The revelations in Diana: Her True Story were almost entirely true, although they were certainly not the complete truth. Truth of any kind, however, seemed to be the last thing that mattered inside the royal crucible I now found myself occupying. There was outrage that the Princess should even tacitly have lent her support to such a breach of the pact of secrecy, and there was a reflex outpouring of sympathy for the Prince that he should have suffered such cruel indignity.
By contrast, I reacted in the opposite way. To me it was practically immaterial whether the Princess had co-operated or not. What mattered to me were the implications of what the book said about her experiences in the past and her predicament in the future. A magnanimous response from the establishment she now tremulously realized she had mortally offended might have been the best incentive yet for the Princess to come back into line. The only effective reply to such a gigantic piece of whistle-blowing was to demonstrate a very visible concern to respond positively to any truth that the book contained and to undertake a privately conciliatory approach to the Princess herself. This would have demanded superhuman restraint and imagination from the royal establishment and was therefore an unrealistic expectation.
In some quarters, notably the Queen’s office, there was an extraordinary degree of understanding for the Princess, and for me as the poor sod in the middle. In the end, however, the organization suffered the worst of all worlds. The Princess continued to be portrayed as wronged, isolated and defiant. The Prince was seen as petty and vindictive or just humiliated. Buckingham Palace appeared to be unable to keep its house in order and at a loss to know what all the fuss was about.
‘Come on, Patrick!’ was a fairly typical accusation along the red-carpeted corridors. ‘We know she did it. It’s incomprehensible, unforgivable … I’m just sorry for the poor Prince.’ Then came the afterthought (sometimes), ‘And for you, of course.’
‘There is no evidence that she did it!’ I would stoutly retort, hoping to God that none was about to come to light. ‘Anyway, that’s not the point …’ But it was the only point, at least as far as the institution was concerned. Only a few perceptive individuals heeded the main message of the book and declined to be distracted by acrimony over the source of the details it reported. By then, sadly, it was all too late.
As the 7 June publication date for Diana: Her True Story approached, I became acutely aware of the Princess’s agitated state of mind. One day I received an odd and unexpected instruction from her to find out immediately how the charity Turning Point would be able to cope with a sudden donation running to some tens of thousands of pounds. Knowing that the author was not involved, could the charity be trusted to use it in a way that was discreet? Could they be trusted not to ask where it came from?
It only took me one call to the charity to establish that they could set her mind at rest on these questions and would be more than happy to put the windfall to excellent use on behalf of their clients with drink, drug and mental health problems. The Princess did not mention the subject again, however, so after a couple of days I asked her who the charity should thank for such largesse when it appeared. She was evasive and plainly did not like being reminded of what in retrospect seemed to me to have been a panicky attempt to find a respectable resting place for cash arising from contributions to Morton’s book.
Further evidence of the Princess’s jitters came rather more predictably with a sudden request for me to arrange additional engagements on dates adjacent to the day of publication. Thus the surprised staff and patients at the Royal Marsden Hospital and St Joseph’s Hospice and the young homeless at Centrepoint all became the unsuspecting beneficiaries of the Princess’s reflex response to a situation which put her good image under threat.
It was a clear example of a phenomenon I already associated with her. Time and again I saw the Princess arrive at a hospice, a drugs centre or a homelessness project and perform a great service for the people she visited, for the organization that was helping them, for the local community, and for the institution of monarchy too. Her motive in agreeing to the visit might have been far from selfless, however. Sometimes she was there for some distinctly narrow purpose to do with her own perception of her public profile, or even to satisfy a personal vendetta as she attempted to upstage the Prince. Be that as it may, her role as a vehicle for the relief of suffering and the good she achieved for the people she visited remained untainted by her questionable motives (as, largely, did the good she achieved for her media image). For those of us who saw both sides of the coin, it was a remarkable achievement.
Not long after the Morton missile had been launched, the perfect opportunity arose for the Princess to demonstrate that, even if she was the perpetrator of the book’s revelations, her value as a top-rank royal performer had to be set against any blame that might rebound on her. In addition, if she was the victim either of the book or the unfeeling family it portrayed, she was strong, determined and glamorous enough to survive the ordeal with her head held high.
With some encouragement, not least from me, the Northern Ireland Office – with whom I always fostered close relations – let it be known that the Secretary of State would like the Princess to be guest of honour at his annual garden party at Hillsborough Castle. Sir Patrick Mayhew was a distant relative of the Princess and, although not normally a keen volunteer for garden parties, she quickly grasped the value of such an invitation at a moment when her status might be in dire need of shoring up.
Thus on 29 June 1992 the Princess returned to Belfast, this time in the middle of a heatwave. After a couple of engagements in the city centre, she carried out a spectacularly successful walkabout in the Falls Road, in a part of the city synonymous with the grimmest aspects of the province’s 23-year experience of urban terrorism. The unscripted arrival of the glamorous Princess produced a spontaneous outpouring of welcoming emotion that moved even the most cynical observer and paid dividends in the next day’s papers.
The Daily Mail estimated that 20,000 onlookers came to ‘shout for Diana’. ‘DIANA STEALS ULSTER HEARTS’ proclaimed the Belfast Newsletter. ‘THE BRAVEST WALKABOUT OF ALL’ said Today, noting the fact that details of the Princess’s programme had been leaked in a serious security breach the night before her visit. ‘WE WANT DI!’ shouted the front page of the Daily Mirror, followed by the subtitle ‘Frontline Belfast with a message for the Royals’.
Such printed adulation for the Princess was not entirely unknown, of course, but in its unanimity and in the attention it drew to her courage in the face of a known security threat it was unusually helpful. Behind Palace walls the finger of accusation was being pointed firmly at the Princess over the Morton book, so this was undoubtedly a providential media windfall.
Almost more significant to me was a little-noticed report in a Dublin newspaper, which deserves quoting at greater length because of the evidence it gives of the Princess’s transnational appeal. On the subject of the British royal family there can be few more sceptical readerships in the world than those of the Irish Republic’s Sunday newspapers. Yet Anne Cadwallader wrote in The Irish Press on 30 June 1992:
Princess Diana braved thousands of peering eyes yesterday to shake the hands of hordes of curious strangers … as speculation about the future of her marriage reached new heights. Her eyes seemed to say it all. ‘Look, you all know what I am going through, please be kind.’ And kind they were. Polite, smiling and kind.
There could not have been a single one of the two thousand people she met who had not seen some parts of THAT book about THAT marriage. But not a word about it passed their lips as they bowed and exchanged polite words with the Princess of sighs…
Earlier in Belfast city centre there had been what was described as ‘pandemonium’ when the Princess went walkabout. One photographer even got his forehead gashed … Then she was away again, lifting her royal hand in a final gracious wave to the watching press. And you know, some of us just could not resist waving back.
In her letter of t
hanks to the Secretary of State after the garden party, the Princess reminded him of her ‘ardent hope’ that the search for peace should have a successful outcome. She also underlined her own willingness to assist in any way she could. As might be expected, this was an offer with a not wholly unselfish hidden meaning. As with her letter to the Foreign Secretary after the Egypt tour, however, even on face value alone it was thought quite valid enough to deserve a positive response.
At a time when her very future in the royal family was under question, the Princess had successfully reminded leaders in two critical areas of national policy that even as the subject of exaggerated media reports she could make a useful contribution – particularly in areas where a touch of feminine glamour and maternal emotion could achieve worthwhile results. At the same time she had reminded the growing ranks of muttering opponents within the British establishment that it might just be safer to keep her on board the royal family’s leaky ship. If jettisoned, she might very well not sink in public esteem as quickly as the obliging Duchess of York.
It quickly became apparent that such opponents were prepared to use almost any weapon against her. On the same day as the papers published their ecstatic reports of her success in Northern Ireland, others carried stories that could only have been planted by her enemies, clearly suggesting that the Princess suffered from mental instability.
Reports of the Princess’s occasional mental brittleness came as no surprise to me and many others who worked or lived closely with her. I suppose the difference was that, for those of us who were sympathetic to her, the real story was not that she was occasionally mercurial in her thoughts and emotions but that she had not years ago retreated to a life of seclusion and contemplation as a result of nervous strain. I had only to recall the unforgettable picture of the Princess among the crowds in the Falls Road to feel a slow-burning scorn for those who had directed such a slur at her from the safety of their anonymous briefings.
Perhaps this was why I, and maybe some others, managed a thoroughly reprehensible smirk at a cartoon in a popular tabloid which showed the Prince of Wales in conversation with his pot plants: ‘I need hardly tell you how worried I am about my wife’s state of mind.’
In terms of my day-to-day work, the Princess’s emotional unpredictability was just another challenging aspect of the job. Slowly and painfully, I developed structures and routines for dealing with it. This was so that my main duty to the Princess – to organize her public life – did not slip below my secondary duty, which was less official but could roughly be translated as doing what I could to ensure that she was in the best frame of mind to undertake the public tasks I had set up for her.
An apocryphal story used to circulate about a private secretary advising his royal boss to be cautious about some new enthusiasm. It perhaps illustrates the sort of professional challenges faced by any functionary for whom the collective noun might be ‘a grovel’. Applied to my own situation, the imaginary conversation goes like this:
‘Patrick! I’ve had a brilliant idea!’
‘Ye-e-es Ma’am?’
‘I’ve decided to run naked down Piccadilly!’
‘That is a brilliant idea, Ma’am. Tell me, would you like me to stop the traffic first?’
Her moods seemed to change as often as the weather. Although with practice I hoped to have some chance of influencing these moods, the task seemed at times about as easy as diverting the course of a thunderstorm or prolonging a beautiful summer evening. To stretch the meteorological metaphor, the Princess’s moods could also be deceptive. What might look like a benign overcast could contain sudden blizzards, while within viewing distance a more fortunate stretch of landscape could be bathed in unexpected sunshine.
What gave the game of forecasting its special thrill was wondering which moods were genuine and which were assumed in order to achieve a particu-lar purpose. Sometimes, manipulative though she could be, I think the Princess herself got confused. Certainly the transition from victim of cruel injustice to Boadicea with a headache could be accomplished in an instant.
Shortly after the earliest Morton revelations hit the headlines, I was with the Princess on a visit to Merseyside. I was in the car immediately behind her in the convoy when news came over the radio that a diversion was urgently required to find a lavatory. My first thought, typically, was of the disruption this would cause to my carefully scheduled programme. My second thought was that she must be pulling a stunt in order to win sympathy from the publicity that would inevitably result from such a departure from the published programme. This seemed more likely, given her need for extra public sympathy in the fevered climate which prevailed at the time. Only then did I wonder if there might be something actually the matter with her.
As I had seen in Budapest and on many other occasions, unscheduled loo stops were not unknown, but unscheduled loo stops for the sole purpose of going to the loo were virtually unknown. There was almost always a message to be passed to the watching world, and this was no exception.
After hurried discussion with the typically unflappable Merseyside police, we diverted to a small airfield where I strode into the headquarters of the local flying club to tell a startled chief instructor that his lavatory was required at once by the Princess of Wales. His reaction to what might have been some sort of elaborate hoax spoke volumes for his unflappability. With scarcely a moment’s delay, not only the ladies’ loo but also a retiring room were immediately provided.
The Princess hurried in, eyes downcast, and took up occupation with her lady-in-waiting for what seemed like an age. It gave me time to thank the chief instructor and reflect to myself that if this was how he handled emergencies on the ground I would not mind being his pupil in the air.
Eventually we were back on the road, trying to catch up with our now seriously disrupted schedule. You may think me callous, but I still could not bring myself to believe there was anything seriously the matter with my boss. I knew her well enough by now to interpret the downcast gaze as a sign not of demure shyness but rather as a simple reluctance to have to meet the eye of anybody who might see something there to question.
By the time we reached our next destination, the air of apprehensive concern was almost palpable. In response to a speech of welcome vibrant with genuine emotion, she contrived – again with downcast eyes – to shed a tear, and the mood both in the hall and in the media coverage that followed was of almost unreserved sympathy. It was another masterful performance and I mentally saluted it as such.
Lest I be thought terminally cynical, I should add that I also detected how close to the surface the Princess’s inner conflicts and unhappiness came that day. I often saw these and other stronger emotions at work in her, however, and no matter how much of her mind and actions they affected, one part of her – and it was a steely and determined part – somehow never completely relinquished control.
If this seems confusing now, I can only say that it was at the time as well. There was only one helpful rule of thumb: see every apparent mood in its context. So she was upset and had to make an unscheduled loo stop – reasonable enough until you realized the current media value of the image of a fragile Princess publicly wrestling with the private demons of her marriage. A happy mood was the same. There was the Princess, without a care in the world, graciously acknowledging public adulation – while her husband agonized over organic agriculture or went fox-hunting; or (a message for internal consumption only) while a hapless lady-in-waiting digested a series of privately delivered slights.
When a totally genuine emotion overcame her, as with her anxiety over Prince William’s head injury or her grief at the death of her father, there was a sense almost of relief. Here at last was something real for her to experience, unlike the endless repertoire of public faces, or the equally comprehensive range of personae she adopted when pursuing a private objective, such as the recruitment of a new supporter or the isolation of a soon-to-be-ex-friend.
It is worth repeating that, despite the
play-acting, the Princess’s frequent outward expressions of care and concern were not mere cynicism. Frequently they were disturbingly sincere, especially in the presence of very sick children. It was just that she usually also had an eye open for the inevitable camera and took care not to miss an opportunity for the watching world to share her feelings of sympathy. It was possible to argue that this was in itself a perfectly adequate justification for her public existence. She invariably did more good than harm, whatever complicated inner script she was following at the time.
Soon the summer’s usual twin ordeals were looming ever closer. First was the Wales family holiday aboard a yacht lent by the Greek shipowner John Latsis (also our neighbour in St James’s). Then came the annual holiday at Balmoral with other members of the royal family. For the Princess the two holidays were a landmark in her relations with her husband and his family.
Bizarre as it may now sound, the press were encouraged – not, I might add, by the Princess’s office – to report the Latsis cruise as a second honeymoon. The Balmoral residence, as it always had, would convey a sense of family togetherness and continuity. Hopefully it would show the holidaying British public that the royal family was together in its favourite surroundings of glens and braes and that all was really well with the world.
In reality, the royal world was changing fast. Never again would the Prince and Princess be required publicly to deny the reality of their estrangement. Never again would the Princess feel that she had to go along with such charades without any means of escape. Unwittingly or not, the Morton revelations were the Princess’s Rubicon. There was no way of repairing the damage they had done.
Shadows of a Princess Page 35