The news cannot have been a surprise to them, yet from their expressions it was plain that several realized the gravity of what they were hearing. I watched with amusement as they were released from the Privy Purse Door and ran with what dignity they could muster across the great forecourt, towards the camera crews waiting outside the gates.
For us there was nothing more to do. A footman brought coffee and we drank it in virtual silence. I left the others and wandered through the warren of rooms in the Palace press office. They were almost deserted – the lull before the storm. I idly wondered if these same rooms had seen similar scenes as the minutes counted down to Edward VIII’s immortal abdication broadcast. At least he had gone into exile straight away, I thought, and had taken his immediate staff with him. A few weeks setting up a new life in France seemed like a welcome alternative to the future I was facing.
The Princess had rather gamely decided to carry on with the day’s engagements on the Tyne. She had taken with her neither an equerry nor a private secretary, nor even a lady-in-waiting. Instead she had chosen one of the senior secretaries from the joint miscellaneous letters section of the office, a mature lady with a natural empathy that made her the ideal companion to a young woman in the very eye of the hurricane which raged about her.
That evening I called at KP to brief the Princess on the day’s events back at base. She was buoyed up by the warm welcome she had received in Newcastle and invited me to help myself from the drinks tray. She sat down on the sofa and tucked up her feet. ‘Well, Patrick. We did it!’
‘We did, Ma’am. Or rather, you did. Here’s to your future.’ I raised my glass to her.
I was struck by how well my boss was weathering the storm. To go with her calmness and humour in the midst of the crisis, I also noticed an understandable relief. At long last the waiting was over. It was still unclear what was going to come next, but we were all still breathing and suddenly there seemed to be everything to play for.
In the weeks that followed this new mood deepened, particularly as it slowly dawned on the world that for both the Prince and Princess their new, separate status made little difference. ‘Business as usual’ was the prevailing theme.
There were some changes, of course. The domestic staff underwent a fairly ruthless reorganization in the wake of the separation. A new, elite domestic team was ordained for Highgrove. The unchosen ones thus displaced were either paid off or, in a couple of cases, taken in as strays at KP by a sympathetic Princess (after some soft-hearted persuading by me).
In a series of raids, the Prince’s staff made a thorough job of removing his effects from KP – so thorough, in fact, that they even ripped the lavatory out of his bathroom. Meanwhile, in the country, traces of the Princess’s former occupancy were being systematically removed from Highgrove and designer Robert Kime moved in to complete a very thorough transformation.
This attitude reflected a residual bitterness in some sections of what was still nominally a joint household. The Prince and Princess themselves were able to begin rebuilding a more civilized relationship quite quickly (they were together again in public by the time of the Battle of the Atlantic commemorations in Liverpool in May). References to ‘the Rottweiler’ disappeared entirely from the Princess’s vocabulary. Some employees, however, particularly among the Prince’s domestic staff, seemed somehow to nurse a resentment on his behalf. This reservoir of ill feeling grew into a constant reminder that neither side could really move on until the divorce was properly finalized – and that was years away.
The Princess’s response was rather less divisive. At KP she tentatively began putting her own mark on the former family home which she would now have to herself, except when it was her turn to look after William and Harry. Family photographs and pictures of the Prince remained in several rooms, not least for the benefit of the children. Some of the self-mocking cartoons that I had admired in the cloakroom during my very first visit were replaced with others slightly less deferential. A couple of rooms received the expert attention of the interior designer Dudley Poplak.
After years of hushed voices and a perceptible tension, the atmosphere at KP lightened almost overnight. Happily, a great sense of team spirit developed, which brought relations between the house and office staff to a point closer than I had ever known before.
A great party was held. The Princess played the piano. We all sang and many people danced as we glowed with the sudden feeling that the grown-ups had gone out for the evening and would not be back for hours and hours … if they were going to come back at all.
FIFTEEN
PAYBACK
The next year began well for the Princess. It was hard not to agree with the front-page judgement of Vanity Fair in February 1993. ‘DI’S PALACE COUP’ it trumpeted, going on to list the Princess’s extraordinary success in securing her own future at the expense of her enemies, who were seen to have been left leaden-footed and peevishly swatting at her elusive heels.
Disappointingly, however, the year ended with headlines of a different sort. ‘HAS IT ALL GONE WRONG FOR PRINCESS DIANA?’ asked the Daily Express on 3 November 1993. Even more foreboding was the Evening Standard’s ‘SENSATION AS DIANA CUTS ROYAL DUTIES’ on 3 December. The story of how the year progressed is, I am afraid, a story of lost opportunities and old patterns of behaviour which the Princess proved powerless to overcome. It is also a story of enemies unappeased, waiting patiently for the butterfly life to run its brief course.
Such an outcome certainly seemed remote at the beginning of the year. Although written by Anthony Holden, who was undeniably one of the Prince’s more critical chroniclers, the February Vanity Fair article might claim to have been speaking for the public mood when it said:
Since the announcement of the end of her marriage on December 9th, Diana, Princess of Wales, has been visibly reborn. There is a new bounce in her step, a cheekier smile on her face, a new gleam in those flirtatious blue eyes … At long last the sham was over. For Diana it was a moment of triumph. For Prince Charles it was a crushing defeat…
Looking into the future, he saw the Princess firmly in the ascendant, ‘a heavyweight on the world stage’. It seemed reasonable enough, certainly to an outside observer. After all, she had just enjoyed a 40-minute meeting with President Mitterrand. Holden went on to note an uncomfortable truth for the old guard:
British historians were hard pressed to remember any previous Princess of Wales – let alone one with the looks of a Hollywood film star – conducting talks, in her own right, with a major foreign head of state … Diana’s staff is discreetly orchestrating a rapid move to centre stage, an upgrading from minor to major player in a drama whose plot gets thicker all the time.
The strength of the Princess’s position received an unforeseen boost with the extraordinary emergence of the ‘Camillagate’ tape in late January 1993. As with Squidgygate, excited rumours multiplied about the source of the recording. Rogue elements of the secret services were popular suspects with the tabloids and the Princess alike, but the truth was far more mundane. Analogue phone technology in 1989, when the conversation had taken place, provided amateur eavesdroppers with hours of vicarious thrills as they listened in to mobile calls. Inevitably, some of these people were tempted to sell the results of their electronic bin-scavenging to unscrupulous newspapers.
A sinister GCHQ plot was therefore hardly necessary, at least to explain the initial interception. There were rumours of the intercepts being deliberately rebroadcast, which, so far as I am aware, never suggested anything more than casual malice. Fledgling digital phone technology – theoretically more resistant to eavesdropping – was probably the greatest beneficiary of the whole business. Certainly the Waleses’ office was an enthusiastic early customer.
As further vindication of the truth of much of what Morton had revealed, the Camillagate tape was excruciating in content and devastating in timing. No one who read the transcript is likely to forget the intimate and affectionate telephone conversation it
recorded between the Prince and Camilla Parker Bowles.
Rumours of its existence had appeared in the press as long ago as mid-November 1992. Even before then, I had been aware from remarks made by a Fleet Street editor that it existed and that – in the editor’s opinion – it jeopardized the Prince’s claim to the throne. Popular disgust and Church disapproval would be so strong as to make the Prince’s accession an unacceptable option for a monarchy that reigns only by popular consent.
Such was the overinflamed atmosphere of those months that this seemed a credible outcome. Other, perhaps more worldly, commentators – and they included many of the Prince’s natural supporters – had views similar to Sebastian Faulks, who wrote a piece in the Guardian on 14 January dismissing the tape as just an ‘unguarded exchange of two people who are fond of each other’.
Among the Prince’s camp, faces which had reflected ill-concealed satisfaction at the timely appearance of the Squidgygate tapes now suddenly struggled to conceal less happy sentiments. A deep depression fell over the office. Our small staff perhaps shared it less than most.
The Princess took understandable comfort from finding that she was no longer the only victim of the Peeping Toms of the airwaves. She was, however, genuinely shocked by some of the cruder references in the transcription. ‘God, Patrick. A Tampax! That’s sick!’
Needless to say, morale in the Princess’s legal team also took a bit of a boost. Officially, there was no immediate prospect of divorce after the separation, but both sides knew that the chances of a reconciliation were remote in the extreme. We had instead an armistice of unknown duration, so the lawyers – if not actively rearming – remained on high alert. ‘We’ve got ’em cold with a cross-petition for adultery if we need it,’ said Paul, viewing his next encounter with ‘The Lord’ (Goodman) and ‘The Knight’ (Farrer) with more than usual relish.
If nothing else, it seemed to even the scores in our distasteful battle for public hearts and minds. In reality, of course, it was more of a victory for the Princess. Whereas the reporting of Squidgygate quickly directed public ire at the radio ham allegedly responsible for the tapes’ publication, reporting of Camillagate was much less charitable towards the heir to the throne. It was perhaps understandable – and since his was the most recently exposed transgression, it remained uppermost in the public’s mind.
Soon there were pictures to support the impression of an unequal race. A reduced travelling press pack relayed images of the Prince dolefully trying his hand at peasant farming in Mexico, while in March the Princess jetted to exotic Kathmandu to dine with the King and tour British aid projects accompanied by a Minister of the Crown, Lynda Chalker.
Even here, however, an underlying cautionary note was evident. Much press attention was devoted to establishing just why the band at the airport to greet the Princess’s arrival in Nepal had not played the national anthem. The truth was that such a recital would not have been appropriate for what was, after all, simply a working visit. Its absence had passed without notice in Egypt, Pakistan and Hungary, yet now it was front-page news. (I should know – I was pulled out of the delivery room during the birth of my eldest daughter to field calls on the subject down an agitated line from Kathmandu.)
The clear implication was that, whatever her success in front of the cameras, loyal supporters of the old royal status quo could have the satisfaction of knowing that the Princess did not enjoy unqualified royal status. Depending on your point of view, this either marked the Palace old guard as being determined to denigrate the beautiful, plucky Princess, or it marked the wilful, manipulative Princess as being determined to flout the wishes of the established order. It did neither of them much good.
Leaving aside the pointless speculation about protocol, the Princess’s trip to Nepal was a great success. Nevertheless, in the midst of her triumph there was one disturbing straw in the wind, though few realized its full significance. Emerging from a hut in a deprived rural village high in the Himalayas, the Princess – shocked by the poverty she had just encountered – was quoted as promising, ‘I will never complain again.’
This called for a universal snort of amused incredulity. It certainly got one from her staff, albeit very discreetly. Surprisingly few public voices joined in, though, and our boss was thus left unhealthily ready to believe her own propaganda. Serving up such an appetizing soundbite was talent enough; getting so many people to take it at face value was verging on genius. The trouble was, the one person who should never have taken it at face value – herself – swallowed it hook, line and sinker. The consequences for her sense of media self-preservation were disastrous and culminated in the infamous Panorama interview in 1995.
The strategy for future work which I agreed with the Princess following the separation was conveniently vague. She had not won her relative independence cheaply, so she was keen to enjoy being at least theoretically mistress of her own destiny. There was no doubt, however, that her taste for life in the public eye was undiminished.
Having seen those who would have curtailed her public duties forced to retreat, I was keen to get the Princess back on track, working what appeared to be an unchanged routine and answering her critics in the most effective way possible. The best thing she could do was to carry on with the work that was expected of her and that she did so well. The normal pattern of domestic engagements in support of her patronages therefore resumed.
A particularly heartening development for me – or so it seemed at the time – was the Princess’s increasing willingness to consider doing more work with the International Red Cross. As patron of British Red Cross Youth, she had a perfect vehicle for involving herself in almost any of the organization’s campaigns worldwide. This was precisely the area in which I felt her wish to carry out independent foreign tours could be exploited without raising the controversial issue of whether or not she was representing the Queen in the process.
The role of Lynda Chalker – then Overseas Development Minister – was increasingly valuable in our discussions on this subject. She perfectly combined an almost maternal concern for the Princess’s welfare with a politician’s dispassionate and pragmatic approach to media issues. In those first difficult months, I believe she made a major contribution to the Prince’s and Princess’s understanding both of each other and of the necessity for moderation in protecting the interests of the royal institution as a whole. Her concern extended to the Princess’s office and, in a world which for me was also growing increasingly short of nonpartisan council, she earned my lasting gratitude.
Her moderating role included keeping the Prime Minister informed of the reality of the Princess’s situation and the calibre of her future ambitions, none of which was intended to conflict with her first duty of loyalty to the Crown. Like Lynda Chalker, the Prime Minster had established a trusted position in the Princess’s eyes as an honest broker. In turn, he had the chance to judge for himself whether the anxious young woman he met on several occasions to discuss her future was the demonized inadequate portrayed by certain establishment sources.
In October 1992 the Princess had hosted a dinner for Doctor Sommaruga, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was another expression of her determination to be taken seriously, a message to her husband and any others who were watching that she intended to involve herself with the work of world-class humanitarian organizations – and not just as a subject of heart-tugging photo-spreads. The dinner itself was a sparkling success, the newly opened Lanesborough Hotel making a stylish bid to establish itself as a royal watering hole to rank alongside London’s other great hotels. The Princess, supported by Lynda Chalker and the British Red Cross Director General Mike Whitlam, played her part to perfection – every inch the beautiful but sophisticated angel of mercy.
In due course it became evident that the Princess had only to express an interest in any of the Red Cross’s activities for them to be made available for her patronage. That dinner and other meetings like it were undoubtedly instru
mental in achieving this aim.
Sadly, however, the seeds thus sown did not take deep roots. Certainly, in the years that followed, the Princess carried out some spectacularly productive engagements on behalf of the Red Cross, who in turn frequently provided her with just the sort of headline-grabbing activity that helped her sustain her dream of becoming a true roving ambassador. Nevertheless, with instinctive caution the Princess maintained a maidenly elusiveness and never fully committed herself to the embrace of any single one of the many charity suitors who sought her favours.
Lynda Chalker and others, including me, tried to introduce her to the rewards and satisfaction of sustained commitment to a small number of reputable causes, but she lacked the inclination, if not the capacity. Thus she left a long legacy of raised expectations as she flitted her butterfly path through the garden of good causes that blossomed so invitingly for her.
With characteristically practical concern, the Prime Minister’s office also became involved in promoting a national scheme of recognition for carers which would have borne the Princess’s name. This too, despite all its attractions from my point of view, failed to attract genuine interest from the Princess. For this and other reasons that I could only guess at, but which probably had much to do with general uncertainty over her future status, the idea was quietly shelved.
My enthusiasm for all these suggestions was probably greater than the Princess’s. This was not because she had a low opinion of an organization such as the Red Cross – quite the reverse. Rather, I believe her instinct was to protect her recent, hard-won independence, and that included a readiness to take up and then drop without much warning any of the attractive proposals that came her way.
Balancing this capricious reaction with the charities’ reasonable expectation of an efficient and dependable booking system was one of the major challenges in my remaining three years as her private secretary. It was a challenge I knew I shared to some degree with many of my brother private secretaries, but in the Princess’s case it was especially significant. She was setting out to reinvent herself, hopefully as somebody happier and more fulfilled. It was a worrying sign, therefore, that she could so easily fall back into patterns of short-sighted self-indulgence where work was concerned. Such indiscipline, I had hoped, belonged to the past, to a time when it had been a luxury that she had shared with those whose future status was unquestioned. Those days were gone. Now she really did have to work every day as if running for office.
Shadows of a Princess Page 39