Speaking for Myself (9 page)

The next day Tony came downstairs from the attic annex for the usual morning conference. As chief pupil, I always sat next to Derry, while Tony sat at my desk opposite. He claims (I don’t believe this at all) that I spent the entire time winking at him.

So that left me with three men in my life. Tony knew about John but not about David. John knew about David but not about Tony. And poor David fondly imagined I was living a quiet life of hard work in dreary London, enlivened by occasional visits to Liverpool. Oh, dear.

Inevitably, as the months ticked by, my thoughts turned to the chances of my getting tenancy. One of the things Derry kept repeating was that the Bar was a tough place for a woman. Also, he thought that of the two of us, I was the political animal. It was completely the reverse. Tony was never as committed to the law as I was; I was just much more open about my political affiliations. When I was living in my Weech Road bed-sit, I had joined the local Labour Party and was its nominee governor at the neighborhood primary school. This was common knowledge in chambers. In fact, Tony was already a member of the Wandsworth Labour Party, but he kept it quiet. In not shouting about his political affiliations, he was wiser than me, giving chambers the impression that his energy was entirely focused on a career at the Bar — crucial if it came to a head-to-head for the tenancy. There were also pragmatic reasons for Derry going for Tony over me. Because Tony was focusing on commercial law, he could be more useful and lucrative, and Derry was keen to build up the commercial side of the practice. I was just the leftie who did that other stuff.

There were other names in the hat as well. Not every pupil master can get his or her pupil accepted as a fully fledged tenant in chambers every year — there simply isn’t room. And though my position as chief pupil was not in dispute, being constantly in Derry’s company had its disadvantages. Up on the top floor, Tony was sharing a room with two junior members. This put him in a much better position to network while I was downstairs with my nose to Derry’s grindstone.

It was increasingly clear that in terms of getting a tenancy, my major obstacle was gender: I was the wrong sex. That year only 16 percent of those of us called to the Bar were women. The year before it had been 9 percent, and the year before that, even fewer. Yes, the percentage was growing, but attitudes among senior barristers — the people who decide who gets tenancy — were not changing. A set book in my first year reading law was
Learning the Law
by Professor Glanville Williams, QC (Queen’s Counsel). In the 1973 edition, he warned of the difficulties of women succeeding at the Bar. “Practice at the Bar is a demanding task for a man,” he wrote. “It’s even more difficult for a woman. It’s not easy for a young man to get up and face the court; many women find it harder still. A woman’s voice does not carry as well as a man’s.”

I will never forget how, shortly after I was called to the Bar, an entire robing room full of men fell silent in shock and horror when it dawned on them that I was going to go in there and change into my wig and gown along with the chaps.

In many ways Derry was no different from the rest. But he had taken me on, and he had already got considerable mileage out of having miraculously discovered the top law graduate in the country. I had also seen how he pushed his former pupils and found them tenancies. He was someone who honored his obligations. I would have to trust that.

Chapter 7

Tenancy

O
nce both Lyndsey and I had left home (she, following in my footsteps, had headed off to study law, though she did so in Cardiff instead of London), there was no further reason for our mum to stay in Ferndale Road. It’s one thing living with your mother-in-law when you have no real option, but Grandma was now well into her seventies, and my mum was more or less looking after her. As it turned out, she wasn’t the one to make the decision. One day, when my mum got back from work, Grandma made her sit down. There was something she wanted to say: “Now, Gale, have you thought what you’re going to do when I die?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, when I die, this house is going to be sold and divided among my three children, so what’s going to happen to you?”

In fact, my mother owned nothing beyond what was in her wardrobe. Even though by this time the bed she shared with Lyndsey was sagging and everything was falling apart, Grandma hadn’t let her have anything. The only thing Grandma had let her buy was a television from Lewis’s, and of course she left that there when she moved out.

Housing was controlled by the local authority. Because she still had one daughter in full-time education, my mum was given a two-bedroom flat in Seaforth, down by the docks in a pretty rough area, not far from the fish-and-chip shop where she’d worked all those years before. The flat was on the sixth floor and was actually very nice, with lovely views out across the sea. I stayed there that Christmas, but it never felt like home.

One afternoon shortly before New Year’s, the phone rang. My mum answered it, then passed it to me with an odd expression.

“It’s for you,” she said.

Much to my surprise, it was Tony. He had vaguely suggested that as we would both be in the north, I might go to his father’s house near Durham sometime over the holiday. Now he was calling to see what was happening.

“Who was that?” Mum asked accusingly. “No one from round here, in any event. Not with that voice.”

“Tony Blair. You remember. Derry’s other pupil. You met him at the ceremony.” Although I’d warned John to stay well clear, I’d had no qualms about introducing Tony to her.

“I don’t remember.”

“Well, you did.”

“So what did he want, then?”

“He wants me to go over there.”

“Where?”

“A village near Durham. Where his dad lives. His sister is there, and he thought I might like to meet her. She’s reading law at Oxford.”

She was definitely suspicious.

“I told him I’d go.”

“I heard. Well, you know what you’re doing, I suppose.”

“I’ll go on my way back to London.”

“Just don’t you forget, Cherie, an accent like that is as much of an accent as a Liverpool accent.”

All went well till I arrived at Durham, when my bag — inconveniently containing a bottle of disinfectant and some cheap bleach I’d picked up back home in an attempt to save money — fell out of the luggage rack. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Tony wasn’t there to meet me, as he’d promised he would be. I was so irritated that I thought I’d take a taxi and go straight to his father’s house. So I got in this cab, reeking of cheap disinfectant, and gave the driver Tony’s dad’s address. Just as we pulled away, I saw Tony getting out of a car behind me. I was so cross that I said nothing to the taxi driver. But Tony must have seen me get in, because as we drove along, my driver kept saying, “There’s a fella behind us keeps flashing his lights.” I told him to carry on. I thought,
I’ve put myself out for him, so he can bloody well lump it.

We arrived at the same time. It wasn’t a great start, admittedly, but at least I had the moral advantage. And he paid for the taxi.

I don’t know now what I’d been expecting, but the house wasn’t remotely grand. I knew a bit of the backstory already, and it was really tragic. When Tony was only ten, his father had a stroke. He’d been a lecturer in law at Durham University and a part-time barrister in Newcastle. He’d been planning on going into full-time practice as a barrister when it happened, with a view to becoming a Tory member of Parliament (MP). Tony’s mother, Hazel, had died of throat cancer the previous year, just two weeks before Tony left university. His parents had always talked about moving to Shincliffe village and had finally found this house, which they really liked. But Tony’s mum had died before they could move in, so it was all very sad.

Only a few hours before, I had been in Ferndale Road, and now I was here. I surprised myself at how easy it was to move from one world to the other.

All five of us at the house were “legal”: Leo, Tony’s father; his brother, Bill, who had a commercial practice in the Middle Temple; Tony and I; and Sarah, who was then at Oxford reading law, though not entirely happy with it, as I soon found out. Looking at the lineup of Blairs in the kitchen, I was surprised at how tall Tony was in comparison with the others. He was a good six feet, while his father and brother were almost six inches shorter, as was Sarah.

She and I hit it off immediately. Leo turned out to be fairly right-wing, so sometimes he would come out with something completely outrageous. I would inevitably rise to the bait, then Sarah would join in, the pair of us taking the feminist stance. But it wasn’t just women versus men. I never forgot that Tony was the competition, and I was trying to counteract the notion that anyone who wasn’t from public school and Oxbridge didn’t cut the mustard.

I can’t imagine what his family made of this rather odd girl who, having stunk the kitchen out with the smell of cheap disinfectant, proceeded to harangue their father about why women are as good as men, while their sister cheered from the sidelines. I could certainly hold my own. My mum, having trained at RADA, had always spoken well herself, which had served to temper the Scouse that was all around us — though no one could doubt that I was a northern lass. In addition, the nuns had seen to it that we had elocution lessons. Those things were important if you were going to get on in life.

The moment Tony and I were back in chambers, Derry started a big case. Unusually for him, it was a criminal case concerning a huge scandal in Singapore. Derry was representing the Singapore government, which was trying to extradite a number of British businessmen to stand trial for fraud. The two key individuals involved were Jim Slater, the main protagonist, represented by a famous criminal barrister, and Dick Tarling, managing director of Slater Walker’s Singapore subsidiary, represented by Michael Burton, fellow tenant of 2 Crown Office Row. The case was being heard at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court in central London, and Tony and I went along. Our job was to see that Derry had what he needed, passing him the necessary papers, taking notes, and doing whatever else was required. The court was close to the Tate Gallery, so every lunchtime Tony and I would go to the museum, and it was then that he really began to open up.

He talked to me about his mother, whom he missed tremendously. Also about religion, which was obviously very important to him. Although the Blairs were not a churchgoing family, the two boys had been sent to the Chorister School, attached to Durham Cathedral. He told me that he had been confirmed during his time at Oxford. His father wasn’t a believer, however, perhaps explaining why Tony hadn’t been confirmed earlier.

At Oxford he had met an Australian priest called Peter Thomson, studying theology as a mature student. Their discussions were all about liberation theology: Christ as a radical and how it all fits in and resonates with socialism. That was exactly what had inspired those campfire debates when I was with the YCS.

Even at that very early stage in our relationship, Tony and I spent hours talking about this kind of thing, about God and what we were here for. I don’t think it would be too much to say that it was this that drew us together. This and the fact that he had just lost his mother. He was incredibly honest and open about his feelings, which was unusual in a man at that time. He had very firm views on marriage, for example. He genuinely thought that two people could be together for life. Having seen what had happened to my mum, I thought this was a wonderful thing to aim for, though I wasn’t sure any man was up to it. I certainly wanted it to be true, not least because I had seen for myself how damaging a wandering male can be to his family. Yet when Tony talked about love and fidelity, there was no sense that these were anything more than general conversations. He always kept me guessing in that department, which I found intriguing and not a little challenging. What I really admired was his honesty, his desire to get to the heart of things, and his belief that we were here for a purpose. I loved talking to him, and on the odd occasion when we couldn’t have lunch together at the Tate, I felt as if something was missing.

By now he was introducing me to his friends as his new girlfriend, and I’d say, “I’m not sure I’m your new girlfriend.” But I liked his friends.

The house where he was living in Primrose Hill was owned by the mother of a guy he’d known at Oxford called Marc Palley. The family was originally from Rhodesia, where Marc’s MP father had been described by Ian Smith, Rhodesia’s white supremacist leader prior to independence, as a “one-man opposition.” His mother, Claire Palley, was a law professor at Oxford, as vociferous as her ex-husband in terms of African emancipation and an extremely formidable woman, though not a very motherly one. Marc lived in one of the flats with his girlfriend, Bina (short for Sabina), while Bina’s brother Dave, who had also been at St. John’s, was in the flat below with Tony and another St. John’s friend, Martin Stanley. They were all quite posh, but surprisingly, I liked them. At the LSE I had avoided anybody like that. The first time I met Marc, he said, “Oh, Tony’s been talking about you. You’re not like his usual girlfriends. He usually wears his girlfriends like a flower on his lapel.” At the time I thought this was a dig, but later I realized it was meant as a compliment, meaning that I wasn’t just a pretty face.

Once Tony’s Oxford friends had given me the thumbs-up, it was his school friends’ turn. He was really wooing me now. One weekend he wanted to take me to Reading, where Ian Craig, a friend from Fettes, was studying agriculture. In order to go, I told John that a friend from the LSE had been dumped by her boyfriend, so I had to spend the weekend propping her up.

It was around this time that I first met Geoff Gallop and his wife, Beverley. Geoff, who would later become Premier of Western Australia, was a couple of years older than Tony. They had met at St. John’s when Geoff was a Rhodes scholar studying philosophy, politics, and economics. He had been in the International Marxist group at the time, and it was Geoff who had introduced Tony to left-wing politics. It was also Geoff who had introduced him to Peter Thomson, who had rekindled Tony’s interest in theology. So Geoff was a very important figure in Tony’s life. When I met him, he had just arrived back in Oxford to do a Ph.D. I was totally captivated by him.