Servants tend to become proprietorial, but none more so than the ever-watchful David John Payne. He never felt that Tony was quite up to scratch. Margaret’s new romance had taken him and the rest of the staff by surprise: up to then, they had written off the society photographer as just a passing acquaintance. After all, ‘he was still a commoner, and no match, so we all thought, for the Princess’.
Payne first set eyes on Tony (as the staff called him behind his back) at a lunch thrown by the Queen Mother in honour of the high commissioner for Rhodesia and Nyasaland in July 1959. Tony was wearing a navy-blue suit with a white shirt and a plum-coloured tie. ‘His fairish hair was groomed in his characteristic manner, which I thought rather ridiculous then. But I didn’t know that one day it would set a new style for men’s hair fashions.’
Payne had no idea who the young gentleman might be, but noticed his eyes darting around the room at the other guests, taking them all in, ‘and he kept eyeing me and the other servants in our liveries with a sort of obvious wonder’.
Bending over to serve him, Payne glanced at his name card. ‘It said simply … Mr Antony Armstrong-Jones.’ An unspoken exchange then took place between guest and servant. ‘He glanced up as I spooned vegetables on his plate and smiled. I was quite shocked. I had come to expect only a stony stare from top people when I served them. Now here was this young man smiling at me in an obvious attempt to be friendly. I wanted to smile back then because I knew he felt out of his depth in that company but I dared not. It was just not done.’
Payne was intrigued, and his interest quickened still further when he spotted Princess Alexandra chatting to the newcomer like an old friend. Who was this dapper young man?
After lunch, Payne kept a sharp eye on Mr Armstrong-Jones. ‘I noticed something funny about Tony’s walk. He was stepping along with a strange spring-heeled action … His slim figure was emphasized by the tightness of his trousers which tapered away to about sixteen-inch bottoms.’
As the time came for the guests to leave, Armstrong-Jones buttonholed Payne near the front door. ‘He smiled and said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you before have I?”
‘“No sir,” I replied. “I don’t think you have.”
‘This was hardly surprising as it was the first time to my knowledge that he had been invited up to the house.’
Armstrong-Jones asked Payne what his name was.
‘“Oh, you are John, who is with her Royal Highness. She has mentioned your name to me. I must say I have always been impressed by the way in which she has spoken of you to me. She has often told me, ‘John did this for me today’ or ‘John did that.’ Now I know who she meant. I hope to be seeing a lot more of you in future, John.”
‘“I hope so too, sir.”
‘“I think you will John.”’
Despite this chummy exchange, or perhaps because of it, Payne entertained misgivings. Like most of the servants, he was more of a Townsend man. ‘I never really felt happy myself at the match. While Townsend seemed to project force and vigor, Tony was not that type of man. I felt my Princess was wasting herself on this friendly but unsuitable man. Often I think back to that first day I saw him and how I watched him briskly stepping out along the pavement with his head in the air and a spring in his step and I wish that he had walked away and never returned to claim Margaret’s hand in marriage.’