by Tim Clayton
If she said she was going to be there at seven o’clock, she was there at seven o’clock. I think that the Jaguar might have exceeded the speed limit occasionally. We’d be sitting in the sitting room and she’d arrive and I’d go to the front door and let her in the hall and she’d come bouncing in, in an excited mood, and hug my mother and say hello, probably half knocking her over because my mother hadn’t quite got up from her curtsy yet – my mother’s not a tall person and Diana was tall. So she’d arrive and the whole place would come alive and be fun and carefree and jolly.
She’d arrive on a Friday evening and we’d have a dinner party. My mother was about, or my sisters – we generally kept it to family and the personal bodyguard. And they were all great people. So it was a big party atmosphere. Everyone mucking in in the kitchen and helping with the washing up. I mean, she wouldn’t cook but she’d wash up – great laughing times. And then you’d get up and have breakfast and go for a walk or go for a ride, and another dinner party on Saturday night and then get up late on a Sunday morning and read the Sunday papers and either go back on Sunday night or Monday morning. So they were good long periods of relaxation and fun.
I don’t know where people imagined she was. Somebody must be responsible for knowing where a member of the Royal Family is and you can’t just disappear for three, four days – anything could happen to you. So somebody would have known and I remember on more than one occasion she asked my mother if she could use the phone in order to ring Balmoral – which I think is quite amusing. It made me giggle.
It seems unbelievable now that we weren’t found out for a long time – although I think that’s a bit misleading because I think we were known about by those whose business it is to know about these things: the police and the security forces that support the police behind the scenes. It would have been their job to know about it. Also, in the initial stages, for example, going down to Devon: the first time she came down in her Jaguar with a back-up car following and a police car following that. And every time they passed from one police authority area of responsibility to another they’d pick up a different police car. That happened quite a few times till we thought, well, actually that’s rather silly.
Ken Wharfe, Diana’s new protection officer, would sit up late playing poker with Hewitt, then sleep on the couch while his royal boss spent the night with her riding instructor. Hewitt saw all the official back-up and concluded that the relationship was sanctioned at the highest level.
Meanwhile, Diana’s friendship with banker Philip Dunne attracted much speculation. He invited her to join a weekend house party at his parents’ home in Herefordshire. In June 1987 they met again when Charles and Diana attended the wedding of the Marquis of Worcester and the actress Tracy Ward. Charles danced with Anna Wallace and talked to Camilla Parker Bowles. Diana danced flamboyantly with Dunne late into the night. The press seized on what may have been no more than a cleverly laid trail leading away from James Hewitt, who was the main and probably the only significant love interest in Diana’s life for several years to come.
With new self-confidence, Diana was trying to change her public image. Determined to play a more significant part in royal business, she increased the number and seriousness of her solo engagements. One suggestion that came her way was that she should identify herself with the plight of AIDS victims.
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The first British AIDS ward was being opened at London’s Middlesex Hospital. Dr Mike Adler, the clinician in charge, remembered that:
A letter was written to the Palace asking whether a member of the Royal Family would be prepared to open the ward, and I think we actually expressed a preference for Prince Charles. And we got a letter back saying no, he was too busy, but would we consider the Princess of Wales, and we jumped at it.
Many were terrified of AIDS, widely known as ‘the gay plague’. Few understood how the disease was caught, and there was great distrust of anyone who had it. Mike Adler suggested to the Palace that it would do a great deal to ease public anxiety, and remove the stigma attached to AIDS sufferers, if Diana was seen to shake hands with a patient. The Palace initially asked whether the Princess should wear gloves to protect herself. The question may sound ridiculous now, but it is a sign of how bad the situation was. It is to the great credit of the Princess and her advisers that she agreed to the gloveless handshake.
Adler had not met Diana. He hadn’t thought of asking her initially because he assumed she would not be interested in such a serious subject. But, once she agreed, he was quick to realise the potential. He assiduously briefed the media for weeks before the opening. The Middlesex Hospital was combed by Special Branch. Then the day came.
She was clearly nervous when she came in. We did a very short seminar for her and then we took her into the ward. But the moment she started meeting patients she relaxed. And, of course, there was that very famous photograph of her shaking hands with a patient who had AIDS. That was wired all over the world. It made a tremendous impact, just a member of the Royal Family touching someone. It was a colossal impact. It shouldn’t have been but it was.
Shortly afterwards, Diana met Margaret Jay, the head of the National Aids Trust. Soon Diana was Jay’s most valuable asset:
She used to come to Scotland – where there was an enormous problem with AIDS and HIV related to drugs misuse. And she was very good at talking, particularly to young women. I have a mental picture of her kind of sitting on the floor, drinking Nescafe out of mugs and chatting to them about the sort of concerns that they had in their lives. They didn’t feel, in any sense, that this was some figure from a completely different planet who was talking to them, or patronising them in any way.
Diana derived great satisfaction from these personal encounters with suffering, encounters that soon became a feature of all her tours and visits. She later spoke in almost religious terms of the deep serenity she felt as she shared quiet hand-holding moments with the terminally sick, simply sitting, smiling and listening to them speak about their feelings. She said on numerous occasions that she felt strangely happy at times like this and hated being made to break away.
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Sunday evenings at Highgrove settled into a pattern. Diana would leave with the children in the late afternoon. Soon the hot-water pipes would rumble, and around eight Charles would appear dressed in smart jacket, shirt and cravat, and smelling of cologne. One of the detectives would then drive him to Middlewich House.
The most embarrassing part was Diana’s phone calls. Wendy Berry recalls having to lie to the Princess when she asked where her husband was, and then cope with her alternate sadness and fury at the other end of the line. Sometimes Diana would phone Charles while he was in his car on his way to a meeting with Camilla. The conversations were heated, but the car never once turned back. Diana had always believed that Charles was seeing his lover secretly and occasionally, but these new, regular and semi-public assignations carried out in front of people who worked for them both struck her as the keenest humiliation.
But Diana had her riding instructor now, and Charles had made no fuss about it. So why should she get so exercised about Camilla? The answer – as Diana told Hewitt and several other friends – was precisely because it was Camilla, the woman who’d ruined her engagement, her honeymoon, the woman who’d blighted her life. If Charles had chosen to find some extramarital diversion elsewhere, she said she would not have minded. It’s hard to believe that Diana could ever have been comfortable with Charles seeing another woman, but a lower-level fling or two would certainly not have hurt her as much as this.
However much she was worshipped in Tokyo or Ottawa, in the Middlesex Hospital or the Daily Mirror, the people that mattered – her peer group, his peer group – all knew that the Prince of Wales had finally, definitively, turned her down. And no one could help her get him back. Diana told Hewitt that she had made a special visit to the Queen to ask whether she could stop her son seeing Camilla, but she had refused to intervene.
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nbsp; Wendy Berry saw no more attempted hugs in the garden. The two shouted less often, but their remarks were ever more sarcastic and disdainful. Charles read the papers one day and announced: ‘“Difficult Di causes Malice at the Palace” – sounds about right to me.’ Diana asked him one morning, ‘Who is getting the benefit of your wisdom today? The sheep or the raspberry bushes?’ She invented last-minute excuses to stop the children watching Charles play polo, excursions both they and he looked forward to.
In the autumn of 1987 newspapers calculated that Charles and Diana had not spent the night under the same roof for over five weeks. Their mutual friend Jimmy Savile urged them to visit South Wales together to inspect the after-effects of recent flooding. The News of the World hired an expert in body language to study them that day. He noted an aversion to physical contact, finding them nervous, uncomfortable or anxious. ‘The emotional temperature is very, very cold,’ he pronounced. After the tour, Charles went to Balmoral and Diana returned to London. By November 1987 there had been enough leaks for the American magazine Time, summing up British press opinion, to assert with confidence that Charles and Diana were living separate lives.
It quoted the Sunday Times to the effect that ‘It has been impossible to disguise the differences between the Royal couple, and certainly in recent months they appear to have given up even trying.’ The usual flock of royal commentators offered their opinions on the reasons for the disintegrating marriage. ‘A former flatmate of Di’s’ was quoted to the effect that ‘Diana never had a growing-up period of flirtations that most teenage girls have. Diana is now going through that stage, which is something Charles can’t cope with.’ It is easy to forget that Diana was still only just twenty-six. Time concurred with the verdict of the Sunday Times: ‘The fairy-tale romance peddled so avidly by the world’s media has gone. In its place, after all the hubbub has died down, is a marriage demystified and much like any other – vulnerable.’
Nevertheless, Time predicted that they would preserve their marriage together. In a remark that was typical of the bitchier tones in Buckingham Palace, ‘one palace source’ told them that ‘Diana wanted to be Charles’s wife from the age of 15 and will do nothing to jeopardise this now’. They had, it appeared, come to a typical aristocratic arrangement.
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By 1988 an understanding was developing – a largely unspoken understanding, and one with which the Princess was only sometimes minded to comply. Nevertheless, both partners were happier than they had been. Charles and Diana were together at Highgrove in February and outwardly much calmer. Then came a skiing accident at Klosters. Equerry Major Hugh Lindsay was killed in an avalanche after Charles’s party had skied down a dangerous off-piste slope. Patti Palmer-Tomkinson was seriously injured and Charles was only yards from death himself. Diana – who had stayed indoors that day – was widely praised inside and outside the family for the way she handled a very shocked and guilt-stricken husband, stopping him from skiing again the following day as, in his disturbed state, he had first wanted to do.
During this ‘truce of equal indifference’, weekdays were spent on separate royal duties, and Charles was rarely seen at Kensington Palace. Highgrove was effectively shared, one weekend his, one weekend hers. Staff there witnessed frequent visits from Hewitt and noticed an ‘air of relaxed domesticity between Diana and James’. Hewitt chased the children around the garden and joined in pillow fights with protection officer Ken Wharfe. He found it
quite weird being at Highgrove because it didn’t seem very homely. It was far harder to relax there than in Devon because there was staff there with all that that entails. When you walked around the gardens the security camera followed you. The camera watched you having a swim in the swimming pool. Inside the house it was a little more relaxed. Occasionally my mother stayed as a guest at Highgrove and my sister, and on occasions other friends of Diana’s came, such as Carolyn Bartholomew. So that was nice as well.
In my experience Diana enjoyed it there. She liked the place. The reports that she was a London girl, she only liked Kensington Palace and that she hated to go down to Highgrove, were totally inaccurate. I suppose at times it was difficult for her. I don’t think she liked to be there alone. But she loved the countryside, she loved her riding, although she never really got over her fear, she liked shooting, and the whole way of life, of countryside pursuits and living in the country. In my experience she loved that.
When it was Charles’s turn to have the house he would go out for dinner and return very late. On other weekends Diana would go to Devon to stay with Hewitt’s mother and sister. There she enjoyed something resembling normal life.
We’d go for a walk along the beach at Budleigh Salterton, along the pebbled beach there. I was quite happy staying at home but she would suggest that it would be nice to go for a walk or go out and, you know, walk off lunch or whatever. Budleigh Salterton by the seaside was a favourite. She’d put on a hat or, I mean we weren’t trying to sort of flaunt anything, so a disguise of sorts was used – just a hat. We passed people and you would wonder whether she’d be recognised. But people don’t pay much attention. So it worked – we were able to do that. And we’d walk across Woodbury Common, which was fairly wild and open – it’s like a moor – which was great, but again there was a danger of bumping into people. We would try and avoid crowds – if we saw too many cars parked in the carpark we’d move somewhere quieter – you’re able to do that in Devon. Then we’d ride in the riding school at home and in the fields and up the lanes. So as near as damn it, it was a normal existence. Of course, when we went walking either Ken, Allan or Peter [the royal protection officers] would be in close attendance or within range for me to contact them by radio. So we weren’t being stupid.
But being away from the pressure of work, the pressure of London, the pressure of life and of living in a glass bowl and being married to a future king – that was where there was a relief valve.
In Devon even the detectives relaxed. Shirley Hewitt recalls:
one in particular was a very good chef, and he said he’d cook dinner for us one night. So having got all the necessary ingredients for him I thought, ‘That’s marvellous I can go and sit down and I can enjoy James and Diana’s company and be a guest in my own house.’ And dishes were clattering away and suddenly he burst forth into some operatic aria and it was just so wonderful to hear it because he had quite a good voice as well.
Whenever Diana came to stay she brought a little gift.
they were never over the top they were the sort of gifts that one would perhaps give oneself when going away. Then she discovered that we liked a little tipple after our dinner at night and so she nicked a bottle of orange vodka from the cellar – I think it was made at Highgrove by their cook – and it was excellent. Thereafter, each time she came down she managed to smuggle a bottle. I should think Prince Charles must’ve thought he had a secret drinker in the house.
Shirley Hewitt remembers above all one particularly idyllic hot summer night when they all ate out under the stars:
we were on the terrace having supper and she sat back in the chair and looked up and looked around and she said, ‘Christ, this is such a lovely place!’ I’ve always remembered that actually. She seemed to be so, you know, this is just heaven. It was merely an ordinary supper, but it was a lovely night.
Diana and Hewitt shared a fantasy future together: peering through estate agents’ brochures and picking out country houses in which they would live; daydreaming about walks along country lanes, their future children riding ponies in the paddock.
She would say that she wanted a quieter life and a different existence. She would say it would be great to just be an army wife. I expect a lot of army wives would disagree with that, but that’s what she wanted. That’s what she said she wanted. To find some small, cottagey-type longhouse in Devon – nothing big, grand or majestic but somewhere that’s cosy and comfortable. A bit of a sort of dream cottage. We spoke about that at length quite often.
The love affair was evidently precious to Diana but in Devon she had also found something else that she craved – a relaxed and informal family life of a kind that was just not available where your husband was the future King. She enjoyed being with Hewitt’s mother and sisters and kept in touch with them when she was away on tour.
One would be sitting at the kitchen table having a supper, probably quite tired at the end of the day, and the phone might go and it would be Diana ringing from some outlandish place where she’d escaped to her bedroom just ringing to see how we all were. And it wasn’t just a three-minute hello how are you, I’m here in such and such a country but she would want to know what one had been doing and she’d chat away . . .
By now Hewitt was more relaxed about the treasonous aspect of his relationship with the Princess of Wales.
I don’t think I’d be far wrong suggesting that it was authorised by those who may be making executive decisions from on high – I don’t know if it’s done by committee or what, but quite clearly it was known about and presumably – you know, it could have been stopped.
Charles knew about the extent of our relationship, in the same way that Diana told me the extent of the relationship between Mrs Parker Bowles and Prince Charles. But also he would have been briefed about it by the firm, on two fronts really, politically speaking and for security reasons.
Diana told me that she had discussed our relationship with her husband. I don’t know what was said – they discussed all sorts of personal things that I didn’t really want to know about. It was a tacit understanding between Diana and Charles that I was a part of her life in the same way that Mrs Parker Bowles was part of Prince Charles’s life. Not only that – I’m suggesting that it was understood by those who are in political authority over us, and security, and by the royal household. You know, those three factions knew about the extent of the relationship yet nothing was done, no approach was made to stop it.