Life Worth Living (35 page)

I did not mind getting up in the middle of the night, nor did I feel that I was missing out on anything by being tied down by two babies. I had been to all the parties I needed for this lifetime; I had slept with enough men to know the glories and limitations of passion. I had had my great love, romantic fulfilment, and a life that had sometimes been rather too fascinating for my own comfort. The virtue of coming to motherhood so late was that I knew exactly what I was missing, and I couldn’t have cared less.

I still needed a nanny, for tiredness has never held any attraction for me, and I would need to resume working at some stage. This I had actually organised as far back as December 1991: the nanny, a country woman aged about forty, with several children of her own, had been hovering in readiness. I telephoned her and told her to pack her bags – her airline ticket was on its way.

As if I did not have enough on my plate, I returned to London to discover that the Calcutta Creep had taken advantage of my absence to stir up more trouble. According to him, the trip to Russia had been arranged to conceal the fact that I had not been asked to the opening of a social event. Not only did I have my invitation to hand, but I had also declined it prior to leaving for Russia. Going to fetch a baby was rather more important than attending a social occasion. I fired off a writ for libel to stop him in his tracks. Bored though I was with lawsuits, I had to keep fighting if I was ever going to stop the press harassment. It did not prevent Dempster’s rats scurrying over my babies’ cots.

On the very afternoon of my return to London, I was sitting in my kitchen having a cup of tea and recounting my experiences in Russia to Anna, Lady Brocklebank, a close friend who is also a doctor and had acted as a referee for the adoption, when the doorbell rang.

‘Who is it?’ I asked over the intercom.

‘The
Daily Mail
,’ a woman’s voice replied.

‘What do you want?’

‘Can you please let us in, Lady Colin? I’d like to talk to you about the two babies you’ve brought back from Russia today.’

Someone from one of the other flats let the woman and her photographer into the lobby, so I cracked open the front door of my flat to speak to them.

‘I am terribly sorry to tell you that you’ve wasted your time coming here. I have nothing to say to you.’

I slammed the door shut and walked back into the kitchen.

‘Can you believe that?’ I said to Anna. ‘Two babies. Two babies, indeed. You know who’s tipped them off, don’t you?’ I mentioned the name of a mutual soon to be ex-friend. ‘She phoned me shortly after I got in from the airport. She, you and my brother Mickey are the only people who know I’m back in the country and that there are two babies.’

Anna herself had been in such a hurry to get over to see us that she hadn’t known I had both Dima and Misha until she arrived. ‘As my brother would never even think of speaking to the press, that leaves only you-know-who.’

‘It could be a coincidence,’ said Anna, kindness itself.

‘I doubt it. Either she’s currying favour with Dempster in the hope of getting a mention for herself, or she’s supplementing her paltry income with a few pieces of silver, Judas like.’

I was certain I was right, but just to make sure I set a trap. I gave each person to whom I spoke about the boys different variations of their names, and kept a record of what I had called them to whom. Less than twenty-four hours later, the trap was sprung. I had been to see the doctor with the babies. As I took the first baby out of the car outside the house, I was accosted by a photographer who loomed out of nowhere.

The paper would have no story if there was no picture, so I hunched my back and shielded Dima, running between the cars in the courtyard with the photographer in hot pursuit.

‘You do not have the right to photograph me on my home ground without my permission,’ I screamed from behind the cars. ‘Get off this property before I have you arrested.’

Much shouting went back and forth, as I demanded he withdrew and he and a woman begged me to come out. After a minute or so, the woman declared in a cultivated voice, ‘It’s OK, Lady Colin, you can come out now. He’s gone. I’ve sent him back to the car and he won’t take any photos of you without your permission.’

I straightened up, so angry I could have shredded him alive with my bare hands.

‘My name is Hilary Douglas and I am the royal correspondent of the
Sun
,’ said the young, dark-haired, rather attractive woman. ‘I’ve come to interview you about the two babies you’ve adopted.’

‘Forget it,’ I said curtly. ‘This is private property. You’re in contravention of the Press Complaints Commission’s rules. Please get off my property.’

‘Are these the babies?’ she said, looking into the Jaguar XJ6 at one and back to my arms at the other.

‘I am not answering one question,’ I snapped.

‘Can you at least confirm their names? Our informant has told us they’re called Dmitri and Misha.’ These were the versions of their names I had given to the treacherous social climber.

‘You obviously didn’t hear what I said,’ I told her furiously. ‘I will not answer one question. I suggest you get off this property before I have you thrown off.’

Realising that I meant business, Miss Douglas apologised for inconveniencing me and left. Once she had reached the gate, I walked across the porch to the building’s front door, my back shielding the baby from view. I noticed that the photographer was snapping us from the street. This was also a clear violation of the Press Complaints Commission’s rule concerning invasion of privacy, and even though I was pretty sure he would have nothing he could use, I was not about to leave anything to chance. Any photograph was better than none. I put the baby back into the car and ran across to the gate.

‘Give me that film,’ I demanded.

‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he sneered.

‘I’m not,’ I said solemnly. ‘I want that film and I will get it, on that you can depend. Please hand over the film and save us both a lot of trouble.’ I stretched my hand out.

‘Fuck off, lady,’ he said, and got into his car.

I positioned myself right in front of the vehicle.

The photographer started the engine.

I stood my ground.

He edged towards me.

I still stood my ground.

He had to stop when his bumper was about to touch my shin.

‘You’re going nowhere until you turn that film and any other photographs you’ve taken over to me,’ I shouted.

He revved the motor.

‘Mr MacDonald!’ I screamed, calling the porter, whose office was nearby. ‘Mr MacDonald, please call the police. Call the police!’

Hilary Douglas reached over, picked up the camera, and handed it to the photographer. He removed the film. She got out and handed it to me.

‘I’m really sorry,’ she said. ‘You must think we’re the lowest of the low. I had no idea it would be like this. I only started on this
job last week, you see. I’m the new royal correspondent, and they asked me to cover this story. I can’t apologise enough.’

Over the next few months, press interest in the children remained constant, though word soon spread that I considered no publicity worth the expense of my children’s privacy. When invasiveness failed, they tried money – I was offered tens of thousands of pounds.

Two weeks after my return from Russia, my stepmother-in-law, Margaret, Duchess of Argyll, died. Margaret and I had been great friends for nearly twenty years. When I was married, ever one for reconciliation, I had even brought Colin, whom she had not seen since the age of twelve, back into her life. That was a big mistake: within weeks he was threatening to smash her face in. As she knew what he had done to mine, she thereafter refused to see him. In the last five years of her life, Margaret and I had become particularly close. Twice a week, every week I was in London, I went to see her and took her adored poodle, Louis, for a run in the park with my dogs. Her glory days now over, she was often at a loose end, so until she became housebound, I frequently asked her to small supper parties at my flat, or we would go to the cinema together. Margaret and I had had a unique bond: our husbands, father and son, had both committed themselves to our destruction. If ever there was a dire warning on the destructiveness of publicity, it was the latter part of Margaret’s life. Born in 1912, the only child of George Whigham, the founder of the British, American and Canadian Celanese Corporations, Margaret was the greatest débutante of all time in an age when débutantes were as famous as rock stars are today. By the age of twenty-five she was so celebrated on both sides of the Atlantic that Cole Porter included her in his hit song, ‘You’re the Top’.

Margaret would undoubtedly have lived out the remainder of her life as an ultra-respectable, stylish and beautiful heiress and a pillar of society, had she not made the cardinal error of marrying Ian Campbell, 11
^th
Duke of Argyll. He was penniless, a chronic alcoholic and shunned in good company as an unscrupulous reprobate. His second wife, Louise Clews, who was the mother of his two sons, warned Margaret’s first husband, Charlie Sweeny, that he was a wife-beating opportunist who was marrying Margaret solely for her money.

By her own admission, Margaret was always a sucker for a good-looking face and a glib line in chatter, and Big Ian, as he was known, had both. Margaret did not believe Charlie’s warning and went ahead with the marriage, which was not a happy one from the outset. Big Ian’s cruelty towards Margaret has been recounted by many of their friends, and was surpassed in scale only by the voraciousness with which he worked his way through a large chunk of the Whigham millions. Inevitably, the marriage collapsed, in 1959. As I have recounted elsewhere, Big Ian tried to blackmail Margaret into making a settlement of £250,000 upon him, and when she refused, he dragged her through the courts in a sensational divorce.

The attitude of the judge, Lord Wheatley, was symptomatic of the prejudices rampant in Britain in 1963 and which still exist, to a lesser degree, to this day. He could not believe that any
gentleman, much less a duke, could be as dishonourable and disreputable as Margaret testified. Big Ian’s peers knew otherwise, however, and he lived out the remaining ten years of his life in exile in Paris, shunned by all but a handful of stalwarts.

Margaret survived for another twenty years. The court case had made her undoubtedly the most notorious woman in British society, and she was deeply traumatised by the loss of her respectability. She was one of my most avid supporters, telling all who would listen that Colin Campbell was doing to me what his father had done to her. ‘Character assassination’, she called it, and would not stand for one word against me.

Our shared trauma was not the only reason why I was so fond of Margaret. She could be tremendously good company and had the courage of her convictions. While strangers did not see beyond the haughty duchess, those of us who knew her well recognised her as a witty amusing, loyal woman who always stood up for what she believed.

Although I felt Margaret’s loss, I appreciated that death had been a release for her. The last few years of her life had been a torment, largely because of financial problems. After she was forced to leave the Grosvenor House Hotel, where she had had a flat since the sale of her Georgian townhouse in Mayfair in 1976, she often said, ‘I should have died while I was still at Grosvenor House.’

Margaret’s death was the media event in Britain in the summer of 1993. Even at her funeral the press blocked my way into the church and hassled me for a comment until I snapped, ‘For God’s sake, can’t you leave people alone? This is a funeral, you know, and while her death might not matter to you, it does to some of us. No, she was not the godawful creature you’ve made her out to be ever since my father-in-law divorced her. The obituaries and articles that have been printed in the last few days are a disgrace, and I wish you’d just leave us all alone.’

‘Why did he do it, then?’ a reporter asked, thrusting a microphone under my nose as the flashbulbs popped and the television cameras whirred. What the hell, I thought. It’s about time someone stood up and was counted.

‘Because he was a dirty, rotten stinker who tried to blackmail her, and when she wouldn’t succumb, made money in a different way. By selling stories about her,’ I said. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to go into the church and say my goodbyes.’

No one gets Brownie points for guessing whose comment featured on the television news that evening, or whose picture was published large as life in all the newspapers, along with a word-perfect quote. Was I sorry? Not a bit. Margaret deserved to be stood up for, and I was glad that amid all the sensational obituaries and salacious articles there was at least one fair remark.

After Margaret’s funeral, I returned to motherhood and a quiet life. In October, the boys were christened at the Brompton Oratory by Father Harrison, to a resounding public silence which I had worked hard to achieve.

The occasion was magical. After the babies were received into the Church at 2.30 p.m., my closest friends and I returned to my London flat for a champagne tea party. It was wonderful to be surrounded only by people who wished us well, and when it was over I had cause to reflect upon how lucky I was to have so many good and loving friends. I planned to dedicate myself totally to the children until the new year, when I would start work on my next book, and I looked forward to the future with optimism.

A
s 1993 drew to a close, looking for a house in London for my expanded family became the number-one priority. Now that I had two sons as opposed to the one baby I had anticipated, we needed somewhere bigger. In some ways, it was the ideal time to look. The market was depressed and prices were lower than they had been for a generation. However, I was still funding my lawsuits at this stage, and consequently much of the capital I would otherwise have used had to be kept available for legal expenses. I would have to be incredibly lucky to find the sort of place I wanted, for I was not prepared to move out of the Belgravia–Pimlico–Chelsea–Kensington grid.

‘You’ll never find what you want,’ my brother used to say. ‘You’re going to have to move to Clapham or Battersea or Fulham.’

‘In that case, I’ll stay at Lochmore House,’ I’d respond.

Lochmore House was one of the four blocks of Decoesque flats which comprised the Cundy Street Flats. Situated on the corner of Eaton Terrace and Ebury Street in Belgravia, the smartest area in London, they were, like my previous flat, owned by the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor Estate and housed the highest concentration of aristocrats and pukka establishment figures in the land. Among them were the former prime minister Lord Home of the Hirsel; arts ministers Richard Luce and David Mellor (whose flat was actually the property of his girlfriend, Viscountess Cobham); the Queen’s former private secretary, Lord Charteris and her Master of the Horse, Lord Westmoreland and his Countess; and the Princess of Wales’ great-aunt, the Dowager Duchess of Abercorn.

I was fortunate in having a brother who was a solicitor. Although he refused to get involved in the actions lest something go wrong and cause trouble between us, he used to warn me of the pitfalls of the legal system. My solicitor did the same, and usually agreed with Mickey. It was reassuring to have such a close and knowledgeable sounding board in the background.

Mickey and I had always had what Richard Adeney described as a ‘close but antagonistic’ relationship. It was a closeness based on mutual respect for one another’s characters rather than on similarity of personality. We were so radically different that, aside from a love of people, music and art, we had nothing in common. Indeed, we were so opposed in some respects that I used to say, ‘I’m going to check that I’m doing the right thing. If Mickey disagrees with it, I’ll know I should do it.’ This did not stop me loving him, however, and I confidently expected my only brother to continue to bug and bless my life for many years to come.

On Christmas morning 1993, I awoke bright and early and prepared the children for mass at Westminster Cathedral. This was going to be a quiet Christmas. Unusually, neither Mickey nor I was having a large luncheon party. This year I was going
to the El Khazens and he to Daksheenie Abeywardene, his partner. Later, he would call in at Lochmore House on his way home and we would exchange presents.

Six o’clock came and went, and there was no sign of Mickey. Six-thirty came and went. Still no Mickey. At seven o’clock, I stomped to the telephone in high dudgeon and called Abbey.

‘He didn’t come,’ she said. ‘He said he wasn’t feeling well.’

This was most unusual. Mickey was never ill. He was a powerhouse of such energy that even going for a walk with him was an experience few survived unscathed.

I telephoned my brother, straight away. ‘I was sleeping. I’ll come and see you in an hour,’ he said.

Two hours later, by now very worried, I called Mickey again. ‘I’m sorry, I fell asleep again. I’m just so exhausted all I can do is sleep.’

Suddenly, a host of little observations I had made in the last few months fused before my eyes in one horrid moment of recognition. The time in August I had gone to his office and asked him, as he rose from behind his desk, ‘How come you have a tan and you haven’t been abroad?’ The pasty but somehow even more tanned look he had had in October at the children’s christening, which prompted me to repeat the question. How the indefatigable Mickey had fallen asleep at Richard Adeney’s dinner to celebrate his birthday in November.

‘Is there something wrong with you? Do you know what it is? And if so, what is it?’ I asked, my tone grave.

‘Come round tomorrow. We’ll speak then,’ he said.

From his evasive answer, I knew that Mickey had a life-threatening condition. Of course, I said nothing, and we rang off with the normal civilities. Without even replacing the receiver, I telephoned Jesús Mora. ‘I just had the most extraordinary telephone conversation with Mickey. I’m sure he’s going to tell me tomorrow that he’s dying.’

‘You might be wrong,’ said Jesús, trying to console me as I broke down in floods of tears. The truth, however, has a sound as clear as a clarion to the ears of those who listen to it. I hoped against hope, but I was prepared for the worst when I turned up at Mickey’s the following morning.

He took a seat on a chair beneath the picture window in his drawing room and I took one diagonally opposite him. He looked at me. I looked at him. I couldn’t read his express ion, and I was pretty sure he couldn’t read mine either.

‘I’ve got cancer,’ he said. ‘It’s in the right side of my mouth and the sinuses.’

I didn’t even blink lest I convey what I was thinking.

‘Do you remember how I told you the other day that I was having trouble with one of my teeth, that it was wobbling? Well, I went to the dentist and he said, “You’d better go and see a doctor. There’s no bone beneath this tooth.” I went to the doctor. She referred me to an oncologist. They did some tests and it turns out I have lymphoma – that’s a form of cancer of the lymphatic system.’

Our maternal Aunt Majorie, now happily in remission against all the odds, and paternal cousin, Peter Jonas, had both had another form of cancer of the lymphatic system, Hodgkin’s disease. I calculated that the genetic odds were not in his favour.

‘What’s the prognosis?’ I asked.

‘I don’t suppose I’ll die in the next week or two, but the odds are I’m not going to live as long as we all expected.’

‘I take it you’ll start treatment immediately and cancel your trip to Jamaica?’ He was due to leave in three days’ time.

‘No, no, no. The ticket’s booked and paid for, and I’m not changing my plans. I’m going, and I’m going to see everyone I planned to see.’

He’s going in case it’s goodbye, I interpreted.

‘The oncologist says I can go,’ he went on. ‘A few weeks one way or the other won’t make any difference.’

‘Does he know how long you’ve had this growth?’

‘I didn’t ask him that.’

Typical. Mickey never delved. I made a mental note to speak to the doctors as soon as I could engineer a meeting. Someone had to know exactly what was really going on.

Two days later, Mickey left as planned for Jamaica. Catherine Graham was writing a biography of Camilla Parker-Bowles, which I had assisted with. Catherine suggested that I wrote a series of articles on Diana for her employers, the
Sun
. Never was a commission more welcome.

I was haunted by the possibility that Mickey might die at forty-six, and having something to do straight away took my mind off the appalling images which flickered through it. As the days stretched into weeks, it was easy to put the issue on the back-burner and think, where there’s life, there’s hope.

Mickey returned from Jamaica at the end of January and promptly went into St Mary’s Hospital for his first course of chemotherapy. It was difficult to get a measure of how worried or hopeful one should be, and I was keen to waylay a doctor to get a more accurate prognosis. There was never a doctor around when I was, however, so I had to judge by the dramatic improvement the chemotherapy wrought. Within days, Mickey
looked so much more like his old self, and had so much more energy, that I dared to hope that he would be as lucky as Auntie and Peter had been.

The second time Mickey was in hospital for his chemotherapy, I made sure that I arranged for one of his doctors to see me. ‘I know from my brother-in-law, who is also a doctor, that you doctors don’t like giving firm prognoses or making estimates with time,’ I said. ‘But the rest of our family is relying on me to keep them informed about what is really going on with my brother. What I need to know is, is he dying and if so, how much time does he have?’

‘The prognosis for a cure is not good,’ the doctor said. ‘But I’d be very surprised if he doesn’t last at least another two years.’

Two years, that was good. Anything could happen in two years. Medical science was making such strides that what was not curable today might be in six months, or eighteen. I was even more encouraged when Mickey was released from the hospital and returned to his old routine of working till eight o’clock every evening. On two occasions I deliberately dropped into his office unexpectedly so that I could judge his progress. He was back to being the old, energetic Mickey.

The Sunday before he was due to return to St Mary’s for his third course of chemotherapy, Mickey spent the afternoon with me after church. I can still see him, sitting on the sofa beneath the window overlooking the garden on Ebury Street. He looked so healthy, so vibrant, that, for the first time since Christmas, I thought, he’s going to make it.

Two days later he phoned me. ‘Don’t bother coming to take me to the hospital. The oncologist says he wants to see me in his office.’

Bad sign, I thought.

Bad sign indeed.

‘The chemotherapy isn’t working as well as it ought to,’ Mickey said on the telephone when he got home. ‘It’s not containing the growth effectively. It shrinks after each course, but then begins to grow rapidly after the drugs wear off. They’re switching me to radiotherapy.’

It was at that moment that I knew that my brother was going to die, and that it would be sooner rather than later. Radiotherapy was just a palliative, something to ease his last few weeks or months.

‘I have to go to the Hammersmith five days a week for six weeks, once they fit my face mask. The laser is so specific and the rays so strong they have to mark your mask and strap you down to the machine.’

Mickey expected to be able to drive himself to the hospital, but his condition deteriorated so rapidly during the week before his first fitting that I took over. The lassitude from which he had been suffering prior to the infusion of steroids which are a part
of the chemotherapy cocktail returned in force. Worse, the weight just dropped off him. I encouraged him to eat; I even cooked a variety of meals he liked and took them up to his flat to freeze. The cancer, however, was now growing at such a rate that it was uncomfortable for him to eat and, of course, the less he ate, the less he felt able to, and the more lethargic he become.

‘You’ll die of starvation if you don’t watch out,’ I said.

He opened his mouth to show me an upper back molar on the right side of his mouth dangling from a ball which was about the size of a dime.

‘Um,’ was all I could say.

‘If you stop to consider that that’s the tip of the iceberg, and that the rest is also expanding in my sinuses, you can imagine how I feel.’

‘Does it hurt?’

‘No, it’s more of a pressure than a pain.’

‘Then you’ll have just have to liquidise your food, Mickey. You must have nourishment.’

A few days later I took Mickey for a fitting and he discussed the problem with the doctors, who put him on liquid food. When we got back to his flat, I looked in his mouth again and nearly passed out from terror. In five days, the visible part of the growth had increased from the size of a dime to that of a quarter. It made me frantic with worry. Everything I saw told me that Mickey was dying right before my eyes. I was now so unsettled that I could not write. Nor did there seem much point in looking for a house. The last thing I needed to do was move at a time like this. I put my life on hold. The feedback I was getting from the family also discomfited me. Every time I spoke to my parents, Aunt Majorie or my sisters, I could almost hear them thinking, ‘Georgie’s being alarmist. We saw Mickey at Christmas, and he wasn’t anywhere near as bad as she’s making out.’ Tut, tut, tut.

A month after the chemotherapy had been aborted, I took Mickey to the Hammersmith Hospital for the final fitting of his face mask and a meeting with the oncologist. I made up my mind that I was going to speak to him on my own, by hook or by crook. When Mickey was called away, I bolted to the nurse and told her that I had to speak to the specialist before my brother returned.

She responded to the urgency in my voice. ‘Of course,’ she said gently.

What a pleasure it is to be with people who have some humanity, I thought. I was so used, in public life, to being regarded as an inanimate object. The kindness of the nurses and the doctors was a spiritually enhancing aspect of the whole nightmare.

The nurse ushered me into the professor’s consulting room. ‘I’ll be brief,’ I said, once we had greeted each other. ‘I know you’re very busy, and I want to be out of here before my brother returns. I need the truth, not only to deal with what’s happening realistically, but also to inform my family, who are depending on me to provide them with accurate information.’

The professor, who was devastatingly handsome, looked at me and said in a tone that conveyed both compassion and agreement, ‘What would you like to know?’

I wanted to ask, ‘Is he dying, and if so, how quickly?’ This time, however, the words, would not come out, and had I tried to force them, I would have broken down. Knowing that doctors do not like tears, I said instead, ‘It doesn’t look good, does it?’ and smiled to conceal the tears that welled up anyway.

‘No, it doesn’t,’ he said, returning my smile with an understanding look. ‘Michael’s cancer has turned out to be far more virulent than we expected. If he’s lucky, he could last two or three months, but he could go within a matter of days if anything happens.’

I was so devastated by this news that I did not think to ask what ‘anything’ might be. In fact, I couldn’t think at all. Before I knew it Mickey was back, and the three of us were having a chat about politics. It is astonishing how people in extraordinary situations hang on to the ordinary fabric of life. This was the first time I had seen this phenomenon at first hand. As Mickey’s life ebbed away, I noticed how we all continually overlaid the awfulness of what was happening with mundane conversations and pleasures. Mickey’s friends invariably took their cue from him and the family, and when Mickey was around, the atmosphere was often so jolly that we might all have been at a cocktail party. When he was not there, however, the masks fell away and the grief was painfully visible.