Barbara Vine - The Blood Doctor

I take the Jubilee Line from St John’s Wood and get off at Green Park, which isn’t far from St James’s Square where the London Library is. The rest of the way is on foot, through the park and over the bridge, and though I’ve walked this way a thousand times, I always stop for a second on the bridge to look at the view of Whitehall and Horse Guards and the Foreign Office: water and trees and majestic buildings, and the pelicans on their island. At this time of the year the great influx of tourists hasn’t yet begun. It’s an ordinary walk to the Palace of Westminster, not a battle through dawdling crowds with cameras as it sometimes is. Outside the Peers’ Entrance, Richard Coeur de Lion sits on his horse, his sword arm and sword upraised. I always give him a glance and wonder what it was like to go on a crusade, when the rabble of peasant soldiers of Christ thought it quite permissible, indeed praiseworthy, to kill infidel women and their babies and roast them for dinner. The doorkeeper says, ‘Good morning, my Lord,’ though it is twenty-five past two, but, as peers should know when they’ve been here five minutes, it’s morning in the House of Lords until prayers have been said.

I hang my raincoat on the peg that says ‘Lord Nanther’, which is next door but two to the Duke of Norfolk’s, go up the staircase to the Principal Floor and in the Printed Paper Office I pick up an order paper, and there is my starred question: ‘What, in the opinion of Her Majesty’s Government, is the likelihood of the Jubilee Line extension being completed in time to offer public access to the Millennium Dome by 1 January 2000?’

Not being fond of bishops, I stay out of the Chamber until after prayers. It’s always a bishop that says them – there are twenty-four in here and two archbishops, and each does a week-long stint – but these days few of them use the fluting tone associated with the High Church of my father’s youth. I go into the Chamber as part of the great influx from the Peers’ Lobby and take my usual seat in the third row from the front of the cross-benches on the spiritual side. Not strictly the cross-benches at all, they are in the middle, parallel to the clerks’ table and the throne, but an extension of the government area behind their bit of the front bench where the privy counsellors sit. Lord Callaghan and Lord Healey are often seated there but not today. My grandfather sat on the cross-benches on the rare occasions he attended, describing himself as independent and Bohemian. My father and Henry were staunchly right-wing, both of them diehard Conservatives.

When I first entered this chamber at the age of eleven and sat on the steps of the throne as my father’s heir (the Hon. Martin Nanther) I thought the place very ugly, its Gothic ridiculous, its colours crude, especially the kingfisher-blue carpet and blood-red leather benches. The gilding of the throne, almost too dazzling to look at, reminded me of a stage set in the Aladdin pantomime I’d seen at Christmas. Thirty-five years ago Gothic was still unfashionable, taken for granted as being in bad taste. I was particularly scornful of the stained-glass windows, uncompromisingly red, green, blue and yellow. But I was still young enough to like the carved figures of lion and unicorn which serve as finials on the posts at the bar. Now I feel differently, if I don’t quite go along with whoever it was the other day that described the Palace of Westminster as the most beautiful building in London. It is beautiful and I shall miss it when I’m gone. I shall miss giving the unicorn a pat on his polished head when I pass through the gate in the brass barrier we call ‘the bar’, bow in the general direction of the throne and the Cloth of Estate (non-existent, spiritual, a space only, marking the position which the Queen, if present, would occupy) and make my way up the steps to my place. The Chamber is full, for today is the first day of the second reading of the House of Lords Bill. First reading is, of course, a mere formality, so the second reading is very important and feelings will run high. Quite a lot of hereditary peers acknowledge that their day is done, that a man or woman – there are a few women hereditaries – should not have a right to make the country’s laws just because an ancestor helped the king in war or an ancestress slept with him. It’s not this which most of them will dispute, but the uncertainty surrounding what kind of a House will come after them, the brutal talk about ‘getting rid of them’ and the loss of their privileges to eat and drink and smoke in the House and use its library – in other words, their club rights.

But questions first. There’s one about Railtrack and one about nuclear weapons and then comes mine. The Clerk of the Parliaments gets up and says, ‘The Lord Nanther,’ and I say, ‘My Lords, I beg leave to ask the question standing in my name on the order paper,’ but I don’t ask it because it’s printed for all to read on the Orders of the Day.

The minister says there’s no question but that the Jubilee Line will be completed. I’m obliged to ask a supplementary question and this is something that makes a lot of peers sweat, lest the minister pre-empts them and they’re left with an enquiry that’s already been answered. Also you may write down your possible supplementaries as a mnemonic but not read them aloud. When I first came in, I got into a muddle over this and Conservatives began chanting, ‘Reading, reading!’ I resolved never to ask another starred question but of course I did, and then another, and now it doesn’t worry me much. Very soon it won’t worry me at all but by then I shall have been banished.

I get up and ask if the minister is aware that almost the only access to the Millennium Dome will be by tube and bus, and if the opening of the Jubilee Line is delayed attempts will be made to reach the Dome by car, an awkward situation since there is virtually no car parking provided. But I abstain from savagery because, although I don’t take their whip, I’m sympathetic to the Government and almost always vote with them. The minister (an urbane man, shaken by nothing) repeats his earlier reply and adds that the tube will be finished and serving Greenwich North station not just by 31 December but by October. Now it’s open to the rest of the House to ask questions and peers do so, diverging wildly of course from the subject and belabouring the minister with queries as to why the Northern Line is so bad and getting worse, whether the Dome is to be a permanent or temporary structure and when is the Government going to do something about restricting the number of cars in the capital? Every starred question and its supplementaries gets seven and a half minutes to ensure we’re done in half an hour, so we soon pass on to the last one which is about e-mail.

The public gallery is full today, so are the press seats and the places below the bar where peers’ guests sit on the temporal side and their spouses sit on the spiritual side, so-called because the bishops sit there as well as the Government. Reforming the House of Lords is a hot potato, as the Sunday Times said yesterday. I drift off into thoughts about Henry. He was in this House as a Conservative, but it seems he put in few appearances. He made a maiden speech on the subject, appropriately enough, of the contribution of good drainage to health, and seldom spoke in here again. Too busy with his blood quest, no doubt. The armorial bearings, produced for him by the College of Arms, show (I’m not getting the heraldic terms right) castellated turrets in two quarterings, red hearts in two, the motto Deus et Ego or God and I, which Jude says is very bad Latin.

Questions are over and the Government chief whip is on his feet telling the House that while the debate today and tomorrow is not time-limited it would be best for everyone if back benchers restricted the time they spoke to seven minutes in view of the long list of speakers. Reasonable and fair man as he is, he repeats that he can only offer guidance, but he points out that it would be in everyone’s interests if speeches were not unduly extended into the small hours.