Lily slips into the deckchair beside him without saying hello, as if visits to his home happened every day.
‘I bring news from the outside world, Solomon.’
‘Is any of it good?’
‘Quite a bit, actually.’
‘Hit me with it then.’
‘Your boss has been fired, for taking backhanders from Phillip. Vee says the police force want to promote you to his job instead, with a big pay rise. Some senior officers are at the station now, sorting out the problems you identified. Dex Adebayo’s been arrested for drug dealing. He’ll be charged with assault too – Cherelle decided to press charges after all. The guys from the boat will be prosecuted for manslaughter.’
‘What else? I can see you’re not finished.’
‘Dr Pakefield’s been allowed to keep his job until Dr Bunbury comes back; the only thing he did wrong was take a boat ride out to the Aqua Dream, late at night, and accept money to help his children. It looks like Pastor Boakye could be pardoned too.’
‘I don’t believe it. He invented his entire CV.’
Lily smiles at him. ‘The whole island knows what he did, to free his family from poverty, and follow his mission. He’s been sending almost his whole wage home to Lagos, and he’s got big fans here like Keith Belmont. They’re standing by him. He’ll spend a year at seminary college on St Vincent, then see where he can be posted after that.’
‘Let’s hope the guy’s sincere.’
‘There’s one more thing, I’m afraid.’ She takes off her sunglasses, her eyes matching the sea’s calm turquoise. ‘Phillip killed himself last night, in his prison cell.’
Nile remembers Mama Toulaine saying there would be one more death, then releases a stream of curses. ‘What the hell happened? Weren’t those idiots keeping watch?’
‘They checked his cell every fifteen minutes. He must have been pretty motivated; he used his clothes to hang himself.’
Nile’s thoughts buzz with anger. Everard found a way to steal the limelight again after all. ‘Is that why you dropped by, Lily?’
‘I’d have come sooner, but I thought you needed time to rest.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap.’
‘It’s okay. I’m still processing it all too; I can still hardly believe two people I spent every summer with, since I was small, are no longer here. It’s weird that I feel better about Mum. She never meant to leave me behind, and it wasn’t my fault. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
There’s so much sadness on her face that Nile reaches out to touch her wrist. ‘I’m glad you’re here.’
Lily’s smile slowly revives. ‘I borrowed Vee’s buggy for the afternoon. If you feel well enough, we could find an empty beach somewhere, and lie on a blanket. I even brought a picnic. I thought it might stop you brooding.’
‘I don’t brood.’
A stream of laughter slips from her mouth. ‘That’s rubbish, and I’ve got witnesses.’
‘I could handle a trip to the beach.’
‘Call it a chauffeur-driven deluxe picnic by the sea.’
‘That works for me.’
Nile slides his feet into some old flip-flops. His hand settles on her shoulder as they head for the ocean that unfolds in front of them, like a magic carpet, glittering with late afternoon sun.
65
Saturday, 28th September 2002
THE MOON BALL will begin in an hour’s time. I’m putting the finishing touches to my make-up, a few dashes of glitter on my cheekbones, applying a little more spray paint to my hair. Jasper and I considered cancelling the party and replacing it with a far smaller celebration of Lily’s birthday, but it felt right to proceed. The Rothmores are on Mustique and the Fortinis are our guests, both families insisting we go ahead. The ball will celebrate the lives of Lily’s lost friends, as well as her coming of age. Tommy and Amanda will be in all our minds tonight, but her life matters too. I want her to progress confidently as she comes of age, aware that she’s central to our family. I am so grateful to be here.
When I stand up from my dressing table, my costume fulfils my design perfectly. It’s made of diaphanous grey silk, my hair swept into a chignon. I may not look precisely like a moonbeam, but I feel elegant, and ready for the evening. When I go downstairs, there’s no sign of Jasper, but things appear to be ready. The marquee on our lawn glows like a spaceship preparing to ascend into the heavens, the tables inside loaded with delectable food and wines from all over the world.
I stand on the terrace, watching Jose Gomez testing strings of star-shaped fairy lights that adorn the trees, even though the sun still hangs above the horizon. His movements are slow and graceful as he completes the task, and I’m thrilled he’s happy again. Jasper and I have rewarded his brave attempts to prove that Phillip was dangerous, to keep watch over us all. I hope that a much bigger wage will help his family. All our guests have made it in time for our moon dance to begin. I can hear distant music, as some of the world’s biggest rock stars prepare to serenade Lily on Britannia beach. The ball will be just like the old days, a wave of glamorous guests flowing from one villa to the next, until our musical finale on the shore with a huge firework display.
When rapid footsteps sound behind me, I can’t help jumping. My nerves are still on edge after my adventure at sea, even though my injuries have healed and a week has elapsed. It’s Wesley, with a tray that bears a single drink. He’s dressed in a gold jacket, glittering with sequins, the rest of his clothes in subdued black.
‘Vodka tonic for you, Lady Vee, to get your evening started.’
‘Thank you, that’s so thoughtful. You look very handsome by the way, Wesley.’
My butler gives a narrow smile. ‘Lord Blake suggested I should dress up as a shooting star, but I refused, point blank.’
Wesley marches away, in command of the situation as usual, his dignity intact. People are beginning to gather. There’s no sign of Jasper but I can hear his laughter in the distance and feel relieved that he’s happy tonight, prepared to live up to his nickname, the Lord of the Dance. On the far side of the lawn I clap eyes on Lily at last. She’s not yet wearing her costume, which doesn’t surprise me, because she and Solomon Nile have spent every spare minute together since the case ended. They’ve been out on her boat, checking that all her coral grafts survived the storm, and repairing any damage. He’s helping her recover from her losses. I think he seems lighter too, as if he’s cast aside some burden he was carrying. My own grief is harder to define. Why do I care so much about losing something that never really existed? Phillip’s kindness was just another pretence, in a lifetime of play-acting. The space he left behind will fill, as time passes.
I take a sip of my drink and hear Jasper’s voice again in the crowd, closer now, calling for me – I’m quite tempted to stay here but I should join the party and see what chaos he’s creating now. The sun is sinking behind the horizon and I almost think I catch a flash of emerald green on the sea’s surface – but no. Mustique looks absolutely beautiful, a home from home, and my heart is full of gratitude as I hurry down the steps to greet my friends.
Get Lady in Waiting here
THE TIMES MEMOIR OF THE YEAR
Out Now
The remarkable life of Lady in Waiting to Princess Margaret who was also a Maid of Honour at the Queen’s Coronation. Anne Glenconner reveals the real events behind The Crown as well as her own life of drama, tragedy and courage, with the wonderful wit and extraordinary resilience which define her.
Read on for an extract …
PROLOGUE
One morning at the beginning of 2019, when I was in my London flat, the telephone rang.
‘Hello?’
‘Lady Glenconner? It’s Helena Bonham Carter.’
It’s not every day a Hollywood film star rings me up, although I had been expecting her call. When the producers of the popular Netflix series The Crown contacted me, saying that I was going to be portrayed by Nancy Carroll in the third series
, and that Helena Bonham Carter had been cast as Princess Margaret, I was delighted. Asked whether I minded meeting them so they could get a better idea of my friendship with Princess Margaret, I said I didn’t mind in the least.
Nancy Carroll came to tea, and we sat in armchairs in my sitting room and talked. The conversation was surreal as I became extremely self-aware, realising that Nancy must be absorbing what I was like.
A few days later when Helena was on the telephone, I invited her for tea too. Not only do I admire her as an actress but, as it happens, she is a cousin of my late husband Colin Tennant, and her father helped me when one of my sons had a motorbike accident in the eighties.
As Helena walked through the door, I noticed a resemblance between her and Princess Margaret: she is just the right height and figure, and although her eyes aren’t blue, there is a similar glint of mischievous intelligence in her gaze.
We sat down in the sitting room, and I poured her some tea. Out came her notebook, where she had written down masses of questions in order to get the measure of the Princess, ‘to do her justice’, she explained.
A lot of her questions were about mannerisms. When she asked how the Princess had smoked, I described it as rather like a Chinese tea ceremony: from taking her long cigarette holder out of her bag and carefully putting the cigarette in, to always lighting it herself with one of her beautiful lighters. She hated it when others offered to light it for her, and when any man eagerly advanced, she would make a small but definite gesture with her hand to make it quite clear.
I noticed that Helena moved her hand in the tiniest of reflexes, as if to test the movement I’d just described, before going on to discuss Princess Margaret’s character. I tried to capture her quick wit – how she always saw the humorous side of things, not one to dwell, her attitude positive and matter-of-fact. As we talked, the descriptions felt so vivid, it was as though Princess Margaret was in the room with us. Helena listened to everything very carefully, making lots of notes. We talked for three hours, and when she left, I felt certain that she was perfectly cast for the role.
Both actors sent me letters thanking me for my help, Helena Bonham Carter expressing the hope that Princess Margaret would be as good a friend to her as she was to me. I felt very touched by this and the thought of Princess Margaret and I being reunited on screen was something I looked forward to. I found myself reflecting back on our childhood spent together in Norfolk, the thirty years I’d been her Lady in Waiting, all the times we had found ourselves in hysterics, and the ups and downs of both our lives.
I’ve always loved telling stories, but it never occurred to me to write a book until these two visits stirred up all those memories. From a generation where we were taught not to over-think, not to look back or question, only now do I see how extraordinary the nine decades of my life have really been, full of extreme contrasts. I have found myself in a great many odd circumstances, both hilarious and awful, many of which seem, even to me, unbelievable. But I feel very fortunate that I have my wonderful family and for the life I have led.
CHAPTER ONE
The Greatest Disappointment
HOLKHAM HALL COMMANDS the land of North Norfolk with a hint of disdain. It is an austere house and looks its best in the depths of summer when the grass turns the colour of Demerara sugar so the park seems to merge into the house. The coast nearby is a place of harsh winds and big skies, of miles of salt marsh and dark pine forests that hem the dunes, giving way to the vast stretch of the grey-golden sand of Holkham beach: a landscape my ancestors changed from open marshes to the birthplace of agriculture. Here, in the flight path of the geese and the peewits, the Coke (pronounced ‘cook’) family was established in the last days of the Tudors by Sir Edward Coke, who was considered the greatest jurist of the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras, successfully prosecuting Sir Walter Raleigh and the Gunpowder Plot conspirators. My family crest is an ostrich swallowing an iron horseshoe to symbolise our ability to digest anything.
There is a photograph of me, taken at my christening in the summer of 1932. I am held by my father, the future 5th Earl of Leicester, and surrounded by male relations wearing solemn faces. I had tried awfully hard to be a boy, even weighing eleven pounds at birth, but I was a girl and there was nothing to be done about it.
My female status meant that I would not inherit the earldom, or Holkham, the fifth largest estate in England with its 27,000 acres of top-grade agricultural land, neither the furniture, the books, the paintings, nor the silver. My parents went on to have two more children, but they were also daughters: Carey two years later and Sarah twelve years later. The line was broken, and my father must have felt the weight of almost four centuries of disapproval on his conscience.
My mother had awarded her father, the 8th Lord Hardwicke, the same fate, and maybe in solidarity, and because she thought I needed to have a strong character, she named me Anne Veronica, after H. G. Wells’s book about a hardy feminist heroine. Born Elizabeth Yorke, my mother was capable, charismatic and absolutely the right sort of girl my grandfather would have expected his son to marry. She herself was the daughter of an earl, whose ancestral seat was Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire.
My father was handsome, popular, passionate about country pursuits, and eligible as the heir to the Leicester earldom. They met when she was fifteen and he was seventeen, during a skiing trip in St Moritz, becoming unofficially engaged immediately, he apparently having said to her, ‘I just know I want to marry you.’ He was also spurred on by being rather frightened of another girl who lived in Norfolk and had taken a fancy to him, so he was relieved to be able to stop her advances by declaring himself already engaged.
My mother was very attractive and very confident, and I think that’s what drew my father to her. He was more reserved so she brought out the fun in him and they balanced each other well.
Together, they were one of the golden couples of high society and were great friends of the Duke and Duchess of York, who later, because of the abdication of the Duke’s brother, King Edward VIII, unexpectedly became King and Queen. They were also friends with Prince Philip’s sisters, Princesses Theodora, Margarita, Cecilie and Sophie, who used to come for holidays at Holkham. Rather strangely, Prince Philip, who was much younger, still only a small child, used to stay with his nanny at the Victoria, a pub right next to the beach, instead of at Holkham. Recently I asked him why he had stayed at the pub instead of the house, but he didn’t know for certain, so we joked about him wanting to be as near to the beach as possible.
My parents were married in October 1931 and I was a honeymoon baby, arriving on their first wedding anniversary.
Up until I was nine, my great-grandfather was the Earl of Leicester and lived at Holkham with my grandfather, who occupied one of the four wings. The house felt enormous, especially seen through the eyes of a child. So vast, the footmen would put raw eggs in a bain-marie and take them from the kitchen to the nursery: by the time they arrived, the eggs would be perfectly boiled. We visited regularly and I adored my grandfather, who made an effort to spend time with me: we would sit in the long gallery, listening to classical music on the gramophone together, and when I was a bit older, he introduced me to photography, a passion he successfully transferred to me.
With my father in the Scots Guards, we moved all over the country, and I was brought up by nannies, who were in charge of the ins and outs of daily life. My mother didn’t wash or dress me or my sister Carey; nor did she feed us or put us to bed. Instead, she would interject daily life with treats and days out.
My father found fatherhood difficult: he was strait-laced and fastidious and he was always nagging us to leave our bedroom windows open and checking to make sure we had been to the lavatory properly. I used to struggle to sit on his knee but because I was too big he would push me away in favour of Carey, whom he called ‘my little dolly daydreams’.
Having grown up with Victorian parents, his childhood was typical of a boy in his position. He was brought up by nan
nies and governesses, sent to Eton and then on to Sandhurst, his father making sure his son knew what was expected of him as heir. He was loving, but from afar: he was not affectionate or sentimental, and did not share his emotions. No one did, not even my mother, who would give us hugs and show her affection but rarely talked about her feelings or mine – there were no heart-to-hearts. As I got older she would give me pep talks instead. It was a generation and a class who were not brought up to express emotions.
But in many other ways my mother was the complete opposite of my father. Only nineteen years older than me, she was more like a big sister, full of mischief and fun. Carey and I used to shin up trees with her and a soup ladle tied to a walking stick. With it, we would scoop up jackdaws’ eggs, which were delicious to eat, rather like plovers’. Those early childhood days were filled with my mother making camps with us on the beach or taking us on trips in her little Austin, getting terribly excited as we came across ice-cream sellers on bicycles calling, ‘Stop me and buy one.’
The epitome of grace and elegance when she needed to be, she also had the gumption to pursue her own hobbies, which were often rather hands-on: she was a fearless horsewoman and rode a Harley-Davidson. She passed on her love of sailing to me. I was five when I started navigating the nearby magical creeks of Burnham Overy Staithe in dinghies, and eighty when I stopped. I used to go in for local races, but I was quite often last, and would arrive only to find everyone had gone home.
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