CLIO: When I was little I’d always know when Mum had come home because
I’d hear her bangles jangling as she came in the door. She’s always worked
long hours. People sometimes ask if I missed out because of this, but my
memories are of Mum being very much around. Once she was home she spent her
time with me and my brothers. She’s always been a very lively, involved
mother, playing games, reading, larking around with us.
One time, on holiday in Scotland, she read us a book about the second world
war, then joined in with me and the boys playing all the characters,
escaping across the border and going into the forest. And she’s particularly
good at treasure hunts — one Easter when we were on holiday with all our
cousins, she wrote lots of little clues in limericks, sending us scurrying
all over the place.
Mum didn’t often manage to get to school events, though. Mostly it was Dad who
was there for our performances and Christmas fairs. But there was one time,
while I was at primary school, when Mum took me to see Dad in a parents’
pantomime. He was playing a baddie and people kept shouting at him, which I
didn’t understand. She spent a long while comforting me and explaining that
the audience didn’t really hate him. She thought it very funny.
Because her work is about human rights and things that really matter, and
she’s very serious about them, people don’t realise Mum has a great sense of
humour and is a laugh. But she can get very emotional if she has a trial and
her client’s situation really touches her, or if she feels there is
injustice. Then we all sit round the dinner table discussing it.
I’ve become very interested in human rights myself, and Mum took me to Lebanon
recently on a visit for Medical Aid for Palestinians. She’d talked to me
about the history of the conflict there, because she felt it was important I
should understand what was going on. And I stayed in a refugee camp for a
night — that’s the kind of education Mum believes in, where you learn from
seeing the reality of people’s lives. There was incredible work being done
in the camp, and now I want to go back there and get involved. My brothers
and I have never had human rights pushed on us, but my parents have brought
us up to be conscious of them and of injustices.
I know teenagers often rebel against their parents’ values, but I’ve never
wanted to reject what Mum believes in.
Not that we’re always on the same wavelength, though. One summer I got a
tattoo and I was really pleased with it. When Mum saw it she immediately
said: “Oh, God, that’s really ugly.” But now, on holiday, she offers to put
sunscreen on it — I think she secretly quite likes it.
I didn’t care for being told I couldn’t stay out as late as I wanted when I
was younger, but Mum would refuse to negotiate. I felt hard done by, because
friends had more leeway. One time when I’d gone to a club, my older brother was
sent to wait outside and make sure I came home in time. That was so not
cool! But at least Mum was sensitive enough not to send Dad to wait.
Though Mum and I are often quite girlie together, there are times when the
generation gap shows. Once, in my teens, a friend and I were laughing about
a hideous pair of boots we’d seen in a shop window. A week later, on my
birthday, my Mum got out what she thought was the most up-to-date cool
birthday present. It was the boots.
I didn’t know whether to tell her or not that I really didn’t like them.
Eventually I did, and she took the whole thing well. In fact, I think she
kept them for herself.
On the other hand, on my 18th birthday she gave me the best present ever. I
was going through an “I do not need material possessions” phase, so Mum went
through all the drawers of photos from when my brothers and I were children
and made a collage for me, which hangs in my bedroom.
I’ve grown up with Mum as a model of what a feminist is. She’s fiercely
outspoken and she’s been battling for women’s rights for 30 years. Now she’s
involved in Amnesty’s campaign around domestic violence. But she’s also a
very womanly woman. When I went to Durham, none of the women students wanted
to say they were a feminist. They felt it put them in a category they didn’t
like. At Christmas Roland and I both got T-shirts saying: “This is what a
feminist looks like”. I’m afraid Roland uses his to pull women! I wear mine
with a mini and lipstick, and I tell anyone who asks that
I love men, but that I’m also very clear about the importance of women having
equality. I’ve learnt from Mum that being flirty and feminine is perfectly
compatible with being a feminist.
I don’t like it when the newspapers say critical things about Mum. It was
especially tough when she was standing up against the government over
proposals to remove trial by jury because she just couldn’t support what
Labour were up to. At home we saw how upset she was. A lot of people she’d
considered good friends were turning against her. My brothers and I felt
really hurt for her, but Mum’s view was that it’s important to stand up for
what you believe in, no matter what.
Last year, when I’d just broken up with my boyfriend, she took me off for a
really long walk across London and told me about all her relationships
before Dad. It was incredible to realise that even though she seems so
strong, she’d been through the same kind of hard times. That really mattered
to me. I learnt a lot about my mother that afternoon.
One of my favourite things is when we’re just cuddly together. After coming to
visit me in Durham one time, she spent the night with me and we snuggled
together in bed and talked and talked — about my course, her cases, guys
I fancied, books we were both reading… And it’s become a thing we do when I’m
home from uni. Sometimes Dad will wake me in the morning and suggest I go
and cuddle up with Mum. I’m lucky to have parents I feel so close to, and I
try not to think about Mum growing older. I know she still thinks about her
own parents a lot and wishes they were around. But I’m sure she will be
pretty feisty, no matter what her age.
HELENA: Clio was my second baby, and I expected a long labour, as I’d
had with Kier. In fact, she shot out in just two hours. I almost gave birth
on the steps of the hospital. She was a baby who didn’t seem to need any
sleep and wanted to party all night. But that changed, and as a little girl
she was watchful, seeming to take everything in, quite a serious little
person. There were certainly times when I felt stretched in every direction
— for instance, when I really wanted to be at an event I knew was important
for the kids, like school races, which always took place early afternoon.
But if I was in court there was nothing I could do about it.
There were times when the conflict became very stark. Once I was doing a
murder trial of a battered woman who’d killed her husband — I was known as Mrs
Domestic Violence because I took on these desperate cases. The case was in
Sheffield and I got a call from our nanny saying Clio was running a very
high temperature and she couldn’t get it down. I immediately thought
meningitis and felt desperate. I couldn’t walk out on the trial, but how
could I not be with my child? This is where I’m so grateful for my fantastic
gang of women friends. I phoned one and she went straight round and phoned a
doctor, who came at once. It turned out to be some kind of infection, but I
felt such guilt at not being there.
I’ve not consciously taught the children about human rights, but their lives
have exposed them to the subject. They all went to local state schools.
Then, aged 16, Clio went to Kenya — organised it all off her own bat. I’m
not sure all parents would have allowed a 16-year-old to go, but she raised
the money herself and was absolutely determined, and it seemed important to
support her in that kind of enterprise. It meant Iain and I had to become
proficient at using e-mail to keep in touch. This trip changed her outlook
quite dramatically. She worked in a school there and saw a very different
reality. Later she went to work in Peru — not on one of those phoney
gap-year projects, but a very serious campaign around extradition.
Clio has a bold and courageous spirit, and that’s something I admire hugely.
But oh, she’s quite a bloody-minded little person if she wants to be, and
we’ve had our conflicts, just occasionally! I’d say her greatest fault is
that she can take umbridge too easily. In her mid-teens, particularly, she
was quick to assume I was being critical, even when I wasn’t. If I offered
her a haircut, she’d come back with: “Why? What’s wrong with my hair?” I’d
say quite harmless things and fall foul of how she wanted me to behave.
People ask whether, as a feminist, it was important to have a daughter.
I certainly wanted a girl, but not so that I could mould her. I already had a
son and thoroughly enjoyed experiencing a girl next. One of the pleasures
was watching Iain develop a close relationship with Clio. Seeing her in his
arms was like having my own early childhood re-created, because I was very
close with my own father and I know how much that means.
One of the things I’ve wanted to pass on, as a woman, to both my daughter and
my sons, is that it’s possible to have a career and work hard but for family
to be valued highly. I remember that from my own young years, growing up in
Scotland. My parents worked very hard and weren’t available so much
ordinarily, but when we took holidays they were absolutely with us and they
made it such fun. We had lots of cousins who all came to stay. We’d swim,
make friends, create our routines. And what I remembered when I became a
parent was how important the familiarity of being together every year was.
So we now have a house in Scotland and cousins share holidays with us. And
we have a house on Cape Cod, where we go in the summer and the children all
come, even though they’re grown up.
The closeness was touching for me when I had a very bad time because friends
in the Labour party were angry that I was challenging government proposals.
I saw how it affected Clio and the boys. They felt I was being treated
badly; it was puzzling and painful for them to see people they’d regarded as
good friends — and whose children had been their mates — behaving this way.
Their support mattered to me very much.
Clio is forceful as well as passionate, but she’s also very serene, which I’m
not. I often watch this serenity and envy it. I see how other people enjoy
this in her, too, and want to be around her. It’s been thrilling watching
Clio’s separateness as she grows up, her own interests developing, and
realising that I have every reason to be proud of her as a young woman.
Text: Angela Neustatter.
Main portraits: Olivia Arthur
