Breaking the Code (84 page)

And so it proves. Raffle done, Ruby drags me
and
Cherie (plus two-man police escort)
and
Elizabeth (plus Ram) up the stairs and into the midst of the milling throng. ‘Where is she? Where is she?' shrieks Ruby. ‘She's here's somewhere. And she's royalty. American royalty. Where the fuck's she gone?'

Not far, it turns out. In the middle of the mêlée we find her, slumped in a wheelchair, wrapped in a rug, wearing dark glasses and clearly in a state of desperation. ‘How do you do, Miss Minnelli?' I gurgle. ‘I need the john,' she gasps. ‘I need it now.'

‘It's only pee-pee,' says a high-pitched voice above her. It's David Gest, her smooth-checked, orange-faced husband whom I think I've met before. ‘David,' I cry. ‘It's only pee-pee,' he repeats. ‘Don't worry about it.'

‘I need the john now,' squawks Liza. ‘Now, I tell you.' ‘Fear not,' I cry. ‘Cherie is here, accompanied by two of Downing Street's finest police officers. We'll sort you out.'

And we did. Cherie's security guys created a path to the lift, we found our way to the floor we needed, we pushed Liza and David through the door to the ladies and waited in the corridor outside. Minutes later, David wheeled Liza out to join us. As she reappeared, she took off her dark glasses in triumph. ‘It wasn't just pee-pee.' She looked up at David and snarled, ‘He knows
nothing
.'

It was all a bit tame after that. Dinner was served, the speeches came and went, Bob Geldof was good, the auction was a struggle and then, somehow, we managed to lift Liza from her chair and hoist her onto the stage. She teetered to and fro, explaining that she couldn't stand because she had hurt her knee falling off the stage last week while singing with Pavarotti in Rome – or was it Domingo in Madrid? She didn't seem sure. Looking up at a huge photograph of Rosa's daughter Domenica on the screen above the stage, with a catch in her throat, she told us, ‘I'm here for her – I'm here for lovely little Jennifer!' ‘Domenica!' I hissed from the wings. ‘Japonica,' cried Liza. ‘Domenica!' I hissed again. ‘Veronica,' cried Liza triumphantly, blowing the photograph a kiss. ‘We all love Veronica.'

Other highlights of the evening: John Simpson's young wife, Dee; Liz Hurley showing me how a little bit of rolled-up cotton wool can lift a pair of breasts just so; and Cherie. I sat next to Cherie for dinner. I really like her. She is intelligent, funny and nice. We are meeting again next week – at the Tyburn Convent at Marble Arch. Cherie is giving the Tyburn Lecture. I am giving the vote of thanks.

I sat with Robin Cook at the
Oldie
literary lunch. Talking about Iraq, he was wholly persuasive. I reminded him how rare it is for ministers to resign on principle. ‘Usually it's a scandal that forces them from office,' I said. ‘It was Blair's obduracy that drove me
out,' he said.
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‘He wanted the invasion. He would not be moved.' When John Smith died, Robin Cook was the potential Labour leader we most feared. He was a formidable debater – the best of their lot by far. But he looks like a cross between a ginger-nut biscuit and a garden gnome. He hadn't a prayer.

In my time, our only rival to Cook as a forensic debater was Michael Howard – and this week Michael becomes the Conservative leader and the party breathes a collective sigh of relief. After the aberration of IDS, we will have a safe pair of hands – a proper, grown-up leader. Will he become Prime Minister? That, alas, is another matter – though what an adornment Sandra would be to No. 10!

That's where I am just in from – No. 10. An hour or so ago I was sitting in the green drawing room on a sofa, alone with Cherie. (I was early for the Longford Trust reception.) She's sprained her ankle so I sat with her feet by my lap and told her wonderful she is. And she is. Wonderful but needy. She clings to Tony when she sees him because she doesn't see him enough – and (according to Alastair Campbell) Tony resists her because he finds the clinging oppressive.

We were at the pizza parlour in Franschhoek [a small town in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, on holiday] when a call came from Sally [Bulloch] to say that Lady Thatcher would be coming for tea and could we come too. Sally was manager of the Athenaeum Hotel in Piccadilly when the Thatchers were living there ‘between houses'. Lady T. likes Sally, trusts her, and here on holiday with Mark (who has a house in Cape Town) is looking for things to do, people to see, ways to pass the time. She was in much brighter form than I had expected – looking wonderfully groomed, elegant and summery, and really pleased to see me – not because she really knows who I am but because she knows that I was an MP and we could talk politics. That's all she wants to do: that's all that interests her. We had a good political gossip – she very much approves of Michael Howard as leader, but she was happiest talking about the old days. She was very funny about the self-indulgence of Peter Morrison, Reggie Maudling and Roy Jenkins – and
absolutely spot-on. I was interested to find that she had the measure of Peter Morrison – that was a surprise.

It was clear that she misses Denis [who died in June 2003] quite dreadfully. She dotes on Mark, but never talks about Carol. There was not much sign of her mental ‘frailty', except that she was occasionally fretful – looking around anxiously and saying she wanted to go home. ‘I need to be at the House of Lords. There's business to attend to. I should be there – voting. When are we flying back?'

Crawfie [Lady Thatcher's assistant, Cynthia Crawford] was in attendance with her husband – who was dressed in khaki safari shorts like a character from Carry On Up the Zambesi – and clearly in no rush to return to London. ‘We're going back in a week or so,' she said.

‘I want to go back now,' insisted Lady T.

‘You can't go yet,' said Crawfie firmly. ‘You must come to tea when we're back in London,' she said to us. We must. Lady T.'s achievement is extraordinary – and she is very sweet. It is a privilege to know her.

Train to Manningtree. John and Penny Gummer pick me up to take me to Wissett for the ‘Annual Lunch'. Penny anxious that I might say the wrong things, John tells the story of being asked on the way to a similar event (by Mrs Michael Grylls, in a neck brace, turning her whole body while driving) ‘not to give the talk Teresa Gorman gave last month … on HRT … We've heard all we need to hear about dry vaginas…'

I spoke in a barn with two tents attached. The rains came. The downpour was torrential. They sat there, in a sauna, with the rain gushing in – under umbrellas. I am pleased to report that my speech went well, but I am so glad (so glad!) I do not have to do this every weekend. Who would be an MP?

Drink with Michael Howard in the leader's office, overlooking the Thames. Half bottle of Chablis on green sofas. He's buttoned up. I make him laugh about our daughters larking about in New York. He relaxes a little – not much. And then we get down to business. It's just the two of us.

Michael has been leader for nine months now. He's known ups and downs, but this has been a bad week – the worst. It's perceived in media-land as being all over. They
are not talking about the general election – the result of that is a foregone conclusion. They're talking about the leadership election after the general election.

Michael knows all this. He's no fool. And he's clearly deeply frustrated that his message isn't coming across.

‘You have a message?' I say, smiling.

‘Oh, yes,' he says, ‘I know what I want to do and why…' and as he sits forward and says it, he becomes more real, infinitely more attractive…

I'm there to talk about jokes – but I tell him he doesn't need jokes. People don't need him to be funny: they need him to be human – and convincing. We talk about Bill Clinton and his extraordinary ability to command an emotional response, to inspire and connect.

As Michael gets up and goes to the door to call in the others, I sit there thinking, ‘Do I want to become involved? Is there any point? He is a good man, but is this going to get us anywhere?'

The team: Ed
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is very likeable, Rachel Whetstone has become a bit of a spinny – more than a touch of the bossy-boots schoolmarm. Michael brings them in; cancels the seven o'clock meeting; senses that we're on to something. It can't wait until the party conference. Let's do something now … ‘Gyles, 19 July 2004 marks the nadir, the nadir – is that how you pronounce it? Now we have seen the way ahead…'

‘We're fucked, Gyles, utterly fucked.' Ed Vaizey, speech-writer to the Leader of the Opposition, sums up the prospects for his party and his leader nine months or a year ahead of the next election.

I like Ed. He's droll and savvy and fully aware that the situation is dire and the leader's set-up a shambles. ‘All you need to be Leader of the Opposition is to be able to do two things: head up the fund-raising, head-up the strategy.'

‘What's the strategy?'

‘Exactly.'

I said how much I like Michael, how effective he'd seemed at the Home Office, but how I wasn't yet sure what more there was…

‘There isn't.'

‘The magic?'

‘There won't be.'

Ed was hoping to get to know Michael better this coming week on holiday in Italy. He and Rachel have gone the past few years to stay with Anne Robinson (& Penrose) on holiday in Italy. This year the Howards are coming too. Except that while Ed and I are having tea the call comes that it's too hot in Italy and Anne is coming home – but the rest are welcome to go as planned. Michael and Sandra have already bought their tickets.

Ed is anxious about Wantage. He's put in two years and thinks the Lib Dems could win. He's been outed as one of the ‘Notting Hill Tories'. The Lib Dems will call him the Member for Notting Hill in Wantage. ‘I'm fucked. Michael's fucked. The holiday's fucked. We're all fucked.'

I went on from tea on the terrace at the House of Commons to a drink at the Charlotte Street Hotel with Charlotte Bush – publisher's publicist and the only woman I've met who hasn't fallen for Bill Clinton. ‘He's so flabby.' She was looking after the great man's book tour, but barely got beyond the entourage (three cars and a minibus for security) – especially disliking the overweight young woman who was ‘the President's scheduler'.

Supper with Joanna Lumley up the road at Tanur, where Jo ordered the mezze and it came: ten starters on a tray. We shan't be going again. Fortunately if you held the Pinot Grigio right up to your nose you could mask the stench from the toilets…

Michael Howard meeting on how to handle PMQs. The outsiders at the meeting (from the world of marketing) don't get it – that Michael has to make it work in the House for the sake of his troops' morale … It has to work in the chamber and on TV … The usual talk: get women into the doughnut, make the sound bite real etc. Nothing has changed in ten years. Even the cast seems much the same: David Cameron (impressive), George Osborne (earnest), Rachel Whetstone (at the far end of the table and very much in command of the show: we worked to her agenda). I sat next to Michael and we smiled at one another knowingly as the young ones rabbited on. The meeting served no purpose whatsoever.

With Eileen Atkins & Bill Shepherd to Sonny's. Eileen is very funny. She told us about her Women's Reading Group. She joined at the suggestion of John Standing, whose wife
Sarah is a founder … and it turns out that Kimberley Quinn
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is a member – and the personification of charm and intelligence: Eileen was almost ready to bed her herself … The revelations of Kimberley's complex relations with David Blunkett and Simon Hoggart and heaven knows who else have warmed our cockles on these cold winter nights. Anyway, the point is that Eileen wrote to Kimberley to commiserate and, to show fellow-feeling, told a story of one of her own past embarrassments … and Kimberley sent a lovely eleven-page response full of heart and hurt and humiliation … Eileen said that all eleven members of the group had written to Kimberley with a confession of their own past wickedness, including Sarah Standing – who is perfect and could only confess to having ‘been cross with John once' and feeling so bad about it! (‘Sarah is perfect, of course,' said Eileen. ‘Michèle, you are probably perfect too – but your saving grace is you have edge.')

On the night of the last Reading Group meeting – when Eileen was making the supper for it – at about three minutes to eight, Harold Pinter telephoned. ‘Eileen, will you do my birthday party?' For a moment, Eileen thought he meant cater for it – then she remembered going to some dreadful evening at the Pinters where people read poetry and assumed she was wanted as a kind of cabaret for the party and said, ‘Oh, Harold, I hate those sort of things.' Harold responded bleakly, ‘But you've done one of my plays before. I thought you liked them.' Then the penny dropped. Eileen is going to do a short tour then a season at the Arts in
The Birthday Party
. She'd like Jude Law as the young man, but the producers won't even ask him.

The general election result was entirely predictable. Blair is back, but with a majority down to 66 from 160. Labour lost forty-seven seats; we gained thirty-three; the Lib Dems gained eleven. The Lib Dems did well, with a 3.7 per cent swing their way. Labour had a swing against them of 5.5 per cent. The swing our way was just 0.7 per cent. Michael did valiantly – he's a good guy – but we were never going to win. When will we win again? And with whom? And does it matter? (Yes, I think it does. I am not really part of it anymore, but I do still care.)