The cumulative effect was to reinforce my desire to resign. Knowing how and when to do this was going to be difficult in the extreme. An open approach might seem the obvious answer, but I knew that in the Princess’s current state of mind it would be interpreted as disloyalty. Worse, it would put me beyond her reach. Making a smooth transition to a new career while salvaging some credit from the old one was not going to be easy at the best of times. A boss bent on being the victim of betrayal and avenging what she saw as the worst of all crimes would make it impossible.
I sometimes pictured myself like a man locked in a cage with a tigress. In the roof of the cage was an escape hatch, but to have any chance of reaching it the man had to distract and pacify the tigress for long enough to enable him to get under the hatch and make his leap to safety. Otherwise he was lunch. I should add that this rather melodramatic image was largely subconscious, but I did discover a greater motivation than ever for keeping my boss happily occupied.
Partly in response to my urgings and partly in response to comparable advice I think she was getting from other sources, in early 1995 the Princess drew up an attempt at her own, very private manifesto. It was a positive, forward-looking document containing a longer list of things she wanted to do than of things she wanted to avoid.
It also betrayed her own muddled thinking. She expressed a wish to avoid ‘endless bureaucrats’, but her own staff could not have been smaller, while an involvement in the sort of mind-numbing occupation usually associated with bureaucracy was never something she was likely to have to encounter for herself.
She said she wished to avoid being ‘treated as a puppet’ – neglecting the fact that, if she had ever been anybody’s puppet, she had comprehensively cut any strings that might have been trying to control her movements.
Tellingly, she also wanted to avoid ‘being used by others who then take praise’. As I wryly reflected on the amount of praise she received for things that perhaps in the strictest truth were not of her own doing, I recognized her continuing, avid requirement for reassurance, popularity and recognition, which nothing was going to satisfy.
She bemoaned the ‘inflexibility’ of her diary too. Having only just over a year earlier presented her with a completely blank diary for her to fill in pretty much as she chose, I interpreted this as a request for licence to change her mind without being made to feel bad about it afterwards.
Her ambitions were similarly revealing and easier for me to sympathize with. She wanted her ‘true worth to be recognized’, the chance to use her ‘healing interests and abilities’ and the chance to ‘address increasing world problems’. With this went a desire to make ‘a contribution on a world platform … and to deal with many countries’. Nowhere, to my regret, could I find any reference to a desire to acknowledge the requirements of the rather less glamorous causes and charities in her own country, from which the bedrock of her support was drawn.
Quite reasonably perhaps, given all she had gone through, this appeared to be a plan to enable her to write her own ticket to wherever she wanted to go, in support of whatever cause she currently favoured, in a continuing quest for her most elusive ambition. This ambition had been repeated to me on so many occasions, but was conspicuously and strangely absent from her own list: ‘peace of mind’ was what she always said she craved.
I had my own doubts as to whether this manifesto would help her achieve that ambition. I kept them to myself, however, only referring to it when there was a good opportunity to make a connection or nudge her in a particular direction that might prove rewarding.
As the year progressed, despite all the minor battles we won against the reactionary forces that would have restricted her chances to exploit her extraordinary world celebrity, she was ultimately unable to win the war. At its most elevated, her war was fought to establish herself as an independent, globetrotting channel for good works. I think I coined the word ‘ambassador’ to describe what she wanted to do and she seized on it with enthusiasm. At its least elevated, it was a struggle within herself for control of everyone and everything she could possibly reach. The more danger she detected, the more plots she saw, the more disloyalty she imagined, the more injustice she felt, the greater grew her sense of victimhood. Control of all these threats – by aggression if need be – seemed to be her only way of feeling safe.
The victory that seemed close enough to grasp at the beginning of 1995 had been snatched out of reach by the year’s end. This was not the result of some dark conspiracy by faceless men in grey suits plotting in the corridors of Buckingham Palace or St James’s. Such people existed and so, in a fairly benign form, did their plots, but she had outmanoeuvred them before with ease and was developing a capability to do so with even greater ease in the future. Her worst enemy, as so often in the past, was herself. Her single-handed and devastating assault on any prospect of progress through consensus – with her husband, with Buckingham Palace, with the still considerable establishment forces inclined to her side – by making her Panorama broadcast finally condemned her to life as an unsupported solo act.
Thereafter, any assistance she required – and she would always be a high-maintenance proposition – would be inspired by the giver’s self-interest or sympathy, rather than by the respect and duty which were her real due. I wondered how she would ever find the peace of mind she sought if the means of achieving it were controlled by people who would always want something back from her in return for their support, be it jet, yacht, holiday, pet project or even love. Their agendas, however well intended, would always be far removed from that of the only real source of her own status, the British royal family.
The irony was that, with perfect clarity, she saw her priority as being survival against the forces that had so nearly suffocated her. In choosing a path of high-profile indulgence, however, she only accelerated the result that her enemies had been trying so vainly to bring about.
A better private secretary might have succeeded in the painstaking task of stitching together a rapprochement with our ruling family. Ultimately it was my failure to succeed in this as I had hoped to do that brought about my decision to resign. A better private secretary might also have persuaded the Princess to revisit the scenes and origins of her own popularity, and perhaps find the elusive peace of mind she wanted in a restrained programme of hard work and real involvement with some of the causes close to people’s daily lives.
How I longed for the legions of good people who made up the forgotten armies of her charities to feel that their patron had turned her back on at least some of the glamour which now tempted her in order to strengthen them – and herself – through a systematic, disciplined involvement in what they were doing. Then, from a restored and virtuous position on the moral high ground, she could attempt the task of publicly forgiving her husband and building on the reconciliation already begun with him in private. Such a strategy would have won her something more like the admiration and respect she felt she deserved. It would certainly have won her something more substantial than a self-appointed role as ‘Queen of Hearts’.
From early 1995 onwards, I knew this was expecting too much. The long-term publicity benefits of a disciplined return to a systematic, UK-based programme – back to the grass roots of her support – were no longer attractive enough to wean her off the exotic new diet of globetrotting photo calls. Nor was the idea of a public expression of forgiveness for her husband more attractive than the expression of hurt victimhood which she still saw as her due. Panorama proved it.
As always, such philosophizing was only an afterthought, a luxury I allowed myself when the increasing tempo of the daily alarms and excursions permitted. Nonetheless, with varying degrees of intrusiveness, these thoughts were always with me, like a dull, repeated bass note underlying the day-to-day cacophony of almost single-handedly running the public life of the world’s most famous woman.
Work time merged indistinguishably with family time. I was never beyond the reach of my boss, thanks to the
pager that I carried everywhere. The newspapers were a constant source of anxiety, and it usually reached a crescendo at weekends. At least they provided a distraction from the boxes of correspondence that were my regular baggage as I headed out of town on Friday afternoons. There was little time to think, and I became increasingly desperate to stop the rollercoaster and get off.
Ultimately, I suppose, Princesses – and Princes too, for that matter – get the private secretaries they deserve. For a number of reasons, I felt I was no longer the private secretary she deserved, and I thought I should make room for somebody who might be. I no longer felt the degree of commitment for her that I needed if I was to sustain this deformed version of royal life. I therefore formed a one-man escape committee and began to dig my way out, putting out tentative feelers to prospective new employers, taking all the advice I could get from people who were succcessful in the world beyond our Palace walls. Meanwhile, I kept the tigress appeased as best I could.
The pace was hectic. In 1995 I counted no less than 10 overseas trips made by the Princess of Wales. Each had to be planned, organized and executed with the same precision that had characterized the set-piece expeditions I recalled from my early days in the Wales office. Whatever lip service the Princess paid to the new regime she had brought about – a regime of accessibility, flexibility and increased enjoyment – like so much else in her life the dream was not accompanied by the fundamental change of attitudes necessary to make it a reality. Some of my most uncomfortable moments with her could still be sparked off by a minor failure of organization, however far out of my control it may have been.
The best response when the Princess was in a foul mood was to do what you could to ignore it and carry on with business as usual, feigning (with difficulty) a complete lack of concern. Very late one night in 1995, we were waiting to go in to a dinner of unsurpassed grandeur in an Italian military academy. The dinner was the crowning event in a programme of music organized by Luciano Pavarotti to raise money for child victims of war in the Balkans. The great tenor had been not uncharacteristically delayed en route from dressing room to banqueting hall and the Princess, used to being the only star of the show, was chafing at the delay.
Unable in these surroundings to betray a fraction of the frustration she was feeling, she had to content herself with turning to me with angry eyes and a vicious whisper. ‘Patrick! It’s midnight!’
‘Gosh, Ma’am,’ I replied, eyeing an approaching drinks tray. ‘Is it really?’
No significant relaxation was permissible in the high standards she legitimately demanded of her staff, but no recruitment was possible either. It was a matter of pride and also part of her new image to be not only more glamorous, responsive and efficient than the rest of the royal family, but thriftier too. There was certainly no slackening in public demand for her, so the task of keeping her show on the road was becoming an ever more demanding one.
There was hardly a night that year when she did not appear in my dreams – but not for me the happier visions I am told some people experienced of her. As often as not, my dream Princess had a telephone in her hand, a desk thick with unanswered mail, revenge in her heart and danger in her eyes.
The first major set-piece tour of the year was to Japan. The published purpose of the visit and the focus of the programme was to enable the Princess to acquaint herself with the work of various charitable centres for the old, the young and the disabled. There was also to be a formalizing of the link between Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, of which she was president, and Tokyo’s National Children’s Hospital.
Such innocent objectives nevertheless attracted scrutiny from those now convinced that the Princess of Wales was a dangerous unguided missile, ready at a moment’s notice to explode with devastating effects for British diplomacy and the prestige abroad of the British royal family. It did not matter to such people that the Princess’s solo foreign trips had so far attracted nothing but praise from the countries she visited. I had a fat file of telegrams from Embassies and appreciative letters from Foreign Secretaries to back up this important but awkward fact.
As part of a ‘hearts and minds’ policy towards those who could influence her future role, I had encouraged the Princess to cultivate a personal relationship with whoever was occupying the post of Foreign Secretary. With Douglas Hurd in particular, I felt she struck up a rapport which may have reassured him about her competence and good intentions. In return, I know it represented a kind of paternally concerned interest which she badly missed when he left the post.
Knowing the mistrust with which we were viewed, as well as just knocking out another royal programme with all its attendant nuances and permutations, I also had to wage a subtle campaign of persuasion to reassure suspicious minds in Buckingham Palace and the Foreign Office that they had nothing to fear from such an expedition other than further laurels for the Princess of Wales. I wished to make it clear that if anybody had any objection to such laurels being earned, then they should kindly say so clearly, preferably with accompanying reasons, because otherwise we were going to press on regardless.
Unsurprisingly, since nobody could raise any legitimate complaint about the Princess’s conduct of her foreign tours, no overt objection was made. There was, however, still a strong enough undercurrent of disapproval for me to encourage the Princess to hold a personal meeting with the Foreign Secretary before her trip.
Our former leader on the Indonesia/Hong Kong tour, David Wright, was now back from Korea and installed in some splendour at the Foreign Office. Japan was his area of special responsibility (he later went on to be our Ambassador in Tokyo). David’s view of our intentions was, I suspect, as immune as any to the charms of a laurel-hunting Princess. He had been the Prince’s man and this type of royal visit, which did not really conform with any of the established categories, must have offended his sense of propriety. Nevertheless, any reservations he may have harboured he magnanimously kept to himself, and I hope he was not disappointed with the results we achieved.
As in the past, the view from the Embassy was rather different from the vistas of doubt we faced at home. Properly handled, the prospect of a visit from the Princess of Wales was enough to arouse enthusiasm in most countries. Ambassadors, insulated from the shifting currents of the Whitehall–Buckingham Palace axis, were able to report what was only the evidence of their eyes. People wanted to see the Princess of Wales. They approved of the causes she supported. They admired her beauty. In her life, touched as it was by tragedy, they could see something of themselves. These were potent, if unconventional, national symbols.
She might at times be described as a mere clotheshorse, a loose cannon or a glitzy Mother Teresa, but she attracted headlines from New York to Tokyo and was thus a powerful magnet for politicians, businessmen and cultural figures – the very people upon whose doors British diplomats might politely knock for months without achieving the success made possible by a three-day visit from the Princess of Wales. The same held true at the highest levels of the countries she visited. While I fenced tensely with officials in Buckingham Palace and the Foreign Office about the precise definition of the Queen’s stricture that the Princess should not represent her abroad, Presidents, Kings and even – in the case of Japan – an Emperor let it be known that they expected the Princess of Wales to come to tea when she was in town.
Even in Japan, however, she was not free from the effects of her other, less statesmanlike public image. At long last a resolution, in the Princess’s favour, had been found with the Sunday Mirror on the illicit gym photos. I blearily received the news over the telephone in the small hours of a Tokyo morning. Tiptoeing across the Embassy landing, I pushed a note under the Princess’s bedroom door, inscribed with the agreed code: ‘The man from Delmonte, he say yes.’
Together with an invitation to tea at the Imperial Palace, this news represented a sweet victory for the Princess. It was not that she thought particularly ill of the Sunday Mirror, or even of the sneaky pho
tographer. He had been pilloried enough. What I believe gave her the greatest pleasure was the recognition the legal ruling represented that her outrage had been genuine.
The next morning I found her trying on several different pairs of shoes. Finally the dresser had had enough. In the forthright tones that made her such a refreshing, if ultimately short-lived addition to the Princess’s entourage, she pronounced, ‘They’ll just have to do. They’re quite high enough.’
The Princess appeared to accept this ruling meekly. Catching my quizzical look, she laughed. ‘It’s very important,’ she said, ‘to wear really high heels. I’m already taller than the Emperor, but it won’t do any harm to look just that bit taller!’
The Emperor and his family seemed duly impressed, if not by the Princess’s height then at least by the entourage of international pressmen who were lying in wait for her at the Palace. The most exciting moment, however, came right at the beginning. ‘I had to curtsy below the Emperor’s eye line,’ she explained to me later. ‘But with those heels and that skirt …’ She did not finish the sentence, but simply waved a copy of an English newspaper at me. An eye-catching photograph showed her curtsying deeply before the diminutive head of state, the perfect picture of respectful modesty, but for the generous expanse of athletic royal thigh it tastefully revealed.
None of this deterred the Ambassador from reporting the outcome of the Princess’s visit in eulogistic terms. Despite thus further adding to her impressive tally of overseas successes both for herself and for the country, if not – technically – for the Queen, the suspicion about her motives and her trustworthiness remained at home. I found myself playing the same ponderous game of grandmother’s footsteps before every high-profile foreign visit made by the Princess.
Shadows of a Princess Page 49