The Final Curtsey (11 page)

Soon after our marriage Denys and I were invited to spend a weekend with Randolph, and one of my recollections was at teatime encountering him, still in his dressing-gown, sitting at the tea
table, drowning whatever sorrows he had in whisky. My austere Scottish soul was shocked. That Sunday we were invited to lunch with Winston at Chequers, and drove there in our car. Randolph’s
daughter, Arabella, who was then a small child, sat in the back and was comprehensively sick on the way. On that hot July day, over sixty years ago, we arrived to meet her grandfather, the Prime
Minister, smelling faintly of sick and looking rather pea-green— not a good beginning. Arabella later took up charity work and became co-founder of the Glastonbury Festival.

There was a large gathering on the terrace and Randolph lost his head, introducing me to everybody as Lady Margaret Rhodes, which, of course, I wasn’t. Jock Colville, who by then had
become Winston’s private secretary, and who knew several members of my family, took me in tow to correct this social solecism, but made it worse, re-introducing me as Mrs Elphinstone, which
again I wasn’t. At lunch I — the lady seemingly with three names — was made to sit between Winston and his son. My attempts at conversation with the Prime Minister were received
with grunts and finally Winston and Randolph had a row across me. It was a day I wished had never happened. This was at the beginning of Queen Elizabeth II’s reign and I remember being told
that when Winston attended his first prime ministerial audience with her she was so over awed at being in the presence of the great man that she hardly dared to speak. He, on the other hand, was
overcome with emotion and wept tears of chivalric adoration.

After his spell with Randolph Churchill, Denys, like so many ex-servicemen, was in an employment limbo. He did various jobs, including being a private detective and working for a sewage company:
I never enquired too much about that. But when I first met him he was in the more salubrious surroundings of the embryonic European Movement, founded in 1947 by Duncan Sandys. Its aim was a united
Europe and its first major achievement was the setting up of the Council of Europe in 1949. But, however noble its aims, I formed a less than flattering view of the organisation during my interview
in the Jardin des Gourmets. I could never fathom the reason why the Frenchman present, Jean Paul, and Denys thought it would be hilariously funny to pose as being gay. It was fifty years or so
since Oscar Wilde had been imprisoned for homosexuality, but same-sex relationships were still illegal and men went to prison if they were caught out. But I needed a job and what was on offer
sounded interesting. I was taken on as a personnel officer and for the first few weeks sat in Denys’ office, where he was supposed to be showing me the ropes. In fact he spent most of his
time on the telephone chatting up what seemed to be a harem of girlfriends, which at least assured me about his sexual tastes. Consequently he taught me very little about my duties, although I
learnt something about him.

My first European challenge was an important conference in Brussels, for which I had overall responsibility for its smooth running. I was terrified and for weeks before I hardly slept, fretting
about all the things that could go wrong. Figures like Jean Monnet, who was busy transforming Europe, haunted my dreams. To my relief the conference went rather well, but my memories of it are more
coloured by the après conference activities, particularly the drama sparked off by our unstable accountant, who among other diversions took the night off to go to the cinema to see a
frightening film, called
The Snake Pit
. It tipped him over the edge and he returned to our hotel in the middle of the night in a right old state, racing round the floors stark naked,
screaming, ‘Look out, the snakes are here!’

We were due to leave the next day on the Dover ferry and somehow the poor man had to be got home to England. We locked him in his bedroom and a doctor was called, who sedated him. He called
again the next morning and gave him some knockout pills, assuring us that he would definitely remain unconscious until the ferry docked, when we would be met by an ambulance. As luck would have it
a storm blew up and the sailing was delayed for several hours. Denys and I were horrified at the prospect of travelling with a fully conscious madman for the whole cross-Channel voyage. But that
was what happened, and the only thing we could do was to lash him with ropes to his bunk and take turns in watching him.

It was an enormous relief when we delivered him into the hands of the ambulance crew and to recover we went to Denys’ mother’s house near West Malling in Kent. She was a widow and a
delight to know, with a mop of grey bird’s nest hair and with a Turkish cigarette permanently fixed between her lips. She had some very down to earth habits; she drank pink gins with reckless
abandon and always sat with her legs wide apart, so that the assembled company were treated to a good view of her knickers. She had five children all of whom in their different way were
extraordinary, some of them with bags of artistic and acting talent. I was totally seduced by this. I had always thought that the Elphinstones were a very close family, but compared with the Rhodes
brood and the Plunkets, we were inhibited and reserved. Perhaps it was a Scottish trait.

The youngest Rhodes daughter, Pam, was vivacious and full of laughter and I was astonished when she went off to be a nun. She used to wear plus-fours under her habit to keep her legs warm in
winter. In the end she jumped over the wall, as the saying goes about holy sisters who change their minds, and ended up in Zululand working for the Mothers’ Union, the Church of England
organisation, until sadly she died of cancer. Teddy, the youngest son, was a Grenadier, like his father. After he was demobbed at the end of the war he returned home and was careless enough to get
one of his mother’s maids pregnant. There was a family panic and he was banished to New Zealand. The unfortunate maid, or fortunate depending on your point of view, followed and family
pressure forced him to make an honest woman of her. They were an example of the social mores of the time and I can’t imagine such an arrangement now.

My mother-in-law had three brothers and two sisters. The eldest brother, also Teddy, the 6th Lord Plunket and his beautiful wife Dorothé were both killed in an air crash in America in
1938. They were on their way to California to a party being given in their honour by William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper tycoon, at his extravaganza of a mansion at San Simeon. His career
inspired the Orson Welles film
Citizen Kane
. Teddy and Dorothé were part of the
jeunesse dorée
of London between the wars. They were great friends of the present
Queen’s parents when they were still Duke and Duchess of York. They left three orphaned sons, the youngest only five. My mother-in-law took them under her wing and installed them, with her
five children, in a flat in Eaton Mansions. The Plunket children arrived with their nanny and their own butler. The Rhodes’ family nanny Mrs Appleby was also in residence. During the Second
World War London blitz she would work herself into a panic because she was convinced that the Germans would bomb Regent’s Park Zoo, and that the lions would escape and unerringly make their
way to Eaton Mansions, get into the lift and exit at the top floor with the intention of eating her. Unbelievable, really, that anyone could be so deliciously eccentric.

Patrick, the eldest Plunket boy, succeeded to the Barony when he was scarcely fifteen. Four years younger than Denys, he ended up a Lieutenant Colonel in the Irish Guards and was successively
Equerry to George VI and Queen Elizabeth II and was appointed Deputy Master of the Household in the year after the coronation. He combined, to the Queen’s advantage, a love and knowledge of
art with an awareness of people’s eccentricities and was adept at arranging a seating plan which kept everyone happy. That was something that required an intimate knowledge of all the
participants. Any occasion organised by Patrick went with a swing. He was Denys’ first cousin and I remember him as delightful and good humoured, always ready to laugh at any joke and not the
least a stuffed shirt. He had known the Queen since adolescence and combined an older brother role with that of a close friend and courtier. She minded very much when he died from cancer aged only
fifty-one in 1975, with so much more to give.

Denys was amusing, witty, six feet tall and handsome, although not in a chocolate-box way. Unfortunately he was penniless. It didn’t seem to matter to me at the time. He first kissed me in
a taxi going round Hyde Park Corner, which felt comforting and nice, but I was so surprised that I did absolutely nothing. We started going out to dinner and then to clubs where we could dance,
including the 400, the top nightclub of the day. The relationship grew into a serious love affair, but there was a major drawback. Denys was married. His wife was the actress Rachel Gurney, whom he
had married in 1945. They were unhappy together and by the time I met him they were living apart. They decided to divorce and began the convoluted process, very common in those days, which involved
the husband booking into a hotel and paying a tart to be found in bed with him in the morning, there to be conveniently discovered by a private eye who would give the necessary evidence. For some
mysterious reason this plan did not get off the ground. They were in a marital limbo and time was ticking by. Denys and I were still working together and marriage was looming larger and larger on
the horizon. I couldn’t imagine any other way than being married in church. Denys was advised that he should try for an annulment. The date for the hearing was some months ahead and when it
finally arrived I spent the day waiting with my friend Liz Lambart. When it was all over Denys picked me up and we drove down to his family in Kent. I know no details of what went on but he was
granted the annulment.

Rachel, who was lovely to look at and talented, became a very successful actress and is probably best remembered for her role as Lady Marjorie Bellamy in the television period drama
‘Upstairs, Downstairs’. Eventually she was written out of the series and the method chosen was to send her down with the
Titanic
. I seem to remember her giving up her place in
one of the last lifeboats to her maid. Rachel died in 2001 and I still keep very much in touch with Sharon, her daughter with Denys, who is my stepdaughter, and my four step-grandchildren. I love
them all including Sharon’s husband Simon Gough, son of the actor Michael Gough. They lead a delightfully chaotic life in Norfolk, and Sharon and my daughter Victoria are close chums.

Our wedding

Wedding day: Among this group are the King and Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret, my parents and my mother-in-law