JUST BORIS: A Tale of Blond Ambition (41 page)

On 9 February, she quickly bounces back with what sounds like another of a series of explicit invitations. ‘Most women I know don’t bother about orgasms at all. Well, sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. There is no mystery about it. It is like the weather.
Sometimes it rains and sometimes it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, one gets a watering can and waters the flowers oneself.’ Soon afterwards she launches into what is no doubt a well-targeted rebuke: ‘If a man cannot organise his clothes it is often an indication that he cannot organise much else – either his life or the country. A man who cannot be bothered to take care of his clothes will often extend this cavalier attitude to his care of others.’

Later, in May 2002, we hear her pain in not having children: ‘It is a truth universally acknowledged in the newspapers these days that a woman over 30 who has not yet had a child is in a very bad way indeed. Having limped over the age of 30 myself, this is all rather depressing stuff. Perhaps I should give up now and resign myself to a childless future or the lottery of adoption.’ On another occasion, she writes about becoming unconscious after falling downstairs. In September, in what might be interpreted as a growing plea for help, she reveals that she has been mugged and notes: ‘I am still nervous and emotional. I wished I had a man with me.’ The following month she sounds even more desperate to retain both her man and her hopes of a family: ‘There is no stigma attached to children born out of wedlock, indeed it has become the fashionable thing to do. Most Italians still cleave to the time-honoured tradition of keeping both a wife and a girlfriend.’

Perhaps just such a dual arrangement was still Boris’s intention as he flew back from Liverpool to London a couple of years later in 2004, on the October evening of his apology tour to Merseyside. That night he was a major item on all the BBC bulletins and the next day the prospects for his future in politics were analysed in great detail in all the papers. The posse of Boris-watching journalists who now covered his every move in public did not yet know that his private life was also in turmoil. No wonder that he had been grumpy in the car to the airport. His affair with Petronella had continued for four years – sometimes brazenly, such as when he suggested she join a family holiday, and on another occasion when a snap of her somehow found its way into one of Stanley’s family albums. Indeed, Marina had been aware of the relationship for some time but thought it not much more than an annoying distraction. Sometimes Petronella tried to end it, at
one point becoming engaged to an American lawyer and living over in Rhode Island but clearly he was not a patch on the excitement that Boris offered. Petronella was to be one of the great loves of Boris’s life and he wanted her back; she duly returned and the relationship resumed but just as his journalistic persona had crashed in on his political career, so too would his private life now dominate his public fate.

On 18 October, three days before Operation Scouse Grovel, Petronella booked into a private London hospital to abort the second child she had conceived by Boris. She was seven weeks into her pregnancy. It has been said that it was her idea and that she took the decision, even though Boris offered to support the child financially if she carried it to term. But other reports suggest Boris was keen on a termination and had claimed he was not in a position to support another child. ‘Petronella said Boris kept changing his mind,’ a friend of hers declared. ‘She wanted to have the baby and at first he said she should have it, but said if she did, he wouldn’t be able to support it. Then he said she should have an affair with someone else and say it was their child.’ The same friend – later backed up publicly by Petronella’s mother Lady Wyatt – also said Boris had refused to pay the £1,500 medical bills from the abortion, believing them to be too high.
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It can only be guessed from her ‘Singular Life’ writings how painful these events must have been for Petronella, who was now 35 and after four years of the affair, seeing her hopes of marrying Boris fading fast. Whether or not he wanted the abortion to go ahead, the storm clouds of love and betrayal were now gathering.

Just a fortnight after the Merseyside farce, on 7 November 2004, the
Sunday Mirror
broke the story of the abortion although without naming either Petronella or Boris. On the same day, the
Sunday Express
reported that Boris was about to resign his post as shadow arts minister ‘amid rumours of a crisis in his private life.’ It also mentioned his ‘close relationship’ with Petronella, but went no further. Readers of both newspapers might just have been able to work out the full story – as did a lot of journalists – but most civilians would have been none the wiser. Both papers trod very carefully for good reason and the sequence of events is telling.

The
Sunday Mirror
had the full story about the affair, the pregnancy and the termination but was unable to contact Boris and so asked Guy Black, Howard’s spokesman, about it instead. He in turn phoned Boris, who was with Marina at the time and reputedly spluttered: ‘Outrageous tabloid! My poor wife, my poor wife, what on earth is she to make of all this? It’s absolute nonsense, piffle, completely untrue!’ Although offered the chance of another conversation when he was alone, Boris said it was not necessary and so an official denial was issued to the
Sunday Mirror
. Its editor Tina Weaver felt in the circumstances that she could not name the protagonists, however impeccable her sources.

Meanwhile, the
Mail on Sunday
had managed to contact Boris directly and although it did not run the abortion story, the paper still dealt the fatal blow. Boris gave the political editor Simon Walters a wonderful quote – and an unexploded bomb. ‘I have not had an affair with Petronella,’ he said. ‘It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle. It is all completely untrue and ludicrous conjecture. I am amazed people can write this drivel.’ Presumably Boris considered himself spared. His extraordinary ‘pyramid of piffle’ phrase – although not a new addition to his lexicon – was both eye-catching and definitive. Howard let it be known that he thought a politician’s private life was just that – private. No further action was needed. On the Monday, Petronella’s mother went along with Boris’s denial, telling the
Daily Mail
that her daughter’s liaison with Boris was nothing more than a ‘close relationship.’

The story had broken just as Marina was setting off on a legal case at the high-security hospital at Broadmoor. Those present felt deeply for her. ‘I kept thinking how lovely she was, and how desperately sorry I felt for her,’ recalls one person on the same visit. ‘But you soon realised that mentioning it or expressing sympathy would have been absolutely taboo – no matter what you read in the papers each day. She made it unthinkable to broach the subject. She was just focused on her work and you had to respect that.’ Indeed, another former close friend found herself estranged when she contacted Marina again after reading about the Wyatt saga. It was as if she was offended that the friend had not only taken note but was now commenting on the
story: ‘When all the stuff came out, I hadn’t seen her for a while but I sent her an email asking her whether she was OK. I never got a reply – and haven’t heard from her since.’ For a woman of such dignity, even expressions of sympathy must be torture.

While Boris was still denying the affair publicly, Marina obviously knew better and ordered him out of the family home. Because she had long since known about the relationship no doubt Boris thought she would now accept the media consequences too. But while she was angry at what she considered to be press exaggeration – although related to many journalists, Marina has a habit of not believing what she reads in the papers – she was also cross that it was now clear that Boris had continued to see Petronella when he had agreed to stop. In fact, the consensus is that Petronella became pregnant when Boris sought to rekindle the affair after a break over the summer holidays. Any hopes of Marina just accepting the situation – and the idea that Boris might be ‘allowed’ to have another family with Petronella – were seemingly dashed. Boris would have to choose.

With a single set of clothes – a grey tweed suit, white shirt and burgundy pullover – he retreated to the Camden home of Justin Rushbrooke, a friend from Balliol, and his wife Nell Butler, daughter of the former Cabinet Secretary, Lord Butler. Rushbrooke, who knew Marina before he met Boris, studied Classics at Balliol before returning to study Law. Nell, who works in television, is tactful and loyal. The couple, and particularly Nell, have taken on the role of supporters-in-chief in Johnsonian crises and crucially are not part of Petronella’s circle. Boris is probably now closer to Rushbrooke – a witty cricket-mad Old Harrovian who regularly skis with him – than any other man outside his family. He finds a bond in fellow Classicists – even if Rushbrooke went on to pursue another degree and a career in another field. He and his wife, whose glittering circle of friends say they ‘like to keep Boris to themselves,’ are very discreet about the friendship. They have taken Boris in on more than one episode of marital discord and even tolerate his general messiness and predilection for leaving coffee cups around their house while in residence, despite the fact that they themselves are well-known for impeccable levels of tidiness.

Rushbrooke is said to enjoy the ‘excitement’ and ‘unpredictability’ of being friends with Boris – even when on occasion it leads to disappointment. At Rushbrooke’s 40th birthday party in a London restaurant, Boris was designated to make the celebratory speech only to dry up in embarrassment. ‘Boris fizzled out,’ recalls another guest. ‘He just made a very bad speech and ran out of things to say about the birthday man, which was surprising when Justin is supposedly his best friend. But Justin didn’t mind, he just said that’s what you get with Boris – you never know whether an idea he has will work out or not.’ During the Petronella saga Rushbrooke put up Boris for a full week – even at one point smuggling him into a smart drinks party in Chester Square – in the same outfit, of course.

On the Thursday of that week Boris turned up again in the same garb at Claridge’s for the
Spectator
Parliamentarian of the Year lunch. Held in the Art Deco ballroom, the event is well attended by media glitterati and the more interesting sort of politician. A place for Petronella was laid at one of the big round tables but she did not turn up. Someone removed her name from the guest list with a rubber. Nor did Marina appear. But invitees such as Jeremy Paxman, David Trimble, Sir David Frost and Lord Lawson all made an appearance. Over lunch of Filet d’Agneau and Mousseline of Soubise, there was quite a buzz about ‘Boris’s problem’, with guests gossiping over the previous weekend’s coverage. There was even more of a frisson of excitement when Boris and Michael Howard both mounted the stage just before coffee. Although Howard had stood by Boris, it was clear there was a tension between them – the fact that Marina had lost patience with her husband cannot have improved Howard’s view. Boris opened with a remark about ‘shrugging off the assaults of the press, which can be less than wholly helpful’ before handing over to the Conservative Leader.

Howard, when relaxed, is quite a giggler in private but until that lunch he had not been widely known for a playful sense of humour and so it was all the more surprising when his address prompted an outbreak of mirth. For once, the crowd were laughing
at
Boris, rather than with him. ‘The
Spectator
is an incomparable magazine,’ Howard began. ‘There is nothing like the
Spectator
for stirring up and
stimulating political controversy. Indeed, in all senses of the word it could best be described as political Viagra. And I must take this opportunity of congratulating Boris on the tremendous enthusiasm with which you have approached your various front-bench duties. You were keen to make your mark with the City of Culture [Liverpool]. And you succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. All I can say is, Boris, keep it up!’

Cue unbounded hilarity from the audience who could not quite believe their ears. There was only one person in the room who was not creased up with laughter. According to Quentin Letts in the
Mail
, Boris’s ‘mouth assumed a fishy quality: gaping, rounded, assembled into an expression of hooked horror.’ When he recovered slightly, those nearby could hear him muttering: ‘He can’t get away with this! Outrageous, outrageous!’ Ever the joker, Boris does not care for the joke to be on him, but it was a joke rather than a dismissal, that much was clear.

On the Friday, he drove down to Henley – still in the same clothes – for a Golf Club dinner and returned home to his friends’ house in Camden that night. When questioned about his failure to change his attire for nigh on a week, he shot back: ‘I am a man of thrift and economy.’ But he was also now a man of hope: there had been discreet talks with Marina and he was clearly hoping that a reconciliation might be on the cards.

On the Saturday, Guy Black’s afternoon was disturbed again. Both Simon Walters of the
Mail on Sunday
and Andy Coulson of the
News of the World
(now David Cameron’s notorious ex-spin doctor) rang as he ate lunch in a bistro on a weekend break to Paris. Now there was no way back. Petronella’s ‘friends’ (who turned out to be her mother Verushka) had finally confirmed the whole story, from the affair to the abortion. She also revealed that Petronella was upset over Boris’s denials of their relationship – almost certainly the reason why she had decided to speak out. Boris had told the most enormous whopper, not just to the press but also to Guy Black and Michael Howard. Moreover, Black had been made to look duplicitous. ‘I think the indulgence of Boris had passed at that point but it was nothing to do with the way he conducted his private life,’ says a well-placed
source. ‘The key here is that Michael couldn’t bear any lying to the newspapers.’

At around 2 p.m., Howard, on his way to another football match, instructed Guy Black to inform Boris that he would have to resign from his position as shadow arts minister and party vice-chairman. His crime was not the affair or even the abortion but the fact that he had lied. But Boris refused to go, arguing he had a right to lie to the tabloid press, if he wanted.