Upstairs, the notorious gambler and future murderer Lord Lucan sat coolly playing chemin-de-fer with his best friend Jimmy Goldsmith.
Downstairs, Jimmy’s mistress Lady Annabel Birley reigned supreme over the world-famous nightclub that bore her name. Annabel’s, agreed the rich and famous, was the best club in the world – and it was a privilege to seen alongside the shapely beauty who was its inspiration.
But that night, all eyes were not on the hourglass figure of Lady Annabel. but focused on the dancefloor. There in the half-light was the 23-year old heir to the throne dancing with a tousle-haired blonde with a figure to match Annabel’s.
It was the autumn of 1972 and this was Prince Charles‘s first public date with Camilla Shand, 25, daughter of a prosperous wine merchant. They had first met that summer at a polo match.
Completing the foursome that night were Charles’s sister Princess Anne, 22, and her then boyfriend Gerald Ward, an ex-cavalry officer who in time would become Prince Harry‘s godfather.
A few years later, Annabel’s would become the playground for many young royals – it was at the club in London‘s Mayfair that Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson turned up for Sarah’s hen night in 1986, both dressed as policewomen. (They were arrested by the Parks Police for impersonating police officers, according to Sarah, and chucked in the back of a paddy-wagon).
Prince Charles, with the summer off from the Royal Navy after leaving Cambridge University, seen chatting to Camilla Shand at the polo in 1972
The Hon Rosalind Shand and her daughter Camilla in March 1965
Lady Annabel Birley, later Lady Goldsmith, with Lord Lucan who was Jimmy Goldsmith’s best friend
Lord Snowdon was an Annabel’s regular with – though more often without – Princess Margaret as his dance partner. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent were also familiar faces – and even Queen Elizabeth graced the club with her presence at a 70th party for her friend the Countess of Airlie.
But for now it was the exclusive domain of the future king and queen, and no more fitting a backdrop for their first public sighting could there be.
The tall building in Berkeley Square (where, by the way, nobody’s ever heard a nightingale sing) had royal connections, a spectacular sweeping staircase, many fine rooms and a capacious basement.
Upstairs they gambled, downstairs they gambolled.
Camilla was on a break from her long-time romance with Andrew Parker Bowles – a handsome, dashing and outstanding horseman eight years her senior – and so, just for the moment, she was young, free, and single.
Charles was similarly fancy-free. From Cambridge University he’d been pushed straight into the Royal Navy, but that summer had been allowed time off to learn to fly Wessex helicopters.
Now he faced the prospect of a miserable winter aboard a dreary coastal minesweeper and had just a short time to party – and for those days and nights he chose as his companion Camilla.
The romance between them was short but passionate. All too soon naval duties took the prince away, and Andrew Parker Bowles swung back into view.
Camilla Shand and Captain Andrew Parker Bowles on their wedding day in July 1973
A former girlfriend of Andrew Parker Bowles, Princess Anne with the Queen Mother attended the wedding
Naval duties took the Prince of Wales away, and in less than six months Andrew Parker Bowles announced his intention to marry Camilla
In less than six months he’d announced his intention to marry Camilla, and soon after that the wedding took place at the Guards Chapel, a stone’s throw from Buckingham Palace.
‘From Camilla’s point of view, Charles was just a light-hearted fling,’ wrote one biographer. ‘She’d spent a long time waiting for Andrew to make up his mind – she was always going to marry him. But for Charles, it was entirely something else.’
That night in Annabel’s, neither had the faintest idea where it would lead. Charles was expected to find a wife among the princesses of Europe – young, pretty and virginal – and at worst he might end up with the daughter of a British duke. Camilla ticked none of these boxes.
Nobody knows when this historic couple first consummated their love, but that night they ended up back at Camilla’s place, a ground-floor flat in an unprepossessing block near Victoria Coach Station called Stack House. Her flatmate Virginia Carington was to become accustomed to seeing the future king hanging about the place.
But after that night their lives moved on. Camilla married and gave birth to her first child while Charles had a brief affair with blonde Australian temptress Lady ‘Kanga’ Tryon. It appeared to those who knew them that the flame had died.
Throughout the 1970s a succession of well-born girls trailed after Charles across the polo fields of England, some with a title like Lady Jane Wellesley, others without, but no less aristocratic. Each perhaps hoped to end up becoming the Princess of Wales – until each discovered that Charles had only one woman on his mind.
One of the hopefuls was Lady Sarah Spencer, who knew what became known as the Camilla Problem, and when her short-term royal fling fizzled out, she was able to share what she knew with her kid sister, Diana.
The rest of the story is well-known. But on that night in Annabel’s in October 1972, fate struck.
Prince Charles dated Lady Jane Wellesley after Camilla
Charles also briefly dated Lady Sarah Spencer, who was one of the future Princess Diana’s older sisters
John Bingham (Lord Lucan) with his future wife Veronica Duncan after they announced their engagement in 1963. Over ten years later he went on the run after murdering the children’s nanny
Upstairs the Earl of Lucan, losing money recklessly at the gaming tables and out of love with his wife, was just months away from bludgeoning the family to death with a lead pipe and going on the run.
When that bloody event occurred Charles was about to celebrate his 26th birthday and Camilla was shortly to give birth to her son Tom. And the prince – now officially the boyfriend of the Duke of Wellington’s daughter Lady Jane Wellesley – was wondering if he would ever see Camilla again.
Fate saw to that. And whatever bumps in the road followed – and there were many – here they are today, radiant and happy as King and Queen.
It was always meant to be.