Diana's Nightmare - The Family (42 page)

The Snowdons' marriage hit serious trouble when the outrageous flirting and well-lubricated carousing gave way to adultery. While Lord Snowdon was carrying out a photographic assignment in India for the
Sunday Times,
Margaret had a brief fling with a mutual friend. Stricken with remorse, she made the mistake of ringing the man's wife to say how sorry she was that it had happened. Although both marriages stayed more or less intact, there were frequent arguments in Apartment 1A.

Tony wasn't always the nonconformist he had once been. When an old friend blew his horn to attract Tony's attention as he was turning into Kensington Palace one day, he got a curt note telling him that such familiarities were no longer welcome.

Other affairs followed for both of them. Margaret sought the company of less critical men and encouraged one of them, Robin Douglas-Home, to such an extent that he urged her to leave her husband. Robin fell madly in love with Margaret the second time around after his own private world had crashed in ruins. Rejected by Princess Margaretha, or more accurately, snubbed by her family, he had married the leading fashion model Sandra Paul in July 1959. But he found it impossible to give up some old habits. His unpredictable libido, which led to him being caught in the act with a titled lady in the back of a car, and a cruel streak, which he blamed on the public school system, landed him in the divorce court.

'When I received a petition for cruelty I can only describe one's feelings as though a small bomb had gone off inside your head,' he said. 'Five years of one's life, say seventy per cent of which were happy, reduced to a great wad of foolscap typed out by leering little clerks in solicitors' offices.'

He drank heavily in the clubs where he had been a respected performer and gambled well beyond his means in the casinos. He was going down for the third time when Margaret came to the rescue. She invited him to her home and allowed him to escort her to first nights and cocktail parties. Realising that his declarations of love were serious, she tried to let him down gently, but her ardent suitor persisted with his attentions. So persuasive was he that Margaret gradually began to respond in a way that she would live to regret. According to Robin's friend and drinking buddy, the ubiquitous Noel Botham of Squidgy fame, Margaret began to reciprocate his feelings. She started an adulterous affair with Robin on 10 February, 1967, and wrote passionate love letters to him, which he kept for reasons that later became less than sentimental.

Once the Press noted the Margaret and Robin were keeping company and started to report their nocturnal escapades, she took a diplomatic holiday in the Bahamas on her own. When Robin badgered her to divorce her husband and marry him, she went to Balmoral and wrote him a letter which dismissed him from her life. Her rejected lover, however, did not go quietly. He threatened to sell Margaret's love letters unless he was given cash to pay off his debts. When Margaret refused to submit to blackmail, he offered the letters to New York publishing houses. For years, they were locked in a Manhattan safe where, like the Squidgy tapes, they remained a timebomb on deposit.

Broken by drink, drugs and self-pity, Robin committed suicide eighteen months after his royal affair ended. He was only thirty-six. His body was found at his home, Meadow Brook, Sunset Lane, West Chiltington. As a suicide note, he left a tape-recorded message which said: 'There comes a time when one comes to the conclusion that continuing to live is pointless.'

Shaken, the Snowdons reviewed their behaviour and worked out an agreement under which they would remain a married couple but lead separate lives. Tony would turn up in public with attractive younger women, driving Margaret into fits of jealousy. She would not agree to a divorce, however, because of the embarrassment it would cause her sister.

There were also the children to consider.

ONE evening in the early Seventies, Princess Margaret, dressed in a mink coat, stood impatiently in a school cloakroom and addressed her daughter. 'For goodness sake, Sarah, where are your gym shoes?' she asked the young schoolgirl. If she had come to parenthood later than her sister, Margaret had turned out to be a good mother. 'My children are not royal,' she declared firmly and she and Tony raised them accordingly.

'Sarah was a sweet little girl, completely natural and totally unspoiled,' said a parent at the Francis Holland School. 'She was passionately fond of ballet, drawing and dancing and she really worked very hard. I can still see Margaret standing in the cloakroom in this fabulous coat; otherwise, she was just like any other mother. The complete addict had produced two stable children; both kids got on and did something with their lives. Tony was a good father, too. He always came to the school and sat on the benches to look at the gym displays, very often with his mother, Lady Rosse. She'd be wearing wonderful clothes and be virtually sitting on the floor with Tony. Other children were often invited to Kensington Palace.'

In September 1973, Margaret went on holiday alone to the Tennants' home in Scotland. Once again, her old friends were instrumental in introducing her to a young man to whom she was enormously drawn.

Roderic Llewellyn, second son of the show-jumping baronet Sir Harry 'Foxhunter' Llewellyn, was only twenty-six and drifting through life when he was unexpectedly invited to join the house party. His name had come up on a list of eligible young men. Somewhat bemused as he had never met his hosts, Roddy turned up as instructed at the Cafe Royal, just off Princes Street in Edinburgh, for lunch. For a blind date the casting turned out to be inspired. The sexual chemistry between the highly-strung and delicately handsome Welshman and the Queen's sister was immediate and reciprocal. They held hands, looked lovingly into each other's eyes and shared a bedroom.

Six months later, Roddy was introduced to the delights of Mustique. Much as he adored his royal lover, however, the pressure of keeping their liaison secret proved too much for him. Roddy had tried to commit suicide twice before they met and, fearing the onset of another breakdown, he phoned Margaret to say he was leaving the country indefinitely. On a flight to Turkey after travelling to Guernsey on the first available plane, he confided to a stranger that he was having an affair with a married woman and the sexual side of the relationship was getting him down. Margaret, distraught at what he might do to himself rather than at the prospect of losing him, took several Mogodon sleeping tables, but recovered two days later. Roddy travelled around Turkey by bus, then slipped quietly back into Britain and, having resolved his inner conflict for the time being, resumed the affair.

Liz Brewer, the Belgravia public relations consultant, remembers the rapport between the Princess and her lover, 'I met my ex-husband John Rendall through Roddy Llewellyn, who was a very good friend,' she said, 'I didn't think John was interested in me, but it turned out that he was, anyway. One day the pair of them said, "You've got to come and meet Princess Margaret." They picked me up in the famous blue van and drove me to Kensington Palace. They were outrageously dressed in sort of boots and sweatshirts and I was in hot pants and boots.

'Roddy warned me before we went in, "She likes a very deep curtsy." I said, "I cannot do a deep curtsey in hot pants." He said, "You must." When we got to the door, Margaret answered it herself with a cigarette in one hand and a drink in the other. Roddy ran round to the back of her and signalled me to deep curtsy. I was trying but he kept signalling, "Not deep enough, not deep enough." At that point, she noticed I was looking at something over her shoulder and turned around. "Oh Roddy, you are naughty," she scolded him. "How outrageous!" '

Not long afterwards, however, the same self-destructive feelings overwhelmed Roddy again. This time he took Valium and ended up in hospital for three weeks. It was evident that the union was potentially lethal to both partners. In 1976, they were back at Mustique and, as they relaxed on the beach with friends, Ross Waby, a New Zealand journalist working out of Murdoch's New York bureau, photographed them together for the first time in their two-and-a-half-year relationship. When the snatched picture appeared on the front page of the
News of the World,
Lord Snowdon seized his chance and pressed for a legal separation. He already had a new partner in his life, Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, whom he married after his divorce in 1978.

Thoroughly dispirited over the end of her marriage and the inevitable break-up with Roddy, Margaret drank so heavily that she developed alcoholic hepatitis. She also underwent exploratory surgery on one of her lungs after smoking caused her further health problems.

But Margaret lost none of her well-honed social instincts. She was amazingly accurate in her reading of the state of play in the Yorks' marriage a few months before it broke up. During a visit to Sunninghill, she spotted Fergie pulling faces and making jokey gestures behind Andrew's back. When he realised what she was doing, he became very upset and his aunt noticed that he was angry as well. Turning to a companion, Margaret said: 'I give that marriage six months.'

She was right - with time to spare.

'She was too much herself and I think that's the problem'

C.C. Beaudette

PRINCE Andrew knew he was tempting fate. His mother had asked him to write down a list of suitable brides and he had put C.C. Beaudette right at the top. The Queen's reaction was predictable. 'Like hell,' said Her Majesty, according to C.C.'s relative, Lady Edith Foxwell. Before Koo Stark and Sarah Ferguson, Andrew had given his heart to Cobina Caroline Beaudette, known to all and sundry in her native California as C.C.

Ironically, C.C. was the beautiful daughter of his father's old actress flame, Cobina Beaudette. As Lady Edith explained, Prince Philip had been smitten by the stunning Cobina when Beatrice Lillie introduced them as teenagers. The Queen had always been jealous of her and the thought of the screen
femme fatale's
daughter marrying her favourite son did not appeal at all, no matter how nice she was.

At Philip's invitation, both mother and daughter had joined the royal party on board
Britannia
in 1976. 'I remember it was at Cowes for a beautiful festival,' said C.C. Beaudette, speaking at her home near Solvang, north of Santa Barbara. 'There were many beautiful boats and
Britannia
was one of them.' The following year, C.C. stayed with her cousin Edith at her splendid country residence, Home Farm at Sherston in Wiltshire. She loved country life and Prince Andrew joined her there for more than one romantic weekend.

'How does one know how serious it was?' said Lady Edith. 'But when the Queen asked Andrew for his list, I understand C.C. was the first name he wrote down. C.C., who was born within a year of my own daughter Atalanta in 1956, remained single until some time after Andrew and Fergie were married. The Queen does make decisions about her children, but all the bloody wrong ones.'

'We have been friends for a long time,' confirmed C.C. Beaudette. 'He is a good friend and his father is a good friend - there is a history of generations of friendship in our families. I have very few friends and I certainly wouldn't do anything to encourage any more attention than is presently being given.' Referring to the Windsors' problems, she added: 'No family has ever been that much in the public eye. I think it is very difficult for everyone. And they are good people. I don't know anyone who could live such an open life and not be ridiculed for something - whether it be the tie you are wearing or the colour of your underwear. People are always trying to find fault and it's just ridiculous.' Not the sort of married life she would have enjoyed, then? 'Well . . . it's very difficult for anyone not in a situation like that to live in a situation like that,' she replied tactfully.

When Sarah Margaret Ferguson and not C.C. Beaudette became Her Royal Highness, Duchess of York, people in high places started to worry. Fergie's problems might be her own affair, to put it politely, but her actions could threaten the future of the monarchy. One who expressed his misgivings was a Conservative peer in the House of Lords. 'That girl will single-handedly bring down the House of Windsor,' he told a relative. 'He was right because she set everything in motion - it was like a domino effect,' said the relative. 'With her background, it was inevitable that she would be indiscreet and stupid. The very fact that Fergie could have an affair made everybody think that Princess Diana could have an affair. It rolled on from there.'

Not all aristocrats, however, shared this pessimistic view. Some enjoyed Fergie's bizarre behaviour, which showed little sign of abating after the separation. On one occasion, she lunched with the Duke of Marlborough in a private room at Green's restaurant, run by Simon Parker Bowles, brother of Andrew, in St James's. 'I was lunching with Simon,' said Sarah Kennedy. 'He said, "You'll never guess what those two are eating downstairs - smoked salmon covered with tomato sauce and Coca-Cola." Isn't that unbelievable? I recoiled from that. Smoked salmon with tomato sauce
and
Coca-Cola. With all that money! Thank God we're all different.'

Fergie's downhill run had started in Verbier long before she was ever considered as a potential royal. She socialised with a blue-blooded set which loved to mix excitement with pleasure at Paddy McNally's chalet. One of the high-living aristocrats she partied with was Marlborough's heir Jamie, the Marquess of Blandford, who graduated from softer drugs to heroin and cocaine until he was hopelessly addicted.

'Verbier is where Jamie Blandford started his drug-taking,' said the Chelsea socialite Viviane Ventura. 'Jamie was gorgeous. I mean, he was such a wonderful young man. You know the problem with drugs; some people are weak and some are strong. He was such a good-looking guy and so together and charming.' 'He had tracks right up his arm,' said a recovering addict who met him in a detox centre a few years later.

When his marriage to Becky Few Brown fell apart after the birth of their son, he started smoking crack, the most powerful derivative of cocaine. Jamie was eventually admitted to a treatment centre in North London after a run-in with the police.