Speaking for Myself (35 page)

From there we were taken up to the crossing point, looking out across no-man’s-land to the queue of refugees waiting to cross over into Macedonia and the sanctuary of the camp. The line snaked back as far as I could see. Everyone was laden with suitcases and bundles of what were probably clothes and linens. We were then taken to the head of the line, where people just wanted to shake our hands. The interpreter went with Tony, while I talked to people who spoke English, by definition educated. I remember a lawyer and a professor at Pristina University, both of whom had previously led uneventful lives. Life under communism may not have been particularly comfortable, they said, but they had never really known hardship. Now this had happened. They had no idea what awaited them — not a job in a university, that’s for sure.

Even though I was born after World War II, when I was a child, games of Germans versus English were still commonplace, and I remember the stories my primary-school teacher Mr. Smerdon used to tell of the concentration camps. As I walked down this unending queue, faces marked by exhaustion and fear, I was deeply shocked. These people were being picked on because of their religion, because they were Muslims. What did Europe think it was doing? We had been there and done that. We didn’t need to go back.

Three months later, at the end of July, Tony returned, this time to Pristina in Kosovo itself, and this time as a true hero. His plan had worked. America had agreed to commit ground troops, and the moment it had done so, Milosˇevic´ had backed down. There are, apparently, hundreds of small boys called Tony running around the newly independent Kosovo.

Chapter 24

New Horizons

M
y post-1997 career at the Bar was progressing as well as could be expected given the difficulties of reconciling the Downing Street agenda with the Gray’s Inn Square agenda. That wasn’t my only problem. Shortly after we moved in, Number 10 decided to “take a view” on a case that I had been approached to do. I resisted. As a professional woman, I told them, I had to be allowed to get on with my profession. I invoked the cab-rank principle, my line being that as soon as I started making choices, I was in trouble. Even though they knew this was my position, over the next ten years the office would sometimes indicate that they would rather I did not do a particular case. I never knew exactly who it was “taking a view.” Tony would simply deliver the message. As for who was standing behind Tony, it was “the office” or “Number 10.” It was as if these anonymous people would all participate in a discussion — including my husband but excluding me — and come to “a view.” The rationale was always the same: the press would write stories along the lines of “Cherie is suing the government,” thus embarrassing the Prime Minister. My voice was never heard in these discussions. Nevertheless, the cab-rank argument was always accepted, until the next difficult case came along and we went through the whole thing again.

My fears that my career would suffer were already being justified. It wasn’t so much the money; I loved my work. Not only were my official duties taking their toll, but while a few people wanted Cherie Booth, QC, because they wanted the attendant publicity, others wouldn’t touch me with a barge pole, as publicity was the last thing they desired. It was rarely overt, but word got round.

Shortly after we moved into Downing Street, I sat as a recorder (a part-time judge), something senior barristers do to learn the ropes. The case concerned an old lady who had been evicted from her retirement home because she was being disruptive, going round complaining that the other old ladies were stupid. Before I passed judgment, she told me, “I want you to know that I have always voted Labour, and I voted for your husband in the general election.” On the basis of the evidence, I imposed a suspended possession order on her, in effect delaying the eviction provided she behaved herself in the future, at which news her attitude toward me suddenly changed. “I will never vote Labour again!”

Arguing the same point of law but from the opposite point of view happens all the time, and it certainly keeps you intellectually focused. In 1997 I did a case in which a lesbian rail worker wanted to claim free rail travel for her partner. Heterosexual partners, even if they weren’t married, were entitled to this perk, but Lisa Grant couldn’t get it for her same-sex partner and claimed sex discrimination. I argued the case for her in the European Court in Luxembourg, but we eventually lost.

Under the British legal system, judges start life as barristers, then recorders. In 1996 I was made an assistant recorder, and in July 1999 I became a full recorder. Both recorders and judges are kept up-to-date by a body called the Judicial Studies Board, and toward the end of September I went on one of the three-yearly update courses. On the night of the twenty-third, a couple of old barrister friends and I went out for a birthday supper: my forty-fifth. I was feeling very positive. That summer we had had a good break in Italy, and Tony was feeling relaxed. All the energy he had expended over Kosovo had been worth it. Sitting there, raising a glass of champagne, I saw only one little shadow on my immediate horizon: my period. Where was it?

“It’s a bit odd,” I told Tony when he rang me that night from Chequers. “I’m usually so regular.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Probably nothing,” I said. “Probably just my age. Don’t worry.”

He wasn’t about to. He was working on his Labour Party Conference speech and was paying little attention to anything else. But there was a little niggle at the back of my mind.

A few weeks before, we had been on the usual prime ministerial weekend at Balmoral. The first year we had actually stayed overnight, in 1998, I had been extremely disconcerted to discover that everything of mine had been unpacked for me: not only my clothes but also the entire contents of my distinctly ancient toilet bag, with its range of unmentionables. This year I had been a little more circumspect and had not packed my contraceptive equipment, out of sheer embarrassment. As usual up there, it had been bitterly cold, and what with one thing and another . . .

But then I thought,
I can’t be. I’m too old. It must be the menopause.

Once back from the course, I met up with Carole at the gym. “I know it sounds odd,” I said, “but do you think you could get me a pregnancy testing kit?” It was hardly something I could pop into the local chemist for. She brought it round on Thursday, and on Friday morning, lo and behold. I just couldn’t believe it.

I rang Tony immediately. “The test,” I said. “It’s come up positive.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It means I think I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, my God.”

That evening he came back from Chequers, and as soon as there was an opportunity, I showed him the little dipper and explained the significance of the blue line.

“How reliable is it?” he asked. I said I didn’t know, but Carole had got me another one, though I’d have to wait to do that the following morning.

“We’ll have to tell Alastair.”

Alastair and Fiona came up the next morning before we set off for Bournemouth and the conference. The second test had shown the same little blue line.

“So how pregnant are you exactly?” Alastair asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Are we talking weeks or months?”

“Weeks.”

He seemed more amused than anything else. They took the view that given it was still very early days, the best thing was to keep quiet. By chance I had already agreed to return to London on Monday for a Breast Cancer Care event. I’d leave a little earlier than planned to see my GP.

As arranged, Fiona and I took the train back to London on Monday. Rather than risk making a big deal of it, I went along to the general surgery at the Westminster Health Centre. It turned out that my usual doctor, Susan Rankin, wasn’t there, so I saw another partner.

“So, Mrs. Blair,” he said, “what can I do for you?”

“I think I’m pregnant,” I replied with a smile. The poor man fell to pieces.

I had to calm him down. He didn’t want to do an internal examination, he said. Feeling obliged to have at least a bit of a prod of my tummy, he kept saying, “Susan should be doing this.”

“What about one of your tests?” I suggested. “Presumably it would be reliable?”

Relief flooded over him.

“Well?” Fiona said when I went out.

“End of May.”

The next day it was very hard not to mention it. Traditionally we had a lunch for family and friends while Tony made the final adjustments to his speech. My half sister Sarah, who now worked as a journalist under the name Lauren Booth, had just had a miscarriage — she had written about it in a newspaper — so the last thing I wanted was to upset her further. I didn’t tell my father for fear that he might let it slip.

Only those in the know would have spotted the twinkle in Tony’s eye at a particular point in his speech that afternoon. By pure coincidence, one of his speechwriters had drafted a passage about children.

“To our children, we are irreplaceable. If anything happened to me, you’d soon find a new leader. But my kids wouldn’t find a new dad. There is no more powerful symbol of our politics than the experience of being on a maternity ward. Seeing two babies side by side. Delivered by the same doctors and midwives. Yet two totally different lives ahead of them.” As Tony spoke those lines, he glanced at me, because we both knew that very soon we would be in that hospital ward ourselves.

The plan was to keep the number of people in the loop very small. Now that it was confirmed, I decided I wanted a bit of private time with the idea of this baby. I also was conscious that, particularly at forty-five, things could go wrong, although I was personally convinced that everything was going to be all right. I had decided I wanted to get past the twelve- to thirteen-week mark before extending word beyond the tight-knit group. Also, we were due to go to Florence for a seminar that Tony and Bill Clinton had set up, and the last thing I wanted was for the focus to shift onto me. We’d wait till we came back from Florence, by which time it would probably be obvious, but at least we would be in control of the announcement.

I told my mum, my sister, and Jackie, our nanny. (Ros had left us in July 1998 to do a teacher-training course, a long-held ambition.) Jackie was thrilled. For any nanny worth the name, school-age children are all very well, but a baby is heaven.

I was a bit worried about telling the kids. I wanted them to know, but I remember thinking,
They are going to think this is disgusting. I mean, parents!
But they were fantastic about it and really excited. Kathryn came with me to an early scan, and as we walked along to the ultrasound department, I realized with a start that with me being so obviously middle-aged, people might think my prepubescent daughter was the one who was pregnant.

Once the Labour Party Conference was over, Susan Rankin gave me a proper examination. “You do realize,” she said, “that the statistics for Down’s and other abnormalities shoot up at your age.”

I did, but having got this far, I didn’t want to risk any damage to the baby, so I decided that an amniocentesis was out. I had a blood test and a scan, however, and all appeared well.

Over the next few days, the tight-knit group appeared to be stretching. Tony told Anji because, he said, she would be upset if he didn’t. Then he told me he’d told Gordon.

“What business can it possibly be of Gordon’s?” I remonstrated.

“You have to understand, Cherie. It’s a very sensitive topic for him. The whole issue of my being a family man is very sensitive to him.” He was only thinking of Gordon’s feelings, he said.

Pregnant or not, we trundled on. As few people knew the news, there were no concessions to my delicate condition. Early on, I took the train from Liverpool Street station to Norwich to celebrate the opening of new offices for a big firm of legal-aid solicitors. Halfway there, overcome with nausea, I was sick all over everything. It was in the middle of the afternoon, and fortunately the carriage was empty, so I was able to go into the toilet and clean myself up. Then I went back to the carriage to scrub away at the seat and floor, all the time thinking,
This is hard, hard, hard.

Another time we were up in the constituency, and I was with a Number 10 driver named Dave. Suddenly I knew I was going to be sick. Dave stopped the car, retrieved a bucket out of the back, and held it while I vomited my guts out. He was so kind that day that I swore then I would love him forever.

I was finding out the hard way that I wasn’t thirty anymore. At one point I went up to Liverpool to do something for Jospice. Now a worldwide hospice movement, it had been started by Father Francis O’Leary, a Crosby boy born and bred. As always I stayed with my old friend Cathy, who has six kids, her youngest then being about four, while her oldest was older than Euan. Exhausted from the journey, I went upstairs to one of the girls’ bedrooms where I’d be sleeping. The six-year-old had just got back from school, and the four-year-old was generally rushing about. I was sitting on the bed, trying to catch my breath, when Cathy came in with a cup of tea, and I burst into tears.

“What on earth is the matter?” she said.

“I’m pregnant. And I’m just remembering what it’s like. The chaos, the noise. How can I possibly do all this in Downing Street?” It wasn’t the first time I’d had such negative thoughts. It had taken over two years, but we had just got everything organized in Number 11 — the kitchen, our bathroom, the children’s rooms — and now we were going to have dirty diapers and sleepless nights. Sitting there, I was overwhelmed by the immensity of it. And at the same time, I thought,
How dare I?
Here was Cathy, struggling to make ends meet. Her husband had just lost his job, and she was doing part-time teaching. But there she was, a good Catholic mother, bringing up these lovely, happy children.

One afternoon in mid-November, I had a call from Fiona. I was due to give a speech later that day.

“Just to warn you, there may be a slight problem,” she said. Piers Morgan, editor of the
Daily Mirror,
had just spoken to Alastair and implied he knew I was pregnant. “He needs Alastair to confirm or deny it, and Alastair can’t lie.”