‘Thank you,’ said the Prince politely when I handed him the wreath. Then, as he watched me salute, his look turned to one of sympathy as I prepared to manoeuvre my sword. At least, I chose to interpret it as sympathy. He certainly knew the hazards of the drill I was performing – and sensibly avoided attempting it himself. My luck was in. My sword obeyed me and the Royal Navy drill book’s sanctity was preserved.
Our final night on the yacht saw us all dining informally with the Prince, who then treated us to some of his prized collection of Spike Milligan videos. I sat in the flickering darkness listening to the Prince’s loud guffaws, which were faithfully echoed by the assorted courtiers and yacht officers present. It was surprising how many of them suddenly seemed to remember how side-splittingly funny The Goon Show had been.
The tour had a revealing postscript. As we were approaching the coast of England in our VC-10, and just when we thought there was nothing left to do but climb into the bus for London, the weather added its contribution to the tour’s tests on the Prince’s good nature. Fog at our destination, Lyneham, meant that it was impossible to land there.
A hurried conference with the crew concluded that Glasgow was the best alternative. Radio phone calls were made to the startled Chief Constable of the Strathclyde police, warning him to prepare for the imminent arrival of the Prince of Wales and his accompanying party, inbound from the Orient and in search of anonymity and a bed for what remained of the night.
Thus the Prince found himself eating an unfamiliar breakfast in a Glasgow airport hotel while a cold, grey dawn broke over Scotland’s second city. It was the morning of his forty-first birthday; he had uncomplainingly suffered a tedious disruption to his itinerary; and only a handful of people even knew he was there.
As I contemplated my own bowl of porridge, I wondered how his wife would have reacted to such a disturbance of her plans. The intervention of mere forces of nature would hardly have served as an adequate excuse for what she would more than likely have portrayed as an almighty cock-up. Her sense of injustice at the sheer unfairness of it all would have been uncontainable. In this assumption I was only partly right, as it turned out. There were occasions in later years, including a risky visit to Northern Ireland, when her imperturbability in the face of similar meteorological provocation surprised me.
The Far Eastern tour and the one to Hungary which followed it in mid-1990 were the last grand gestures of togetherness. Henceforth, where the Prince and Princess went and why they went there became less important for the watching media than how they coped with the ordeal of being in each other’s company.
Despite this increasing pressure, the Hungary tour was a publicity success for them both as individuals. Ironically, it also produced some misleadingly optimistic comments about how well they seemed to be getting on. It was an exciting time to visit Budapest. The Communist regime had melted away between the time of our recce and the start of the tour. In the early summer sunshine the whole country seemed to be having a party, and the press would not have been human if they had not felt the romance which seemed to lie over the city like early morning mist on the Danube.
Authoritarianism was in full retreat, as our police discovered during discussions with their Hungarian counterparts when they tried to suggest some very necessary crowd control for the planned walkabouts. ‘We are a free people,’ they were told, ‘and we will stand wherever we like.’ It was impossible to argue with the sentiment, even though it proved its limitations in dealing with enthusiastic crowds when the Prince and Princess were in town.
There was an unusually large number of joint engagements, and enough romantic photo opportunities to satisfy even the most soft-focus Hello! photographer. The Prince and Princess were seen looking wistfully across the Danube from the Fisherman’s Bastion, inspecting vegetables in the traditional covered market, and looking for all the world as if they were on holiday together as they sat on the upper deck of a river boat during a cruise on the last day of the tour.
This led to a small rash of excited reports in the press that the Waleses had put their marital difficulties behind them. How wrong could you be, I said to myself as I read the misguided speculation. To be fair to the press, you did have to be very close to the action – and very cynical – to understand the guerrilla warfare that was being waged below the surface.
Behind the apparent togetherness of the Hungary tour, there had been no real rapprochement. What we were seeing was a professional performance from two individual performers, not the media’s dream of a revived love affair. There was no real teamwork in their public appearances – a knowing eye on the walkabouts told you that. Nor was there any let-up in the minor point-scoring, at least on the Princess’s side, as she sought and found the cameras’ sympathy in the arrival ceremony while she held the President’s wife’s hand, or on the romantic pusta plain as she posed with daredevil horsemen, or in her detachment from the Prince’s effusive support for Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson as they brought Shakespeare’s King Lear to Budapest.
Point-scoring was still on her mind as we set off the next day on a busy round of joint engagements. It was in the hubbub of the covered market that the Princess sprang one of her occasional surprises, designed to test the ingenuity and resourcefulness of her equerry and to attract the sympathy of anybody else within earshot.
‘Patrick,’ she hissed, ‘I’ve got to go to the loo!’
Since, at that moment, we were hemmed in on all sides by a crowd of costermongers, photographers, politicians and police, the task of even asking for a lavatory, let alone finding one that was presentable, had me momentarily nonplussed. Then a happy inspiration struck me. ‘Ma’am, the next engagement is at the St Mathias Church. I’ll be there ahead of you to check out the plumbing and meet you on arrival. Nobody will notice if you slip away for a couple of minutes there.’
Without waiting for her to disagree, I disappeared into the crowds and commandeered one of the spare cars, in which I raced at high speed to the church. The difficulties of arriving at a major ecclesiastical establishment which is in the final stages of preparing to receive distinguished foreign visitors became apparent as soon as I tried to negotiate my way past the security cordon, which seemed suddenly to have remembered some of the co-operative charm which had marked its totalitarian past.
Having with difficulty overcome this hurdle, I then had to find a suitable recipient for my urgent piece of news. Given the delicacy of the subject matter, this took some time. I was in a state of ill-suppressed panic when I was shown eventually to a distinctly elementary facility, down a dim side-passage and seemingly guarded by a roomful of nuns, through which I had to pass on my lightning inspection.
I puffed back to the main door just in time to see the Prince and Princess arrive. I signalled at her urgently with my eyebrows and she made a beeline for where I was standing, leaving a bemused Prince looking questioningly over his shoulder as he carried on with the official receiving line.
Needless to say, this digression from the established programme caught the attention of the hawklike British media, who were thus well placed and well primed to photograph the Princess as she paused in devout prayer on her way back from sharing one of the less mystical experiences of the nuns’ life.
From the shadows a discreet distance away I watched the saintly figure bowed in prayer, and admiration overcame any irritation I might have been feeling. In the noisy background the spiritual Prince was being shown the finer architectural points of the church, while his notoriously disco-mad wife knelt in a pew, apparently lost in reverent contemplation. I just hoped she was giving appropriate thanks to the Almighty for Hungarian ecclesiastical sanitary fittings.
As always, there was enough sincerity in her actions to allay casual suspicion as to her real motives. To my mind, however, there was no doubting her underlying intentions – to attract attention, to signal an independence from her marriage, and to exert by guile and gamesmanship the strength she felt unable to express openl
y. Foreign tours, no less than home engagements, were vehicles for a subliminal message: I am not a dumb clotheshorse, a junior player in a marriage that frustrates me; I am a figure in my own right, and none too scrupulous.
EIGHT
JUMP AT SHADOWS
Back in England, the same unscrupulousness was becoming more apparent in her public duties and private relationships. The energy which the Princess used in creating such a world of intrigue and suspicion might, of course, have been used more productively to sustain her popular support of good causes. Used positively, it might also have helped her feel generally more content, but being content was not a natural state for her. Given the chance, she always preferred to plot and manoeuvre.
A prime target for these instincts was the Duchess of York. During 1989 and 1990 the two of them were often bracketed together, both in the public mind and in the disapproving eyes of some senior courtiers. This was always to the Princess’s detriment. Being senior – as the wife of the heir – and having already established a better record of public service than the Duchess, she actually needed only to emphasize the differences between herself and her sister-in-law in order to achieve a comfortable superiority. The process should have been made even easier by the simple fact that the media had cast the Princess as the epitome of stylish elegance, while they portrayed the Duchess as, well, someone rather less photogenic. Improbable as it now seems, however, at that time the Princess was paranoid that Fergie was winning the popularity battle.
The rivalry the Princess introduced into the relationship spoke volumes about her sense of insecurity. It also emphasized a little known fact. Fergie was in reality a much stronger personality than the Princess and was always able to influence her moods, often for better, but sometimes for worse.
As the wife of the Queen’s favourite son, Fergie enjoyed a closeness with the monarch that the Princess never felt she shared. This closeness was a constant source of jealousy and suspicion. It meant that the Princess could never fully accept Fergie’s freely offered friendship. Instead, she traded on it to acquire information and to build up a spurious sense of sisterly solidarity.
The Duchess’s own marriage was in its painful final stages during those years. This gave the Princess a chance to share the dangerously thrilling idea of royal divorce, while coolly watching someone else go first into the fiery furnace of family ostracism and media condemnation. The situation afforded her considerable schadenfreude – always a pleasing sensation – as well as some practical tips on avoiding any adverse media consequences of her growing taste for independence, such as the importance of keeping up a consistent programme of hard work and being efficiently discreet about affairs.
‘Who do you think will get the blame for the Yorks’ bust-up?’ she once asked me, revealing her own sense of priorities in the process.
I was not at all sure what answer to give. The whole issue of royal separation or divorce was still officially unthinkable, but some of us were unofficially thinking the unthinkable every day, without really knowing what to do about it. We were just the staff. We simply hoped against hope that our employers would sort themselves out. We did not want to get involved – it was too dangerous.
She needed to look no further than Fergie to see how absolute would be the Windsors’ alienation when provoked, and provocation – either deliberate through media manipulation or incidental through the popularity she attracted – was increasingly what they must have perceived in her actions. It must privately have been what her husband felt too, from a date long before I joined. Since neither of them found compromise easy, the eventual outcome should have been no surprise. That it was not more widely anticipated demonstrates one of the royal family’s greatest assets: at that time people still seemed to have an infinite capacity to believe the best of it.
Little by little I developed a personal policy of doing what I could to soften the Princess’s landing when the crash happened. It was self-interest, really. After all, I was strapped into the cockpit with her. Now my policy – and my faithfulness – was being put to the test. My answer to any question about the Yorks’ marriage would be filed in the Princess’s memory under ‘Loyalty’. It was a crowded section and my dossier was constantly under review. Too damning, and I would be written off as part of the unfeeling establishment. Too approving and I might as well be the footman. I paused, hoping to look judicious while actually racking my brains.
Somewhere in my head a voice was telling me just to say what I really thought: that the whole thing was a ghastly mess and she would be a bloody fool to have any similar notions. Just get on with your lovely life, Ma’am, turn a blind eye to what hurts you and stop making such a fuss. The voice was a stranger, though, not to be trusted. I fell into the familiar habit of weighing my words.
I guessed that the Duchess would come off worst, but something stopped me from giving my boss this answer, perhaps because I knew it was exactly what she wanted to hear. Instead I adopted my stuffy courtier look – not easy sideways on in the back of a Jaguar – and said, ‘Hard to say, Ma’am, but I think people will only blame either of them if it looks like the children are being exploited to gain popularity in the press.’
This piece of pomposity was received in disapproving silence. Already I could guess that the most powerful weapon in the Princess’s impending battle with her in-laws, namely her reputation as a devoted mother, was being secretly sharpened up in readiness. The question about the Yorks was further unwelcome evidence to me that such a battle was only a matter of time. Like so many approaching marital disaster, she hesitated on the brink, not sure of her ground, anxiously gathering opinions to bolster her own uncertainty. Who could blame her, after all? Her husband and his family were not enemies to be made lightly, yet enemies they were inexorably becoming as the Princess diverged ever further from their ideal model.
From watching Fergie’s experience, she might also conclude that from neither her potential suitors nor even her closest friends could she expect the strength of support she would need for a successful independence campaign. Her future was in her own hands, in the hands of general public opinion, and in the hands of those to whom she entrusted small parts of it – such as me.
As the Yorks’ separation continued to unfold in public, the Princess’s role as spectator and co-conspirator grew more and more absorbing. She would avidly scan the newspapers for clues as to the trend in Fergie’s popularity and seemed to feel little dismay that it appeared to be in free fall. Meanwhile, there were daily phone calls between the sisters-in-law, from snatches of which I got a taste of the intrigue afoot. Even then, however, the Princess seemed only to see herself as a player in an exciting and illicit game, the ringleader of which shared little of her own sense of self-preservation.
The true story of Fergie sending the Princess a copy of the video The Great Escape hints at the schoolgirlish plotting which was going on. Those of us who knew what was happening were able to dismiss it as such, if uneasily. Despite the childish antics, my boss nonetheless never lost her coolly detached ability to assess Fergie’s tortuous path to freedom, or the pitfalls that awaited her when she too took the plunge.
Here was further evidence of the Princess’s talent for matching her oscillating moods with a calculating analysis of public opinion. She could run rings round the hidebound royal establishment and dupe a willing press into endorsing her squeaky-clean image. Meanwhile, unknown to most watchers – and carefully kept from her staff – her relationship with James Hewitt was passionately resumed, and already she was secretly co-operating with a little-known court correspondent called Andrew Morton. No wonder she watched Fergie’s downward progress with a mixture of fascination and dread.
In these circumstances, anything that might dispel so many nagging uncertainties – and provide a lot of fun along the way – was bound to be popular with both women, and it was around this time that their shared interest in clairvoyance acquired an importance bordering on obsession. Characteristically, it was the Du
chess who made the running, acquiring regular bulletins about the future which she shared with the Princess. Some of these she then passed on to me.
‘You’ll never guess, Patrick! Fergie’s magic woman – she’s really brilliant – has said that my husband’s going to have the worst day of his life next week!’
‘Really?’ I replied, with heavy sincerity. ‘Any tips for the 3.30 at Kempton?’ This she dismissed as the predictable response of a mere man – and a man blind to her psychic potential at that.
My tactful scepticism never deterred her for long. Next week the seer had stepped up the drama factor accordingly. Well, I thought, at least she knows her market. ‘Patrick! Fergie’s witch-woman says my husband is going to be killed! She’s seen mountains and a helicopter …’
This time my scepticism was even less tactful, but the Princess was not to be denied her supernatural thrills and retained a faith in clairvoyance that appears to have lasted to the end of her life, despite the public debunking of the Duchess’s most notorious fortune-teller, Madame Vasso.
Keen to share her delight at recruiting a royal client, Madame Vasso invited a tabloid newspaper to write all about it, including a reference to the efficacy of her famous blue pyramid. Incredulous snorts arose from many breakfast tables as the news was absorbed, and at last my scepticism raised a laugh from the Princess. ‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about, Ma’am. I use my blue pyramid all the time and it works brilliantly!’ Her laughter was as much over Fergie’s embarrassment as my attempt at humour. Once again she had kept her head down as the impetuous Duchess set off on a dangerous but intriguing track, and she had been able to watch the subsequent derailment from a safe distance.
Shadows of a Princess Page 19