High life
Decent
Taki
New York Tmissed all the fireworks because I left
London two weeks ago. I guess I was lucky for once. In the mood I was in I don't think I could have endured a lecture from hacks about caddish behaviour and the sanctity of marriage. Edward du Cann was the only one who made sense when he spoke about humbug and hypocrisy. The only
thing I have to add is that if I were Cecil Parkinson I would consider the matter clos- ed after quoting from The Importance of Being Earnest: 'In married life three is com- pany and two is none.' And if I were the Prime Minister I would assign yet another ministry to him. After all, any man in public life who will not stoop to the depths of pretending that he's celibate deserves to be recognised as the extraordinary man he is.
What I would like to know most of all is who is the government minister who said that Parkinson should have done the decent thing and divorced his wife. Well, I am quoting from the New York Times, and I trust it as much as I trust Mugabe to keep his promises. But if a minister did say that I think he owes it to us to come out and tell us exactly what the decent thing really is.
Ironically, about three weeks ago I met again a man who did the decent thing ten years ago. It was at the party given by Naim Atallah for Tony Lambton's book of short stories. Lambton and I met over 25 years ago on the Riviera. I thought him a strange figure at first, and after the initial impres- sion, a fascinating one. He wore a blue double-breasted suit in the August heat, yet managed to get a lot of women into bed despite his sartorial taste and Dracula-like appearance. Lambton had the reputation for being ruthless with other people's wives. What I remember liking about him was that unlike most politicians he did not stoop to be liked, made no pretence, and gave the impression of being more lecherous than he really was.
And, talking about doing the decent thing, it was the most decent gentleman of all, Sir Alec Douglas Home, who didn't do the decent thing where Lambton was con- cerned. Sir Alec knew that Tony was under sexual scrutiny by Heath's castrati, and he should have warned him to lay off Norma Levy for a while. But probably he was shocked that Tony Lambton spent his time in this way, and I'm not surprised. Sir Alec is hardly the type of man to understand such things; which he should have, because the only loser was the Tory Party, and even Sir Alec must have known that Lambton was as likely to give in to blackmail as, say, Anthony Blunt would he not to.
Yes, I wish the minister who wants the decent thing to be done would explain it better to me. Perhaps he means to be like the Kennedys, who, it seems, have been do- ing the decent thing since time immemorial. Just look at America's first political family. Through the magic of collective guilt on the part of the electorate, the Kennedy PR machine has managed to hoodwink a by now lobotomised American public into believing that the family is a normal, hard- working community-minded group. The fact that they pretend to do the decent thing has been what it's all about. Bobby gets caught with heroin and immediately the machine goes to work: 'I am determined to beat this problem,' says his statement, and everyone is immediately aware that Bobby's father was assassinated when he was only
14. The fact that there are hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have lost their fathers in war, and have not turned to heroin, is neither here nor there. What is important is the message the Ken- nedys put out. They are liberal, anti- establishment and anti-big-business. They pretend to strive to do the decent thing, and whenever they get caught cheating, lying, or breaking the law — something which hap- pens as regularly as I get wrecked — they invoke the fact that they are a martyred family.
Well, would it be better for Cecil Parkin- son to have divorced his wife so that people would not make snide remarks, or to have done what a Kennedy would have: offered the mistress a sum she couldn't refuse and found a friend to cover as father? I say neither, and I hope that he sticks to his guns. I have often had a mistress while I have been married and believe me it is a sign of a good man when the wife sticks by him. It is the sign of a fool when the wife leaves and he sticks to the mistress. But I shouldn't be talking because it is the sign that a man is over the hill when the mistress leaves him and the wife does too. Which I suspect is happening to me. I guess I'm too decent.
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