Marryingmy ‘crazy’Earl helped me overcome rape ordeal
The Countess of Cardigan bravely reveals the trauma behind her VERY unlikely union
WHEN her daughter, Lady Sophie, was eight months old, Joanne, Countess of Cardigan, took her to a local playgroup. ‘All the mothers were standing around talking to each other. One came up to me, said she hadn’t seen me before and asked where I lived. I answered, “Savernake Forest.” She drew in her breath and added, “That crazy Earl must be your landlord.”’
Actually, that ‘crazy Earl’ – David, Earl of Cardigan – is Joanne’s husband, as she swiftly pointed out. But then her husband does have something of a reputation.
The illustrious family name may have been immortalised by an earlier Lord Cardigan – a distant cousin who led the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War – but little in its 1,000-year history can match the drama of the recent events in the life of the 63-year-old Earl, ones that have cast him in an unfavourable light.
He is estranged from his daugh- ter, Lady Catherine BrudenellBruce, better known as Bo Bruce, a former star of the TV programme The Voice, and has no regular contact with his son and heir Thomas, Viscount Savernake, both children of his first marriage to Rosamond Winkley, a cookery writer who died of pancreatic cancer in 2012.
Between 2013 and 2015, the old Etonian, whose family name is David Brudenell-Bruce, was also in and out of court 16 times, accused of a string of offences by the trustees of the 4,500-acre Savernake Estate in Wiltshire, which has been in his family since 1067 and includes the only privately owned forest in the country.
He is still trying to sue one of the trustees for allegedly failing to maintain some properties. Cardigan has emerged victorious, but the battles have meant that the Earl, who depends on income from the estate, was reduced to penury.
‘So much so that social services offered me vouchers to take to a food bank,’ he reveals. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to accept.’
The latest, considerably happier twist in his story is no less dramatic. Six years ago when Cardigan was at rock bottom and his doctors feared he might end it all, Joanne, 52, a beautiful, intelligent woman from Arizona, appeared in his life and has stayed there as he tried to turn his fortunes around. Not only that but, a little over three years ago, at the age of 48, Joanne became pregnant naturally and gave birth to a baby girl.
Only now, with all the trappings of parenthood apparent at the family home – the buggy in the hallway and pink toys scattered around – can she start to see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
Joanne says: ‘The odds on me getting pregnant were against me because of my age, and it was a real shock when I made it. I had a natural birth but she was six weeks premature and only weighed 4lb.
‘When I found out I was pregnant, I told David that I couldn’t do it alone and he said he would be fully involved. The only thing I knew about him as a parent were the negative things his kids had said, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. In fact he’s been brilliant.
‘We don’t have a nanny and he will change nappies, play with her, everything really. I’m now using birth control because although I’d like another, it’s not fair for any of us.’
This happy turn of events has also helped Joanne put her own troubled past behind her. For in this, her first full interview, she reveals the extraordinary story of how a vicious attack by a stranger ultimately led her to meet – and then marry – one of Britain’s most colourful, and controversial, aristocrats.
The path to their unlikely marriage began in 2011 in the decidedly unromantic environment of the Trauma Resolution clinic in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the US.
‘In the mid-1990s I was raped and stabbed by a stranger as I was walking back to my car in Phoenix, Arizona,’ Joanne reveals.
‘I didn’t think I would survive my ordeal and went to see a psychiatrist, who prescribed Xanax, an antianxiety drug. I took loads of pills rather than address what happened, and became addicted. It took me years before I sought help, but the clinic diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and helped me stop taking Xanax.
‘My attacker’s DNA is on police records, but he has never been caught and I like to think he is dead.’ Joanne was going through divorce proceedings at the time, and it was the sudden breakdown of the Earl’s 25-year mar- riage that brought him to the clinic, too. Furthermore, he was traumatised by his daughter Bo’s experiments with drugs in her teens that led to an accidental overdose.
‘David was also diagnosed with PTSD,’ says Joanne, who was a businesswoman at the time. ‘We attended the same group therapy sessions, so we both knew each other’s worst stuff before we knew anything else.
‘Stuff you would never dream of telling anyone you were starting a relationship with. You lay yourself bare and if someone still wants to be with you, it’s really something.’
When they left the clinic, they stayed in touch as friends. Cardigan spent time with his sister Carina on the island of Tortola, in the British Virgin Islands. Joanne, who has a son Wolfy, now 18, went home, but love gradually developed between them.
Far from a Cinderella tale, however, the relationship was fraught with difficulty. It was a fate even her own mother warned her about.
Joanne says: ‘My mother, who was in her mid-70s, pleaded with me not to come over to England to be with him. She said, “Don’t marry a penniless Earl and move to a crumbling house.” I replied, “I can’t help it, I’m madly in love with him.”’ She looks directly at Cardigan and beams. ‘I still am.’
Indeed, by her own admission, you would have to be madly in love with him to put up with the events that followed. In 2011, the Earl brought her to see his home in Britain – Savernake Lodge, one of 15 properties on his vast estate.
To her astonishment, it looked as if it had just been abandoned by a small army of squatters, with electric wiring pulled from the walls and rain pouring into the house from leaking ceilings.
The lodge was also a far cry from the grandeur of Tottenham House, the 100-room, Grade I listed, 19th Century Palladian mansion, which was later sold to a property developer for a little over £11million, despite Cardigan’s efforts to keep it in the family.
‘I thought aristocrats were wealthy with huge homes,’ she says. ‘Instead I had left my son to arrive in a strange place where I was always cold, had no friends, no money, and worried where the next meal was coming from. It was like walking into a battlefield with his family and trustees.’
But Joanne did not turn heel and return to Arizona. ‘The first couple of years were rough and I didn’t think we would make it through. Harassment, arrests over nonsense, people telling you how awful he is, and finding nasty things about him on Google.
We knew each other’s worst stuff before anything else
No one in their right mind would do it. The stress has been enormous.
‘My son, who has started university, came over during the summer. He liked it here but thought the house was a bit creepy. I had to agree.’
Joanne was perplexed to find herself thrust into the realms of the English aristocracy. ‘After we married, another big problem for me was feeling I had to behave and look like a countess, but I didn’t know what that was,’ she says.
‘I learnt a little by watching TV series Upstairs, Downstairs and more Downton Abbey and thought I had to be quiet and reserved, not wear my heart on my sleeve, and definitely not wear jeans.’
It was the Earl, she says, who put her mind at ease. ‘He thinks I am beautiful and wanted me to be myself even when I really needed to lose weight, whereas in America everyone was trying to look younger and slimmer.’ In return, she is immensely loyal to him. ‘I am proud that when we absolutely had no money and he had to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance at £71 a week, after a few months he found a lowgrade job delivering food for a catering company because we needed to put food on the table,’ she says. ‘One day he was given a £20 tip. I bet they didn’t know he was an earl.’
But it was her daughter Sophie who put everything into perspective. She prevented the couple from sinking into despair. Cardigan certainly seems more adjusted to domestic duties, even mopping the kitchen floor where the youngster had spilt water during my visit.
‘Even in our darkest point when we had no money and no heating, Sophie was such joy,’ says Joanne.
And the house is more habitable. The trustees have finally released some money that has enabled building work to begin and the heating, which hasn’t worked for years, will be restored. The ongoing feud between Cardigan and his two older children, however, still upsets Joanne. ‘I have tried to help,’ she says. ‘I saw his daughter, Bo, in the ladies’ two years ago when David successfully went to court to remove John Moore, one of the trustees.
‘I said to her, “Your dad loves you. All parents make mistakes. You now have a half-sister if you want to get to know her. You could also meet me without David.” She hasn’t taken me up on it, which makes me sad because she has also lost her mother. I wish she could forgive.’
The Earl wasn’t invited to Bo’s wedding earlier this year and had not heard the news of his daughter’s pregnancy. ‘I am thrilled for her,’ he says, ‘and hope the birth may lead to a reconciliation.’
Given this troubled background, might Cardigan leave his percentage of the estate to Sophie rather than his son, who refuses to have anything to do with him? ‘Of course not,’ he says. ‘It has gone from father to son for 30 generations and I wouldn’t break that, but I will of course leave provision for her.’
Joanne says she has gradually learned to feel more comfortable in her new life. ‘At first I felt very shy and that people would have preconceptions of me,’ she says. ‘The English are so reserved but now I have loads of friends.
‘In August 2015 we had a barbecue for all the children and parents in Sophie’s nursery. I asked the school to email everyone for me. They sent an incredibly formal invitation, “Lord Cardigan cordially invites…” and they all came dressed-up expecting a butler and champagne, whereas we were in our jeans.
‘I love our increasingly peaceful, simple life. Sophie goes to nursery in the afternoons, otherwise we spend all day together, which not many fathers get to do. We are getting to the end of our struggle.’
Last May, the couple renewed their marriage vows. Joanne says: ‘David secretly planned it. We flew over to the small hilltop village of San Miniato, near Pisa, Italy, where we were married. I even wore the same dress. I can’t tell you how special and romantic it was, especially as Sophie was a wonderful addition.’
I learned how to be a countess by watching Downton Abbey