There were lots of boyfriends but none became lovers. The sense of destiny which Diana had felt from an early age shaped, albeit unconsciously, her relationships with the opposite sex. She said: ‘I knew I had to keep myself tidy for what lay ahead.’
As Carolyn observed: ‘I’m not a terribly spiritual person but I do believe that she was meant to do what she is doing and she certainly believes that. She was surrounded by this golden aura which stopped men going any further; whether they would have liked to or not, it never happened. She was protected somehow by a perfect light.’
It was a quality noted by her old boyfriends. Rory Scott said roguishly: ‘She was very sexually attractive and the relationship was not a platonic one as far as I was concerned but it remained that way. She was always a little aloof, you always felt that there was a lot you would never know about her.’
In the summer of 1979 another boyfriend, Adam Russell, completed his language degree at Oxford and decided to spend a year travelling. He left unspoken the fact that he hoped the friendship between himself and Diana could be renewed and developed upon his return. When he arrived home a year later it was too late. A friend told him: ‘You’ve only got one rival, the Prince of Wales.’
That winter Diana’s star began to move into the royal family’s orbit. She received an unexpected Christmas bonus in the form of an invitation to join a royal house party at Sandringham for a shooting weekend in February. Lucinda Craig Harvey, known to all her friends as Beryl, remembers Diana’s excitement and the irony of the subsequent conversation. They were chatting about the weekend while Diana, ever the Cinderella, was on her knees cleaning the kitchen floor. Diana said: ‘Guess what, I’m going on a shooting weekend to Sandringham.’ Lucinda replied: ‘Gosh, perhaps you are going to be the next Queen of England.’ As she wrung out a cloth which she was using to mop the floor Diana joked: ‘Beryl, I doubt it. Can you see me swanning around in kid gloves and a ballgown?’
As Diana’s life was taking a new direction, her sister Sarah was in crisis. She and Neil McCorquodale, a former Coldstream Guards officer, had abruptly called off their wedding which had been planned for later in February. In true Spencer style – it is certainly not a family for the faint-hearted – there were angry words and exchanges of letters between the interested parties. While Sarah was trying to sort out the mess – they eventually married in May 1980 at St Mary’s church near Althorp – Diana was having fun. For once Diana was in what she called ‘a grown up’ social setting. This for Diana was the satisfaction of that Sandringham weekend, not her proximity to Prince Charles. She was still in awe of the man, her sense of respect mellowed by a feeling of deep sympathy for the Prince whose ‘honorary grandfather’, Earl Mountbatten, had been assassinated by the IRA just six months previously. In any case the following Monday as she scrubbed her sister’s floors this aristocratic Cinderella had to pinch herself to make sure that her weekend had not been some idle pipe dream.
For whatever that small voice of intuition was telling her about her destiny, common sense decreed that the Prince already had a full hand of potential suitors. She travelled to King’s Lynn and then on to Sandringham with Lady Amanda Knatchbull, the granddaughter of the murdered Earl. Lord Mountbatten had strenuously pressed his granddaughter’s suit not only on the Prince of Wales but on the royal family. After all it was he, in the face of George VI’s reservations, who had been instrumental in clearing the decks for the union of Princess Elizabeth and his nephew Prince Philip.
While commentators have dismissed her as a serious contender, those who worked intimately with the Prince and watched Mountbatten’s machinations at first hand were convinced that marriage between Prince Charles and Amanda Knatchbull was a virtual certainty. A glance through his working diary for 1979 shows how frequently Prince Charles stayed at Broadlands, the Mountbatten family seat, ostensibly for fishing and shooting weekends. In the aftermath of Mountbatten’s murder in August 1979, Charles’s friendship with Lady Amanda developed and he spent several weekends in her company as they tried to come to terms with their loss. If Mountbatten, the unofficial ‘queenmaker’, had lived, royal history might have been very different.
While Amanda may be considered as the ‘official candidate’ whose breeding and background made her eminently acceptable at Court, the Prince was also conducting a stormy relationship with Anna Wallace, the daughter of a Scottish landowner, whom he had met while fox hunting in November 1979. She was the latest of a long line of girlfriends, drawn for the most part from the upper reaches of the aristocracy, who had appeared on his romantic horizon. However, Anna, fiery, wilful and impulsive, was temperamentally unsuitable for the regulated routine of royalty. Not for nothing was she known as ‘Whiplash Wallace’. Prince Charles, a man who by his own admission fell in love easily, pressed his suit even though his advisers told him that she had other boyfriends.
Their relationship became so serious that, according to at least one account, he asked her to marry him. She is said to have turned him down but that rebuff did little to dampen his ardour. In May they were discovered by journalists lying on a rug by the river Dee on the Queen’s estate at Balmoral. The Prince was furious at this intrusion into his private life and authorized his friend Lord Tryon, who was present at the picnic, to shout a four-letter word at the journalists concerned.
The end of their romance in the middle of June was just as tempestuous. She complained bitterly when he virtually ignored her during a ball to celebrate the Queen Mother’s 80th birthday at Windsor Castle. Anna was overheard to rage: ‘Don’t ignore me like that again. I’ve never been treated so badly in my life. No one treats me like that, not even you.’ On their next public appearance he treated her in precisely the same way. She watched with mounting fury as he danced the night away with Camilla Parker Bowles at a polo ball held at Stowell Park, the Gloucestershire estate owned by Lord Vestey. He was so eager for Camilla’s company that he did not even ask his hostess, Lady Vestey, to take the floor. In the end, Anna borrowed Lady Vestey’s BMW car and drove off into the night, angry and humiliated at her very public snub. Within a month she had married Johnny Hesketh, the younger brother of Lord Hesketh.
With hindsight it is tempting to ask if her outrage was directed at the Prince or at the woman who held him in such thrall, Camilla Parker Bowles. If Prince Charles had been serious about marrying Anna then she, a worldly-wise 25-year-old, would have been aware of his friendship with Camilla. She would have known, as Diana discovered too late, that Camilla’s famous vetting of Charles’s girlfriends was not so much to assess their potential as a royal bride but to see how much of a threat they posed to her relationship with Prince Charles.
She might also have simply got tired of playing second fiddle to the Prince’s pastimes. Throughout his bachelor years – and during his marriage – his partners have simply fitted in to his lifestyle. They were interested spectators while he played polo, went fishing or fox hunting. When he entertained them to dinner, they travelled to his apartment at Buckingham Palace, not the other way around. His staff organized boxes for concerts or the opera and even remembered to send flowers to his escorts. ‘A charming male chauvinist’ is how one friend describes him. His behaviour, as the Victorian constitutionalist Walter Bagehot had noted a hundred years earlier, was the prerogative of princes. He wrote: ‘All the world and the glory of it, whatever is most attractive, whatever is most seductive, has always been offered to the Prince of Wales of the day, and always will be. It is not rational to expect the best virtue where temptation is applied in the most trying form at the frailest time of human life.’
That summer of 1980 Prince Charles was a man of settled habits and inflexible routine. A former member of his Household, reviewing the collapse of the Waleses’ marriage, sincerely believed that he would have remained single if he had been given the choice. He recalled: ‘It’s very sad really. He would never have got married, of course, because he was happy with his bachelor life. If he had his fishing tackle ready,
his polo ponies saddled and a £5 note for the church collection he was perfectly content. It was great fun. You would wake him up at six in the morning and say: “Right, Sir, we are going here” and off we would go.’ His relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, who eagerly adapted her life to his diary, dovetailed perfectly with his lifestyle.
Unfortunately for Charles, his title brought obligations as well as privileges. His duty was to marry and produce an heir to the throne. It was a subject Earl Mountbatten discussed endlessly with the Queen during afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace while Prince Philip let it be known that he was growing impatient with his son’s irresponsible approach to marriage. The ghost of the Duke of Windsor haunted the minds of the family, patently aware that the older he became the more difficult it would be to find a virginal, Protestant aristocrat to be his bride.
His quest for a wife had developed into a national pastime. The Prince, then nearly 33, had already made himself a hostage to fortune by declaring that 30 was a suitable age to settle down. He publicly acknowledged the problems of finding a suitable bride. ‘Marriage is a much more important business than falling in love. I think one must concentrate on marriage being essentially a question of mutual love and respect for each other … Essentially you must be good friends, and love, I’m sure, will grow out of that friendship. I have a particular responsibility to ensure that I make the right decision. The last thing I could possibly entertain is getting divorced.’
On another occasion he declared that marriage was a partnership where his wife was not simply marrying the man but a way of life. As he said: ‘If I’m deciding on whom I want to live with for fifty years – well, that’s the last decision I want my head to be ruled by my heart.’ Thus marriage in his eyes was primarily the discharge of an obligation to his family and the nation, a task made all the more difficult by the immutable nature of the contract. In his pragmatic search for a partner to fulfil a role, love and happiness were secondary considerations.
The meeting which was to set Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer irrevocably on the road to St Paul’s Cathedral took place in July 1980 on a hay bale at the home of Commander Robert de Pass, a friend of Prince Philip, and his wife Philippa, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Diana was invited to stay at their house in Petworth, West Sussex, by their son Philip. ‘You’re a young blood,’ he told her, ‘you might amuse him.’
During the weekend she drove to nearby Cowdray Park to watch the Prince play polo for his team, Les Diables Bleus. At the end of the game the small house party trooped back to Petworth for a barbecue in the grounds of the de Pass’ country home. Diana was seated next to Charles on a bale of hay and, after the usual pleasantries, the conversation moved on to Earl Mountbatten’s death and his funeral in Westminster Abbey. In a conversation which she later recalled to friends Diana told him: ‘You looked so sad when you walked up the aisle at Lord Mountbatten’s funeral. It was the most tragic thing I’ve ever seen. My heart bled for you when I watched. I thought: “It’s wrong, you’re lonely, you should be with somebody to look after you.”’
Her words touched a deep chord. Charles saw Diana with new eyes. Suddenly, as she later told her friends, she found herself overwhelmed by his enthusiastic attentions. Diana was flattered, flustered and bewildered by the passion she had aroused in a man 12 years her senior. They resumed their conversation, chatting away late into the evening. The Prince, who had important paperwork to attend to at Buckingham Palace, asked her to drive back with him the following day. She refused on the grounds that it would be rude to her hosts.
However, from then on their relationship began to develop. Her flatmate, Carolyn Bartholomew, recalled: ‘Prince Charles was coming quietly on to the scene. She certainly had a special place for him in her heart.’ He invited her to a performance of Verdi’s Requiem – one of her favourite works – at the Royal Albert Hall. Her grandmother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, went along as their chaperone and accompanied them when they returned to Buckingham Palace for a cold buffet supper in his apartments. His memo to his valet, Stephen Barry, relating to the meeting is typical of the elaborate planning undertaken for the simplest royal date. It read: ‘Please ring Captain Anthony Asquith [a former equerry] before going out shooting and tell him that I have asked Lady Diana Spencer (Lady Fermoy’s granddaughter) to come to the Albert Hall and dinner afterwards at BP on Sunday evening. Please ask him if this can be arranged and she will arrive with her grandmother at the Albert Hall. If it is all right, please ask him to ring back at lunchtime when we will be in the House. C.’ [The House is Buckingham Palace.]
The problem is that the invitation must have come rather late, as Carolyn recalled: ‘I walked in about six o’clock and Diana went: “Quick, quick I’ve got to meet Charles in 20 minutes.” Well, we had the funniest time ever, getting the hair washed, getting it dried, getting the dress, where’s the dress. We did it in 20 minutes flat. But I mean, how dare he ask her so late.’
She had scarcely recovered her composure from that frantic evening before he invited her to join him on the royal yacht Britannia during Cowes Week. For many years the royal yacht, the oldest ship in the Royal Navy until it was decommissioned in 1997, was a familiar sight in the waters of the Solent during the August regatta and Prince Philip played host to a party which usually included his German relatives along with Princess Alexandra, her husband, the late Honourable Sir Angus Ogilvy, and numerous yachting friends.
On that weekend Diana had Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, Princess Margaret’s daughter, and Susan Deptford, who later became Major Ronald Ferguson’s second wife, to keep her company. She went water skiing while Prince Charles went windsurfing. Stories that she lightheartedly tipped him off his board do not ring true of Diana, who was totally in awe of him. Indeed she felt ‘fairly intimidated’ by the atmosphere on board the royal yacht. Not only were his friends so much older than herself, but they seemed aware of Prince Charles’s strategy towards her. She found them too friendly and too knowing. ‘They were all over me like a bad rash,’ she told her friends. For a girl who likes to be in control it was profoundly disconcerting.
There was little time to reflect on the implications as Prince Charles had already asked her to Balmoral for the weekend of the Braemar Games early in September. The Queen’s Highland castle retreat, set in 40,000 acres of heather and grouse moor, is effectively the Windsors’ family seat. Ever since Queen Victoria bought the estate in 1848 it has had a special place in the affections of the royal family. However, the very quirks and obscure family traditions which have accrued over the years can intimidate newcomers. ‘Don’t sit there,’ they chorus at an unfortunate guest foolish enough to try and sit in a chair in the drawing room which was last used by Queen Victoria. Those who successfully navigate this social minefield, popularly known as ‘the Balmoral test’, are accepted by the royal family. The ones who fail vanish from royal favour as quickly as the Highland mists come and go.
So the prospect of her stay at Balmoral loomed large in Diana’s mind. She was ‘terrified’ and desperately wanted to behave in the appropriate manner. Fortunately rather than staying in the main house, she was able to stay with her sister Jane and husband Robert Fellowes who, as he was a member of the royal Household, enjoyed a grace and favour cottage on the estate. Prince Charles rang her every day, suggesting she join him for a walk or a barbecue.
It was a ‘wonderful’ few days until the glint of a pair of binoculars across the river Dee spoiled their idyll. They were carried by royal journalist James Whitaker who had spotted Prince Charles fishing by the banks of the river. The hunters had become the hunted. Diana immediately told Charles that she would make herself scarce so while he continued fishing she hid behind a tree for half an hour hoping vainly that the journalists would go away. Cleverly she used the mirror from her powder compact to watch the unholy trinity of James Whitaker and rival photographers Ken Lennox and Arthur Edwards as they tried to capture her on film. She foiled their efforts by calmly walking straight up throu
gh the pine trees, her head muffled with a headscarf and flat cap, leaving Fleet Street’s finest clueless as to her identity.
They soon picked up her trail and from then on her private life was effectively over. Reporters waited outside her apartment day and night, while photographers badgered her at the Young England kindergarten where she worked. On one occasion she agreed to pose for photographs on the condition that she would then be left alone. Unfortunately during the photo session the light was behind her and made her cotton skirt seem see-through, revealing her legs to the world. ‘I knew your legs were good but I didn’t realize they were that spectacular,’ Prince Charles is reported to have commented. ‘And did you really have to show them to everybody?’
While Prince Charles could afford to be amused, Diana was quickly discovering the exacting price of royal romance. She was telephoned in the early hours of the morning about stories in newspapers and yet dared not take the communal telephone off the hook in case any of their families became ill during the night. Each time she went out in her distinctive red Metro she was followed by a press posse. However, she never lost control, giving polite but non-committal answers to endless questions about her feelings for the Prince. Her engaging smile, her winsome manner and her impeccable behaviour soon endeared her to the public. Her flatmate Carolyn Bartholomew said: ‘She played it just right. She didn’t in any way splash it across the newspapers because that ruined her sister’s chances. Diana was very aware that if anything special had to be cultivated it should take place without any pressure from the press.’
None the less, there was constant stress which tested her reserves to the limit. In the privacy of her apartment she could afford to show her feelings. ‘I cried like a baby to the four walls, I just couldn’t cope with it,’ she recalled. Prince Charles never offered to help and when, in desperation, she contacted the press office at Buckingham Palace, they told her that she was on her own. While they washed their hands of any involvement, Diana dipped deep into her inner resources, drawing upon her instinctive determination to survive.
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