Diana's Nightmare - The Family (5 page)

There are many examples of Diana's charisma but none more telling than her box office appeal in the United States. When the English National Ballet, one of her charities, received an offer to stage a new production of
Sleeping Beauty
in big American cities during summer 1994, one important stipulation was made. 'An American benefactor promised to underwrite everything provided Diana attended the premieres in San Francisco and New York,' said a ballet source, if Diana showed up, the costs were sure to be covered, but without her, it was no deal.'

But Diana needed to consolidate her power base closer to home. She stepped up her attendance at high society events without sacrificing the Work. By living life to the full she wanted to dispel a belief that followed publication of
DIANA: Her True Story
that she was suicidal. 'Let's face it, most books have got three facts in them really,' said Andrew Morton. 'This one's got Camilla, bulimia and suicides. They are the three headlines.' It was the third one that had returned to haunt Diana because it challenged her sanity.

'She didn't throw herself down the stairs at Sandringham although she might believe she did,' said a well informed royal sleuth. 'A witness who actually saw it happen says she slipped two or three steps and fell on her bottom. She was found by a Royal Protection Squad officer. She was not concussed and not unconscious. The Prince of Wales insisted a doctor be called. Yet I am sure she genuinely believes it to be true now.'

Coupled with the emotional stress of the break-up, the strain of living the legend had exacted a heavy price.

WHEN the Princess stared into the dressing table mirror on what turned out to be her last morning at Highgrove, she did not like what she saw. Diana later admitted that she had cried much of the previous night away and she was prepared for the puffy eyes which confronted her. What troubled her were the fine lines emanating from the corners of her eyes. To Diana, the flawless image she had cultivated was extremely important. The thought of her looks fading was as awful as the prospect of the clock striking midnight for Cinderella. Others seized on the cosmetic factor as well. 'She will be diminished, especially when she loses her youthful looks,' claimed John Casey, a Cambridge don well disposed towards the monarchy.

The greatest health and beauty experts in Britain had worked their magic to create the Princess who turned heads even among Hollywood's fairest. The women at
Vogue,
where her sister Jane had worked, had played their part. Style queen Anna Harvey waved her wand over the Princess's wardrobe and make-up experts Barbara Daly and later Mary Greenwell created the masterstrokes of colour that shaped her face. Fitness expert Carolan Brown moulded her figure during hour-long workouts three times a week at Kensington Palace or the LA Fitness Centre in West London. Diana even inspired others to keep fit. When she visited a gym and saw Marje Proops, the
Daily Mirror's
evergreen agony aunt, working out on an exercise bike, she said encouragingly: 'Keep going, Marje, we'll soon be on Page Three.'

Sam McKnight cut her hair every six weeks and she visited Daniel Galvin's salon in Mayfair to have her highlights touched up. The therapist improving her speech was Peter Settelen, an actor who once played Edward VIII. Her 'working clothes', either for daytime or evening wear, were styled by Catherine Walker, Victor Edelstein, Bruce Oldfield and Bellville Sassoon. 'Clothes are for the job - they've got to be practical,' she said. 'Sometimes I can be a little outrageous, which is quite nice, but only sometimes.'

But there is more to Diana than this dazzling glamour. At home, she is happy to loaf about in a threadbare tracksuit. Unlike her husband, she possesses the ability to behave naturally. She offered a splendid example of this when she took her sons into a corner shop to buy them sweets. When they visited Thorpe Park, Diana queued with other families to buy two thirty-five pounds Supersave tickets for her party, which included the two young sons of her butler, Paul Burrell. This was the common touch in action. Few could imagine the Prince of Wales crammed into an economy seat close to the lavatories of a long-haul flight, swapping stories about children with an Antiguan woman - as Diana did during her ten-day New Year break with the young princes on the Caribbean island of Nevis.

'Her Royal Highness has replaced what one might call wifely duties with good works,' said a supporter. 'But it would be wrong of anyone to think that this has softened her resolve. HRH has become very skilful at using those around her. She is inclined to pick people off one at a time, win them over with her enormous, girlish charm and then play them off against each other. This way she gets exactly what she wants without ever having to ask for it. In all my years in royal circles I have never come across one so adept at playing palace politics - even with John Major. I would hate to be on the other side.'

Charles and Diana had been playing separate courts for six months when they met up on
Britannia
at its Merseyside berth to attend the same public function. They joined forces for the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic at Liverpool Cathedral. The Prime Minister greeted them with equal enthusiasm. After the service, the Waleses smiled at each other and worked the crowd together for the first time in years. If the smiles lacked any particular warmth or conviction, they at least proved that the couple were on speaking terms. They also flew back to London on the same flight but, once there, Charles headed for Highgrove and Diana returned to Kensington Palace.

The only significance in the reunion was that the Queen wished the Waleses to be seen once more as people liked to remember them: as royals doing their duty in a civilised fashion and not the war-torn adversaries of the tabloid headlines.

When an onlooker in the crowd complimented them on how well they looked, Charles couldn't resist one of his cryptic one-liners which, in this case, needed little translation: it's all done by mirrors,' he said wryly.

'It's amazing what ladies do when your back is turned'

Prince Charles

SET in spacious grounds on the edge of a West Country village, the Victorian mansion that had been the setting of several highly confidential tete-a-tetes about Diana looked a picture of elegance in the morning sun. Parking on the gravel drive, the visitors knew that the only important person who had not been present at these meetings was the Princess of Wales herself. Not once had she entered the stately Georgian doorway nor set foot in the splendid oak-panelled hall beyond. In this quiet corner of rural England, she was
persona non grata.

The visitors were ushered into the drawing room and left alone to admire the sheaves of early summer flowers while the butler disappeared down a long corridor to prepare drinks. But it was the mantelpiece and a Regency sideboard rather than the flower displays that caught the attention. Closer inspection confirmed that no brief was held for Diana here. Among a collection of family photographs, there was one of the Queen and Prince Philip in their Garter robes, and another of the Queen Mother. Pride of place, however, was given to a small portrait of a youthful Prince Charles mounted in a frame bearing his personal three-feathered crest. There was not a single picture of Diana in this or, apparently, in any other room.

Through the French windows, the lawns swept down to a river where geese nested on the grassy banks. Drinks duly served in tumblers of the finest crystal, the visitors stepped out on to the patio. At that moment, the sound of a car beyond the border hedge signified the return of the owner of the house, who had been attending to business in a nearby village. The royal friend swept into view with a characteristic flourish to greet the guests. Chatting animatedly, they adjourned to the dining room, where the shining mahogany table had been set for lunch. Even on this warm day, a log fire burned invitingly in the hearth.

After the first course of mushrooms
en croute
had been served, the friend paused until the butler had withdrawn, silently closing the double doors behind him. Alone now, the guests listened in astonishment as the talk turned to what had gone wrong in the marriage of Charles and Diana. The most unfair thing, it transpired, was that Charles had been cast as the villain of the piece and his wife as the innocent victim of a heartless conspiracy. There was a completely different side to the story, according to the friend.

First, there was that picture. It had been taken twelve years ago and a recent event in faraway Nepal when the Princess of Wales had worn a transparent skirt on a visit to a Ghurka regiment had revived the memory. Prince Charles, the friend explained, had been staying with the Queen at Balmoral when his valet, Stephen Barry, delivered the morning papers on 18 September, 1980. Barry had served his master for more than a decade of bachelor life and, if Charles noticed a mischievous glint in his eye, it was only to be expected. The arrival of Lady Diana Spencer had already signalled the beginning of the end of Barry's royal service.

Plastered all over the front pages he held out was a picture of Diana in a thin cotton skirt patterned with romantic floral hearts. She had taken care to put on gold loop earrings, a lilac blouse and purple sleeveless pullover, but she had neglected to slip into a petticoat. The skirt was transparent in the autumn sunlight and the pictures revealed her showgirl legs in glorious silhouette. As an added quirk of nature, the sunshine had placed a golden halo around her blonde head. She was half Lolita, half angel. The photograph had been taken outside the Young England kindergarten, attached to St Saviour's Church in the Pimlico district of London, where she worked as a child minder. Diana had posed with two decorative tots, Louise and Scarlett, one tucked under each arm. She had also talked. 'You know I cannot say anything about the Prince or my feelings for him,' she confided in a most telling way. 'I am saying that off my own bat. No one has told me to stay quiet.'

Previous accounts all suggested that Charles had found Diana's performance fetching, the picture flattering. But the friend, who was with him that day, revealed that his reaction was very different. He was 'angry and worried' as he contemplated the implications of Diana's first exercise in media manipulation. Was she naive beyond belief or was she an opportunist?

'Charles telephoned her almost immediately and asked, "Why did you do it?"' said the friend. 'When he got off the phone, he said she had replied: "I thought they (the Press) would go away if I did a picture for them." In hindsight, it seems that Diana knew exactly what she was doing. She wanted the limelight even then. What better way to get a vaguely sexy yet virginal image for herself than to pose for national newspapers in a see-through skirt surrounded by innocent children?'

Diana's subsequent remark - 'I don't want to be remembered for not having a petticoat' - cut no ice with those in the Prince's camp. Indeed, his Balmoral companion added that if Diana had meant either of the things she said, her next move was even harder to comprehend: 'She went out and bought a new car, a Mini Metro, in the most notice-me colour available - red.' While she could truthfully tell Charles that she always tried to give newsmen the slip, she had made it remarkably easy for them to pick up the trail after she had parked to visit a friend or go shopping.

The Prince believed that the two episodes marked the birth of a media star, one his friend described as 'self-centered and egotistical - a woman who did the most selfish thing possible when she left her husband, to pursue her own personal happiness.'

There was a pause while the butler dished breasts of chicken
supreme
on to the Royal Doulton dinner plates and proffered a selection of mashed potatoes, creamed swede and garden peas. The picture that had been painted was so alien from the accepted image of the Princess of Wales that, in the sunlit dining room, it was like watching a hologram of Snow White turn into a devil in disguise.

'One of the reasons the marriage failed is that she would not make any effort to share his hobbies or his other recreational activities,' the friend related. 'She made it clear that she was not interested in fishing or polo, yet she had been more than happy to join him on the banks of the Dee and to cheer him on from the edge of the polo field when he was considering asking her to marry him. Towards the end of the marriage she refused to let him have the boys when they were apart. But once they were officially separated she had to abide by an agreement which gave him access on an equal number of days. For the first time, he was able to get quality time with his sons. Even so, she chided him with newspaper stunts like the highly publicised trips at Easter. When the princes then went to Scotland to be with their father, so did the photographers. He had plenty of opportunity to be photographed with them, with his arms around them, with them smiling at him just as they had smiled at her. But he wouldn't play Diana's game; he's too much of a gentleman. When he came in from fishing one day, I asked him how it had gone and he said, "Terrible! I only got twenty minutes in because the Press were so awful." He had William and Harry with him and he could have taken the chance to turn it into a photo call, but he's not like that and he never will be by choice, no matter how powerful Diana gets by using the media.'

The butler returned briefly to present the cook's special dessert, pears marinated in wine and served beneath a nest of crystalised sugar. When he had gone, the friend resumed: 'Look at that time when she went on the big PR exercise to France just before the separation. She made a tremendous thing of posing with President Mitterand, but what was she talking to him about - frocks? I can feel genuinely sorry for Fergie; she's just — well, stupid. But Diana is mean and calculating and the people who suffer are the man who married her and their sons, especially the sons. How can you put two boys through that? No marriage is perfect, but we make them work just so we don't cause pain and suffering. Not Diana, she thinks only of herself and her amazing publicity campaign.'