going to say, “Who told you that?”
[CR] I’m sure he will.
[JS] He adopts positions and it’s very difficult to get him away from them. I’m always challenging him. His memory is quite selective now, too.
[CR] Oh sure.
[JS] This may be one of the ups and downs he needs to talk about. He trusts you. He’s very fond of you.
[CR] I’m very fond of him.
[JS] Maybe in a discreet, subtle way you can get into it. He knows about other biographies and these things have to be revealed. I’m sure he’ll come out with it when you’re on your own sometime. I think it should [the rest of the sentence is unintelligible on tape because Jenny was speaking so softly]
[CR] That’s my gut feeling.
[JS] Talk these things out. Otherwise, after he goes ... someone else will come up with something. Sheila and Una [one of Michael’s secretaries] know, but I don’t know that they will say anything until they know Michael wants to talk about it. Once you’ve got that established, I can talk to you about it. Her [Jill’s] angle on that. It’s very difficult, isn’t it? interviewing very, very close and loyal friends ...
Jenny added: “I’ve been in politics so long ... ”—the rest of the sentence is inaudible—but I can’t help but believe she was alluding to how hard it was to be frank. Certainly her attitude here contradicted the way she later behaved, when politics and protecting Michael Foot the public figure became her sole raison d’être. Perhaps Jenny’s attitude began to change once she realised how much of the ‘Lamia’ affair I already knew from Julie. In retrospect, I can see what was at stake: who had power and authority over this story? It alarmed Jenny, I’m sure, that Julie had made herself such an important source. Julie was the wild card Jenny could not control, except by trying to mitigate what Julie said. I understood as much, but only now do I see how worried Jenny was that the indiscreet Julie would challenge the control Jenny wished to exercise. “What is her theory on why it happened?” Jenny asked me. “He just fell in love? It happens to every bloody MP”—again the rest of her sentence is inaudible. Here I made a strategic error, telling Jenny what Julie said. I told Jenny I had asked Julie how Jill had come to suspect Michael. “Well,” Julie had said, “when a man like Michael begins taking perfumed baths, [I laughed] “and starts paying attention to his personal hygiene in a way he hasn’t before ... ” Jenny was not laughing and I should have understood what a mistake I had made. Julie would not have minded my repeating her words, but Jenny, I think, was appalled that Julie’s account amused me. Jenny said less and less and then switched the subject back to Dubrovnik and how important that story was to the biography. Thinking I had made enormous progress, I had no idea that in another sense, I had dealt myself a significant setback.
26
In Dubrovnik, Michael established a celebratory mood, cloaking his days with Jill in the city in such lavish ardour that I did not have the heart to discuss anything that might cast a shadow on his memories. I would have to change the terms of our conversation. To scale Michael’s “politics of paradise” (the title he gave to his Byron book) would take some manoeuvring on a different terrain.
“It’s very interesting, Julie, where we’re headed on this,” I said. “Eventually I’m going to have to ask him about this Pakistani woman.” A startled Julie said, “Oh, are you?” I had to, I told her. “How do you know it happened?” she challenged. I laughed: “You told me.” “I know, I know,” she said, “but I don’t want you. . .” I laughed again: “I won’t say that. I talked to Jenny last night about it. But she would say almost nothing. ‘Once you’ve talked to Michael, I’ll talk to you,’” she promised. I wasn’t sure the affair belonged in the book, I said to Julie, but I wanted to write a real biography. “The relationship survived it,” Julie observed, even though at one point a distraught Jill ran away to Venice to sort out what she should do about the affair.
Julie now elaborated on her mother’s discovery of the affair and how Michael took it:
Just after my son was born (1970), I went to see my mother and she was sort of drooping around the kitchen in a very peculiar state. I said, “What’s the matter? There’s something wrong.” She said “I’m not going to talk to you. I’m not going to talk to you.” I said, “Yes you are, there’s something wrong.” So she broke down and told me. Then she kept me informed all the time and things came to a head very quickly and Michael couldn’t make up his mind. My then husband, Mike Randall, went round there and sat Michael down and said, “Shit, or get off the pot.” Mike was then editor of the Daily Mail. Michael had great respect and admiration for him. So Michael had to. One of the strong influences was not just his love for Jill but ... he was not going to move out of that house. No way he could move all those books. Into a flat with a Pakistani? Jill wasn’t about to give up the house, which happened to be in her name, because of the libel case with Kemsley [a newspaper publisher]. Everything was transferred to her name so that they couldn’t be bankrupted. She had him, really. He’ll never admit that. How he’ll react ...
[CR] Well, so far he’s had a free ride with me. I’ve just listened because I think that’s important. I don’t want to cut him short. There’s a truth in all he says, but there’s another side you’re talking about.
[JH] His thinking will be this is a book about Jill, not about his flaws.
[CR] But I will say to him, “This had an impact on Jill. I already know that.” Then either you will be seeing me again, or I’ll be off working on another book.
[JH] Have you met Paul yet?
[CR] No.
[JH] I would not approach Michael until you’ve seen Paul. Paul knows. So Michael won’t know where it’s come from.
Perhaps it was good advice, but I had no rapport with Paul yet and I was keen to test just how strongly Michael trusted me to tell the whole story.
Julie continued:
“Jill was very distracted. There were late night sittings in the House. She was at them. She never used to go. He was a completely free agent. She clung to him ... went right to the other extreme. Then there was the odd business of learning how much money he had spent on her [Michael’s mistress]. They went to the accountant together. He’ll never tell that.”
Julie said my biography would be no good if it became just a book of praise. “It’ll be boring.” I agreed: “No one will read it. This is the Carl Rollyson who usually gets in trouble doing his biographies and suddenly he writes a saint’s life?”1 Which prompted Julie to say:
“My mother had an enormous amount of anger at Michael. I don’t think he was aware of it. She occasionally had rows with him, but her anger was
always turned on me. The tiniest thing would trigger
off a lethal rage at me, which I never understood.”
There were also long periods when mother and daughter did not speak to one another. It took considerable effort on Michael’s part to reconcile Jill and Julie. He was good at that and wanted peace between them, believing that Jill had done the best she could with her daughter.
To Julie, Jill had become Michael’s devotee. “She would give an opinion tentatively as her own and if I wasn’t obviously very impressed, she said, ‘Well Michael doesn’t think ... ’ She was deeply insecure about herself, which was strange seeing as though she was so accomplished in so many ways.”
