I left my resignation statement with the Queen’s press secretary, ready to be released on receipt of my telephone signal. Then I jumped into a taxi to make the familiar journey for the last time.
At KP I was received by a stony-faced butler who bade me wait in the Equerries’ Room. I waited and waited. This was another room full of potent memories. Here was the rug I must practically have worn out with anxious pacing. There, the desk on which I had laid out the day’s programmes and briefed myself Navy-style on their objectives. Over there was the musty drinks cabinet from which I had occasionally fortified myself before an evening at the opera. And here at last was the familiar sound of the Princess’s approaching footsteps.
Then she was in the room. She was wearing a pale blue suit, in honour, I realized, of the lunch she was due to have with the Argentinian Ambassador – a lunch she would shortly cancel. She looked pale and oppressed. Suddenly I saw that she was nervous too.
She carried an unopened envelope in her hand and as we sat down on opposite sides of the table she held it up. To my relief there was no sign of her phone hysterics. ‘What’s this about?’ she asked. Her voice was carefully controlled, but in her eyes I could see apprehension as well as sadness.
‘I’m afraid it’s my resignation, Ma’am.’
‘Why?’
This was not a conversation I wanted to protract. She knew very well why. ‘Because I feel our working relationship has broken down. It’s probably my fault, but in any case I don’t think it would get better. I think it will only get worse.’
‘I see.’
She stood up and headed for the door. I stood up also and half made to follow her. Suddenly she turned, colour rushing back into her cheeks. ‘Well. We can at least shake hands,’ she said, and so we did.
Then she was hurrying back up the stairs. I heard a door slam. I waited for a minute, feeling the sudden silence. So that was it.
I felt numb. As if in a dream, I let myself out of the Palace. Then I walked with quickening steps to the police lodge, where I phoned the press office at Buckingham Palace. I had foiled tomorrow’s lethal story and now I would give the papers my script instead. My resignation statement was brief and respectful. It could now be released, and so could I.
For the last time, I stepped out through the Palace gates. I felt the January sunshine on my face and looked up into a clear blue sky.
That was not the end, of course. You cannot just walk away from the Princess of Wales. I must have sensed that my royal experiences were not over yet, that more painful twists lay in store. At that moment, as I strolled away from Kensington Palace, all I knew was that on the inside I was running.
TWENTY
OVER THE HILLS
Halfway down the drive, I stopped. The January sunshine was nice enough, but the January cold was reaching places it certainly should not have been reaching. I quickly confirmed what my most accurate thermometer was already telling me. My flies were undone.
In a panic, I reviewed the last few scenes. Luckily my new suit had a long coat. I was fairly confident my modesty had thus been preserved. Relief flooded over me, quickly followed by a snort of laughter. What a great way to say goodbye. Students of body language might have been equally entertained.
Even with my zipper at half-mast, any dignity I had tried to give the resignation ritual was evaporating fast. I had to make good my escape. My laughter stopped abruptly. This was no time to relax. The Princess had slammed her door with a vehemence that rekindled my worst fears. ‘With one bound …’ I was not going to be free, at least if she had her way. God knows what calls she was making even now as I searched for a cab on Kensington Gore. I might at last be outside the cage, but the tigress had long claws.
First, however, like a prisoner handed the key to his cell door, I unclipped the pager from my belt and held it for a moment in my palm. ‘CALL THE BOSS,’ it used to say (translation: ‘You’re in trouble’). Or, ‘WHERE ARE YOU?’ (translation: ‘Which restaurant are you in?’) In happier times we sent each other jokes, too. Now I switched it off. There would be no more poison from that royal radio umbilical. Unfortunately, I did not then throw it dramatically into a bin. I cannot remember what I did with it, in fact, but I have not seen it since.
Back at St James’s, I gave the office a wide berth as I made for the apartment that had been my refuge the night before. The same Good Samaritan from the Queen’s household was in the kitchen, only this time he was accompanied by my secretary – also seizing the opportunity to escape – and a small group of work friends. Judging by the hilarity and the empty champagne bottles, we were in for a memorable lunch. Yet even as we exchanged congratulations, it seemed that we were not just celebrating my departure. It was almost as if I was commiserating with them.
My fate was a sharp reminder of their own mortality in this capricious royal game of snakes and ladders. Unknown, and therefore scary, for me the outside world now beckoned. I had no idea what I would do, but for the moment it was enough to know that it would at least be beyond the baleful watch of our royal employers. My friends, on the other hand, would return to business as usual after lunch. In return for all their hard work, loyalty and dedication, there would be compensations in the form of some privileges and perks and the hope of the occasional royal favour – yet less and less frequently could they share our predecessors’ satisfaction from a working life devoted to the service of a universally respected institution.
That institution now felt itself to be under siege. Unable to control a critical outside world, it had turned inwards for the cause of its fear. Purges on varying scales were rending many royal households at that time. It was as if, by finding scapegoats among their staff, our employers could avoid an unwelcome possibility: the best candidates for change (and probably the only people they would truly heed) might be the ones they saw in the mirror every morning.
Like dozens of others, I had done nothing to warrant resignation, yet my fate was sealed nonetheless. In this atmosphere, it was no longer possible to sleep soundly in the knowledge of humble duty honestly done. At their desks as much as in their beds, happy dreams were no longer going to be in the courtiers’ conditions of service. As I knew from my own experience, once upon a very recent time those dreams had been as reliable as the arrival of the Royal Victorian Order. No longer.
Meanwhile, there was the small matter of a press interview. I knew that a media storm would break around my head as soon as my press statement was released from Buckingham Palace. I had learned enough over the previous years to know that speed was essential if I was going to communicate my own version of recent events.
‘Make a short statement and then shut up,’ was the good advice I was given, and I still wonder at how often this simple maxim is ignored by those who claim to understand the British press. Stories acquire a life of their own and it is folly to believe that you can greatly influence their subsequent twists and turns.
It followed that the short statement should say everything I wanted to say, and discourage speculation about areas I would rather avoid. I also had to co-ordinate what I said with Buckingham Palace. My public alignment with the Queen’s household for such a significant announcement would be very revealing to those in the know, indicating that the Princess of Wales and I may have fallen out, but I was not in disgrace. Nor was I beholden to the Prince. In fact, I wanted to distance myself from the whole St James’s operation, which probably saved it from attempting the task on my behalf.
After all the necessary conferring had taken place, therefore, a line was agreed. In time-honoured fashion, it was less than candid. ‘Aide beats Di to the draw’ might have been one truthful version. ‘Patrick Jephson wants to save his sanity and his skin’ might have been another. The official version was reassuringly bland: ‘It is announced from Buckingham Palace that the private secretary to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, Mr Patrick Jephson, is to resign …’ To this I added a short personal statement that was mostly accurate about the hono
ur I felt at having served the Princess of Wales, but less so when it cited family and career commitments as my reason for leaving. The truth was still too raw.
I stuck to the agreed formula throughout my brief interview with the Press Association correspondent – a friendly face and the best conduit for authoritative royal information, as opposed to the selected leaking so beloved of the Princess and the new generation of royal image-makers.
Within minutes the statement was being read verbatim on national news, as I artlessly eavesdropped on the kitchen radio. It was a shock to hear my name. I had a sudden flash of the squirming embarrassment I used to feel at school roll call. Why couldn’t I have been called Smith? But I still felt no connection with the accompanying ‘Di shock-horror’ story.
The next day brought the expected deluge of front-page headlines. In their various ways they all said the same thing: here was a good man driven beyond endurance by his loopy boss. ‘AIDE LEAVES PRINCESS AS TIGGY CALLS FOR AN APOLOGY’ (Daily Telegraph, 23 January). ‘I CAN’T STAND IT ANY MORE’ (Daily Mirror). ‘TOP AIDE DUMPS DI’ (Sun). I heaved a sigh of relief as I thought of the alternative obituary the Princess had planned for me. The Daily Mail gave a clue as to how the story might have gone: ‘DIANA IN DISMAY AS TOP AIDE GOES,’ it announced. I remembered our last few encounters. If that was dismay, I would have hated to see her when she was angry.
Even so, the press attention was oppressive for a while. Everyone from distant relatives to schoolfriends was canvassed by the press for any titbit that might add the necessary ground glass to the pot they were stirring. That my esteemed ex-boss might be grinding away with them did not make the experience any easier. Although it was not pleasant, I was better able than most to see it from the journalists’ point of view. Circulation wars take no prisoners, and it was unrealistic to expect such a tasty royal story – or its dramatis personae – to be treated with much respect or restraint.
I laid low. As expected, without new fuel the story expired after a week and took its rightful place as wrapping paper in the country’s fish-and-chip shops. It is sometimes easy to forget that, whether supportive or critical, even the loudest newspaper thunder soon rumbles off into the distance.
For me, the best bit was a Matt cartoon in the Daily Telegraph. A bemused couple of American tourists were reading a sign at the gates of Kensington Palace which read, ‘Changing of the Staff,’ and gave a list of times. (Four staff had left within days of each other, and more were soon to follow.)
The same week also brought a strange letter from the Princess. In self-pitying phrases it protested her mystification at my departure. The longest paragraph was a peevish grump that I should have chosen such an inconvenient moment to, as she put it, ‘walk out on me’. For once I did not feel guilty. Nor, given her treatment of my last few attempts at communication, did I feel in a hurry to reply.
I was in rather more of a hurry to find a new job. Ironically, if I had let the Princess sack me, I could have wrung a generous severance package from the keepers of the Prince’s bulging Duchy treasure chests. This was the time-honoured method of buying the co-operative and hopefully mute departure of staff who had passed their sell-by date. By beating her to the draw, I paid for my pride by being awarded the princely handshake of two months’ pay and the balance of my railway season ticket. Ah well. Nobody ever went into the royal business to get rich. Courtiers deal in other commodities, the most precious being royal proximity.
By this measure I was paid my due. A few days later, I was called back to St James’s Palace to say a formal farewell to the Prince. It was an awkward, artificial exchange. Most staff departures were a simple choice between satisfaction and regret. In this case I imagine the Prince perhaps felt a mild version of both. On the one hand, it would be months – if not longer – before the Princess might train a replacement so experienced in abetting her attempts to carve her own course, often to the Prince’s cost. On the other hand, without Jephson’s plodding if sometimes misguided attempts at control, her unpredictability was now likely to increase. The Prince might also have been wondering, as some were doing aloud, where the next ‘top aide’ was going to be plucked from. And, even if he or she spoke in the tongues of men and of angels, would the cruelly deserted Princess listen?
If the Prince had such thoughts, he suppressed any obvious grief at my departure. I duly got a real princely handshake, together with an official photograph (of eloquently modest size) and a little container for cuff links and collar studs. I liked the symmetry of the gift, remembering my lost cuff links at the very beginning of my royal adventure. I even got a few strangled words of thanks, which, I decided, was either a lot less or a lot more than I deserved. I comforted myself with the thought that virtue is its own reward, but it was a harsh lesson in the realities of living by my precious principles nonetheless.
Throughout this transitional period I had maintained a few friendly connections in the Queen’s office. Sympathetic noises that had necessarily been discreet while I worked for the Princess could now be expressed more freely. Messages of goodwill arrived in surprising and humbling quantities from colleagues past and present, from patronages, and even from sparring partners in Fleet Street. Suddenly lunches could be enjoyed without even the pretence of having to call them ‘working’. The Princess might have been ready to call me a ‘reject’ – as she soon did – but others kindly gave me the impression that I would be missed.
The Queen herself added to these by summoning me for a farewell call. I left her room feeling better understood than I expected and with a rather larger photograph of the Queen than the Prince had deemed appropriate.
As I made my way down the corridor and out of the Queen’s private quarters, I thought of the hundreds of such photographs and trinkets that I had arranged for the Princess to dispense. Then, I had taken a tolerantly disparaging view of the whole process. I remembered the distraught attaché in the Gulf, inconsolable that he had failed to qualify even for the smallest official snap. Anyway, I had seen too many Embassy sideboards groaning with the things. It was either an exercise in vanity (what else could a photograph of the donor be called?), or it was just a grown-up version of a teenage urge to plaster bedroom walls with pictures of pop stars. Now, after years of smug indifference, it was my turn to be the recipient of a photo – and of the appreciation it represented. I thought it was great.
I tucked the precious blue box under my arm and set off for the final time from the Privy Purse Door across the forecourt of Buckingham Palace. Still rather distracted by my recent conversation with the Sovereign, I had not followed an elementary rule about venturing on to that huge expanse of red gravel: don’t forget, several times a day it turns into a parade ground for the changing of the guard, and marching soldiers have right of way over private secretaries scurrying into obscurity beyond the Palace gates.
I looked up to see what appeared to be the entire Household Division on a collision course. There was a man at the front wearing a bearskin and carrying a sword, marching inexorably towards me. As I dithered, he delivered the loudest whisper I have ever heard. ‘F*** off out of the f***ing way!’
It seemed a good note on which to depart.
Having used so many front pages to advertise my availability for new work, I was soon approached by several prospective employers. I was offered huge sums to write a book of my experiences – not an option in the Princess’s lifetime – and was even invited to write for newspapers on royal affairs. This was tempting, but also premature. The unwelcome truth was that I was a monkey without an organ or an organ-grinder. I was not senior enough to snap up the chairmanship of a bank, nor junior enough to be Jeeves to various would-be American Bertie Woosters. I could dimly remember how to salute with a Royal Navy sword, and I could organize a royal visit to a drugs centre/widget factory/hospital ward with my eyes shut. I did not, as they say, have much to bring to the party.
After a rather haphazard sifting process, I fell for the easy charms of public relation
s. A few weeks later I found myself behind a desk in Sir Tim Bell’s Mayfair headquarters, from whence the legendary spinner of Margaret Thatcher’s election victories doubtless hoped I would add more laurels to his collection. Or perhaps he hoped I would just bring my address book and some valuable new contacts.
Sadly, my appointment turned out to be a mistake for him and an even bigger mistake for me. For 18 months I schmoozed and lunched and dissembled with all a courtier’s skill, but it was no good. Perhaps I just did not suit his kind of organ music.
Like all the best errors, however, it contained a lesson too. As may be apparent from my account so far, in my opinion the ecstatic marriage of PR and royalty is not made in heaven. It is made in hell, which is where it continues to head in a high-speed handcart. The partners are too needy for things the other cannot give for the relationship to be healthy. The PR people are desperate for kudos, the royal people are desperate for a magician. Neither can meet the other’s requirements, but an ever-closer embrace keeps disillusion at bay. The need for fundamental self-examination is thus perpetually postponed. If this sounds like sour grapes, well, I have toiled in the vineyards of both bride and groom.
Meanwhile, having temporarily lost the sympathetic ear of the press, the Princess contented herself with some poisoned remarks about her departing staff in circles where she knew her words would eventually be passed on to the intended victims. These only accelerated my relief at now being beyond her reach.
I watched with deliberately detached interest as she worked through the remains of the engagements I had arranged and a rather haphazard selection of new ones. The photos I saw were revealing, not from the familiar images of the Princess – they were her usual range of public faces – but from what I could see in the background. Her close entourage now seemed to comprise newly acquired friends, office girls and even domestic staff. No doubt such figures provided much needed personal reassurance, but there was a professional price to pay for their inexperience. Without even an equerry to give some continuity, the Princess’s office lacked essential aspects of institutional memory.
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