When I look back now and think of Charlie as a little boy, my heart sinks because we had no idea of the extent of his torment, or that it would go on troubling him for years to come. He was our pride and joy—a longed-for boy, our first son, the heir to Glen.
Charlie and Henry’s relationship was strained, and Charlie would often be quite mean—moving away when Henry went to sit next to him or refusing to touch something Henry had touched. Henry had a very different character and was easy in comparison, with nothing untoward about him and a calm disposition. Instead of graffitiing his desk with swastikas, Henry went off to Buckingham Palace for weekly dancing lessons with Prince Andrew, which he really enjoyed.
In 1968, after Charlie and Henry, I had a third son, Christopher, who even as a baby had a really lovable character and seemed to bring my two older sons closer together. After a few years, Charlie appeared to be more settled, smiling more, his rituals lessening. Happiest at Glen, he’d go off with the gamekeepers for hours or would ride his mini motorbike round the estate. We thought everything was fine, that his troubled days were behind him. I was so relieved: all I wanted was for my children to be happy—I had desperately wanted to have them. Having grown up in the war, my friends and I had all longed for big families, feeling it was nature’s way of replacing a lost generation. But although I had these three wonderful boys, I secretly wanted a girl. I had saved my childhood dolls thinking that one day I would have a daughter to give them to. In 1970, I was thrilled when I ended up having not one daughter but two when our twins, May and Amy, were born. I hadn’t been expecting twins. I’d just thought I was having another large boy—Henry had weighed ten pounds nine ounces. When the girls were born, a delighted Colin rushed off to Paris to buy outfits from Baby Dior, as well as coming up with their pretty anagram names.
Life felt complete, but when I think about all five children’s childhoods, I see a marked difference in Christopher and the twins’ childhoods compared to Charlie and Henry’s. Charlie was twelve years older than the twins, Henry ten, so the older boys were already at boarding school by the time Christopher and the girls were born. There was such a big gap between my children’s ages, it was almost like having two families.
While Charlie and Henry had had a succession of nannies, who came and went, the younger three had stability, which made all the difference. This came in the form of a nanny called Barbara Barnes, who was from Holkham village, her father working on the estate. The children adored her, and she became an ally to me. She stayed with us for twelve years, until the twins went to boarding school in 1982, when she went on to become Princes William and Harry’s nanny, but has stayed in our lives ever since.
As well as being adored by the children, Barbara got on well with Colin and dealt with his more difficult behavior extremely well. Once I heard a terribly loud banging from Colin’s study and then I heard him shouting. Unhesitating, Barbara marched into the study, to find Colin standing on the table, stamping his feet and yelling. She said firmly, “Lord Glenconner, will you get down and be quiet? You’ll frighten the children.” And he did. Just like that. Another time, Colin, Barbara, all five children, and I were in a tiny plane near Mustique when suddenly the pilot warned us that he might have to make a crash landing in the sea. Having been told to put on our life jackets, we sat very quietly, hoping everything would be all right, except Colin, who panicked. Putting his snorkel and mask on, he started shouting and scrambling around, searching for the inflatable life raft. As soon as he had found it, Henry pulled the rip cord, the raft promptly filling the cabin.
Barbara got out a pair of scissors from her bag and punctured the raft, which deflated, although rather slowly. By this stage, Colin was screaming at the top of his lungs, so she said very loudly to him, “Will you be quiet, Lord Glenconner! You’re scaring us all!” And, once again, he did. He would never have stopped if I had told him to do so. The plane didn’t crash but the raft had to be removed before we were able to get out, Colin disembarking rather sheepishly, having taken off his snorkel and mask.
Barbara was always on hand to manage situations and made it easier for me to interact with the children because we worked as a team. With Christopher, I couldn’t bear to give up breastfeeding, so for a year Barbara and Christopher came with Colin and me to all the different weekend events, and when the twins were babies, she would give one a bottle, while I fed the other.
It was such a joy to have two little girls, although they mostly seemed to prefer each other’s company—they liked sleeping together, tucked up in one cot. Sometimes I felt unwanted because they had each other and didn’t need me in the way I’d thought a daughter would. Barbara understood how I felt, which helped. I would never have confided in anyone else, especially not Colin.
I felt relieved I had Barbara because not only did I know that my children were being looked after properly when I wasn’t with them but she made it easier for me to interact with them, allowing me a better balance between being a mother and a wife.
When the twins were toddlers Barbara would take them and Christopher to Ranelagh Gardens, part of the grounds at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. It was a very formal place to go because the nannies would sit on different park benches according to the titles of the family they were employed by—nannies working for earls wouldn’t dare sit on the bench full of nannies employed by dukes.
Every morning, I’d take Christopher and on Barbara’s day out the twins to the gardens, pushing a huge double pram, which looked like a tank. They loved the gardens because instead of there being a flat lawn, like most of the other London parks, there were hillocks covered with bushes, so they could escape from the watchful eyes of the adults. I was always amazed to see the lengths some people went to—one pram had the family’s crest painted on the side, and some children’s sleeves were pinned to a piece of white linen that was tucked over the child’s lap when they were seated in a pram, maintaining an appearance of perfection as they were wheeled along.
Looking back, Barbara was almost identical in character to my beloved governess Billy Williams, having the same effect on my younger children as Billy had had on me. They were very settled and secure in their routine. But Charlie and Henry lost out, only becoming a bigger part of our lives when Christopher was born. Colin always said he was sure Charlie would have fared better if Barbara had been around when he was small, certain that Charlie’s odd behavior would never have materialized if he had had a decent, permanent nanny like her.
While nannies were a staple part of family life, so was boarding school, but while the children loved Barbara, they hated being sent away to school, although the twins found it easier because they had each other. It was agonizing seeing them all so upset. I would drive them to school and each one would be in tears, which would set me off, making it worse. We tried to make up for this: in the holidays, Colin planned trips for us to take with the children, introducing them to different countries and cultures. At one point he decided to take us all to every capital in Europe. We went to Amsterdam, Madrid, Rome, but, not wanting to go to Berlin, Colin had the wonderful idea of going to King Ludwig’s castles in Bavaria. The children loved the castles, on which Disneyland’s fantasy designs are based. When I took them to a room that was full of kit-kat portraits of all the women Ludwig had had affairs with (despite him mostly preferring his own sex) they giggled in delight when I pointed out one of my ancestors, Jane Digby, who was staring down at us from the wall, and told them her story. She had fallen for King Ludwig when she was sent away from Holkham after being caught having an affair with the librarian.
The very best holiday we ever went on wasn’t until the twins were about fifteen years old. We took Nick Courtney with us, a great friend, who used to work with Colin. Colin organized a camping trip in the Himalayas, which started off predictably shakily because Colin got very cross with me for some obscure reason but then he relaxed. Perhaps it was the mountain air but soon he was interacting with the children and became rather like a child himsel
f, dissolving into hysterics when a cow peed on his tent. The relaxed atmosphere meant we all had a lot of fun, despite the pouring rain, which led to little streams running through our tents. Deciding to abandon camping, Colin managed to sort out an alternative immediately—a Kashmir houseboat, which was painted in bright colors and suited us perfectly. The holiday continued smoothly.
These holidays were a marvelous experience for the children. Colin was like a walking encyclopedia, knowing a great deal about a great many things, and had moments of being utterly wonderful, getting them to look at things in new ways and igniting their imaginations.
When the twins were young and Mustique was still developing, we spent Christmas and Easter all together at Glen, the house resounding with the children’s shrieks of excitement as they opened their stockings on Christmas morning and ran around the garden on Easter Sunday on big Easter-egg hunts. Glen was a brilliant house for children because of the space and size, providing endless opportunities for games. Colin and I used to play a game with them called “Rescue.” Everybody went to hide, except one of us who was “the hunter” and would stay on a sofa in the hall, which would be their prison. The hunter had to guard the sofa but also had to leave to find the others, capturing anyone on sight. Colin was brilliant at being the hunter because he would be so theatrical, calling out as he searched, saying things like “I’m coming to get you… I know you’re there… fee fi fo fum…” following the sound of giggles coming from a linen cupboard or from behind a door.
It was one of those games in which people crept along the corridors, then burst out on each other in peals of laughter, going on for hours if someone was particularly sneaky or patient: the sort of game best played in a house like Glen, full of nooks and crannies and different staircases, giving everybody a circuit. We all loved it. It reminded me of “the Dark Game” that Billy Williams had introduced me and Carey to: she’d turn all the lights out and try to find us as we ran away, bumping into things, giggling in the dark. In life there are some things, often simple things, that can make you incredibly happy and for me playing Rescue with the children and Colin, and the Dark Game with my beloved sister and governess, are some of my happiest memories.
Every August, Princess Margaret would bring her children, David and Sarah, with Nanny Sumner, to Glen on their way down from Balmoral. As Princess Margaret played the piano and sang Glenn Miller’s “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” we all joined in. The song became a firm favorite among the children. In the daytime they would go off to the Military Tattoo music performances while the adults went to the Edinburgh Festival.
We had an Italian butler at Glen called Elio. One evening when we came back, Elio rushed up to me and said, “Lady Anne, something extraordinary happened tonight. You must ask Nanny Barnes and Nanny Sumner about it.”
The next morning, I asked Barbara and she explained. “Nanny Sumner and I had just put all seven children to bed, when Elio appeared very flustered. He told us to come—‘Quick, quick, quick!’ And out of the window we saw a hovering cigar-shaped object with green lights. It looked like a UFO. It came down the valley over the birks and slowly went off.”
When I told Princess Margaret she said, “What had they been drinking?” but when we went up to where they said they had seen it, all the heather was completely flattened. Colin rang up the nearest air force base, in case they had been doing some sort of exercise that could explain it, but they were none the wiser. Over the following days, other people reported similar sightings in Peebles and the surrounding area, and we were all left wondering what on earth it was. The UFO was never seen again, but each August the same routine was rolled out, and our families intertwined happily.
As well as Glen, we spent time at Holkham with my parents, going to the beach for picnics and for walks in the pine woods, collecting fir cones and shells. Carey and Sarah would come too with their families: Carey lived near Holkham and had married Brian Basset, a friend of the Queen Mother, so she spent a lot of time at Birkhall, the Queen Mother’s house in Scotland, to fish. Carey was much better at fishing than a lot of the men, much to their irritation. She would bring her three sons for picnics with us and was a huge hit with my children. She was double-jointed and would do this funny walk with her bottom sticking out and have everyone in hysterics.
Sarah had also gotten married, to David Walter, and was living in Perthshire with their two sons. Carey’s husband, Brian, didn’t appreciate Colin’s character but David and Colin got on very well so it was always fun when we took the children to stay in their thatched house. All the children would make dens and campfires next to the stream and Sarah would take them red squirrel spotting. When Sarah came down to Holkham in the summer, she would bring her dachshunds and the twins would walk them along the dunes. Then we’d go crabbing, filling our buckets with crabs before turning the buckets on their sides and watching the crabs race back to the water.
I taught all the children to sail in the creeks of Burnham Overy Staithe, just as my mother had taught me. I’m not sure I successfully transferred the passion to my children. Sailing brings out the worst in people and I think I was rather fierce. Suddenly requests are demands—I suppose because of the risk involved there is an unusual priority of clarity over politeness—so there I would be suddenly shouting orders: “Pull this!” or “No, not that!”
Although none of them naturally took to sailing, they all loved going to Holkham and enjoyed all the things I had done as a child, like jumping into the fountain on a hot day, and dashing off around the park. I would tell them all about Lord Nelson, how he had grown up in the next village and paced along the banks of the creeks we sailed on, looking out to sea, hoping to be called to battle, which captured their imaginations.
Once the twins were older, we often spent Easter and Christmas on Mustique. There was an Easter-bonnet competition every year, which the twins loved. May was staunchly independent but Amy sought Colin’s help and he approached the task with characteristic enthusiasm. One year Amy won with a bonnet Colin dubbed “Goldilocks” and stuck gold streamers to her hair; the next year he made a hole in a gourd and she wore it like a deep-sea diver’s helmet, complete with a snorkel and mask. Everybody entered these competitions, including the adults—I remember Bianca Jagger parading around with the top of a cactus stuck to her head.
But, of course, the better the time the children had at home, the more they would dread going back to school, and nothing I was able to do made saying goodbye any easier for any of us. I don’t know if anyone ever enjoyed being carted off to boarding school—Prince Charles used to write long letters to my mother from Gordonstoun, saying how much he longed to come home and complaining of the endless weeks without a holiday: the longest term was fourteen weeks.
When I was at school, parents only visited the school once a year and the conditions were far from ideal. I also had to endure the doodlebugs, which were bombs, flying overhead, and the hard, stale bread that was put into the oven for a second life. We were all given five boiled sweets a week, which I would hide in my doll’s petticoat so they weren’t stolen, and we had to endure powdered egg, which was utterly disgusting.
In comparison, my children went to good schools and were made a fuss of when they were at home in the holidays. When we were all in London, a weekly delivery of the freshest food from Glen would be sent down on the overnight train and our butler would fetch it from King’s Cross. Schools had changed so much by the time I had children that there were all sorts of leaves and opportunities to visit or take the children away for weekends. Some terms it seemed they spent more time out of school than in.
But, despite my efforts, Charlie, as an adult, described Colin and me as “remote figures in his childhood.” He was right, but I had never thought about it like that until he said those words. Only through my relationship with Barbara, and her relationship with my children, did it occur to me that there were different ways of approaching motherhood, that maybe the approach I knew, especially with the older boys, was
not necessarily the most fulfilling for me as a mother or for the children. Sadly, by the time I had grasped this, the children had grown up.
I look at my daughter May now, and I am in awe of how she works full-time, supports her husband, and brings up her children without a nanny, so much more consistently involved in their everyday life than I ever was. Compared to some friends in my generation, I was quite hands-on, but compared to my daughter’s generation, I can see how much things have changed.
CHAPTER TEN
Lady in Waiting
ONE DAY IN early 1971, after the twins’ christening, at which Princess Margaret had become a godmother to May, she said to me, “I do hope you’re not going to have any more children.”
I replied, “Absolutely not. Three boys and twin girls are quite enough.”
“Well, in that case,” she said, evidently pleased with my answer, “would you like to be one of my Ladies in Waiting?”
The invitation couldn’t have come at a better time because Colin was going through a particularly difficult phase of which Princess Margaret was fully aware. She wasn’t daunted by his behavior, having been used to the King’s temper—my father was always retrieving wastepaper baskets that the King had kicked across the room. It had been Princess Margaret who had been the best person to calm the King down, often being summoned to change his mood, and she was always able to ignore Colin’s behavior, reminding me to do the same.
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