Singular life
All of a tremble
Petronella Wyatt
It is one thing to keep a diary. It is one thing to sell that diary to Macmillan for publication after one's death. It is one thing to select someone to edit it. It is one thing to wish the Sunday Times to serialise the aforesaid diary in its Review section. It is quite another, however, not to tell your family you are doing any of the above. I refer, of course, to those Woodrow Wyatt journals. Those scribblings that have been titillating and terrifying the town for the past three weeks. For years little bun- dles had been leaving our house every few weeks but mother and I were never sure what they contained. We hoped it was cigars or claret or biscuits from Fortnum and Mason.
Much later I discovered these bundles had been delivered to the bank vaults. This Was after the will was read, which was when mother and I were told by one of the executors that Volume I of the Woodrow Wyatt Journals was to hit the shops in Octo- ber. My jaw hit the carpet. Worse, the seri- alisation rights were apparently being sold to the Sunday Times. Oh God.
I could imagine the frank style in which father's diaries would have been written. Contrary to recent insinuations from those little minnows overwhelmed by father-the- whale, in life he was rarely sycophantic. As 4Columnist for Rupert Murdoch he risked dismissal by persistently attacking the Sun, and, later, defending Major after the boss had switched allegiance to Tony Blair. With this in mind I asked the publishers, Politely, if mother and I could see an advance copy, just to set our minds at rest. After all we were the family. The publish- ers said no. I was not allowed to see one on the curious grounds that I was a journalist and might 'scoop' the book. The real rea- son, however, may have been concern that Mother and I would wish some passages removed.
If so they were spot on. As the past three Sundays dawned we trembled like aspen as .1•annlY friends (now ex) were pinioned to the page like highly coloured butterflies. rd This and Lady That were revealed as an 'ass/humbug/secret paedophile/mass murderer' — not quite, almost though. Worse, various ladies were accused of tam- pering with their outer structures (wrongly, I'm sure).
Was columnists began to telephone. "as I not devastated by the 'revelations' of father's 'string-pulling' to acquire me a place at Oxford? Not at all, I replied, I had been delighted at its success. I quoted my friend Andrew Roberts: Par grander to be the recipient of 18th-century-style patron- age than a mere cog in the mid-Victorian competitive examination process.' This made the hacks even angrier.
When, a few days later, I flew to New York on business — taking my mother who wished to escape from the hullabaloo the hacks followed us. Someone from the Evening Standard telephoned our hotel at 6.30 in the morning New York time and was put through to my mother's room. Was it true,' they demanded, 'that you bought Petronella a Dior dressing-gown when she was nine?' (This was, naturally, completely incorrect. I was three.) Then came the inevitable, dreadful tele- phone calls from aggrieved friends and acquaintances. How could Woodrow have written that they beat their wives, that they had described so and so as a frightful phony and an ugly bitch? Didn't we realise that so and so was their best friend? They could just kill him. I remarked not unrea- sonably that it was pointless wishing to kill father as he was already dead.
What can one say? Father was an incor- rigible joker and this was his best joke yet. I would say his last joke were he not perfect- ly capable of springing another surprise from the grave — it may turn out that Lord Lucan is buried under our potting shed, or that there is another Wyatt wife lurking somewhere to add to the other four whom he acknowledged officially in his lifetime.
This is, obviously, a matter for Mary Killen. What does one do on meeting someone your father has rudely insulted in his diaries? Does one take them by the hand and remark sorrowfully, 'I am so dis- tressed that my father described your ankles as piano legs. Of course they are nothing like piano legs. He must have been thinking of someone else's ankles'?
A second option, which I am seriously considering, is to declare the diaries a forgery. Where is the evidence that these are indeed my father's journals? There is none. Perhaps they were written by some- one else? Perhaps the author is really Rupert Murdoch. I shall ask Hugh Trevor Roper to adjudicate. That is, if father hasn't referred to him as an old fool who can't tell his Goebbels from his gorgonzola.
'How many times do I have to tell you about drawing on the walls?'
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