Turn Right at the Spotted Dog

by Jilly Cooper

  Anyone would have thought she was running a sixth form college.

  Bordellos in Nevada, according to the guide book, range from the vast five-star-rated Mustang Ranch, which has thirty-five girls working full-time, to Irish’s, a brothel which, despite having the best bar in the state, with wood panelling, hanging plants and a pot-bellied stove, has the ultimate Irish joke, no girls.

  The Cottontail, which also has a five-star rating, is midway in size between the two. Miss Harrell, who prides herself on quality not quantity, insists on holding classes to teach new girls how to make love properly.

  ‘It’s not fair to the girl or the man to throw an unpolished girl on the floor,’ she said.

  Did they practise on live men, I asked.

  ‘I hold verbal classes,’ said Miss Harrell, suddenly prim. ‘I don’t hold with Masters and Johnson.’

  Happily married, but unwilling to discuss her private life, she believes her girls are happy working for her.

  ‘They have chosen a profession where the remuneration is far greater than that of a secretary, a dress designer or an airline stewardess. No one is held captive here. Nor do I retire people. My oldest hooker is sixty. She’s worked for me since she was sixteen.’

  Any moment she’d qualify for a gold pinger.

  Then, as a great honour, Miss Harrell took me over the workrooms, where I half expected to see the girls engaged in carpentry, making egg racks. Many rooms were in use, others had gold mirrors on the walls, and amber candlewick counterpanes on the beds, not unlike a Maples showroom. I had an exciting glimpse into the temporary orgy room, which had royal blue shagpile swarming over the floor and up four steps leading to the water bed, and a huge screen for porno films.

  ‘Now you can see what a working girl looks like when she’s not working,’ whispered Miss Harrell, as she softly opened a door. Inside, a ravishing redhead in a purple flowered bikini was not reading Schopenhauer, but lying fast asleep on her back on the bed.

  On the way out, Miss Harrell introduced me to a good-looking workman called Kent, who, grinning like a small boy in a sweet shop, was building catwalks between the caravans.

  ‘Last night, Kent put up the vital thing to show we’re back in business,’ she said dramatically. ‘The revolving red light.’

  The pinger was pinging, the seedy individuals had turned off the hose and she was plainly restless. It was time for me to go.

  ‘Do you know Madame Sin?’ asked Miss Harrell as she walked me to the car.’ ‘She lives in England.’

  I said I hadn’t had the pleasure.

  ‘Madame Sin gave a party for me when I was in the UK. It was full of celebrities, everyone from schoolteachers to punk rockers. A real conglamoration.’

  Had she really only lost her bid for the Nevada State Assembly by 120 votes?

  ‘I won,’ said Miss Harrell bitterly. ‘But they stuffed the ballot. They couldn’t bear the thought of a madam in the State Assembly.’

  It seems a pity we can’t have a few people like Miss Harrell to ginger up the House of Commons, or at least Gloucestershire County Council.

  Margaret Thatcher

  THIS PIECE WAS written in January 1985, four months after the Brighton bomb outrage.

  I last interviewed Mrs Thatcher in 1976 after she’d taken over as Opposition Leader. We spent an hour cosily chatting at her home in Flood Street, uninterrupted except by Mark and Carol drifting in and out. I was totally charmed. She was friendly, direct, touchingly insecure, and quite unlike her rather stiff, pompous, pontificating television image. She was also extremely pretty – not unlike Selena Scott’s rather serious bluestocking elder sister. The most important thing in politics, she had said, was the ability to pick oneself up, however hurt you felt inside.

  She certainly needed this ability when I saw her this week.

  ‘I’d better give you the bad news first,’ she said.

  With the pound crashing about her ears, I thought she was going to say she was too busy to see me. Instead she dropped the bombshell that: ‘The abdominal, or abominable, or whatever they call themselves, council in Oxford have just turned me down.’

  She was plainly in a state of shock. For a second, her eyes filled with tears. But predictably Maggie-nificent in a crisis, she pulled herself together, adding with a toss of her head that if Oxford was unwilling to confer an honorary doctrate on her, she had no wish to receive it.

  Ironically, she was wearing an Oxford blue coat-dress and blue stockings. In her shoes I’d have rushed upstairs and flung on a Cambridge blue track suit. Despite having a frightful cold, she looked great – not a day older than when I last saw her. The turned-down air-force blue eyes are as bright as ever, the blond hair more ashy and less corn-coloured. She is also more regal and imposing.

  Her study in Downing Street is more like a sitting room, decorated in gold and pistachio green with flatteringly soft lighting. A marvellous collection of pictures is only marred by a perfectly frightful seascape by Winston Churchill, which Mrs Thatcher glowingly described as ‘Turneresque’.

  Security was much tighter than the last time I saw her. A charming but tigerishly protective press aide asked me to submit my line of questioning in advance, and was present throughout the interview making incessant notes. She had also placed a tape-recorder between me and Mrs Thatcher so I couldn’t pull a fast one. It was a far cry from the cosy twosome in Flood Street.

  Mrs Thatcher clearly didn’t want to talk about Oxford, so I asked her how she felt she had changed since she came to power.

  ‘Well I don’t know,’ she clasped her beautiful white hands, and leant forward. ‘The biggest change came with the Falklands. Somehow I never expected to be in charge of a government which had to fight a war, to deal with the military so that no one in the field was in difficulties, seeing that the military and political sides understood one another. But we found we were able to take decisions.’

  ‘Then the Brighton bomb’ – for a second, the deep contralto faltered. ‘We lost very dear friends. But one found one could cope with that too. In a crisis, the way ahead is so much clearer. Then I had no idea at the start how to cope with international conferences. I went off wondering what would happen, whether there was some crucible of wisdom one could draw on. But there was no philosopher’s stone. It’s merely a question of being properly briefed, and doing one’s homework.’

  There followed more talk about coping successfully with the Common Market, as though she were comforting herself in the face of the vicious Oxford snub by recalling other times when she had displayed courage and tenacity. To cheer her up I remarked that her recent trip to China had been a success. Wasn’t she pleased that the Chinese leaders, used to spitting in public, had only spat twice in her presence, compared with nineteen times in front of the Russians?

  What was remarkable, said Mrs T, neatly sidestepping the question, was that she had seen all four Chinese leaders in one day. No other visiting foreigner had had that honour.

  Didn’t it help when she met leaders from abroad that she was such an attractive woman?

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied crisply. ‘I don’t think they notice you’re a woman, it’s a question of personality and exchange of views.’

  She did find it difficult however to get her point of view across through an interpreter. She was used to having one sequence of thought.

  ‘You suddenly realise when you’re well into a subject that they can’t understand what you’re saying, because you’re speaking in a different language.’

  One suspects the same thing happens in her own country. She tends to answer questions by swinging into set speeches on different subjects. By the time you’ve halted her, or tried to get down what she’s saying in case it contains some pearl of wisdom, you’ve forgotten your original question.

  Last time I had seen her she complained about the calibre of the Tory top brass: ‘Where are my lieutenants?’ How did she feel about her cabinet today?

  This time Mrs Thatcher pro
ceeded to praise her squad in Downing Street, smiling warmly at her secretary as she spoke of ‘marvellously loyal support. Number Ten is more like a family than an office. A hundred people work here; it’s a home and very cosy.’

  I tried another tack.

  Why did she personally get such a good press, and her ministers such a lousy one?

  ‘I divide people into Doers and Communicators. We in the cabinet are doers. We get on with the job, perhaps we should spend more time communicating. I like people who talk straight, no jargon, no fudging.’

  Earlier in the day, I’d seen her during Question Time being shouted down by the Opposition, who tabled a motion of no confidence in her financial policy. Watching Mrs T and Mr Kinnock bristling across the dispatch boxes, I was reminded of Dignity and Impudence: Mrs Thatcher, as the stately Great Dane, too high-minded and noble to resort to vulgar abuse, with Mr Kinnock as the little terrier snapping round her ankles. Was she prepared to give a headmistress’s report on Mr Kinnock’s first six months leading the Opposition?

  She was not – beyond murmuring that Mr Kinnock was rather discourteous, which must be the understatement of the decade. On the other hand, she added, she had also faced Wilson, Callaghan and Michael Foot as well.

  How had they differed?

  ‘I’ve been in science,’ said Mrs Thatcher firmly. ‘All my background is strategy and detail, arguing with the support of evidence to reach a conclusion.’

  As her particular crosses were Mr Scargill and Mr Kinnock, I asked, did she think there was anything particularly significant about balding red-headed men?

  ‘Has Mr Scargill got red hair?’ said Mrs Thatcher, the blue eyes widening in surprise. ‘Yer can’t judge personality, yer know, by the colour of people’s hair.’

  What about beards? Did she really hate them, as had been quoted that week?

  ‘My dear,’ she threw her hands up. ‘I’ve no idea where that came from. It has caused great upset.’ Then, smiling quickly at the bearded Mail on Sunday photographer, who was cringing behind a saffron armchair, she added, ‘I mean beards are like hair styles, they suit some people and not others.’

  She would not forecast whether the miners’ strike was coming to an end, nor whether Mr Scargill was going to play ball.

  ‘What grieves us’ – often she sounds like a Shakespearian king – ‘is that the miners are still on strike. After ten months the striking miners have never had a chance to ballot. They must be getting terribly into debt. Why go through such deprivation,’ she went on in a hurt voice, ‘when they’ve been offered the best voluntary redundancy terms, and the latest equipment? One can’t turn back the clock.’

  I took a deep breath: ‘People are saying after six years, your financial policy is in tatters.’

  It was as though I had switched on the cold blast of my hair dryer by mistake.

  ‘Tatters,’ said Mrs Thatcher, in the outraged tones of Lady Bracknell, ‘Tatters!’

  Neck and face reddening like a turkeycock, she launched into an impassioned party political broadcast.

  ‘With the miners’ strike into its tenth month, inflation is at its lowest for fifteen years, we are producing more than ever before; record production, record sales, record investment, the biggest denationalisation programme ever . . . 1.7 million more owner-occupiers . . . reduced taxation. Some tatters.’ She sounded positively Churchillian.

  The only way to tackle unemployment, she went on, was to produce more, to work harder . . . ‘Spirit of enterprise . . . going out into the market . . . catching up with other nations . . . Youth Training Schemes . . . job creation programmes.’

  The voice rolled on relentlessly, as though she were patiently re-dictating a botched-up letter to a junior secretary. Dazed by the torrent of words, I noticed I’d never seen better-looking potted plants. Perhaps I should start making speeches to mine about inflation and the spirit of enterprise. She was now repeating what she’d said to Alistair Burnett, the previous week, that all the socialists did was shuffle round the shekels.

  She is like a wonderfully comely steamroller. One can see why most of her cabinet have the puffy look of constantly being flattened like pancakes, then blown up with bicycle pumps next morning.

  ‘Tatters,’ snorted Mrs Thatcher.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Parkinson,’ I said, desperate to raise the temperature, ‘I mean Norman Parkinson, said of all the beautiful women he’d photographed, you had the most sex appeal.’

  Mrs Thatcher brightened: ‘How astonishing! He made it so easy. He’s a professional of course. I’m a professional person. So are you. I like dealing with professionals.’ She smiled suddenly – the tartar with the heart of gold, forgiving me for the ‘tatters’.

  One has the feeling that although she is genuinely kind and sympathetic, particularly to people in trouble, she’s not remotely interested in what makes herself or anyone else tick. She never watches herself on television, for example, nor does she read hurtful things written about her in the press.

  ‘My dear. If one is hurt, and these things do hurt, one can’t concentrate on work, and nothing must interfere with that.’

  Wasn’t that rather wrapping herself in cotton wool?

  ‘I read the press digest. If a complaint or criticism is justified, of course, I take it seriously. That’s why I go out and about a lot. I will not be cotton-wooled. And I do put up with Question Time,’ she added by way of justification.

  ‘Twice a week,’ said her press aide defensively.

  ‘Must be a nightmare,’ I said. ‘Rather like doing Mother Rota at the play group.’

  Mrs Thatcher laughed. ‘Rather worse. Real children are far more grown-up than politicians.’

  Certainly she has been dealt some terrible blows in the last few years, loosing one great friend and mentor after another: Airey Neave, Lord Carrington, Cecil Parkinson and nearly Norman Tebbitt. Lord Carrington she regards as a particularly bitter blow.

  ‘We tried and tried to persuade him to stay. If he had been in the Commons, it would have been different. He could have come to the dispatch box and argued his case, but he was denied this. He’s a wonderful man, with a great sense of people, wisdom, experience, universally respected and liked, and great fun,’ she added enthusiastically, as though they’d spent rainy afternoons playing Postman’s Knock together.

  Would Cecil Parkinson come back?

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said wistfully. ‘We miss his abilities. He knew business from the inside, so few politicians do. There was no jargon, no fudging. Even rarer, he was a doer and a communicator.’

  ‘He was certainly a doer,’ I said without thinking, then hastily added, ‘And a great communicator too.’

  Despite the punishing schedule, there are no black rings under Mrs Thatcher’s eyes, and hardly any lines on her face. She is alleged to work harder than any other prime minister. She attributes this to years of practice: ‘I’ve never had more than four or five hours sleep. Anyway my life is my work. Some people work to live. I live to work.’ Then, suddenly remembering the unemployed, ‘That’s why I feel so desperately sorry for those who have no work.’

  Did she really hate holidays?

  ‘I hate lolling about, I must do something. I can’t stand sunbathing in a deckchair.’

  ‘You could lie on the sand.’

  ‘Never!’ It was as though I’d suggested some fearful perversion.

  How did she feel about being nearly sixty?

  She laughed. ‘Well, it seems much younger than I thought twenty years ago. It seemed ancient then. Now it seems rather young. Besides, Dennis is going to be seventy soon,’ she added with a sly satisfaction that he wasn’t going to be able to dodge advancing age either.

  What did she miss most about being prime minister?

  ‘Picking up my handbag and dashing down to Sainsbury’s,’ she added without hesitation. ‘I miss window shopping too, and being able to walk up Regent Street to my dentist. We tried to go to Sainsbury’s a
bout a year ago, but we were mobbed. Such fantastic value, but of course one must make lists first, or it’s dreadfully easy to overspend. One mustn’t overspend.’ Suddenly I had a vision that she saw Kinnock and Hattersley as naughty schoolboys rushing into Sainsbury’s and loading up their steel trolleys with tuck they couldn’t pay for.

  She is certainly in great shape too – much slimmer than when I saw her ten years ago. Woodrow Wyatt has got her on to Vitamin C for breakfast, but she hasn’t taken up jogging yet.

  ‘Could lose a bit,’ she said, squeezing a non-existent spare tyre. ‘I don’t like sugar, even on grapefruit, [or fudge either for that matter]. I drink black coffee. But I do like a thick sauce with fish, and fruit with meringue on top, and chocolate sauce with ice cream. I love baked potatoes too, but only with lots of butter,’ she went on dreamily. But rigid self-control reasserted itself quickly.

  ‘You just learn not to eat too much, to take the top off a tart, and scuffle around to find the fruit underneath.’

  She denies she has the strongest faith of any prime minister since Lord Salisbury.

  ‘No, no, Winston and Lord Stockton were both religious men.’

  Did her religion help her when she was down?

  ‘Yes,’ she said simply.

  Throughout our conversation, I felt an intruder, because I suspected the full shock of the Oxford rejection was beginning to sink in and I’d caught her at a particularly vulnerable moment. One could only admire her guts all the more. Time and again when people talk of Mrs Thatcher, they say she should follow her instincts because she is always right. She will always ask the practical question. To one minister who wanted £700 million to sort out the railways, she kept saying: ‘But why do you need all that money, when there are so many porters doing nothing at Paddington Station?’