My shock at finding he’d left it all to his manservant
SOME of the happiest times that Princess Margaret and I shared were on Mustique, and we went there every February for 30 years.
But by the time the Eighties came to an end, things had changed. Colin had sold more and more shares and had less and less say in how Mustique was run.
In 1987 he moved to St Lucia, where he invested in an undeveloped 480-acre estate. He wanted to create somewhere else as spectacular as Mustique.
Shortly after moving to St Lucia, Colin — who had inherited the title 3rd Baron Glenconner following the death of his father in 1983 — saw an advertisement for an elephant for sale at Dublin Zoo and spontaneously bought it, organising its shipment to St Lucia.
He named her Boopa and her arrival, on a ship importing bricks, was a big event because she was the first elephant to come to the Caribbean.
Everybody flocked to the beach, and many of the young men on the island wanted to be her keeper, bustling and waving to try to get Colin’s attention.
Among them, he saw a boy with very big ears and picked him on the spot. The boy’s name was Kent.
Over the years, Colin became more and more reliant on Kent for pretty much everything, especially as by then I was around much less than I had been.
In 1987, our then 19-year-old son Christopher had a terrible motorcycle accident, which left him so brain damaged that he was like a small child.
My whole life became bound up in trying to save his. I was convinced that if I gave him all of my attention, he just might be all right.
In time he did make a remarkable recovery. He also got married, but when Colin moved to St Lucia permanently, I remained in England so as not to be too far away from him.
When, some years later, the marriage failed, Christopher came to stay in my farmhouse in Norfolk (and subsequently met and married a local woman, Johanna, with whom he is blissfully happy).
Kent devoted his life to Colin, who in return was generous, giving him two hotels and paying him well.
Although Colin had improved since the early days of our marriage, he was still highly strung. On one particular occasion, he became hysterical under the most embarrassing circumstances.
He had taken me and Kent to Italy and organised an evening in Verona to see Nabucco, one of my favourite operas. Kent, who was mad about football, went off to watch a match on TV instead.
The evening was going well until halfway through the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves in the third act, when, to my horror, Colin started to wail and scream. ‘Colin, what is the matter?’ I asked. ‘I wish Kent was here,’ he wailed. ‘Honestly, I don’t think Kent would enjoy it, but I am here.’ But still Colin continued to wail: ‘No, no, I want Kent!’
By this time, more and more of the audience were turning their heads in our direction. Seeing the rug over Colin’s knees, I threw it over his head, hoping it would shut him up.
With his wails now muffled, the audience turned their attention back to the stage. Shrinking into my seat, I hoped the saga was over — but the worst embarrassment was yet to come.
When the chorus finally ended, the conductor turned to the audience and announced: ‘Under the circumstances, I think we will have to have that again.’ I was utterly mortified. By 2010, Colin had prostate cancer but he was adamant that no one should find out. He had always had the idea that people didn’t want to do business with someone who looked ill or old.
That summer, I went out to St Lucia to look after him and stayed for several weeks. As he recovered slowly, he was relaxed and loving. With commitments in Norfolk, I went home with the intention of coming back a week or so later. On August 27, 2010, three days after I’d left, he had a massive heart attack and died. I was completely shocked.
As I flew back to St Lucia to organise the funeral, I found it hard to imagine a world without him. Colin was a uniquely difficult and brilliant man in equal measure. But somehow, despite his endless affairs and histrionics, there was an overriding loyalty, a friendship that bound us together, no matter what.
ON ST Lucia it is customary for a will to be read quickly, so that night I waited for the lawyer. I was apprehensive and a little worried about it, as Colin’s lawyer had told me: ‘I believe Lord Glenconner made a new will seven months ago with a lawyer from Soufrière.’
My heart sank when the new lawyer turned up. He barely kept eye contact and was very fidgety as I stood with my daughter-in-law, Sheilagh, whose son Cody was the heir presumptive.
He got out a single piece of paper and read aloud: ‘I hereby leave everything to Kent Adonai, and I trust he will carry out my wishes towards the family.’ I thought my heart was going to stop. Afterwards I found Kent, and as calmly as I could, I said, ‘Well, Kent, I hope you will carry out Lord Glenconner’s wishes to us all.’
He looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I don’t know what Lord Glenconner meant.’ I knew then that we truly stood to lose everything.
Later, I stood on the balcony of the house that no longer belonged to us. Fifty-four years. Five children. A marriage filled with Colin throwing as many tantrums as he threw parties.
And now, after all I’d been through, this. It was such a terrible humiliation. And to do it to our children …
I despaired. Going against everything my mother had always taught me, I let emotion take over and I screamed and screamed into the pitch-black night.
Everything that belonged to Colin, whether sentimental or valuable, he had left solely to Kent. The only thing the family had left was Glen, the Scottish estate, left in trust to my grandson Euan. He is the son of our second son, Henry, who died from Aids in 1990.
But the heir to the barony and the Caribbean assets is Cody, the son of our eldest son Charlie, a reformed heroin addict who died from hepatitis C in 1996.
Cody and his mother disputed the will. In the end it took seven years to resolve. While Kent kept a huge amount of land and money, about half of Colin’s estate was handed to Cody.
I still find it impossible to tell whether Colin intended to leave us all with nothing. It is entirely possible that he did it on purpose, as some sort of horrible stunt which would secure his reputation as a memorable eccentric.
It is also possible he didn’t understand what he was doing in the last few months of his life. I will never know for sure.