Harry (6 page)
Authors: Chris Hutchins
Dining with a friend at the Tai Pai restaurant in Knightsbridge in late summer 1986, Diana had been
bemoaning
the fact that, having produced a second son, in the light of her loveless marriage she faced a stark choice: to enjoy some pleasure with the bankin’, shoppin’ and dancin’ set, or to stay at home and turn into a palace couch potato. Three evenings later she accepted an invitation to a party in St John’s Wood; this was the night she and Hewitt first set eyes on each other, contrary to subsequent much-quoted reports.
How Diana would have fretted had she known that her affair with Hewitt would eventually result in Harry serving
on the front line of the world’s most dangerous war zone. Hewitt claims she told him she would never be able to live with the thought of her sons ever being sent away to war. ‘She said it wouldn’t be fair to her as a mother,’ he records.
I pointed out that all soldiers had mothers. She was silent for a bit and then said that her sons were special because they were the only men in her life. I asked her how things were with Charles. She looked at me and I could see the pain in her eyes.
One of the first differences Ken Wharfe noticed about the two princes was William’s inclination to conform, to obey, in sharp contrast to Harry’s need even then to explore beyond the rigid boundaries of royal life. Wharfe recalls that on occasions when the elder boy told his sibling he was doing something he ought not to, Harry would reply, ‘I can do what I like because I’m not going to be king. You can’t because you are.’ Noticing the distinction the two boys were making for themselves, Diana took to calling her second son GKH which she told him stood for Good King Harry.
‘Yes, Harry was always the more adventurous of the two,’ says Wharfe.
Even when he was a small boy he showed signs of enjoying danger. He used to come to me in that little camouflage outfit Diana had had made for him – he never took it off – and ask me for ‘assignments’, saying that soldiers used them so
he needed to know how they worked. On one occasion I lent him a two-way police radio and told him to go and report to his aunt, Jane Fellowes, who lived in a lodge close by, well within the palace grounds. He duly did and radioed in: ‘Ken, this is Harry reporting; assignment complete.’ I then told him to go to the police officer on the gate and report back to me when he got there, but he didn’t. I started to get worried when several times he failed to answer my call. Eventually he came in with the ‘Ken, this is Harry’ call sign. ‘Wow, Harry,’ I said, ‘where on earth are you?’ because I could hear traffic in the background. ‘Just a minute while I check,’ he said. ‘Oh right, I’m outside Tower Records on the high street.’ Needless to say my feet didn’t touch the ground as I ran to fetch him. He was only doing what inquisitive boys of that age do, but of course Harry was no ordinary boy.
On another occasion Harry was being taught to drive (at no more than seven years old) in his father’s Land Rover Discovery. When the lesson was over he demonstrated the kind of obstinacy which more than once had earned him a smacked bottom from his protection officer. Refusing an instruction to step out of the vehicle, he reached over from the front passenger seat and jammed his foot down hard on the
accelerator
, causing the car to plunge forward and crash into a stone wall. Miraculously there was no discernible damage to the vehicle but, had there been, how could anyone have blamed Harry? After all, as he pointed out later, it was the policeman who was in the driving seat when the accident occurred.
Of the frequent appearances by other men (and one woman) in the Waleses’ marital home, Wharfe says that, while William could be circumspect, Harry – who often greeted surprised guests by wearing his American baseball cap back-to-front – was the one who assessed the visitors for their fun factor. And it was James Hewitt who always came top of the pops. By the time Wharfe had been drafted into royal duties by Scotland Yard in September 1986, Diana’s affair with Hewitt was already well known and the policeman was urged to be as discreet as possible.
There was never any danger of the boys finding Hewitt in Diana’s private suite since their own room was in the attic of Kensington Palace’s apartments 8 and 9 and they were never allowed to go downstairs uninvited until their nanny – who was also in on the secret, as was just about everybody who worked at the palace – had made sure the coast was clear. There was one dangerous moment, however, when Harry was exploring his mother’s dressing table and discovered a ‘piece of treasure’. It was a gold fob watch inscribed with the words ‘I will love you always’. ‘Is this going to be Daddy’s birthday present?’ he asked. ‘Yes,’ she lied.
Harry liked his mum best when she was her normal self and never was the Princess more so than when she took her sons to visit her mother, Frances Shand Kydd, at the whitewashed farmhouse on the remote island of Seil, a few miles south of Oban, where she lived alone. There, when Diana washed up after their meals, Harry insisted on being ‘dryer-up’ of the dishes. There was no stress and there were no
photographers since the visits
chez
Shand Kydd were always kept a closely guarded secret. Harry marvelled at the sight of his mother doing the domestic chores that over-attentive staff would never have allowed her to do in KP or at Highgrove. She even ironed Ken Wharfe’s shirts and there was much laughter in the house when doing so on one occasion as the bath towel she was wearing slipped off and she was left standing naked for a few moments in front of her sons and the police protection officer. Harry laughed, William laughed and Wharfe politely turned away as she picked up the towel and re-covered herself.
Harry loved Grandma Frances not only for being ‘normal’ but also because she brought an atmosphere of calm with her when she came to visit the Waleses at Highgrove: Diana obviously thought the world of her and, despite their early differences, Charles respected Mrs Shand Kydd for not
interfering
, even though she was well aware of the extramarital goings on in both his and her daughter’s life. Harry was especially fond of her for taking him on long walks when she visited, listening to his tales of adventure as they strolled through the countryside. Charles has his late mother-in-law to thank for teaching both his sons that they were human beings first and foremost, and royals second. When the royal yacht
Britannia
sailed close to Mrs Shand Kydd’s home, taking the Royal Family to Balmoral where the Queen has spent her summer holiday every year of her life, they would assemble on deck and wave to Frances, who would stand at the edge of her oceanside garden to acknowledge the gesture.
‘Oh,’ Harry said to his mother one year, ‘I wish we were going there for the hols.’ Like his mother he was not especially keen on his other grandmother’s castle and the formal welcome by its immense staff – seventeen gardeners, five cooks, four scullery maids and the sixty bagpipers who traditionally gave a noisy performance of what was definitely not his kind of music.
Although, through sheer determination, William was more knowledgeable than his brother when he was his age, soon after Harry joined him at the pre-prep Wetherby School the younger boy was reckoned to be the cleverer of the two and was quickly placed in the top group whereas William had to settle for a class with the averages. Harry was a chancer and if he didn’t know the answer to a question he made one up and his guesses often proved to be right. Even in the playground he took chances, just as he was to do later in life when he gave no thought to the dangers of going to war. ‘We worried about him a little,’ says an ex-Wetherby teacher,
because he always did what he wanted with no fear of the consequences. When I warned him about walking in front of oncoming cars, he simply sniffed and said he wasn’t bothered because they weren’t allowed to knock him down. Has anyone told you about their go-kart adventures when they weren’t at school? His mother told me that Harry was a particularly dangerous driver and had many a spill but she just laughed it off and ‘made it better’ by kissing where it hurt. She got Ken Wharfe to arrange a driving lesson for
him from [Formula One driver] Jackie Stewart at Silverstone but, to Diana’s amusement, he still went hell-for-leather and inevitably crashed on the bends. Charles eventually put a stop to it, the Queen having complained about the early-morning noise of the screaming engines beneath her bedroom window after, on one occasion, Diana had allowed the boys to take the karts with them for an overnight stay at Windsor. Diana wasn’t happy about that. She was all for allowing the boys – especially adventurous Harry – their freedom. I was told later by someone I kept in touch with at KP that she even laughed it off when she heard Harry had had his first few puffs on a cigarette at the age of eight. It can’t have pleased his anti-smoking father though and, of course, it led to a life-long habit.
Harry still smokes to this day, although he does his best to avoid doing so when there’s a photographer around.
Although Harry’s mother continued to be extremely generous to him and his brother (often to Charles’s great annoyance), she never hesitated to put on her frugal face when others were spending money. On one occasion, after a shopping expedition to buy ‘surprise presents’ for the boys in Harrods, she went around the corner to San Lorenzo – the Italian restaurant run by her friend and ‘fixer’, the motherly Mara Berni. Prince Philip had previously tried to discourage her from frequenting the venue which, he said, he’d been reliably informed was ‘over-priced and frequented by
show-business
hangers-on’. In defiance of his advice she arranged
specifically to have lunch with a girlfriend there. Ken Wharfe who, as always, had seen her safely to her table, went back upstairs to maintain his protective stance in the entrance area which doubles as a bar.
Sipping an orange juice, he was informed by a waiter that Diana required his presence in the basement dining room: her friend was running considerably behind schedule and she wanted Wharfe to sit with her at the table. As she ordered her lunch, Ken was offered, and accepted, a bowl of pasta to keep her company. He had barely finished it when Diana demanded, ‘And who’s going to pay for that?’ When Wharfe told her that he would be paying for the £11 starter himself, a suddenly cross Princess declared: ‘And you’ll put it on your expenses so the taxpayer will be paying!’
Having returned to his post by the upstairs bar, Wharfe was subsequently informed that his charge was ready to leave but did not require the limousine waiting outside for her with chauffeur Simon at the wheel. Instead she wished to go a few doors up the street to Kanga – the exclusive (and highly expensive) boutique owned by her friend, Lady Tryon. She picked out three dresses and asked her ever-present
protection
officer, ‘What do you think of my choices?’ Wharfe, somewhat surprised by the thousands-of-pounds price tags, asked on what special occasions she was going to wear them. ‘Oh, I’m going to Pakistan with my friend Jemima [Khan],’ she replied, adding, ‘and there’s bound to be one or two
meetings
with VIPs.’ ‘Oh,’ said Ken savouring the moment, ‘so the taxpayer will be paying.’
Diana learned much about penny-pinching from her husband. Once, on his farm at Highgrove, Charles was asked if he would make a small presentation to a
policeman
who had guarded his precious chickens for a number of years. The Prince grumbled but, sure enough, he was there on the day and made a glowing speech about the member of the constabulary who had done so much to watch over his treasured birds. Then he handed him a reward for his years of service: half a dozen eggs laid by the very same hens. Most of the royals – certainly the old-school ones – believe that they should receive valuable presents but not give them. It’s ingrained.
When the Duke of Kent travelled to Poole Harbour to make a presentation he was rewarded by the owner of one boat with a handsome fleece made to his exact
measurements.
The generous donor had had two others made up to size – one for the Duke’s accompanying private
secretary
and another for his policeman. Alas, the Duke was not happy when he learned he was not getting all three. When the policeman pointed out, ‘You can only wear one, sir,’ the minor royal replied, ‘I know, but they make rather nice Christmas presents.’
Years later, following his departure from her service, Wharfe was photographed by the paparazzi talking to Diana in a London mews after she had spotted him and stepped out of her black Audi for a chat. Wharfe was astonished to see the pictures subsequently used in one newspaper with a headline suggesting the chance meeting was in fact a lovers’
tryst. He sued and won damages but when he next saw the fabulously rich Princess she asked him quite seriously for her share. Noticing the surprise on his face she said, ‘Well, they libelled me, too, but obviously I couldn’t sue, so hand over my half please.’
However, Harry has always been generous and positively despised meanness. He frequently took toys to Wetherby to give to his special friends and was always popular as a result. To this day he donates money, in addition to his time, to charity and when there is a tab to pick up during nights out with his friends, he is the first to grab it.
