Lady in Waiting

by Anne Glenconner

  This is extremely difficult for any parents to hear and act upon, and for years we couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. With hindsight, perhaps our love for him assisted his downfall. Although nowadays he might be slapped with the label of “archetypal rich kid junkie,” he was our little boy, known as “sweet Charlie,” who had somehow spiraled out of control. He could quite easily have been like many other rebellious teenagers and experimented with drugs without becoming a full-blown addict. That would have been far from ideal, but significantly better than the reality we were all faced with.

  Instead of abandoning him, Colin kept him on Mustique, which seemed to be the only place in the world Charlie couldn’t get his hands on heroin. That might be surprising since Mustique was known for its hedonistic parties, but although other drugs, such as cannabis, could be found, heroin did not feature. Charlie described it as a “Paradise prison,” getting very depressed there, feeling trapped and suffering from cold turkey.

  Of course, as soon as Colin let him go, which he had to from time to time, Charlie would find a dealer, even before he’d got to London. Both Colin and I lived in waves of anxious dread—one minute we hoped Charlie might be rising above everything, the next we would realize he was even deeper into the addiction. When he was on Mustique, I was able to relax a bit, knowing Colin had a firm grip on him and feeling reassured that at least Charlie couldn’t access heroin.

  I compartmentalized my worries, distracted myself, and focused on other parts of my life. It was the only way I could cope, and since nothing seemed permanently to get Charlie away from drugs, I got used to the feeling of unease. When Colin and I were together, we discussed endless options, hatching several plans, until he became convinced that Charlie had got into drugs to shirk responsibility. Colin had threatened Charlie with the prospect of disinheriting him so many times, but Charlie continued down the same path, either not taking the threat seriously, not caring, or unable to stop. I didn’t know what to think but could quite see where Colin was coming from.

  Becoming convinced that Charlie didn’t want the responsibility of looking after the vast family estate, Colin began to think that the pressure was adding to his problems. We were also dreadfully worried Charlie would simply sell Glen if anything were to happen to Colin and he had the chance.

  Reluctantly, in 1977, when Charlie was nineteen and had already been on heroin for three years, Colin made the difficult decision to disinherit him from Glen. This would mean he would still inherit the Caribbean assets, which were, at the time, substantial, but that the family estate would stay protected. I supported the decision, knowing that Charlie wasn’t in a position to take over and had to accept that he might never be.

  When Colin handed Charlie the contract, Charlie signed it on two conditions: to be given a bigger monthly allowance and for Colin to cover his future medical bills. The conditions didn’t make us feel he had realized his pitfalls. On the contrary, they sounded like ways to support his addiction, only making us believe we had taken the right decision. With Colin’s agreement, Charlie signed on the dotted line. It was official: Glen would be Henry’s when Colin died. Although other young heirs were dabbling in the world of drugs, it was unusual to disinherit and the decision was a big blow to our family. It was an official failure, marginally compensated through having a second son to hand the legacy down to. But put in perspective, having to disinherit a son was nothing compared to the reason why he was disinherited, and our concern was centered around how on earth we could get him off heroin.

  After Charlie was disinherited, Colin let him leave Mustique and packed him off to a clinic in the States, but the cycle continued. For the next three years, Charlie was high half the time and marooned on Mustique for the rest. A real low point came in late 1978, after a summer at Glen where Colin had organized a variety show for fun. The lineup was impressive. Bianca Jagger started it off with some ballet, then Charlie mimed to Elvis Presley’s “Blue Suede Shoes.” Then out came Princess Margaret dressed as Brünnhilde, in a horned helmet and wig, miming to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” with the twins, who were about eight years old, on either side of her as mini Valkyries, loving every minute of it, grinning from ear to ear. They were followed by Roddy Llewellyn, who, dressed as a wizard, rattled off a song that he sang to a skull held in his hand.

  Colin and I were left thinking it was one of the best weekends we’d ever had at Glen. But not long after the party, photos of Princess Margaret were splashed across the newspapers. Horrified, I recognized the photos as mine and when I opened my photo album, I saw that they had been ripped from the pages. Joining the dots, I guessed that Charlie must be at the bottom of it. When I confronted him, he admitted that he had sold the pictures to a friend, dubiously called Muddy Waters, who had then sold them to the Daily Mail. I was furious.

  In the beginning, he had stolen money from me, and as the years passed, he had stolen belongings, including a pair of ornaments that had huge sentimental, let alone financial, value, encouraged by Colin’s sister Emma, who sympathized with him when he complained to her he didn’t have enough money. But this was something different. I was not only worried for him but it threatened my integrity and position as Lady in Waiting. Princess Margaret was hugely understanding and dismissed the incident, drawing a line under it and forgiving Charlie.

  I was exasperated and tried to reason with him. When I told him I would rather he just asked for money than deceive and undermine me like that, I could see he felt terrible. He wasn’t naturally nasty, but his addiction had split his personality, making him manipulative and untrustworthy. When I saw his reaction, I felt a glimmer of hope that he was still in there somewhere behind the awful shroud of addiction, and I started to engage with him more, trying to make him understand he had to get his act together and stop all this nonsense. I think he began to see the hurt he had caused everybody, and it looked like he was beginning to realize he no longer wanted to deceive everybody around him.

  Although he seemed to try, he was unable to make the necessary changes and once more Colin and I found ourselves in the same position. When he was arrested for being in possession of drugs at Heathrow, Colin refused to pay his bail, hoping that a small stint in jail would be enough to shock Charlie into giving up once and for all. Even though he begged and promised, as soon as he was out, he shot up.

  It had been six years since he had started taking heroin and only when we had got to the breaking point did we decide finally to cut him off, using all the courage we possessed to take the advice of the doctors and turn him out. It was the hardest thing to do, far harder than disinheriting him, but it was this decision that finally broke the dreadful cycle.

  Colin and I watched him as he sat on the London pavement outside our house. Colin immediately wanted to bring him back in, and it was almost impossible to go against our instincts, but I stuck to my guns, thinking that this might be our very last chance to save him.

  What was worse than seeing him looking helpless and bewildered outside was when he eventually moved off and we had no idea where he had gone. There was a constant sinking feeling in the back of my mind, wondering whether we would get a phone call to hear something dreadful had happened.

  Several weeks later, after hearing nothing from Charlie, he reappeared, declaring he wanted to quit. We listened and quietly rejoiced. Never before had he said he wanted to quit. He’d promised he would, but he’d never said he actually wanted to. It was pivotal that this came from him, because only with the desire to quit would he stand a chance in succeeding.

  Colin bought him a small house in Fulham that was near enough to us that we could check up on him but allowed him independence, cautious that overcrowding him might deter him from his goal, and knowing that if he was going to stay clean, he needed to be determined enough to make his own choices.

  When he started going to a drug rehab center of his own accord, we didn’t have high hopes, no longer trusting him or his word, but were tentatively happy when he went onto meth
adone and there was a marked change in him, as he seemed to really try. He went up to Glen to stay there for a bit and that was the start of the beginning of the rest of his life. On the estate, there was a couple called Mr. and Mrs. Parsons who were renting one of the farmhouses, making a living by creating rose-scented candles. Mrs. Parsons was also a counselor and was instantly supportive of Charlie. Soon he was making his own candles, which were rather different from theirs. I was on the receiving end of Charlie’s psychedelic candles, getting black skulls and huge purple creations in the post, not really knowing what to do with them, but I was glad he was at least doing something. The prospect of Charlie managing to get clean was by then as surreal as finding out he had ever become addicted in the first place.

  Meanwhile the other children were blossoming. Christopher was in his mid-teens and in the throes of school, very popular and enjoying life. When he came home in the holidays, he would sneak off to nightclubs with friends and come back late, sleeping in the summerhouse, but having seen what heroin had done to Charlie, he wasn’t tempted to follow him.

  As the twins got older, they connected more with their brothers. They really looked up to Christopher, and when Charlie was in a more level period, we would all listen to his reggae records in the sitting room at Glen. Henry taught the twins how to play chess and they admired his skill for card games—he was especially good at gin rummy. I was still involved in my charities and would take the twins with me to the events, where they would help out with the tombola at fairs and were very popular with the guests.

  As May was goddaughter to Princess Margaret, she was asked to the Royal Variety Performance and was excited to meet all the acts from Orville to Tom Jones.

  In 1979, aged nineteen, Henry fell in love while on his gap year in Machu Picchu. He met a young woman named Tessa Cormack, who had pulled him out of a hole he’d managed to fall into. Although a chance meeting, far away from home, it turned out they had a lot in common. Tessa had also grown up in Scotland—she was the granddaughter of Liberal peer Lord Davies, and they shared strong values and a similar sense of humor, so we were all thrilled for them when, a few years later, they got engaged.

  Their wedding on Mustique in 1983 was brilliant fun, both families joining in to decorate the jeep and boat with palm fronds and flowers. It was a beautiful day and we were all together celebrating a happy occasion. There were no histrionics, no bad moods. It was perfect.

  Sadly, it was the last time my mother came to Mustique. Suffering from emphysema, having chain-smoked all her life, her health declined rapidly. It was a terrible illness, and it was agonizing to watch her breathing become more and more strained, until she died in 1985. Everybody was tremendously sad. She had been such a positive force in all our lives and Colin had become very fond of her. She was popular with everyone, including the Queen, who wrote me an exceptionally touching letter to say how much my mother had meant to her. Prince Charles, having spent so much time with her when he was a boy, was also terribly upset and has stayed a loyal and incredibly kind friend, always checking up on me.

  My mother taught me many things, above all that I should stay strong for my family, reminding me always to give an air of absolute resolve, just as she had done. So far life had thrown me challenges—from navigating an often tumultuous marriage to dealing with a drug-addict son—but what came next tested me in the extreme.

  For a while it seemed as if Henry and Tessa would live happily ever after. In 1984 they had their son, Euan, and there was no reason to doubt their compatibility whatsoever. Henry was busy with his business ventures—first importing fruit from Trinidad and then delving into the stationery industry. He also started up a business called “Henry’s Help” where people would call up if they were looking for a plumber, electrician, or handyman and he would find them one—he was ahead of his time. By then, he had found Buddhism and had become an increasingly positive part of May and Amy’s life as they had grown older: he was a calm and loving brother whenever they needed someone to talk to. May described him as her “guru,” holding on to every word he said. He would do little things for them, like making compilation tapes, when they were at school, and taught Christopher and the girls how to chant.

  Tessa became close to us all, and we were very impressed with her career: deeply intelligent and a passionate activist, she was a pioneer, going on to co-found one of the first green investment funds in the UK. Because of her full-on schedule, it was Henry who spent a lot of time with Euan when he was a baby, and I was able to see them regularly as they lived in the basement of Hill Lodge.

  One day in 1985 Henry asked Colin and me down to their flat. There was a strange tone to his voice and when we came down, there was an equally strange feeling in the flat. I knew at once that something was wrong, but I was not prepared for what came next. As we sat down with Tessa and Henry, he blurted, “I’ve moved out because I’m gay.”

  I couldn’t believe it. He wasn’t camp, like Colin’s Uncle Stephen, or even as flamboyant as Colin or Charlie for that matter. To me, he gave no outward hint of being gay, so the news came as a massive shock, especially given his apparent happiness with his wife and child.

  Although I didn’t mind that he was gay, and only wanted him to be happy, I was exasperated that he had married such a lovely girl, then gone on to have Euan, only to turn around and shun the life he had made, in favor of a completely new one. Tessa was calm, and somehow managed to deal with everything with grace and empathy. She never divorced him, even though he moved in with his friend Kelvin O’Mard, an actor at the Royal Shakespeare Company. It became clear Henry just wanted to stop living a lie and embrace his sexuality, so separating from Tessa was his way of doing that. Surprisingly, Tessa became very close with Kelvin.

  Colin, too, seemed more understanding and took the news far better than I did. He was patient and accepting of Henry’s choice, and was glad that Henry had felt comfortable enough to tell him. Not only was being gay a taboo—it had only become legal in the UK in 1967 and was still met with huge prejudice—but it was made far worse because of the risks.

  In the 1980s it was dangerous to be gay. AIDS had become an epidemic. Having been a little-known disease, starting in the Democratic Republic of Congo, by the mid-seventies it had spread to five continents. At that stage, no one knew how it was caught. The only certainty was that it was killing thousands of people a year and that it was heavily linked to gay men.

  My concern swapped from his broken family to his welfare. I warned him so many times, saying, “If you are promiscuous, you need to wear protection and be careful.”

  By 1986, the British government had released major advertising campaigns on television and newspapers, warning people that one in five people would contract HIV with the tagline, “Don’t die of ignorance.”

  Tragically, Henry wasn’t careful enough. As soon as he came out, he went wild, presumably feeling finally liberated. In December 1986, moments before Colin’s famous birthday party, the Peacock Ball on Mustique, was about to begin, Colin told me that Henry had been diagnosed with HIV. Why Colin picked that moment to tell me, I will never know. The party was already surreal enough, with Princess Margaret in a turban, crowning Colin as “the King of Mustique.” To be handed my son’s death sentence while standing in a glittering dress welcoming lots of guests felt like some sort of obscure nightmare.

  Suddenly I had a son with the most feared virus in the world, as well as a son who was addicted to heroin. I despaired, thinking I had hit rock bottom. But only a few months after Henry had been diagnosed with HIV and had started endless amounts of medication to try to keep it from progressing to AIDS, Christopher had a near fatal accident while on his gap year in 1987.

  Christopher was very handsome, resembling Elvis Presley, and had left school as one of the most popular boys in his year. Full of affection, funny, and with a very sunny disposition, he was instantly likeable. Just before he set off, I went to the travel agent to collect his tickets and the man behind the counter
said, “Have you insured him?”

  “No,” I replied.

  I hadn’t thought about it, but after listening to him explain why it might be a good idea—in his experience young travelers often lost key items or needed medical treatment while abroad—I bought a policy, although £150 seemed like a lot of money for insurance. It made me more aware of the possibility of danger, especially through reckless behavior, so when I gave Christopher the tickets, I said, “Please, no motorbikes. Whatever you do, no motorbikes.”

  Well, of course he and his friends took no notice. They were nineteen-year-old boys with their first taste of freedom, hiring motorbikes just as soon as they arrived. The dog-eared postcards that Christopher sent from time to time made clear he was having a terrific time as they made their way across Mexico and Guatemala. His scribbled messages politely wished I was there, which I’m sure he didn’t.

  On the final stretch of their adventure, Christopher and his friends arrived at the Guatemala–Belize border at nightfall, only to be told they couldn’t cross into Belize without giving a large deposit for the entry of their motorbikes. When they didn’t have the money, one of the motorbikes and a helmet were taken in lieu of payment. So, Christopher rode pillion, without a helmet. When two of their friends arrived at the next hostel, they waited and waited, wondering what had happened to Christopher and their other friend.

  By dawn they were so worried, they got back on their bikes and retraced their journey from the night before. What they found was a scene from a nightmare. Having got tired, and with the roads winding, unevenly surfaced, and unlit, the boy driving the motorbike had crashed into an unlit barrier. Christopher was thrown off and had hit his head on a rock; the other boy had a broken shoulder. It transpired that after the accident, although people had passed, no one had stopped, fearing the boys were bandits and were only pretending to be hurt.