His system worked well until the very last class, when Keith invited a salesman from the wine merchants Harveys of Bristol, who turned up with a whole case of wine and a selection of sherries and ports. We started the first bottle, which we sipped, swirled around in our mouths and then dutifully spat into a bucket. By the third bottle Keith was so excited by the variety of wines he’d failed to notice that the rest of us were knocking them back, and by the time we got to the sherry and port we were literally gulping them down. By the end some of us were so drunk we had to be carried back to our dorms to sleep it off and face the inevitable hangovers the following day. I am not sure the course delivered on its purpose, as all we’d learned was that it was a lot more enjoyable to get drunk on wine than on vodka and that it was better to do it indoors than out in the woods.
As with sailing, the wine-tasting general study was a rewarding addition to the curriculum and felt worthwhile to my education – until, that is, my school report, along with that term’s bill, turned up in the post. Dad was still coming to terms with the idea that he was having to pay for one of his children to go to a private school, and getting the bill each term threw him into a depression although he sometimes tried to ease the pain with a little humour. On this occasion he read the bill and my school report out loud to everyone around the kitchen table at Gloucester Crescent. Acting out an air of shocked disapproval, he started by reading out each item on the bill: ‘A term’s fees – £1,500, laundry charges – £20, a set of cricket whites from the school sports shop – £15, and wine – £100.’ After this last item his eyes fixed on me with withering displeasure as everyone around the kitchen table fell about laughing and I tried to make excuses for the importance and value of each item on the bill. He then read out my school report. ‘Biology: I am afraid William continues to be rather weak and despondent and has difficulty with the fundamentals.’ Then he moved on to chemistry. ‘William’s lack of mathematical ability is a distinct hindrance to his grasp of the subject.’ I had now shrivelled with embarrassment and tried to come up with reasons as to why I was failing to grasp the fundamentals of any of my subjects, but it was no use. The next one was my sports report, where Phil wrote: ‘This Body in Question has more enthusiasm than physical expertise although nothing quite deters his hunger for the philosophy of sport.’ Then there was the icing on the cake – general studies. ‘William has acquired a taste for the fine wines of Bordeaux.’ The evidence was damning, but hearing Dad reading out my report in the manner of a high court judge about to pass sentence, I suppose it was quite funny. The grim reality was that things were not going well with my A-levels and it was likely to go downhill from there.
31
THE BEDALES FINALE: SUMMER 1982
At the end of the spring term our teachers announced that they’d taught us everything we needed to know from the syllabus, and in the final lessons of that term they closed the textbooks, handed us pages of revision plans and sent us home for the Easter holidays. By now Conrad and I had become pretty good at cadging rides to and from London with our trunks, and Sarah Armstrong-Jones was someone we could usually rely on for a lift. So, once again, Princes Margaret’s chauffeur, Mr Griffin, turned up in the black Range Rover and the three of us were driven back to north London, via Kensington Palace.
In an attempt to knuckle down and revise, I decided it would be a good idea to go somewhere less chaotic and distracting than Gloucester Crescent and went to stay at Stanage for the first week. As ever, Stella was thrilled to see me, and set me up with a desk in the library, lit a roaring fire, and while I buried myself in textbooks she brought me lunch each day on a tray. I took the occasional break to go for a walk with her and the dogs, and I went fishing on my own on the lake and came back with a couple of trout for our supper. With the best intentions I steadily worked my way through the revision plans, and it seemed like I was making progress of a sort, although I wasn’t entirely sure how much of the information was actually sticking in my head.
A few days after returning to London, Sarah Armstrong-Jones called and asked if Conrad and I would like to go to the theatre with her to see Cats. I’ve never been a big fan of musicals, but a night out with her and Conrad would be a welcome break from memorising the formula for photosynthesis and the elements of the periodic table. I also thought if I could borrow a car it would be an opportunity to experience the freedom of driving my friends around town. With a little persuasion my parents agreed to lend me theirs, and Conrad and I set off to collect Sarah from Kensington Palace. We parked in the palace courtyard and walked up the front steps to be greeted by a tall, smartly dressed butler who showed us to the drawing room and then dashed off through a side-door. A few minutes later he reappeared with a tray of glasses and a bottle of champagne.
Although Dad and Alan are the last people to take royal etiquette seriously, just before I left for the palace they thought it might be amusing to give me a lesson in the basics. I think their motive had more to do with the absurdity of it rather than the importance of not embarrassing myself in royal company. Either way, they stood in the middle of the kitchen facing each other and acted it out for me. Dad kicked off with how to address the Queen or Princess Margaret, with Dad playing the commoner and Alan the royal personage. ‘Remember,’ Dad said, ‘it’s “ma’am”, which should rhyme with “spam”, and not “marm” as in “palm”.’ As he said this, Alan responded with mock-regal squeals of pleasure. Alan went on to explain that girls curtsy and boys bow, which Dad demonstrated with a quick nod of the head. Funny as it all was, I said it was highly unlikely that I’d be meeting Princess Margaret, who would probably be out cutting ribbons or hosting a dinner somewhere for the Girl Guides.
It was perhaps the serving of the champagne that was the first clue that the evening wasn’t about to go in the direction Conrad and I had originally been led to believe. Sarah came into the drawing room looking slightly uncomfortable, closely followed by her mother, who was dressed in a pale pink taffeta ball gown. In a moment of surprise and confusion on seeing her mother my mind went blank, and I found I couldn’t remember the key points of Dad and Alan’s etiquette lesson. As she approached, I found myself curtsying and nodding at the same time, and whatever it was I said it definitely didn’t rhyme with ‘spam’. Conrad nodded and said ‘ma’am’, which left me wondering which one of us had got it wrong. Princess Margaret, graciously ignoring my awkward greeting, asked after my father and what he was working on. As I was trying to remember the name of Dad’s latest production, the butler returned with more champagne and a tray of canapés, which he proceeded to hold out for each of us. I reached out and took a canapé of beef on melba toast with an unidentifiable garnish. As I bit into it I knew it was a mistake as the beef stuck to my teeth, the toast snapped in two and everything else fell down the front of my shirt, leaving a snail trail of what looked like mayonnaise. The conversation stopped briefly as everyone stared at the remains of the canapé on the carpet. Princess Margaret looked up, smiled kindly at me and said, ‘So sad we don’t have corgis like my sister – they’d have gobbled it up in an instant.’ Then she clapped her hands and shouted, ‘Chop-chop, let’s go!’ I had another one of those moments where my head went blank with confusion and I looked across to Sarah for some kind of explanation.
‘Chop-chop who … where?’ I jokingly replied, but it soon became obvious what she was saying – our party of three had become four and she was coming with us to the theatre. By now Sarah was blushing and looking at her feet, knowing she’d left this minor detail of the evening out in case we turned her down.
Our party now walked out of the front door, where Mr Griffin was standing in the courtyard, holding open the back door to Princess Margaret’s official car – a brown Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith. Surprisingly, her Rolls-Royce wasn’t quite as big inside as I’d imagined, and Conrad, Sarah and her mother squeezed into the back seat, leaving me to go in front with Mr Griffin. ‘Well, this is cosy,’ Princess Margaret announced as I looked back at
them. She was grinning from ear to ear, and somewhere under a mass of taffeta were Conrad and Sarah. As we pulled out of the palace courtyard we were joined by two police cars and two motorcycle outriders. At Kensington High Street the motorcyclists raced ahead to clear the traffic and we drove along the edge of Hyde Park, down Piccadilly and on to Drury Lane.
There is no royal box at the New London Theatre, so we sat right in the middle of the stalls, with Princess Margaret in her pink ball gown, Sarah, still looking embarrassed, and me and Conrad in our casual jackets and jeans. Princess Margaret seemed to be captivated by Cats and didn’t take her eyes off the stage for a second, whereas there was very little I liked about it other than a couple of catchy songs I’d heard on the radio. As my mind wandered, I looked around the auditorium and noticed that most of the audience were staring at us rather than the stage, and I started to wish the show would hurry up and end.
When the curtain finally came down, an official-looking man from the theatre made his way down the aisle and politely instructed our entire row to stay in their seats while the four of us awkwardly climbed over their legs. Then he escorted us to a hospitality room backstage, where it had been arranged for us to have drinks with the cast. One by one the performers filed into the room, curtsied or bowed to Princess Margaret and Sarah, and then to Conrad and me. After gushing with praise and congratulating each of them, Princess Margaret announced to everyone in the room that I was the son of Jonathan Miller. I really wished she hadn’t – the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, and I was now the centre of attention, with little to say other than lying about how much I liked the show and how sad my father was to have missed it.
I was eventually saved by the familiar cry of ‘chop-chop’, and we were suddenly back in the Rolls-Royce. Only this time our departure didn’t go quite as smoothly as the one from the palace. As I climbed in the front seat I pressed my hand against my chest to check my wallet was still inside my jacket, only it wasn’t – it had probably fallen out in the hospitality room, where I’d thrown the jacket over a chair. As our police escorts started to rev their engines, I apologised profusely, leaped out of the car and ran back into the theatre. Sure enough, there under a chair in the hospitality room was my wallet. Back at the car the police were now battling with a crowd of autograph hunters and a couple of drunks who were trying to get to the car for a better look at its occupants. Inside were Conrad and Sarah, looking terrified, and Princess Margaret, who was clearly not amused. Mr Griffin sat calmly at the wheel, and as soon as I was safely inside we sped off up Drury Lane.
There was an uncomfortable silence in the car, then, as we passed McDonald’s at Marble Arch, my mind started to wander onto food and the fact that the only thing I’d eaten in hours was the corner of a single canapé. I figured that as soon as we got back to Kensington Palace we could say our goodbyes, then Conrad and I might just make it back to McDonald’s before it closed.
The butler was waiting for us on the front steps and we followed him into the drawing room, where he whispered something in Princess Margaret’s ear and then scuttled off. By now I had a Big Mac with fries on my mind and was seconds away from saying, ‘Thank you for a lovely evening, Ma’am, but we really must be off.’ But as the words collected in my head and I tried to remember if it was ‘ma’am’ or ‘marm’, the butler reappeared between two double doors which he pushed open with a flourish to reveal another room with a large table laid for dinner.
As we sat down, the butler unfurled our napkins and placed them carefully on our laps, then he poured Princess Margaret a very large whisky and placed a silver cigarette box beside her. Once everyone was settled, he disappeared to fetch the first course, returning a minute later with four prawn cocktails in glass bowls. Princess Margaret lit a cigarette and took a long sip of her whisky pushing her prawn cocktail to the side. Then she said, ‘I don’t think your father would have liked Cats, would he?’ She was right; he would have hated it. ‘Shame,’ she said, ‘I went to see Guys and Dolls at the National last week and it was wonderful.’ She then informed us that she had the soundtrack and wanted to play it to us after dinner.
She didn’t seem to have much of an appetite, and as I was trying to extract a second prawn from under its pink sauce her fist came thumping down on a rubber clam shell positioned six inches from her place mat. The shell clearly contained a hidden bell which must have connected to the kitchen, as seconds later the butler came flying back into the room and removed our nearly full bowls. He topped up her whisky then ran off to get the next course, which was petit poulet with roast vegetables, a bread sauce (which I love) and gravy. I’d just started to dissect mine by removing a succulent slice of breast and was lifting it up to my mouth when down came the royal fist, back came the butler and my plate was gone. At first I thought the speed at which we were getting through dinner might have had something to do with Princess Margaret wanting to get to bed, but it soon transpired it had more to do with her wanting to play us her record of Guys and Dolls. When the butler returned, he was carrying a tray with four enormous glass bowls, each containing a delicious-looking trifle. As he approached the table, he was met with a steely glare from the Princess, who waved him off announcing ‘I really don’t think anyone has space for pudding.’ As if to keep his balance and the momentum going, he carried on moving all the way around the table holding the tray of trifles and disappeared back through the door. Judging by the look on Conrad’s face he was about as heartbroken as I was about the sudden disappearance of the trifle, which would have easily made up for the earlier loss of the prawn cocktail and the petit poulet. Crestfallen, Conrad and I were led back in the drawing room by Sarah and her mother, who was now waltzing her way across the room to the record player, where she carefully placed the needle onto the rotating record. For the next two hours she proceeded to choreograph Sarah, Conrad and me through a series of dance routines from Guys and Dolls – a nightmare combination of my two least favourite things: dancing and musical theatre.
It was the eventual return of the butler that saved us when, at around two in the morning, he came in and offered us nightcaps. This was our cue to leave, and within ten minutes Conrad and I were driving up Kensington Palace Gardens towards the Bayswater Road. There was something surreal about having escaped the bubble of royal life at Kensington Palace and finding ourselves back in the real world. It felt liberating to be driving my parents’ battered old car without the police escort or the discomfort of Princess Margaret sitting in the back seat judging us. We were now properly starving, and having found McDonald’s at Marble Arch to be closed, we carried on driving through the empty London streets in the hope of our finding something to eat at home. As we drove we talked and laughed out loud going back over the unexpected events of our evening.
Before long we were sitting at the kitchen table in Gloucester Crescent picking our way through the remains of a roast chicken we’d found at the back of the fridge. As we polished off the carcass, Conrad told me that he’d been discreetly reminded, before we left Kensington Place, that on writing to thank Princess Margaret we must remember to sign off with ‘I remain your humble and obedient servant’. We sat in silence for a while as we picked at the remains of the chicken and reflected on our evening and the somewhat archaic requirements for our thank-you letters. I also thought back to Mum and me listening, last year, to Princess Margaret’s Desert Island Discs on the radio and how odd it had been. Everyone else tended to chose calming music, whereas she’d chosen mostly music for royal pageantry: ‘Rule Britannia’ was one of her choices, which left me asking why anyone would want to hear that on a desert island, and another ‘Scotland the Brave’. This was played by the Pipes and Drums of the Royal Highland Fusiliers, followed by ‘King Cotton’, performed by the Band of the Royal Marines, who she said always came with them on the Royal Yacht Britannia. At the time I thought it was going to be a very busy desert island and that she wouldn’t get much time to sit with her feet in the sand contemplating life. Then again, w
hen Dad did Desert Island Discs, one of his choices was a hymn, of all things, called ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’, and his luxury item was a razor blade. When Roy Plomley asked Dad politely if it was to shave with, he said, ‘No, to slit my wrists.’ Princess Margaret made no such suggestion – in fact, her luxury item was a piano.
A week later we were back at school, and for the next two months, as I waited for exams to start, the summer term began to feel like a car accelerating towards a brick wall. I could see the wall getting closer, but there was nothing I could do other than close my eyes, steer in a straight line and wait for the sound of crunching metal and breaking glass.
Before I knew it I was sitting in the sports hall staring at my first A-level exam paper, which was chemistry, and something called a ‘free response’ paper. The last thing I needed was the opportunity for any free response, since that always got me in trouble as I drifted off topic. I looked long and hard at the first question but found I couldn’t make head or tail of it. I felt physically sick but I had to write something, so I set off like a madman as a stream of consciousness flowed from my head and through my pen to the paper. I wasn’t sure if any of what I’d written made sense or went anywhere towards answering the actual questions I was being asked. Whereas everyone else came out of the exam saying ‘Well that was easy’ or ‘That was tough’, I found I simply didn’t have the first idea what I thought.
The exams went on for two weeks, with essays, multiple-choice papers and something called ‘structured questions’, along with several more ‘free response’ exams. At the end of June I sat the very last one. I walked out of the sports hall into brilliant sunshine and lay in the long grass of the orchard. As the sun warmed my face, I tried to take in the significance of this moment – as I lay there, it dawned on me that my entire school life had been one long meandering journey that had taken me to this one single point, where everything to do with school suddenly stopped: Primrose Hill Primary, Pimlico School and then Bedales, with year after year of lessons, evenings and holidays destroyed with endless homework and months of revision – the curtain had come down and it was all over. There would be no more exams and no more school. For the next few weeks I had nothing to do other than enjoy what was left of my time at Bedales and try to forget about the exams. Then it would be the summer holiday and the long wait for the results.
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