Shadows of a Princess. Patrick Jephson

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      As I finished paying, the man said, ‘Did anyone ever tell you your friend looks just like Princess Di?’

      I followed his gaze back to the car, where the driver had put away her compact and was obviously keen to get back on the road. I furrowed my brow. ‘Now you come to mention it, in this light … I suppose there’s a passing resemblance …’

      ‘Looks just like her. She could make a fortune on the telly.’

SIX

       TOYCHEST

      An old lag on the royal scene once gave me a very good piece of advice. ‘Never forget,’ he said over one of many brimming glasses, ‘to these people you’re just a toy. They’ll wind you up and watch you whizz all over the place and then, when your spring runs down, they’ll throw you away and get another one.’

      In turn, I passed on a version of this guidance whenever new recruits fell into my hands. It was a gross exaggeration, of course, and it suggested a heartlessness about our royal family that was seldom my experience. Nonetheless, I thought – and still think – that it contained a grain of truth. Deference breeds indifference. Historically equipped with employees selected for their talent in the art of brown-nosing, there is little incentive for the royal recipient to experiment with more enlightened forms of personnel management.

      In time, the respective postures become institutionalized. The servants seek ways to please, tendering advice with one eye on their pensions (I should know, I did it). The masters become jaded and indifferent, prepared eventually to swap a once-loved plaything for a new model with fresh batteries. The nursery cupboard is always well stocked with replacements, selected for safety and conformity. What is more, all the discarded puppets have conveniently signed confidentiality clauses, so there will be no trouble from them.

      Every generation of toys thinks it will be different for them. Somehow they will escape the fate of all their predecessors and grow old in wisdom, honour and their owners’ esteem. Inevitably, however, most will be consigned to the charity box when the restless royal eye is caught by the next novelty.

      You may think, rightly, that I was prematurely cynical, but the old lag had done me a favour by wiping the new toy’s shining eagerness off my face. When I later relayed his lesson to those I thought would not have time to learn it for themselves, it saved them, I hope, the expenditure of energy necessary to court fleeting royal favour and the unhappiness caused by the inevitable eventual rejection.

      It was obvious that some royal people had grown accustomed to the seasonal change of playthings and sometimes quite enjoyed it. After all, why should they be denied this harmless pleasure, since they are denied so much else? But at an early stage it dawned on me that the only thing more valuable – and more permanent – than a new toy would be a toymaker.

      No sooner had I formed this theory than its truth was confirmed in a sharp little exchange. After three years of what was generally held to be exemplary duty as the Princess’s equerry, my predecessor Richard Aylard had transferred to a post that was clearly on the Prince’s side of the invisible divide running through our still joint office. In a typically nonpartisan gesture, he offered to cover for me on one of the Princess’s engagements when I was unavailable. To my surprise his offer was immediately rejected. What could this good and faithful servant have done to incur such rapid alienation? Sadly I concluded that his sin must have been to transfer his allegiance, as she saw it, to her husband. The reason was probably immaterial. ‘Once gone, always gone,’ she said, and set her face resolutely against him.

      I was naive enough to be flattered by this revelation. It was one of my boss’s less endearing habits that she encouraged her current favourite toy to take satisfaction from the misfortunes of his or her predecessor. It was one of my less endearing habits that I fell for it, at least initially.

      If nothing else, however, it validated my theory about the advantages of being a toymaker rather than a mere toy. From then on I made a special point of controlling as much as I could of the hiring and firing process – which, when I became her private secretary, was practically all of it. I would like to think my involvement tempered some of the Princess’s more arbitrary attempts at personnel management. In the end, though, I could not escape the reality of royal service, which is that professional performance is less important than ‘chemistry’ in determining the progress of your career (or lack of it).

      From my observations of the royal family, I gradually came to the conclusion that inherited power values survival above responsibility. You might say that such considerations are irrelevant, since royalty has been shorn of all real power anyway, thanks to generations of people’s representatives ready to risk their necks in the shearing. Yet it is perhaps because of this loss that some of today’s royalty seems all the more anxious to exercise its power over the smaller domains now left to it, and these begin and end at home. To a dresser, a valet, a housemaid, a cook, a chauffeur, a butler, a lady-in-waiting or even a private secretary, the royal master or mistress still holds the power of professional life or death. At least that would be the case, but for safeguards offered by post-feudal employment legislation and the spasmodic interest of the press.

      This was even more true of the power acquired on marriage by the Princess. It was not that she was unfeeling, or lacking many of the qualities associated with effective leadership. Often the reverse was true. Rather, she had an iron resolve – understandable to a certain extent – to put her own interests above everything else in every situation. She subjected most decisions to a simple test: ‘How will this action affect my reputation, power base or convenience?’ It was further evidence of her subconscious need to assert her exclusive authority over as much and as many as lay within her reach.

      She applied this test to people just as much as she did to decisions affecting her public profile. Cannily, she knew that the two areas sometimes overlapped. No Queen of Hearts – even in the making – could afford to spoil the public image with revelations about unsaintly behaviour towards her own staff. Characteristically she would pre-empt such revelations with a simple denial. At the time of Anne Beckwith-Smith’s ‘retirement’, the Princess had herself quoted as saying, ‘I don’t sack anybody.’ Equally characteristically, this breathtaking piece of wishful thinking was swallowed by most people, even as the P45s accumulated.

      Perhaps only the Queen herself, famously loyal to her staff, could make such a claim. It was certainly not true of the Princess. The real significance of the remark is this: she actually convinced herself it was true. Put another way, she actually thought that having an old toy – sorry, long-serving cook – declared redundant (the usual way round the law) was not the same as having him sacked.

      It was one of those remarks which she knew sounded good and which she would like to believe was true. Most of the time she conveniently forgot that it was not. After all, nobody was going to remind her. The curious thing was that so many people accepted such pronouncements about herself as if they were true. Thus her reputation was seen to be invincible, her domestic power base was strengthened and her convenience was unaffected, as cooks were easily replaced.

      Such wishful thinking seemed to become more unabashed as the years passed. There are many other examples which come to mind: ‘I will never complain again’ (Nepal 1993); ‘I want to be Queen of people’s hearts’ (Panorama 1995); ‘I don’t need to take advice from anyone’ (Le Monde 1997). Wide-eyed innocence became one of her favourite defensive ploys, acquired, I supposed, in childhood to protect her fragile self-confidence, especially when she knew she was in the wrong. The trouble was, she unblinkingly employed it in defiance of any unwelcome facts – and usually got away with it.

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