17, but since Heath was not a formal candidate this meant little. Quite as important was the fact that Maudling was credited with six ‘definite aversions’ – in effect, blackballs – against Heath’s one. Hailsham, at one time said to be Macmillan’s favoured successor, piled up so many ‘definite aversions’ as a result of his ill-judged and extravagant performance at the Party Conference that he was ruled out. In the end the Queen, largely, it seems, on Macmillan’s recommendation, sent for Home. It was the consummation Heath had hoped for. It was made even better by the fact that Iain Macleod and Enoch Powell took exception to the secretive and, as they saw it, undemocratic process by which Home was finally selected and refused to serve under him. By doing so they gravely damaged their own prospects of future promotion. On 19 October 1963, the Earl of Home, as he then was, became Prime Minister, renounced his peerage and stood for election to the House of Commons as Alec Douglas-Home. It remained to see what job he would offer Heath.
For his first twelve years as an MP Heath’s style of living had been frugal. He lived in a tiny flat in an unfashionable area. As a Whip he had spent much of his time in the House, as Lord Privy Seal he was often in Brussels. He entertained little, and then largely on expenses. He spent most of his weekends at the family home in Broadstairs and for his holidays tended to patronise the houses of his richer friends. By the standards of a City tycoon his salary was pitifully small, but his commitments were even smaller. Each year he saved, and his money was invested for him by Brown Shipley, who took particular trouble to ensure that he was well looked after. Increasingly too he was advised by the investment maestro, Jim Slater, a man who had his problems from time to time but was generally considered to possess one of the shrewdest minds in the financial world. When he briefly rejoined Brown Shipley as a director after the Conservatives lost the election in 1964, Heath bought or was given 3,125 shares worth £7,000.1 Though his stay with the merchant bank was brief, he made a most favourable impression: the chief foreign-exchange dealer said that Heath spent two days with him and ‘mastered every subject that I expounded…He understood it all: it takes some people years…If everyone had fallen down he could have run the bank.’2 If he had remained in the City he probably would one day have run the bank; certainly the directors felt that he was somebody with whom close contact should be maintained. ‘When you get your pass sheet you will see that you have been credited with rather higher directors’ fees for the current year,’ he was told after he had resigned for the second and final time. ‘This is intended as a gesture of our thanks for your very real help.’3
The money he thus earned he guarded assiduously. He was not mean – he was capable of surprising generosity and when he entertained he liked to do so in style – but he much preferred other people to pay for things. There are innumerable anecdotes of people who thought that they were being treated to a drink or meal and ended up paying the bill themselves. Every expense was carefully considered and often begrudged. When, in 1970, the Carlton Club put up its annual subscription to £55, Heath minuted that this was ‘a monstrous sub for this useless club’. Surely he should be exempt? Enquiries were made and he was told there could be no exemption. ‘You will have to ask Brown Shipley to pay the extra,’ concluded Heath: which, seeing that it was at that time five years since he had ceased to be a director, cast a curious light on his relationship with the merchant bank.4 Yet he never acquired any of the skills that might have made it easier for him to economise. He could not have sewn on a button and approached with caution the task of making a bed. He could not cook.5 Once he volunteered to produce breakfast for the crew of Morning Cloud. He broke the eggs, put them on slices of bread in a frying pan, and could not understand why the unpalatable mess that resulted was so unsatisfactory.6
He kept his room in his father’s house in Broadstairs and occasionally took his father and stepmother, and his brother John with his wife, out to lunch or dinner; but he does not seem otherwise to have contributed to the household expenses. For Heath, the heart had gone out of his family with his mother’s death. He resented his father’s remarriage and never established any real relationship with his kindly if unexciting stepmother Mary. William Heath’s marriage day was a botched affair. Heath was an hour late in picking up his brother and, when they got to Ramsgate, could not find the Register Office. They arrived there only five minutes before it closed. ‘It was the saddest wedding I’ve ever been to,’ John Heath’s wife, Marian, remarked. ‘Looking back, I regret very much not taking the lead, as the boys might have followed in kissing the bride and giving good wishes. After a quiet celebration lunch, where no one proposed the health of the bride, we returned to London.’ Heath’s new stepmother had previously been married to a committed socialist, but since Heath would never have considered the possibility of discussing politics with her, this caused no problems. When asked what she thought of her stepson she replied: ‘He frightened me. It was difficult to know what to say, because he dislikes small talk. If there is nothing much to say he likes to keep silent. I find he is a man with whom you can be happily silent, however.’7 Many women were to make the same complaint over the next forty years, though there were few who learnt the art of being happy in the prevailing silence.
Heath spent his weekends at Broadstairs out of habit and because it was cheap. He preferred to take his holidays with his more sophisticated and richer friends. Madron and Nancy-Joan Seligman remained particularly close; he visited them frequently and almost every year spent holidays with them in France or Italy. He became part of an extended family and was accepted by the children as an honorary uncle, to be treated with affection and cheerful disrespect: ‘If only Uncle Teddy and Daddy weren’t so fat, we’d have won,’ one of the boys complained after their boat had come last in a local regatta. But though he was thoroughly at home and at the time was closer to Nancy-Joan than to any other woman, it would not have occurred to him that he might confide in her; ‘letting down one’s hair’ was a concept wholly alien to Heath’s character.
The same was true of the Aldingtons. Lord Aldington, or Toby Low as he was when Heath first knew him, was a Tory MP who, after achieving modest distinction in politics, took over the family bank of Grindlays and became chairman of GEC and Sun Alliance. His wife Araminta, like Nancy-Joan Seligman, had the knack of making Heath laugh and tolerated his moods with equanimity. If he felt inclined to be surly or sulky then he was free to indulge himself: she would pay no attention and would be happy to resume more comfortable relations when the time seemed propitious. Aldington was one of the most important people in Heath’s life. Heath respected his judgment, welcomed his advice and took advantage of his powerful connections in the world of business and the City. If ever it was necessary to cobble together some informal group which would support Heath by financial or other means, then Aldington could be relied upon to do it. Like Heath he was a consensus man; not so firmly convinced that in the end reason would prevail but always agreeing that reason should be given every chance of doing so before there was resort to other measures. Most important of all, he greatly admired Heath and supported him to the uttermost; to a man as naturally suspicious as Heath the knowledge that this powerful and well-connected figure was on his side was immensely comforting.8
Heath was no snob. He continued to make no effort to conceal his origins and, indeed, was not above using them to his advantage. When he was urged not to support Alec Home for leader on the grounds that the party needed someone from the middle classes, he replied that, since he was working-class himself, he could not see things in quite that way. But he liked great houses and the appurtenances of wealth: he told Sara Morrison that he found the very rich ‘interesting’; he also found them attractive and curiously exciting; he had no expectation, or even wish, that he would ever achieve the same status himself but was more than ready to accept their hospitality and, with due restraint,