Married to the minister

Judy Hurd

A BICYCLETTE here is a lot to be said for writing about a new experience when it is still new. Leave it too long and familiarity will have dulled its edges. Isabelle Juppe, my French 'homologue' and a journalist by profession, has not wasted her first year as wife of the French Foreign Minister. She has not entirely discarded her journalistic habit nor her notebook. The result is a slim volume which has been hovering around the No. 8 mark in the French bestseller list.

It is not a tell-tale book nor a critical one. Everyone from ambassadresses and interpreters to the Quai d'Orsay chefs and the lady who looks after the table linen come in for her praise, each one adding his or her weight to the power of French diplomacy. The book tells us straight how it feels to be in this strange and privileged position. But at the same time it is nicely ironic and quizzical, with parts which made me chuckle with the accuracy of the obser- vation.

Jacques Toubon, the French Minister for Culture, is the only person who might be irritated by the book. It is he who has fired the latest salvo in the war against Franglais. But Isabelle has chosen to ignore it.

'Cosy', 'garden party', `no man's land', reotganisation des 'stocks' — all have crept into the text. And there is worse. A frank admission that the French language is losing its battle with the English language. 'II est aujourd'hui indispensable de parler anglais', says Isabelle unreservedly. Poor Monsieur Toubon must have a heavy heart.

Diplomacy is a fiercely competitive busi- ness, and I discover that the way it is prac- tised by two thrusting Foreign Ministers is almost identical. Messrs Hurd and Juppe 'on tour' follow pretty much the same path. Touch-down, red carpet, welcome ceremo- ny, high-speed police convoy (there is a not a moment to be lost), embassy dinner with interesting people, breakfast with business- men (also interesting, of course). For Douglas and Alain talks and lunch with their opposite numbers, for Isabelle and me the British Council or the Alliance Frangaise, a hospital, a school or a charity. A chance to see progress, or perhaps more often the need for help, in our host coun- try. A chance to get to know the women who fill our shoes in distant places. A chance – dare I say it? – to enjoy the sheer pleasure of travel, aided and abetted by our hosts. It is a privilege, a supreme privilege. And the purpose? We are all at the same game. Working to make a small dent in the suspicion and ignorance which still do such harm in the world. Working to make our relationship more special than the next man's.

With that thought in mind, did I detect just a slight drawing in of breath amongst Douglas' advisers at the news of Alain Juppe's five-day high-profile visit to South Africa earlier this year, the first for 18 years by a French Foreign Minister, com- plete with a French frigate in Simonstown and a lot of pressing of flesh? No, I'm sure I didn't.

Unlike many of her compatriots, Isabelle doesn't flinch from a little self-deprecation.

She tells a story or two which remind me of my own sartorial mistakes. That backless and frontless red spangly dress that I wore for my very first Downing Street dinner. It had been absolutely 'a point' for dancing the night away in the Shires, but was not quite the thing for a Government dinner. Isabelle confesses that she went to her first Elysee banquet looking rather like Cinderella at the Ball. The dresses of her more practised colleagues were discreet and 'passe-partout'. And then there was the folly of those pencil-thin heels, not advis- able when you have to stand for hours. I have often wondered how Margaret Thatcher managed it.

Isabelle's passion, like mine, is for the places where life has been hardest, or the places which are on the point of radical change: Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South Africa. It is in these places that the contrasts are acute. And her hosts, women who could have expected a less stressful life in Paris, paint vivid pictures of their experi- ences: Eva in Poland, Olga in the Czech Republic, Raoufa in the Yemen, Carla in Beirut. Each of these women makes her mark on Isabelle by the story she has to tell.

I have vivid memories of our own visit to Beirut. Two hours in all it was. A dash through the rain-soaked streets, with sirens wailing, to the home of Zalfa, Presidential daughter and Ministerial wife. Inside, a dozen of so beautifully dressed and wel- coming women. We had an excellent and amusing dinner, throughout which they all puffed voraciously on their cigarettes. The lively wife of the Health Minister had clearly read her brief; she had spotted my link with the Cancer Research Campaign. As the room filled with smoke, she looked me straight in the eye. 'You see, Mrs Hurd, if you'd lived with the dangers that we've lived with for 15 years you would under- stand why we all smoke so heavily. It has been our only release, our only pleasure'. Off the top of my head I could think of better ways of coping with a cur- few, but my courage failed me. And who was I from comfortable old England to dis- agree?

Isabelle writes about the intoxication of being plunged into the liquid of power, like an ant in a sea of jam. French jam, you will remember, is very runny. She analyses the layers — les couches — which separate the powerful ones (the President or the Minis- ter) from reality — layers which become proportionally greater the more important you are.

The first layer is the entourage. Its pur- pose is to help the powerful one under- stand the world, but in fact it can end up by smothering him. Wishing to protect him, it forms almost a hermetic seal. Security is the second layer, more discreet in France than in the States, but still everywhere. The third layer is the Press. They wish to observe the powerful one having contact with reality, but by their overweening pres- ence make it much more difficult for him to do so. The three together create a cocoon which entirely protects its captive from the real world.

So how can the powerful one survive this unreal experience? Isabelle has her own remedies. Since when has Main not bought his own jam in the supermarket?, she asks, stressing that amidst the pomp of power he has not abandoned the simple things of life. For what, I say, was Douglas created if it were not to turn the compost in our Oxfordshire garden? Perhaps our most important role is to keep the feet of the powerful ones firmly on the ground.

It emerges in the book that Isabelle Juppe's father had once prevented her from going on a 48-hour school trip to London because he said, 'You can't get to know anything about a place in 48 hours'. She sulked for days. But now all her wildest travel dreams have been fulfilled — it's 48 hours everywhere. At least that's time enough to decide whether she wants to come back.

My travel dreams are pretty well dreamt too. As a 21-year-old I made a very ungrand tour of Europe with a good friend and her battered Hillman Avenger. We had £250 between us, and a pre-war tent which you could only enter on all fours, and which anyway leaked like a sieve. How often have I been asked on these more recent journeys whether I have ever visited that particular country before. The dia- logue goes something like this:

'Yes, I came over 20 years ago.' 'Where did you stay?'

'In the campsite outside the city.'

This often provokes a little mirth, but it makes me ask the question: which is reali- ty? A leaky tent and a Hillman Avenger or the British Embassy and a police escort? Each has its charms. But as the years pass I'm thinking that leaky tents are probably best in the memory.