Speaking for Myself (16 page)

The next day Tony told me about the count, how the first boxes to come in were from the outlying villages around Darlington, which were Tory wards. They were all piled up on tables, and he knew from Beaconsfield exactly what that meant: the Conservative candidate was in the lead.

“I was in such a panic,” he later admitted, “that I went outside and had a cigarette” (the first since our wedding day). But then new boxes began to arrive, and the tide turned. In the end he won by 8,281 votes.

Tony might have been successful, but the results for the Labour Party as a whole were disastrous. Any idea that going further to the left was the way to revive the party was dented. Michael Foot resigned, and Neil Kinnock took over as leader.

One of Tony’s election promises was that if he was elected as the MP for Sedgefield, he would buy a house in the constituency. Thankfully, he didn’t say we would move up there permanently, which was what he’d planned to do if he hadn’t been elected: he had been determined not to be accused of being a London carpetbagger.

Although Tony might have been happy to move his practice, I knew that if I moved mine, I could wave good-bye to specializing in employment law; it would be back to a diet of family, crime, and accident cases. With Tony now safely elected, I could breathe again. We could have a home in the northeast, but I could continue to work in London.

Immediately we began thinking about where to buy. Even though he had only been there three weeks, Tony had a good idea of the geography, it being so close to where he’d been brought up. Sedgefield is essentially a rural constituency made up of mining villages and farms. The small town of Sedgefield itself, he decided, was a bit posh. As he’d had a lot of support from Trimdon, it made sense to base himself round there, and we could tap into the community through John and Lily Burton.

So while I went back to work, Tony stayed up in Durham, getting to know the people and looking for a house. It would need to be comparatively big, he had decided, as it would double as the constituency office. In the meantime he continued to sleep on the Burtons’ floor.

In early July he called me with news. “Cherie, I’ve found the perfect house. It’s fabulous! It’s got seven Victorian fireplaces and a hand pump in the kitchen!”

“Does it have anything else?” I asked. “Because we’re expecting a baby.”

Throughout the campaign, I had been feeling a little peculiar, which I’d put down to anxiety. I still wonder whether it happened the night of his thirtieth birthday party, but we’ll never know for sure.

Before we got married, I’d been on the Pill. But Tony always worried about the long-term effects, so after the wedding we practiced other forms of contraception. Once I realized that Thanet was a dead duck, I stopped taking precautions. My future, I decided, did not lie in politics, though I never imagined I would get pregnant immediately. When Tony was selected as candidate, I saw that even thinking about starting a family was not sensible, so I went back to using contraception again . . . a bit late.

As for Myrobella, as the house was called, the answer to my question “Anything else?” was no. The house had been cleaned out. The last occupant had been the mine superintendent’s widow. A friend of John Burton’s had been planning to buy it, but luckily for us, the reality of the renovation proved too daunting for him. Everything needed to be done: rewiring, replumbing, the lot.

The hamlet of Trimdon Colliery is about two miles from Trimdon Village. It’s basically two streets of small terraced houses, at right angles to each other, with Myrobella roughly in the middle. The unusual name is not one of those unwieldy conjunctions of the owners’ names (as I first supposed), but a variety of pear that grew in profusion in the garden. We bought it for about £30,000 and spent about the same doing the absolutely necessary improvements. We didn’t move in till the following summer, by which time Euan had been born.

When I discovered I was pregnant, I was twenty-nine years old. My career was going pretty well. I had started to do much more employment law and less of the more general stuff. So far, so good.

I was only the second woman tenant that 5 Essex Court had ever had. The first one, when she found out she was expecting, left and never came back. That wasn’t my intention at all. Nor could it be. Although some barrister MPs continue to work, Tony had decided to give it all up and devote himself to politics. As simple as that. He did one last case and then bowed out for good.

Financially, of course, this had implications. By 1983 he had been earning in the region of £80,000 per year. This would now drop to an MP’s salary of less than £20,000 — not bad at all for the times, but not enough to cover our expenses, especially with a baby on the way. It was going to be a struggle. I was about to become the main breadwinner, a status that filled me with anxiety. Not that I had ever indulged in fantasies of being a stay-at-home housewife — quite the reverse. The specter of what had befallen my mother loomed large in my life. I wasn’t afraid of abandonment — I didn’t think for a moment that Tony would abandon me. (But, then, what new wife does?) However, accidents happen. Behind my mum was the example of my grandma. How often had she drummed into me the need for a woman to have financial independence as she recounted trudging the streets of Crosby and Blundellsands in her desperate attempt to find work after Grandad had his accident on the Liverpool docks after World War II. For two years he was totally incapacitated, which led directly to my dad leaving school long before he should have, which changed his whole life. That was why my education meant so much to her: nothing to do with certificates and diplomas, and everything to do with never being dependent on a man for money.

None of these practical considerations, however, took away from the sheer excitement of realizing that a baby was on the way. I have always loved babies, and the unexpectedness only added to the thrill — like being given a surprise present that you have secretly longed for.

In 1983 there was no such thing as maternity leave, not even a moratorium on the rent. Once the baby was born, I would be able to arrange for child care and continue to work. But before birth comes pregnancy — something I couldn’t delegate. My practice was far less lucrative than Tony’s, and so I had to work as long as I possibly could. This is where my stubborn streak came to the fore. I would show everybody that I could do it. Completely ridiculous, but there we are.

Just because I was pregnant, I saw no reason to slow down. Now that Tony was MP for Sedgefield, he was up there every weekend, and I’d go with him, though usually on a later train. Then as now, on a Friday night it would be standing room only. Young and healthy as I was, this was a strain the bigger I got, not least because I had usually been on my feet in court earlier in the day.

I was due on January 29, 1984. At my first checkup after Christmas, I was told that the baby was too small. “The baby is not receiving sufficient nourishment,” the doctor said. “You are doing too much. At eight months this workload is completely unacceptable.”

I was taken to the hospital for bed rest and went nearly mad with boredom. After ten days, there being no improvement, they said they wanted to induce me. I wasn’t keen, I said.

“Mrs. Blair, your baby is not growing. It’s not a question of not being keen.”

Tony and I had gone to all the birthing classes, and I had fully expected to have my baby naturally. But they broke my water and put me on an IV, and immediately I was right into a very painful experience. My firstborn made his appearance at about eleven-thirty, on January 19, 1984, after an epidural and a high-forceps delivery. So much for natural childbirth.

As birth experiences go, it was utterly ghastly, including a third-degree tear, because they yanked him out. It was the human equivalent of going from zero to sixty in five seconds. Lyndsey and Tony’s sister, Sarah, were now sharing a flat, and when they arrived at the hospital, I was still in trauma. There was blood all over the place, and Sarah said it put her off having babies forever. Luckily for the future of the planet, a new mother quickly forgets the pain as she is overwhelmed by love for this perfect little person. This was certainly my experience, and from the first blink of those little unfocused eyes, the curl of those tiny fingers, I was hooked. We called this precious creature Euan, after Euan Uglow and also a school friend of Tony’s who had died far too young.

Tony had been there since the induction. It would be nice to say that his presence had made all the difference. It would be wrong. He was completely useless. Like practically all new fathers, he hadn’t been expecting it to be quite so gory. My husband has always been good at empathizing, but when it comes to childbirth, empathy only goes so far. Once Euan was cleaned and wrapped and smelling delicious, however, Tony’s pride and delight in his son was such that you’d think he had taken more than a queasy spectator’s role. He made up for it later, becoming as adoring and hands-on a dad as anybody could wish for. That afternoon Tony told me I had a visitor. I was about to have my picture taken, he informed me, by a photographer from the
Northern Echo:
Sedgefield MP, wife, and newborn son being the theme. I think the caption was something like “Euan Brings Labour for Labour.”

I was given a rubber ring to sit on so that at least I could force a smile. As the guy went about his business, focusing and clicking, all I could think was
An appearance before the highest court in the land is a cakewalk compared to this. I am never going to do this again
.

My last thought as I went to sleep that night was of my husband:
I hate this man
.

Euan was comparatively small, so the numerous hats and coatees I had knitted, though far too big, came in handy, as he needed to be kept very warm. He was both families’ first grandchild, and we were well looked after: my mum came down, then Auntie Audrey, then Olwen. But it couldn’t last. I needed to get back to work; I needed a nanny.

Euan was christened in Sedgefield, and that same weekend I found Angela, who stayed with us for four years. I had advertised in the
Northern Echo
because I wanted someone who wouldn’t mind spending time in the northeast. Angela was a farmer’s daughter from North Yorkshire with a strong Yorkshire accent and a passion for Manchester United soccer. A down-to-earth girl, then in her midtwenties, she had already worked for a couple of other families. She spoke her mind and was completely trustworthy and sensible, and we just clicked.

No matter how confident I was that Angela would care for Euan as well as, if not better than, I could have, it was incredibly hard for me to leave him. Apart from the first few weeks, I’d had sole care of him; to hand him over to somebody else was torture. We had our own little routine; everything was a pleasure and a game. For four months the center of my world had resided in this small, helpless creature. I was still breast-feeding when I went back to work, and my breasts had no scruples in showing exactly how they felt. Sometimes I’d be sitting in court, aware only of the intense pain of the swelling and knowing that by the time I got out, my bra would be soaked. I would express milk with a breast pump in chambers during the day, put it in the fridge, and then take it home for the next day.

It was hard, but I didn’t dare slow down. I’d put in so much effort to build up my practice that it would have been mad to let it go, particularly at a time when Tony had effectively given up his. Tony’s election had already put an end to any thoughts of standing for Parliament myself. There wasn’t a pact between us, as has been speculated; it was simply impractical. Nor can I say I minded. I loved my job, and with Tony a committed MP (I knew even then he was determined to go as far as he could), I would get all the exposure to politics I wanted — and then some.

Our first summer at Myrobella, in 1984, was the year of an intense and sometimes violent miners’ strike, which ultimately resulted in significant damage to trade unions throughout the country. Although there were no longer any mines in the constituency itself, the Fishburn coke works were affected, and a number of Tony’s constituents were miners. It was a painful time, not only for the individuals and the families concerned but also for the communities as a whole and ultimately for the Labour Party.

Once we were a family, Nicky came along quite naturally. I didn’t want Euan to be an only child, and given that the system was now in place, we thought we might as well get on with it, especially as my practice had definitely flattened out.

I remember our second summer in Myrobella — the summer I was pregnant with Nicky — as a kind of idyll. Driving up the road from Sedgefield, through Fishburn past the coke works, I felt almost as if I was going back to my roots. Perhaps it had to do with being pregnant, but the smell of coal fires — a smell that was there even in the summer — reminded me of my childhood. Living in Trimdon was, in some sense, going back into that community. Just as in Ferndale Road, we always had an open door, and there was a group of local kids — they must have been about age ten — who would come in and play with Euan, by now a sturdy toddler. I used to do cooking with them. At that time garlic was exotic, and I remember introducing them to it, showing them how to peel it.

We went up to the constituency every weekend. Tony would usually go on Thursday, and I’d follow on Friday. Looking back, I don’t know how we did it.

When Euan came along, we became a two-car family. Tony had a Rover — Parliament had done a deal with Rover, so MPs got them at a discount — and I had a beat-up Mini Metro, which got progressively more beat-up because I was such a terrible driver. I have no spatial awareness whatsoever.

During my first driving test, the examiner told me to stop after only ten minutes. “In the interests of public safety, I’m terminating this test,” he said. “Stay here. Do not touch the car. I’m going to go back and get your driving instructor to come and get you.”

On my second attempt, I spent the entire time with my foot hovering over the brake, expecting the examiner to stop me at any second: failure number two. The third time, the test seemed to go on far longer than usual. “I thought you needed settling down,” the young examiner explained. I’d put it down to mine being the first test of the day and the lovely spring weather.