Shadows of a Princess. Patrick Jephson

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СКАЧАТЬ found myself treading on eggshells even before I had left the UK. Taking leave of the Princess was never easy, even when going abroad ‘on duty’ as I would be for this recce. Arrivals and departures were important to her. They were landmarks in an otherwise monotonous landscape of public and private routine. They presented opportunities for her to make a point. The simple exchanges involved often gained an extra theatrical value as she expressed delight with a greeting or wistful regret at a parting. Her natural ability to influence moods was at its strongest when first and last impressions could be created. This was a characteristic ideally suited to the life of transitory encounters that she led in public.

      Also, I found that I missed her. This was partly sentiment – employed to serve and, metaphorically, to defend her, I sometimes felt a vague sense of negligence if separated from her for long. As I grew less impressionable, this was supplemented by a healthy suspicion of what she might be doing or saying in my absence.

      In her moments of greatest doubt, any absence for any reason could be exploited to support a passing prejudice. Thus going away on holiday could provoke an envy bordering on resentment, apparently impervious to her own frequent absences on ski slopes or beaches. She paid lip service to the need for staff ‘R and R’, but seldom missed a chance to make you feel just a little bit guilty for taking it. Going away on recces was scarcely less suspect. Even when I knew I was heading for a tough recce far from home in an inhospitable land, she somehow managed to make me feel like a truant, if not an actual deserter.

      She would look up wearily from a desk that had suddenly become conspicuously crowded and give me a well-practised, reproachful look. ‘It doesn’t seem fair on you’ – by which she meant her – ‘to be sending you away. We’re so busy at the moment.’ (We were always ‘so busy’.)

      ‘Well, Ma’am, you know I can’t get out of it – I’m duty for this tour. And everything’s up to date here …’ She looked meaningfully at the papers on her desk. ‘And I won’t be away for long. I’ll phone.’

      ‘That would be nice.’

      ‘And take pictures. Then you can see what I’m letting you in for!’

      ‘Hmm.’

      That was obviously an idea too far. I had failed to lighten the atmosphere and it took the application of several airline gin and tonics to ease the feeling that I was abandoning her.

      That feeling never entirely left me and, if anything, it got worse as the years passed and her position in the hierarchy began to be threatened. She once memorably had me paged at Heathrow as I was about to leave for a decidedly non-recreational recce of Japan. Expecting some nameless catastrophe, I took her call with a heavy heart. She knew exactly where I was and that I was about to miss my plane, yet she spent 10 minutes cross-examining me on a minor diary item months in the future. Of course I had none of the paperwork with me and my memory refused to come to my rescue in the crisis. From her voice, the Princess’s loneliness was transparently obvious, even when expressed in the reassuringly familiar format of chiding her scatterbrained private secretary. A call that began with contrived recrimination ended with genuine good wishes for my success and a quick return. No wonder I felt a heel.

      Especially when feeling beleaguered – not uncommon – she would sometimes wonder aloud whether a protection officer could not achieve just as much as the private secretary now shuffling in front of her, visibly champing for his club-class dinner. In some households it was true that an experienced PPO could more than adequately organize security, logistics and even domestic arrangements, but the requirements of the Waleses and their entourage demanded attention to a range and depth of subjects that were beyond the reasonable capacities of any single person.

      Local British Embassies could also not be expected to shoulder more than the already considerable extra workload our visits entailed. A sensible rule was therefore followed by all with responsibility for royal programmes: ‘Never recce anything you’re not going to visit, but never visit anything you haven’t recced.’ There was nothing more unsettling than arriving blind at an unknown destination for a high-profile engagement.

      The other golden rule – ‘Avoid surprises’ – was one you broke at your peril. Whatever the hardships (or compensations), everything that could be recced was recced, regardless of raised eyebrows from envious office-bound colleagues or royal employers scenting a skive. The office folklore of recce excesses provided rich pickings for anyone wishing to believe that these foreign planning trips were not all work and no play. In due course I could add to them myself, albeit discreetly.

      It was perfectly true that recceing gave you the chance to experience many royal delights twice over – and without the attentions of the press pack. Had I not flown all over the bush in Zimbabwe in search of the right refugee camp? Or lunched alone with six Indonesian princesses anxious to practise their royal conversational skills? Or even risen at dawn to see the sunrise from a frontier fort in the Khyber Pass? Too much of this kind of reminiscence could produce jaundice in the most tolerant listener, and the Princess seldom fell into that category except when on duty. I sometimes unfairly felt that there was nothing like another’s good fortune to cloud her sunny outlook. Nor was there anything more guaranteed to stir up royal displeasure than the thought that those travelling on their coat-tails were enjoying the ride.

      So if the Princess asked, apparently kindly, if your room in the guest palace was comfortable, it was wise not to make too much of its huge TV set, bottomless minibar or big fluffy towels. She was not really that interested, except to find reasons for feeling resentful or exploited.

      It could have gone either way, therefore, but when I said goodbye to her on the eve of my departure for the Kuwait recce she was touchingly solicitous, concerned for the hard work I faced and anxious to let me know that I would be missed. This reflected her good nature. It also reflected her tendency to see duty on her husband’s behalf – which this would largely be – as an unenviable hardship. I later concluded that it was also evidence of her foresight in realizing that this was not going to be one of those recces that anyone would sensibly envy.

      Twenty-four hours later I lay in the darkness and shivered. I had not expected to feel cold in the Persian Gulf and this dusty chill had a penetrating quality. I was dog tired, but sleep was impossible. The Embassy residence was quite small and, as a junior visitor, I had been given a room that could have been used in the fight against government cuts as convincing proof that there was no feather-bedding in this corner of the Diplomatic Service. I soon started rummaging in my suitcase for extra clothes that I had not packed. My thoughts turned enviously to my companions who, because of the lack of official accommodation, had been exiled to the nearest five-star American hotel.

      The shivering was not just caused by the cold. The Ambassador’s anecdotes, though intended to amuse and inform, had also contained warnings about the pitfalls awaiting us in the protocol departments of our later destinations in Bahrein, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

      I felt oppressed by our responsibilities, especially my own. I was scared stiff, in fact. I have never needed much excuse to indulge in a good bout of worrying and it often has the beneficial side effect of displacing my habitual lethargy. This time, however, I realized I had better reason than usual to feel apprehensive. A tour could be judged as successful against a host of different criteria – there were as many opinions as there were observers and any credit could therefore be widely distributed. No such latitude applied to the unsuccessful tour. I knew that if the verdict on our Gulf expedition was unfavourable, in the scramble to avoid the ensuing derision I would be at a disadvantage. Royal displeasure is an unstable pyrotechnic, but I had already observed that it favoured soft targets – and I was pretty sure that they came no softer than the apprentice equerry.

      Even more worrying was the discovery that this regal wrath could be directed almost at will by СКАЧАТЬ