The gorgeous new girl in my life
FOR most of my life I longed for a daughter. Instead, I ended up with two sons and then two grandsons — until finally last November, Vivien arrived. Joy of joys. My first granddaughter!
Now, I can only hope that I live long enough to see her grow up and achieve her full potential — just like the three women who have shaped my life.
Readers of my novels often comment on the strong women characters. There’s a reason.
My father, printer, died when I was a teenager, so early in my life I was an only child in a one-parent family.
I was at boarding school at the time, and had no idea of the hardships my mother Lola was facing.
Of course, I missed my father, not least because Mum couldn’t bowl to me in the park, and fell over whenever she tried to kick a football. But she could do everything else.
What I didn’t know was that when my father died, he hadn’t made a will and left debts of around £500, which was a considerable sum of money in the Fifties, when someone who earned £1,000 a year was considered to be well-off. However, I was unaware of the sacrifices my mother made because she never let on.
She took on three part-time jobs; selling advertising for a weekly magazine, What’s On In Weston-super-Mare, for which she received a 10 per cent commission, and in the afternoons working on the reception desk at a seafront hotel. At the same time, she was writing a weekly column — a rather refined gossip column about local people — called Over The Teacups, for the Weston Mercury.
In her spare time, and there can’t have been much of that, she was secretary of the local amateur operatic society (mainly Gilbert and Sullivan) and stood as an independent for the local council. She was elected three times. The height of her political career was when she was appointed chairman of the arts committee.
AT The age of 51, my mum went back to school (Weston Technical College) and studied for three A-levels. She would have loved to have been a full-time journalist and although it was too late for her to begin a second career, she took a degree in journalism at 57. Later, she wrote a novel that was sadly never published.
My mother died at the age of 87, having buried three husbands — the second an Army major, the third a local retired bank manager — and she still managed ten more years as a merry widow.
She regularly visited London for the theatre (she adored Terrence Rattigan), always staying at the Savoy Hotel. (She wanted me to be an actor and was disappointed when I went into politics.)
The second remarkable woman in my life is Mary Doreen Weeden, whom I met at a party in Oxford in 1963. For me, it was love at first sight. She took a little longer to realise I was the one.
Our progress at Oxford couldn’t have been more different.
Mary was a scholar, reading chemistry at St Anne’s College, and heading for a First, while I was at Brasenose doing a diploma in education. We married at the University Church of St-Mary-theVirgin in Oxford, in July 1966, a few days after coming down.
While I set out on a political career, Mary pursued hers in academia. By the time I entered the House of Commons in 1969, she was teaching chemistry at Oxford to undergraduates who were only a few years younger than she was.
And then disaster struck. I made a rash investment in a Canadian industrial cleaning company called Aquablast, on the advice of the vice-president of the Bank of Boston. I lost everything and, facing bankruptcy, had to leave the House of Commons in 1974 and sell all my assets, which included our lovely home in The Boltons in Kensington.
By that time we had two young sons and Mary came to the rescue. She accepted a teaching job at Cambridge — with the perk of a comfortable family flat.
I told her I was going to write a novel based on my experiences, called Not A Penny More, Not A Penny Less. She wasn’t convinced because, as she admitted years later in an interview, I’d never even sent her a love letter. Over the next decade I wrote novels while Mary progressed up the academic ladder.
And then suddenly, at the age of 42, she announced she couldn’t go on teaching chemistry for the rest of her life and wanted a new career. Over the next few years, Mary took up a range of interests, from joining the Council of Lloyd’s insurance company to becoming a non- executive director of Mid Anglia Radio.
she later joined the board of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, and thus began a new chapter which required different skills and turned out to be a far greater challenge than anything she’d done in the past.
Nothing seems to daunt Mary. Six years ago, she was diagnosed with bladder cancer and underwent a seven-hour operation. The longest seven hours of my life.
She later described it as a ‘firstclass piece of plumbing’, and just two months later was back chairing the board at Addenbrooke’s, and five months after surgery was running in the annual Cambridge Chariots of Fire race. Bravo, NHS!
When Mary stood down after ten years as chairman of Cambridge University Hospitals (having been appointed DBe — Dame Commander of the British empire — for services to the NHS), I assumed she would ease into a graceful retirement, while continuing with her charity work and completing her third book (Nanostructured And Photoelectrochemical Systems For Solar Photon Conversion, since you ask).
But then the position of chairman of the Science Museum Group came up and I begged her to apply. I felt it was the ideal job for someone who had spent her life as a scientist. At 69, she wasn’t convinced they would even interview her. Now, three years on she’s the first woman to chair a national museum and I’ve never seen her happier.
Mary began her working life as a scientist — a chemist — and that is how she intends to end it. Which brings me on to the third remarkable woman in my life, another chemist, who just happened to become prime minister.
There is a most unlikely link between Mary and Margaret Thatcher that, even in a novel, would be thought too far-fetched.
Margaret Thatcher began her chemistry studies at Grantham High School, in Lincolnshire, where she was taught by a young Irish woman, Margaret Keay, before going on to read chemistry at Oxford. Miss Keay later moved to Cheltenham Ladies’ College, where she taught Mary, who also later read chemistry at Oxford.
My friendship with Margaret was based on a mutual passion for politics; for Mary it was their shared fascination with science. But the two of them had so much more in common and Margaret undoubtedly influenced Mary’s professional life.
Margaret had no idea how many hours there were in the day, as I quickly learned when she appointed me deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. She would call at all hours of the night and day, including weekends, assuming that if she was awake, you must be.
The other great quality Margaret had was loyalty, which one or two of her parliamentary colleagues didn’t share with her, but Mary did. Both of these women stood by me when I was in trouble, while others walked away.
But Mary has given me far, far more. Wife, friend, lover, shrewd adviser and resident tutor. In my Who’s Who entry under ‘education’, I have written ‘By my wife since leaving Oxford’.
If I have done anything for Mary
during the past 50 years, it has been to convince her that nothing is beyond her reach, and give her the confidence to consider new challenges she might never have thought about.
Have these women inspired me in my work? Of course they have.
Those of you who are familiar with the novels in my series, The Clifton Chronicles, might recognise that the hero, Harry Clifton’s early life is roughly mine, and he falls in love with Emma Barrington, who is based on Mary.
Maisie, Harry’s mother, is just like my mum Lola, while Margaret Thatcher, of course, plays herself in the novels. And if any of you are wondering on whom I based the wicked Lady Virginia, the answer is three very different women.
The first, quite the most evil person I have ever met in my life; the second, unquestionably the most cunning woman I’ve ever known; and a third, who had five husbands. Say no more. However, I will never reveal their names.
My life has been blessed by three remarkable women — and, most of all, by Mary, without whom any success I’ve had would not have been possible.
We celebrated our golden wedding anniversary last summer, and when someone asked her if she had ever considered divorce, she responded with Lady Longford’s memorable words about her own husband: ‘Divorce? Never. But murder, several times.’
And now, for me at 77, there is little Vivien Archer, the fourth woman in my life, who will no doubt be a powerful influence on me, too — I have already rewritten my will!
Seriously, I know that she will have a far better chance of equality in every aspect of her life, precisely because so many women like Lola, Mary and Margaret, have paved the way.
THIS Was A Man, the final instalment of Jeffrey Archer’s Clifton Chronicles, is published in paperback by Pan on May 18 at £7.99.