Letters From London

by Julian Barnes

  The tabloids do, it is true, frequently behave in a disgusting manner; they define the phrase “the public interest” as meaning “whatever the public happens to be interested in, particularly sex.” The feeding frenzy of paparazzi, the heaving shoal of photographers eager for a snap of misery or a surprise bikini shot do not constitute a group overtly concerned with the sensitivities of their subjects; nor should we imagine that Mr. Morton is unconcerned with financial reward or Mr. Neil indifferent to a thumping rise in circulation (210,000 extra copies for the first installment of his serialization). But the image of the Royal Family as mute manipulatees is far from the truth. For most of the time, the Palace successfully works a pliant and monarchistic press. Few complained when the popular newspapers a decade ago built up Charles and Diana’s courtship and marriage in the most treacly, sycophantic, and, it now seems, mendacious fashion: the Cinderella Princess, the Romance of the Century, and all that guff. Morton offers a few corrective details about that supposedly enchanted time. Before the wedding, Diana discovered that Charles was offering Camilla Parker-Bowles a bracelet with their self-given nick-names Fred and Gladys on it, which made her discuss with her sisters the possibility of breaking off the engagement. On her honeymoon, she saw photos of her “love rival” fall out of her husband’s diary, and noticed a pair of cufflinks, with two Cs intertwined, given to Charles by Mrs. Parker-Bowles. Even during her engagement, she had begun to display symptoms of bulimia, which were put down to prenuptial nerves. This may all be intrusive tittle-tattle, which the nation’s newspaper readers shouldn’t have the right to know. But if there is a choice between happy lies and sad truths, which do the more harm? And the sad truths, when they inevitably arrive, appear sadder because nobody sought to curb the pornographic panegyrics in 1981, to moderate the press’s mawkish epithalamia.

  A thumbnail guide to the current fortunes and popularity of the Royal Family—or, at least, of its most visible members—would go something like this:

  Queen Mother. Top Royal. The nation’s favorite granny. Gracious, smiling, professional, still carries off pastel colors even at an advanced age.

  The Queen. Popular, respected, thought to be “good at her job.” Suspected of having a secret sense of humor. As she has got older, she has been less mocked for her tweediness, for her high voice and low dogs. General attitude among skeptics: if we’ve got to have a monarch, she seems to fit the bill better than anyone else.

  The Duke of Edinburgh. Not much loved, though not much disliked. Given to making ducal gaffes, like being overheard on an Eastern tour referring to “slitty-eyed” Orientals. This tends to confirm prejudice among fans and critics equally.

  Princess Margaret. Less in the public eye nowadays. Regular supplier in her day of emotional drama—Peter Townsend, Lord Snowdon, divorce, Mustique, Roddy Llewellyn, etc. Now a neutral figure. Popular with the tobacco industry, no doubt.

  Prince Charles. Provokes ambivalent reactions. No longer the gauche youth with sticky-out ears who played the cello. But what is his role as he waits in limbo, knowing that he can become what he was born for only by the death of his mother? He supports organic farming, talks to plants, dislikes modern architecture, is a disciple of the Jungian trekker Laurens van der Post. Bit of an odd fish, who was humanized for the nation by his marriage to Diana. Now whither? Will he be seen as just another off-beam aristo who didn’t know how to make his wife happy?

  Princess Di. Fairy-tale princess, virginal, sweet. Frequently called herself “as thick as a plank” in early appearances. Suspected initially of not taking her royal status seriously enough, not paying her dues in return for the treats, but then buckled down, and after she shook hands with AIDS sufferers her standing was fully restored. Now largely pitied for her plight, but who is to blame? The royal system? The journalistic rat pack? Her own lack of psychological hardiness?

  Princess Anne. For years, disliked as haughty. Once told press photographers to “naff off,” thus popularizing the euphemistic phrase, which she may have used in the full original. Was married to Capt. Mark Phillips, known as Fog, because he was thick and wet. Marriage dissolved. Perhaps the only Royal with actively rising popularity, after work for the Save the Children Fund. Now perceived as mature, industrious, her own woman. Expected to remarry.

  The Duke of York and Fergie. Known variously as the Duke and Duchess of Yob (this from a regular Times columnist) and, for their contented-looking chubbiness, the Duke and Duchess of Pork. Builders of a large and vulgar ranch-style house. He a naval officer and couch potato, she an enthusiastic consumer of royalty’s perks: she likes the skiing, the travel, and the writing of fatuous children’s books about an anthropomorphized helicopter called Budgie. She untraditionally accepts royalties—well, why else would they be called that—on her literary output, and in late June signed a TV-and-merchandising deal, which, according to industry sources, could net her as much as £3 million. Briefly popular after their marriage, the couple are now officially separated and held in low esteem.

  Prince Edward. The youngest child, but already balding. Joined the Marines but didn’t stay the course; was found a job instead by Andrew Lloyd Webber (recently knighted). Suspected of artistic leanings and possible unmanliness. Has denied that he is gay. Not much public rating.

  Duke of Kent (the Queen’s cousin). Mason. Recently photographed in his apron. Not much else is known.

  Duchess of Kent. Wife of above. Has rather ethereal graciousness; thought to suffer mood-related problems. Only appears at Wimbledon fortnight.

  Princess Pushy. Nickname (supposedly affixed by Queen) for Princess Michael of Kent. Married to an obscure man with beard (also a Mason). Foreign divorcée who makes Fergie seem austere and self-denying in her attitude toward the perks of royalty. Wrote a book that bore dubious similarities to other people’s books on the same subject. Positively unpopular.

  Given this colorful dramatis personae, it’s tempting to think of the Royal Family as a supersoap, Britain’s longest-running TV export, the PBS hit that outgrossed Brideshead Revisited. But the Royals are not played by actors; they merely (however hammily at times) play themselves. Equally, comparisons with international stars like Dietrich or Sinatra or Liz Taylor, which are closer in terms of money, perceived glamor, and distance from reality, are misconceived. With figures like these, it is always possible to go back to the original performances from which the legend derived, to say that So-and-So acted or sang badly or well. With the Royals, there is no original talent that gave rise to their myth, simply the myth itself, which arises from the awful luck of being born or marrying into this extremely rich, well-connected, landowning family. They cannot do, they can only be; so mythic reality is all they can have for us.

  And also, presumably, much of what they have for themselves. If we try to imagine what it must be like to be a Royal, we usually stop at the rewards and the inconveniences: on the one hand, the tax-free status and the ability to swish past in the fast lane; on the other, the nuisance of having the plebs stare at you, take photographs, and feel that they have a stake, however small, in your life. But imagine what such an existence must do to your sense of identity. You don’t have anything like a job, though you may make the odd speech (usually written by someone else) and open the occasional factory. You have a semblance of power but no reality of power, and a shivering memory of what happened to your ancestors who governed too greedily. You are expected to be noncontroversial, while knowing that your slightest preference, for primrose yellow in a summer frock, or for domestic-revival over postbrutalist architecture, will be heeded as if it were an addendum to the Ten Commandments. You travel the world like an animated shop-window dummy advertising the unique, the mysterious product of Britishness. You are feted and groveled to and kept out of traffic jams. But in a sense you do not exist: you are what others decide that you are, you are only what you seem to be. And therefore you depend for your existential reality on the whole myth making, knee-bending, lie-telling business of promotion and pac
kaging, on the Buckingham Palace spin doctors and the megaphonic exaggerations of the media.

  You are, for instance, a rather gawky, shy, big-nosed girl from a posh family, not very bright, with no obvious fashion sense and with a taste for Barbara Cartland novels; you are, perhaps, one of the last virgins of your age in the country. (If you are not, someone will later find out and publish the fact.) You meet an equally gawky, big-eared boy, also from a posh family; he is older than you, rather serious-minded, not a spectacular wow with girls, and he just happens to be the heir to the throne. Therefore, and immediately, you become a fairy princess and fashion icon; you are 50 percent of the Romance of the Century. True, there are disadvantages, since you are inspected every moment of the day, inspected even by the royal gynecologist for your fitness to produce new young Windsors. But you have been transmuted from an unformed Chelsea girl who likes teaching small children into the bearer of a vast weight of the nation’s emotional overload. Some people see in you a perfect example of the tremendous thing they hope will happen to them; others, for whom the business of love and marriage went wrong or is old history, are fiercely consoled by the fact that it went right for you. You have stepped not out of but into the world of a novel by Barbara Cartland—who, just for symmetry, happens to be your stepgrandmother.

  So what then if things start to go wrong for you? There is nothing in the myth book to fit your case. It seems to contain only items such as Royal Romance of the Century, Prince Weds Commoner, Princess Gives Up Unsuitable Suitor out of Duty, King Abdicates for Love of Foreign Divorcée, and so on. You can have Triumph or Tragedy, or (better still) Tragedy that becomes Triumph. What you can’t have is the banality of My husband doesn’t understand me, he’s still seeing his old girlfriend, he’s stuffy and doesn’t want to have fun, my marriage is emotionally like lots of other people’s marriages. The myth book has something about a Princess in a Gilded Cage, but such princesses tend to be liberated by handsome troubadours who help them fly the coop. The trouble with Prince and Princess Together in a Gilded Cage is that it’s far too close to Marital Tiffs at No. 24 Laburnum Drive. Less than the stuff of myths.

  The problem for the modern monarchy is how to hold in balance the demands of myth and ordinariness. The Queen is no longer seen as God’s appointee; her role as Defender of the Faith is marginal, her position as Head of the Commonwealth probably less influential than that of nonplaying captain of a Davis Cup team. Yet she and her family are wanted by a majority of the population; their presence, and their continuity, are considered a defining mark of the nation. Republicanism remains a spindly growth, and the low regard in which politicians are held confirms many people in their view that the Head of State should not be just another elected official. So the main danger to the monarchy is that of auto-destruction—if it flaunts its cash, enjoys its perks too openly, fails to look useful, or seems too fallibly ordinary for the survival of its own myth.

  When I was growing up, the Royal Family still operated as a moral and domestic exemplar for most of Her Britannic Majesty’s subjects. This function is currently in abeyance. You could try to argue that Elizabeth’s children are showing how democratically close to ordinary people they are by their ability to screw up their own lives; but that would be sophistry. Part of the unspoken deal between the Royals and the populace is that the Royals, in return for privilege, wealth, and adoration, must occasionally be seen to suffer, or give the appearance of suffering; they must also indicate from time to time that they are subject to burdensome duty, to long-term conditions and restrictions that the rest of us do not envy. They can’t be seen to wallow in the benefits and then walk away when things get sticky. Therefore, the best scenario for the Royal Family—at least, the one that will best enhance its durability—is for Diana to stay with her husband and be seen to be making a painful go of it; for the Duke and Duchess of Pork to call off their separation and develop a sudden interest in charity work; for Prince Edward to make a tactical marriage; and for Princess Pushy to take the veil. Otherwise, the Royal Family will quickly decline into mere illustrators of what is known in advertising jargon as an aspirational lifestyle: this is how we plebs could and would live, had we the luck, the history, the tax breaks. Whether this would be a strong enough philosophical justification for the House of Windsor’s continuance is doubtful.

  July 1992

  The Royal Family puzzlingly declined my advice, and its capacity for public fission continues.

  8

  The Chancellor of the Exchequer

  Buys Some Claret

  History, even when in trivial, jesting mood, often comes in incompatible versions. So during the last week of November the British public hunched frowningly over the following conundrum. Did a short, plump, middle-aged man, his hair mashed into a rather ridiculous graying quiff, enter Thresher’s “off-license” in Praed Street, Paddington, on the evening of Monday, November 16, and there purchase one bottle of Bricout champagne, plus a packet of Raffles cigarettes (total cost £17.47), or did the same man go into a different branch of the same liquor chain on the previous day and there buy three bottles of wine (total cost also £17.47)? It would matter very little to most of us, but it mattered very much indeed to the man in question, Mr. Norman Lamont, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

  The story began on November 26, when The Sun published an irresistible tip-off from a mole inside the National Westminster Bank. The Chancellor, the informant disclosed, was currently £470 over the limit on his Access credit card; not only that but Mr. Lamont had breached his limit twenty-two times in the previous eight years, and had received no fewer than five written warnings after failing to make the required monthly payments. Downing Street huffed and puffed at the news, denouncing the breach of confidentiality, and claiming that the latest unpaid bill had only gone astray because of building work at No. n, the Chancellor’s official London residence. Few were impressed by this flimsy defense, and opinion varied from those who saw a shocking failure of security on the bank’s part, plus a shocking intrusiveness by the press, to those who professed deep unsurprise at the financial revelations, given the wider state of the British economy under Mr. Lamont’s stewardship.

  Tucked away in The Sun’s report, however, was a small paragraph about Mr. Lamont using his Access card in the Paddington area the previous Monday. The Evening Standard sent out a reporter and turned up John Onanuga, an assistant at the Praed Street branch of Thresher’s, who vividly recalled serving the Chancellor. According to Mr. Onanuga, Mr. Lamont had first examined a bottle of £11.99 Tescombes Brut champagne, the cheapest in the shop, and then moved up to the midrange £15.49 Bricout, which was being promoted, appropriately enough, as a “recession-busting” item. The Chancellor also bought a packet of Raffles 100s, a low-tar cigarette retailing cheaply at £1.98. Mr. Onanuga said that he had recognized Mr. Lamont, as had a woman in the shop, and had also noticed the House of Commons pass in his wallet; he added that the Chancellor had particularly wanted a bottle of champagne that was already chilled.

  All this seemingly trite substantiating detail was in fact potentially lethal. Mr. Lamont is known to smoke only small cigars; his wife does not smoke at all. Raffles, in any case, is hardly a brand either of them would be likely to smoke; the cigarette’s image is one of down-market attempted glamor—you might expect a man who smoked Raffles to have a rusting car with a Playboy badge on the back, and a woman who smoked Raffles to dream of ensnaring her boss behind the filing cabinets at the Christmas office party. And what, moreover, about the chilled champagne? This hinted at—no, screamed—immediate consumption. On the Monday evening in question, Mr. Lamont had apparently left a civil-service select committee at six-fifteen, and was next seen at an official reception at No. 11 a while later. Journalists muttered about “the missing hour and a half,” which translated into newspaper headlines like WHAT WERE YOU UP TO NORM? (Daily Star).

  Fleet Street can scent the possibilities of sex like a tile-tripping tomcat; and while sex—by which we m
ean, of course, extramarital or otherwise nonconformist sex—is not in itself enough to burn a minister at the stake, it makes excellent kindling. The best way to bring down a member of the government in Britain is to link private indiscretion to public incompetence. Here the argument does not go: Ah, I see the Minister was engaging in sexual activity—well, that’s probably relaxed him after a tough week of decision making and sent him back to his desk with a fresh mind. No, the argument tends to run: Look what the Minister was up to when he should have been contemplating great affairs of state. At times, of course, the Minister in question aids and abets this latter interpretation. The last of John Major’s close associates to fall, David Mellor, then Secretary of State for National Heritage, made a phone call to his actress girlfriend in which he maintained that their previous sexual encounter had been so exquisite and so prolonged that he did not have the energy to write his next ministerial speech. Now, this could have been mere intimate praise, a lover’s courtesy, but the phone happened to be tapped, and British puritanism supplied the textual exegesis: Minister too shagged out to think straight. The illegality of the phone tap was a mere side issue in Mr. Mellor’s subsequent fall. So was the fact that most ministerial speeches are of such low quality anyway that an outside observer would be hard-pressed to judge where in the politician’s private sexual cycle any particular speech resided. Germaine Greer, when put up in debate against the sort of crusty old male who argues that women can’t do really complicated and demanding jobs, like fly an airplane or run the country, because, well, er, you see, the fact of the matter is that every so often, about once a month, actually, they, how shall we put it, become a little unreliable—Ms. Greer would on such occasions look the geezer magnificently in the eye and say, “Am I menstruating now?” Ministers might in turn try a similar ploy when congratulated on an effective speech: “Fact of the matter is, old boy, had a spot of how’s-your-father last night, properly sets you up for speechifying, y’know.”