Shadows of a Princess. Patrick Jephson

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the house itself on barbecue days was not encouraged, but I had been there often enough before. Engagements that fell on Mondays or Fridays usually began or ended at Highgrove, with an associated trek, inevitably at the worst time of day, along the M4.

      It has been said that the Princess disliked Highgrove and my own observations would confirm this, particularly towards the end of the marriage. As has also been said, it was in most ways a typical, comfortable country house with cartoons in the loo, boots in the porch and Jack Russells, it seemed, almost everywhere. It was distinctly more homely than Kensington Palace and certainly, so far as the Princess was concerned, there was no distinction between family and staff areas of the house. When I arrived I might expect to find her perched on the kitchen table, swinging her legs and sharing gossip with the chef, or in the staff hall, listening to the housekeeper’s latest personal crisis.

      When the Waleses separated in 1992, the Princess collected all her belongings from the house and quit without much evident regret. No sooner had she gone than comprehensive redecoration took place, together with large-scale purging of the domestic staff. Highgrove then formally became what it had always seemed to be: the Prince’s personal sanctuary and main domestic base. For the Princess’s staff, it became foreign territory overnight. She never returned.

      As allegiances in the office and in the country hardened, I found myself firmly in the Princess’s camp. This was not because she was blameless – she could not and did not claim this for herself, as I knew better than most. In fact, she was refreshingly honest about her capacity to run amok in the royal china shop, without ever surrendering her right to do so. ‘Everything’s got to change, Patrick!’ she would say, and I spent a few years trying to translate this aspiration into a reality that was acceptable to the institution and still recognizable to her.

      I suppose I supported her because, in the end, she was younger and more naive than her husband was, and ultimately he bore responsibility for what happened in his family. In an organization that had such a highly developed sense of duty, this seemed logical, but I had not even begun to grasp the agony the Prince must have suffered trying to reconcile duty with the demands of the heart. Only now can I hope to have a better understanding of his dilemma.

      From this comfortably conceited moral high ground, I felt able in the years that followed to criticize the Prince – if only privately – for failing to break the deadlock with his wife, a move which I knew she would welcome and the country would applaud. As the menace I had seen in him grew in my own mind into a force to be opposed on principle, I believed with righteous zeal that he represented the greater of two pretty unattractive wrongs.

      If forced, I would still stand by that assessment, but it is an assessment now tempered by my own experience. All the while I was ministering to the needs of the royal family, I was neglecting those of my own. Ironically, I eventually found myself facing the same doubts about my personal morality for which I had so unhesitatingly condemned the Prince. In my small way, I also faced the opprobrium of observers snug in a moral certainty I could only envy. As my own marriage began to feel the consequences of my strange occupation, I blushed to remember my outrage on behalf of the wronged wife.

      Even in what I thought to be the line of duty to the Princess, I cast more than my share of stones at the man I felt was the greater sinner. You may feel, as I do, that it says something about him that he declined to throw them back. Less charitably, you may also feel he had no need, there being plenty of volunteers to undertake such dirty work unbidden on his behalf. Yet in the end it is naive – however superficially justified – to criticize royal people for misdeeds carried out in their name. Being different, if not strictly better than the rest of us, is their raison d’être. Questions of blame also seem to become irrelevant when royalty is concerned for its own survival. All’s fair in love, war and royal service. Many people are attracted to it for that very reason.

      As had been proved both at home and in the Gulf, our daily working lives were adapting to the Waleses’ growing estrangement as a matter of professional routine. However, this uncritical acceptance of the facts of life ran into trouble when we had to explain them to others. It was uncomfortable to have to provide for the stark domestic reality behind the public illusion.

      One very practical problem arose whenever we were making arrangements for accommodation on overseas tours. We now needed two royal bedrooms. Few hosts were so indelicate as to query this, although raised Embassy eyebrows sometimes had to be stared down. A line suggested for use in these circumstances went something like this: ‘The Prince and Princess often work to different programmes on tour and it makes sense that they – and their immediate personal staff – don’t get in each other’s way when quick turnarounds are required between engagements. This sort of arrangement was perfectly normal for royal people historically and for much the same good reasons. To this day, many couples in the aristocracy organize their sleeping arrangements in the same way. It doesn’t mean they don’t have – and take – the chance to meet intimately when time and inclination coincide.’ In other words, mind your own business – which I, for one, was happy to do. It proved impossible at times.

      Apart from the considerable duplication of effort this system dictated, not to mention the restrictions it sometimes placed on the types of accommodation we deemed acceptable, it struck an unwelcome, discordant note among our hosts and anybody else who was taking an interest. I sometimes felt we were arriving with our dirty laundry already on display.

      In the mornings they would emerge from separate quarters like boxers from opposing corners of the ring, except that, unlike boxers governed by the bell, they could stage their entrances for effect. Sometimes she would keep him waiting, sometimes vice versa. Tension that might have been safely – if uncomfortably – vented behind closed doors was carried instead into the day’s work, where it could fester.

      It was like a secret deformity that our hosts never saw, but which restricted our freedom to programme joint activities while doubling much of the administrative effort. Even something as simple as getting the end-of-tour presentation photographs signed by them both could call upon all Harold Brown’s skills as the behind-the-scenes co-ordinator. Never were his talents as butler/diplomat in greater demand than when he had to preside over divided domestic quarters in an unfamiliar house.

      There were benefits as well. One of the unresolved questions in the wake of their divorce was whether the Prince and Princess should have tried harder to ‘make a go of it’. Looking at the situation from a different aspect, the question could be rephrased, ‘How long should you force people to stay together if they want to be apart?’

      As I greeted the Princess in the mornings or took my leave at night, I knew the answer in practical if not in philosophical terms. There was absolutely no doubt that, however sadly solitary, her room was a haven of privacy between bouts of exhausting public exposure. Had she been forced to swap the media spotlight by day for a marital battleground by night, I doubt she would have performed her royal duties at all. Since I observed similar feelings in the Prince, it is safe to conclude that, this close to the end of their marriage, the royal double act was a performance best reserved for barely consenting adults in public only.

      Other benefits looked attractive at first sight, especially to me as the inexperienced new equerry. On closer inspection, however, they stirred my early suspicion that my boss was anything but a guileless pretty face. These dubious benefits centred on the Princess’s wish to be seen as more popular, approachable, flexible and generally ‘normal’ than her husband. When they were on tour together he was conveniently close by to act as a foil for this desire, much to the uncomfortable advantage of ‘her team’.

      As if to underline the contrast with the Prince’s habitually more preoccupied appearance, she would burst from her quarters in the morning radiating popularity, approachability and flexibility to the assembled entourages as we waited to depart for the day’s programme. Usually she would time it so that we had several minutes to bask in СКАЧАТЬ