In public, however, Diana appeared buoyant and happy. She joined in a singsong in the sailors’ mess, playing ‘What shall we do with a drunken sailor?’ after drinking from a can of beer. ‘We were all tickled pink,’ recalls one sailor. One moonlit night they enjoyed a barbecue in a bay on the coast of Ithaca. It was organized by the yacht’s officers, who did all the cooking. After they had eaten, a Royal Marine accordionist came ashore, song sheets were handed out, and the night air rang to the sound of Boy Scout songs and sea shanties.
In its own way, the honeymoon finale was the high point of the trip. For days the officers and men had rehearsed a farewell concert. There were more than 14 acts, from stand-up comics to bawdy singalongs. The royal couple returned to Britain looking fit, tanned and very much in love and flew to join the Queen and the rest of the royal family on the Balmoral estate.
But the Highland mists did little to soothe Diana’s troubled spirit. Indeed when they arrived at Balmoral, where they stayed from August to late October, the full impact of life as Princess of Wales began to hit home. She had believed, like many others in the royal family, that her fame would be transitory, her star soon fading following the wedding. Everyone, even newspaper editors, was caught unawares by the Princess Diana phenomenon. Their readers could not get enough of Diana; her face was on every magazine cover, every aspect of her life attracted comment and anyone who had ever known her was tracked down to be interviewed by the voracious media.
In a little under a year this insecure High School dropout had undergone a process of deification by press and public. Her very ordinariness was celebrated; everyday gestures such as opening a car door herself or buying a bag of sweets were acclaimed as evidence of a very human princess. Everyone was infected, even the royal family’s guests at Balmoral that autumn. Diana was profoundly confused. She had not altered overmuch in the 12 months since she was covering cars with eggs and flour and ringing doorbells with her giggling friends.
As she mingled with the guests at the Queen’s Scottish home she realized that she was no longer treated as a person but as a position, no longer a flesh and blood human being with thoughts and feelings but a symbol where the very title ‘Her Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales’ distanced her not only from the wider public but from those within the intimate royal circle. Protocol decreed that she should be addressed as ‘Your Royal Highness’ on first reference and ‘Ma’am’ thereafter. Of course everyone curtsied too. Diana was disconcerted. ‘Don’t call me ma’am, call me Duch,’ she told a friend shortly after her marriage. But no matter how much she tried she could not prevent the shift in perceptions towards her.
She realized that everyone looked at her with new eyes, handling her like a precious piece of porcelain to be admired but not touched. Diana was treated with kid gloves when all she needed was some sensible advice, a cuddle and a consoling word. Yet the confused young woman who was the real Diana was in grave danger of drowning in the tidal wave of change which had turned her world upside-down. For the watching world, she smiled and laughed, seeming perfectly delighted with her husband and newfound status. At a famous photocall by the Bridge of Dee on the Balmoral estate, Diana told the assembled media that she could ‘highly recommend’ married life. However, away from the cameras and microphones, the couple argued continually. Diana was always on edge, suspecting Camilla’s presence in Charles’s every action. At times she believed that he was seeking Camilla’s advice about his marriage or making arrangements to see her. As a close friend commented: ‘They had shocking rows about her, real stinkers, and I don’t blame Diana one bit.’
She lived on an emotional see-saw, her jealousy matched by a sublime devotion to Charles. Diana was still totally besotted with him and Charles, in his own way, in love with her. They went for long rambles around the hills which overlook Balmoral and as they lay in the heather he read out passages from books by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung or Laurens van der Post. Charles was happy and if he was content, so was Diana. The touching love letters they exchanged were testimony to that growing bond of affection.
But these romantic interludes were mere pauses in Diana’s worries about public life, anxieties which did little to subdue her bulimic condition. She was continually sick, her weight falling drastically until she had literally shrunk to ‘skin and bone’. At this critical juncture in her life she felt that there was no one in whom she could confide. She assumed, correctly, that the Queen and other members of the royal family would take her husband’s side. In any event the royal family, both by training and inclination, shy away from emotional breast beating. They live in a world of contained feelings and regimented activity. It was assumed by them that Diana would somehow be able to assume their rigid code of behaviour overnight.
Nor did she feel she could approach her own family for assistance. Her parents and sisters were sympathetic but expected her to conform to the existing status quo. Her girlfriends, particularly her former flatmates, would have rallied round but she did not feel that she could inflict upon them such a burden of responsibility. She sensed that, like the rest of the world, they wanted the royal fairytale to work. They believed in the myth and Diana could not bring herself to tell them the awful truth. She was terribly alone and dreadfully exposed. Inexorably her thoughts turned to suicide, not because she wanted to die but because she desperately wanted help.
Her husband took matters into his own hands by asking Laurens van der Post to come to Scotland to see what he could do. His ministrations had little effect so in early October she flew to London for professional counselling. She saw several doctors and psychologists at Buckingham Palace. They prescribed various tranquillizers to calm her down and recover her equilibrium. However, Diana vigorously fought against their advice. She knew in her heart that she did not need drugs, she needed rest, patience and understanding from those around her. Just as she was bombarded by voices telling her to accept the doctors’ recommendations she discovered that she was pregnant. ‘Thank Heavens for William,’ she later said as it meant she could now quite properly forsake the pills she was proffered by arguing that she did not want to risk harming the baby she was carrying.
Her pregnancy was a reprieve. It was a reprieve that would not last long.
4
‘My Cries for Help’
The sound of voices raised in anger and hysterical sobbing could be plainly heard coming from the suite of rooms occupied by the Prince and Princess of Wales at Sandringham House. It was shortly after Christmas but there was little festive feeling between the royal couple. Diana was then three months pregnant with Prince William and felt absolutely wretched. Her relationship with Prince Charles was rapidly unravelling. The Prince seemed incapable of understanding or wishing to comprehend the turmoil in Diana’s life. She was suffering dreadfully from morning sickness, she was haunted by Camilla Parker Bowles and she was desperately trying to accommodate herself to her new position and new family.
As she later told friends: ‘One minute I was a nobody, the next minute I was Princess of Wales, mother, media toy, member of this family, and it was just too much for one person to handle.’ She had pleaded, cajoled and quarrelled violently as she tried to win the Prince’s assistance. In vain. On that January day in 1982, her first New Year within the royal family, she now threatened to take her own life. He accused her of crying wolf and prepared to go riding on the Sandringham estate. She was as good as her word. Standing on top of the wooden staircase she hurled herself to the ground, landing in a heap at the bottom.
The Queen was one of the first to arrive on the scene. She was horrified, physically shaking with the shock of what she had witnessed. A local doctor was summoned while George Pinker, Diana’s gynaecologist, travelled from London to visit his royal patient. Her husband simply dismissed her plight and carried on with his plan to go riding. Fortunately Diana was not seriously hurt by the fall although she did suffer severe bruising around her stomach. A full check-up revealed that the foetus had not been injured.
The incident was one of many domestic crises which crowded in upon the royal couple in those tumultuous early days. At every turning point they put a greater distance between each other. As James Gilbey observed of her suicide attempts: ‘They were messages of complete desperation. Please, please help.’ In the first years of their married life, Diana made several suicide bids and numerous threats. It should be emphasized that they were not serious attempts to take her life but cries for help.
On one occasion she threw herself against a glass display cabinet at Kensington Palace while on another she slashed at her wrists with a razor blade. Another time she cut herself with the serrated edge of a lemon slicer; on yet another occasion, during a heated argument with Prince Charles, she picked up a penknife lying on his dressing table and cut her chest and her thighs. Although she was bleeding her husband studiously scorned her. As ever he thought that she was faking her problems. Later on, her sister Jane, who saw her shortly afterwards, remarked on the score marks on her body. Jane was horrified when she learned the truth.
As Diana later told friends: ‘They were desperate cries for help. I just needed time to adjust to my new position.’ One friend who watched their relationship deteriorate points to Prince Charles’s disinterest and total lack of respect for her at a time when Diana badly needed help. ‘His indifference pushed her to the edge whereas he could have romanced her to the end of the world. They could have set the world alight. Through no fault of his own, because of his own ignorance, upbringing and lack of a whole relationship with anyone in his life, he instilled this hatred of herself.’
This is a partisan appraisal. In the early days of their marriage Prince Charles did, for a time, try to ease his wife into the royal routine. Her first big test was a three-day visit to Wales in October 1981. The crowds made it painfully obvious who was the new star of the show – the Princess of Wales. Charles was left apologizing for not having enough wives to go round. If he took one side of the street during a walkabout the crowd collectively groaned, it was his wife they had come to see. ‘I seem to do nothing but collect flowers these days,’ he said. ‘I know my role.’ Behind the smiles there were other muttered concerns. The first sight of the Princess on a rainswept quayside in Wales came as a shock to royal watchers. It was the first chance to see Diana close up since the long honeymoon and it was like looking at a different woman. She wasn’t just slim, she was painfully thin.
She had lost weight before the wedding; that was only to be expected – but the girl moving through the crowds, shaking hands and accepting flowers, looked positively transparent. Diana was two months pregnant – and feeling worse than she looked. She chose the wrong clothes for the torrential rain which followed their every move, she was wracked by severe morning sickness and absolutely overwhelmed by the crowds who turned out to see her.
Diana admitted that she wasn’t easy to handle during that baptism of fire. She was often in tears as they travelled to the various venues, telling her husband that she simply could not face the crowds. She didn’t have the energy or the resources to cope with the prospect of meeting so many people. There were times, many times, when she longed to be back in her safe bachelor apartment with her jolly, uncomplicated friends.
While Prince Charles sympathized with his tearful wife he insisted that the royal roadshow had to go on. He was understandably apprehensive when Diana made her first speech, partly in Welsh, at Cardiff City Hall when she was presented with the Freedom of the City. While Diana passed that test with aplomb, she discovered another truism about royal life. However well she did, however hard she tried, she never earned a word of praise from her husband, the royal family or their courtiers. In her vulnerable, lonely position a little applause would have worked wonders. ‘I remember her saying that she was trying so damn hard and all she needed was a pat on the back,’ recalled a friend. ‘But it wasn’t forthcoming.’ Every day she fought back the waves of nausea in order to fulfil her public engagements. She had such a morbid fear of letting down her husband and the royal family ‘firm’ that she performed her official duties when she was quite clearly unwell. On two occasions she had to cancel engagements, on others she looked pale and sickly, acutely aware that she was not helping her husband. At least after her pregnancy was officially announced on 5 November 1981 Diana could publicly discuss her condition. The weary Princess said: ‘Some days I felt terrible. No one told me I would feel like I did.’ She confessed to a passion for bacon and tomato sandwiches and took to telephoning her friend, Sarah Ferguson, the daughter of Charles’s polo manager, Major Ronald Ferguson. The irrepressible redhead regularly left her job at a London art dealer and drove round to Buckingham Palace to cheer up the royal mother-to-be.
In private it was no better. She stalwartly refused to take any drugs, once again arguing that she could not hold herself responsible if the baby were born deformed, perhaps thinking back to her elder brother who died soon after birth. At the same time she acknowledged that she was now seen by the rest of the royal family as ‘a problem’. At formal dinners at Sandringham or Windsor Castle she frequently had to leave the table to be ill. Instead of simply going to bed, she insisted on returning, believing that it was her duty to try and fulfil her obligations.
If daily life was difficult, public duties were a nightmare. The visit to Wales had been a triumph but Diana had felt overwhelmed by her popularity, the size of the crowds and the proximity of the media. She was riding a tiger and there was no way of escape. For the first few months she trembled at the thought of performing an official engagement on her own. Where possible she would join Charles and remain by his side, silent, attentive but still terrified. When she accepted her first solo public duty, to switch on the Christmas lights at Regent Street in London’s West End, she was paralysed with nerves. She felt sick as she made a brief speech which was delivered in a rapid monotone. At the end of that engagement she was glad to return home to Buckingham Palace.
It didn’t get any easier. The girl who would only appear in school plays if she had a non-speaking part was now centre stage. It took, by her own admission, six years before she felt comfortable appearing in her starring role. Fortunately for her the camera had already fallen in love with the new royal cover girl. However nervous she may have felt inside, her warm smile and unaffected manner were a photographer’s delight. For once the camera did lie, not about the beauty she was becoming but in camouflaging the vulnerable personality behind her effortless capacity to dazzle.
She believed that she was able to smile through the pain thanks to qualities she inherited from her mother. When friends asked how she was able to display such a sunny public countenance she said: ‘I’ve got what my mother has got. However bloody you are feeling you can put on the most amazing show of happiness. My mother is an expert at that and I’ve picked it up. It kept the wolves from the door.’
The ability to become this smiling persona in public was helped by the nature of Diana’s bulimia, her binging and purging allowing her to maintain a relatively steady weight. At the same time Diana’s healthy lifestyle of regular exercise, little alcohol and early nights gave her the energy to carry on with her royal duties.
At the same time her deep sense of duty and obligation impelled her to keep up appearances for the sake of the public. As she later recalled: ‘The public side of her was very different from the private side. They wanted a fairy princess to come and touch them and turn everything into gold. All their worries would be forgotten. Little did they realize that the individual was crucifying herself inside.’ Diana, an unwilling international media celebrity, was having to learn on the hoof. There was no training, backup or advice from within the royal system. Everything was piecemeal and haphazard. Charles’s courtiers were used to dealing with a bachelor of fixed habits and a set routine. Marriage changed all that. During the preparations for the wedding there was consternation that Prince Charles would not be able to afford his share of the expense. ‘Sums were worked out on the backs of envel
opes, it was chaos,’ recalled one former member of his Household. The momentum which continued long after the wedding took everyone by surprise. Even though extra staff were drafted in, Diana herself sat down to answer many of the 47,000 letters of congratulation and 10,000 gifts which the wedding generated.
She frequently had to pinch herself with the absurdity of it all. One moment she was cleaning floors for a living, the next receiving a pair of brass candlesticks from the King and Queen of Sweden or making small talk with the President of Somewhere or Other. Fortunately her upbringing had given her the social training to cope with these situations. This was just as well because the federal structure of the royal family means that everyone keeps to their own province.
As well as coming to terms with her public role, the fledgling princess had two houses to furnish and decorate. Prince Charles admired her sense of style and colour and left the burden of decoration to her. However, she did need professional help. She welcomed her mother’s suggestion of Dudley Poplak, a discreet South African-born interior designer who had furnished her own homes. He set to work on Apartments Eight and Nine at Kensington Palace and Highgrove.
His main task was tastefully to accommodate as many wedding presents into their new homes as was practicable. An 18th-century travelling commode from the Duke and Duchess of Wellington, a pair of Georgian chairs from the people of Bermuda and wrought-iron gates from the neighbouring village of Tetbury were just a sample of the cornucopia of presents which had descended on the royal couple.
For much of her pregnancy Diana stayed at Buckingham Palace while painters and carpenters worked at their new London home. It wasn’t until five weeks before Prince William was born that the royal couple moved into Kensington Palace, the home also of Princess Margaret, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and their immediate neighbours, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. By then Diana was truly at the end of her tether. She was constantly watched by photographers and reporters while newspapers commented on her every action. Unknown to the Princess, the Queen had already summoned Fleet Street newspaper editors to Buckingham Palace where her press secretary requested that Diana be given a little peace and privacy. The request was ignored.
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