanted to get old and ugly. | :11:07. | :11:12. | |
He was always convinced that he was going to die | :11:13. | :11:19. | |
He had this ridiculous romantic idea of the poet starving in the garret. | :11:20. | :11:28. | |
He always built up this idea of being tubercular and being sick | :11:29. | :11:33. | |
because his mother had pampered him so much as a little boy. | :11:34. | :11:40. | |
I think actually, he was a lot tougher than he tried to make out. | :11:41. | :11:44. | |
His constitution was much stronger than he made out. | :11:45. | :11:51. | |
He wanted to be pale and dying all the time. | :11:52. | :11:54. | |
Actually, his bones broke pretty easily. | :11:55. | :11:57. | |
He kept falling down and breaking bones. | :11:58. | :12:00. | |
All that helped the image he was trying to build up | :12:01. | :12:03. | |
of the tubercular, consumptive, dying, pale poet. | :12:04. | :12:06. | |
It was much more like David Gascoigne. That was his image. | :12:07. | :12:10. | |
He wanted to be long and sickly and green and all that. | :12:11. | :12:13. | |
and not like the conventional idea of a poet at all. | :12:14. | :12:20. | |
Was he the same man in his own private life | :12:21. | :12:25. | |
No. He was rather off stage in the house. | :12:26. | :12:29. | |
He just liked his warm slippers and his dish of tit-bits | :12:30. | :12:34. | |
and pickled onions and sardines and anything with a lot of vinegar, | :12:35. | :12:38. | |
and cockles, all put on a plate, which he'd stuff into his mouth | :12:39. | :12:43. | |
when he was listening to the cricket scores. | :12:44. | :12:45. | |
He was just Mr Everyman until he put on the act of being the poet | :12:46. | :12:50. | |
He never liked to talk about his poems. | :12:51. | :12:59. | |
But when he was in the pub for instance, | :13:00. | :13:02. | |
he was always telling funny stories. | :13:03. | :13:05. | |
Nothing to do with poetry. He didn't want to talk about it. | :13:06. | :13:08. | |
he would only answer per force, as if he was made to talk about it. | :13:09. | :13:14. | |
He didn't want to be bothered with it except when he was working on it. | :13:15. | :13:21. | |
One of the few people who could talk to him about the workings of a poem | :13:22. | :13:26. | |
was Vernon Watkins, who he did open up to. | :13:27. | :13:30. | |
Although, with me privately he'd say, | :13:31. | :13:32. | |
"Oh my God, what a bore. I've got to talk poetry with Vernon Watkins." | :13:33. | :13:37. | |
And he'd try to get Vernon drunk so that he wouldn't talk about poetry. | :13:38. | :13:41. | |
Vernon practically never drank at all, so he was the most comic drunk | :13:42. | :13:45. | |
because he didn't know what was happening. | :13:46. | :13:48. | |
Was he interested in the domestic side of bringing up children? | :13:49. | :13:54. | |
Not at all. He was a hopeless father. He couldn't have been worse. | :13:55. | :13:58. | |
He didn't want anything to do with the children. | :13:59. | :14:01. | |
He just liked to feel they were there. | :14:02. | :14:06. | |
When he was in the pub in London, he'd bring out the photographs. | :14:07. | :14:10. | |
He was very sentimental about it. He'd show them to all the people. | :14:11. | :14:15. | |
But he had nothing to do with them in a practical sense. | :14:16. | :14:18. | |
As the marriage progressed and as the relationship progressed, | :14:19. | :14:22. | |
did the drinking get worse or did it stabilise? | :14:23. | :14:26. | |
I think drinking automatically gets worse, | :14:27. | :14:29. | |
even if you go on drinking the same amount. | :14:30. | :14:32. | |
My drinking got a lot worse because I was drinking spirits | :14:33. | :14:37. | |
when Dylan was drinking enormous pints of beer | :14:38. | :14:40. | |
that I couldn't possibly fit inside myself. | :14:41. | :14:42. | |
I'd take short ones and I'd drink more and more whiskey. | :14:43. | :14:46. | |
I think I was destroying myself faster probably in Laugharne. | :14:47. | :14:53. | |
Dylan, when he went to town, he'd start on the shorts, | :14:54. | :14:57. | |
and of course then there came America, which was worst of all. | :14:58. | :15:01. | |
Did he like Laugharne? Yes. He loved Laugharne. | :15:02. | :15:07. | |
He's much more sentimental about it than I was | :15:08. | :15:10. | |
because he could go up and down and escape. | :15:11. | :15:13. | |
I think he must have felt the lack of intellectual conversation. | :15:14. | :15:19. | |
He was happy, but I've got a sneaking feeling | :15:20. | :15:24. | |
that he was also bored after a certain time. | :15:25. | :15:27. | |
Bored? Yes. Because some people suggest that he stayed there | :15:28. | :15:31. | |
because he was afraid to go elsewhere. What do you think? | :15:32. | :15:35. | |
It was his only working place for one thing. He did want to work. | :15:36. | :15:41. | |
But we also had to make some attempt to make money. | :15:42. | :15:45. | |
The excuse he made to go to London was to make a few pounds. | :15:46. | :15:49. | |
Occasionally he did, with the BBC, but he'd spend it immediately. | :15:50. | :15:54. | |
It was never a valid excuse but he couldn't go on not making any money. | :15:55. | :16:00. | |
the cliche that when poverty comes in at the window | :16:01. | :16:08. | |
It's not true. Poverty was there. It was there right from the start. | :16:09. | :16:15. | |
We were so used to it. Real poverty? Yes, really poor. | :16:16. | :16:20. | |
I was used to it. I had this mother who never mentioned money. | :16:21. | :16:24. | |
I didn't realise we were so poor in our humble cottage. | :16:25. | :16:28. | |
Our mother treated us all like great ladies who'd marry rich men. | :16:29. | :16:33. | |
We were just waiting to move in to the rich house. | :16:34. | :16:36. | |
How bad was the poverty in your married life? | :16:37. | :16:43. | |
Dylan used to worry terribly about it. He had sleepless nights. | :16:44. | :16:50. | |
That accumulated and got worse with the bills and debts. | :16:51. | :16:54. | |
But, of course, then he got this patroness. | :16:55. | :16:57. | |
This Margaret, can I mention her? Yes. | :16:58. | :17:01. | |
Margaret Taylor helped us more than anybody. | :17:02. | :17:04. | |
Without her, I don't know what we'd have done. | :17:05. | :17:08. | |
She bought us various houses and put us up in Oxford, | :17:09. | :17:13. | |
in a little studio place in the grounds and so on. | :17:14. | :17:18. | |
Were you ever in total want, in destitution in Laugharne? | :17:19. | :17:23. | |
We put the food bills down and we put the drink on tick | :17:24. | :17:29. | |
until the patroness came down and paid them off every now and then. | :17:30. | :17:34. | |
Was it that Dylan didn't have money or that he was prodigal with it? | :17:35. | :17:39. | |
But as soon as he got a bit, we used to drink it. | :17:40. | :17:48. | |
I used to try to steal a few pounds for the Carmarthen market, | :17:49. | :17:52. | |
for dishes, pots, pans, shawls and blankets. | :17:53. | :17:56. | |
but occasionally I'd steal the odd pound to buy plates and so on. | :17:57. | :18:04. | |
Steal it from the drinking money? Yes. | :18:05. | :18:07. | |
At what stage did things start to go publicly wrong? | :18:08. | :18:15. | |
You began to have scenes with Dylan, didn't you? Yes. | :18:16. | :18:19. | |
It wasn't about the money, it was about the infidelity. | :18:20. | :18:23. | |
It took some time to sink into my damn head. | :18:24. | :18:29. | |
I was left in Laugharne and most of Dylan's adventures, or whatever, | :18:30. | :18:37. | |
went on in London. He'd just disappear for a few weeks. | :18:38. | :18:41. | |
I'd hear nothing. I didn't know where to ring him. | :18:42. | :18:44. | |
He'd say he'd had the most ghastly flu. | :18:45. | :18:49. | |
Possibly, he'd been drinking and flopping into bed with any woman. | :18:50. | :18:54. | |
That was not serious at all as far as he was concerned. | :18:55. | :18:57. | |
I couldn't care less about the flu or the drinking, | :18:58. | :19:01. | |
but the infidelity I just couldn't take. | :19:02. | :19:04. | |
I was murderous. I just killed him for that. | :19:05. | :19:07. | |
I remember, after coming back, after a drinking evening in Laugharne, | :19:08. | :19:14. | |
we had the most appalling fights in the bedroom, | :19:15. | :19:17. | |
tearing him on the ground by those curls | :19:18. | :19:20. | |
and banging his head on the floor as hard as I could. | :19:21. | :19:23. | |
I was a bit stronger than him and he seemed to allow me to do it. | :19:24. | :19:28. | |
He must have fought back, but I don't remember him hitting me. | :19:29. | :19:32. | |
You used to fight physically with him? Oh, God, yes. | :19:33. | :19:35. | |
Once, I took a torch and banged him on the head. | :19:36. | :19:40. | |
"Do you realise you might be killing an immortal poet?" | :19:41. | :19:45. | |
I couldn't care. I didn't give a damn. | :19:46. | :19:48. | |
He was quite prepared to pay the price to these patronesses. | :19:49. | :19:54. | |
If they wanted to go to bed with him, he was going to do it. | :19:55. | :19:58. | |
he'd speak on the phone for five hours with this bloody woman. | :19:59. | :20:04. | |
Something stopped me interrupting, I don't know what it was. | :20:05. | :20:09. | |
I'd noticed, even in America, when he started getting off with a woman, | :20:10. | :20:15. | |
I was so cut out of the picture, I somehow felt I couldn't interfere. | :20:16. | :20:22. | |
People say, and he may have said, these things were only incidents. | :20:23. | :20:28. | |
Yes, right. I believe that and so he said. | :20:29. | :20:35. | |
I just couldn't take him doing the physical act with anyone else. | :20:36. | :20:39. | |
I did not accept that in any way whatsoever. | :20:40. | :20:42. | |
Nevertheless, I should add I was partly trying to keep up with him, | :20:43. | :20:50. | |
having my revenge down with the local oafs. | :20:51. | :20:53. | |
I was by no means leading a dutiful, virtuous life. | :20:54. | :20:57. | |
When he wasn't there, I was drinking as much as I could | :20:58. | :21:01. | |
and behaving in a most unconventional way. | :21:02. | :21:05. | |
I didn't want him as a bed mate, I wanted him completely faithful. | :21:06. | :21:19. | |
We both had this image of each other which was quite ridiculous. | :21:20. | :21:26. | |
We wanted the other one to be perfectly faithful. | :21:27. | :21:30. | |
We knew what we did was of no importance at all. | :21:31. | :21:34. | |
I was really following in his footsteps. | :21:35. | :21:38. | |
I was trying to out-do him and be worse than him. | :21:39. | :21:41. | |
Dylan was invited to America in 1950 by Malcolm Brinnin, | :21:42. | :21:48. | |
who ran the Poetry Centre in New York. | :21:49. | :21:51. | |
Brinnin arranged two more tours. Caitlin went on the second trip. | :21:52. | :21:55. | |
It was a barn storming, boozing coast-to-coast tour. | :21:56. | :21:59. | |
Caitlin said they were an excuse for idleness and infidelity. | :22:00. | :22:03. | |
We weren't used to that kind of thing. | :22:04. | :22:06. | |
You never get all that arse licking in England. | :22:07. | :22:10. | |
I don't blame him. I was probably very envious | :22:11. | :22:16. | |
All that overdoing it is very bad for anybody | :22:17. | :22:25. | |
unless you are terribly civilised, rich and used to it. | :22:26. | :22:29. | |
Very few people, least of all us, could stand up to it. | :22:30. | :22:35. | |
He worked hard with his readings and his tours. | :22:36. | :22:41. | |
He did both. It was an impossible job to drink all the time | :22:42. | :22:48. | |
and to give these very concentrated readings. | :22:49. | :22:51. | |
He was flying all over, one on top of the other. | :22:52. | :22:55. | |
It must have been gruelling hard for him. | :22:56. | :22:58. | |
He could have only just done it well without the drink. | :22:59. | :23:02. | |
He did it, he gave the whole of himself to his reading | :23:03. | :23:06. | |
and the whole of himself to his company. | :23:07. | :23:09. | |
It's just impossible for a physical person. | :23:10. | :23:12. | |
And there were infidelities too in America? | :23:13. | :23:15. | |
Oh my God, those bloody American women are shameless. | :23:16. | :23:19. | |
They were sending him flowers, that kind of thing. | :23:20. | :23:23. | |
They were all over him. It really filled me with disgust, | :23:24. | :23:29. | |
the whole picture, the way these women flung themselves at him. | :23:30. | :23:34. | |
Talking about the American business and the infidelity, | :23:35. | :23:37. | |
Do Liz and Sarah mean anything in particular? | :23:38. | :23:45. | |
They ring a rather horrible bell with me. | :23:46. | :23:49. | |
There was that Pearl one. Is that the one you mean? | :23:50. | :23:58. | |
The one he was alleged to have been serious about. | :23:59. | :24:01. | |
She wrote him endless letters and he used to keep them in his pockets. | :24:02. | :24:06. | |
I used to read all the letters. He didn't bother to read them. | :24:07. | :24:11. | |
That worried me. That upset me a hell of a lot. | :24:12. | :24:15. | |
The first I heard of that was when Margaret Taylor came down | :24:16. | :24:21. | |
to say she'd come over from America to meet him in London | :24:22. | :24:24. | |
and she was covered in all these dangly things. | :24:25. | :24:28. | |
There was I, slaving away in the bogs with my children. | :24:29. | :24:34. | |
There was he, gallivanting. I was absolutely mad with rage. | :24:35. | :24:39. | |
I think I wrote a very rude letter, an abusive letter, to her. | :24:40. | :24:51. | |
I don't know if she ever got it or anything. | :24:52. | :24:56. | |
Yet, he told everyone that when he was away from you, | :24:57. | :25:03. | |
he found life impossible and unbearable. | :25:04. | :25:06. | |
He apparently told Brinnin that he loved two women. | :25:07. | :25:10. | |
At this time, with Pearl, he loved two women, me and her. | :25:11. | :25:15. | |
I remember that was the time I was pregnant with Colm. | :25:16. | :25:23. | |
I think that was the only reason, because Dylan was sentimental, | :25:24. | :25:30. | |
that he stuck to me rather than Pearl. | :25:31. | :25:32. | |
He obviously was pretty serious about her. | :25:33. | :25:35. | |
Me, he just made fun of "that stupid old bitch". | :25:36. | :25:39. | |
"She's been following me around, being a bloody nuisance." | :25:40. | :25:43. | |
He never admitted it. He'd never dream to come clean with me. | :25:44. | :25:48. | |
Yet, he wrote you the most moving love letters. | :25:49. | :25:51. | |
Yes, all the time, as though I was the only woman that existed in life. | :25:52. | :25:56. | |
Yes, some of them were very beautiful. | :25:57. | :26:02. | |
It makes a queer impression to read them later on. | :26:03. | :26:06. | |
He had to have that image on a pedestal. | :26:07. | :26:12. | |
I think it had nothing to do with the real me that we all go on about. | :26:13. | :26:17. | |
I don't think anything a man really loves is real, | :26:18. | :26:21. | |
What do you think it was that destroyed Dylan? | :26:22. | :26:27. | |
I think it was a combination of all those things. | :26:28. | :26:34. | |
He went to all his worst weaknesses and his indulgences. | :26:35. | :26:45. | |
He had no strength of character or discipline. | :26:46. | :26:50. | |
There was no hardness, the kind of things you'd expect in a man. | :26:51. | :26:55. | |
He was just a piece of bread, as they'd say in Italy. | :26:56. | :26:59. | |
He was just lovely and loved by everybody. | :27:00. | :27:02. | |
That's wrong. A man has to have a bit of ruthlessness. | :27:03. | :27:05. | |
Went he went to America, he was just eaten alive. | :27:06. | :27:11. | |
Eaten alive? Yes. He was eaten alive by America. | :27:12. | :27:15. | |
All these women and the booze, the lot. | :27:16. | :27:18. | |
Did he want to go back the last time? He would crave it. | :27:19. | :27:24. | |
Like a man with drugs, he just craved for more and more. | :27:25. | :27:28. | |
When he came back to Wales, I used to forbid him to go. | :27:29. | :27:33. | |
I did everything to persuade him not to go. | :27:34. | :27:37. | |
But he was completely stuck on it. He couldn't resist anymore. | :27:38. | :27:43. | |
but he was the one who asked Brinnin to get more engagements. | :27:44. | :27:50. | |
I thought Brinnin was luring him, but it was really Dylan. | :27:51. | :27:54. | |
I blamed, I think I blamed Brinnin wrongly. | :27:55. | :27:59. | |
Although, in the beginning, it was Brinnin who suggested all this. | :28:00. | :28:04. | |
It was said you were jealous of his success out there. | :28:05. | :28:08. | |
I probably was. I wouldn't have admitted it then. | :28:09. | :28:12. | |
But naturally, I'd have preferred to have had the success myself. | :28:13. | :28:16. | |
In fact, I never went to his readings, which is very suspicious. | :28:17. | :28:22. | |
It is rather boring to listen to poetry reading, | :28:23. | :28:26. | |
but I think there must be more to it than that. | :28:27. | :28:30. | |
What I hated most was all these young girls and students | :28:31. | :28:37. | |
and screaming at him as though he was a pop singer. | :28:38. | :28:44. | |
In the universities, I didn't mind it. | :28:45. | :28:49. | |
Can you remember much about that traumatic experience of his death | :28:50. | :28:58. | |
when you went across there and collapsed? | :28:59. | :29:01. | |
I can remember some pretty awful things about myself. | :29:02. | :29:10. | |
I can remember being drunk on the plane. | :29:11. | :29:14. | |
I remember the farewell lunch they gave me in that lobster place. | :29:15. | :29:22. | |
It was the last thing thinking of Dylan dying there. | :29:23. | :29:29. | |
It was just like a celebrating party. | :29:30. | :29:32. | |
They were kind of making merry and drinking. | :29:33. | :29:42. | |
They pushed me on the plane eventually. | :29:43. | :29:45. | |
I found a place on the plane where there was a little bar. | :29:46. | :29:50. | |
I didn't know it existed, but I found it. | :29:51. | :29:53. | |
I drank a lot of whisky on the plane. | :29:54. | :29:57. | |
When I arrived, I must have been pretty dead drunk. | :29:58. | :30:01. | |
Finally, they conducted me to the hospital. | :30:02. | :30:04. | |
They kind of pushed me through because I had precedence. | :30:05. | :30:10. | |
Then I saw Dylan in the oxygen tent and they left me there. | :30:11. | :30:15. | |
I really didn't know what to do at all... | :30:16. | :30:22. | |
I just sat on the bed and started to roll a cigarette. | :30:23. | :30:29. | |
There were all these other people behind the glass partition, gazing. | :30:30. | :30:34. | |
Presumably, his other woman, I don't know if it was Sarah or Liz, | :30:35. | :30:39. | |
Brinnin and a lot of fans were on the other side of the partition. | :30:40. | :30:48. | |
I couldn't think what I ought to do to perform to them. | :30:49. | :30:52. | |
The last thing I was thinking of was Dylan | :30:53. | :30:55. | |
because he didn't seem to be there at all. | :30:56. | :30:58. | |
As soon as I saw him, I knew he wasn't there. | :30:59. | :31:01. | |
He was gone and he'd never come back. | :31:02. | :31:08. | |
I couldn't regret marrying Dylan. It was an experience of a lifetime. | :31:09. | :31:12. | |
He was a marvellous person. It's just I didn't want to share him. | :31:13. | :31:17. | |
I couldn't have someone who's made for everybody all for myself. | :31:18. | :32:14. | |
Fein is arrested tonight in connection with the murder of a | :32:15. | :32:20. | |
woman killed by the IRA in 1972. We have the latest. | :32:21. | :32:24. | |
How society is dividing into a vast number of have-nots and a very small | :32:25. | :32:31. | |
number of have-lots, and lots, and lots. Why social inequality is | :32:32. | :32:35. | |
predicted to get worse and what, if anything, we ought to do about it. | :32:36. | :32:40. | |
We talk to the French economist who has written what's been | :32:41. | :32:41. |