Speaking for Myself (23 page)

Tony’s speech wasn’t until Tuesday. Purgatory, I decided, would be a cinch compared with this. Tony had been working on his speech for days, and it still wasn’t finished. The slogan “New Labour, New Britain” had only been agreed on the previous week, just in time to get the banners up for the conference. The trickle of people around my husband gradually became a whirlpool, and the debate about his speech became more frenetic and tense with every passing hour. The speech went through between twenty-five to forty drafts, with everyone chipping in, including me, though Tony and Alastair did the final tinkering.

On Sunday we went to church. Every year there was a nondenominational service organized by the Christian Socialist Movement. I remember how that first year I didn’t have anything to wear and had to borrow a cream outfit of Carole’s, which shows how effective the diet was and how disorganized I was. I had always enjoyed going to those conference services. There was usually a good crowd and a good preacher, who would give a thoughtful sermon, and there is nothing I like more than a rousing hymn. Tony and I both believe that we have an obligation to God in determining what we should do, and the sermon frequently dealt with serious issues, such as Third World debt or, later, asylum seekers, issues that the church has a right to be concerned about but that maybe don’t entirely chime with Labour Party or, later, government policy. We always listened seriously to what the preacher said.

The Labour Party Conference is the biggest of the party conferences, not least because of the union involvement. That year I discovered for the first time how it’s funded. Basically, interested parties rent stalls that act as shop windows for what they do. Some smaller stalls are given rent-free to charities. One thing Labour Party Conferences are not short on is opinion formers, so this is a great opportunity for the organizations or businesses concerned to get themselves seen and talked about. One of the incentives given them to return year after year is the “best stall” competition, judged by — yes! — the leader’s wife. There are various categories — public sector, private sector, voluntary sectors, and so on.

It took me at least two half days to get round to all the stalls. I wasn’t overly enamored with the prospect. How would I judge? What were the criteria? That first year someone came along to show me the ropes, and surprisingly I really enjoyed it. Apart from anything else, it was something to do. It was completely out of the limelight, and a little bit nonsensical, but the stallholders genuinely seemed to value my visit. What they really wanted, of course, was a piece of their glamorous new leader, but if they couldn’t have that, they’d settle for a piece of his wife. There were usually about two hundred stalls, and I made sure I went round to all of them, having a little chat and my picture taken with everybody.

Over the years there were inevitably some hiccups in my visits to the stalls, even though I was always closely shepherded — usually by Fiona, sometimes by Roz Preston, who later took over running Tony’s office from Anji. One year a stand had Viagra on display, and my comment “Oh, we don’t need that!” was duly trumpeted across the next day’s newspapers. Every stall would press me to take its mug or pencil or its mouse pad, so naturally I did, getting increasingly weighed down, not daring to refuse the kind offers, in case doing so would show favoritism. At the end of the week we’d divvy up this “booty” among the staff who had been working so hard for Tony, they’d had no time to find anything to take home to their kids. My sense of fairness would later come back to haunt me when the
Daily Mail
claimed that “Cherie used to go round the conference and Hoover up every freebie she could find.”

By Monday night, when the speech was into its nth draft, Tony was getting tenser and tenser. Gordon had given his speech that morning, and apparently he had said something that Tony had been planning to say. While I was drifting off to sleep, the voices in the sitting room next door continued to rise and fall. Eventually I could stand it no longer.
He has to get some sleep,
I thought.
If he doesn’t, he’s going to collapse.
So I got out of bed and went into the room. I am far from being a tidy person, but the state of that room was appalling: papers all over the place, half-drunk cups of tea and the odd beer glass, room-service trays with the remains of sandwiches, jackets here and there, and some very gray faces.

“Tony,” I said, “you have got to come to bed, because you must get some sleep. And as for you lot,” I said, pointing at Alastair, Anji, and the rest of them, “out. You’ve all got to go.” As it was, he barely slept anyway, and I spent a wakeful night with him tossing and turning in bed beside me.

Finally, it was time for Tony’s big speech. The Clause IV moment had come. As he began to speak, a hush descended, and I felt a shiver of anticipation. It was only at the end, however, that it became clear just how momentous it was. There was a brief moment of shock, and then the hall erupted. I felt the excitement all round me — the most brilliant speech a new leader had ever given. I felt ridiculously proud. There was nothing fake or phony about my clinging to my husband’s arm, but at that moment a pattern had been set, with the press making comments along these lines: “She’s supposed to be this successful career woman, yet she behaves like a love-sick teenager.” They had me “clinging to his hand like the adoring wife.” I was seen as a “breath of fresh air.” My clothes were approved of; I was approved of. Everyone was happy.

And then, within only a couple of hours, it all began to unravel.

“Where is she?” Alastair’s voice boomed down the corridor. Then he came storming in.

What was he talking about? Who?

“Carole,” he bellowed. “Where the fuck is she!”

Just then she emerged from the bathroom.

“I thought I told you to stay away from the limelight. But oh, no, you knew better. And now the press are onto you. Not only have they seen you; they know exactly what you are doing and who you are. And now our beautiful day has been ruined by this ridiculous woman.” He was literally spitting.

“What do you mean?” Carole said, looking aghast.

“What I mean is that you’re a topless model!”

I froze. “I don’t believe it,” I said, but nobody heard me.

“I’m not a topless model,” Carole said.

“Yes, you are! And what’s more, the
Sun
has pictures of you, and tomorrow no doubt the whole world will have the benefit of seeing your tits. I want you out of here. Now,” he said. (The
Sun
was not only one of our more gossipy tabloids, but it had the largest daily circulation of any English-language newspaper in the world.)

Slowly the story emerged. Several years before, when Carole was in the music video business, a boyfriend had taken pictures of her topless. She was eighteen. They were never published, but they would be now, as he had just sold them to the
Sun.

By this time Carole was in tears. She left the room, saying she was going to pack.

“How dare you?” I said to Alastair, his arms now folded across his chest. “Don’t think I don’t know about you writing for a porn magazine. If we were all held accountable for what we did at eighteen, then it’s a wonder you didn’t disqualify yourself from this job on several counts, frankly.”

“Cherie, listen to me. I’m a journalist. I’ve got a nose for these things. That woman is trouble. You can’t possibly trust her. I don’t want anything to do with her, do you hear? There’s bound to be more coming out, and if you want to know what I think, I think she’s only here to sell her story.”

“So you’re about to expel her from the Garden of Eden, is that it?”

“Your words, not mine.”

Then Tony came in, and suddenly I felt dreadful. He had been so happy, exultant. All those desperate hours working on the speech had paid off, and now here he was, looking like thunder. He wanted to talk to me alone, he said. Alastair bowed out. We went into the bedroom, and he shut the door. I felt sick.

“I cannot believe this, Cherie. My God, this woman has been in our house! She’s been in our bedroom sorting through your clothes. I mean, who is this person? What do you know about her? Come on, think about it. What do you actually know about her?”

“You know who she is. She’s an exercise teacher. I’ve been going to her classes for years. I was hardly going to cross-examine her about what she’d done when she was eighteen.”

“And to think I let you talk me into having a massage.” He sat down on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

“We all did pretty stupid things when we were young. As for Alastair, he was an alcoholic, for God’s sake. I don’t condemn him for that, and I don’t see why he should condemn Carole for being a bit careless.”

“Careless!” was all he could say in reply.

The next day it got worse. Part of me was hoping that it wouldn’t be her or that the pictures had been faked or something. But it was obviously Carole. Alastair continued his attack.

“You have to drop her, Cherie. It’s as simple as that.”

“Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not going to. It wouldn’t be fair. She has done nothing wrong, and what’s more, she’s done a good job and been incredibly helpful to me. You’ve even said yourself that I look great.

“And by what right do you tell me what company I should keep? It may surprise you to know that I have a life of my own, that I actually enjoy the company of people who couldn’t give a stuff about politics, and I intend to hang on to it.”

Shortly after breakfast the phone rang. It was Carole. Her mother had just called, she said. The house was surrounded by photographers. Later it came out that she’d been involved with this cult called Exegesis. What this was, or is, I still have no idea. But by that time she was gone. It had been decided to get her into a safe house. She couldn’t go back to her mum’s, as the press was parked outside. Hilary Coffman and Tony’s researcher, Liz Lloyd, had been deputed to take her out through the kitchens, and she stayed at Liz’s for a few days.

As far as the press impact was concerned, Alastair had managed to keep Tony distanced from it all. But I felt really bad about the whole thing, particularly since my role was to make things easier for him, not more difficult.

As for Carole, I was not about to give her up. She had promised me I’d have more energy, and I did. And now I knew I was going to need it. There was no mileage to be gained in rubbing anyone’s face in it, but I continued going to the gym three times a week for an hour before work, and gradually the furor around Carole Caplin seemed to die down.

The press showed no signs of letting up on their interest in Tony and me as a couple, but increasingly I needed clothes to wear. So Carole would search things out, and I would pay her to go. Realistically, who else could I ask? Most of my friends were working mothers like me. In terms of their clothes, their horizons were limited. I didn’t know ladies who lunched.

Chapter 17

Home Life

B
ack in Richmond Crescent, life continued much as usual, except that now Daddy didn’t take the kids to school in the morning. All three were still in school in Highbury, though this would be Euan’s last year. The question was, where would he go next?

Planning your children’s education is always difficult, but after factoring in all the Blair imponderables, it became a nightmare. Wherever Euan went, he would start a new school in the autumn of 1995, and if the Major government decided to follow the normal pattern, the election could be in May 1996. I had to be practical. If the unimaginable did happen and we found ourselves in Downing Street in 1996 or 1997, that would be upheaval enough for our kids. Continuity would be crucial, and changing schools would not be an option. Also, with Nicky only two years behind Euan, we didn’t want them going to different schools. In the end we opted for the London Oratory School in west London, which was a reasonable journey from both Richmond Crescent and Westminster.

When Tony told Alastair, he went ballistic. It would be disastrous for Tony’s reputation, he said. He had a duty to send his children to a neighborhood school, not to a school on the other side of London, operating independently of the local education system. The fact that the Oratory was funded by the state and nonselective in terms of ability did not impress him. The fact that it was a faith school was enough to put him off. Alastair famously “doesn’t do” religion, so he never understood why it mattered to me that my children received a Catholic education. Catholic schools continued to have religious assemblies, and the children observed the feast days, things that no longer happened in nonreligious schools. This sort of thing wasn’t important only to me; it was important to Tony as well. Although he wasn’t Catholic, he had been coming to Mass with us since the children were little. At St. Joan of Arc, as at most Catholic churches up and down the country, the Sunday morning Mass was family Mass: a genuinely warm and friendly affair, if a little chaotic. It was a chance for the children and their parents to worship and socialize together. In fact, Tony used to take Communion with the kids on a regular basis. He was a member of our church community; few, if any, in the congregation knew he wasn’t Catholic. By this time Euan and Nicky had made their first Holy Communion. It would have been very odd for Euan to go to a non-Catholic school after being at a Catholic primary.

I don’t know if Alastair thought this was me flexing my muscles because of the disagreement over Carole. Frankly, I think it unlikely. I might have been the official Catholic in our family, and Tony might have been dissuaded from brandishing his religious beliefs in public, but this was not politics, this was private and nonnegotiable, and Tony told Alastair so in no uncertain terms. Alastair gave him dire warnings, saying, “You will live to regret this,” but the truth is, we never did. It was the right thing for our family.

Of course the story leaked, and on December 1, 1994, it was front-page news in the
Daily Mail
. But Tony stuck to his guns. The London Oratory was not a fee-paying school. It was not selective. It was still funded by the state, if not the local education authority. His children’s education was not a political football.