Speaking for Myself (41 page)

Her preferred color may have disappeared in the (now) Terra-cotta Room, but over the door, within the plaster frieze, is the figure of a little man going up a ladder with straw on his back — a nod to “Thatcher.” I, too, have left my mark. Just before we departed Number 10, my plans to return Mrs. Thatcher’s study to its former glory were finally completed, and the official opening was a tearful one, as this was one of the last things I did in Downing Street. I was known universally as Mrs. B, and if you look carefully, you can see a group of six bees carved into the wood of the bookcase: five big ones and a little one.

I had never seen the Queen more relaxed than on the evening of the dinner. She seemed always to be smiling. “What a relief,” she said with a laugh as she came in. “No need for any introductions.” Everyone was soon sharing reminiscences, and I found it fascinating to hear about different families’ experiences of living in Number 10.

A few days later Tony and I had dinner with Roy and Jennifer Jenkins. Jennifer had been reading a history of the American First Ladies called
Hidden Power
. “Somebody should do a version for this country,” she said. Coming so soon after that fascinating dinner with all the Prime Ministers and their families, it got me thinking. I had all the contacts, and, most important, I was about to have plenty of time on my hands: very disconcertingly, I had just discovered I was pregnant again.

Needless to say, I was astonished. Leo’s birth had seemed like a miracle, and here I was nearly three years older. Although the idea was daunting to say the least, I realized that it would be nice for Leo not to be what amounted to an only child. As before, I went to see Susan Rankin, who arranged for me to have a scan in-house.

The radiographer was in raptures. “I have never seen a baby in a mother of your age that wasn’t conceived by IVF [in vitro fertilization],” she said.

Tony was less enthralled. “I’m not sure I want to be a father at fifty,” he said.

This time we decided to say nothing to anyone about the pregnancy. Not Alastair, not Fiona, certainly not Gordon. Not even my mum and dad. Only Jackie and the children knew. Unusually for me, I wasn’t feeling at all well. It was going to be a hard pregnancy, I realized, and I was feeling grim most of the time. In fact, the
Mirror
published a picture of me sitting down after an official photo with the Queen during a lunch at the Guildhall, part of the Jubilee celebrations. I’d been standing up for the picture but then had felt incredibly weak. This was taken as proof of how rude I was and how antimonarchist, the caption being something like “Cherie Snubs Queen.”

That year it was as if the past, the present, and the future were on a collision course. In May Tony attended a European Union meeting in Madrid, where José María Aznar told him he was planning to announce that he wouldn’t be standing for a third term and that he’d be designating his successor. Aznar had first been elected Prime Minister exactly one year before Tony and was now two years into his second term. It had got Tony thinking. Even when we’d first arrived in Downing Street, he had said there would come a point where he would grow stale, and that after two terms — or a maximum of ten years — it would be time to move on. On a practical level it would mean I’d have got two of the kids through school and one even through university. Of course that was before Leo turned up.

Even during his first term, there had been tensions between Tony and Gordon. Many of these were provoked by the behavior of Charlie Whelan, Gordon’s equivalent to Alastair. Whelan, it was claimed, spent half his time “briefing against” Tony — setting up the story that Gordon was the power behind the throne and the man taking all the decisions. Few believed that story, but it was irritating nonetheless. More damaging was the claim that Tony had done a deal with Gordon that he was now reneging on. Though Tony had always said that he felt two terms were probably enough, to my knowledge he never gave a guarantee on timing. Yet Gordon was always trying to pin Tony down with his “When are you going to go?”

So when Tony had this conversation with José María Aznar, he got very taken with the idea. It was not that he would be capitulating to Gordon’s demands, he explained; it was rather that by making a public announcement, it might encourage Gordon to play ball. “It would reassure him that I am willing to go, and therefore he might start cooperating, and we could get the health and school reforms through.”

“You must be mad,” I said. “It might work for José María and his successor, but Gordon would only take advantage, and you’d be severely weakened in the eyes of the other people who count.” Fortunately Sally, Jonathan, and Alastair all thought the same, and by June Tony had accepted that if he wanted to get his reforms through, he needed to stay at Number 10, not announce that he was planning on packing his bags.

There were foreign policy concerns, too. The shadow over Iraq was becoming increasingly thunderous, and Tony was increasingly concerned. That spring America had renewed bombing in the no-fly zone in an attempt to disrupt Saddam Hussein’s military command structure. In early June 2002, when Bill Clinton came to Chequers for the weekend, I found him and Tony crawling around the floor of the study, which was covered with maps. Bill was saying how he had always felt that Iraq was unfinished business, that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous person and a serious threat to world peace. From the intelligence he had seen, he was convinced that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He certainly wasn’t advising caution — after all, he had initiated the bombing — but he was advising Tony that the UN was inevitably bound into the whole process. I could sense his frustration at no longer being in a position to take these decisions.

Carole was around that weekend. She was there to do some training with Tony, and I’ll never forget her coming into the Great Hall and within seconds engaging the former President in conversation. “You need to remember the importance of stretching your back,” she was saying, while arching her own, right in front of him, all white leggings and leotard at full stretch, her long hair sweeping the ground. I could see Bill’s eyes widen, and I quickly moved her on.

The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of a book about the wives of Downing Street. I even had a title for it:
The Goldfish Bowl,
because that was what it felt like. I mentioned it to Fiona, but she was dead against it. What I needed, she said, was to lower my profile, not raise it. But I remained excited about the idea. As we planned to go up to the Lake District before going on holiday to France, I decided to run it past the social historian Cate Haste, wife of the broadcaster and writer Melvyn Bragg, to see what she thought.

Because the terrible foot-and-mouth epidemic had been causing so much damage to the British tourist industry, we’d arranged to spend a few days in the Lake District, though being on vacation in Britain was never particularly relaxing, particularly for Tony, as the media would never leave him alone. We took Leo to the Beatrix Potter museum, and the weather on the last day was glorious, reminding me of when I used to hitch my way on the M6 from Crosby all those years ago. In the end we had a good time.

On August 5 we were back at Chequers. I had a meeting at Matrix on the morning we were due to leave for France, so I had booked myself in for my next scan. It was the same ultrasound technician as before, and again she was really excited, going on about how rare it was for someone my age to have a naturally conceived baby. She was just moving the sensor across my oiled stomach when suddenly she stopped.

“There’s no heartbeat,” she said, still staring at the screen. For a moment I didn’t understand.

“What did you say?”

“There’s no heartbeat, Mrs. Blair. I’m afraid the baby’s dead.”

“Ah,” I said. “So that’s why I’m feeling better.” Because I was. Recently the constant nausea had disappeared.

I told her I needed to go to the bathroom. She pointed me to one immediately off the room, and the moment I sat down, the bleeding started. Later I thought it was almost as if, now that I knew, my body could let go.

By the time I emerged from the cubicle, Dr. Rankin had appeared. They were going to have to do a scrape, a D & C, she said. “We’ll try to get you in and out as soon as possible.” Nobody need know. For the time being, I should go back to Downing Street and rest.

I stood numbly by the door in the waiting room, and the ’tec came over.

“Come on now, Mrs. B, no dawdling. You’ve got that holiday to think of. Can’t have you missing that flight.”

“I don’t think I’ll be going on holiday,” I said. I felt embarrassed. He didn’t even know I was pregnant, and I didn’t know what to do or say. “I need to speak to the PM.”

“Are you all right, Mrs. B?”

“Just get me the PM and take me back to Number Ten.”

The flat was empty and silent. Leo’s toys were stashed away in hampers. We weren’t meant to be coming back for several weeks. There was usually so much noise — music coming from the kids’ bedrooms, piano practice, the kettle, the washing machine, a TV on in the background somewhere. Ordinary sounds of family life. I walked upstairs, suddenly feeling very, very old, and crawled between the sheets and just lay there, strange sounds ringing in my ears. Only when Tony got through did I let go.

He said he’d come up to London straightaway after explaining things to my mum and the kids. Twenty minutes later he called back. The kids were okay, he said, and he hoped I understood, but he had to tell Alastair. Ah, yes. Alastair. I lay there waiting. Then the phone again: this time the two of them on the line. There were implications in not going on holiday, they said. It was all to do with Iraq. There had been talk that we might be sending in troops. If we didn’t go on vacation, the concern was that it would send the wrong message. They had decided that the best thing was to tell the press that I’d had a miscarriage.

I couldn’t believe it. There I was, bleeding, and they were talking about what was going to be the line to the press. I put down the receiver and lay there staring at the ceiling, as pain began to grip.

Finally, Susan Rankin rang. I should get to the hospital as soon as possible.

When I began to come round from the anesthetic and was being wheeled out of the operating theater, who should I see but Gary, one of the ’tecs. He was looking so distressed that I burst into tears, sobbing and sobbing, and saying, “But I really want my husband.” In fact, Tony was there, but because of the security issues, it was Gary I saw first.

As for Tony, his main emotion appeared to be relief. “You know you felt there was something not quite right, Cherie,” he said. “So it’s probably all for the best.” I realize now he was simply trying to make me feel better; it just came out a bit oddly. Of course he was right, but I was surprised at just how badly it hit me. It wasn’t as if I were childless. I had four lovely, healthy children. But I was overwhelmed by this great sense of loss. To me, more than anyone else, this baby was real. I had seen it. I still have the scan.

I decided to go ahead with the book. It seemed appropriate. While in the Lake District, I had talked to Cate Haste, and she thought it a good idea. It would be based on interviews with the former wives. I had met them all and sensed they had strong, idiosyncratic views and real stories to tell. Fiona was still against the idea. She thought I’d be accused of taking advantage of my position. I pointed out that there was a precedent: Norma Major had written a book about Chequers, and no one had criticized her. After that wonderful Golden Jubilee dinner, I really wanted to share the history of these fascinating people. I found them inspiring. Perhaps Fiona didn’t see it that way. Perhaps she felt that I should have suggested doing it with her. But I believe her unhappiness had less to do with me than with Alastair. She was getting progressively resentful of the time that he was spending with Tony, and this in turn was affecting her relationship with me, which was rapidly deteriorating.

Fiona was firmly in the camp of those who believed that Britain should not get involved in Iraq. It was a nonstop tirade. “Why don’t you just tell Tony to stop it? He’ll listen to you,” she’d say. She harangued Alastair, too. If it was bad for me, it must have been terrible for him — no letup at work or at home. My response was always the same: “Listen, Fiona. I don’t see the papers. I don’t see what Tony and Alastair see. If Tony tells me, as he does, that if we don’t stop Saddam Hussein, the world will be a more dangerous place, I believe him. And in my view you and I should be supporting our men in these difficult decisions, not making it worse by nagging them.”

The discussions over the possibility of Tony not standing for a third term had certainly made me aware of just how vulnerable we were. The bald truth was that however comfortable we had made the Number 11 flat, it was only a grand version of a tied cottage. We had no tenure. Once we were out, we were out with nowhere to live. Certainly there was Myrobella, but no way could I carry on my career from county Durham, and with three children in school in central London, we had to stay in the area. Other Prime Ministers hadn’t been faced with either of these problems. Thanks to Denis, the Thatchers were wealthy long before they took up residence in Downing Street, and the Majors had kept their house outside Cambridge.

Over the past year the talk at every dinner party was house prices. Between 1997 and 2002, particularly in London, they had risen dramatically, and our old home in Richmond Crescent was now worth more than £1 million. Our friends would tease us about our lack of a house, but it was no joke. To make matters worse, the stock market had taken a tumble after 9/11, and the money in our blind trust had gone down. The blunt truth was that we were substantially worse off than we had been when Tony became Prime Minister five years earlier. At the time I was pondering all this, I was pregnant with my fifth child, which further concentrated my mind.

That August we returned to our favorite corner of France for our summer holiday, this time to a rented house. Renting a house on the open market with the security features the protection guys required was difficult. We eventually found one, but it wasn’t ideal, and as I was feeling generally very low, I can’t say it was the best holiday of our lives. We had friends in the area, however, and as my miscarriage was now public knowledge, people were very sympathetic.