Backstairs Billy (17 page)
Authors: Tom Quinn
One junior footman who knew him well during his last years said:
Everyone talks about Billy as the epitome of the faithful servant but Reg was the real thing. Billy took risks, drank too much and couldn’t always control himself, where Reg seemed never to put a foot wrong. I sometimes used to think that Billy would have liked to be a star in his own right. I mean famous in some way independently of his association with the Queen Mother and occasionally you sensed that he regretted that the only way he could enjoy fame was through his association with the royals. You never got that impression with Reg. He didn’t want the limelight – not even a small share of it – in the way that Billy did. But it was subtle differences like that that kept them happy together so long. If they’d both had big egos – and Billy’s ego was huge! – they would never have got on so well.
But there are dissenting voices and at least one former servant, Liam Cullen-Brooks, paints a very different picture of both Reg and Billy. Liam felt that Billy was vindictive and would deliberately find fault if he happened to dislike someone. For example, he would double-check the cutlery and find fault with how well it had been cleaned even if it was spotless.
Liam particularly remembered an elderly under-butler whose
life was made an absolute misery. He was picked on continually by Billy and even by Reg. Liam claims it was like school playground bullying. Another servant who suffered badly from acne was teased mercilessly by Billy.
According to Liam, Billy would not just find fault; he would also make life difficult just for the sake of it. One servant was charged with clearing up the leaves that fell each night from a fig tree growing in a large pot by a set of doors. Billy would wait until the leaves had been cleared up, go back to the tree, shake it until more leaves had fallen and then berate the servant for not doing his job properly.
Liam also remembered the sense of shock when a diabetic servant collapsed on the terrace at Clarence House and Billy forbade anyone to touch him or help in anyway. He was simply left lying on the ground until an ambulance arrived. Billy is said to have simply stepped over the prostrate figure as he went about his work.
Various servants complained about Billy to Sir Alastair Aird, but to no avail. Billy was clearly seen as such a difficult character that little could be done to curb his excesses. There seems to have been an especially bad relationship between Billy and Reg and Betty Leek, who was for many years the Queen Mother’s dresser and one of the few people who genuinely had more access to her than either of her pages. Billy would make snide remarks in a stage whisper as she passed and, goaded beyond endurance, she would eventually snap back. Billy would then make a formal complaint against her.
The extent to which the Queen Mother understood that Billy
had a dark side is difficult to determine, but she was no fool. One of her ladies in waiting is reported as having said that she knew that servants would always squabble and fall out: ‘It’s what servants had always done.’
Billy certainly made mistakes and he could be spiteful to those he did not like, but he also promoted those he liked and sometimes his desire to help his friends ended badly. Prince Charles’s former valet Michael Fawcett, later the Prince’s personal consultant, is a case in point. Billy was very keen that Fawcett should get the job of personal consultant because he liked him. Billy lobbied hard on his behalf and Fawcett got the job, but he was later forced to resign after a series of public embarrassments.
Billy and Reg did not have it all their own way, according to Liam. He recalls how now and then he got the better of Billy, Reg and their circle. He was once reprimanded by Michael Fawcett for laughing while breakfast was being prepared. Fawcett explained that Prince Charles had overhead and was annoyed. When Cullen-Brooks served lunch that day he made a point of apologising to Prince Charles for having laughed too loudly that morning. Charles was completely mystified and said that he hadn’t been bothered in the least – that in fact he loved the sound of laughter.
Cullen-Brooks and other former members of the Clarence House staff also recall that on free weekends Reg and Billy would help themselves to wine and food from the Clarence House stores. Apparently the two men would tour the larders and cellars carrying a large bag which they would fill with wine and cheese and other delicacies before setting off for Reg’s flat for the weekend.
The other servants referred to this as Billy and Reg’s supermarket sweep, and it was something they apparently did regularly at Sandringham and Balmoral as well as at Clarence House.
Billy’s usual habit at Balmoral was to pack a box of wine each week and post it to Reg in London. It was all part of Billy and Reg feeling they had special privileges because they had worked in the royal household for so long, and this was certainly reflected in Billy’s increasingly erratic behaviour. He had always drunk heavily, but by the late 1990s he occasionally collapsed and had to be put to bed by Reg or one of the other servants.
These drunken episodes were very difficult to keep from the Queen Mother. The other servants would tell her that Billy was indisposed or ill and had gone to bed, but she clearly knew what was really going on and enjoyed teasing Billy about it.
After he re-appeared one morning looking decidedly the worse for wear she said: ‘William, I hear you have not been feeling well. I had thought of sending up something to make you feel better. Perhaps some warm whisky and water. But then I thought no, perhaps not. Was I right not to?’
The temptations of royal service were huge. Salaries were tiny and it was the perks that made the job tolerable. And the perks were easy picking for Reg and Billy because they ordered food and wine as they pleased and never had to account for anything to anyone. Billy especially could take what he liked because the Queen Mother allowed him to order and dispose of whatever he liked.
‘It was a good example of power corrupting,’ recalled a former junior steward.
Reg and Billy would not have let anyone under them get away with what they got away with. They ran the household and took whatever they liked whenever they liked. Billy was the driving force and anyone they didn’t get on with was definitely frozen out. If, on the other hand, you made an effort to get on with them and they liked you, then you would find you were part of the magic circle. They’d even give you the odd bottle of wine and some wonderfully expensive chocolates – and there were a lot of chocolates as the Queen Mother seemed to eat a dozen boxes a week.
In reality the arguments and disputes, the backbiting and resentments of servant life at Clarence House were probably typical of any environment where a disparate group is forced to live and work together.
As Noel Kelly put it:
It was a hothouse of intrigue, but what else could it be with all those strange and sometimes forceful personalities effectively locked up together? I think in some ways it was a bit like a prison or a public school with intense friendships and hatreds, petty disputes over privileges and an over-arching sense of claustrophobia. Very few people could survive it for long, which is why staff turnover was so high, but one or two, like Billy and Reg, actually thrived in that over-heated atmosphere.
W
HEN
REG WILCOX
died in 2000, he left Billy just under £200,000 – much of it in the form of paintings – in his will. Like Billy, Reg had carefully collected gifts and pictures over the years, including a number of pictures by Billy’s friend the artist Roy Petley. But Reg had also been popular with the Queen Mother and other royals and many people were surprised at how many valuable antiques he had accumulated. Some of these were left to Michael Fawcett, who had been a great friend.
For a while after Reg’s death Billy drank even more than usual and seemed to lose some of his zest for life. ‘The fire went out of him for a while,’ recalled one friend. ‘But the life force in him was so strong that he got over his bereavement remarkably well in the end. He even eased up a little, I think, on his drinking.’
He also threw himself into his relationship with the Queen Mother with even greater enthusiasm. Sometimes, staff would watch open mouthed as Billy, after one drink too many, would pick up one of the royal corgis in his arms and dance around with it, just as if it were his partner.
Billy also loved to tell the story of how the Queen Mother once caught a page sitting on a sofa next to Princess Margaret.
‘What on earth is going on?’ asked the Queen Mother. Margaret apparently replied, ‘There is an unsightly hole in the sofa and I thought this was the best way to cover it up.’
Billy was scornful of stories run by the press detailing an incident in which he was said to have got into terrible trouble after Princess Margaret’s final public appearance in August 2001. The newspapers saw that she was very ill and decided that Billy had
made the decision to wheel her out in front of the public in a frightful condition.
‘The idea that I would be the one to make such a decision is ridiculous,’ said Billy. ‘If Princess Margaret had asked to be there I could hardly have told her it was an inappropriate thing to do. She made these decisions, as did all the members of the family. I would not have dreamed of telling them what to do.’
Nonetheless, stung by newspaper reports that argued he had behaved very badly, Billy had written to the Queen, who responded with a hand-written letter telling him not to worry in the least.
And in the main, Billy did not worry about the decisions he made, because he usually got it right.
A close friend recalled Billy explaining how the Queen Mother found herself occasionally feeling a little depressed. On one of these days when nothing was planned and Billy could not find a way to enliven the day, he suggested the two of them take an impromptu lunch at the Ritz.
The Queen Mother was delighted at the idea and when they arrived she insisted they should not take a private room but should instead eat in the public dining room. The shock on the faces of the other diners was something Billy never forgot. They fell silent and the Queen Mother did her usual smile and wave. But it was a rather long luncheon and no one dared leave until at last the Queen Mother and Billy rose from their table. As she left, the other diners – no doubt intensely relieved their ordeal was over – broke into applause.
As he grew older Billy’s taste for outrageous gossip increased.
‘People who know nothing about William always say he was discreet and that that was why the royals were so devoted to him,’ recalled Noel Kelly.
That is a complete misunderstanding. They loved him for exactly the opposite reason – they loved him because he was so indiscreet, but in a confined way. He loved gossip and though he would never talk to the press or to someone who might talk to the press he nonetheless told his friends every juicy bit of gossip he could muster. Half the time I think he made it all up or at least exaggerated shamelessly for the sake of a good story. He loved to embellish. And he felt he could say whatever he liked about the Queen Mother and the other royals just so long as he was talking to someone he viewed as a trusted friend. But he took huge risks with his gossip as he did with his drinking and promiscuity and I’m amazed that more tales didn’t leak to the press because he really did have a large number of friends and acquaintances. I think it is perhaps testimony to his instinctive ability to judge character that he didn’t get into terribly hot water more often.
Billy also loved to explain how the old Queen made no allowances for the fact that he was getting on a bit.
‘She insists on dancing with me at least once a day,’ he would say. ‘She’s a very good dancer but she will insist that I sweep her off her feet!’
He tried always to emphasise the informality of his relationship with the Queen Mother. He liked people to think that she confided in him, which she certainly did, but he exaggerated the
extent to which she did this. The truth was actually a curious mix of informality and strict, almost archaic formality.
Noel Kelly explains:
There was a curious atmosphere among royal servants, an atmosphere that dated back to the days when royalty, the aristocracy and even the middle classes could afford dozens of servants. So the tradition of referring to servants by their first names was kept up – the Queen Mother always called Billy William – and some people thought this was an example of how the royal family had lost some of its old-fashioned stuffiness. In fact pages and other servants had always been referred to by their first names to emphasise their lowly status. No servant in Clarence House would have dared call Ralph Anstruther Ralph, or Alastair Aird Alastair, but they always used the lower servants’ first names. It was a class thing dating back to Edwardian times and earlier when pages had been young boys.