Interesting:
Tea with Mrs. Thatcher
By YEHUDA AVNER
Eaton Square is a leafy enclave surrounded by pristine period properties where the wealthy and the celebrated, the great and the good, make their homes. Arguably London's premier quadrangle, the roll call of its former residents reads like a who's who of English political and cultural lore. It is the sort of place where tour buses stop.
Ninety-three Eaton Square comes with a particular cachet. Two ex-premiers once lived there: Sir Stanley Baldwin in the Thirties, and Margaret (now Baroness) Thatcher in the Nineties.
Thatcher's occupancy was fortuitous. After more than 11 years in office, conniving Conservative colleagues unceremoniously kicked her out, compelling her to vacate 10 Downing Street with no alternative address readily on hand.
That was in November 1990. So, with Arthurian chivalry, Henry Ford offered Thatcher and her husband, Dennis, his London residence – 93 Eaton Square – until they could sort themselves out. It was to this burnished, brass-knobbed, black pearl door that I repaired on a crystal sunny April morning in 1991, to keep an appointment with the ex-prime minister.
My acquaintanceship with Mrs. Thatcher went back to my London days as ambassador in the Eighties, when she was premier. The purpose of my visit now was to offer her an honorary doctorate in the name of Bar-Ilan University.
"Come in, come in," piped Dennis Thatcher with a rush of companionability as he opened the door. "Margaret's in the lounge. I'm just dashing out. Be back in a jiffy."
And off he strode, a well-groomed, gray-haired, bespectacled, thoroughbred English gentleman wearing a brown trilby hat, a well-tailored suit and polished black brogues, and carrying a tightly-rolled umbrella, which he carried vertically like a ceremonial sword.
THATCHER, dressed in an apple-green outfit with a huge string of pearls around her neck, received me genially in the hallway. She led me into an elegant and spacious room papered in a bold flower design, with a grand piano, superb furnishings, Modiglianis on the walls, and French doors giving off to a manicured terrace garden decorated with a medley of spring flowers.
Admiring the setting, I tentatively alluded to the purpose of my visit. On the spot she accepted the honorary doctorate invitation with gusto. Then she patted a comfortable-looking couch and chirped, "Now, why don't you and I sit down and have a bit of a natter like in the good old days. Here, have a peppermint!"
She pushed a brass tray of wrapped green sweets in my direction, and also tinkled a little bell that was handily placed by her side. "I'm sure you'll join me in a nice cup of tea, won't you?"
A maid appeared bearing a china service, a silver teapot and a plate of cucumber sandwiches, extra thin, which she placed on a coffee table whose surface was largely obscured by old copies of the Illustrated London News and Country Life.
"Well, thank God that ghastly war is over," said Thatcher stoutly, doing the honors. And then, in a leap of empathy, her voice dropping into tenderness as she passed me a cup, "You people must have had a frightening time being attacked by those Scuds. Any one of them might have carried a nonconventional warhead. Who was to know? It was all so unprovoked.
"Saddam Hussein is a tyrant, a criminal! Bravo for your self-restraint! Now please help yourself to a cucumber sandwich."
THE FIRST Gulf War had just about ended, and between sips of tea and cucumber sandwiches Thatcher resorted to salvos of reminiscences about how she had first heard of Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait the August before.
"I was still prime minister last summer, of course," she recalled wistfully, "and was attending a conference in Aspen, Colorado, with president Bush. When I heard about the invasion of Kuwait I went to see him in his suite. He asked me, 'Now, Margaret, what's your view?' I told him I had experienced aggression in the Falklands, so I had no doubt how to deal with an aggressor.
"Aggressors had to be stopped, thrown out, destroyed. And when he began to chew this over, I said, 'Look George, this is no time to be wobbly. No half-measures. Liberate Kuwait. Go into Iraq. Destroy Saddam Hussein and his National Guard utterly. Britain will be by your side.'"
Her voice suddenly acquired a serrated edge: "George Bush promised me two things," she said grimly. "He promised to destroy the Iraqi forces, and he promised to capture Saddam Hussein and have him tried as a war criminal. Well, as far as I am concerned, what happened in fact "
She was interrupted in mid-sentence by the little servant's cough of her maid, who had obsequiously entered the room to hand her a note. Thatcher shot her a sharp glance, read the note with ferocious concentration and, rising, said, "You'll have to excuse me a moment. I have to take a call in the study."
She strode to the door, opened it, paused, turned, and glowered back, "So yes, what happened in fact is that George Bush failed on both counts. He neither destroyed the National Guard, nor did he capture Saddam Hussein."
She said this with an emphatic lifting of the head and a lowering of the eyelids for added veracity. Then, with a cold, hard stare, she walked back into the room, laid a confiding finger on my arm, and said, "I've telephoned Number 10 only once since leaving, and that's when I saw what savagery Saddam Hussein was inflicting on the Kurds and the Shi'ites.
"I simply could not hold my tongue. They were doing exactly what George Bush had asked them to do – rise up against Saddam Hussein – and then he left them hanging in the lurch.
"And I'll tell you something else." Her whole demeanor had risen in vehement severity. "George was badly advised. James Baker [secretary of state] is no Henry Kissinger. Jimmy Baker is a lawyer from Texas. He operates like a lawyer from Texas. He doesn't make policy, he makes deals. I suspect he thinks Sinai is the plural of sinus."
And, with that, she spun on her heel and stalked out to take her call.
In the sudden stillness I gazed about me and noted the fantasies of power that still clung to her in a room that was a feast of opulence: the large oil painting above the fireplace – a statuesque Thatcherite image in full evening regalia – the silver sculpture on the table engraved with the names of her cabinet, the huge plain silver bowl next to it inscribed as a parting gift from her parliamentary constituency, and a needle-worked cushion on an armchair depicting the front door of Number 10.
'NOW, WHERE were we?" Thus Thatcher shuffling back into the room, minutes later. "Ah yes," she reminded herself, "George!"
She stood staring hard out of the French window, her arms folded, her shoulders stooped, her features fixed in a pose of melodramatic pugnacity, saying nothing – a nothing that said everything, a nothing that said: "If only I was still prime minister, everything would be different."
When she finally spoke her voice was thin, worn, resigned.
"I was unseated at the critical moment," she lamented, "just when George needed all my backing to keep his nerve. But he faltered. The Scud strike on the barracks in Saudi Arabia that killed 36 Americans – that's what broke his nerve.
"He became obsessed with casualties. He tried to win the war from high altitudes, where everything is clean and sterile. His air campaign demoralized the Iraqi army, true, so that when the ground forces went in they cut through Kuwait to Baghdad like a knife through butter.
"But instead of finishing off the job by destroying the National Guard and capturing Saddam Hussein, George declared a premature victory."
"So there we have it," she concluded, her face stiffening into an effigy of contempt: "I'm out of office, George is having to fight a reelection himself that he may not win, and that tyrant is sitting pretty in Baghdad ready to fight another day.
"Mark my words, Saddam Hussein shall yet be back to haunt us."
The writer, a veteran diplomat, was ambassador to the Court of St. James's.
avner28@netvision.net.il
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