I was so grateful to Margaret and Mitch because as soon as I arrived I knew it was the right decision—everything Mitch had said was true, and I felt a sense of relief straightaway. They took me along to different temples: to Jain temples, which looked like they’d been made out of lace, and we watched the monks in devotion, wearing nothing but a feather fan over their groins. The nuns wore white garments, their bodies bundled up, so they looked like huge white meringues.
We went into one of these temples and found a family mourning a family member who had died, in the middle of a puja, a Hindu form of worship. They were bunched together, clapping and chanting, moving in rhythmic unison. Mitch went up to them and said, “I’ve got a lady with me whose son has just died. He was a Buddhist. Do you mind if she watches you?”
“No, no, she can’t watch, she must join in!” they said, opening their arms to me. I felt a huge sense of release when I was swept up in their puja, as they burned incense and chanted.
We carried on visiting more temples but I started to get worried: in Buddhism, it is believed that when the deceased has reached a certain level in their journey to nirvana, there has to be a Buddhist monk chanting a prayer at the precise time in this journey to help the person reach the next level. The process is the same for everyone and therefore, on a set day and time, a few weeks after the death, this prayer has to happen.
On that particular day, we were driving and hadn’t found anywhere with monks to chant the prayer. I knew the time slot was a slim one, so I began to get anxious on behalf of Henry. We were in the middle of nowhere, driving down a long road in the desert, when Mitch said to me, “Don’t worry. I am absolutely certain we will find a monk.”
I didn’t know why Mitch was so sure, since there was nothing but camels and palm trees, but then we saw a lone figure on the road. Mitch said, “I think this is what we’ve been waiting for,” and stopped the car.
Mitch, who spoke Hindi, explained and the monk smiled and took my hands at once, starting the puja for Henry. I couldn’t help but feel it was a sign that this monk, the only person we had passed on the whole journey, was there for me, for Henry, and that Henry was all right. He was at peace.
With that, I felt so exhausted I almost collapsed. I think it was the grief, followed by an enormous flood of relief. I got back into the car and slept for hours. It was the most important trip of my life, which is why I think I found it so draining and yet, at the same time, I found this amazing strength. The strength has stayed with me and still makes me feel more able to cope when I think about Henry.
As the eighties came to an end, my life had changed considerably. Ever since Henry’s diagnosis, swiftly followed by Christopher’s accident, I had reevaluated my priorities and focused on being a mother, then a wife, staying in England to be with Christopher far more than being with Colin.
Christopher was walking again, his recovery astounding. The first proper outing he had was three years after the accident when we went to a ball at Holkham. He wore black tie with an enormous smile, and I kept looking at him in disbelief, although the reality was that for most of the evening he leaned on me. I didn’t mind in the slightest, but because he is very tall and very heavy, I did wonder whether we would both suddenly find ourselves in a pile on the floor. In the end it took five years for Christopher to recover as much as he was going to.
During that time Mustique had changed too. The hedonistic carefree days of the seventies and eighties had been so successful that they had changed the island. Colin had sold more shares and slowly but surely had less and less say in the decisions of how Mustique was run. It was no longer possible for him to do it his way. Having clashed with so many people over his rigid opinions and the extreme way in which he conveyed them, Colin had left Mustique in 1987, selling The Great House to the heiress Christina Onassis’s third husband, former KGB agent Sergei Kauzov.
Moving to St. Lucia, he had invested in an undeveloped 480-acre estate that Henry had found before he died. Selling half of the land to developers, who built the Jalousie Plantation Resort, he kept the other half for himself, coming up with all sorts of ideas, wanting to create somewhere else as spectacular as Mustique.
As Henry had suspected he would, Colin fell in love with the place, which was between the pair of volcanic spires known as the Pitons, with land sloping to the sea, building the third and final Great House. Unfortunately, it was the least “great” of them all. Although it had a vast main room on the top floor, with a domed roof, which was spectacular, the bedrooms were on the ground floor and were very gloomy. With the water tank on the terrace over the bedrooms, I was always nervous that it would burst above my head and I’d be drowned while asleep. I was never quite so connected to St. Lucia because, over the years, Mustique had come to feel like home.
The twins, by then in their late teens, took after their father, loving the lifestyle the West Indies offered, as did Christopher, who craved independence, so Colin came up with a brilliant idea. Finding a cottage in Soufrière on St. Lucia, he invited Christopher to move out there. Thrilled by his father’s plan and desperate to start a new life, and have a bit more fun, he left England at once.
Colin’s plan was a huge success. Christopher loved the setup, never realizing that Colin had hired two old ladies who lived next to the cottage Christopher was occupying, to keep an eye on him. He just thought they cooked for him and did his laundry, but in fact they followed him at a distance in case he fell over and made sure he had got into bed all right. It was the perfect compromise and meant I was hugely reassured. It was amazing to think he was able to live like that after all that he’d been through.
A state of normality returned and, as time progressed, the sadness of losing Henry became, very slowly, easier to bear. Although we had lost Henry, Charlie had managed, amazingly, to stay free from heroin and, although on prescribed methadone, was able to live a much more normal existence. The candle-making couple, Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, had given Charlie a new focus—the long and the short of it was that Charlie and Mrs. Parsons, Sheilagh, had fallen in love.
We were all thrilled when, after her divorce in 1993, Charlie and Sheilagh got married in a London register office. Charlie, who took after Colin in his flamboyant dress sense, wore Tennant tartan trews and a leopard waistcoat, and drove to and from the ceremony in a bright pink Cadillac, past Buckingham Palace on the way home. They were quite a spectacle, especially when the traffic police assumed they were going to one of the Queen’s garden parties. Corralled into a queue, Colin, absolutely furious, had to get out and explain, leaving the garden-party guests in their tea dresses and suits with open mouths at the extraordinary car and its occupants.
The wedding reception was held at our house and we all danced reels to a ceilidh band. I just hoped that Charlie had many happy years in front of him and that maybe he would be okay. When Cody, their son, was born in 1994, everyone was thrilled. Although Charlie had been disinherited and Henry’s son Euan would inherit Glen, Cody would inherit the barony, as well as the Caribbean assets.
For Charlie, the birth of his son changed his outlook on life entirely. Two days after Cody was born, he said to me, “I have never in my life felt so happy, and I feel like I have suddenly realized what life is about.” To hear those words coming from Charlie was momentous. For years, I had never dared hope that he would get himself out of addiction, let alone become a happily married man and a father of a wonderful son. No one had, least of all Charlie. This was all down to Sheilagh, who had managed to keep Charlie on the right path.
But although he had turned his life around, it was too late. Charlie’s happiness was to be short-lived because, when Cody was still a toddler, Charlie became ill and was diagnosed with hepatitis C, a direct result of the years of heroin addiction. All the family were worried but Charlie played it down. Sheilagh conveyed that it would be a rocky few months and that the doctors had been unsure whether he would stabilize, although as time went on, it looked increasingly unlikely.
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p; When Amy rang him up a few weeks later to see how he was doing, he dismissed it completely, doing the little laugh he always did, assuring his sister that she needn’t come all the way up to Scotland to see him. Colin, used to Charlie being up and down over the years, didn’t come back from the West Indies so I went on my own and spent the weekend with Charlie, Sheilagh, and Cody.
We had a really lovely time feeding the ducks in Edinburgh and walking round the garden at Holyrood, but I was in two minds about leaving, unsure exactly how unwell Charlie was. When I discussed with Sheilagh what I should do, she reassured me, saying Charlie might go on for a long time and I should carry on living my life. When I explained I was supposed to be going to Morocco on holiday with Zannah and Nicky Johnston, she said how guilty Charlie would feel if I canceled my plans, so I went.
None of us realized how quickly Charlie would deteriorate. Only a few days later, while I was in Morocco, I got the devastating phone call from Sheilagh telling me Charlie had died.
Once again, the family descended into grieving. Colin was riddled with guilt, having become less and less sympathetic to Charlie over the years. Christopher was distraught and May, even now, is full of regret for having cut their last phone conversation short and postponing a visit to see him that she and Amy had arranged.
As a mother, I hadn’t thought there could be anything worse than burying one son until I was in the churchyard again, burying another. I’ve never seen Colin cry the way he cried at Charlie’s funeral. It reminded me of Charlie’s reaction when Henry died.
There were so many what-ifs with Charlie. Looking back, I question and doubt the choices we made: the things we noticed developing in his childhood but chose not to delve into or were unable to solve, the things we thought would be fixed by sending him away to hospitals, clinics, and, later, to rehab. But even with the greatest help in the world, he was such a free spirit with such presence that I don’t know if we’d ever have been able to stop him going down the route he chose.
Once again, when we needed privacy the most, the press was intrusive, this time because of their obsession with the old myth about “the Tennant Curse,” which had been entirely made up but revolved around the notion that family members died before their time in various dramatic ways. Now that two sons in the family had died young, the “Tennant Curse” played into the reporters’ hands perfectly, only adding to our anguish.
On the day of the funeral, the press were surrounding the church and appearing over the graves. There we were, mourning our sweet Charlie, only to have them banging on the door of the church, wanting to get their story. I suppose by then we had got used to them behaving so badly, but I still can’t think of anything much lower than gate-crashing a funeral.
Over time, my stress levels began to lower, the sorrow eased, life turned a corner, but it was never the same again. To this day my heart almost stops whenever the telephone rings too late at night. I don’t know what I would do with another death in the family. The twins had always been so proud of being a big family and having three older brothers, but as Christopher has had to remind us all numerous times, “Although they’re gone, the love continues.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Last Days of a Princess
A LOYAL FRIEND all her life, Princess Margaret supported me throughout. She allowed me time away from the Household when my children needed me, and she always welcomed me back when I was ready. Over the years, she had spent so much time with Colin and me that our lives were completely connected. By the nineties, I had been a Lady in Waiting for over twenty-five years.
At my coming-out dance, I remember realizing we had both grown up, our childhood days on Holkham beach long behind us, and then, in 1993, I had a similar realization when Peter Townsend came to have lunch with Princess Margaret at Kensington Palace and I happened to be there. Suddenly, I was aware we were getting old.
They hadn’t seen each other since he’d moved away in the 1950s, following the ultimatum she’d been given to choose between him and her royal life. I watched him from the window, now a very old man, as he got out of the car and slowly made his way into the house. I didn’t go to lunch but afterwards, once he’d left, she asked me to sit with her. “How did it go?” I asked her.
“He hasn’t changed at all,” she replied. It was a touching response, given the forty years that had passed.
I had never really asked her much about their relationship but now I sensed she wanted to talk about him. “Ma’am,” I said, “when did you first fall in love with him?”
She didn’t need much encouragement, launching into the story of the 1947 royal tour to South Africa. Every morning and evening she had gone for a ride, with the horses that had been brought on the Royal Train, accompanied by an Equerry to the King, Peter Townsend. They had fallen madly in love and, although it had happened long ago, the subject made her pensive. I felt sad for her, but just like with me and Johnnie Spencer, there was no way of telling whether we would have been happier had we married those men instead of our husbands. Not one to dwell on things, after a moment’s pause, she moved on to a completely new conversation as though she wanted to draw a line under the topic, in exactly the same way my mother would have done.
That matter-of-fact attitude had served us both well, enabling us to laugh and have fun, living our lives and making the best of them, despite all the obstacles we had both faced. Some of the happiest times that Princess Margaret and I shared were on Mustique, and by this time we had been going every February for thirty years. But things had changed. With Colin on St. Lucia and The Great House no longer mine and Colin’s, I stayed with Princess Margaret at Les Jolies Eaux, although she had passed it on to her son David, who often rented it out during the high season. This meant we went at set times of the year and, as we had always done, swam together, collected shells, and had drinks at Basil’s Bar, watching for the green flash over the sea at sunset.
Although we were both only in our mid-sixties and I was in good health, Princess Margaret had been on a steady decline since 1985 when she had had part of a lung removed. It was when we were on Mustique in 1994 that she had her first official stroke. In the months before, I had noticed that during conversations when she was in full flow she would suddenly stop. Not for long, just a moment or two. At first, I thought perhaps she had been distracted or she didn’t want to continue the conversation. It was rather odd, but I dismissed those moments because they lasted only a few seconds and she would seem perfectly fine, carrying on with the conversation almost straightaway.
One evening, when we were halfway through dinner at our friends the Harding-Lawrences’—their house stands cut into the hillside as though built for a Bond villain—I heard a sudden intake of breath from Princess Margaret. Glancing across the table, I saw her slumped forward. Everybody got up and we carried her from the table to the drawing room where we laid her down on the sofa.
Fortunately, there was a wonderful doctor on the island called Dr. Bunbury, who is still there today. He is much loved among the expat community, and Colin always said that some of the women came to Mustique especially to be ill so they could see him. Dr. Bunbury came straightaway and confirmed that Princess Margaret had had a small stroke. There were no obvious lasting effects—her speech wasn’t slurred, her muscles hadn’t stopped working—but she became gradually slower and the little moments I had noticed before, when she would suddenly lose her place, continued.
The following year while on the island, Princess Margaret scalded her feet, a story that was somehow leaked to the press, making headline news back in the UK. I wasn’t on Mustique but Janie Stevens, another Lady in Waiting and a great friend of mine, was with her. After her usual breakfast in bed, Princess Margaret went to take her shower or bath and Janie waited for her to appear to help her dress. When there was no sign of her, Janie went outside in case Princess Margaret was there. Noticing the bathroom windows were completely steamed up, she rushed back inside and knocked on the bathroom door but there was
no answer. Opening the door, she found Princess Margaret sitting on the side of the bath with her legs in the water, not moving as the steam billowed all around her.
Whether or not Princess Margaret had had a stroke at the time, no one knows, but she had been washing her hair in the bath with the overhead shower and had fumbled to turn the water off. Instead of turning off the hot tap, she had turned off the cold, and with something wrong with the thermostat, the hot tap ran hotter and hotter. Dazed, she didn’t react to the boiling water, and although Janie managed to get Princess Margaret out of the bath, her feet were left in the most terrible condition, burned so badly she was unable to walk.
Dr. Bunbury instructed Janie on how to care for Princess Margaret, but when she had to leave, I flew from London to take Janie’s place. Les Jolies Eaux had been rented out for the following weeks so we had to find somewhere else to stay. “Do we really have to leave?” I said, worried because I couldn’t find anywhere that was available at such short notice. “Don’t you think everybody would understand?” But, as was her way, Princess Margaret insisted she move, not wanting to make a fuss.
In the end, I rang the Harding-Lawrences, who immediately offered their beach house, which happened to be just below Les Jolies Eaux. It was on a steep part of the hillside with steps going down to the beach and the ever-amenable Dr. Bunbury organized a rickety out-of-service ambulance to drive her down to the new house.
When we arrived, she turned to me and said, “I don’t know the staff in this house. I don’t want them to come into my bedroom so you will have to look after me.”
We stayed there for about ten days in the gloomiest of conditions. Outside the sun was as bright as ever, but Princess Margaret wouldn’t allow the curtains to be drawn, staying in the dark for the whole time, which meant I had to fumble around as I changed her ashtrays, cleaned her room, and took the meals to her that had been left at the door by the maid.
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