by Tim Clayton
People who joined the royal household about this time tell us that they were discreetly informed about the difficulties in the marriage and the joint affairs, and confirm that Charles and Diana and the royal household had reached a tacit understanding about them. But the courtiers were worried about the strength of Diana’s commitment to the pact:
When I arrived at Buckingham Palace, I was told the problems, that they could occasionally bear to be together in public, but couldn’t bear to be alone together. There was an accommodation for a couple of years, Charles and Camilla, Diana and Hewitt. The problem was she couldn’t stick to it. This was a girl who had no stability, didn’t have the intellectual rigour or the concentration, or the sense of duty to stick it out.
Hewitt’s confidence that his role in Diana’s life was being tacitly encouraged by the Prince of Wales was made even firmer when he was invited to Charles’s fortieth birthday party in November 1988. Hewitt took great satisfaction from the evident fact that Diana was much happier and more relaxed than when they had met. With him she might have been, but there were still angry late-night phone calls to her other friends, during which Diana would complain of the unfairness of her life. Whatever she got from Hewitt, and however many dreams she shared with him, it was never quite enough to forget or forgive the wrongs that she believed had been done to her by her husband, ‘that woman’ and the firm.
Diana’s continued isolation and need for emotional support shine through many of the letters she wrote at this time. They are warm, affectionate and yet faintly sad, accompanied by numerous teenagerish exclamation marks and little smiley faces down the side. One regular correspondent was former boss Kay Seth-Smith.
She was a remarkable letter-writer. I sent her a birthday card and was very surprised to receive a letter thanking me, for the card. I mean a thank-you letter for a birthday card in itself was fairly remarkable, but the fact that it actually had been written on the day of her birthday I found rather sad, because I felt she should have been doing other things than sitting there writing thank-you letters for birthday cards.
* * *
There were periods when Diana was with the Royal Family or working, and she could not see Hewitt. They invented a little sign system to communicate secretly:
She said, for example, ‘I’ll play with my ear or flick my nose when I’m on television, which means I’m thinking about you.’ I said, ‘Well, I’ll watch out for it, then.’
They bought each other presents and made little pacts:
She had quite badly bitten nails when I first met her and I just think that, you know, nicely manicured hands are quite attractive and so I said, ‘Look, how can I bribe you to stop biting your nails?’ She said, ‘Well, I’d like a pair of earrings,’ and I said, ‘OK, well, if you stop biting your nails then I’ll buy you a pair of earrings. What sort of earrings would you like?’ And she said, ‘Emerald, so they are quite difficult to find.’ So I sold a horse and bought her the earrings.
As time went by Diana became bolder and more determined to spend as much time as possible with Hewitt. One day in the late summer of 1988 they were working out when they could next meet. Diana invited Hewitt to Highgrove for the weekend, but he had to excuse himself because the regimental polo team had reached the final of the hotly contested Captains and Subalterns Cup.
I said, ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve got to play in a match on Saturday in Tidworth.’ And she said, ‘Oh dear! Well, can I come and watch?’ I said, ‘Well, that’s going to be very difficult, isn’t it? I’d love you to, but I mean that’s going to be really obvious.’ She said, ‘Oh, I suppose so, you’re right.’ She said, ‘Who are you playing?’ And I said, ‘We’re playing the 13/18th Royal Hussars.’ And you could see her face light up, and a twinkle in her eye and she immediately got a plan together in her mind. She said, ‘I’m Colonel of the 13/18th.’ So she rang up the commanding officer and said, ‘I understand that your regimental Captains and Subalterns polo team are playing on Saturday.’ And he said, ‘Oh yes, ma’am.’ And she said, ‘Oh, well, can I come and watch?’ And they were surprised and delighted, of course.
We took a picnic – the Life Guards team which was myself, Rupert Mackenzie-Hill, Milo Watson, Giles Stibbe and a chap called Christopher Mitford Slade. My mother and my sisters and a few other friends came to support and watch and it was a lovely day, I remember, a sunny day, and Tidworth Ground is wonderful, so it lends itself to a nice picnic before the match. So we were sitting behind the cars, the boot of the car open, with a picnic on our dirty old horse blanket, and she had to attend lunch in the officers’ mess. I think she was in the pavilion near by. She had told the commanding officer to keep it a bit low key, but of course he had organised lunch to which she went. Then she just cut away from that and came and joined us at our picnic, which must have seemed very strange to the poor commanding officer of the 13/18th.
I obviously knew exactly what was happening. I told the rest of the team – I was captain of the team. I said, ‘Keep it to yourselves, chaps, but Diana’s coming. She’s Colonel of the opposition.’ Anyway, we arrived and got our picnic gear out and the commanding officer of the 13/18th came over to me and said, ‘James, I think you ought to know, just keep this to yourself, but the Princess of Wales is coming to support us. You may just want to be aware so you can follow the right protocol and all that.’ I said, ‘Oh, thank you very much indeed, Colonel, for letting me know that.’ He was oblivious to the fact that I already knew that, and the rest of the details, and the reasons why, or the real reasons. It was a lovely, lovely day.
She came over and just plonked herself down and I said, ‘Well, what are you doing?’ She said, ‘Oh, there’s a stuffy lunch going on, or something.’ I said, ‘Well, you ought to be there.’ And she said, ‘No, I said I was just coming over to give the opposition a bit of encouragement. They looked as though they were suffering a bit having their curled-up sandwiches instead of this smoked salmon.’
And I think we won by a good margin of six, seven goals probably. I’m not quite sure when she was asked to present the cup – I suppose she might have been asked at lunch by the commanding officer if she’d be kind enough to present the winners with the Captains and Subalterns Cup, which was huge. It’s a wonderful piece of silver. Anyway, she said she would.
It was just wonderful to go up and receive the cup from her. And that small memento, a bottle of champagne for each person. So you go up and bow. It was quite amusing. I don’t think she could speak, other than saying well done. I think she was about to get the giggles and she didn’t really say very much to me at all. But she looked at me and I looked at her and we didn’t really need to say anything and I could see that she was about to get the giggles so I said thank you very much and walked back as quickly as I could. And then she actually held the others in conversation, putting on a wonderful show. She said to Rupert Mackenzie, ‘Oh, wonderful, I’ve heard so much about you.’ She was just having great fun.
* * *
So carefree was Diana about her relationship with James Hewitt that her new equerry, Patrick Jephson, feared credible evidence of it would soon emerge.
That anxiety was heightened by the kind of effort at innocent social contact which gives illicit lovers such a thrill but fools practically nobody. I imagine a similar anxiety existed among the Prince’s staff as they quietly accommodated his need for Mrs Parker Bowles.
Diana gave James Hewitt a gold cross with the inscription ‘I will love you forever’. Hewitt and Charles still occasionally met at polo matches.
We saw each other from time to time at polo – weren’t, you know, closest buddies but knew each other to say hello and how are you and how’s it going. He played occasionally on the same team as me as well as against me. Actually on this particular occasion we were on the same team and so he came over and said hello, how are things and how’s the riding instruction going? How’s my wife getting on? And I said, ‘Actually, very well – we’ll soon have her in the hunting fi
eld, sir.’ And then I think he looked rather sideways at me at that suggestion, I think he thought I might have been serious, but there we are.
Hewitt also saw Andrew Parker Bowles from time to time in his regiment’s officers’ mess. He was now the Colonel Commanding the Household Cavalry, and thus Hewitt’s commanding officer. From time to time Hewitt exchanged pleasantries with the husband of his lover’s husband’s mistress. He marvelled at the finesse of it all. All the parties knew exactly what all the others were doing, and so did some others in the mess, but no one ever referred to it. All very civilised, all very grown-up.
But Diana was not always prepared to play the game. In February 1989 she went to a party at Lady Annabel Goldsmith’s house on Ham Common. She knew that Camilla would be present, but she had been encouraged by Hewitt to hold her head up high.
I said: ‘Camilla, I would just like you to know that I know exactly what is going on between you and Charles, I wasn’t born yesterday . . . I’m sorry I’m in the way, I obviously am in the way and it must be hell for both of you but I do know what is going on. Don’t treat me like an idiot.’ . . . In the car on the way back my husband was over me like a bad rash and I cried like I have never cried before – it was anger, it was seven years’ pent up anger coming out.
After so many months of the civilised, grown-up approach, Camilla must have been confused. Surely Diana had now accepted her place in Charles’s life? But she said nothing to provoke her future Queen, limiting herself to a deep and over-elaborate curtsy as Diana swept out of the room.
* * *
In the autumn of 1989 Hewitt was given a two-year posting to Germany. He had originally agreed to the ceremonial duties and the period at headquarters on the basis that he would then be given charge of a combat squadron. Now he was offered the role that he had wanted, which was an important stage on the road to promotion. Moreover, there was trouble in the East and the British Army was in a state of high alert. It was possible that Soviet tanks would come to the aid of the embattled East German government, and the situation was highly unstable and tense.
He could not bring himself to tell Diana until the last moment – the posting would reduce their time together to rare weekends. She wanted to pull some strings to keep him close. When he forbade her, she felt let down.
It was a shock but there was a way around it. I mean, the idea of being in Germany wasn’t as horrific as it may first appear because, let’s face it, it wasn’t as though we were living together. We were seeing each other two, three times a week, perhaps once a week, and that pattern could have continued in Germany as long as I wasn’t on exercise. But actually the pace of life in the army in Germany is a bit quicker and you are quite busy – particularly at that time when it wasn’t necessarily a case of if the Russians come over the border, it was when are they going to?
In reality I wasn’t able to get back, certainly during the initial stages. It was a very busy period – the transition and retraining, going from armoured cars on to tanks. And, you know, I had quite a responsibility to train the men and to retrain myself and to be there.
After a while it just sort of petered out. I think she felt that I let her down badly by doing that, and I think she needed someone around her and I wasn’t there to be around her.
* * *
They hardly spoke for the rest of the year. Hewitt trained his tank crews and watched the news coverage as, in Berlin, youths tore down the Wall from both sides. The Russians did not come to the support of the East German regime. The Cold War was ending. The old established boundaries were being torn down and nobody knew what would follow.
9
Miracle on Henry Street
* * *
‘Verona, guess what? I just got a call from the mayor’s office. Now sit down before I tell you this.’
Verona Middleton-Jeter’s first thought was that the programme had lost its funding. The threat had been hanging over them for some time. She leaned against the window and for a moment looked out over Baruch Place. Under her breath she whispered, ‘Oh no.’ But her boss, Danny Kronenfeld, had different news. ‘You’ll never imagine who wants to come to Henry Street . . . Princess Di.’
Not the money – good. But Verona’s first reaction was far from positive. ‘Now what do I have to do, take time for this? How’s she going to help us, Danny, she’s not even from this country. How’s she going to help the homeless people in New York City?’
‘Verona, don’t you get it?’
* * *
Verona had taught on a pioneering programme in Atlanta and brought one of her favourite students, Frances Drayton, up to New York to help her manage the Henry Street shelter for the homeless and for battered women in Manhattan’s tough, poor Lower East Side. Here, amid the crumbling high-rise housing projects strung out along the edge of the East River Drive, the two women supervised dormitories, nurseries, resettlement and training programmes and generally sought to improve the lives of several hundred temporary and permanent residents. Many had been down as far as it’s possible to go: sleeping rough, beaten by their partners, addicted to drugs, selling their bodies.
Henry Street was one of the best-managed social welfare programmes in America, widely praised for its policy of employing the formerly homeless and battered to help others in similar situations. Lives were changed by Henry Street, dozens every year. To achieve that needed the dedication of Frances and the other workers. It also needed money, and in New York money follows publicity, which is why Danny Kronenfeld was so excited about this English princess.
Danny said, ‘We need to get our message out. The way we approach families, the fact that we insist on being respectful, insist on helping people to help themselves, rather than doing it all for them.’
Danny told Verona that even if Princess Diana could do little herself to help she’d get Henry Street’s name out. Verona talked it through with Frances. They were both unsure. There had been a lot of celebrity visits in the past and both women had grown tired of ‘rich folks coming downtown to do some charity’. In recent years several high-profile people had asked to come by and been told politely ‘no’.
I felt like they might be on a guilt trip, like they were not really concerned about what’s really going on but more ‘it’ll be in the newspaper on the society page’.
Shirley Reese had been homeless herself, and was now working in the self-help support group. She was juggling that with trying to raise her eight children in a new apartment near by. But, as she says, ‘Henry Street has a way of bringing out the best.’ When she heard that Diana was coming, Shirley had none of Verona or Frances’s reservations and questions, but she did have one of her own: what do you wear to meet a princess?
* * *
There was nothing haphazard about Diana’s request to see Henry Street. The visit to New York in February 1989 – during her affair with James Hewitt – was her first solo tour abroad. Her new equerry, Patrick Jephson, and her lady-in-waiting cum private secretary, Anne Beckwith-Smith, had organised the trip to promote her as hard-working, caring and fearless. No more shopping and fashion parades – well, maybe a few, but carefully balanced against other events and interests.
The call to Henry Street was the result of a series of transatlantic exchanges. Diana, Beckwith-Smith and Jephson decided the shape of the tour and the kind of visits it should include. The British embassy in Washington worked with the British consul in New York and the City Hall to draw up a list of likely institutions. Diana personally vetted this before anyone approached the men and women on the ground.
When it was all announced in Britain, Today newspaper reported:
Princess Diana has asked to spend most of her first trip to New York touring its notorious ghettos.
She will tour a run-down hospital for child AIDS victims and drug-ravaged, violence-ridden districts that are considered ‘no-go areas’ for tourists.
At Harlem Hospital caring Di will see eight babies doomed to die of AIDS before their first birthdays.
* * *
Verona Middleton-Jeter was still not sure whether she was excited or suspicious about meeting Princess Diana, but the staff at her public library were thrilled on her behalf. She’d gone in there looking for a book about royal etiquette.
The Princess Diana people said they would send us something on protocol, but we couldn’t wait. So I went to the library to make sure, because we don’t wanna look like we don’t know what we’re doing. And I said, ‘Oh, I’d like some information on protocol, for when the Princess comes to visit us.’ And this woman said, ‘What princess?’ I said, ‘Oh, Princess Di’s supposed to come to my work.’ And she’s just screaming and singing all over the library. ‘She’s gonna see the Princess! She’s gonna see the Princess!’ So then later she got me some material, about what we should do, and what we shouldn’t do. And she said, ‘You don’t seem so excited.’ I said, ‘Yeah, well, you know.’
Anne Beckwith-Smith came to Henry Street a few weeks before the visit to plan the itinerary. Verona was impressed.
It wasn’t, ‘Oh, well, we just wanna talk to the directors, and the governor’s wife, and maybe the mayor’s wife.’ It included her opportunity really to interact with clients. They wanted to know could she visit with a family. And I thought, Now that’s really down to earth. And so we said, ‘I’m sure we would find a family that would be interested in doing that.’ And we had a lot of other ideas about what she could see, and she definitely wanted to see the nursery programme, because she had a special interest in kids, and so they set up an itinerary that made her touch people.