Stones: Acclaimed Biography, The by Norman Philip

Author:Norman, Philip
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007477074
Publisher: HarperCollins

ELEVEN

‘THERE’S JUST NO ROOM FOR A STREET-FIGHTING MAN …’

The few close friends who knew about Marianne’s pregnancy were surprised to see with what unaffected pleasure Mick looked forward to fatherhood. It was one further paradox in a character so narcissistically self-absorbed that he loved small children and enjoyed taking care of them; to a child he always granted an intimacy withheld from his closest adult friends. His happiest hours with Marianne came when he forsook his court to go off for a day in the country with just her and her three-year-old son, Nicholas. With Nicholas, he was less surrogate father than elder brother. He would play with the little boy for hours, pushing him high on swings or whirling him round by the arms in some empty Berkshire meadow.

Jagger desperately wanted this first child of his own: he also wanted Marianne to become his wife as soon as John Dunbar would divorce her. Marianne had always demurred before, afraid of such a commitment a second time – a little wary, too, of acquiring so voluble a mother-in-law. ‘Somehow,’ she says, ‘I always felt there couldn’t be another Mrs Jagger.’ Even so, she felt her resolve weakening. For, since his discovery that she was carrying his child, he had treated her with almost maternal tenderness.

Jagger’s support was doubly needful when the story got into the papers, as it soon did. In pre-feminist 1968, there were few social stigmas worse than that of being an unmarried mother even if you were not already notorious as a shameless wearer of fur rugs and abuser of Mars bars. Marianne’s pregnancy, indeed, did far more than pillory her with further lipsmacking banner headlines. It touched off a whole crusade against the Sixties’ ‘Permissive Society’, with its flattened sexual and moral boundaries, by attention-seeking media figures, politicians and clergy. What should have been the most private matter to Jagger and Marianne became the stuff of speeches and parish newsletters throughout the land. The Archbishop of Canterbury himself spared a moment in his pulpit to ask for intercessionary prayers on Marianne’s behalf. Loud criticism also emanated from Mrs Mary Whitehouse, a northern schoolteacher and self-appointed spokeswoman for Britain’s silent moral majority. Once again as chivalrous knight errant, Jagger agreed to defend Marianne and debate morality with Mrs Whitehouse on a special edition of the David Frost television show.

‘The fact of the matter …’ Mrs Whitehouse said, looking at Jagger through flyaway-rim spectacles and smiling her bright, metallic smile, ‘… is that if you’re a Christian or a person with faith, and you make that vow, when difficulties come, you have this basic thing you’ve accepted. You find your way through the difficulties.’

‘Your Church accepts divorce,’ Jagger replied. ‘It may even accept abortion – am I right or wrong? I don’t see how you can talk about this bond which is inseparable when the Christian Church itself accepts divorce …’ It was, of course, beyond his power to confess that he wanted to marry the girl, but couldn’t.

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