Shadows of a Princess

It was not until later that I recognized these mini-binges as comfort eating, vain attempts to console herself for her emotional hunger. The roots undoubtedly lay in childhood unhappiness. The broken home of her early years has been well documented and she spoke to me often of tensions with her father. ‘Once when he took me to school,’ she said, ‘I stood on the steps and screamed, “If you leave me here you don’t love me!”’

I did not probe into the Princess’s childhood, but in a way I had no need to. Photographs of the teenage Diana Spencer show her at a glance to be knowing, dull-eyed and self-conscious. Throughout my time with the Princess there were occasional signs of the scars of earlier traumas: insecurity in her attractiveness, a passionate need for unconditional love, an obsession with establishing emotional control, and a sabotaging approach to relationships. The distrust of men and the chronically poor image she had of herself told their own story.

The Princess was bulimic for most of the time I knew her. Despite a continuous battle with the condition, which she was popularly supposed to have won, she often suffered recurrent attacks. These were most frequent when the strains in her marriage were simultaneously driving her to comfort eating while fuelling her innate self-doubt.

Once – on a hungry day – she took a big bite at a prawn sandwich. A solitary prawn escaped and fell with deadly accuracy down her front, disappearing into her cleavage. She squeaked with surprise and looked inside her jacket. I waited for the prawn to reappear, but it failed to do so.

‘Bloody thing’s stuck!’ she said through a mouthful of sandwich.

‘Poor prawn,’ I said lamely.

‘Bloody lucky prawn!’ she corrected me, turning away to deal with the intruder. I took the hint. Modesty was for her to indulge in when she wanted to. It was not for me to question her absolute desirability, even in fun, even by a syllable.

Perhaps surprisingly, there was never a ban on food jokes. Maybe it was her way of dealing with the potential embarrassment of the whole subject. I was later struck by the courage – or foolhardiness – of her self-mocking reference to constantly ‘sticking my head down the loo’.

Later that day we flew back to London. As the helicopter lifted from the town park, so the tensions of the day lifted from her shoulders. It was instant party time. Now came the jokes and the gossip. Nobody cared about shouting. My newcomer’s ears struggled to believe what they heard. Was this the same Princess who an hour ago had been the saintly hospital visitor?

‘What d’you get if you cross a nun with an apple?’ she yelled above the engine noise.

‘I don’t know, Ma’am. What do you get if you cross a nun with an apple?’ I replied, looking dumbly at the lady-in-waiting to see if this was normal behaviour. Her determined smile indicated that it was.

‘A computer that won’t go down on you!’ shrieked the Princess, doubling up with mirth.

Even as I obediently joined in the laughter, I noted the sadness behind my new boss’s taste in humour. She would not know how to switch a computer on, let alone use it for long enough to see it crash; and as for the oral sex … as a joke, it was reassuringly remote. The daring and crudity gave her the necessary thrill. Even if she did not fully understand what she was saying, she knew it would shock and that was what she wanted. It was the safest of safe sex.

The theme of sex was a standard feature of her joke repertoire. She seemed immune to the embarrassment it might cause others. Careful never to exceed the bounds of good taste while in the public eye, her reticence was thrown to the winds as soon as she felt she was in relatively safe surroundings. Even then her judgement was erratic. Many times I cringed as her crude jokes and braying laughter scandalized the delicate ears of outsiders such as Queen’s Flight crews, diplomats and charity officials. The desire to shock outweighed any possible pleasure she might have gained from the humour of what she said.

The same desire was apparent in her infantile mockery of other members of the royal family – though only behind their backs. Thus her husband was referred to as ‘The Boy Wonder’ or ‘The Great White Hope’, while her father-in-law was labelled ‘Stavros’ and her in-laws generally as ‘The Germans’.

Even the objects of her compassion were considered fair game. All this I could laugh off, however uneasily, as her way of coping with stress. However, the looks of worried disbelief on strangers’ faces – and those of junior staff too, worst of all – made me realize that other people’s feelings were less important to her than her desire for gratification.

By the time we were back at the Palace front door the Princess was cool and controlled again. We stood awkwardly, waiting to be dismissed. Each in turn, she held our eyes and inclined her head. We bowed.

This, I learned, was when she looked back over the day and judged our loyalty. If she failed to make eye contact – ‘blanked’ you, in the jargon – you had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Suddenly the jokes in the helicopter seemed a long time ago. I tried to guess if I had laughed enough.

‘Thank you all very much,’ she said, her voice now carefully neutral. But I got the message. Yes, I can be fun, but I can also choose to be an imperious madam – and now I own you.

She disappeared back up the stairs. In the silence I heard her footsteps once again, heading towards her bedroom. The door slammed. Slowly I let out my breath. This job was going to be interesting.

I drove home slowly, my mind filled with images of the day. Most vivid, of course, were those of the Princess. I had to admit, I was surprised. From that first lunch and, I suppose, from the gossipy things I had read about her, I had expected a well-meaning but essentially shallow person, perhaps in need of my manly support and worldly wisdom – a sort of royal super-Sloane. Instead, what I had seen was a polished and confident performance from a professional celebrity. Every gesture, every glance and every word – at least in public – had been consciously planned. Sometimes the planning had taken only a split second, but that simply showed how quickly she thought and how sharp were her public-pleasing instincts.

There was no doubt about it. Behind the good looks and the expensive grooming there was much more than the bimbo caricature to which her critics – even then – would have liked to limit her. That first day I saw, from her effect on the people she met, that she had a powerful, even hypnotic, charisma. Later I learned that it had the ability to conceal many flaws, or at least compensate for them.

Of all the day’s new impressions, it was perhaps the Princess’s fondness for crude humour that sat least comfortably with the public image which until now had been my only guide to her personality. When she was relaxed, the Princess’s vocabulary and verbal mannerisms were pure Sloane Ranger. Consonants were an optional extra, so words often emerged in a lazy drawl. This suited the subject matter, which in private was not always very elevated. The cruder the humour, the more her verbal discipline deserted her, as if it shared our wish suddenly to be far away, preferably with someone not expected to ascend the throne.

When she was serious, however, she commanded phrases and delivery that could make her a witty and clever conversationalist. Her speaking style was that of the verbal sprinter not the marathon runner. I doubt if anybody ever suffered a Princess of Wales monologue, except possibly when seeing her on Panorama, but many will remember – most with pleasure – being on the receiving end of one of her quicksilver one-liners.

These deserve special mention because they played a key part in shaping the impression she left. On public occasions, amplified by the hushed, deferential expectation which is the royal visitor’s usual reception, her spontaneity cut through the self-conscious small talk that thrives on British social nervousness. She reacted instinctively against pomposity – and just think how much of that she had to endure. Her favoured weapon was the verbal pinprick that released the speaker and the audience from the tension which paralyses truthful communication.

She might sit with an audience of drug addicts (or mental patients or battered wives) listening to a turgid briefing on their problems from an overly earnest therapist before leaning forward with a smile and perfect timing to whisper loudly, ‘Does he always go on like this?’ In the laughter that she knew would follow, pent-up emotion was suddenly released and contact made between Princess and pariah. As an added test – or entertainment – the turgid speaker could pretend to laugh too.

This technique, honed in a hundred hospitals, drop-in centres, outreach projects and community facilities, gave her public that feeling of intimate knowledge which is the secret ingredient of devotion. Also, like all really effective spontaneity, it knew its own boundaries. Even her wittiest remark contained a nugget of sympathy, understanding or concern. She may have been short of O levels, but she never dropped a public clanger, never mocked disability or disfigurement.

Except in the car going home, of course. Then the stress of so much emotional giving could be relieved with some pretty unedifying outbursts. By then, however, she had done her duty, left hope with the hopeless and smiles on stricken faces. We told her so, since nobody else was going to, swallowing our scruples to join in the desperate humour that she often called on in place of joy.

It was a very different world from the one I was used to. I was already beginning to learn that early impressions – whether of my new boss or my new surroundings – must never be taken at face value. I also knew that I was not there as a reward. I was there to work. Thus I quickly began to comprehend that being in royal service might provide a rather luxurious working environment, but only at my peril would I ever feel in any way entitled to it. The order of things had been made clear in the Princess’s glance as we waited to be dismissed at the end of the day: she owned us, not the other way around.

In the years that followed there were times when the grandeur and privilege of my surroundings seemed to mock my efforts at running the newest royal household. I realized, though, that it was a healthy sign sometimes to be at odds with those surroundings. In fact, I came to view with suspicion anyone who seemed to take to them too easily. I already had an idea that our royal employers could be jealous of their inheritance and suffered our intrusion only as long as we were useful – or amusing. I resolved to be both to the Princess of Wales, given the chance.

During that first day out with her, I had been surprised by her conflicting displays of compassion and indifference. I had been shocked by her crude humour when out of the public eye, some of it at the expense of those she was visiting, but I had also recognized its value as a safety valve for the stresses of spending so much time being sympathetic to those in desperate suffering or need. Even so, it would have been hard to serve someone who was so ready to find humour in such tragic situations. Luckily for my own peace of mind, I quickly learned that much of the Princess’s compassion was very definitely the genuine article.

As I watched her at a dying child’s bedside, holding the girl’s newly cold hand and comforting the stricken parents, she seemed to share their grief. Not self-consciously like a stranger, not distantly like a counsellor, not even through any special experience or deep insight. Instead it just seemed that a tranquillity gathered around her. Into this stillness the weeping mother and heartbroken father poured their sorrow and there, somehow, it was safe. The young woman with the smart suit and soulful eyes had no answers for them, but they felt that somewhere inside she knew at least a part of what they were feeling. That was all the moment needed.

The Princess did have some experience of what they were feeling, and she usually managed to let it appear rather more, but the suffering she felt had none of the merciful clarity of bereavement. As I slowly discovered, it was dark and complex and grew from years of stunted emotional growth. The compassion she showed others was not drawn from some deep supply within her. Rather, it was a reflection of the attention she herself craved. Once we had returned her to the lonely privacy of her palace, I sensed she had little left over for herself.

Instead, she increasingly settled for the illusion of compassion. Reading about herself as ‘the caring Princess’, she felt a soothing glow of achievement, but the reality was that her compassion came to be reserved largely for the cameras. It was not exclusively so, because along with a cynical use of her saintly reputation there was an erratic but genuine kindness. Even this struggled to remain anonymous, however. The surprised recipients of flowers or sympathetic messages after some well-publicized tragedy might justifiably have suspected that their good fortune – artlessly shared with a local newspaper – just added to the overall illusion.

As for the cumulative, corrosive effect of this on her own sense of self-worth, I was to discover that it could be severe. Even at the outset I could see that receiving credit for virtues she did not possess could not satisfy the hunger for recognition that burned within the Princess of Wales.

Gradually I slipped into my new routine, wearing the same few suits, parking under the same tree in The Mall, giving the same cheery greeting to Gladys the St James’s housekeeper, and offering up the same daily prayer for continued survival. Richard took his beer mat to his new office, the Princess began to ask for me instead of him, and I began to look forward to opening the return Bag with something less than panic.

After my first day out with her, my urgent priority was to gain confidence in planning the Princess’s public appearances. An early milestone came with my first solo recce itself. The engagement was to be quite a routine London affair – the official opening of an office and resource centre for a small children’s charity, followed by a reception to meet the usual mixture of fundraisers, charity workers and local officials.

In later years the recce might have taken me three-quarters of an hour – 15 minutes for the recce itself and 30 minutes to chat up and generally get the measure of the hosts. As the rawest apprentice, however, I must have spent nearly two hours pacing out every inch of the route, nominating press positions and marking places for individual presentations.

Then I changed everything and started again. I failed to get the measure of the hosts as well, but I think it can be safely concluded that they were very patient people.

From this I learned the importance of not hesitating to change my mind if I thought it necessary. However tempting it was to cultivate an air of infallibility, complacency was a risky companion when planning a royal visit and often led me into embarrassing U-turns. Such was my spurious authority – and their customary good manners – that few hosts objected and some, I think, even enjoyed the chance to prolong the royal experience. Generally, though, changing my mind – like confessing to my mistakes – was a pleasure to be indulged in sparingly.

Again and again I felt my lack of experience, but surprisingly quickly the time I spent on recces began to shrink. Even 15 minutes eventually became too much for some engagements. By then I knew what would work and what would not. The extra time was needed only to reassure myself that my distilled experience as passed on to the hosts would be treated like the politely phrased commandments I felt them to be.

I knew, for example, that the Princess refused to be rushed when meeting people. If time was limited the only option was to reduce the number of people she met – not, as some hosts seemed determined to try, merely to persuade her to hurry up. Nothing was more calculated to make her slow down even more.

I had seen that she liked to be punctual and well briefed, preferably in humorous, bite-sized chunks. ‘YRH will remember Mr X. Last time you visited he forgot to bow; he curtsied instead!’

She also liked plenty of elbow room when she was in the public eye. Apart from a protection officer, she preferred the gaggle of officials and dignitaries who inevitably accompanied her to keep well out of her way. I sometimes thought the equerry and lady-in-waiting were mainly there to conduct a type of genteel crowd control. With sharp elbows and distracting small talk, we became expert in buying our boss the uncrowded stage she needed to perform at her best.

I knew where the arrival line-up should be positioned, where the girl with the posy should stand, where the ribbon should be cut and where the press pen should be sited. The Princess liked short line-ups, preferably with spouses excluded. The girl with the posy should be at the end of the line, well positioned for the cameras because there was always a moment of amused miscommunication – small fingers reluctant to let go at the crucial moment – as the flowers were handed over. If not, she would laughingly contrive it. The flowers should be in neutral colours, in theory to avoid clashing with the royal outfit, and unwired.

She liked the ribbon (or the plaque or the sapling or the pharmaceutical research laboratory) to provide a backdrop that identified the cause being supported and, ideally, someone very young or very old on hand to ‘assist’ photogenically with the cutting, unveiling or digging. She preferred the press to be well penned, unobtrusively positioned and silent but for the whirr of their motor drives. Muffled yelps of delight were permitted and not infrequent, but groans and calls of ‘Just one more!’ usually met the same contrary response as requests to hurry up.

She did not like the press party – unkindly termed the ‘rat pack’ – to get too close. Cameras, flash guns and the dreaded boom microphone could all ruin the carefully arranged spontaneity that we tried to make her trademark. But nor did she like the pack too far away. She traded skilfully on the knowledge that they needed her just as much as she needed them, so she theatrically ‘endured’ their presence and could be sharp with her staff if any cameraman got too far out of line. All the players in this game knew it was a mutually advantageous conspiracy, however, and played by the rules accordingly. She gave them the shots both they and she needed, and they responded with enduring devotion.

I learned the crucial importance of seeing all planning decisions through royal rather than mortal eyes. In my ignorance I had imagined that, as with some naval chores, royalty regarded public duties as just that: duties which had to be performed as a matter of necessity, to be enjoyed if possible, to be endured if not and all to be accomplished with a noble appreciation of the greater good being served – or at least with the satisfaction of a job well done. Now it slowly dawned on me that the process was more complex and allowed the intrusion of other personal considerations. While some might see only the outward appearance of royal concern – in, say, a children’s hospice – the equerry has to allow for the emotional toll exacted by 90 minutes’ close involvement in a dozen harrowing accounts of family distress.

The engagements which required the greatest display of outward compassion (hospices were a case in point) were often those that drew deepest on the Princess’s reserves of inner goodwill and determination. I came to understand that, while showing sympathy with those in distress sometimes rewarded her with a virtuous glow, it also emphasized the loneliness with which her personal unhappiness had to be faced.

Surprisingly often, even the most efficient and well-run organization seemed unable to understand the simple practicalities of designing a visit programme. Often it was the humblest charity which had the clearest idea of how long could be spent talking to a certain number of patients and how welcome would be the obligatory shaking of influential but otherwise ungripping hands.

Watching it wrestle with such small considerations frequently seemed a measure of how well a management knew its own people. I quickly learned that the priority was not just to allocate the required number of minutes to a particular event. Frequently it was more important to practise ego-management, as a touchy official or departmental head hotly insisted on more time as if it were a measure of his importance or even – in extreme cases – his virility. Always to be pitied were those who would bear disappointing news home to their wives about the limit on line-up numbers, to the equal dismay of local hat-sellers.

Best of all were the organizations who simply explained what they hoped would happen during their royal visit and then left the rest to us, the assumed experts. Less welcome were those who had considered every detail and were then unwilling, understandably, to accommodate changes made for reasons that I could not tell them, such as the fact that the Princess would probably prefer to climb straight on the plane home rather than sit next to an old bore like you during lunch. Least welcome were those who introduced their plan with the words, ‘Now, you won’t have to help us with any of this. We know the ropes. We had the Duchess of Blank here in 1971 and it was a huge success …’

A lexicon of soothing phrases, excuses and explanations quickly became part of my visit-planning toolkit as ministers, matrons and monks were lulled into complying with a programme whose constraints they might often have found eccentric, trivial or even offensive. Over time, however, the necessary mannerisms of speech accumulated into an oleaginous patina which proved hard to shake off when talking to people outside my narrow field of work. Thus can courtly talk slip into insincerity.

The final step in the planning process was to walk the course. An obvious precaution, you might think, but with surprising regularity it was possible to encounter host organizations who had overlooked elementary considerations such as the time actually spent walking from one part of a building to another.

To be fair, this was partly because their minds were quite properly concentrated on the people at the expense of less exciting aspects such as timing or camera angles. Also, until you had experienced it, it was difficult to estimate accurately just how quickly a 26-year-old Princess with the ground-covering abilities of a mustang could move between the car and the briefing room, the lab and the packing centre, the day room and the chapel, the royal box and the touchline, the presidential jet and the guard of honour, and so on. It did sometimes seem, however, that concerned hosts were expecting a visitor with the frailty of the Queen Mother rather than a young woman whose athleticism was becoming legendary.

FOUR

DOUBLE UP

Once I had achieved a shaky confidence in organizing the Princess’s UK engagements, I could look forward to the challenge of planning her overseas visits. I remembered pictures I had seen of the Princess looking cool and compassionate in a dozen exotic foreign locations. This, I thought, would be where my new job started to become a bit more glamorous. The reality, of course, was that it took a lot of very unglamorous hard work to reach the media-friendly results that she – and her public – expected.

I have always taken undue pleasure even from aimless travel, and to be offered transport and accommodation on such a royal scale and be paid to indulge my puerile desire seemed the best part of the job description. During my early days at St James’s I heard an endless travelogue of tour stories, some of dizzying tallness. As I was to learn, even in exaggerated form these tales struggled to convey the reality of transporting our royal circus to foreign countries. Not to be outdone, over the years I developed my own improbable repertoire of traveller’s yarns from which, if nothing else, my audiences learned that the overseas tour encapsulated in concentrated form all the best and worst aspects of life with the Waleses.