FATHER’S RACING YEARS were a period of his life on which he looked back with affection and regret. His interest in the turf was first pricked in the 1960s. It was not that Father had ever mounted a horse himself. In India twenty years before, the most the Viceroy had done was to persuade him to sit on a pony.
Father, his face and hands scarlet with a five-cocktail flush, had omitted to secure the girth. The dénouement was inevitable, perhaps. When the animal began to amble off, both saddle and rider slid to the ground.
From then on, Father determined that if any riding were to be done, it would be by other people. I suppose that friends must have suspected that horseflesh was something with which he was not familiar, because when he was invited to his first race meeting at Newmarket, he is alleged to have asked, ‘At which point do they bring on the dancing girls?’
He denied strenuously, however, asking the host at which intervals during the day to cry out, ‘match point’, ‘foul’ or ‘sticky wicket’.
The Newmarket grandstand, where the guests enjoyed an elegant repast, was grand enough even for Father’s exacting tastes. Encouraged by good food and wine, he was persuaded to place some money on a horse called Diamond Girl, which was running in the second race. He won. In the fifth race he won again. The effect of this run of luck was dramatic. Father decided to buy a race horse, thus beginning an association with the turf that was to last nearly forty years.
As a rule, Father’s horses had a funereal halo of failure hovering over them. They did not distinguish themselves on the racetrack and were therefore entered in small, inconsequential meetings. These invariably took place in the foulest of weather. Father always felt he was sloshing around in some strange puddle, the whole ambience of the courses so slippery that neither he nor the horses could get a grip.
Then he struck lucky. Some wiry, weather-beaten racing hunk pointed Father in the direction of a certain two-year-old. Its mother was called Lady Godiva and its sire, Pink Flower. It was a beauty, with ample yet lean lines and legs as strong as metal bars. Father knew he had a winner on his hands. What is more, he managed to purchase the horse for under four hundred pounds.
There was one small snag. The horse had as yet no name. It was 1959 and Father was a Labour MP. The Tories were still in power but the election might change that. Thus when the Jockey Club asked Father what he intended to call his horse, he replied, ‘Vote Labour’.
Vote Labour? Quelle horreur. The serried ranks of the Jockey Club took an unsurprisingly dim view. That aspicated body said it disapproved of political propaganda on the racecourse. In the end Father called his horse Godiva’s Pink Flower.
After it had won a small but not insignificant race in Nottingham, Father asked the trainer to enter it in the New Stakes at Royal Ascot.
The man was horrified. ‘You can’t run a four-hundred-pound horse at Ascot. All the other horses will have cost five to ten thousand pounds.’
It was the only occasion on which he disregarded his trainer’s judgement. Father intended to go to Royal Ascot for the first and perhaps the last time in his life, and races were infinitely more amusing if one had a horse running. Besides he was confident of his little horse and asked a bookmaker for a price on his being placed fourth – which, after a demur at such an unusual request, he received.
In the paddock Father told the jockey of his bet, and after doubtfully looking around the smart horses being saddled for the race, he promised to do his best. The Duke of Norfolk, a great figure in racing, had an outstanding runner called Sound Track. It jumped into the lead and there was silence about Father’s tiny quadruped.
Then he heard the commentator saying, ‘Godiva’s Pink Flower coming up fast behind Sound Track.’
From then on the man repeated over and over, ‘Sound Track followed by Godiva’s Pink Flower.’
What a pity, Father mused, as they approached the Royal Enclosure, that the commentator’s voice could not be echoing into the stands and the boxes, ‘Sound Track . . . and Vote Labour,’ to the astonishment and perhaps petrification of the spectators.
Godiva’s Pink Flower had no hope of overtaking Sound Track but it did its brave best. Father’s horse had become worth far more than he had paid for it.
After that, though, Father had no more winners. Racing was draining his finances and the odd small victory proved no counterpoint to his dwindling pride. He sold his remaining horses. This might have been the end of things in one way or another, but then Fate stepped in, in the amiable manner she usually employed where Father was concerned.
By this time his close friend Roy Jenkins had become Home Secretary in the Labour government. One day he spoke to Father on the telephone, seeking advice. He had a problem. The Chairmanship of the Horserace Totalisator Board was vacant. The company had been losing money and was generally believed to operate in an archaic, short-sighted style. Who could fill the post? Father could not come up with any names, so Roy asked archly, ‘But Woodrow, you like racing. Why don’t you do the job?’
‘Roy, old boy, I don’t want to. Besides, I don’t know very much about that side of racing.’
‘Never mind. You’ll soon pick it up.’
Roy was obdurate. He wore Father down. Reluctance was natural. The job was hardly a plum sinecure. The salary was barely reasonable and the task ahead was about as glamorous as a strangled corpse floating in the Thames. Father said he would do it for four years at the outside. In the end he stayed for twenty-one years.
He became very partial to the racing world and its self-contained set of values, which were louche enough some of the time, and quite rigid the rest. The racecourse had an etiquette of its own. No umbrellas, they would frighten the horses – literally. No trousers for women, unless they were culottes. And of course there was the whole dress code for Ascot – at least if one wished to pass through the social Outer Hebrides of the grandstand into the Royal Enclosure.
Under Father’s stewardship the Tote began to make, for the first time in its history, a substantial profit. It was partly to do with his ebullient mode of work; his notoriety reflected on the Tote and endowed it with a certain élan. An annual lunch was instigated in the gold and ivory dining room at the Hyde Park Hotel. Everyone remarked on the longevity of Father’s chairmanship of the Tote. He succeeded in outlasting four Prime Ministers and scores of Home Secretaries. The longer he stayed the crosser some people became. Why on earth was Woodrow Wyatt permitted to remain? Every year journalists predicted his retirement. It never happened. They stormed with impotent fury, but the Tote’s profits continued to rise and, for the first time, the company had achieved public recognition.
These years encompassed two alterations in Father’s status. When he took over the Tote he was plain Mr Wyatt. When he left he was Baron Wyatt of Weeford, in the county of Staffordshire.
The offer of a knighthood came when I was fourteen. I recall that Mother had roused me out of a half-slumber. There was an excited lilt in her voice. ‘Your father’s a bit tight,’ she said. At least that was what I thought I heard, which was quite possible, as our family frequently suffered from what a cousin of mine used to call the Irish disease.
What she actually said, however, was, ‘Your father’s to be a knight.’ She repeated it.
Father, a knight? This was head-swimming romance. It was a subduing experience therefore to hear that all it actually entailed was a small ceremony at Buckingham Palace, even though this was one that Mother and I might attend.
When the day came, Father put on his morning suit and a top hat. We drove to Buckingham Palace; in the cool morning light it resembled a marbled barracks. Small crowds of people, mostly tourists, had gathered outside the gates and were pressing inquisitive faces through the bars. I cannot say that the inside of the Palace impressed itself upon me. Aside from the public rooms, it seemed remarkably drab. A smell of fish and cabbage wafted from corridors. The overwhelming sense was one of greyness and brownness. But then we passed into a room enlivened by gilt and galleries. Huge carpets sprawled there in somnolent splendour. Father bit his nails, an uncharacteristic indulgence. Suddenly a band struck up some musical tunes by Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Father was not the only person being knighted that day. There was a small assembly-line of people who were to receive honours – they were still and quiet, as though waiting for the Queen to arrive before throwing themselves into exuberant freedom. Mother and I were seated on some gold chairs. Fifteen minutes later a flunkey announced Father’s name.
Father strode forwards, his bow-tie even bigger than usual, almost covering his ears. Then he knelt down before the Queen. She looked tiny in the scale of the room; she was pretty, with a surprising feathery flimsiness. When they handed her a huge shining sword, I was amazed she could even lift it. Her voice was so small one could scarcely hear what she was saying.
‘I dub you Sir Woodrow Wyatt,’ I believe Her Majesty mumbled.
Mother was now Lady Wyatt. Father was much amused by this, and took to using her title at home as if they were characters in Jane Austen. But although Father liked being a knight, he secretly longed to become a peer. This was not out of any desire for social advancement: he had advanced thus far as plain mister and had no interest in straight-up snobbery. But he wanted to sit once more in the Houses of Parliament and the only way he could do that was through a life peerage.
He had to wait only four years. Early in 1987, father received a telephone call from Mrs Thatcher. ‘Woodrow,’ she asked, ‘would you like to become a peer?’
Wouldn’t he just. But once the first feelings of euphoria had worn off, he told her he had no intention of taking the Tory whip. He would sit on the crossbenches as an independent.
I always laughed at father’s attempts to illustrate in public his detachment from Margaret Thatcher. He praised her in the newspapers but refused to go to a Conservative party conference, saying, ‘If I do, someone might think I’m a Tory.’
When I questioned this logic, he became angry and derisive: ‘I’m not a Tory, nor is Margaret. The Tories are shits. She just makes use of the Tory party. Winston Churchill did the same.’
To become a peer in the full sense one had to be introduced formally to the House of Lords. For this father needed two supporters. This was not because he would be high – on other spirits besides his own – but because each new peer was required to be introduced by two fellow peers.
Mother was very pleased, but I remember thinking she had a more raw deal from it all. Father became Lord Wyatt but she stayed Lady Wyatt. ‘The Lady Wyatt,’ Father corrected. The Lady Wyatt? As opposed to what?
Still, she was able to attend the State Opening of Parliament and wear a tiara. As the Communists had confiscated the family jewels, Mother had to borrow one from a friend. It arrived by courier in a brown paper bag but was too big for her. No matter how Mother tried, she could not prevent it from slipping from her head, except by securing the ornament with a pipe cleaner.
The morning brought showers – an enlivening spray dispelling the muggy cloud that had encompassed the city. Mother and Father drove to Parliament. When they alighted from the car they noticed that a group of people had gathered to review the spectacle. They admired Mother, dignified in her splendour; they looked at Father and must have been more disappointed by his robust and smiling figure. People expect a Lord to be reserved and haughty, just as they expect a comedian to be cheerful and animated.
The scene inside was sobering. In the House of Lords, the massed ranks of the English peerage were assembled in all their finery. Mother, whose idea of bliss differed from Wordsworth’s more egalitarian one, found it very heaven. Father felt likewise, though for a different reason. His eyes were firmly fixed on his fellow life peers, and almost everywhere he looked, he saw a familiar face from his days in the House of Commons. There was Roy Jenkins, there Jim Callaghan, there Denis Healey.
For Father his elevation to the Lords was like a coming home. During afternoons when the Tote made negligible demands upon him, he would set off for the Lords. Every peer had his own coathook in the cloakroom with his name printed above it. These were arranged alphabetically, so that Father’s was close to that of Harold Wilson. The temptation to tweak his old adversary’s nose was great. When Wilson next left his coat hanging on the hook, Father removed it, placing it on his own.
Presently the former premier emerged from the chamber to collect his belongings. But what was this? His peg was empty. His coat had gone, vanished into thin air. Wheeling around, Wilson noticed on Father’s hook something suspiciously like his missing garment. But he had not spoken to Father in years and he was chary of breaking his silence over a coat – it seemed too insubstantial a cause to renege on one’s principles. So Wilson went out coatless into the cold night and continued to do so until the perpetrator replaced it a few days later.
‘The nice thing about the House of Lords,’ Father said some time afterwards, ‘is that one enters it in one’s second childhood, expecting to find a dull finishing school. Instead one stumbles upon the most delightful nursery.’