Andrew was the eldest of four; next was his brother, Simon, who also went into the Army and then the wine trade, before founding Green’s, the well-known restaurant and oyster bar in St James’s. The only girl, Mary Ann, married Nic Paravicini, who after the Army became a merchant banker and dabbled in the property business with Andrew. Their son is the blind, autistic musical genius, Derek Paravicini. Rick, the youngest, was a bloodstock agent and great character but sadly became an alcoholic, and died in 2010 at the age of sixty-three.
Camilla and Nic both loved Derek Parker Bowles and got on with him famously, but neither of them could cope with their mother-in-law, and it became a running joke about which of them was more in favour. Camilla would say, ‘You’re leading at the moment, I’m right at the bottom.’ But the next time they saw each other their status would be reversed. She would laugh her deep laugh about it and pull faces; laughter is her way of coping with every difficulty.
Camilla found a house to buy near Chippenham in Wiltshire, about an hour west from Newbury, and she and Andrew moved there in 1974, when Camilla was pregnant with their first child. Tom Henry Charles was born on 18 December 1974. Bolehyde Manor was a big medieval property in the village of Allington, just south of the M4 motorway. It was ideal for Andrew, with London less than two hours away by car and a fast, mainline station nearby. There were good schools in the locality, and they had friends in the area. But a big attraction for Camilla was that it was just inside Beaufort country, the oldest and biggest fox hunt in England. Andrew hunted occasionally but he didn’t find it particularly interesting – his enthusiasm was for racing and polo – but Camilla had hunted since she was a little girl with her father. And like her father, if she wasn’t curled up with a good book, she wanted to be on a horse.
Bruce had learnt to ride at Rugby but his hunting career began as a young cavalry officer, in the pre-war years when there was a good railway network and people travelled all over the country in pursuit of sport – even more than they do today. Strong friendships were forged at Sandhurst, and in soldiering generally – and the upper classes at that time still had large country houses and sporting estates, where friends congregated for weekends. Bruce frequently found himself at Dauntsey Park, in north Wiltshire, where his friends Hugh and Joyce Brassey lived. Brassey was a fellow officer and hunting enthusiast and the house was in the heart of the Duke of Beaufort’s hunting estates. After the war, in 1949, they had moved from the big house, but were still living in north Wiltshire and the friendship and the visits continued. When Camilla and Andrew moved to Bolehyde, her father no longer needed the Brasseys’ as a base – he stayed and hunted with his daughter instead – but they often came to dinner with her father afterwards.
Camilla gave great dinner parties – her time in Switzerland had not been wasted. A house filled with friends, good food and good wine was what she had grown up with and what she loved, and Andrew was the same. Initially they started off rather grandly with a Portuguese couple doing the work, but after a year they decided it 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.