One by one the Princess rejected all these suggestions, leaving just one – a remnant of the Red Cross proposal. This offered a minor but still potentially significant part in a group of experts charged with guiding the worldwide organization towards its main future areas of operation. Even this was to fall victim in the end to the Princess’s reluctance to commit herself in any one direction. Less kindly, it could be said that she lacked the necessary discipline, application, motivation and intellectual ability to be anything more than just a figurehead for other people’s good work.
Good works surely need good figureheads, and none came better than the Princess of Wales. Her campaign on landmines (itself, incidentally, salvaged from the Red Cross proposals of the winter of 1993, when she had rejected it out of hand) demonstrated once again her extraordinary power to draw world attention to urgent humanitarian issues. It dawned on me during the aftermath of her speech, however, that in my country at least, the place for such a figurehead was still within the royal family, not in competition with it, as inevitably she would be portrayed and moreover as she would sometimes like to see herself.
In the long run she would either damage the monarchy or, more likely, run out of the necessary higher motivation, leaving herself driven only by self-pity and a desire for vengeance. Meanwhile, the organizations and institutions that had contributed to building her up would transform themselves into a widening circle of disillusioned former friends. It was not a happy prospect.
Still, I thought, I am on the side of the greater good, even now. I have not yet compromised my loyalty to the monarchy either. Properly managed, the Princess could still be a reliable source of fascinating occupation for me, not to mention high-quality travel and lunches to match. I should stick around, I concluded, and see what happened.
In the meantime, semi-retired or not, in presiding over her own household the Princess surrendered not one jot of her innate hauteur. The idea of a more open and honest relationship between us – which had seemed so possible in the cosy afterglow of her big speech – remained just an idea. What little self-discipline she had possessed was also slowly unravelling. She was demob happy and the devil found work for her underused talents.
The influence of junior members of staff, whose opinions she covertly solicited, fed her desire for plots. The continuing ascendancy of ‘therapists’ – including ever-more influential astrologers – fed her self-obsession. Finally, the exposure of her furtive meetings with Richard Kay of the Daily Mail revealed a continuing need for dangerous male company that fed, I supposed, a continuing need to feel wanted.
I was not particularly proud or possessive, however much she might have tried to provoke such reactions. It was just that life was already hard enough as I attempted to fight her corner, without the sense that she was drawing a bead on my back while I was doing it. I was under no illusions. The reinvented Princess had as few scruples as the old one when it came to swapping friends and staff who had passed their sell-by date. I was permanently on the alert for the softening-up process that would – hopefully – precede my own demise.
I did not have to wait long. One morning the Daily Mail told me that the Princess did not trust the loyalty of even those closest to her. I knew my employer well enough to recognize a career prospects review when I saw it. For the first time I began to make serious but very secret plans to leave her.
SEVENTEEN
TOPPLE
The public verdict at the end of 1993 was still far more favourable to the Princess of Wales than to her husband. On a funereal front cover showing a top-hatted Prince in a carriage at Ascot, the Mail on Sunday dubbed it ‘annus horribilis II’ for the royal family.
There was broad agreement that, although 1993 had seen a bruising publicity war between the Princess and her husband, she appeared to have won it hands down. The Daily Express headline for 2 December 1992, ‘WHY DIANA CAN DO NO WRONG’, effectively summed up her public image at the beginning of 1993 and, despite occasional near misses (the gym photos and the sacking of Ken Wharfe spring to mind), her first 12 months of ‘going solo’ ended with the Guardian concluding that she was ‘more squidged against than squidging’.
Her coup in December 1993 with the dramatic announcement of an ill-defined ‘withdrawal’ from public life was sufficiently ambivalent for it to be interpreted as either the gracious decision of a champion quitting at the top of her career, or the tragic outcome of a campaign of vilification unsuccessfully directed against her by those we all thought should know better. Generally speaking, the reaction to her announcement was uncritical. Even those who only a month before had been ready to write her off as ‘Sad Di’ (in the words of the Express) full of regret about her separation, were silenced by the enormity of her gesture. She seemed to share a politician’s gut instinct that huge amounts of even moderately sympathetic publicity could be a worthwhile end in themselves.
The early months of 1994 were spent gingerly tiptoeing back on to the familiar stage of public good works from which she had tearfully swept only a few weeks before. Just over a month after so publicly bowing out of public life, the Princess had resumed a scaled-down but recognizably similar pattern of engagements, receiving the commanding officers of her regiments, visiting the dying at Mildmay Hospice and spending time in that favourite retreat, Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children.
She did not blush at this glaring contradiction. She had an unmatched ability to disregard her own inconsistencies, of which this was only the most obvious. I did the blushing for her, not least when those who had been disappointed with the cancellation of engagements originally scheduled for 1994 observed others receiving the benefit of their patron’s involvement without apparently having waited patiently in line, or indeed having much obvious merit other than their convenience to KP and their unblinking readiness to be used as part of the Princess’s rehabilitation programme.
Something of this disillusioned mood communicated itself to me through a visit from Keith Hellawell, then Chief Constable of West Yorkshire and later to be created head of the Government’s anti-drugs task force. He spoke movingly to me of the sense of abandonment that was felt in certain deprived parts of his constabulary. In such poverty-stricken areas, the Princess represented a figure from another, better world who nevertheless took the trouble to come and meet ordinary people on their own terms.
Mr Hellawell was particularly concerned by the demoralization of unemployed young men and the numbers in which they were resorting to drugs. The Princess, he said, offered a symbol of hope to such people. Her loss would be grievously felt, and not just in the salons of London or the smart shops of Bond Street. A return to the good times was not to be, however. While the Princess did maintain a vestigial interest in her drugs charity Turning Point, her days treading the backstreets of industrial cities in the service of her patronages’ good works were sadly now largely behind her.
With her diary now being less demanding, the Princess expanded her list of lunch guests at KP. To existing regulars such as Margaret Jay, Lynda Chalker, Clive James and David Puttnam were added new figures such as Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey. The inclusion of these last two reflected a shrewd recognition of the importance of maintaining a strong popularity base in the US – a country to which she would always want to return and which at times even seemed a possible permanent refuge. These older, wiser women already knew all there was to know about life in the media spotlight and were ready to trade experiences with sympathy and good advice. The friendships she formed with them were, I believe, of long-term benefit.
In another significant development, the Princess even began to lunch with her stepmother Raine. This delighted Hello! readers, but dismayed other diary scribblers who preferred the feud to carry on in the traditional way. Her rapprochement with her father’s widow was a source of real comfort to the Princess. Sadly, her new talent for reconciliation only ever made limited progress in her husband’s direction, despite some apparently positive gestures.
&
nbsp; Meanwhile, the saga of the L.A. Fitness Gym photographs rumbled on, as it would all year. Lord Mishcon, Anthony Julius and others became regular callers at KP and in due course the firm’s family section took responsibility for the Princess’s marital negotiations with her husband.
A matter of passing interest was whether or not she should pay rent. Her use of apartments 8 and 9 at KP included their status not only as her family home but also as her place of work. If her rate of public duties dropped below a significant level, then the question of their advantageous financial position would be re-examined. If nothing else, it gives an indication of the thoroughness with which Sir Michael Peat – the eagle-eyed new Keeper of the Privy Purse – was conducting his rigorous review of royal expenditure.
The administration of each parent’s contact with William and Harry was also becoming a regular aspect of office life. The Princess relied on me to work out how many days she could expect to have her sons with her and to check that a fair allocation was being maintained. Negotiations over changed dates and substitutions took up an increasing amount of my time. Encouragingly, these negotiations were conducted without any animosity and, perhaps because they had been devolved to functionaries such as myself and Richard Aylard, they freed the boys’ parents to re-establish some sort of direct relationship.
This they duly did, no doubt at some personal cost, and a pattern of quite formal visits became established, during which they could talk alone. On alternate dates the Princess would go to the Prince’s new apartments in St James’s Palace and the Prince would visit his old home at KP. This pattern of civility between the estranged parents had begun soon after the separation and gradually grew to what I thought was a fairly warm mutual regard. It never stopped the public competition between them for popularity or moral superiority, however – much of it conducted by proxy and all of it regularly resuscitated by a media which would not let such a good story die of natural causes.
Before her meetings with the Prince, the Princess would usually visit her office in St James’s and build up her courage for the coming encounter with much laughter amongst the girls. She was nervous but composed, and was invariably calm and thoughtful when she set off for the short walk to Colour Court, where the Prince had set up his new base after an abortive attempt to move into Clarence House, the Queen Mother’s residence. Afterwards she would usually call on us again, less nervous and less in need of laughter, but always positive in her remarks about the Prince’s growing role as father.
Her greatest frustration was her inability to influence the day-to-day direction of Tiggy Legge-Bourke’s contact with the boys. Although this caused her genuine distress, my sympathy was tinged with the thought that the Prince’s role as father would have been very hard to discharge without Tiggy’s assistance, given his other commitments. On her instructions, I drafted letters from the Princess to her husband pointedly asking for clarification of Tiggy’s duties and asking to be involved in decisions concerning her contact with the boys. I do not think she ever got an entirely satisfactory answer, but I doubt if one was possible. It was hard for her to be content with the reality of her reduced influence over her children’s activities.
My sympathy became even more conditional as the Princess developed an increasingly lurid fantasy picture of Tiggy’s private life. No man in the Prince’s entourage was safe from her suspicions, including the Prince himself. The inevitable outcome followed at Christmas 1995, when the Princess delivered a poisoned remark which drove even easygoing Tiggy to retaliate.
When it suited her purpose, the Princess was just as ready to employ the velvet glove as an alternative to the knuckleduster in dealings with her husband’s staff. Given the speed with which she could change one for the other, however, any perceived warmth had to be treated with caution. Her motives were rarely straightforward.
In the midst of her galloping suspicions about Tiggy, the Princess found time to send her congratulations to her husband’s private secretary Richard Aylard, who was appointed CVO (Commander of the Royal Victorian Order) in the Queen’s 1994 Birthday Honours List. ‘Many congratulations on your award. I know what hard work the last few years must have been. Few CVOs can have been so thoroughly deserved!’ I wrote, and she happily autographed it. Generosity from a position of perceived weakness is usually the sign of the greatest strength. It did not come naturally to her, but whenever she could be persuaded to display it, the results were always disproportionately gratifying. She felt strong, and those on the receiving end knew it. It was that simple.
One very disturbing spin-off from the Princess’s new-found freedom – and a sign of her increasingly erratic judgement – was her decision to dispense with her police bodyguards except at public engagements. This was a bold, even reckless move, the result in varying parts of a desire to secure some privacy, a wish to appear different from her in-laws (some of whom could claim rather less personal risk than herself but who nevertheless clung on to their PPOs as powerful status symbols) and a willingness to demonstrate her popularity in the most practical way possible.
To me, as I morbidly recalled a little Freud, she also seemed to be indulging her developing death wish. I could think of no other explanation for the whole series of decisions which marked her descent into self-destruction. I had only to think of the Morton book, the ‘Time and Space’ speech and the self-harm so apparent in many of her personal relationships to find plenty of evidence for this. All this was well before the suicidal gesture of Panorama, too.
This apparent appetite for self-destruction was inextricably linked with a craving to be noticed. When – as was inevitable in the absence of a PPO – photographers got too close, crowds too insistent or even parking wardens too zealous, the inconvenience and occasional alarm she suffered could be borne as something akin to the wounds of martyrdom. The experience was painful but somehow holy, and suffered in the cause of reminding the world not only that she was there but also that she was defenceless and occasionally at least potentially in danger.
Being dimly aware of this unspoken desire for vulnerability, I found it difficult to do more than express my genuine concern for her safety. ‘I don’t need any of that stuff, Patrick,’ she responded briskly. ‘Nobody’s going to hurt me.’ It was true enough. I knew that, with rare exceptions, the police assessment of risk to the Princess’s life was fairly reassuring. (As someone who spent a great deal of time sitting or standing very close to her, I took a rather personal interest in these intelligence reports.)
This unorthodox approach to her own security nonetheless caused headaches among the professionals at the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Group. What was the best course of action? They were under tight budgetary constraints, so the lifting of the requirement to field a four-man team for the Princess of Wales was certainly an attractive economy. Indeed, in the name of economy her hitherto automatic assignment of a motorcycle escort on official engagements had been withdrawn on several occasions in the previous year, sometimes at short notice and with undesirable consequences for the punctual running of her programme.
Despite the innocent reasons I was given, whenever I was feeling unusually suspicious I thought I saw in such moves a subtle attempt to downgrade the Princess’s engagements. My suspicions had been strengthened by my discovery at the traditional police pre-Christmas drinks party in 1993 that the Princess’s portrait was missing from its usual place among the other members of the royal family in the headquarters building. It was away for cleaning, explained a senior officer guilelessly, but its absence still made me unhappy.
The question of the Princess’s security remained a bone of contention for a while. A desire to accede to her wish to dispense with her bodyguards was quite naturally at odds with the fear that heads would roll if anything should happen to her. Eventually the Home Secretary’s views were sought and it was decided that the Princess should receive protection as before, but only when she asked for it.
Regardless of the mixture of signals they received fr
om her, her erstwhile team of PPOs and their back-ups retained a deep loyalty for their wayward charge. I was later moved by the distress some of them expressed to me that she should eventually have died in circumstances which they would never have allowed to develop.
Unprotected by such professionals, the Princess soon found herself being pursued by unwelcome photographers on many occasions. Images of her panic-stricken dodging around parked cars outside the house of her therapist Susie Orbach, or her televised hounding in the concourse of a Spanish airport that summer, must have brought feelings of concern and disgust to the mind of any reasonable observer. In some cases her altercations with cameramen even prompted acts of robust gallantry from members of the public.
All the same, the concern I felt when I saw these pictures was mixed with a nagging doubt. Every one of these incidents could have been avoided, either with greater foresight on her part, or with the help of the PPO to whom she was entitled but chose to disdain. I also knew – and the cameramen all knew – that this was the same woman who would think nothing of tipping off photographers if there was a message she wanted to convey by means of an apparently random picture taken in a public place.
It was the clearest and most distressing example of her apparent inability to understand that public attention could not be courted and spurned with impunity. Nor could its sometimes heavy-footed servants in the media be trusted to direct their attention only towards the subjects and at the times that she ordained.
Despite the paradox of her relationship with the media, there were still a few of us who tried to portray the Princess as the victim of greater injustice than she herself was attempting to commit. Even her duplicity retained for me a kind of admirable gutsiness. In early June 1994, when I was questioned about her latest bout of media incontinence – most notably the notorious photographs of her clandestine rendezvous with Richard Kay in his parked car – I still felt able to point out, ‘Well, at least she does her own dirty work.’ For me this was still the key difference between her and those who sought to reduce her public standing through cynical manipulation of the media, an unwholesome task for which her opponents never seemed to be short of willing volunteers.
Shadows of a Princess Page 45