18
Father and Margaret Thatcher
WHO AMONGST US does not strain to the need of divine people to worship, to feel before them, as Thomas Carlyle, wrote, ‘a heart-felt, prostrate admiration, submission, burning, boundless, for a noblest god-like Form of Man’?
The pinnacle of Father’s ambition in this respect was always one woman. As Sherlock Holmes remarked of Irene Adler, ‘She is the woman. She eclipses and surpasses the whole of her sex.’
Her name was Margaret Roberts Thatcher.
I first made libation to the deity aged eleven – I was aged eleven, that is, not she. The year was 1978. It was one of those spring afternoons that smelt of beeswax and moist chestnut blooms. The school day was over and tea and biscuits waited in the kitchen. It was not long after I had made short work of these that Father appeared and issued one of his bewildering warnings. Readers will have already noticed that he was prone to giving inexplicable instructions to those around him. As he grew older these became more frequent. The entreaty that followed was even by Father’s standards a startling one.
‘Go upstairs, child, and put on a blue dress. It must be blue, otherwise disaster will ensue. Yes, it must be blue or disaster will ensue.’ Pleased with this rhyme, he repeated it three times.
Good heavens, what could he mean? The reply was even more Delphic than the original command. ‘Because it is the colour. The colour of the day.’
The explanation, it turned out, was that a lady was due to arrive for a drink. But this was no ordinary lady. Her name, Father said, pronouncing it with careful reverence, was Margaret Thatcher. He drew the syllables out gingerly as if he were afraid they would break in his mouth. This miraculous woman, one learned, had been the Education Secretary in Edward Heath’s Conservative government. More recently she had ascended to the title of Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. ‘Mrs Thatcher,’ Father declared with all the zeal of the converted, ‘is the Queen of Heaven.’
As the hour of her arrival approached I consulted Mother as to the etiquette of greeting a deity. If she were a queen, would I be expected to curtsy, or perhaps, as one had seen in footage of the Royal Family on the television news, present her with a bouquet of flowers?
It was soon clear that Mother’s enthusiasm lagged behind that of her spouse. ‘Your Father talks nonsense. She is not a real Queen. He is only a woman.’
Having made things less pellucid, Mother left me to ruminate. What was one to expect? An icy, imperial goddess? A sly termagant? Or a respectable middle-class lady quietly pouring out the Angostura bitters?
At a quarter past six I presented myself in Father’s library. Margaret Thatcher had her face turned towards the window. There was little visible of her save a straight back encased not in blue, her party’s colour, but bright yellow. ‘My dear Margaret,’ Father began deferentially, ‘may I present my daughter Petronella?’
How she confounded my expectations and yet, in a strange and remarkable way, fulfilled them all. Her face, which in those days was lightly made up, seemed to show both the conventional and unconventional. It had the stamp of command and also the mark of the ordinary. She looked like someone who in the course of uttering seemingly mundane arguments could, by a process of extraordinary dialectic, arrive at startling and correct conclusions. For the moment she fixed me with cobalt eyes. ‘Sah you-ah ah Pahtronahlla.’ At least that is an approximation of what it sounded like. (She had just begun, in the strictest secrecy, Father later divulged, to take vocal lessons from Harold Macmillan; the result being that she sounded a little like a Home Counties Scarlett O’Hara.)
Having small choice, one answered in the affirmative. ‘Cahm here, dahr.’ I came. A plump apple-white finger attached itself to my collar. For a moment I thought she was going to embrace me. Instead the finger alighted on a badge that I had forgotten to remove from the blue dress. This emblem, acquired at a charity fête, bore the words, ‘British Smile Day.’ Mrs Thatcher bent down.
‘Thaht’s right,’ she said. ‘Keep smahling.’ I simpered obligingly.
‘Well,’ said Father, pleased with the way our little meeting was going, ‘You two seem to be getting on like a house on fire. I’ll leave you together for a while.’
It is not to my discredit that I trembled slightly. It is not often one is left alone with a goddess. Without Father’s robustly tempering presence she seemed less suburban and more supreme. There was a visible majesty, a divine stamp; it was not all good, but nonetheless it was glorious. Cowed, I said not a syllable to start the lioness roaring. Eventually she spoke.
‘Which of your schoolwork do you most enjoy, dahr?’
‘Erm, history.’
‘And which British Prime Minister do you most admire?’
This was awkward. Should I temporise? Were I to choose a Labour figure such as Clement Attlee or Ramsay Macdonald, which in those days I was inclined to do, it might lead to an explosion. I searched blindly for names. Conservatives, who were the great Conservatives?
‘Sir Robert Peel,’ I finally blurted out.
There was a terrifying silence. Since that day I have faced violent intruders, enraged employers and a stony-hearted bailiff or two, but never again have I felt such fear as in that moment in the library. Finally she said, in a tone of contempt,
‘Sir Robert Peel! Too many U-turns.’
This lapse of mine was overlooked, which was particularly fortunate as soon afterwards the goddess was officially recognised – she was elected the first female Prime Minister of Great Britain.
Sometimes I thought Father entertained a fondness for Mrs Thatcher that balanced precariously on the edge of love. This at first evinced itself in doggerel praising parts of her anatomy, inscribed on the backs of envelopes, margarine lids or any material that happened to be available.
My suspicions were aroused when I found some lines scribbled on a paper napkin. They would not have won Father any literary prizes.
‘Though I like a soft boiled egg/ I’d rather look at Margaret’s leg.’
Soon the muse took flight – or rather limped off. Father’s sonnets compared Mrs Thatcher’s generous bosom to that of the Hollywood sexpot Jane Russell and her eyes to the violet wells of Elizabeth Taylor. One was never quite sure whether the recipient of this admiration was flattered or appalled.
Father looked at me as if I were mad.
‘How little you understand about Margaret. She is what Napoleon said about Josephine.’
‘What was that?’
‘She is woman, all woman.’
As I came to know Mrs Thatcher better I realised that Father had, by his usual circuitous route, gone down the right avenue. Mrs Thatcher had a finely tuned susceptibility to men. Not all men – not the diffident intellectual, bent over with indecision, his mien clouded by a thousand question marks. No, the sort of prancing animal whose appeal more often lies with adolescent girls or a desperate old maid or two. It was the empty splendour of the he-man, the gaudy posturing of the jungle animal. I watched her fall for those empty vessels one by one, those poor woman’s Sergeant Troys: Jeffrey Archer, Richard Branson, whom she adored – anything that shone and glittered.
Father remarked in mitigation,
‘But she’s a nice middle-class girl – of course she likes a touch of cad.’
She took praise like attar of roses: she sucked it into her skin. Once, when Father complimented her on her knowledge of history, she thanked him shyly,
‘People like Ian Gilmour think I am uncultured, but I have read the great Mr Swift.’
One evening Mark Thatcher remarked amusedly to Mother, ‘Do you know that Woodrow and my mother speak every morning before breakfast?’
I asked Father if this were really true.
‘Of course it’s true. We discuss the state of the nation.’
‘Can I listen while you do it?’
‘Certainly not – a squirt like you!’ Father ruffled my hair affectionately.
This dismissal left me somewhat incens
ed. A squirt? I was not a squirt! I had spoken with one of the immortals. Why couldn’t I listen? Indeed, I would listen. If not from Father’s study then from behind the door. I cannot say this was an admirable plan. I can only plead a healthy curiosity. What followed early the next morning was perhaps a testimony to the virtues of indifference.
Ear pressed to the keyhole, I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. As soon as the telephone call had ended, I hurled myself at Mother, who was sitting up in bed with the papers. ‘You can’t believe what they talk about.’
‘What, darling?’ she yawned.
‘Sex! They talk about sex.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She laughed. ‘Your dear Father doesn’t know anything about it.’
‘But they do,’ I insisted. ‘They say they’re fanatical about it. There is going to be the most terrible scandal. We’ll all be disgraced.’
‘What’s this?’ A peony-pink face thrust itself around the door. Father was roaring with laughter, his rounded frame rocking back and forth like a Russian doll.
‘Darling child, you are such a silly ass,’ he said, in between gasps. ‘Sex indeed. Fanatical sex!’
‘What were you talking about, then?’ I asked him.
‘Sects, of course. We were discussing Middle Eastern terrorism, not the Kama Sutra. That’ll teach you to listen at doors.’
Mother greatly admired Mrs Thatcher, but was cautious at first of embracing the Prime Minister with Father’s wholehearted bonté. My father had a great belief in ‘being forward-looking’, which was with him a special process which was concerned as much with material affairs as the afterlife. ‘Being forward-looking’ referred to proper management and everyone playing their part. When, therefore, he announced that Mrs Thatcher would be coming to dine he had anticipated Mother’s question,
‘And what will happen when the women leave the room?’
‘Why,’ he said evenly, ‘you will lead the way, darling. There will be nothing inappropriate.’
The auguries were not all good. Father had placed himself next to Mrs Thatcher at dinner and was engaging her in a discussion. When the conversation became general, Father felt sure that Mother would not vouchsafe an opinion. He was wrong. For a while she was silent, but could hold herself in no longer,
‘You know, Voodrow, I think that . . .’
At once she was interrupted by the booming tones of the guest of honour, who waggled an admonishing finger.
‘Be quiet dear!’ she said. ‘Your turn will come.’
A little later, Mother rose.
‘Voodrow, I think it’s time the ladies left.’
By this juncture the whole of the table was watching Father. As ten pairs of eyes surveyed him, waiting, he cried out with considerable archness,
‘My dear Buttercup, Margaret is an honorary man. But I am sure Denis would love to leave with the ladies. Wouldn’t you, Denis? Perhaps Petronella is about.’
Denis was as meek as a lamb served up for the daughter. He followed my mother out of the dining room. Mrs Thatcher of course stayed behind.
‘Well she is the Prime Minister,’ Father pointed out defensively.
As I grew up, Mrs Thatcher became an oracle of advice to me. In informal settings her voice lost its shrill discord and strident timbre and became something approaching a caress. That whisper of hers. As Alexander Woollcott said of Mrs Patrick Campbell’s, it sounded like the wind in the chimney of a haunted house. Her sayings were many.
On music, ‘Pop music atrophies the brain, but Mozart is bad for the morals.’
On universities, ‘One must have rules. That is the clearest lesson of life.’
On marriage, ‘Marriages are made in Heaven, but it is better if the money is earned here on earth.’
She believed her own union with Denis to be an unusually felicitous one. He had a large enough income to allow her sufficient independence and self-confidence not to mind her exploiting it. ‘There are not many men like that,’ she said with understandable pride.
Father often discussed who might succeed her as Leader of the Conservative party, but he drew only empty buckets from this particular well. Although – contrary to what has been claimed – she enjoyed argument, she seldom relished rivalry and aside from the unthreatening John Moore, was rarely seen to bring anyone on.
One day Father was invited to lunch at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat. A slight man was sitting silently, tucking into a plate of meat with the timid conscientiousness of a young student. He had diffident rigour written all over his face, which was partly obscured by a pair of thick glasses.
‘Who’s that?’ asked Father. ‘He looks like Bob Cratchit.’
‘That’s John Major.’ Mrs Thatcher paused for effect. ‘He’s going to succeed me.’
This elicited a chortle from Father. ‘I don’t believe you. He looks like a frightened rabbit.’
‘No, Woodrow. You’re wrong. He’s more like a hare – he has deviousness and his enemies rarely catch him.’
She added, ‘But don’t worry. I intend to be here for a very long time.’
That time was not to be as long as she had hoped. If power doesn’t corrupt, it can cause a creeping complacency. Father once told me that the Romans kept their leaders on their toes by employing someone to run behind a man during a triumph, whispering ‘You are only a mortal.’ Father had actually urged Willie Whitelaw to assume that role with Mrs Thatcher.
‘She’d listen to you, Willie,’ he told that gentle Titan.
Willie protested,
‘But I couldn’t run after anybody. I’m much too overweight.’
Slowly and worriedly we watched as Mrs Thatcher’s once infallible antennae began to fail her. At first I was inclined to disbelieve rumours that our goddess was in danger of losing her tabernacle, as the temple of Jerusalem was lost after the Israelites allowed in false idols. Then slowly the proofs became too evident. Disaffected members of the party, those who had been sacked or passed over for promotion, threw out barbs and squibs. Some, as in the case of Geoffrey Howe, whom she had dispensed with as Foreign Secretary, managed to produce small thunderbolts.
Mrs Thatcher’s majesty was still there, but sometimes an awful apathy was displayed upon her features. Then came the inevitable challenge led by Michael Heseltine. I had never seen Father more concerned. He moped about the house. He scolded her for choosing the kindly but ineffectual George Younger to run her campaign.
‘She might as well have chosen your mother,’ he said to me. As Mother happened to be listening, he added quickly, ‘In fact your mother would be rather good at it.’
We watched the results of the first ballot on the television. She had won, but not by a large enough margin. There would have to be a second round.
‘I must ring her at once,’ cried Father, ‘before those cowards get to her and try to persuade her to stand down.’
This proved difficult, as Mrs Thatcher was on her way back from a world leaders’ summit in France. Then, on her return, she made the fateful decision to see each cabinet member individually. Fateful, said Father, because collectively they would have felt obliged to support her, but individually they were more likely to voice doubts.
Father was right. At six-thirty the following morning he received a telephone call from Number Ten. It was his beloved Margaret.
‘I wanted to talk to you before I made the announcement,’ she said slowly and painfully. ‘I have decided to resign. There is no other course open to me.’
Father pleaded and cajoled but it was no good. He replaced the receiver and went to wake up Mother.
‘The sods!’ he exclaimed over and over. ‘The traitors. They did this to her. They’re all scum, those Tories. I am going to tell my readers in the News of the World to vote Labour at the next election.’
Then he burst into noisy tears. They racked him from head to toe. Through some strange quickening of inner life it appeared that his features were being eaten away by grief. It was the firs
t time I had seen Father cry. Perhaps it was the shock, perhaps I felt that I too had lost my Demeter, my Earth Mother, the symbol of my youth. I too began to sob. The goddess had been expelled from Olympus, never to return.
But Father failed to make good his threat. At the next election he advised his readers to vote for John Major.
19
Father and his friends
ONE OF THE most pressing of all the human instincts is that which compels us to seek the company of our fellow beings. Father felt not a tinge of remorse over the calumnies he had committed against women. But he nurtured and protected his friendships with both sexes as carefully as any devoted nurse tends her patients.
And the friends! My heaven, the friends! One could not accuse Father of myopia in choosing those with whom he intended to walk down life’s avenue. His generosity embraced a galere of charmers and geniuses; pale, oval-eyed beauties and dark, freakish Calibans.
Aristotle believed that the risk of eccentricity was greater at the time of the full moon and that those infants who were touched by its beams underwent a strange metamorphosis. On this night of the new moon, I often thought, must have been born some of Father’s closest comrades.
Let us consider the Marquess of Bath. This antique-faced fellow lived at Longleat House in Wiltshire, an hour’s journey from our own house near Devizes. The Marquess, whose name was Henry, gave birth to the present occupant of Longleat, who is best known to the world for his long, roped hair, fishbelly-pale complexion and the exotic series of women to whom he refers as ‘wifelets’.
Henry Bath resembled a figure out of Gillray. He rode like a sleek centaur through life’s forests. His pale complexion and slim carriage spoke of the romance of another era; of the throbbing grace of the Regency waltz. Bath sired an exquisite daughter, Caroline, who became my godmother. She was destined to marry David Somerset, the young heir to the Duke of Beaufort. David had the seducer’s sine qua non: an intriguing air of mystery. Such was the glamour of the couple that Ian Fleming gave Bond and the Soviet heroine in From Russia with Love the pseudonyms David and Caroline Somerset.
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