Life Worth Living (39 page)

‘You’d’ve seen it soon enough if you’d let me know you were going to Jamaica for your father’s funeral,’ she said.

Now I made the connection instantaneously. Had she seized the children while I was away, she would simply have retained them while Westminster City Council pursued their case against me.

I was staggered by Rosebud’s cunning. Westminster City Council had an absolute right to determine with whom the children could stay throughout the duration of a legal battle to establish whether they should remain in my care, and because she was a family friend she could exploit what the council would acknowledge as a valid and existing relationship with him. The process might have dragged on for so long that they could have said to the courts, ‘Even though it emerges that Lady Colin Campbell was a good and concerned parent, the children have been out of her custody for so long that we regard it in their best interests to remain where they are. With Rosebud and her sister.’ And the courts would most likely have agreed.

Thank God I had not allowed the children to fall into her clutches while I’d been away. I prepared a hole for Rosebud to drop into. ‘I’m afraid the connection eludes me,’ I said.

She wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation of letting me know how clever she’d been.

‘No responsible person permits a mother under investigation to keep children that might be in danger. It would’ve been my duty to keep them safely away from you. And once we had them, how would you’ve got them back?’

‘We?’ I queried.

‘Dima is the only one who interests me. My sister could’ve kept Misha, for all I care.’

‘Are you telling me you cooked this up with your sister?’

‘She doesn’t know anything about it.’

‘So this wasn’t about you protecting yourself in the
Sunday
Express
action?’

‘No. I knew you’d never violate my confidentiality.’

‘So you were prepared to disrupt the lives of two children who have never done you any harm, and have already had a difficult start to life, just so that you could get your hands on Dima? Whatever made you think you’d get away with it? Everyone knows the adoption policy in this country is to match children with parents of the same race. They’re white and you’re black.’

‘If I had a baby with a white man it would be white,’ she said defensively.

‘That’s hardly the criterion. It is the colour of your skin, the texture of your hair, the quality of your features.’

‘What makes you think you’re the only person in the world with connections? It’s never occurred to you that I might have connections of my own,’ she boasted.

‘Ah. You have friends who are involved with this, do you?’

‘You can’t prove that.’

‘No, I can’t. But the mere fact that you didn’t deny it shows me that you do. You know, Rosebud, whether you’re aware of it or not, you must realise you are insane. Do you have any idea of the enormity of what you’ve tried to do? We were supposed to be friends. All I can say is, you are one of the most awful human beings it has been my displeasure to come across. Make sure you never get in touch with me again. If you try to, I’ll get an injunction restraining you. And if you ever so much as go near my children again, I’ll use the full force of the law to keep them well away from you. Do I make myself clear? Good. Goodbye.’

Although I had exposed Rosebud I still had to deal with the lawsuit she had instigated. The case against me was pretty pathetic. Rosebud’s story was easily disprovable. Two separate GPs could attest to the fact that Dima and Misha were healthy and hearty. The children had no deep bite marks from the dogs; indeed, no scars at all. The ‘huge, fierce hounds’ she claimed were savaging the children through jealousy were springer spaniels: notoriously soppy and medium-sized at their biggest. Besides, Tum-Tum, Popsie Miranda and Maisie Carlotta were
so affectionate that the only danger they posed to anyone was loving them to death.

Of course, in Rosebud’s original plan, it would not have mattered whether her first allegations stood up or not, for their purpose was merely to instigate the investigation. A flat in the smartest part of town, with one of the most prestigious addresses in the United Kingdom, stuffed with antiques and works of art and featured in glossy magazines as the quintessence of elegance, could hardly be called squalid. Moreover, it was cleaned by a cleaning lady and there was a full-time nanny in residence described by Rosebud as ‘excellent’. That being the case, in Rosebud’s photographs, why were the children’s clothes strewn all about their room? Why was the Nanny’s room untidy? Why hadn’t she put the plates in the dishwasher?

That hearing was adjourned after agreement from the legal representatives of the three sides: mine, the guardian ad litem’s and Westminster Social Services’. They would drop the case if I would provide copies of the children’s adoption certificates and confirmation that the Jamaican authorities recognised the adoptions, and allow Professor Donald Barlthrop, an eminent paediatrician, to examine Dima and Misha to confirm that they were in good health.

After discovering Rosebud’s part in the plot and the degree of Westminster’s complicity, I told the guardian ad litem that I intended at the end of the case to seek an inquiry into Westminster’s conduct. I also said that if I did not get satisfaction in Britain, I would take the matter to the Court of Human Rights.

When her report, which was now extraneous to the proceedings because of the agreement reached by the lawyers, was complete, it was apparent to me that she was treading a fine line. She could find no fault with me, but that did not stop her from trying to protect the Westminster Social Services. Of course, she could hardly come clean and say that the whole thing had been a put-up job, although we had furnished her with sufficient evidence to that end. But even though she could find no evidence to support any of Rosebud’s allegations, she failed to include much that was favourable to me in her report to the court. She even threw the other side a bone by commenting that she was concerned because I was angry with the behaviour of the other side – as if that were a fault. She seemed keen to protect Rosebud.

Although she knew I was aware that Rosebud was the informant, in her report she stated that Rosebud denied it. This was absolutely crucial from Westminster’s point of view, for if I went ahead with my libel suit against Rosebud, I would discover who had been co-operating with her at the council.

The Thursday before the next hearing, which was scheduled for Monday 27 February, the guardian ad litem came round for a visit. ‘My lawyer wants more information about the adoptions,’ she said, pulling out a long sheet of paper and listing a lengthy catalogue of documents I was meant to supply from Russia and Jamaica before the hearing.

Of course, it would have been impossible to have got these documents from abroad in what was effectively one day, all government departments being closed at weekends. It struck me as no more than a crude tactic either to present me to the court as uncooperative, or to prolong the case. It was contrary to what had been agreed between the lawyers.

Immediately, I jumped up from the sofa. ‘I’m very sorry, but from here on in I’ll have to tape this meeting,’ I said.

‘Why would you want to do that?’

‘Because you have just furnished me with reason to believe that you have compromised your impartiality at my expense and in favour of Westminster.’

‘My lawyer has a right to demand anything she wants,’ she said churlishly.

‘That she most singularly does not,’ I said firmly, snapping on the tape-recorder. ‘The three sets of legal representatives reached an agreement and
no one
will be deviating from it. Not me, not your lawyer, not Westminster Social Services’ legal team, not you.’

‘Why are you so upset about a simple little request?’

‘Don’t play the innocent with me. You know as well as I do that this is an attempt to drag this matter out or to sully my image before the court. Well, I won’t be allowing it. You do not have a right of sight to any of the adoption documents, and if you people mess with me, I’ll simply refuse to show you anything.’

‘If you do that, I’ll have to recommend to the court that they grant the assessment order.’

‘You’re not frightening me, so don’t waste your breath. The court has no right to assess the validity of an adoption between two foreign powers, and if they try to usurp jurisdiction, they’ll find themselves in the middle of a diplomatic row. My advice to you is, settle for what was agreed and stop trying to drag this out.’

The meeting, naturally enough, ended soon afterwards.

The following afternoon I took the boys and Joyce, their nurse, to see Professor Donald Barlthrop at the Westminster & Chelsea Hospital on the Fulham Road. Not surprisingly, he found the children well cared for, well adjusted, and not only well loved by their mother, but loving towards her.

Once the report had been presented to all three sides, the court hearing was just a formality. The Westminster legal team had to explain to the court that there was no reason for pursuing their request for an assessment order, and ask for it to be withdrawn. My counsel then stood up and stated how distressing the matter had been for me, after which it was dismissed.
Gaslight
had drawn to a close – but not before Westminster’s Social Services and the guardian ad litem sent their legal representatives over
to say to Charles Buss, ‘This is not the end. We intend to pursue the issue of the adoptions.’

‘On what basis?’ he asked.

‘Because we want to,’ they said.

I was not worried in the slightest. If you have a clear conscience, a good lawyer and an active mind allied to a quick tongue, intimidation will not budge you. But intimidation it was nonetheless. On three separate occasions Charles wrote to these lawyers requesting that they confirm whether or not they intended to pursue their threat. They simply did not bother to answer his letters.

For a while, I was so incensed by the behaviour of the social workers and lawyers from the other sides that I toyed with the idea of reporting them to the Law Society, the Lord Chancellor’s department and Westminster City Council. However, I finally decided that I would spare myself the onerous task of dragging the matter out with inquiries and all the rest. On the theory that the pen is mightier than the sword, and in the knowledge that I was due to write this book, I decided that revealing what had happened would be an appropriate remedy.

As for Rosebud, I thought at first of teaching her a lesson by suing her for libel and wiping her out financially. Then I decided that I had better uses for the money it would cost me to pursue her. Instead, I blew the whistle on her to the people to whom I had introduced her. All the years of cultivation she embarked upon, my friends and myself, has amounted to nought. Knowing that she is now freezing in social Siberia without a baby – especially
my
baby – to warm her hearth is all the revenge I need. I will say this though. This episode above all has taught me that life really can be stranger than fiction.

While I certainly do not thank Rosebud for giving me a central role in a real-life version of a very bad B-grade movie, I am aware that many positive benefits flowed from the experience, not the least of which was the restoration of my faith in God. And that is no small thing.

V
ictory is a comforting experience and, before life returned to normal, I had a few more wins to tuck under my belt. Westminster Social Services were the first of my adversaries to collapse in the months to come. Shortly after their ignominious retreat, the
Daily Mirror
settled my libel action against them, instituted when I was writing
Diana in Private
. Because they had not sought to justify their behaviour, had conducted their defence civilly and were prepared to make a clean settlement, we allowed them moderate terms.

The next newspaper company to crumple did not get off so lightly. Associated Newspapers had defended the three libel actions I had brought against them as nastily, in my opinion, and vigorously in theirs, as it is possible to do, in the futile hope that I would throw in the towel. They had even had the gall to seek through the courts all my medical records. This request, Sir Michael Davies, the judge, threw out, making it clear that they had no right to any of my medical records, and to request all of them was a flagrant abuse of my right to privacy.

Content to bump up my costs, Associated Newspapers appealed against the judgement, but the court of appeal threw out their claim and showed its displeasure by relisting the first of my libel actions back to back, instead of in June and October as previously ordered. This was a disaster for Associated Newspapers. It meant that when I won the first action – and there was never any doubt in anyone’s mind that I would if it went to court – the second would be heard either by the same jury, or by a new jury which had read all about the first case in the papers the week before. No jury likes to witness an individual being hounded by a mighty organisation, especially a tabloid newspaper company, so Associated Newspapers were in danger of losing a seven-figure sum in damages, punitive damages and legal costs.

The degree of success they had had with their legal tactics also carried over to their witnesses. In the first action, Peter McKay, the writer whom I was suing for saying twice in his column that I was a man born, raised and actual, tried to wriggle out of the hole he had dug for himself by claiming that Michael Thornton, and not he, was to blame for the information that had led to this libel. Michael Thornton was in fact my stepmother-in law Margaret Argyll’s biographer, and at the time a cordial acquaintance, though not a close friend. So inflamed was he by this treachery that he offered to be a witness for our side, and turned up for the hearing.

I should never have found myself in Court 13 of the High Courts of Justice at the beginning of the second week of June 1995. But Associated Newspapers still hoped that I would turn tail and run, even at this late stage. They had mucked about with a derisory settlement for weeks, so we steamed ahead and I arrived at the court in the Strand to find a solid phalanx of photographers
and reporters massed outside. No sooner had the court been declared to be sitting than Patrick Milmo, my QC, stood up and requested that it be cleared of all journalists. He had legal arguments, interlocutories, to make. The gist of our request was that the first action, against Associated Newspapers, the editor of the
Evening Standard
and the writer Peter McKay, be fused with the second. The second action was also against Associated Newspapers and the editor of the
Evening
Standard
, but had my jerk of an ex-husband as a co-defendant as well. As the first action was based on Peter McKay’s assertion that I was a man, and the second on Colin Campbell’s claim that I had been born a hermaphrodite with male and female organs and now possessed only of the latter, the quandary facing Associated Newspapers if we succeeded was obvious. And they could not even rely upon Colin Campbell to appear as a witness. He was ensconced in New York, safely outside the jurisdiction of the British courts.

To my side, this was a great pity – within five minutes, Patrick Milmo would have had him bleeding all over the court floor, his lies seeping into every aged crack and crevice. Campbell’s witness statement, which was the basis of what he could say in court, was a travesty. He claimed that my mother had told him I had been born with male and female organs. Naturally, Mummy had provided us with an absolute denial in the form of a witness statement, and I had medical reports proving that I am, always was and always will be female. There was therefore no possibility that I could ever have had male organs.

Moreover, he now claimed, ludicrously, that he had known nothing about my gender problem until he read about it in the newspapers. This, of course, was easily disproven. Not only had he connived with his brother to capitalise upon that very problem – and I had the contract he had signed with the
Sunday People
to prove it – but the very first mention of the issue in any newspaper had started with the words ‘Lord Colin Campbell last night disclosed …’

To cover up for his dishonourable conduct in 1974, Campbell stated that my friend Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill had sold the article which he and Ian Argyll had placed. This was typical of him: commit the terrible deed and then blame it on someone else. But to choose Sarah was an act of folly. Sarah was the least likely person to need to sell out anyone, enemy or friend, to a gutter-press publication. She had been the main beneficiary of her grandmother, Consuelo Balsan, who, as Consuelo Vanderbilt, had been the greatest heiress of the
fin de siècle
. I would dearly have loved to have seen Colin Campbell squirm on the stand as he explained why a Vanderbilt heiress would need to sell a lie about a friend of hers to a tabloid newspaper with which the Argyll family had been in cahoots for two generations. Sadly, it was not to be.

After a day of interlocutories, during which Sir Michael Davies ruled in our favour on every point, he adjourned the case for a week. This was because Associated Newspapers claimed that they needed time to dig out of their files their copies of the papers relating to the previous lawsuit I had settled with them in 1977. For three years we had been advising them that we would be including that action, the subsequent settlement and
their repeated undertakings not to repeat the libel, as a part of our action, in order to increase the aggravated damages which the jury would award.

By the time we left the court, I was so disgusted by Associated Newspapers’ conduct that I would sooner have supped with Stalin than said hello to anyone linked with them. By now they realised they were on a ticket to nowhere, so the following day Harvey Kass, their in-house lawyer, telephoned my lawyer bright and early. His hands were up in the air. Soon my lawyer had him digging them deeply into his pockets. When they were facing damages and costs of well over six figures, and waving around a fulsome and abject apology which would be published in a place of some prominence in the newspaper, along with an accompanying photograph of my choice, I decided to accept their offer of a settlement. This I did with some reluctance, for it entailed dispensing with all my litigation, which meant that my action against Nigel Dempster would never now reach a court.

To be enriched by one’s enemies is some compensation for their existence; to have to deal with them is a bore. I was therefore happy to leave my lawyer to settle, with a minimum of reference to me, the last libel action. This was against Express Newspapers, the editor of the
Daily Express
, Eve Pollard’s husband, Nicholas Lloyd, and Colin Campbell. In many respects, the case was similar to the second action against Associated Newspapers. Both articles were virtually identical; both quoted Colin Campbell in full flow. I had also sued the
Daily Express
before, in 1975, and they too had given an undertaking never to repeat the libel. So much for the word of the untrustworthy.

Recognising that his company too was facing a massive bill if the case went to trial, Justin Walford, their in-house lawyer, advised them to cough up a sum equally as massive as that spat out by Harvey Kass, and to publish a grovelling apology as well.

Now that justice was finally done, I hoped to settle down to a normal life free of the intrusions and abuses which I had had to endure since the publication of
Diana in Private
. Then Colin Campbell struck again. Within days of the
Daily Express
settlement, he reported me to the New York Police for having made threatening calls to him over a two-year period – despite having given a statement to Associated Newspapers late in May which made it clear that we had not been in touch with each other for twenty years.

‘I thought of the most damaging thing I could do to her, and did it,’ he told Michael Thornton, who interviewed him about the report he’d made. ‘I want to destroy her. I will not stop until I see her dead.’

He then convinced George Rush, a tabloid gossip columnist with the
New York Daily News,
to run the story. The British papers, at long last, knew better than to touch it.

Sick to death though I was of Campbell’s never ending abusiveness, I kept a sense of proportion. This latest claim was only one of a list he had made up about me since the
publication of my Diana book. Some allegations were so bizarre that they bordered on the insane.

For instance, he had asserted in the Page 6 column of the
New York Post
that I was an agent of Colonel Gaddafi and had been paid by the Libyan dictator to bring down the British monarchy!

Later, he would state, also on Page 6 of the
New York Post
, that the Duchess of York had sued me for libel and won $200,000 damages against me! (That one was calculated to stop American television companies inviting me to appear on talk shows.)

Both these stories, which were syndicated throughout the US, were doubtless believed by many readers simply because the source was a British lord (and it was thereafter repeated on American national television news and CNN). Of course, I could have sued, but suing in America is even more expensive than in Britain, especially if you live across the Atlantic, as I do. For that reason, I decided to rise above his ludicrous claims.

Nevertheless, I was gratified, when Sarah York wrote her autobiography, to see that she quoted me more frequently and lengthily than any other writer, and that I was the only author she used as an authoritative source for some of the points she wished to make. So much for us being on the outs, or for her suing me.

Within days of the
Daily Express
statement, Campbell telephoned me. ‘I’ve taken out a contract on your life,’ he said. ‘If you make it difficult for us to reach you, we’ll get one of your dogs or those bastards you adopted first.’

‘You don’t frighten me, you miserable jerk,’ I replied, incensed that anyone would ever threaten to kill a child or a dog. ‘You want to kill me, come and try it. Just leave my children and dogs out of your sick equation. You really are depraved.’

I hung up and immediately telephoned the police, who filed a report, more as a precaution than anything else. But the odds are that he would never try to carry out his threats – he has no money to hire hitmen; no guts to do it himself. Indeed, I specifically requested that the police took no further action. Otherwise taxpayers’ money would have been wasted in initiating proceedings to bring Colin Campbell back to Britain to face the courts, and who needed that fuss?

I had to face the fact that I would never be rid of the malevolent presence of my ex-husband. I had always hoped that he would mellow, or experience a spiritual rebirth; now I can see that he can’t help himself. I would either have to endure his continuing abuse or unmask him as the monster he is, and I have opted for the latter course even though doing so means that I am having to violate my privacy in the process. However, as any parent knows, you have a different scale of values once you have children. My children come first, before my privacy, my peace of mind, and certainly my comfort. I will not allow Colin Campbell to taint their lives the way he has done my life. I will not permit him to make them the objects of ridicule and speculation, by cultivating the climate for their friends and schoolmates to ask
them embarrassing questions about their mother. I will not allow him to deprive me of the means to earn a decent livelihood, so that they can live in the comfort and security that they deserve.

Unless I clear up the lies and misconceptions with which Colin Campbell has warped my life in his quest for my destruction, I will never be free of the aura of doubt or the salacious speculation which he has so diligently worked to create around me. And if I don’t clear it up, my children will suffer. I live in hope that once the public’s curiosity is satisfied, I will be allowed to lead my life in peace, free from the invasiveness that has characterised so much of it. There is no doubt that the perimeter of my life has been invaded by the presence of such destructive elements as Colin Campbell, the tabloids and the odd opportunist posing as a friend.

Those Nemeses aside, the core is sound, and it really is a good life. I have two wonderful children, four lovely dogs, a large and loyal family, good friends. I have a lovely home in the country; a charming house with a sweet garden in town. This I spent nearly a year doing up from top to bottom, and we moved into it recently. I am only sorry that my brother Mickey is not here to see that I finally found a house round the corner from where I have lived for years. But I confidently expect to have the satisfaction of being able to tell him one day.

Standing back to write about my life, I have enough objectivity to see that it has been an extraordinary one by any standards. It has taught me how lucky I am to have been born into a sound and sensible family, to have been born with a happy and loving nature, to have been blessed with a good mind. No matter what privileges each of us has, life throws us brickbats. I am supremely grateful that I learned so young that one of the secrets is to turn each negative into a positive, each destructive experience into a constructive lesson. This world is full of wonderful people, but it also has its fair share of venomous creatures who derive satisfaction from destroying the lives, chances, personalities or reputations of others. Experience has taught me that the rules of the animal kingdom prevail as much in the world of
homo sapiens
as they do in the jungle. Some animals help those in trouble, others ignore or devour them.