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As August drew on, with only the lightest of nudges down the telephone from Urquhart, the press tied the Prime Minister ever more closely to his impecunious brother. Not that Charlie was saying anything stupid. He had the common sense to keep well out of the way, but an anonymous telephone call to one of the sensationalist Sunday newspapers enabled them to track him down to a cheap hotel in rural Bordeaux. A reporter was despatched to pour enough wine down him to encourage a few vintage 'Charlie-isms', but instead succeeded only in making Charlie violently sick over the reporter and his notebook, before passing out. The reporter promptly paid ?50 to a big-busted girl with a low-cut dress to lean over the slumbering form, while a photographer captured the tender moment for posterity and the newspaper's 11 million readers.
"I'm broke and busted" says Charlie' screamed the headline, while the copy reported for the umpteenth time the fact that the Prime Minister's brother was nearly destitute and cracking under the pressure of a failed marriage and a famous brother. Downing Street's 'absolutely no comment' seemed in the circumstances even more uncaring than usual.
The next weekend the same photograph was run alongside one of the Prime Minister holidaying in considerable comfort in the South of France - to English eyes a mere stone's throw from his ailing brother - and seemingly unwilling to leave his poolside to help. The fact that the same newspaper a week earlier had been reporting how deeply Henry was involved in sorting out Charlie's financial affairs seemed to have been forgotten - until the Downing Street press office called the editor to complain.
'What do you want?' came the reply. 'We give both sides of the story. We backed him warts and all throughout the election campaign. Now it's time to restore the balance a bit.'
Yes, the newspapers during August were dreadful.
SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER
September was even worse. As the new month opened, the Leader of the Opposition announced that he was resigning to make way for 'a stronger arm with which to hold our banner aloft'. He had always been a little too verbose for his own good.
Like most political leaders he was pushed by the younger men around him who had more energy and more ambition, who made their move quietly and secretly almost without his knowing until it was too late and he had announced his intention to resign in an emotional late night interview. For a moment he seemed to have changed his mind under pressure from his still intensely ambitious wife, until he discovered that he could no longer rely on a single vote in his Shadow Cabinet. Yet they were warm in their praise of their fallen leader. As so often happens, the faithful were far more effusively united by his death than by anything he had achieved in office.
The news electrified the media, and Mattie was summoned back from her beach in Zakynthos, much to her silent relief. Eight days of lying in the sun watching couples grow increasingly tender and uninhibited in the Ionian sun had made her feel utterly miserable. She was lonely, very lonely, and the loving couples around her only served to rub the point home. When the telephone call came instructing her to return to cover the breaking story, she packed her bags without complaint and found a seat on the next flight home.
She returned to discover an Opposition Party which had been galvanised. Their seemingly endless internal divisions were now being played down as they stepped up the attack on a lacklustre Government, most of whose members were still away on holiday. The real prospect of power at the next election, even one which was still perhaps four years away, was helping to focus Opposition minds and encourage fraternal thoughts. Better as one of twenty senior Cabinet Ministers in Government than the sole Party Leader in endless Opposition, one explained.
So by the time the new leader was elected just a week before the Party's annual conference in early October, the Opposition had dominated the news for several weeks and the conference turned into a united salute to the new leader. Under an enormous slogan of 'Victory', the conference was unrecognisable as the assembly of a party which had lost the election only a few months before.
By contrast, just a week later the representatives gathered for the Government Party's conference in a spirit of trepidation and complaint The conference centre at Bournemouth could be uplifting if filled with 4,000 enthusiastic supporters, but now its bare brick walls and chromium-plated fitments served only to emphasise the sullenness of those who gathered.
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