Dancing With Maggie
What happens when you teach the fearsome PM to dance?
If ever a picture summed up the “special relationship” between Britain and America it has to be the one of Margaret Thatcher in her pink jacket and skirt dancing with Ronald Reagan in his dinner jacket and bow tie at a White House ball in 1988.
The framed newspaper clipping has pride of place on the wall beside the fireplace in my front room. Giving the glass a flick with a duster, I recall the day I held the Iron Lady in my arms. It was the day I fell in love.
Now, you have to remember that this was thirty years before Anton du Beke sent Ann Widdecombe sliding across the floor on her rump on Strictly. And before Ed Balls was lowered from the ceiling with a piano, singing Great Balls Of Fire.
I’m not saying politicians were treated with more respect in the 80s, but – love her or loathe her – Mrs T didn’t come across as the sort of woman you’d trifle with.
As I walked up Downing Street towards Number 10, my nerves were jangling.
A policeman stepped aside and I raised my knuckle to knock on Britain’s most famous front door.
Someone must have been peeking through the net curtains because the glossy black door was opened before I made contact.
In the doorway stood an extremely attractive blonde woman with a welcoming smile. It wasn’t Maggie.
“Good morning, Mr Silver, I’m Gemma. Please come in.”
“Cor, it’s like the Tardis in ’ere,” I remarked as she led me down a confusing sequence of corridors, passing more than one set of stairs.
“It’s really three houses knocked into one,” Gemma smiled. “I haven’t been here long and I still get lost sometimes.”
We came to a windowless anteroom with a desk and some stiff-backed chairs.
“Take a seat. Would you like tea?”
“Not ‘alf!” I said, gratefully.
Gemma disappeared through a side door and I checked my highly-polished shoes for marks. Us hoofers take inordinate pride in our footwear.
“Not nervous, I hope?” Gemma asked, returning to catch me patting my hair.
“Me? Naw!” I grinned. “I’ve met ‘em all.”
I reeled off the names of some actors and pop stars. None of them were Britain’s most fearsome prime minister, though.
As I took my bone china saucer, the cup and silver spoon rattled and I was lucky not to get some Rosey Lee on my trousers.
“I saw you on The Generation Game last week,” Gemma enthused, taking her place behind the desk. “It must be fun teaching people to dance.”
“It has its moments,” I replied, grateful for her effort to distract me from my nerves. “Do you like to cut a rug?”
“Oh, I’ve got two left feet,” she giggled.
At that moment, a dark-panelled door opened and out strode Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine. Goldilocks, as he was known in the papers, because of his leonine blond hair.
“I’ll show you in, now,” said Gemma.
The prime minister’s office was flooded with sunlight from a bay window overlooking the garden. As I stepped onto a wide expanse of light green carpet, Mrs T rose from behind a desk covered in open files.
She looked exactly as she did on the telly: royal blue suit, pearls and lacquered hair as big and as hard as a crash helmet.
“So you’re the gentleman who is going to help me brush up my footwork,” she said in her husky commanding tones.
“I’ll try me best, Mrs… um… I mean, Prime Minister,” I croaked.
“Put the tape on, will you, Gemma?” the politician ordered.
Gemma went to a portable cassette player and Fred Astaire’s Cheek To Cheek filled the room.
“You want to start now?” I asked in shock.
“No time like the present.”
“In that case, Prime Minister, may I have this dance?”
She was actually a good dancer and I wasn’t sure why she felt the need for lessons. But then, everything about my summons had been hush-hush.
I guess it’s called need-to-know, and this humble dance instructor didn’t need to know.
It was only when I opened my newspaper one morning and saw her waltzing with the president that I realised the small part I’d played in Anglo-American relations.
Is everything ready in here?” Gemma’s voice pulls me out of my memories.
I turn away from Maggie and Ron’s picture and regard the spruced up room, with the pearl-coloured 30th Anniversary banner hanging from the wall.
“The first guests should be here any moment,” says Gemma. “Not nervous?”
“Well, it’s quite an occasion. Perhaps a quick one would help me relax.”
Gemma smiles understandingly and clicks on the stereo. Old Fred begins to sing Cheek To Cheek and I step into my wife’s perfumed arms for a waltz around the room.
Now, be honest. When I said I fell in love that day at No.10, you didn’t think I meant with Maggie, did you?
Find more fiction to make you smile in every issue of My Weekly magazine. This week’s bumper issue has an extra Fiction Minimag full of wonderfully summery stories to whisk you away into another world!
