Tony found temporary accommodation in a small basement flat in West Halkin Street belonging to Jeremy Fry, his original choice of best man, and the supposed father of Snowdon’s illegitimate daughter. Margaret returned from Mustique on 2 March, her head wrapped in a turquoise scarf and dark glasses. A fortnight later, on 17 March, the Daily Express revealed that the royal couple were to separate. It was a busy time for news: on that same day, the prime minister, Harold Wilson, resigned, and the trial began at Exeter Crown Court of Mr Andrew ‘Gino’ Newton on charges of possessing a firearm with intent to endanger life. The life in question was that of Mr Norman Scott, the former male model who had, as luck would have it, once enjoyed a close friendship with Snowdon’s second choice of best man, the leader of the Liberal Party, Jeremy Thorpe.
Two days later, Kensington Palace issued a statement saying that the couple had ‘agreed mutually to live apart’. This, in turn, found Auberon Waugh ‘thrown into gloom and despair’, though the source of his misery was less the content of the statement than its phrasing:
‘Wrong or redundant uses of “mutual” are a well known trap, as Fowler points out. In this case, the use is not so much incorrect as otiose,’ he pointed out. ‘Every agreement between two people is mutual – is it not? – or there would be no agreement.’ He condemned the announcement as an example of ‘New Proletarian Fine Writing, the English of John Lennon and Dave Spart’. The Royal Family, he continued, ‘has always shunned the world of letters, but at least until now it has had the good manners to make sure its English was respectable. If it can’t do better than this, we should send them all straight back to Germany.’
The news travelled around the world, and even affected President Idi Amin of Uganda, who managed to pluck a message for all mankind from the ruins of the royal marriage: ‘I hope it will be a lesson to all of us men not to marry ladies in a very high position,’ he said. On a photographic assignment in Sydney, Snowdon, looking desperately upset, delivered an emotional interview on television. But Princess Margaret remained unmoved. ‘I have never seen such good acting,’ she said.
A month later, Auberon Waugh confessed to being ‘seriously worried’ about Princess Margaret’s newly solitary state, fearing that ‘there may be no men left with enough heart for the job’. He had, he said, suggested to the Queen that she might place an advertisement in the personal columns of Private Eye, but Her Majesty had been hesitant, feeling that ‘this might cheapen the monarchy’.
But then Waugh had a brainwave. ‘What about asking the Victoria and George Cross Association to Windsor? Surely, among their number we can find an unattached male who would not flinch from what has been described as the most gruelling job in Britain?’
More conventional journalists remained busy with their wallets, placing temptation in the path of anyone with the slightest knowledge of the unhappy couple. The Daily Express offered Roddy’s commune £6,000 for a group photograph, to be handed over in cash, in a brown paper bag. ‘I said, why not?’ recalled Roddy. ‘So we all piled into the van and went back to the farm where we agreed to this photograph. Like a fool, I only kept £500 for myself and put the rest into the restaurant, which was in trouble. It was a silly gesture, but the sort of thing one does in a commune, I suppose.’