Ms Currie is brave to speak up for all adulterers

For every affair exposed to the public, there are thousands imbuing lives with love and sustenance

It was probably too much to expect attention to moral complexity during the party conference season. Now is the time for the simple, heroic, public pose. Peace good, war bad. Public good, private bad. Marriage good, adultery bad.

So it is hardly surprising that the most startling and subversive aspect of the great Currie affair has been lost in the rush to giggle, gasp or self-combust with fake moral outrage. In all her interviews, the cheap trollop, as that born-again family man David Mellor has described her, has been at pains to stress that, while it may suit others to portray her four-year liaison with John Major as sleazy, selfish and essentially trivial, that was not the way it was. There was "a lot of fun, a lot of support, a lot of warmth" between them; it was, in fact, a good relationship.

These remarks transgress one of the first rules in the adulterer's code: an affair, if uncovered at some point after it has ended, must always be dismissed as insignificant, a terrible lapse of judgement and taste committed in a moment of weakness; it was nothing, just a physical thing. The lie is as old as betrayal itself. For the sake of a quiet life, everyone involved plays along with it, knowing in their hearts that sex is rarely just about sex – and is never just about sex when it takes place over a period of four years.

It is traditional, in the case of a public affair such as this, that those who stand on the sidelines, shouting the odds about sleaze and moral standards in public life, accept the lie, too. A few are naive, genuinely believing that a cheat is a cheat and a bonk is a bonk. Most know better, but, being part of the great conspiracy of the married, prefer to accept the convenient myth rather than face an awkward truth. It is perhaps no coincidence that among Currie's most vociferous critics are those, such as David Mellor, Jonathan Aitken or Lady Archer, who are eager to show that their unhappy experience of infidelity has led to wisdom and purity.

Yet surely we are now grown up enough to be able to admit that sometimes, maybe quite often, adulterous relationships can be good and loving; they can require quite as much generosity and self-sacrifice as a marriage, although of a different sort; life is complicated; every marriage is different; people work out their own forms of love, of getting along together. It is simply childish self-deception to see infidelity as if life were a Mills & Boon romance with, for example, a cheap trollop playing the villain's part, an easily led husband the victim and a betrayed wife as a saintly figure in the background.

For obvious reasons, the long-term mistress's or lover's tale is rarely told, but an insight into the way these things work sometimes emerges after the death of a public figure. Graham Greene was sustained for 32 years by his affair with Yvonne Cloetta. Harold Macmillan was aware of his wife's relationship with Bob Boothby. Barbara Castle was at it, and so, according to the next volume of Tony Benn's diaries, was the formidable left-wing MP Joan Lestor, who had a secret walk-out with Kenneth Kaunda, later to be the President of Zambia. For every affair exposed to the public gaze, there are thousands that are continuing at this moment, some bringing unhappiness, others imbuing lives that might otherwise be unhappy with love and sustenance.

Another perspective on the Major-Currie story is that, far from jeopardising the career of a future prime minister, it was the making of him. Who knows what was really going on at home? Who is to say that, without the fun, support and warmth to which Mrs Currie now rather sadly alludes, John Major would have had the confidence and personality that took him to 10 Downing Street? After all, the years in which he was visiting her house coincide precisely with a time of rapid advancement within the Conservative Party.

Edwina Currie is not a subtle woman, and there have been times when her public references to her own powerful libido have verged on the vulgar, but on this occasion she has done something rather courageous, speaking up for sad, brave adulterers everywhere. Major, on the other hand, has lived down to the reputation he acquired during his "back to basics" offensive, distancing himself from his former lover as quickly as he could, coolly allowing the good name of an innocent woman to be besmirched as a distraction from the truth and ungallantly, and unwisely, excluding Mrs Currie altogether from his memoirs.

There has been something cowardly – and, one has to say, male – in the way that he has avoided answering questions while putting out statements that present him as the good, penitent husband, while his former lover, and the relationship that was once important enough to him to risk all for it, are dismissed as a source of shame.

terblacker@aol.com