The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me (40 page)

Robert had spotted Rosa’s culinary talents when visiting the house of his friend Peggy, Countess of Munster, and was so impressed by the Austrian’s cooking that he went into the kitchen and ‘stole’ her. He would have known that this was extremely bad form, if not immoral. Many years before, Gerald had written to Nancy Mitford congratulating her on The Pursuit of Love and his alter ego, Lord Merlin, but adding, ‘I must take you to task for Lord Merlin’s only lapse … I should never dream of attempting to snaffle anyone else’s cook – that is a form of wickedness in which I should never indulge.’

In her early thirties when she arrived at Faringdon, Rosa had high, flushed cheekbones, brown hair scraped into an unforgiving bun and exuded a nervous energy that sometimes verged on the wild-eyed. She had grown up in a small village near Linz, where she was probably recruited to the League of German Girls. When she worked on a farm during the war, she obeyed the command to avert her eyes if passing the nearby Mauthausen concentration camp – notorious as ‘the bone-grinder’ for ‘Incorrigible Political Enemies of the Reich’.443 Certainly, Rosa was believed to be sympathetic to the late Führer, and her own servility and self-abasement before Robert, whom she worshipped, hinted at an affinity with totalitarianism. ‘Rosa was a Tartar, no doubt about it,’ said Des Ball. ‘That’s why she and Robert got on so well.’ Des learned to harvest the vegetables when they were only just visible, and therefore of the correct dainty dimensions and sweet taste to be worthy of the dining room. Rosa declared that ‘Mr Heber-Percy will only have the best … isn’t it?’ as she often rhetorically concluded her sentences. Robert was certainly the principal force in Rosa’s existence and she filled her life with Faringdon House. Many thought that she was in love with him. ‘She had an idea she was Mrs Heber-Percy,’ said Des.444 There was a sister back in Austria, and she made occasional visits there, but there was scant sign of any other family or friends.

It wasn’t long before Rosa’s food was as legendary as that in Gerald’s time. People who had known the place before the war would now go to the kitchen to praise Rosa after a meal that contained dishes they knew and loved – the fillets of sole in cream and horseradish, or lobster Thermidor. But Rosa also developed her own favourites, like rack of lamb, and concocted spectacular puddings and cakes, simultaneously rich and delicate. The world was changing, many country houses were unable to keep going, but at Faringdon, with Rosa’s perfectionism, friends felt as pampered as they had ever been. Frederick Ashton was a great favourite with Rosa and particularly generous with the tips; it must have seemed miraculous to return to the place that retained so many elements of Gerald’s generosity, if not the enchantment of the man himself.

Rosa did not appreciate Hughie; her devotion to Robert seemed to produce equivalent negative emotions towards his lover. She avoided serving the Captain at meals, neglected his bedroom – leaving his waste-paper basket to overflow and hiding his clothes – and humiliated him when she could. If Robert was ever away and Hughie returned to the house alone, Rosa would lock him out. Robert did not reproach her, colluding with her tendency to torment the Captain. Although Hughie and Robert were involved for decades, the former was never given any ‘rights’ in the house, and while he was unanimously considered ‘nice’, many criticised him as ‘spineless’. He ‘panted about behind Robert like a dog’, remembered one local friend, and as he thickened around the middle, it was suggested by the less charitable that Robert was ‘kind’ to keep Hughie on when he was so boring.445 There was quite possibly an element of masochism on the younger man’s part – something that had been noted in Gerald too. In annoyance, Robert was known to pour a bottle of red wine over his lover at dinner and Rosa once poured cold water over Captain Cruddas’s head from the first-floor landing. Many witnessed Robert sending Hughie out to buy him cigarettes from the pub in the middle of a formal lunch. Hughie ‘would scuttle off looking whipped’.446 Rosa, bringing the food to the dining room, would gloat with triumph at the humiliation, while Hughie called Rosa ‘the Nazi’ behind her back.

On the surface, Rosa could scarcely have been more different from Robert. With his silk shirts, irresponsible episodes at the casino, trips abroad and decadent entertaining, the Mad Boy was still overtly sexual and extravagant. Rosa, on the other hand, exaggerated her humility, emphasised her frugality and was almost asexual in her appearance. She adored the aristocracy, believing they were ‘a race apart’. ‘I’m just a servant,’ she would say emphatically.447 If she served only the best for her master, she announced herself content to eat cold porridge or stale bread. She dressed in thick, home-knitted pullovers and sturdy shoes and presented herself as someone with only two concerns – to do her job better than anyone else and to guard her master. If Hughie was a loyal Labrador, Rosa was a fierce-eyed Rottweiler.

Some years later, when Richard Burton arrived at Faringdon to film some scenes from Laughter in the Dark, accompanied by his wife, there was understandable excitement about welcoming the most celebrated and sexiest couple in show business. While Burton acted, Elizabeth Taylor hung around drinking gin. Jack Fox was dispatched to collect a case for Miss Taylor from Ferguson’s, the wine merchant, ‘and she nearly drank it all in three days’.448 Taylor was wearing the colossal diamond ring her husband had recently given her – a 33-carat, octagonal stone famous for being one of the largest flawless stones in the world. At one point, the dazzling, violet-eyed actress took it off to show Rosa and suggested she try it on. Rosa took the outsize gem in her large, work-reddened hands. They may have done dainty work with a knife or a needle, but her fingers were thick as sausages and the ring wouldn’t fit over them.

Despite their differences, Robert and Rosa shared certain characteristics. Both were stubborn and had fiery tempers. They were united in their desire to put Faringdon first, even if they sometimes had diverse opinions as to the method. If Rosa retained a fondness for Teutonic discipline, Robert never lost the disdain for authority that had created such problems at school and in the Army. He fought the town council so that Irish travellers could make an encampment outside the estate’s walls and always gave camping space in the grounds to the elderly Fred Abel, who travelled the country in his caravan pulled by two donkeys. Abel’s menagerie included his famous flea circus in a glass box, nineteen rats and three dogs. Rosa was instructed to make him welcome and give him some milk every day. One year, Robert was away in Africa when the showman arrived and was annoyed on his return to learn that old Fred had not been given his milk. Ignoring Rosa’s protests that there wasn’t any to give Mr Abel, Robert opened the fridge, took out a bottle of milk and poured it over her head as she sat at the table peeling potatoes. ‘She didn’t say a word,’ recalled Martin Webb (son of Gerald’s old taxi driver, Reginald), who had driven Robert from the airport. ‘She didn’t react. She just didn’t want to take Fred Abel his milk.’

There seem to have been other incidents with milk. Jack Fox witnessed Robert and Rosa having ‘a hell of a row’ when he was walking past the kitchen, and saw Robert pick up a bottle of milk and pour it over the housekeeper’s head. She stopped her shouting and ‘let out one manic scream, ran off to her room and slammed the door. Captain Cruddas came running and said, “Ring up the Bell and book lunch and dinner as we’re not going to get any food today.”’ Those who were close to Robert knew that he had a cruel and aggressive side. To some, his unpredictable temper, occasionally violent behaviour and his unapologetic selfishness were off-putting. To others, they were parts of a multifarious character that refused to stay within anyone’s boundaries. For every person who admired or loved him there was another who thought him dreadful. He was generous and stingy, welcoming and rejecting, a person who insisted on good manners and who was appallingly rude.

Robert was godfather to Jack Fox’s son, who was named after him, but Jack didn’t trust Robert not to trick him when it came to business. ‘I need it in writing ’cause I don’t bloody trust you,’ he said after Robert offered him a job in his latest commercial activity – a building and undertaking company. While Robert was busy converting parts of the house into flats, he decided to organise the work himself rather than pay what was demanded by Baker’s, the local firm he used. Luring away from Baker’s a carpenter called Russell Spinage, Robert set him up as director of a building business that he named after him. The team carried out various jobs inside the house (ignoring regulations for Grade I listed buildings), turning dank service areas into garages and workshops and creating a new room for Rosa’s kitchen, close to the dining room, so food was no longer carried up and down a flight of stairs.

It was traditional for country joiners to make coffins and Jack joined Russell Spinage as both a stonemason and an undertaker. ‘I’m not afraid of dead bodies. It’s not horrible when you get used to it,’ he said. Later, when Baker’s closed down, Robert took over their undertaking business too. Friends couldn’t contain their hilarity at the idea of the Mad Boy as an undertaker. They’d enquire, ‘How are the coffins?’ But he took it surprisingly seriously, even claiming that he had been to the annual undertakers’ conference in Blackpool. Robert made sure that he returned from his almost yearly winter trips to Africa ‘in time for the burial season’. He said this came ‘early in spring when all the old folk who had been hibernating, poked their noses out, thinking the weather was getting warmer, caught flu and died’.449

In the early 1960s, Robert decided to build an office for Mr Rich, his accountant, who initially came down from London, but ultimately moved to Faringdon. Robert converted the old chapel that extended from the main body of the house on the lower ground floor by the stables, and Jack was involved in the renovation. On the windowsill of the chapel sat a small oak box. Inside it were Gerald’s ashes that had been there since the cremation in 1950. ‘What shall I do with them?’ asked Jack. ‘Bury them,’ replied Robert. ‘Where?’ ‘Over there,’ said Robert, pointing towards the front lawn. Jack took the box and walked over to the two large flowerbeds filled with delphiniums near the gateway to the churchyard. Gerald had loved the mad firework flash of blue that these tall flowers created for a few weeks each year and Robert had continued the tradition despite the work involved in staking the fragile, ephemeral spires. Jack dug down into the earth between the delphinium beds until he reached the stone foundations of the old Elizabethan house, placed the box there and filled in the hole. Robert had adored Gerald and there were those that felt he dedicated his life to commemorating Gerald’s, but there was no ceremony, no marker for these dusty remains. On the nearby path, by the churchyard wall, there was a row of dogs’ graves that had been given much greater consideration. There was Manley, the Great Dane that died of rickets, and a lovely stone for Towser, a Jack Russell that belonged to Rosa. Everyone on the estate dreaded Towser as a ‘silent biter’, but even he was honoured with a small pyramid, engraved ‘Towser: A short life but a gay one’.

ROBERT IN THE 1960S WITH MANLEY’ THE GREAT DANE

If Robert seemed slapdash in some ways, in others he was meticulous. He would lose huge amounts of money at Mayfair gaming tables and return home with unsuitable young men, whom Rosa avoided at all costs. But on a Monday morning, he’d be up at 7.30, directing the gardeners and groundsmen about their day’s work. He took enormous care to improve the house and grounds, re-rendering the building, buying statues, reclaiming areas that were grown over and insisting that standards were not lowered when it came to raking the gravel or planting up the urns with colourful geraniums and lobelia. He created a ‘gloom garden’ down by the lake, in the shade of dark yew trees, with hellebores and bleeding hearts, and he planted a monkey-puzzle walk, where flowering cherries were interspersed with the spiky trees most associated with suburban gardens. A peacock and peahen were brought in, producing offspring, but the male became ‘oversexed and overfed’, alienating its owner by attacking what it believed was an enemy bird in the Jaguar’s shiny hub caps. Robert asked Jack Fox to ‘shoot the bloody thing’ but it ended up along the road in Lord Faringdon’s wood at Buscot.450

By middle age, the Mad Boy had the confidence to insist on his own taste. Like Gerald, he appreciated the kitsch and unconventional as well as the traditionally attractive. He bought a chest of drawers that leaned to the side as though someone had pushed it or Dalí had designed it, and he was unafraid to add plastic tulips to the grand spread of spring bulbs cultivated along the drive, or fake lilies to the vases of real ones in the house. Among the Victorian needlework and beaded cushions on the day-bed was a soft doll of a ‘dirty old man’, complete with grey woollen hair and a beige raincoat that opened to reveal the daintily sewn genitals. And if someone was shocked, so much the better.

‘He avoided conventions and categories,’ remembered Candida Lycett Green, whose parents, John and Penelope Betjeman, remained among Robert’s greatest friends. ‘And he was fantastically astute about people. Faringdon was a bit like a royal court, with people always wanting to be in it. He understood if people were being sycophantic.’451 Though Robert had considered shutting up the whole place after Gerald’s death, he actually became a generous and active host; the visitors’ books testify both to the many who continued to visit over generations and the new friends who became regulars. In 1960, just before Victoria’s wedding, Robert welcomed the most famous and fashionable newly-weds in the country – Princess Margaret and her photographer husband, Tony Armstrong-Jones, now Earl of Snowdon. He was close to Jeremy Fry, an inventor and entrepreneur who, with his wife Camilla, was a lifelong friend of Robert’s. They were part of the ‘fast set’ that the royal pair were drawn to, with wild parties, casual flings and a liking for drink and drugs. Jeremy was also a cousin of Jennifer’s, and like her was dogged by the epithet ‘member of the Fry chocolate dynasty’. He was also dogged by a conviction for a homosexuality offence, something that led courtiers to make him stand down as Armstrong-Jones’s best man on account of ‘jaundice’. Like Robert, both Jeremy and Armstrong-Jones appreciated women while also being attracted to men. None of them were obviously gay or had camp manners, but they were all at home in the company of other men who were. And it was not until 1967 that England decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men aged over twenty-one.