Life Worth Living (26 page)

As I began to appreciate the enormity of what Colin Campbell had done, I decided that I would not waste my energy on hating him. I cut him out of my thoughts. There was no point in speculating about why any human being would be so evil. I was dismayed when a year elapsed and I still felt fragile and wounded. Admittedly the libel litigation did not help in this respect, since it was a constant reminder of traumas that would have been best consigned to the past, and the financial uncertainty did not enhance my feeling of security.

I was only too aware that Colin Campbell and Ian Argyll had left me with an abiding distrust and fear of people, and I recognised that I could never have a fulfilling life unless I overcame those feelings. The solution seemed to be to get a job that made few demands of me but involved contact with people. My brother suggested I did as he had once done, and got a ‘holiday’ job at Harrods. So it was that I came to work in the cosmetics department from May to the end of September 1976.

Meanwhile, my social life was as busy as ever. Practically every evening I would be out for dinner with friends, or went to the opera or concerts with my brother Mickey, or beat a path to nightclubs like Annabel’s or Tramp with beaux who did not mind chaste relationships. I was going everywhere, but my life was heading nowhere.

Providence stepped in in November. I was in Annabel’s, on my way back to the table from the powder room, when Anka Dineley, whose London home, Aubrey House, was the venue for Prince Andrew’s stag party, called out to me. I briefly stopped to say hello to her and her husband Peter. They introduced me to someone whose name I did not catch. I did not even notice if he was good-looking – I was still on my sabbatical, and the last thing on my mind was romance.

Two days later Anka telephoned me. ‘Come for tea,’ she suggested, making it clear she had an ulterior motive. When I got to Aubrey House, she told me that I had captured the heart of James Buchanan-Jardine. Christ, I thought, here we go again.

‘He’s a great guy,’ Anka enthused. ‘One of the best looking men in London. He’s a member of the family which owns Jardine-Matheson, the great Hong Kong trading company. He’s got a great personality, he’s about to be divorced, from the Earl of Carlisle’s daughter Susan, and he lives in great style in the country, with butlers and the whole shooting match. Can I give him your number?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t have to be dinner. He’d take you for lunch or tea if you prefer.’

‘Thanks, but no thanks. I can think of a few things I’d like less than to go out with someone I don’t know at all.’

‘Georgie,’ Anka said. ‘He’s a great catch and a truly nice chap. As a friend, I’m telling you, don’t squander this opportunity. He’s crazy about you. You’ll never meet anyone better.’

What the hell, I thought. ‘OK, Anka. If he wants to see me so much, he can join my table for the Rainbow Ball next month. I’m on the committee and I have to get a table together in any case.’

On the evening of the ball, as I pulled on my strapless peach silk chiffon ball gown and a matching jacket heavily embroidered with pearls and beads, I wondered if I would even like James. The moment our eyes connected I knew the answer. Here was my dream come true.

In December 1976, James Buchanan-Jardine was thirty years old. Although not tall (he was only five foot ten), he was my physical type – burly, masculine and muscular. He was one of the most classically handsome men I had ever seen: good, strong jaw, sensuous lips, straight nose, big hazel eyes with long lashes, noble forehead, brown hair. Before he even greeted me I felt my knees weaken and my pulse quicken. Without doubt there was a tremendous chemistry between us.

During dinner, James sat beside me and flirted with me shamelessly. He’s my sort of man, I thought: frank, straightforward, open. I could never stand men who pussyfooted around, playing it cool and expecting a woman to extract their interest as if it were an infected tooth. So far so good. As the evening progressed, I discovered that James had a Jamaican connection. When he was a child, his father had bought Sir Frank Pringle’s magnificent eighteenth-century house, where the Buchanan-Jardines lived in tropical splendour until things went sour as independence approached. That was all very well, but I hadn’t forgotten that Colin’s Jamaican links had not exactly turned out to be the bond he had presented them as.

As the ball wound down, James suggested that we went on to Annabel’s. I made sure that my cousin Enrique Ziadie, who was my official partner for the evening, came along too. I was already thinking of ways of slowing down the desire which was emanating unmistakably from the Jardine quarter. I was not now prepared to become involved with any man until he showed me that he was worthy of my trust. If he couldn’t wait, that was just too bad. I would sooner be manless than savaged again. I must have rattled James with the chill of my reserve, which was already well enough developed for friends to describe it as astonishing hauteur, for he made sure that he came armed with moral support for our first date.

We met at the typically Sloane restaurant, Pooh Corner, with Patrea and Alan More-Nisbet, friends of James’ who own a stately home just outside Edinburgh. I enjoyed the evening: James had a good sense of humour, he was kind, and he seemed to like nothing better than a good laugh. Afterwards, we
again went to Annabel’s where we danced, safely familiarising ourselves with each other as the lust built and built to scarcely bearable levels. But not even a declaration of love and further dinner dates budged my tightly closed legs. I planned to keep them just as they were until I was sure that James was someone worth having.

I went to Jamaica for Christmas, while James went to Hong Kong to see whether he should move into tax exile for a few years. When I returned to England, I moved straight into a new flat, which I was sharing with a friend, Nikita Chahursky. James drove from Cambridgeshire, where he was living, to see me that first afternoon. Nature, I fear, finally got the better of my good intentions, but I never had any regrets, for James was an accomplished lover with a divine body.

As our relationship developed, I saw that James possessed the qualities I sought in a man. He was warm, loving and affectionate, and was capable of making a commitment – in my view, one of the most important factors in a successful relationship. He was loyal, with just the right mixture of conventional concern and aristocratic indifference to the opinions of others. Like me, he was gregarious and sociable, and he had an excellent sense of humour. More to the point, he loved me unconditionally.

Once, when we were talking, he said, ‘I love you just as you are. I don’t care what people think you were. In fact, I wouldn’t care if you’d been a goat.’

All in all, James, it must be said, was quite something.

‘I can see James was here last night,’ my cousin Enrique, who lived nearby, often said when he dropped in for coffee. ‘Your eyes are sparkling like diamonds.’

‘It’s tiredness,’ I used to reply in what became a stock response. ‘I never get any sleep. Four, five times a night, every night. I wish I could say no. I don’t see how I can marry him – I’d have to spend all day sleeping.’

And by this time, James and I were discussing marriage. Although he was not yet divorced there was no doubt that they would be divorced. I admired the finesse with which he was handling the dissolution of his marriage. His kind heartedness, decency and absence of malice, even with people he disliked, also impressed me, and went some way towards reducing my understandable terror of remarriage.

In the meantime, my libel actions were brought to a conclusion. The Jamaican government had recently tightened up exchange controls to such an extent that it was now impossible for my father to get money out of the country legally. He was not prepared to resort to smuggling out funds as many other people did, with the result that the greater part of his worth remained in Jamaica, waiting for the Manley regime to swoop in and swallow it. This it was in the process of doing, to the alarm of both my parents, my mother especially – she could hardly believe that my father would stand by and fail to take protective measures on the grounds of principle. Only when 90 per cent of
his assets had been nationalised did he finally accept that the way to fight the Castro-admiring brigands who were engaged in legalised theft was not to allow himself to be crippled by his principles, but to secrete whatever was left.

So I could now no longer look to my parents for help, for the money they gave me to live on had dried up. Faced with the prospect of funding three separate libel actions with no resources, I had no choice but to settle, especially after listening to the advice of my QC, David Eady.

‘The fact that the newspapers haven’t settled has been a source of some perplexity, as you know,’ he had said at our last conference. ‘Sadly, I now believe they never will. Not that they expect to win – they never will, and they know that. But the sad fact is that they stand to make more money by taking this to a trial, even though they will lose. They might have to pay out, say, £20,000 in damages, plus another £50,000 or so in costs, but they’ll make hundreds of thousands in increased sales resulting from coverage of the trial. I fear, Lady Colin, that the gruesome truth is, this will be the most sensational libel case of the century if it reaches court. They know it. That’s why they’re not settling.’

Disenchanted with a legal system that can allow the persecutor to profit at the expense of the victim, not to mention being sick to death with the perpetual hassle, I instructed my lawyers to settle. The
Daily Express
paid some of my costs, and all three newspapers agreed not to repeat the libels. Although the outcome fell some way short of victory, at least I had the satisfaction of depriving the press of the money-making circus they had hoped for.

By this time, James’ plans for moving to Hong Kong were well advanced. ‘Hong Kong is very much like Jamaica,’ he said. ‘You’ll love it. Everyone knows everyone else. It’s cosmopolitan and great fun.’ Moreover, the name Jardine carried a tremendous amount of clout in Hong Kong because James’ ancestors had been responsible for wresting the territory from Chinese control to British sovereignty. If not exactly the world, Hong Kong at least was my oyster, if I wanted it.

I might well have taken the plunge but for one small incident. One day James said, ‘I have to go and see my cousin, Sybilla Edmonstone, this evening. She wants my help with something. I’ll see you after dinner, if that’s OK.’

He came back to my place at a respectable hour, about eleven. He was as loving and attentive as ever, but I noticed that he smelled of soap and that his hair was freshly combed. It was a dead giveaway. No man takes a shower and combs his hair after an innocent dinner. He’d just crawled out of bed, I concluded, waiting to see if he made romantic overtures. He did not, though he settled down to sleep with me in his arms.

As soon as he had drifted off to sleep, I clenched my fist, thumped him in the stomach – not hard enough to hurt; just enough to startle – and said, ‘That’s to let you know you didn’t dupe me.’

James jumped up with a start. ‘What’s wrong, darling? Are you having a bad dream?’

It was just the response a philandering man would make. If a certain liberality of outlook had been inculcated into me with mother’s milk, it did not mean that I was happy to catch my man pulling up his trousers after a bit of light relief.

‘I don’t want to make more of this than it deserves,’ I said without the slightest degree of rancour. ‘I just want you to know that I know that the help you gave Sybilla was rather too in-depth for my taste. Good night, James, sleep tight.’

‘Night, darling,’ replied a relieved James, sealing the air of harmony with a kiss.

Although neither James nor I alluded to that night again until Sybilla died some ten years later, it did consolidate my doubts. Even though I was of the firm opinion that most men cheat given half a chance (and that it’s no big deal unless they bring home unwelcome presents or flaunt their acquisitions in one’s face), in my fragile state I immediately began to ask myself questions that I might otherwise never have put into words.

What would happen if I went to Hong Kong and the relationship did not work? Now that I couldn’t simply pick up the telephone and get Daddy to cough up enough dough to resettle me in the place of my choice, would I not be taking too great a chance in flying halfway round the world to be with a man I had known only for some seven months, and who, despite being abundantly loving, clearly had problems keeping his flies zipped up? Sure, James seemed to be a wonderful guy, but that might change when the familiarity of domesticity took hold. No, I decided, I would stay in London. I would not put my life in anyone’s hands again, at least, not until I was sure that the lily would remain desirable even after it had lost its gilt. If that meant I lost James, then so be it. Much as I loved James, I simply could not face another trauma.

So I stayed in London, and James and I drifted apart. Eventually he met and married someone else, had two children, and I thought that that was the end of the story. When Vanessa Hoare had a party to introduce James’ new wife to his friends, I was happy to attend and wish them well. I thought that was it as far as James and I were concerned but as it turned out, the best was yet to come.

I
f I wasn’t going to be a married woman, I had to become a working one. It was not exactly a popular choice to have to make. In 1977, girls from backgrounds like mine seldom let a good man get away unsanctified by matrimony unless they believed someone of equal stature would come along. I confidently expected life to throw up one fabulous guy after another for my delectation; moreover, I was now absolutely sure that I would prefer to remain single unless I could find exactly the right man for me.

This attitude called into question the very structure upon which the establishment conducted itself. Why should I opt for a single life, with all its harsh realities, when I could just as easily choose marriage? Why should I choose to confront the issues that most women like me did their best to avoid? Did I really want a small flat instead of a large house? A tiny income instead of marital wealth? The struggle of facing the world on my own, instead of the safety net of matrimony? Not only my father, but many of my friends thought I was making life unnecessarily difficult for myself.

I no longer cared what Daddy or anyone else thought of me. Notoriety had given me a new indifference to the opinion of others, because I had to live with people thinking I was the opposite of what I was. Just to maintain a modicum of equanimity, I had had to adopt a new set of values. These new values gave me great freedom, and I was becoming aware that I could rid myself of many of society’s shackles. In other words, I could become an independent woman. First, however, I needed a job. At twenty-seven, I was too old to model, and I did not want to return to dress designing. I toyed with the idea of writing, but decided against doing anything that would not bring in a steady income. In a quandary, I turned to Joe Fish, a wise and wonderful American diplomat posted to the Court of St James’s.

‘What you have to sell is class,’ he said. ‘Not many people have it, and not many people can afford to buy it. Target the Arab ambassadors. They’ve got the money; they’ll like your class. I’ll send you a copy of the Diplomatic List.’ (This was a booklet put out by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which listed all the embassies, high commissions and diplomats accredited to London.) ‘Write to each of the Arab ambassadors. Keep the letter short – one, maybe two sentences saying you’re available for a suitable post. Brevity is a sign of confidence. Then sit back, wait for the replies, and we’ll take things from there.’

The first to reply was the Libyan ambassador. He needed a social secretary. Could I arrange an appointment with his secretary? I was offered the job, and Joe said, ‘Take it. It’s a good offer.’

Although I had reservations because of Libya’s reputation for having links with the IRA, Joe talked me out of them, pointing out that the Libyan embassy was a bona-fide diplomatic mission
with properly accredited diplomats.

Next, I needed a place of my own. Through Maxine Franklin, the acclaimed Jamaican pianist, I found a flat at 10 West Eaton Place. Belgravia was not to my taste. Although the smartest area in London, it was so sedate, so monochrome (all the houses are painted in the same magnolia gloss, by dictate of the Grosvenor Estate) and so quiet that I felt I was becoming middle-aged overnight. But I counted my blessings and moved in opposite Andrew Lloyd Webber and his first wife, Sarah.

Doing up the flat, searching for antiques and pictures, was fun. So, too, was my new job. Once the ambassador discovered that I was capable and reliable, he had me doing the work of a private secretary as well as a social one. This was fascinating, not only because one dealt with people at the very highest levels in government, business and the professions, but also because I was afforded a glimpse into the hypocrisy that underlay governmental posturing. If you picked up a newspaper any day of the week, you could read story after story about the dastardly Libyan regime. Yet, again on a daily basis, people from all the major British companies competed for contracts awarded by the Libyan government, while government ministers, diplomats from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and members of the royal household were regular and frequent visitors. Libya, you see, had a great deal of money, and no matter how the West decried Colonel Gaddafi’s politics, the lure of his lucre was infinitely more seductive. Hence the constant cap in-hand appearances of the great and mighty, some of whom trooped all the way over from the United States.

The Washington embassy did not have an ambassador, for political reasons, which made ‘my ambassador’ (as everyone in embassies referred to their head of mission) the West’s primary route to the Libyan government. I could not have been at the embassy for more than about two months when I was offered my first ‘commission’. ‘If you give us access to the ambassador whenever we want it, we’ll give you a handsome commission paid anywhere in the world,’ an eminent businessman said, handing me a box of chocolates. Had I heard right? Was I being offered a bribe for merely doing my job? Yes, I was, and it happened time and again. Nor was access the only thing I was being asked to provide. Denying access to competitors also had a price tag, and I gathered that it was even higher.

I wish I could say that the offers of commission presented me with a dilemma. Regrettably, they did not. I was too naïve to consider accepting money, thinking it dishonourable to take outside remuneration for a service that the Libyan embassy was already paying me to provide. Nowadays, I would most likely take the money and laugh all the way to the bank,
baksheesh
being an accepted part of the Arab culture, though no amount of money could induce me even now to deny access to those who are entitled to it.

To my surprise, the least hypocritical segment of the supplicating population turned out to be the journalists. Those who covered diplomatic and governmental matters were not like the tabloid reporters. Where there was muck, they sought an explanation, not a wallow. Where there was good, they
questioned its existence and its effects. In other words, they sought truth in a responsible and intelligent manner. Doubtless the fact that Britain had a Labour government, that Gaddafi was a believer in state largesse for his people, and that the journalists on assignment were frequently left wing had something to do with it, though not always. The right-wing
Daily Telegraph’
s diplomatic coverage, for instance, was invariably admirably even-handed, and I can think of no occasion on which any diplomatic correspondent deviated from the high standards everyone had a right to expect of him at all times.

When I had taken the job, I had not reckoned upon coming into contact with journalists. Indeed, had I known that it would become an everyday part of my routine, and that I would even be called upon to court the press in an attempt to improve Libya’s image in the Western media, I would not have taken the post. The diplomatic editors, however, all respected my privacy and kept my personal life out of their writings and questionings.

I cannot tell you how relieved and surprised I was to discover that there was a part of the British press that was actually ethical. The Libyans themselves were also a revelation. ‘My’ ambassador could not have been a more decent, correct or honourable man. Mohammed Younis al Mismari had been Colonel Gaddafi’s commanding officer before the revolution. He was a dead ringer for the young Omar Sharif, and even more charming. Happily married with several children, he treated me with the respect that an Arab gentleman accords a lady. When I left, the newspapers claimed that we had had an affair, which was entirely untrue. We did get on well, though, and with time he came to use me as a sounding board for what people in the West thought.

Once I was settled in my job, I realised that the wealth and caring attitude of the Libyans presented me with an ideal opportunity to benefit others. Each Libyan citizen who needed medical care not available at home was flown to London, put into one of the top hospitals, such as the London Clinic or the Princess Grace, and given the finest medical treatment free, while their families were housed in hotels and given spending money. I conceived the idea of channelling some of the altruism towards people I knew.

‘Charities are constantly approaching me for help,’ I said to the ambassador and Said Gaddafedam, Colonel Gaddafi’s nephew, who headed the military section of the embassy, one day. ‘Perhaps you would consider supporting some of the worthier causes? It would do Libya’s reputation no end of good, especially if you sustain the support over a prolonged period. Drip, drip. Gradually people will begin to notice, and they’ll associate Libya with worthwhile patronage.’

‘That’s good thinking,’ Said said. ‘We should do it.’

‘Yes,’ the ambassador agreed. ‘You tell us what to support, and we’ll support it, Georgia.’

So began my charity work in Britain. Charitable causes, however, were not the reason why I had been hired by the ambassador; social clout was.

‘We want you to organise something to celebrate the eighth anniversary of the revolution. Something that lots of well-known people will come to. Can you do it?’

‘I should think so,’ I replied. This, I could see, would not be an easy task. It was one thing for Field-Marshal Lord This or the Most Honourable the Marquis of That to drink coffee with the ambassador during the day while on a contract crawl, for the British establishment thought nothing of befriending people with whom they would never socialise as long as there was a financial reward in sight. But the tricky part would be to get those same men out after dark, and, even more difficult, to have them accompanied by their wives.

I set to work. The British social set, I had discovered, were suckers for parties. Never before had I seen people, even those of supposedly great principle, who would forgive any atrocity, tolerate any failing, overlook any inadequacy, to be entertained elegantly by others. As long as the host or hostess lived in the right area, greeted them in a civil manner, got the butler to serve them champagne, had a footman or two passing around a few canapés, they would arrive in droves. Whether or not they knew the host or hostess was irrelevant. I decided that to persuade potential guests that the reception was going to be well worth attending, I would need to attract them with a healthy proportion of socialites, business tycoons and diplomats. Before the invitation cards were even printed, I began the serious business of courting people via the media.

The Libyan Ambassador’s Dinner, as I named the event (thereby removing all associations of revolution, which would assuredly put off just about everyone my employers wanted to attract), was going to be the epitome of civilisation and sumptuousness in the contemporary recession-ridden British economy. In other words, it was going to be quintessentially aristocratic, with the best of champagnes, wines, food, brandy, liqueurs, bands, cabarets.

As word began filtering out through the gossip columns that I was organising the grandest, most lavish diplomatic reception ever held, I was inundated with calls. The press wanted more information (yes, the champagne would be Louis Roederer Cristal, not Dom Perignon; the Confrey Phillips Band was playing because it was generally acknowledged to be the finest dance band in the United Kingdom). All sorts of people wanted invitations. Some were already on the guest list, but others were truly surprising. One woman even took to writing me threatening letters when I refused to include her, and more than once I had to rescue Lizzy Thompson, my assistant, from tenacious supplicants with the curt comment, ‘The list is closed. It’s only a party, for God’s sake. Develop some dignity and stop begging. Goodbye.’

The guest list remained exactly as I had planned it, with one exception. Vanessa Redgrave, whose outstanding work for the Palestinian cause had earned much condemnation in the Western media, expressed an interest in attending through a mutual acquaintance. I decided that if anyone deserved to
attend it was her, so I had the ambassador’s chauffeur deliver her an invitation.

The dinner dominated my life for three months. Because this was an ambassadorial reception representing a sovereign state, each guest’s invitation had to be addressed in the full, formal style laid down by Buckingham Palace. The embassy, of course, had no precedents, so I had to check each guest’s correct title and decorations in
Who’s Who
or
Debrett’
s, or with one of the official bodies such as Buckingham Palace or the Foreign Office. Talk about time-consuming – boring, too. My only consolation was the knowledge that the embassy would make no gaffes while I was in charge of social affairs.

Six weeks before the date, 29 September 1977, I handed all 2,000 invitations over to the postal section of the embassy and held my breath. Only when the replies came in would I know whether my campaign had worked. I was worried, not least because August is a notorious time of year for the conduct of any business. Everyone is on holiday in Scotland or the Mediterranean, so some of the replies would not be received until as late as mid-September. By then, however, I knew I was on to a winner. Not only had most of my young socialite friends accepted, but so too had eminent politicians like Reginald Maudling and Roy Mason (both cabinet ministers) and heavy-duty businessmen such as James Goldsmith and his then mistress Lady Annabel Birley (after whom Annabel’s, the nightclub in Berkeley Square, is named).

The evening proved a huge success. Within the two tiers of the great ballroom of the Grosvenor House Hotel, all 1,231 guests were treated to a spread most people hadn’t even dreamed was possible. ‘There are chauffeur driven cars backed up on Park Lane beyond Marble Arch,’ Peter Snow, the television journalist commented with admiration. ‘I didn’t know there were so many limousines in the whole of London. This is the diplomatic ball of the decade. How does it feel to have so much clout?’

And in a way, he was right – working at the Embassy had revealed that I did have a measure of clout. Most people I met now seemed impressed by me. Only the die-hard socialites still made the connection with Colin Campbell’s lascivious tales, which, thankfully, seemed to have petered out. I could pick up the telephone and call just about anyone in the country and be put through to that person. Colin Campbell, I was beginning to discover, had been right about his title, even if he had got the wrong end of the stick as to why it impressed people. Only the aristocracy and royalty recognised the link with the dukedom of Argyll: most other people believed the family was related to the famous racing drivers, Sir Malcolm Campbell and his son, Donald. And when they learned the truth, they usually accepted it as a reasonable substitute. Thus ignorance and confusion, exacerbated by the commonness of the name Campbell, were responsible for the bedazzlement. I had no objections, as long as it worked in my favour. Life was certainly looking up after the years of doom and gloom; if not the purpose of my life, this was at least a pleasant enough diversion.