Backstairs Billy (15 page)

T
HOUGH FONDLY REMEMBERED
as a genial character by many of those who knew him, Billy, as we have seen, had a darker side. Few of his female friends saw this side of him because he never felt threatened by women, especially those women like Reta Michael who perhaps reminded him of his mother.

Fellow servants, on the other hand, and especially if they were male, were sometimes perceived by Billy as a potential threat to his
position and he found this unbearable because one of the greatest pleasures in his life – a pleasure he would rather die than give up – was the exercise of power, especially over his subordinates at Clarence House. This was fine so long as he liked those who worked under him. He was, as it were, a benevolent despot. He was also supportive and considerate to many of his fellow servants, but, inevitably, with a large turnover of staff and a tremendous mix of different characters, there were those with whom Billy simply could not get on. Some he really hated. And as even the grandees such as Aird and Anstruther found, Billy was a force to be reckoned with if he decided you were the enemy.

If the gin and wine were delayed or the flowers didn’t look quite fresh each day, Billy was perhaps entitled to be cross with the more junior staff, but there is no doubt that he used his senior position occasionally to exploit junior members of staff if he felt attracted to them. He would never have tried anything sexual with young men from Eton and Oxford, but junior footmen and others were fair game. And, of course, the distinction between his private life and his professional life was dangerously blurred.

Most of his sex life was focussed on night-time Soho but one of Clarence House’s great advantages was not just that it offered him a magnificent home where he was surrounded by luxury. It was also a place that, as we have seen, made available in varying degrees a string of innocent young men away from home, just starting work and sleeping on the premises.

Billy’s unrestricted access to the Clarence House cellars provided a key tool in his seduction kit. ‘As long as he didn’t actually
fall over in front of her she didn’t mind a bit how drunk he was,’ recalled one fellow servant.

This combination of opportunity – a selection of regularly changing young men sleeping under the same roof as Billy – alcohol and a powerful sexual urge was bound to lead to trouble.

F
ORMER ROYAL SERVANT
Liam Cullen-Brooks remembered Billy’s darker side.

Cullen-Brooks started work at Clarence House in 1992 aged nineteen. Like Billy, he remembered being fascinated by the royal family as a child. He’d watched various royal ceremonies on television and, as soon as he was old enough, jumped at the chance to move to a job at Clarence House. He started as a junior footman and was interviewed by Billy. Right from the start he felt that Billy was a man with two sides – it was a classic case, he recalled, of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Throughout that initial interview Billy maintained what Liam recalled as a ‘cheesy grin’ and the interview appears to have amounted to little more than an informal chat.

All went well initially for Liam but it was not long before he began to see a side of Billy that was carefully concealed from the Queen Mother and the senior staff.

According to Cullen-Brooks, Billy wasn’t just fond of a drink. He was habitually drunk and when drunk he couldn’t control himself. He was, according to Liam, vicious and vindictive and very much a sexual predator.

Other former male servants have confirmed the general picture of Billy as occasionally lecherous. One said:

According to Cullen-Brooks, Billy was a man determined to be king in his own little empire and ruthless in his determination to crush anyone who questioned his authority or failed to comply with his wishes.

Like all the Clarence House servants, Liam worked tremendously long hours, from early morning until perhaps eleven or later in the evening. This was an Edwardian, perhaps even Victorian, world where workers’ rights were notable by their absence. Staff were given to understand that if they didn’t like the conditions there were always others ready to replace them.

But Cullen-Brooks discovered, as Billy had done all those years ago, that there was at least one major compensation – Liam’s tiny salary was supplemented by free accommodation: a small room at the top of the house.

Generally speaking the Queen Mother lived at Clarence House during the week and then set off each weekend for Royal Lodge
in Windsor Great Park. Here a largely new team of servants was always on hand to look after her. Billy and perhaps one or two others often, though by no means always, accompanied her when she went away. If they stayed at home then Liam, Billy and the other servants were left to their own devices.

For young isolated male servants staying in London, weekends could be very difficult to negotiate. Up to seven young junior butlers worked under Billy and Reg and on quiet weekends there was always a risk that Billy would pounce. Reg was never accused of being a ‘pouncer’ but even his best friends would probably agree that Billy, though charming, was not so gentle.

‘If he wanted you, I mean sexually, he made it clear that you wouldn’t be at all popular if you turned him down,’ recalled one former junior butler.

By the mid-1970s Billy had long ago moved out of his bedsitting room at the top of the house to Gate Lodge. It was rumoured that one reason for Billy’s move was that the Queen Mother didn’t want him bringing boys into the main house at all hours. With his little bungalow well away from the main building, Billy could get people in and out without anyone noticing. All the Queen Mother apparently ever said was, ‘You mustn’t be too naughty in your free time, William.’

David Smith, who left Clarence House after being pursued by Billy, recalled a man whose seduction technique was ruthlessly efficient.

The first thing David noticed when he arrived at Gate Lodge was the carefully designed and rather beautiful interior. The walls were covered with pictures and signed photographs of many of the royals and of theatre people. Billy loved ornaments and they were everywhere, along with numerous sofas and chairs. There was an impression of clutter, but then the rooms were tiny with very low ceilings, which added to a slight effect of claustrophobia. David and other visitors thought the rooms looked exactly like those of the ladies in waiting. It was surprisingly feminine.

Billy ‘made a grab’ for David at some stage, but ‘it was just a sort of vague fumble and all over in a minute’.

The one thing all those who knew Billy would agree about is that he was an enormously complicated character and that the complexity was the result of his various different and largely separate lives: his childhood in Coventry, his promiscuous gay side and his serious would-be upper-class role in Clarence House. He was also something of an artist – everyone said it about him. Gate Lodge reflected his taste and everything he did for the Queen Mother was done with a kind of artistic flourish.

R
EG
WILCOX
WAS
in many ways the complete opposite of Billy. He was unambitious, serene and, apparently, always happy. He could smooth over almost any difficulty and when Billy had a tantrum it was always Reg who would calm him down. It was also Reg, calm, kind and seemingly loved by all, who handed the Queen Mother her tea on the morning of her one hundredth birthday.

As the Queen Mother’s Deputy Steward and Page of the Presence, Reg was, at least formally, Billy’s subordinate, but in the hothouse world of Clarence House below stairs such distinctions mattered less than personal relationships. It was the intense personal and emotional relationship between Reg and Billy that really
mattered. They were soulmates and life partners to the extent that Reg was only occasionally perturbed by Billy’s promiscuous nature.

Johnny Hewitt, who knew Billy well at this time, explains:

Others noted that Reg only really felt safe and entirely himself when surrounded by stronger characters such as Billy. If Billy was later to find it difficult to live outside in the real world, Reg would have found it impossible.

It is generally agreed that the occasional bullying and spitefulness of life below stairs in Clarence House was a product of rigid social stratification. Servants in the royal household were
in many ways more concerned about their status than the people for whom they worked. Where the royals felt superior to those who were not from the same or a very similar set, the upper servants felt superior to the lower servants. It was all about hierarchy, whether you were a member of the family or one of the staff. And if the atmosphere was sometimes unkind it could also be intensely rewarding, as the hothouse conditions that destroyed some relationships sealed others for life.

T
HOUGH THERE WERE
many quiet weekends with the Queen Mother away at her various country houses, Billy was less often left to his own devices than other servants simply because he was the Queen Mother’s favourite. There was something about Billy’s skill as an adviser, his tact and discretion as a friend that increasingly led to a situation where the Queen Mother just did not feel happy if he was not around. This bolstered Billy’s sense
of power; his sense that when it came to the other servants he could more or less do as he liked.

His close friend Basia Briggs believes that power was an important part of Billy’s make-up: ‘I think he loved power. He loved the fact that he was untouchable because of his importance to the Queen Mother and he very often exercised the power that position gave him.’

Another friend agrees: ‘I think he had more influence in some ways over the Queen Mother than any member of the royal family, let alone the overly serious advisers, and of course for that they disliked him intensely. This is perhaps why when he died no immediate member of the royal family attended his funeral.’

A number of Billy’s fellow servants have argued, unkindly perhaps, that Billy’s greatest skill was actually sycophancy; others have said that the Queen Mother was far too shrewd to enjoy the company of someone who simply agreed with everything she said. In fact she notably disliked those who too obviously tried to curry favour and Billy was acutely aware of this.

The truth is that Billy was enormously skilful at mixing amusing conversation with risqué comments and solid dependability. It was Billy she turned to when discussing who and what to take to the Castle of Mey or on her trips overseas. The arrangements might have been made by Anstruther and Aird but she would never ask them to organise her store of gin for the journey or discuss which dogs to take or leave behind. Their contribution would have made the preparations dull; Billy’s contribution was to make everything interesting and fun.

Before one trip to Scotland, Billy spent a morning discussing
arrangements with the Queen Mother, who seemed to be unusually flustered about arrangements that varied little between each visit. Billy became slightly exasperated and the Queen Mother said, ‘William, we don’t want this to turn into a muddle, do we?’

William said, ‘Yes, ma’am, or even a bugger’s muddle.’

Barely able to suppress her giggles, the Queen Mother merely replied, ‘Well, quite.’

This was typical of Billy and he was also capable of childish enthusiasms and sudden bursts of hilarity which the rather serious Aird and Anstruther simply could not comprehend. They perhaps felt, as Queen Victoria’s advisers had felt more than a century earlier, that beyond a bit of Scottish country dancing, the Queen Mother’s fun should consist of polite and very restrained conversation. With Billy she could forget all this; in her public life she had far too much polite small talk, so in private she wanted no polite small talk at all. She wanted someone who would make scathing and sometimes very funny remarks about the ‘old bores’ upstairs, someone who would say, as Billy once said about a new press secretary, ‘I like him very much, but then I have absolutely no taste.’

Despite his reputation as a raconteur, which was largely deserved, Billy could also sometimes be a bore.

‘It all depended on the company he found himself in,’ recalled one friend.

On one occasion Billy found himself waiting behind the Queen Mother’s writing table while she looked through her correspondence. One of the equerries knocked and came in to ask about a meeting later that day. When the equerry had left the room the Queen Mother asked Billy if he had had a chance yet to get to know him. Billy made a face as if he was sucking a lemon and the Queen Mother was delighted. But occasionally he misjudged things. He had been making teasing remarks about one of the elderly equerries being remarkable in that he was still able to sit up and hold a spoon. The Queen Mother told Billy his remarks were out of place.

It was a telling reminder of something the Queen Mother often said of herself: ‘I’m not as nice as I look.’ And a number of other stories reveal someone who could be delightful but also occasionally waspish and eccentric.

Noel Kelly recalled that Billy enjoyed telling amusing stories of how the Queen Mother had muddled something, behaved in an odd way or asked him to do the impossible. He was particularly fond, it seems, of a story involving the Queen Mother and the late Lord Callaghan.

The Queen Mother had rather liked Callaghan, recalled Billy, so he was a frequent guest at Clarence House. On one occasion, when she and Callaghan were alone, she happened to be eating (almost continuously) from an enormous box of chocolates. She offered him a chocolate and when he said yes, she pointed to a particular chocolate and made it clear that he could have that one and no other.

While he munched his way through his chocolate she popped one after another into her own mouth and then after some time offered him another chocolate. Just to see what would happen he again said yes and once again she pointed to a particular chocolate and told him he could only have that one. Callaghan later asked one of the pages why on earth he had been offered those particular chocolates and no others. Then came the solemn reply: ‘Those are the ones with hard centres. Her Majesty only eats the chocolates with soft centres.’

B
ASIA
BRIGGS REMEMBERED
an occasion when the Queen Mother and her lady in waiting, Lady Fermoy, upset Billy during an argument in the garden. He stormed off and Lady Fermoy called after him ordering him to come back at once. He took no notice and when he finally returned ten minutes later Lady Fermoy told him he was the bravest man in the country. No one else would have defied the Queen Mother in this way.

‘I think in some ways she was definitely rather in love with
Billy,’ recalled Noel Kelly. ‘We all thought it. It was partly the result of the fact that she knew he adored her and partly because he was the only person in the household who seemed to her to be in touch with the bawdy, funny, irreverent world outside the horribly closed-up, serious world of the royals. He also stood up to her now and then as no one else ever did and he reminded her of the fun and gaiety of the 1920s, which is where she really lived. She loved the music of that era and she wanted her life as much as possible to contain the things that she had at that time that enabled her to forget about the horrors of the Great War in which she lost her brother Fergus. In some ways Billy’s manner, his humour and ability to talk well reminded her of the carefree balls and parties she had attended as a girl.’

And Billy responded to what he saw as a mix of the skittish girl, the matriarch and the emotionally needy in the Queen Mother – which is why when he was occasionally left at home in London when she went to Scotland or abroad he partly enjoyed it and partly hated it.

What he really loved was the world of show business; a world equally loved by the Queen Mother herself. And Billy made a point of keeping in touch with anyone he liked from this or any other world. Basia Briggs recalled being invited to lunch with the Queen Mother as a result of her involvement in the design of a new set of gates at Hyde Park Corner. The Queen Elizabeth Gate, designed by David Wynne, one of the Queen Mother’s favourite artists, was installed to celebrate the Queen Mother’s ninetieth birthday. Billy escorted Basia into the specially organised lunch
and, as Basia recalls, ‘we just seemed to hit it off’. At the end of lunch Billy escorted her out again but made a point of asking for her phone number and promising he would stay in touch, which is exactly what he did. ‘He always did this with people he felt he liked,’ she recalled.

Many of Billy’s friends were actors from the Queen Mother’s favourite TV shows, especially Patricia Routledge of
Keeping Up Appearances
fame.

A
S THE YEARS
passed and long hours and alcohol took their toll, Billy began to slow down. He became less sexually voracious and his night-time adventures became less frequent. He retained an echo of his remarkable early good looks but his puffy red face became increasingly noticeable whenever he appeared in public with the Queen Mother.

He told one friend in the mid-1990s that he felt he was enjoying growing old with the Queen Mother although she was actually more than thirty years his senior. She and Billy had fewer tiffs as time went on and settled into a comfortable routine that was rarely disturbed by outside events. By the time she reached her ninetieth year, Billy’s night-time activities were less of a worry too because his indiscretions with young men became to some extent a thing of the past. He became a more domestic creature – ‘he was like an old family pet’, as one contemporary recalled.

But age did not diminish his love of parties and indeed Gate
Lodge became legendary for its champagne-fuelled nights, as Basia Briggs remembered.

A neighbour who knew him in his last years recalled a characteristic evening.

Regulars at Billy’s local pub remembered that as the night wore on Billy would become increasingly drunk and outrageous, but he was never violent or offensive.