Young and available, although we’d never met him, Roddy fit the bill. I remember feeling rather awkward ringing him up, even though Violet had rung him to forewarn him about the invitation. I said, “Hello, you don’t know me, but we’re having a weekend party at Glen, and I know it’s rather rude of me to ask at such short notice, but somebody’s dropped out. Would you like to come?”
To my delight and relief, he accepted and was able to catch the train to Edinburgh almost immediately. Colin drove to Edinburgh station to meet him, accompanied by Charlie, who was by then a teenager, and Princess Margaret, who was intrigued because she knew Roddy’s father. I stayed behind, busy sorting out all the rooms, getting ready for everybody. They didn’t return for hours. Finally I got the call from John Harding warning me that the car would be arriving in ten minutes—something the protection officers always did whenever Princess Margaret was due to arrive somewhere. I stood outside, ready to greet them at the door, wondering what they had all been up to.
When the car pulled up, there were Princess Margaret and Roddy in the back, more or less holding hands. Colin explained that they had met him off the train and gone for lunch at a bistro in Edinburgh. Princess Margaret and Roddy had immediately clicked, even though Roddy was seventeen years younger than her.
Charlie then explained, with a twinkle in his eye, that they had taken so long because Princess Margaret had whisked Roddy off shopping to find him some swimming trunks for the pool. With a big grin on his face, Charlie said that the trunks were so tight they could have been described as “budgie smugglers.”
I said to Colin, “Oh, gosh, what have we done?”
When Roddy had been at Glen for about two days, he told me how beautiful he thought Princess Margaret was, and I said, “Don’t tell me, tell her.”
So he did, and from then on, Princess Margaret and Roddy were inseparable, staying up late after dinner, sitting at one of the card tables in the drawing room after an evening of playing bridge or canasta. They remained very close to each other, their heads almost touching.
It soon became clear that they had, quite simply, fallen in love. Roddy bore a striking resemblance physically to Tony but, unlike Tony, he was very kind. He was full of entertaining stories and had a schoolboy humor that appealed instantly to Princess Margaret. After the weekend in Glen, they were together for eight years, and friends for life, making all the difference to Princess Margaret who, by the time they met, had endured several years of unhappiness with Tony.
By the mid-seventies, Princess Margaret’s marriage was at breaking point, but with two children and being very religious, she didn’t want a divorce. In the end, Tony pushed her to it because in 1978 his mistress, Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, became pregnant with their first child. Day after day there were screaming headlines, with pictures of Princess Margaret caught looking miserable, not helped by the fact that she had the type of face that looked somber when she wasn’t smiling.
During this press-frenzied time, and in an attempt to escape their ghastly intrusion into her private life, over the next several months Princess Margaret would come quite frequently to stay with me in my Norfolk farmhouse or at Glen. She didn’t bring a dresser, just John Harding, whom the children adored on account of his ability to tear a telephone directory in half.
Roddy would arrive later in the evening and I would leave them to relax. Going through such a private matter in public, and the scandal of being the first high-profile member of the Royal Family to divorce since King Henry VIII, was enough to make anybody need a friend.
The visits to Glen and Norfolk were completely different from the formal royal engagements. The house in Norfolk is the one I bought from my father at the beginning of my marriage, and where I live now. It is an old flint-stone farmhouse surrounded by fields. There is no glamor—people wear wellington boots and raincoats—but I think that appealed to Princess Margaret. There was a sense of her being truly “off duty” when she spent time there, similar to when she was on Mustique.
She would turn up with her Marigold gloves and, not wanting to be an imposition with the absence of her maid, she brought her own kettle. This was because she was used to having breakfast in bed: she brought it so she could make her own tea in her bedroom each morning. The problem came when she didn’t know how to work the kettle. “Oh, Anne, do you think you could help? I think there’s something wrong with my kettle. It doesn’t seem to be working properly.” In fact, although she had been considerate in bringing the kettle, it was more trouble than it was worth, and I ended up doing everything anyway.
Over the years, she adopted the same routine: she would insist on cleaning my car—with Roddy when he came too—and she’d lay all the fires, always reminding me, “You weren’t a Girl Guide, but I was, so leave the fires to me.” Our friendship was ordinary, and she relished mundane activities far more than I did. I would find her dusting the bookshelves and, more than once, dismantling my chandelier to clean it in the bath.
She loved being outside, and we would spend whole days pottering about in my garden, kneeling down next to each other weeding. When we went out, she didn’t want to meet anybody new: she just wanted to put on her brown lace-ups and raincoat and explore gardens, churches, or country houses with me and Colin, if he was there, and a few select people I would invite. Often our mutual friend Jack Plumb came to stay. He was a history professor at Cambridge and a brilliant conversationalist. Sometimes we would go and have dinner with him in college with a group of undergraduates, and Princess Margaret would be in her element, easily holding her own, despite being acutely aware she had never been to university.
Another friend I invited to Norfolk when Princess Margaret was staying was Christopher Tadgell, a professor at Canterbury. He knew everything there is to know about architecture and churches so we would go off round the county, visiting churches, and Princess Margaret would ask all sorts of questions, absorbing absolutely everything.
In the evenings, we would all sit in my drawing room, she always in the chair to the left of the fireplace, and talk for hours, often about what we had seen and done during the day. “What about another little drinkie-winkie?” she would say, and Colin would disappear into the drinks cupboard and come out with another round of drinks—whisky for her, vodka tonic for me, while John Harding bumbled around in the kitchen, reading the newspaper until Princess Margaret eventually turned in for the night.
People complained about Princess Margaret being difficult, but I think quite often it was because she was bored or fed up. She would often be invited to meet strangers at lunch or dinner but, not surprisingly, her idea of fun wasn’t sitting next to the mayor, the bishop, and the chief of police for Sunday lunch. When she was staying with friends, she didn’t want to be on show. She also appreciated being asked what she wanted to do and what she wanted to eat but she often wasn’t. Great dinners would be arranged, when actually she preferred much simpler food.
I minded very much when people complained about her behavior. I knew she could be difficult: she was known for her icy stare if she felt someone had overstepped the mark, often accompanied with a curt remark normally with good reason. She had moments of being very grand indeed, but I worked round these “royal moments,” finding her quietly amusing. I didn’t like it when people criticized her, especially when she was already being hounded by the press.
Somehow, Tony had got the press on his side and Princess Margaret was vilified. Before they divorced, I went on a few engagements with both of them, which were no fun at all because Tony was so unpredictable. I would go to Kensington Palace to collect Princess Margaret and would instantly know if he was there because there would be an uncomfortable feeling in the air. One time, when Princess Margaret was unwell, Jean Wills and I were asked to sit outside her room to stop Tony going in. It was extremely awkward because Tony was very angry about it and wanted to let Princess Margaret know how he felt. To discomfort her, I suppose, he stormed off down the stairs, slammed the front door, got into his car
, and, revving his engine, drove round and round the courtyard near her window, honking the horn.
Princess Margaret was devastated that her marriage had failed, feeling very strongly about divorce, as did I. In some situations I can quite see how it is impossible to avoid, as was the case for Princess Margaret. It was the same for my grandmother, Ga, who had divorced her husband, the 8th Earl of Hardwicke, because of “cruelty.” The details were vague, but I think he had chased her around the house with a knife enough times for her fears to be taken seriously. They got divorced quietly and it was never mentioned again.
We weren’t alone in dealing with difficult marriages. My sister Carey had trouble with her husband, who, after a few years, refused to talk directly to her and instead would talk through his Labrador, saying things like “Tell her to bring the bloody paper over here.”
When I’d discovered Colin was having affairs, I had been incredibly jealous at first and found it very hard to accept. He had also had offers from men, often rather proudly telling me that Field Marshal Montgomery had taken a shine to him when he’d set the record for high jump in the Irish Guards and had stayed keen on him. Over the years, Colin had lots of girlfriends, some I knew of, others I didn’t. I tried not to mind. When he died, a lot of them came out of the woodwork, including one African American lady, for whom he had bought a nail bar in America. I only found out about her when she went to the press and I read about how he had broken her wrist. Hopefully her wrist healed well enough for her to carry on doing people’s nails.
There was one particular mistress he had for years. I had heard rumors about her to start with, but it was only when Colin and I turned up to a party in Kew Gardens and I saw them together that I could sense immediately the unmistakable chemistry between them. You could absolutely tell, and I minded very much. There was never a flaming row between us, or a confession of any sort. I was too polite, which always irritated Colin. Occasionally, after a drink or two, I would start a screaming match with him, but not often.
I avoided confrontation and didn’t want to degrade our marriage to a constant string of arguments. Apart from his infidelity and his temper, we got on so well and we both valued our relationship, which was based on a solid friendship. More to the point, we had five children, so I wanted to maintain unity for their sake. The odd thing was that Colin would complain to me about his girlfriends. He once told me, when he came back from some sand bar off Africa where he had taken this particular long-term mistress, “I’ve had the worst holiday ever. And I’m afraid I’ve behaved rather badly.”
“Colin, that doesn’t sound too good,” I replied, not quite sure what he could possibly expect me to say on the subject of his holiday with his mistress.
“I’m fed up with her! She went and broke her leg before the trip and the whole point of going there was to canoe and see wild animals, but when I tried to get her into it, her leg wouldn’t fit in because the bloody thing is in plaster so won’t bend. And then we had to lie in the boiling hot straw hut all day…” He went on and on, not knowing how ridiculous he sounded.
In the end I said, “I really don’t want to hear about your holiday with your mistress. I’m sorry you didn’t have a good time, but can we talk about something else?” There was no point in feeling sorry for myself. Almost every single couple I could think of was interlaced with other people’s husbands and wives. Rarely, it seemed, were there just the two partners in a marriage. It was an aristocratic curse. Affairs were expected and wives just worked around it. Even married to a princess, Tony wasn’t satisfied, going off with a string of women.
Once I knew Colin had changed the playing field, I leveled it. I had a very dear friend for many years who was always wonderful to me: he made me laugh and we got on terribly well. We had lunch every week and spent the occasional weekend together. It made the whole situation bearable. I felt able to cope, happier and more independent. When Colin found out he was very jealous, but his own behavior was so appalling, he couldn’t really object. It had a positive effect on our marriage because I wasn’t consumed by jealousy and it allowed our friendship to stay strong. We were always talking together and laughing a great deal without a feeling of bitterness.
Colin’s long-term mistress had tried and failed to get him to leave me and marry her. When it came down to it, Colin and I remained loyal to one another. Colin never tried to divorce me. As he always said, “We were brought up not to throw in the towel but to bite bullets and fold towels neatly.” While it was rather easier for him to say, I did agree with the sentiment.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Caribbean Spectaculars
OUR HOUSE ON Mustique, named The Great House after the original one that had been burned down, was the last house to be built by Oliver Messell, in 1978. It was perhaps the greatest of all, influenced by a mixture of eastern architecture. With a central circular room, which had a domed roof, inspired by Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia, and ornate screens of open tiles from Asia and Indonesia, it was breezy and wonderfully light. Surrounded by a palm grove, which Colin had had the insight to plant when he had first bought the island, his pride and joy was the exquisitely carved temple brought from India. It looked as if it had been made from lace. Unfortunately, it arrived in various pieces, and the five men who assembled it put it together in the wrong order, leaving Colin furious. This wasn’t the first or the last time Colin had lost his cool throughout the development of Mustique: he had had several explosive arguments with Oliver, especially when Oliver wanted to use concrete painted like marble and Colin refused, buying a marble quarry to ensure both a good price and the final word.
The Great House was the last house Oliver ever designed and, sadly, he died just before it was completed. Colin and I attended his funeral in Barbados. We were late for the service, and when the taxi driver drove past the church, Colin got so cross that he communicated not only through shouting and screaming but also by biting the driver’s arm, fortunately not drawing blood.
By then, having been married to Colin for over twenty years, I knew to expect this sort of behavior, which I couldn’t control and neither, apparently, could Colin. Although Colin was sometimes impossible to manage, it didn’t take away from his achievements. When I look back on those years on Mustique, they are bursting with color and energy, full of adventure, none of which I would have had without Colin. Recently I read in the papers that Mustique is “unique,” and something that could “never be replicated.” I agree, and that’s down to Colin and his vision.
It was Colin’s eccentricity that helped put Mustique on the map: he used his flair to entice people to come and look round the island. To start with, most of the people were passing by and came ashore out of curiosity—Nelson Rockefeller, the American billionaire and forty-first Vice President of the United States, anchored his yacht off Mustique, and with Bob Dylan’s yacht also nearby, the word began to spread.
Janie Stevens, a great friend and another Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret, was married to Jocelyn Stevens, who was the editor of Queen magazine, now Harper’s Bazaar. After Colin and I mentioned that Mustique needed some publicity, Janie spoke to her husband, who sent the Queen’s photographer cousin Patrick Lichfield, who was also a cousin of mine, to photograph us for an article. The result was a great success. In the glossy pages of the magazine there were double-spread photos of Princess Margaret surrounded by Colin, me, and anyone else who was there—islanders and expats alike. The photos alluded to a bohemian atmosphere but with a unique twist of royalty, all within a picture-postcard backdrop of coconut palms and turquoise waters. The scene was as inviting as it was intriguing.
By the mid-seventies, a steady trickle of articles was being published about how Mustique was the new “place to go.” Other than being a destination for Princess Margaret, this was a huge exaggeration, but it was easy to believe when Colin told people it was so—he made such an impression in his own right that he became a draw. He understood this and played up to it, even hoping that his own lo
go, a red capital G for Glenconner, would become famous.
People certainly had memorable tours with Colin, who went further than most to secure buyers: to show how deep the water was he would sometimes walk, fully clothed, out to sea until his hat floated off, even though the water was in fact only waist deep and actually he was walking on his knees.
Mick Jagger was the first proper celebrity to stay on Mustique, although his initial visit wasn’t a success. He arrived, out of season, with his wife Bianca and his daughter Jade in tow. He stayed for a week and left unimpressed, but his presence legitimized the claim that big names visited Mustique, generating more media attention.
Colin decided that if he threw extravagant parties, people would hear about them and want to be invited to these “Caribbean Spectaculars.” Out of all the parties, his fiftieth birthday Golden Ball, in 1976, was the one that secured Mustique the label of being the hedonistic paradise for the rich and famous. And commercially it worked: directly after the party, Mick Jagger bought a villa called L’Ansecoy, which has panoramic views of St. Vincent and Bequia. He also invited Princess Margaret and me to a Rolling Stones concert in London. It was so loud that we kept our fingers in our ears the whole time.
The fiftieth-birthday invitation was for almost a week’s worth of parties, all expenses paid: the airfare, the accommodation, and everything in between. Everybody stayed dotted around the island in different houses: Princess Margaret had Oliver Messel, Rupert Loewenstein, the financial manager of the Rolling Stones, his wife, my great friend Princess Josephine Loewenstein, and Carolina Herrera, the fashion designer famous for dressing a string of First Ladies from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama, and her husband Reinaldo. Carolina always showed Princess Margaret and me her collections when we flew home via New York, and very generously would invite us to choose what we liked, her tailors making little changes for Princess Margaret so that what she picked was unique to her.
Lady in Waiting Page 15