The royals - Kitty Kelley [197]
After dinner that evening, she had taken her two guests to Le Gavroche, one of London’s finest French restaurants, to join a small party hosted by Alistair McAlpine, former treasurer of the Tory Party. Lord and Lady McAlpine were friends of the Yorks and had dined at Sunninghill Park; they were fond of Sarah but were uncomfortable having to extend hospitality to Saddam Hussein’s envoy. They were also disquieted by Sarah’s blatant behavior with Steve Wyatt. “It was a display of mutual fondling I have never seen before in a three-star restaurant,” said one of the McAlpines’ guests.
“There is in the Duchess a free spirit,” Alistair McAlpine wrote later, “an instinct she believes justifies whatever she may do, regardless of how ridiculous or unsuitable her actions are.”
Surprisingly, Sarah, a master of what Punch magazine called “snoblesse oblige,” did not comprehend the social liability of taking an American lover, especially one who sounded like Sammy Glick with a southern accent. It was a cultural clash of aristocrats versus armadillos on an island that defers to aristocrats. Despite his father’s money, the Texan could not lasso a position within the British establishment. The social barriers were too high, even for an expert climber like Steve Wyatt. One American who had tried to scale the wall ended up living in exile—and she had married the King of England. “The attitude of most British people,” said Harold Brooks-Baker, “is that Americans are savages.”
By 1990 everyone knew that Sarah’s marriage was over, except her husband. Her lover, who continued sleeping with other women, still reveled in her royal invitations. “For the Jewish boy from Houston, whose parentage was shrouded in scandal,” wrote the Daily Mail, “there could have been no greater social triumph than his invitation from the Duchess of York personally to the December 1990 Buckingham Palace Ball to celebrate the birthdays of the Queen Mother (90), Princess Margaret (60), Princess Anne (40) and the Duke of York (30).”
Soon he had no more royal invitations. Through her equerries the Queen communicated her displeasure about the relationship and forced the Duchess to stop seeing the high-flying Texan. “There’ll be nipples on a bull ’fore I’ll embarrass that little lady,” Oscar Wyatt told a business associate. Rather than offend Her Majesty, he cooperated with the Palace by having his son transferred to the United States. “It’s very embarrassing,” Lynn Wyatt told a gossip columnist. “Prince Andrew even called Steve to tell him how sorry he was about it all.”
During the move from his apartment in Cadogan Square, Steve Wyatt left behind 120 photographs from his May 1990 holiday in Morocco with Sarah and her two children. A mover found the casual snapshots, recognized the Duchess of York, and sold the photos to a tabloid. Sarah was traveling to Palm Beach with her father and his mistress when she received the call from her husband prior to publication.
Andrew was aboard his ship when the Palace contacted him about the pictures. The Queen’s press secretary suggested that the Duke tell his wife. So Andrew dutifully called Sarah, who took the call in the Palm Beach airport. She screamed at him for not defending her.
“It’s not like you didn’t know about those pictures,” she said. “You saw them. You knew about the holiday. You wanted me to go. Why didn’t you say that? Why do you never defend me to those bastards?” She slammed the phone down and that night got drunk. Very drunk.
She admitted overindulging when she addressed the Motor Neurone Disease Association the next day. “I had too many mai tais last night,” she told the group. She brightened up