Backstairs Billy (10 page)
Authors: Tom Quinn
The Queen Mother’s occasional sharp remarks must have reminded Billy of his own mother, which would explain why he never really took them to heart. And besides he was more than capable of delivering his own put-downs to those who irritated him. Of one gay friend he was overheard to say, ‘Oh yes, Gary is a fool and you know what they say – a fool and his morals are soon parted!’
He also occasionally got into a slightly sarcastic sparring match with the Queen Mother and she did not always get the best of it. After a particularly lengthy lunch with some of her oldest friends the Queen Mother said, ‘That really did go rather well, don’t you think, William? But perhaps we could have a little more gin next time?’
Clearly Billy had not kept her topped up quite as she would have wished. Before he could stop himself Billy snapped back, ‘Perhaps we should have it delivered by tanker?’
The Queen Mother took his remark completely in her stride, refusing to acknowledge the sarcasm. She merely said, ‘I don’t think that will be necessary, William.’
The corgis, a legendary part of royal life, have been written about extensively. Some commentators believe all the royals actually hate them but are terrified to get rid of them in case the tabloid newspapers accuse the family of cruelty to animals.
Brian Hoey, who has written a number of memoirs of life in royal service, recalled that the corgis served at least one useful function – they gave the household servants early warning that the royals were just about to appear because they had a habit of running on ahead.
Both Hoey and various servants of the time recall that the footmen rather disliked the dogs, some of which were bad tempered and inclined to bite. They were also not fully house trained and a supply of soda water and blotting paper had therefore to be kept on hand at all times to mop up an endless series of puddles.
One of Billy’s favourite stories concerned the corgis. When the mood took him he liked to exaggerate how badly behaved they were. He explained how one belonging to the Queen came off rather badly in a fight with another dog and had to have her leg amputated. Both her ears were also ripped off. The dog’s name was Heather and the Queen brought her along to Clarence House when she was coming for tea.
William and Mr Baker, another footman and one who knew nothing about Heather and her battles, were merrily getting drunk on pink gin in the kitchen and when Mr Baker, in the course of his duties, saw the dog, he went running back to William saying the gin was too strong as he had just seen a
three-legged dog with no ears. William would weep with laughter as he told the story.
But if Billy disliked the corgis, he disliked other aspects of the royals’ lives even more.
At Birkhall, Billy didn’t take to salmon fishing – the Queen Mother’s other passion aside from parties – but he occasionally accompanied her to the river to help with picnics and drinks, especially drinks. He was always wary of the gillies, who were greatly liked by the Queen Mother – one or two had been with her for more than twenty years. Her favourite gillie, who did not want to be named, remembered a woman who loved salmon fishing but only if it came with a glass of her favourite tipple and her favourite page. And Billy was as skilled with the gin on the riverbank as he was in the dining room in London.
A
T BIRKHALL, SANDRINGHAM
, Windsor and Clarence House – and especially when he accompanied her abroad – Billy gradually made himself indispensable.
The exact process by which he did this went unnoticed by the other staff, as Ronald Smith, who worked at Sandringham, recalled.
Billy just had a knack of doing the right thing at the right time and when he turned on the gay charm, as we used to call it, he was irresistible. He also had a very protective air about him – protective, I mean, of those he liked. Even members of staff who didn’t really like
him at all – because he sometimes behaved as if he was too good to talk to the rest of us – would admit that Billy played Elizabeth like a bloody fiddle.
She thought she was running the show but in many ways it was really Billy who was in charge. I don’t mean this in the sense that Billy ordered her about as John Brown was reputed to do with Victoria, but in the sense that Billy really was like a drug to Elizabeth. She tried to do without him now and then, especially if she thought he was getting a bit too big for his boots, but she quickly found she missed having him around – she really couldn’t do without him. I think so far as it was possible for her, she was a little in love with Billy.
Billy was even-tempered, skilful at assembling guests and making them feel relaxed. He was also very good at getting them in and out of a room – and in and out of Clarence House – discreetly, without bothering the Queen Mother herself and, crucially, without making the guests feel they were being shunted about too much.
It was a rare skill and a skill that numerous guests paid tribute to over the years. But the real Billy was a far less patient figure than his professional life would lead one to imagine, and occasionally it all went wrong, as Ronald Smith explains:
I can remember one luncheon party where Billy was doing his usual thing of greeting the Queen Mother’s guests and plying them with drink. There were a couple of serious types at this luncheon who Billy told me later had asked for water or lemonade or something similar. He was very scornful of people who wouldn’t drink alcohol because
he felt the party would not really get going without a few gins to start followed by wine. So he got them their lemonade and surreptitiously splashed a bit of vodka in each glass so they wouldn’t taste anything. The luncheon party went very well and the Queen Mother later told Billy how much she had enjoyed it and that she was surprised how jolly the two teetotallers were. Billy never let on, but the two whose drinks had been spiked wrote to complain at what had been done to them and Billy was reprimanded by one of the equerries. Typically, he took absolutely no notice, and continued his policy of making everyone drink if he possibly could.
On another occasion, when he tried the same trick, one of the Queen Mother’s guests – who happened to be an old friend – complained to her that his drink had been tampered with and Billy got a further ticking off. He was in a bad mood that day and when the Queen Mother spoke to him his face became very red and he suddenly – and very rudely – turned on his heel and stormed off without a word.
The Queen Mother was usually indulgent when Billy ‘had a fit’ as she used to say. One or two of the other servants felt that Billy’s tantrums, which were a regular occurrence in the staff room but rare with the Queen Mother herself, had something of the theatrical about them. It was almost as if they too were part of Billy’s repertoire; his way of entertaining and entrancing the old Queen. Certainly she was never angered or put out by Billy’s tantrums, exclaiming as he stormed off, ‘Oh, don’t be such a silly Billy,’ a line that seemed to amuse her greatly and which she used several
times. Billy didn’t look back as he flounced off but the Queen Mother was careful never to be too harsh. He had a certain power over her and, in truth, she feared to upset him too much in case he resigned. She really would have felt bereft without him.
From Billy’s point of view, his deepening relationship with the Queen Mother made him increasingly aware of his own power. And if power corrupts, it certainly began to corrupt Billy, who felt to some extent that he was invulnerable, especially when it came to the rent boys and other young men he met on his late-night forays to Soho and elsewhere. As one colleague put it, ‘Billy began to think he could do as he pleased.’
A
LMOST FROM THE
time he moved to Clarence House, Billy spent his free time actively pursuing his fellow male servants and bringing back casual pick-ups he met during his free hours late in the evenings and at weekends.
One or two of those who worked with Billy at this time describe him as a sexual predator, but others say that many if not most of the young male servants were happy to take part in what can only be described as orgies.
Brian Wilson (not his real name) describes how he met Billy in a bar in Soho and was dazzled to hear that he worked for the royals. Along with two friends, he was invited back to Clarence House. During the group sex session that followed Billy suggested Brian should sit on the Queen Mother’s favourite sofa and there
Billy had sex with him. Brian was convinced that taking risks was part of the sexual thrill for Billy. Another former lover who knew Billy well in the mid-1960s remembered the royal servant’s remarkable lack of caution.
Well, William used to hunt alone a lot of the time although even then it was a risky business, but gay men in those days had really sensitive antennae – they had to because if they got it wrong they might easily end up in court, or badly beaten up. Billy just knew when a new member of staff was homosexual – and most, though by no means all, of those who joined the royal household in more menial positions,
were
homosexual. There was a sort of homosexual grapevine outside the palace and mostly around central London and it got around that if you worked at one of the palaces the work was interesting, or at least superficially interesting, and it was also somewhere where you would automatically have a lot of sexual opportunity. You can imagine how word would get around that lots of gay young men were not only working in one place but living there too! They were like bees at a honey pot!
Imagine the servants’ quarters at Clarence House with half a dozen or more young randy men all sleeping there every night. And just ten minutes from Soho. I was part of it too and I have to say we had the time of our lives sneaking between bedrooms. Sometimes I’d sneak into a boy’s bedroom and there would be another servant there already, and even if they were already having sex they’d invite me to join them, which I usually did. It all made the low pay seem no problem at all! Personally too I have to say that I don’t remember Billy coercing anyone – he was good looking in those days and really quite a catch!
Billy took great risks even in his early days at Clarence House probably because, as several of his contemporaries noted, ‘he was extremely highly sexed and simply could not stop himself’.
Many of Billy’s contemporaries at Clarence House recall that he was a remarkable mix of discretion and recklessness. If he thought he could get away with it he would do it.
Brian Wilson recalled Billy turning up late one evening with a very rough-looking young man who was clearly a drug addict – ‘when you know what an addict looks like you never fail to spot one’.
The young man had the sort of skeletal face that goes with long-time addiction, but Billy, who had been drinking, went to great lengths to entertain him. He gave him a tour of the house including a number of the private rooms.
It was bad enough that he took the young man up to his room for sex, but to have given him a grand tour as well could have led to a major scandal. But I suspect that even though this was relatively early in Billy’s career, the Queen Mother would not have sacked him just for bringing that young man in. She just seemed to turn a blind eye to that sort of thing. She also had an instinctive, unshakeable belief in her own power to control events; if she didn’t think something bad or embarrassing would happen, then it would not happen.
Perhaps the best example of the Queen Mother’s tolerance of her wayward servant occurred when the
News of the World
reported that a ‘rent boy’ had been invited back to Clarence House by
Billy. The paper made a huge fuss, but the Queen Mother simply responded by saying, ‘How kind of William to invite that poor boy in out of the rain.’
Billy seems to have been careful to invite boys back one at a time to Clarence House when the Queen Mother was there, but when she was away he frequently threw caution to the wind and invited two or even three young men at a time specifically because, as one of his contemporaries put it, ‘I think he rather had a taste for orgies’.
One or two of Billy’s former colleagues and friends believe that Billy’s predatory instincts have been exaggerated. They argue that in many cases he simply invited young men back to Clarence House because he wanted to show off, to impress and to entertain.