Shadows of a Princess. Patrick Jephson

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СКАЧАТЬ next day. The public adored her, but theirs – she thought – was a fickle love, lavished on her hairdo as much as on her soul. In any case, she left it behind with the slam of her car door. Her staff could try to redress the balance, but the line between true praise and toadying was always perilously fine.

      It was a cruel irony that the better she did her job, the more she felt resented by some of her in-laws, unable to stomach the idea that she was a channel for emotions they struggled to feel, let alone express. Very well: if she could not please them, she would please herself. Little wonder, then, that she grew to prefer working for her own benefit and, as she saw them, the emotional needs of humanity at large. It might be selfish and it lacked intellectual discipline. It could – and did – expose her to criticism from agents of an older royal order, fearful of the public sentiment (or sentimentality, in their eyes) which she increasingly stirred up. But better that, she thought – even unconsciously – than deny her need for a recognition that accepted her as she really was.

      The liberal, compassionate and educated people who are the emerging face of royal authority might at this point feel entitled to a flicker of exasperation. ‘We did everything we could, but she was impossible!’

      I can only reply, ‘Yes, you did. And yes, she was.’ But too many people who could have put things right did too little for too long. I will always believe it to be true: the Princess of Wales did not set out to rebel. What in the end was seen as her disaffection was what she did to compensate for a chronic feeling of rejection. Time and again, a small handful of sugarlumps would have been enough to lead this nervous thoroughbred back into the safety of the show ring. When none could be found for her, she set off into the crowd.

      The organization I joined in 1988 nonetheless seemed, at least on the surface, to be united in its common aim of serving the Prince and Princess, both of whom for their part seemed equally united in keeping away from public gaze whatever private difficulties their marriage might have been experiencing. Even those well acquainted with the rumours, such as Georgina Howell, writing in the Sunday Times on 18 September 1988, could still reassure themselves that ‘Diana [has decided] as royal women so often have … to make the best of a cool marriage instead of fighting it.’ Ominously she added, ‘… but she lacks romance. The danger is that she may find it.’ Given what was later disclosed to Andrew Morton about the Princess’s love life at the time, this understatement is touching in its innocence. Captain Hewitt had already been on the scene for some time, carrying his own supply of romantic sugarlumps – and self-denial was never her strong point.

      That first night, as I inched past the gates of KP in the London traffic, such thoughts were the merest inkling, easily pushed to the back of my mind. In the years that followed, however, they grew from idle speculation to grim reality.

      Had I known it, the signs were all there from the beginning.

THREE

       UNDER THE THUMB

      The Princess’s footsteps sounded hurried. I had been listening to them for about five minutes now, standing in the semi-gloom of the KP hallway. Upstairs, she was preparing for a day of engagements out of London – what we called an ‘awayday’. Her high heels struck a distinctive note as she marched back and forth from her bedroom to the sitting room with, it seemed, several rapid diversions en route. To my nervous ears she was beginning to sound impatient. There was something increasingly agitated about her pacing.

      Suddenly I heard a phone ring and there were a few minutes of silence, broken only by the low murmur of her voice. Then the footsteps started again, back to the bedroom, only this time more urgently, as I imagined her checking the time remaining before we were due to leave. She was fanatically punctual.

      It was my first ‘real’ day at work – the first day on which I was going out with the Princess. This was my chance to begin to see the world through her eyes, to experience what it was like to be royal, only slightly second-hand.

      In a pattern that was repeated a thousand times over the next seven years, I waited in the darkness at the foot of the stairs and listened to her flitting from room to room on the floor above, trying to guess what mood she was in and what sort of day lay ahead of us. The phone call could have been from anybody. The tone of her voice was neutral and I could not catch the words. I hoped whoever it was would not keep her talking – I had already learned enough to know she would be irritated if we started late. Best of all, whoever it was might make her laugh and send us smiling all the way to the helicopter.

      A door opened and closed. At the top of the stairs she paused, straightening her skirt. Her blue Catherine Walker suit and executive blow-dry told you that here was a woman who was ready to take a grip on the day. The phone call must have been OK, because she cantered down the stairs, spotted the new boy and smiled, holding out her hand to me. It was to be seven years and a million royal handshakes later before we shook hands again. Then it was to say goodbye.

      ‘Hello again, Patrick. We didn’t scare you off then!’

      I bowed and mumbled something.

      ‘This is a crazy place to work,’ she continued, heading rapidly for the front door, ‘but on this team we all started as outsiders, so we know how strange it feels to begin with.’

      The lady-in-waiting and I followed her outside. After the darkness of the house the sun seemed dazzling. A car took us the short distance to Perk’s Field – a green offshoot of Hyde Park – where a shiny red helicopter was waiting. ‘Yuck!’ said the Princess through smiling teeth. ‘The flying tumble dryer. I just hope it won’t be bumpy. I hate bumps.’ Later I came to hate bumps too; not because they made me airsick, but because bumps, like rain or hail or the temperature of her tea, could quickly become the excuse for a mood. Moods were what we all dreaded.

      As we clattered eastwards over London’s rooftops, the Princess ignored the view and concentrated on her copy of Vogue. The Queen’s Flight always kept a well-stocked magazine rack. After Vogue she might reach for a tabloid newspaper – usually the Daily Mail – and furrow her brow over Dempster. Often there was a royal story. That was a good way of starting a mood too.

      Luckily it was noisy on our 30-minute flight, so there was no need to try to talk. On the occasions when I really had to communicate, shouting into her ear at close range made me paranoid about my breath. She had the same fear and regularly squirted Gold Spot into her famously perfect mouth.

      Five minutes before landing the crewman signalled that we were nearly there. The Princess began rapid, expert work with the compact and lip gloss. With something of a shock, I realized the perfect complexion was not completely perfect close up. When I discovered her fluctuating intake of chocolate and sweets I could understand why – and sympathize too, as I contemplated the visible effects of a courtier’s diet on my own appearance.

      A generous blast of hair spray always followed. Months later, when she was sharing the helicopter with her husband, she made (almost) all of us laugh by theatrically overdoing this emission of ozone-hostile gases.

      As our destination – an Essex seaside town – hove into sight, she pulled out her briefing notes and gave them a cursory final glance. She was very good at her homework and usually swotted up the main points of the programme before she left the Palace. If her staff had done their planning properly, the day would run pretty much automatically. If she did not feel inspired to do more, all she really had to do was smile, shake hands and drop the occasional well-worn royal platitude. Except, of course, she usually was inspired to do more. Once on duty she hardly ever coasted. She took a professional pride in giving СКАЧАТЬ