Lady in Waiting

by Anne Glenconner

  When we arrived in Melbourne we went straight to the races, where it was sheeting down with rain. Princess Margaret’s shoes got terribly wet, so when we sat down for lunch, I took them to see if they could be dried, giving them to the lady in the cloakroom, who, some time later, gave me an almost unrecognizable pair of shoes back. They were horribly misshapen and completely stiff. When I asked what she had done, she proudly said, “I put them in the microwave.” Princess Margaret, who had no choice but to put them back on, hobbled around glaring at me for the rest of the day.

  From Melbourne we traveled to Sydney, where we stayed at Government House with Sir Roden Cutler VC, an Australian diplomat who was Governor of New South Wales, and his wife Lady Cutler. They were frightfully grand. Somehow, as the Queen’s representative, Sir Roden behaved with such exacting manners that nothing was at all straightforward and even the smallest details became nonsensical. To distinguish Princess Margaret from me, I was told I couldn’t use the main stairs unless I was with her. Instead, if I was alone, I was told that I should use the servants’ stairs at the back of the house. When I accompanied Princess Margaret down the stairs we were met with an absurdly formal ritual. Sir Roden and Lady Cutler would stand at the bottom of the staircase facing each other, expressionless, waiting for Princess Margaret to start her descent. As soon as Princess Margaret’s foot touched the first step, like clockwork soldiers, they would turn away from each other to face us. Lady Cutler would then curtsy, and Sir Roden would bow. This extraordinary habit provoked Princess Margaret and me into hysterics as soon as we were in private.

  Over the course of our stay, it became clear that Sir Roden felt he knew everything there was to know about the Royal Family, especially the Queen. At lunch one day, I was sitting next to him and I mentioned Princess Margaret wanted to go shopping to buy Aboriginal crafts. “Shopping?” he said, surprised. “I didn’t think the Royal Family went shopping. I represent the Queen and I have never heard of her going shopping.”

  So I replied, “Actually, the Queen goes shopping. She recently went to Harrods to choose some Christmas presents.” Sir Roden looked at me, astonished. “On what authority do you have this information?” he asked me incredulously.

  “My mother is a Lady of the Bedchamber and she went with her,” I replied. Sir Roden appeared amazed at this exchange of information and seemed after that to see me in a whole new light. At any rate, he was slightly less formal towards me for the rest of our stay, although I was never invited to use the main stairs without Princess Margaret.

  One of the things on the itinerary for Sydney was a visit to Bondi Beach, which included a photo call on the sand with the lifeguards. On discovering this, Princess Margaret wasn’t happy. The idea of sinking into the sand during a formal engagement was not something she was interested in. Knowing it would be inappropriate to show her discomfort and take time to rid her shoes and feet of sand, she flatly refused, using the excuse that her high heels were too impractical, agreeing to go to Bondi but not on the beach.

  When I told the organizers, they were very disappointed and asked me to try to persuade her to change her mind. I promised to see what I could do and put a pair of her flat shoes into my bag before we set off for the morning’s engagements around the city. I had been in this situation before: every now and then Princess Margaret simply didn’t want to do something. Having to read the situation and weigh up everybody’s wishes, I would try to create more of a balance so that everybody got what they wanted. This wasn’t easy—a certain diplomacy was necessary and, over the years, I honed that rather delicate skill.

  Later that day, when we were driving through Sydney, nearing Bondi, I said to her, “Ma’am, you know, they really would like you to go on the beach. It’s like kissing the Blarney Stone for them.”

  “Anne,” she said, her irritation obvious, “look at my shoes. They simply won’t do. I’ll just have to stand on the concrete and look from afar.”

  “Actually, Ma’am, I have a suitable pair,” I said, showing her the shoes in my bag.

  She looked at me, then at the shoes and then back at me. “Okay, Anne,” she said, somewhat tersely. “You win this time.”

  She put on the flat shoes and walked onto Bondi Beach and, as ever, Princess Margaret was the epitome of charm, never giving away her discomfort. When we got back into the car, she turned to me as she was shaking the sand out of her shoes and said, “Well, I hope you’re pleased.” Before I could answer, she added: “But weren’t those lifeguards disappointing?”

  This was typical of Princess Margaret, who always took an interest in young men, and I couldn’t help but agree. Instead of the bronzed gods we were expecting, they were all so frightfully pale because it was the beginning of the season.

  “Yes, they were, especially with those awful rubber bathing caps,” I replied.

  “They didn’t do anything for them,” Princess Margaret remarked decisively.

  While I might have “won” that time, she got me back on the next engagement, which was to Sydney Zoo. On arrival, Princess Margaret was offered a koala bear to hold and, without missing a beat, she replied, “No, thank you, but I’m sure my Lady in Waiting would like to hold it.”

  There was no time to decline. She knew I was not entirely at ease with animals, but within moments I found myself holding the koala bear, which apparently was even more uncomfortable than I was, promptly weeing down my best dress.

  “Thank you very much, Ma’am,” I said, in the car on the way back, “for the opportunity to hold the koala bear.”

  She laughed uproariously, apologized, and looked utterly satisfied that she had got me back for the walking-on-sand incident.

  The rest of our time in Sydney passed smoothly, and just before we returned to England, Lady Cutler came to me and said, “Would Princess Margaret accept a present? It’s rather special.”

  “I’m sure the Princess would be delighted,” I replied. “Will you tell me what it is?”

  “A boomerang cover,” she replied.

  Off I went to relay the news of this peculiar-sounding present to Princess Margaret. I couldn’t help but smile broadly when I told her, “Ma’am, you’ll never guess what Lady Cutler is intending to give you as a present. A boomerang cover.”

  Princess Margaret laughed. “How on earth does she know how big my boomerang is?” she asked.

  Of course it wasn’t anything like we imagined. It turned out to be a quilt that had gone around the country to be stitched by members of different branches of the Women’s Institute, which was how it had got its name—because it had gone back and forth—but we dissolved into hysterics and Lady Cutler never really understood why we were laughing.

  I think I laughed with Princess Margaret more than with anybody else. She had a quite naughty sense of humor and never lost the sense of mischief we’d shared in childhood, jumping out at the footmen at Holkham. Sometimes she would try to make me laugh when we both knew I shouldn’t because when I laugh I cry, and she thought that was very entertaining. In fact, she would make me laugh in front of people and then say in a completely deadpan tone, “I don’t know why my Lady in Waiting is in tears.”

  Spending so much time with Princess Margaret gave me purpose but also distracted me. I appreciated the fun we had together especially when other parts of my life weren’t so easy. Throughout the mid-seventies, family life was fraught.

  Finding the right school for Charlie had been impossible—he had desperately wanted to go to Eton and Colin made a big fuss about getting a tutor for him before the exam, but he failed. He tried again and failed again. Instead, Charlie went to Clifton College, a strict boys’ boarding school outside Bristol.

  Where Charlie had failed, Henry succeeded, sailing through the entrance exams of Eton and doing well in all subjects, making lots of friends. Although we were delighted that Henry was thriving, it was hard for Charlie to see his younger brother do everything he had tried so hard to do, making him feel even more of a failure.

&nb
sp; Charlie was fourteen and still at Clifton College when I became a Lady in Waiting in 1971. We were clueless about him smoking cannabis and taking acid in his early teenage years because being away at boarding school meant it was easy for him to hide this shocking development. It simply didn’t occur to us that any of our children would ever get involved with drugs until years later. All we knew was that Charlie wasn’t finding school easy and would come home in the holidays very glum, not wanting to go back. For a few years, Colin reassured me that Charlie would settle in and I tried not to worry, hoping he was right. Meanwhile Henry, Christopher, and the twins were happily living through their childhood, and were, like Colin and me, unaware of Charlie’s decline into drugs.

  Maybe Charlie would have been better off staying at Clifton, but in 1973, when he was sixteen, he was still desperately unhappy, having been relentlessly bullied by older boys. Colin moved him to Frensham Heights, a co-educational school in Surrey, which was more liberal.

  We had no idea how liberal. The freedom went straight to Charlie’s head and he spiraled downwards from there, although we didn’t know he was going off the rails to start with. For a while, we thought the new school had been the right decision because Charlie seemed a lot happier. We only realized how bad things had got when he came home only two terms after starting with a suspension letter, having been caught stealing with a gang of friends. The letter made Colin furious. What really alarmed me was that Charlie looked dreadful and smelled atrocious. When Colin pressed him for reasons as to why he was so unkempt, Charlie admitted that he had not had a bath for the whole of the second term. We were appalled, never having come across a school with such lax rules, and decided not to send him back. Instead we kept him at home, getting tutors for him so he was homeschooled, hoping it wouldn’t be too difficult to straighten him out.

  Only years later did he admit that the reason for his poor hygiene was all to do with the undiagnosed OCD—his own mind had convinced him that if he washed or changed his clothes the “evil spirits” would take control of him. Given this secret reality he faced, I imagine, from his point of view, being suspended was the least of his worries.

  With Charlie at home, we began to realize he hadn’t grown out of his compulsive rituals at all, but because of his laidback and happy nature, it was hard to know what they were or how much they were affecting him. He would dismiss them and insist everything was fine and, with no useful advice on hand, we didn’t know how seriously we should take it.

  Colin never offered reasons or excuses to any of our friends about Charlie when they witnessed his strange compulsions; nor did he hide him away or label him mad, although I did worry that Charlie was disturbed. Colin had uncharacteristic patience, sympathizing but not knowing how to help.

  Princess Margaret never remarked on Charlie’s behavior and always took time to talk to him. When Charlie started hopping in and out of the doorway, she didn’t blink an eyelid, accepting it was just part of Charlie.

  The other children became used to their eldest brother’s ways. If we were all about to go out, they would stand patiently in the hall while Charlie tried to leave. Quite often he would have been trying to leave for ages but every time he left his room and walked down the hallway and out of the house, he would turn around and go back because something wasn’t quite right. So, there he would be, turning off and on the light switch, tapping the floor, turning around ten times, and then a sudden rush out of the bedroom door only to stop at the front door, turn around, and do it again. Once May was in the way and he crashed into her on his umpteenth attempt and was furious because, supposedly, that had been the one. Back into his room he went, and spent another half an hour getting it right. It was all part and parcel of our family life. Going down the King’s Road with him, once we had eventually left the house, was at times rather testing, waiting for him as he touched a lamppost ten, twenty times, or the side of the pavement, or while he twirled around on the spot.

  In contrast, Henry was a very easy teenager. Despite having inherited a temper, he rarely showed it and was mellow, good-natured, intelligent, and completely normal in comparison to Charlie—and Colin, for that matter. As for the other children, Christopher and the twins were happy and secure, thanks to Barbara’s stable routine. Barbara looked after them so well that they were completely fine when I went away. I would bring them presents when I returned and tell them all the stories, which they loved.

  Christopher had developed a passion for cars and Colin was thrilled by this. When Colin had arrived at Glen during the holidays with a brand-new Jaguar, he delighted in Christopher’s excitement, and drove him all the way back to London at 140 m.p.h. Christopher was bowled over by the thrill, which bonded him to his father further.

  The twins were still very young and lived in a bit of a bubble, coming up with their very own language that no one else understood. It turned out they never did like the dolls I had dreamed any daughters of mine would, and instead would play with Christopher’s Action Men.

  Daily life continued, although London had become increasingly tense due to bombing attacks by the IRA. In 1974, about half an hour after Christopher had posted a letter for me in the post-box at the end of Tite Street, as he always loved to do, the box blew up. I was in the house with him, the twins, and Barbara when we heard the explosion. Twenty-one minutes later, a bigger bomb in a hedge close to the post-box was detonated, injuring more than twenty people, who had come to the scene in response to the first bomb. The threat of these small neighborhood bombs was extremely frightening: I was always on the alert every time I walked anywhere, knowing there was a risk of danger even on a quiet street, always crossing the road at the sight of a post-box.

  Security was heightened around the Royal Palaces, and every time I drove to Kensington Palace, my car would be inspected with one of those mirrors at the end of a long pole that checked for bombs.

  Princess Margaret kept the attitude she had always had, dismissing fear because there was no point in being frightened. I remember once we were on a plane flying over the Atlantic in the middle of a thunderstorm. The lightning was whipping the wings of the plane and I became increasingly afraid. Princess Margaret took my hand firmly and said, “Anne, there’s no point worrying. We will either be all right or we won’t, and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it.”

  Not long after the bombs, we moved from Tite Street to Colin’s mother’s house, Hill Lodge, in Campden Hill. Pamela had moved into a cottage in the garden. After she died, it was perfect for the children as they got older: it gave them a bit more independence.

  By this time my father was really ill. In the war he had got malaria and had been given huge doses of quinine, which had damaged the valves in his heart, stopping the blood pumping to his brain properly. Poor Dad had become more and more unwell in his last years, thinking my mother and younger sister Sarah were Vera Lynn and Gracie Fields. At his insistence they sang songs like “The Biggest Aspidistra in the World.” My mother had many, many attributes but singing was not one of them.

  This was not the only bizarre request she graciously accepted. My father had got into a habit of chatting up women on the train to London and inviting them back to Holkham, where he would take them off on the fire engine, encouraging them to ring the bell. This was not what my mother minded. It was their husbands, whom they invariably brought with them and who would be left with her in the house. She was obliged to make polite conversation with them until their wives returned.

  Sporadically ill, one day my father would be terribly confused, the next he would be fairly okay, and the next he would be absolutely fine. The trouble was that every time the doctor came my father managed to pull himself together for just as long as he was there. Eventually the doctor witnessed him being unwell and he was taken to St. Andrew’s in Northampton, a famous psychiatric hospital. Over the years St. Andrew’s has housed many notable people, including Gladys, 9th Duchess of Marlborough, who spent the last fifteen years of her life there; Lucia, the d
aughter of the Irish novelist James Joyce; and Violet Gibson, the woman who shot Mussolini.

  I went with him to St. Andrew’s, masking my own fear when I was locked into a ward with him, trying to comfort him as all the patients swarmed towards us, curious to see who the new arrival was. Confused as to what was going on, he clung to me, crying, devastated that he was separated from his beloved Holkham. To see my father in such a state was horrendous: he had been so capable, so relied upon by the King and then the Queen, and so popular among his friends in the Scots Guards. He was only in his sixties, and his friends were still going off shooting together, having dinner in the Guards Club, while he was being kept somewhere against his will, having no real grasp on reality. In the end we arranged for him to come home with two or three nurses, who looked after him, knowing he would feel comforted by being back at Holkham.

  It wasn’t easy for my mother and, as his condition declined further, developing episodes in which he was quite violent towards her, she decided to move out into a dower house a few miles away. She returned every day to have lunch with my father, who never realized she was no longer living with him. He was only sixty-eight when he died on September 3, 1976.

  When I look back, my father was very, very sweet. I think he realized how fussy he was, but he just couldn’t help it. He represented everything I had known. Without him, my childhood home was no longer accessible to me, and with it, the foundation of my identity. He had lived his life in such a comfortingly predictable manner, with shooting parties, and the running of the estate, and it was hard to imagine Norfolk without him. The gamekeepers were terribly sad, and a silence descended on Holkham only matched when the King had died twenty-four years earlier.

  Princess Margaret continued being a support, knowing all too well how sad it was to lose one’s father, understanding in the way that only people who have lost a parent can be. Time went on and Eddy, my second cousin, took over Holkham. Eddy had grown up in Africa until my father had brought him over to England so he could teach him about the running of the estate. He was very kind to me, my mother, and my sisters, including us all, and we were thrilled when his second wife Sarah took over the pottery. Although it was the end of an era, Holkham was in good hands so I focused on my duties as Lady in Waiting and supported Colin in Mustique.