The Duchess: The Untold Story – the explosive biography, as seen in the Daily Mail. Penny Junor

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СКАЧАТЬ was a waste of money. Unless it was a big dinner party, when she would bring in a cook who lived in the neighbouring village of Tockenham, Camilla thereafter did the cooking. She was good at it – her roast chicken is legendary. But she sticks to what she knows, which is mostly plain English fare with lots of home-grown vegetables. And there was a big, productive vegetable garden at Bolehyde to raid, as well as an enviable fruit garden.

      Bolehyde was centuries old, with a resident ghost. Camilla was typically unfazed. She would joke about how she’d be sitting on the sofa watching television, and the ghost would come and sit beside her and would change the channels. She never saw it, but she could feel it next to her, and she would laugh about how she and the ghost always wanted to watch different programmes.

      The house was Grade II* listed, which meant it was of significant historic value, originally dating back to the early fourteenth century. There had been later additions but none were much later than the seventeenth century, so it’s not surprising the ghost felt proprietorial. For a house of its size and importance, the approach to it was insignificant – the driveway was no more than 20 yards long, and the front of the house was clearly visible from the lane. But it was an imposing house nevertheless, built of Cotswold stone with three front gables, mullioned windows and a distinctive square stone porch with a stone balustrade above it. There were four reception rooms, each with stone-flagged floors and big open fireplaces, but the kitchen – designed, like that of The Laines, for staff to work in – was tucked away at the back with no view. Upstairs there were eight bedrooms – with a further three bedrooms in an annexe where, after Tom was born, a nanny lived. She was the only live-in help they had after the Portuguese couple left. The first nanny, Georgina, didn’t last, but Mary, who replaced her, was with them for years and is still a good friend. She comes to the party Camilla gives at Clarence House every June for her grandchildren and the children and grandchildren of friends.

      The house had 200 acres of land, stables, a big distinctive garden, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a seventeenth-century stone dovecot, outhouses and two stone summerhouses that flanked the original driveway. It was a magnificent place to live, steeped in history, but it was big and expensive to run, constantly in need of maintenance and repair – and the listing meant that nothing either inside or outside could be altered without planning permission. The garden was a great feature of the property – beyond the formal gardens and stone-slabbed pathways there were sculpted yew hedges, statuary, and expanses of manicured lawn leading to lovely views over open countryside – but it was divided up by a patchwork of stone walls, which couldn’t be moved because of the planning restrictions, so there was very little scope for change and, like the house itself, it took a great deal of maintenance.

      Camilla didn’t have the gardening bug when she was growing up but, when they moved to Bolehyde, it became her therapy. Andrew was already a gardening enthusiast and he prided himself on his greenhouse and the houseplants he cultivated. He would say Camilla didn’t do much more than dead-head the roses – and only then because, when he went off to London for the week, he would leave her lists of things to do in his absence. She and her friends used to laugh about the lists – most of which she ignored.

      Camilla was not built for work in those days – she did the bare minimum she could get away with – but she was a good homemaker and an excellent mother. Like the kitchen, the rest of the house was dark inside because of the leaded windows and low ceilings, an effect intensified by the profusion of oak panelling, but she had a good eye for colour and brightened it up. She furnished it as her own childhood home had been furnished, with a mixture of antique and modern pieces, using pretty fabrics, plenty of table lamps and good rugs. There were books everywhere, and dozens of prints, paintings, cartoons and photographs on the walls, while silver boxes, framed photographs and other knick-knacks covered all available surfaces. Vases of fresh flowers and pot plants were a regular feature. Definitely shabby-chic rather than – to use her expression – ‘tickety boo’, it was a comfortable and happy home for her own children to grow up in.

      What’s more, she made sure that Tom and his sister Laura Rose, born on 1 January 1978, had the security of living in one place. Most Army families move from pillar to post and live on military bases, uprooting their children from schools and friends every time they are transferred. But Camilla was not a regular Army wife. She refused either to live in married quarters or to move from one posting to another, which may not have done much for Andrew’s progression up the regimental ranks but did ensure that they all had a happy home life.

      And to most outsiders, they did appear to be a very happy family. Everyone who knew them well was aware of Andrew’s serial unfaithfulness to Camilla, but it was passed off as a bit of a joke. One friend who sat next to him at dinner one night said, ‘I’m really hurt, Andrew. I’m the only one of Camilla’s friends you haven’t made a pass at. What’s wrong with me?’ Those friends he did make a play for showed scant loyalty, yet she never seemed to blame them or make great scenes with Andrew. He and she were competitive with one another but there was never a tense atmosphere in the house, no barbed comments or bitter exchanges. They teased each other, and seemed to outsiders to have a good, healthy rapport. Andrew’s affairs were just a fact of life and not something she often spoke about.

      It was only those very closest to her who knew quite how standoffish and cold he could be towards her, and how deeply, bitterly hurt she was by his infidelity. She loved Andrew – for reasons that her family could never entirely fathom – and longed to be truly loved by him, and she didn’t feel she was. There was always someone prettier, wittier, sexier, waiting to take him away from her. And because he spent his weekdays in London, he was never short of the opportunity to do as he pleased. Today, looking back, he would admit there is truth in that. If blame was to be apportioned for the way the marriage ended, he would feel obliged to take a full 80 per cent of it. Love her though he does, he would also admit that Camilla was more in love with him than he was with her.

      For some years, when they were both in the Army, he and his brother-in-law Nic Paravicini shared an office, and a flat too – the same flat off Ebury Street that Camilla had shared with Virginia Carington. Although they were both married, they led a bachelor existence, and had a code involving empty milk bottles. Arranged in a certain way outside the door, these meant ‘Do not disturb.’ Nic would say Andrew arranged the milk bottles more often than he did. And still, as often as not, the women Andrew was seeing were Camilla’s friends.

      For all the hurt, it would never have occurred to her to divorce him. She had been brought up to believe that you stuck at things, you didn’t give up. And so she found ways of coping. Hunting was one way; galloping amongst a cavalcade of horses, any one of which might bite or kick or take a tumble, left no time for thinking. And in the summer when the hunting season came to an end, her escape was to bury herself in her garden. She saw friends and family, and there were the children to keep her busy as she took them to and from nursery and then school, to parties and the cinema, to see their grandparents in Plumpton or Annabel and her children, Ben, Alice and Catherine Elliot, in Dorset.

      Bruce and Rosalind were tremendous grandparents and the cousins loved going to stay with them. The initials of each of them, crafted out of round stones, are cemented into the path in the vegetable garden at The Laines to this day. They went there at Christmas and Easter, and every summer Bruce and Rosalind paid for the entire family to spend a fortnight in the Grand Hotel Excelsior on Ischia, a tiny volcanic island south-west of Naples in Italy. Andrew was never keen on the sun and would spend his time, observed one of them cattily, inside writing postcards to duchesses and all his other titled friends. But the children loved it. Every day the routine was the same. They went down to the beach with their mothers for the morning, a doughnut for elevenses, back to the hotel to meet everyone for lunch, a general knowledge quiz, a siesta, a game of tennis on the clay courts, and back to find Bruce and Rosalind on their second Negroni. They did that every year until the children were in their teens.

      Camilla never set out to be unfaithful to Andrew. She flirted for sure, because that was the way she was, a twinkly, sexy woman with СКАЧАТЬ