Speaking for Myself (37 page)

That Sunday the
Mail
ran a couple of paragraphs: nothing about the children — I’m not surprised, as it was all very domestic stuff — but an unguarded remark by Bill Clinton that Ros had overheard, and a couple of comments about different people who had come to stay in Downing Street.

We weren’t able to stop the press reports — the fact that the Blairs’ nanny had written a book — but everything concerning the manuscript had to be handed over to us, and the
Mail
was ordered to pay our court costs. We were also awarded costs against Ros, but I chose not to enforce them. It should really have ended there, but by this time Ros had become involved with a woman, whom the papers would later describe as a “fantasist,” who tried to sell the manuscript elsewhere, in spite of the terms of the injunction. Extraordinary allegations started coming out. I then had to start taking out gag orders against this woman as well. It was a complete nightmare.

The baby was due on May 23, but on the morning of the nineteenth, I knew that labor had started. Always one for putting off the trip to the hospital until the last possible minute, I decided to do just one more thing. As Euan was taking his GCSEs, the headmaster had suggested that I come in to discuss how best to ensure that the press didn’t get hold of his grades. Needless to say, we were followed, but Robbie, one of Tony’s drivers, did a quick U-turn in Victoria Street and managed to lose them. Jackie came with me, as she was intimately involved in anything to do with the children’s schools. Fiona came, too, as this was connected to the press.

My contractions were getting stronger.
Little does he realize,
I thought as I listened to the headmaster,
that as we sit here discussing how to keep my son’s GCSEs out of the tabloids, I’m about to give birth in his office.

When we were finished, I was so terrified about the press finding out, I refused to tell the hospital we were on our way. So Robbie just drove round the back, and we snuck in. I was taken straight into one of the delivery suites. Then there was the question of Tony. Obviously, the moment he arrived, the press would know what was happening. In fact, they had got wind of it anyway, and they were all gathering outside. When I found out, my contractions stopped immediately. Even the thought of that phalanx of photographers was enough to freeze me.

Sally Benatar, the only woman on Tony’s protection team, had by now arrived, and she and Fiona waited outside as labor got well and truly under way. My other deliveries had all been fairly quiet births, but I made up for that with Leo! I remember the nursing staff saying that I didn’t have to worry about how much noise I made because the room was soundproof. “No one will hear anything,” they claimed. Only later did I realize that the room wasn’t
that
soundproof, and poor Sally, who was in the early stages of her first pregnancy, was deeply regretting having volunteered to be present.

At around eight Tony said he couldn’t wait any longer and came over. The ’tecs all put their heads round the door to say hello, and every one of them looked as if he was going to be sick. Leo was by far the longest of my four births. I think part of me was holding on because I was still terrified of being photographed. It was stupid, really, but when you’re pregnant, you get these fixations, and I just thought,
I do not want to be photographed looking like that.
Giving birth is very private. You think you’re ugly and the whole thing is horrendous. You think,
I don’t want my husband to see me like this, let alone the entire world.
In the end, of course, you don’t give a damn.

From Tony’s point of view, it was the best birth, because it was entirely natural. Euan’s was scary, as they had to use forceps. Kathryn’s was scary, because I was being cut open. And Nicholas’s — the only one that had been calm and natural — Tony had missed completely. I refused any drugs because my aim was to get out with the baby in complete privacy, and that meant as soon as possible.

Leo was born just after midnight, and at a few minutes after 2:00 a.m., I walked to the waiting car, the baby in my arms and Tony by my side. That was that. No one expected me to be released that night. The boys were waiting up for us — Kathryn was staying with a friend — and my mum was there to help. All was well with the world. As I fed my new baby for the first time, I felt totally safe. I was in my own bed, in my own home, and no one was going to come running through the door and snatch a picture.

We knew that there was a hunger for photographs, so I had asked Mary McCartney if she would come and take them. I had got to know her through Breast Cancer Care, her mother, Linda, having died of breast cancer. We decided we’d sell the images and give the proceeds to the charity. So the next day — shades of when Euan was born — André came in to make me look presentable. Mary took the photographs: one for the press and one with all the kids for us. Unfortunately they’d been up so late the night before that they were horribly badly behaved. Nicholas ended up with a bruised eye, thanks to Euan, and my mother was in tears.

Chapter 25

Future Imperfect

L
eo’s timing was impeccable. He arrived on the Friday before the bank holiday week. For ages I’d been pushing Tony to take some paternity leave, but he’d refused, saying, “I can’t. I’m the Prime Minister.” But from the moment he clapped eyes on his son, he was so besotted he wanted to spend time with him, and as Parliament wasn’t sitting, it wasn’t that difficult to cancel all his outside engagements. Of course he was still on the phone and read his papers, but basically he was based in the flat enjoying being a new dad.

When Leo was about six weeks old, I decided I needed to take a break and to start getting back in shape. The singer Cliff Richard, whom I had met at a charity event a year or so before, had said that if ever we wanted to get away, we could borrow his villa in Portugal.

So while Tony stayed at home to keep an eye on the kids, Leo and I — together with Carole and my mum — flew off for a week’s vacation. It was exactly what I needed: sunshine, good food, and gentle exercise. Everything was going well until the phone call from my husband on July 6, telling me he had just come back from the police station with Euan after he’d been found sprawled across the pavement in Leicester Square, the heart of London’s entertainment district.

“But he’s home now and he’s safe,” Tony said when he called to give me the glad tidings. “I won’t suggest you try to speak to him because he’s incoherent. But you don’t have to worry, because I’m in charge.”

“If you were really in charge, this wouldn’t have happened.”

It was a short conversation. When I put down the receiver, I turned on the television. The news had even reached Portugal.

Fortunately I was going back to England the following day, and it was a very shamefaced sixteen-year-old who greeted me. His father wasn’t much better. I wasn’t really cross. The press was making a lot of it, but the reality is that had he been the son of anybody else, they’d just have said, “Okay, don’t do it again.” As it was, because of press pressure, he had to be given a formal caution by the police.

The local police station was obviously out, so Euan and I were told to take the emergency escape route, a gloomy old tunnel that ran under Whitehall, right into the Ministry of Defence. In the event of a terrorist attack or a bomb scare, it would take us straight to the nuclear bunker.

A car was waiting on the far side of the Ministry of Defence, and we were taken to a police station in south London, where Euan made a statement and was given the caution.

“If you don’t get into trouble again,” the kindly police officer said, “when you’re eighteen, this will be wiped off, and there’ll be no record at all.”

Euan looked decidedly cheered. “You mean once I’ve turned eighteen, no one need ever know?”

My heart sank.
My sweet, innocent boy,
I thought.
You don’t realize that they’ll never let you forget that at the age of sixteen, you were drunk and were cautioned.

Because of giving birth to Leo, I missed that summer’s G8 summit in Okinawa, which is why André wasn’t there to prevent my husband from wearing a hideous Japanese shirt the British press delighted in. When he got home, Tony explained that they were all given a choice, and he had chosen the least offensive. To his amazement, when Bill Clinton appeared, Tony noticed that Bill had picked the most hideous of all.

“Why on earth did you choose that?” Tony asked.

“Take it from an old-timer,” Bill said. “Sometimes when you go to these summits, you’re in a rock-or-a-hard-place situation. If you don’t wear it, you offend your host. If you do, you’re made a mockery of at home. Now you, Tony, wearing that particular shirt, people at home might conceivably think that you actually chose to wear it. Me, wearing this shirt, everybody at home is going to think,
Boy, is that Clinton diplomatic, being so nice to those foreigners. There’s no way he would have chosen to wear that. What a good man he is!”

The UN doesn’t go in for funny outfits, and as that September’s Millennium General Assembly was a one-off, I was determined to go. I was still breast-feeding, however, so I would need to take Leo. The first question was, Can I take Jackie? The answer from the Cabinet office was absolutely not. Fortunately Leo has known André since the day he was born, and so André agreed to be his stand-in nanny. During that whole trip, whenever I had to be somewhere else, André looked after him: changed his diapers, gave him his bottle of expressed milk, everything.

André has had to put up with a lot from me over the years, but he never expected to have to introduce the British Prime Minister’s son to the American President. We were staying in the UN Plaza Hotel, which because of its location doesn’t have to try very hard. I was late returning to the room, a circumstance with which André was all too familiar. The baby bag was packed, and Leo was strapped to André’s front in the sling, when two FBI men arrived at the door. They told André to bring the baby; Mrs. Blair would meet him at the destination. More than a little unnerved, he was ushered into a limousine — one of five, four of which were empty — and off they set. Then, disaster. Leo filled his diaper. Worst of all, it was of the explosive variety, and André had forgotten to pack an extra set of clothes. As André always points out, he is not a professional nanny, and he panicked.

“Excuse me,” he said to the Secret Service man beside the driver. “I have a problem.”

The man was totally unfazed, and seconds later they screeched to a halt. The door opened and André was ushered out, Leo still strapped to his front, to find himself being escorted into Ralph Lauren.

“My!” said the greeter — the place had been completely cleared of customers — “you must be important!” Then the penny dropped. “Oh, my God, it’s Baby Blair!”

They were whisked into the back of the shop, and once André had cleaned Leo up and put on a new diaper, he was presented with a brand-new outfit, dungarees and a sweater resplendent with the American flag.

Next stop was the Waldorf Hotel, where he was assured I would be waiting. He was taken up through the kitchen entrance — the route of choice for American Presidents and their wives — then up to the presidential suite on the top floor, which was bristling, he says, with bodyguards, earpieces, and cell phones. Finally he arrived at a pair of double doors.

“The President will see you now,” he was told, and the door was held open.

“What about Mrs. Blair?”

“She’s not here yet. You’re to go on in.”

He was petrified. Making his way down the empty corridor, he began calling out, “Hello? Hello? Anybody there?”

“In here” came the reply. André pushed open the door to the room from which the voice was coming, only to see Bill and Hillary Clinton at the far end of a room the size of a tennis court.

I arrived about five minutes later, to find Bill holding Leo and generally cooing, although my son’s red face showed that he had clearly been exercising his lungs until very recently. André gave me one of his looks.

“Cherie,” he hissed, “don’t you ever do that to me again.”

We all then proceeded to the UN to meet up with Tony. The first group to emerge was the Chinese. They are usually very stiff and unforthcoming, but seeing Leo in his little American sweater was too much even for them. They stopped and talked and had their pictures taken with Baby Blair. Then French President Jacques Chirac came out, and it was the same thing. Tony couldn’t believe it. “Why on earth,” he said, “is the British Prime Minister’s son wearing an American jumper?”

“It’s a long story,” I said.

The general election in 2001 was set for May 2, to coincide with local elections, but following a severe outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, it was postponed until June 7. This outbreak was a major disaster for farmers, and the government was entirely right to wait until the situation was under control before going to the country. But it was singularly bad timing for me, as I was about to start a big case on May 8. When I had taken it on, I had assumed the election would be done and dusted by the time it began. Fortunately, as it was expected to be a very long case, the judge agreed we could have a “reading day” every Friday. In addition, a couple of public holidays were coming up.

As a result, although my campaigning with Tony was confined to the weekends, I was able to do some on my own with Angela Goodchild, who took over my schedule for the weeks of the campaign. As Fiona and Roz were “special advisers” paid for by the government, they were forbidden to do anything that might be deemed political. Angela had been a volunteer at Labour Party headquarters in the 1997 election and had then come in as a part-timer, a Labour Party employee in the political office, to help with Tony’s more personal mail. With the publicity surrounding the founding of Matrix, members of the public increasingly saw me as a first port of call for legal advice, and I was flooded with queries. As Downing Street understandably couldn’t help — anything to do with the law was clearly my professional domain — I negotiated to pay for Angela’s services one day a week. We got on very well, and from then on, whenever I hit the campaign trail, Angela would accompany me.