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The background noises could be a clue to how much you were going to enjoy the call that followed. Silence meant she was at her desk, probably perusing the Bag and about to ask an awkward question. If she was in the car and it was early morning, she was most likely on her way back from her morning swim and anxious to resolve a nagging problem that had surfaced during her 50 lengths.
Later in the day it probably meant she was shopping, so expect to be quizzed on men’s taste in cashmere sweaters. The sound of a Harrier jet in the background meant she was under the hairdryer, so expect either the hairdresser’s latest filthy joke or a piece of gossip which the Princess had picked up earlier in the day (‘Did you know the Duchess of Blank’s aromatherapist was having a raging affair with your neighbour?’). The sound of running bathwater meant we were in for a playful 10 minutes during which I was supposed to imagine the saintly form up to its neck in bubbles. The distinctive sound of a dress being unzipped meant she was having a fitting with her current designer … or something.
That first syllable was crucial. It could be warm and conspiratorial: ‘Patrick! Have you seen the papers?’ This induced a cautious relief at being singled out for speculation about the morning’s unfortunate tabloid target, usually another member of the royal family.
Or it could be flat and accusatory: ‘Patrick … have you seen the papers?’ (The ‘yet’ was silent.) This produced a state of high alert. Good preparation was vital – I always tried to have an answer ready for every current subject of her potential displeasure. She was often working from a different list, however.
Or it could be light and carefree: ‘Patrick, have you seen the papers?’ This might be an invitation to share joy at a prominent story showing her in a good light. Anything that described her as ‘serious’, ‘independent’ or ‘caring’ would have this effect. Descriptions of her beauty or fashion genius got a similar but less fulsome reaction. A critical story, however – especially if she had predicted it – meant trouble. The light-hearted tone was designed to lower your guard, the better to deliver either a stinging rebuke or an invitation to join in the persecution of the perceived offender.
It was easy to be fooled, though. I quickly learned how misleading such judgements could be as I witnessed dramatically different moods being signalled to different listeners all in the space of one car journey. It was pointless to question such inconsistency. What mattered was the mood allocated to you and, until it changed, life was at least straightforward, if at times uncomfortable.
No less impressive was her use of the phone as scalpel and feather duster. Under the latter, the most recalcitrant member of the ‘old guard’ would wag his tail with pleasure, but under the former, discarded favourites dumbly suffered their excommunication. In severe cases, any subsequent wailing or gnashing of teeth could be neatly avoided simply with a change of number. The magic digits – the coveted code to personal access – would abruptly fail to connect.
The common denominator was her absolute command of the conversation. This she achieved with artfully presented moods and a surprising fluency which served as a reminder of her mental sharpness. Her sense of timing was sometimes uncanny. In my case she would usually ring when I was late coming back from lunch.
Ultimately, of course, there was the royal hang-up, which could lend unprecedented significance to a simple click. On the other hand, a good call could put a smile on your face for the rest of the day.
I had hardly finished congratulating myself on completing my first piece of written work in my new job when I noticed a lull in the hitherto ceaseless activity at the equerries’ desks. In unison, Richard and Christopher stretched and looked at their watches. It was 1.15, which my internal clock had already informed me was well past its customary lunch call.
‘Good heavens, look at the time, better go to lunch!’ said Richard.
‘Come on!’ said Christopher in a voice which would have galvanized his beloved Ghurkas, and I fell in behind the two veterans as we marched at speed down the stairs, across Ambassador’s Court and out into the sunshine of Green Park.
Approaching Buckingham Palace from St James’s, the great building seems less intimidating than when seen from the grand processional route of The Mall. Visiting heads of state, arriving by the more impressive route, can look up with relief from their open carriage as the Palace fills the horizon, knowing their horse-drawn ordeal is nearly over, while heedless tourists reverse suicidally into the traffic as they struggle to squeeze the whole building into their viewfinders. From Green Park the view is oblique, framed by leafy branches and altogether more human in scale.
The short walk between the Palaces became a well-worn route for me as I shuttled to and from the senior household offices with their Olympian denizens. Sometimes the journey was an opportunity for self-congratulatory reflection or garden party preening. At other times it was a true via dolorosa as the cares of the whole monarchy seemed to reach out at me from a hundred faceless windows on the monolithic facade.
When great events were in the offing, the international TV networks set up their outside broadcast studios among the trees, creating a media gypsy camp under a forest of aerial masts. From this cover, preoccupied courtiers could be ambushed as they hurried by, later to discover that they had become unwitting walk-on extras in the main feature. As additional entertainment, Lancaster House would occasionally lay on a G7 or NATO summit, allowing us the chance to peer at the visiting Presidents and Prime Ministers as they were conveyed past in their limousines.
Safely across the pedestrian crossing at the foot of Constitution Hill, our small detachment marched through the gates into the forecourt of Buckingham Palace, the focus of a hundred pairs of jaded tourist eyes. Were these men in the Simpson’s off-the-peg suits important? They did not look royal, that was certain (especially the one at the back who was explaining to the police that he had not yet got his security pass). But just in case, we had better take a photograph anyway – through the railings as if they were animals in a zoo; or inmates, I sometimes thought, at a secure institution.
Buckingham Palace has two main working entrances – one round the side near the kitchens and one at the front on the right as you look at it. Like everything else, use of each entrance is determined by your place in the hierarchy. Being ‘household’, we strode proprietorially up the steps to the Privy Purse Door, thus being spared the indignity of queuing up with the delivery men at the side gate.
A liveried doorman spared us the further indignity of having to open the door ourselves and, I noticed, greeted Richard and Christopher as if he really recognized them. This is the life, I thought, as my nostrils had their first sniff of the unique Palace smell: a mixture of polish and hot light bulbs with just a hint of mothballs. My feet at last felt qualified to pad across the red carpet as I followed my hungry guides into the bowels of the building.
It was as well that I stayed close to them, because the route from the door to the dining room was labyrinthine to the uninitiated. The entrance gave on to a stairwell, which gave on to a corridor, which jinked, climbed, narrowed and divided before at last turning into the great entrance hall from which the dining room debouched. Even after several months’ practice the journey could seem hazardous, though whether this was from fear of getting lost or getting found I was never quite sure. The latter was a real anxiety at moments of internal tension, as my route even to the nearest exit offered ample opportunity for unexpected encounters with the Palace’s most senior inhabitants.
Running this gauntlet was made slightly more pleasurable by detouring into the Queen’s Equerry’s Room for a preprandial drink. Every day without fail, it was full of courtiers intent on gin and gossip. While exploring the drinks tray on that first day I learned another lesson which time was to reinforce. In a way reminiscent of the tolerance extended by the Prince’s organization to his wife’s, the senior household played forbearant host to its subordinate satellites. Among these the Waleses’ organization constituted the most important – and certainly the largest – planet, but all down to the merest Pluto of royalty theoretically shared equal status as members of household. This entitled them to walk on red carpet, cruise the Royal Enclosure at Ascot and enjoy a number of other perks, one of whose daily rituals I was now experiencing.
The atmosphere reminded me of one of those better service messes where the members had not forgotten some basic rules of communal living, principally the endangered art of making polite conversation. This was not surprising given the preponderance of ex-military personnel, but the similarity began to fray when I listened to the shoptalk which, inevitably, dominated the conversation. Beneath the surface conviviality I slowly detected a lack of the kind of common purpose to be expected even in the least cohesive wardroom.
This was obviously a valuable clearing house for the various informal royal intelligence services. The principal members of the royal family were represented by their private staffs and the heads of the Palace’s great departments represented the behind-the-scenes support structure. This mixture of disparate interests genteelly fenced and bartered in a way that cannot have changed much, I supposed, since Victorian times. Then as now, representatives of lesser households might have felt themselves mere cousins admitted to the ancestral seat where the inner family carried on with its laundry, hiding its resentment that the visitors had the intrusiveness of kin without the discretion of polite guests. The soothing properties of civilized conversation were thus much needed – and were generously employed, not least in greeting the new boy, for which I was duly grateful.
The room quickly emptied in a general move towards lunch. I joined the throng feeling I was among friendly people whose friendship would nevertheless have carefully controlled limits. I would be accepted subject to certain constraints, most of which appeared reasonable to me. These would be imposed by my comparative youth, junior position, temporary appointment and membership of a subordinate organization, tenants of a property outside the pale. In short, we were tolerated. Politely, entertainingly and often warmly, but still only tolerated.
As senior staff, our ‘canteen’ was the Buckingham Palace Household Dining Room. In its scale, decor, portraiture and appointments it encouraged us to feel reassuringly exclusive. We helped ourselves from a sideboard and sat where we thought the best conversation could be found – or avoided.
On that first day I was surprised by the variety of my fellow lunchers. There were the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting – treated with universal respect – and the Queen’s private secretaries – also treated with respect, at least by me. But there were others further down the hierarchy who hinted at the bewildering diversity of the royal household. There was the captain of the Queen’s Flight looking smooth. There was the keeper of the Royal Collection, looking not at all like Anthony Blunt. There was the press secretary, wearing his poker-player’s face. And there was the senior policeman, looking surprised to find himself there at all.
I am sure I did too. My morale was soon boosted when, in a ceremony that beat all the majestic pomp and circumstance of the British Crown, the duty footman dymo-taped my name on to a napkin ring. I may only have been temporary, and I would often lunch somewhere else, but now I was a member of the club.
That first afternoon I strolled back across the park to St James’s feeling pretty pleased with myself. It was a sensation that soon became unfamiliar. The job often made me feel so anxious that the outward perks – even my own napkin ring – seemed like a bad joke. On some days I would have swapped them all for a friendly Portakabin somewhere, anywhere, else. As I returned to my new office that day, however, I was beginning to believe that I could act my part. From my temporary perch I felt the first stirrings of confidence as I measured Richard’s desk with my eye and contemplated a suitable fate for his Australian beer mat if he was careless enough to leave it behind when he moved along the corridor to his new post as comptroller.
The afternoon’s programme was intended to begin my education in Palace life. I was to meet two of the more significant Palace office-holders for ‘a chat’, and in their own way they neatly illustrated the latent tensions that I had detected at lunch. There was an old guard, almost literally. They were mostly ex-Guards Regiment, not very qualified in anything very much, but at least superficially friendly, if tending to be dogmatic about How Things Should Be Done. Then there was a younger guard, less overtly military, less dogmatic, no less friendly and arguably better qualified. As members of the heir’s office, we were usually grouped with this second category, not least by temperament.
The royal household is sometimes still caricatured as being made up of faceless courtiers drawn from public schools and the Army. During my time there, it was still quite true that both types were in the majority. Even those from a City or diplomatic background had mostly worn uniform at some stage, but despite a predictably establishment outlook – which I shared – most also had a very realistic attitude to the institution they served. They had inherited a hidebound, antique machine. To make it work they had to be highly effective in the real world of power and personalities which ran national life – but they also had to be sensitive to the hothouse family politics of the royal world. It was sometimes an impossible job. Failure was always headline news and any success had to be passed modestly upwards.
In a minority of cases, however, it was painfully apparent that the only journey some had taken to be reborn as courtiers was the short march from Wellington Barracks to Buckingham Palace. Their tone and style of working were therefore vaguely familiar to anyone who had ever humoured an unstable commanding officer or in turn meted out patronizing encouragement to a subordinate. My first ‘chat’ was with a prime specimen of this type. Order, precedent and self-preservation were everything to him, which left little room, I observed, for intellect. It became apparent quite early in our conversation that it also left little room for humour, insight, empathy or outside interests of any kind. These were optional in his post and, I suspected, in his world.
He clearly had a dilemma. His self-appointed task was to brief junior new arrivals such as myself about aspects of life at court. Under this heading he included the history of the British monarchy (a bizarre account of his own making), its relevance to modern Britain (akin to his own), and how an insect such as I should hold his knife and fork (an exaggeration, but only just). This performance may have been for our benefit but it was undoubtedly also for his own, since it gave us newcomers a wonderful opportunity to marvel at his mastery of arcane and irrelevant information. However, he plainly suffered doubts as to whether we were suitable receptacles for such priceless wisdom. I fear I did little to set his mind at rest, either then or in our subsequent uneasy encounters.
‘Above all,’ he said, leaning forward for emphasis and fixing me with a watery glare, ‘we don’t want any nonsenses! Nonsenses always lead to nausea!’ He sat back, obviously feeling that no further explanation was required. There was a pause, presumably to allow me to dwell on my capacity for nonsenses. It seemed infinite to both of us.
‘Thank you,’ I said, already aware that hollow pleasantries would be a necessity of life in this place. Then, seeing an opportunity, I added, ‘I really should be getting back …’
He took this news quite well, despite the fact that he had barely warmed to his theme. He left me feeling that I was but a passing aberration on the seamless splendour of royal existence. That may have been quite true, but it did not stop me outlasting him by many years.
Looking back, I now know that he was an exception to the general rule about the Queen’s advisers who, almost to a man, I found to embody the qualities for which I unkindly judged this particular individual had no excess cranial capacity. At the time, however, I thought him a caricature and a good example of a species on the edge of extinction – which, incidentally, is where it remains.
My next encounter was with a representative of the newer generation. Back at St James’s, I had time for a chipped mug of weak tea before the next stage of my indoctrination. I knew instinctively that I was about to learn matters of real relevance from an instructor who would closely monitor my performance, or lack of it. She would become one of the two most important women in my working life: the lady-in-waiting and assistant private secretary to Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, Miss Anne Beckwith-Smith.
Anne had been with the Princess from the start. In a world built on precedent, she had created most of the procedures and conventions by which even our little office needed to function. She set an example of dignity and common sense which belied our subordinate status. Later I discovered that she was also a lot of fun. But on day one I recognized her as a formidable ambassador for her mistress, unlikely to be tolerant of any backsliding on my part.
Her office was the most attractive in St James’s. Formerly a royal dressing room (when our quarters had been a royal residence), it retained an air of domesticity enhanced by Anne’s tasteful choice of decor. A wide bay window looked down into Ambassador’s Court, offering an ideal vantage point from which to observe the daily traffic of the Palace’s visitors and occupants. To me it seemed like a boudoir crossed with a throne room, an impression reinforced as I approached the desk behind which Anne presided with a magisterial presence.
She was just one of many courtiers who had a difficult decision to make when faced with a new recruit such as myself: How much do we tell him? For the next half hour I listened attentively to Anne’s introduction to the workings of the Princess’s office, and although this was accurate and informative, it left me still largely ignorant about the most important factor of all, namely what went on in the mind of the Princess. By what Anne left out on this subject I drew a generally accurate conclusion about Palace life – admit nothing to anyone, especially if they are new. Let them find out for themselves, the hard way.
In obedience to this principle Anne stuck to what I naively thought were trivia. She explained my responsibility to look after the ladies-in-waiting who would accompany the Princess on all her official engagements. ‘You must make sure they have their programme and briefing notes at least a week before each engagement,’ she told me, rather optimistically as it turned out. ‘And you must help them out whenever they need helping out.’
Out of what? I wondered. Cars? Lifts? In fact it was both, among many other things, including that state of Siberian ostracism to which our mistress occasionally committed all who served her closely. Anne, of course, knew that such unwelcome experiences of ‘helping out’ would come my way soon enough. How I dealt with them would be an interesting test for me which I could be sure would be closely monitored.
Anne had been in the Wales business quite long enough to know that the marriage was now largely a sham. Thanks to tabloid coverage of separate sleeping arrangements on the recent German tour, almost anyone else could now come to the same conclusion. She knew also that this created powerful forces that could blow apart the image of normality that we existed to protect. There would be untold consequences, not least for the constitution, and never far from her thoughts was the potential effect on Princes William and Harry. Nothing was said about any of this in that first meeting.
In the Navy I had been used to living by the ‘need to know’ principle. It was elementary security practice to restrict sensitive information just to those personnel who needed it to carry out their tasks. A rather haphazard version of this operated at the Palace. Those who knew the fractured state of the Waleses’ marriage were like members of a secret society, bound by loyalty to their employers. Membership was not to be granted lightly to the new temporary equerry. For one thing, he may be out on his ear next week if he fouls up, and for another, the more people we tell, the more difficult it is to pretend that things might yet get better.
So I had to find out for myself, which I did, but only detail by painful detail over a long period of time. By then I had some sympathy for the hidebound old guard. How much more reassuring simply to lecture the new boys on regimental history and mess rules.
In a conscious effort to break this understandable but counter-productive culture of secrecy, I tried to be more open when it was my turn to break the bad news to new staff. Apart from courtesy, there was a more practical reason: such coyness bred an atmosphere of unreality and suspicion which did nothing for efficiency or morale.
In its more absurd forms it saw courtiers at lunch disdainful of discussing royal revelations already splashed on the morning’s front pages. Sometimes I knew these revelations had been planted by royal leak; in fact, by my revered and respected boss, as when – some years later – she was notoriously photographed making a secret rendezvous with the Daily Mail’s court correspondent Richard Kay. Then it felt as if the world had turned upside down.
When I first realized that such things were possible, initially I felt as though I had entered a devastated landscape from which all signposts and familiar paths had been obliterated. Somewhere I knew civilization continued, the familiar routines of Palace life carried on regardless. Footmen brought tea to comfortable offices in which comfortable officials happily scanned guest lists for garden parties; in the mews contented horses were eating hay; in the Throne Room a smiling Queen received Ambassadors. Yet the whole facade of traditional royal management could be overturned by one phone call to a journalist from a young woman who happened to be married to the Prince of Wales. It made a mockery of the established order under which, if such dirty work needed doing, then a host of officials or ‘friends’ would jump to the task. It was shocking to the royal establishment (but curiously refreshing too) that the Princess was prepared to commit such sins unblushingly and by herself.
I left Anne’s office deep in thought. I was happy to leave premonitions to my more spiritually inquisitive employer, but the sense that events were not entirely under control was real enough. Nothing specific had been said, but it did not need to be. The instinctive reluctance to talk even discreetly about calamitous stories blaring daily from the headlines told its own story: we would bury our heads in the sand and hope for the best.
Much of the lunchtime euphoria had left me and I was again conscious of the mountain I had to climb if I was going to fit into my new world, let alone be a success in it. My gloom deepened as I returned to the alien bustle of the equerries’ office. On my learner’s desk I could see the note I had sent to KP in the Bag that morning, promptly returned as Jo had predicted.
Despite my best efforts, the paper trembled slightly in my fingers as I searched for the teacher’s comments on my first piece of prep. The sprawling, girlish script that I came to know well spelt out just one word – ‘Perfect’. There was an exclamation mark too. I breathed again.
‘Beginner’s luck,’ said Jo’s voice behind me.
I was half expecting the Princess to turn up at St James’s, but she did not. Nor did she phone me. I was not sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. I knew my Palace life would not really have begun until I spoke to her in my own right, rather than just as a job-hunter.
I went home late that night. As I passed KPI looked up the long drive and wondered what was going on behind the lighted windows. It looked cosy enough, but I remembered the Princess’s forced laughter and her clumsy jokes about her in-laws. It did not take a psychologist to see there was a great tension just below the surface.
Her popularity clearly gave her enormous power – I had felt it very strongly when I met her. But, like a toppled pyramid, it seemed an immense weight to rest on just her slim shoulders. Were others helping her carry that weight? Would I?
I already knew the answer to the second question. Even at this early stage I felt a loyalty to the Princess. For all her professional competence and innate nobility, there was an indefinable vulnerability about her that drew from me an unprompted wish to protect her. This developed into a complex mixture of duty and devotion which sometimes took more and sometimes less than the strict professional loyalty required, but which has never entirely disappeared.
As for the first question, I already had the glimmerings of an answer to that too. My observations at lunch in Buckingham Palace had given me a clue. If I felt that I, a junior minion in a junior household, was just tolerated by the old guard, how much more was that true of my boss. If I looked up from my own small patch of red carpet, I could see my experience reflected in that of the Princess, although hers was on a scale as different from mine as a lifetime is from a two-year secondment. Inside the organization of which she was a senior, popular and accomplished partner, she was just tolerated.
Being tolerated was fine, I supposed, but I had expected a degree of supervision, if not actual direction. At times I came to feel that even a measure of interest would have been welcome. Raised in disciplined organizations, I was surprised to discover the extent of the autonomy given to the junior households. Some form of structured, central co-ordination was the Philosopher’s Stone of royal strategic management and endless attempts were – and are – made to discover it. But even the sharpest sorcerer on the PR market is unlikely to work the magic for long. The base material of his potion is a thousand years of royal durability. It is hard, dull and unyielding, not readily open to transformation. It is strong too – but its strength is not the kind you would want to cuddle up to. The best he can hope to create is media gold – a fool’s delight.
Later, as events in the Waleses’ marriage moved from concern to crisis, tolerance became pained aloofness in some cases and outright distaste in others. In the end, however, it was the indifference that caused such harm. Opportunities to alter the downward spiral of events were squandered. Those who could have helped preferred too often to look away or distract themselves with the accustomed routines that had proved an effective bulwark against intrusive reality in the past. I knew and understood why. The need to confront unfamiliar and painfully intimate issues was deeply unwelcome to us courtiers as a class. What I resentfully saw as indifference I eventually realized often masked a genuine concern – and an equally genuine sense of complete impotence in the face of events that constantly defied the rules of familiar experience.
Part of what drove the Princess on to endure and exploit her public duties was her wish to earn the active recognition and approval of the family into which she had married. Sometimes with bitterness, but increasingly with a resigned acceptance, she complained to me that nobody ever told her she was doing a good job.
Oh, the papers praised her to the heavens, but they could knock her down again the next day. The public adored her, but theirs – she thought – was a fickle love, lavished on her hairdo as much as on her soul. In any case, she left it behind with the slam of her car door. Her staff could try to redress the balance, but the line between true praise and toadying was always perilously fine.
It was a cruel irony that the better she did her job, the more she felt resented by some of her in-laws, unable to stomach the idea that she was a channel for emotions they struggled to feel, let alone express. Very well: if she could not please them, she would please herself. Little wonder, then, that she grew to prefer working for her own benefit and, as she saw them, the emotional needs of humanity at large. It might be selfish and it lacked intellectual discipline. It could – and did – expose her to criticism from agents of an older royal order, fearful of the public sentiment (or sentimentality, in their eyes) which she increasingly stirred up. But better that, she thought – even unconsciously – than deny her need for a recognition that accepted her as she really was.
The liberal, compassionate and educated people who are the emerging face of royal authority might at this point feel entitled to a flicker of exasperation. ‘We did everything we could, but she was impossible!’
I can only reply, ‘Yes, you did. And yes, she was.’ But too many people who could have put things right did too little for too long. I will always believe it to be true: the Princess of Wales did not set out to rebel. What in the end was seen as her disaffection was what she did to compensate for a chronic feeling of rejection. Time and again, a small handful of sugarlumps would have been enough to lead this nervous thoroughbred back into the safety of the show ring. When none could be found for her, she set off into the crowd.
The organization I joined in 1988 nonetheless seemed, at least on the surface, to be united in its common aim of serving the Prince and Princess, both of whom for their part seemed equally united in keeping away from public gaze whatever private difficulties their marriage might have been experiencing. Even those well acquainted with the rumours, such as Georgina Howell, writing in the Sunday Times on 18 September 1988, could still reassure themselves that ‘Diana [has decided] as royal women so often have … to make the best of a cool marriage instead of fighting it.’ Ominously she added, ‘… but she lacks romance. The danger is that she may find it.’ Given what was later disclosed to Andrew Morton about the Princess’s love life at the time, this understatement is touching in its innocence. Captain Hewitt had already been on the scene for some time, carrying his own supply of romantic sugarlumps – and self-denial was never her strong point.
That first night, as I inched past the gates of KP in the London traffic, such thoughts were the merest inkling, easily pushed to the back of my mind. In the years that followed, however, they grew from idle speculation to grim reality.
Had I known it, the signs were all there from the beginning.
THREE (#ulink_58f5fc4a-10c4-5950-926f-7fc30203519e)
UNDER THE THUMB (#ulink_58f5fc4a-10c4-5950-926f-7fc30203519e)
The Princess’s footsteps sounded hurried. I had been listening to them for about five minutes now, standing in the semi-gloom of the KP hallway. Upstairs, she was preparing for a day of engagements out of London – what we called an ‘awayday’. Her high heels struck a distinctive note as she marched back and forth from her bedroom to the sitting room with, it seemed, several rapid diversions en route. To my nervous ears she was beginning to sound impatient. There was something increasingly agitated about her pacing.
Suddenly I heard a phone ring and there were a few minutes of silence, broken only by the low murmur of her voice. Then the footsteps started again, back to the bedroom, only this time more urgently, as I imagined her checking the time remaining before we were due to leave. She was fanatically punctual.
It was my first ‘real’ day at work – the first day on which I was going out with the Princess. This was my chance to begin to see the world through her eyes, to experience what it was like to be royal, only slightly second-hand.
In a pattern that was repeated a thousand times over the next seven years, I waited in the darkness at the foot of the stairs and listened to her flitting from room to room on the floor above, trying to guess what mood she was in and what sort of day lay ahead of us. The phone call could have been from anybody. The tone of her voice was neutral and I could not catch the words. I hoped whoever it was would not keep her talking – I had already learned enough to know she would be irritated if we started late. Best of all, whoever it was might make her laugh and send us smiling all the way to the helicopter.
A door opened and closed. At the top of the stairs she paused, straightening her skirt. Her blue Catherine Walker suit and executive blow-dry told you that here was a woman who was ready to take a grip on the day. The phone call must have been OK, because she cantered down the stairs, spotted the new boy and smiled, holding out her hand to me. It was to be seven years and a million royal handshakes later before we shook hands again. Then it was to say goodbye.
‘Hello again, Patrick. We didn’t scare you off then!’
I bowed and mumbled something.
‘This is a crazy place to work,’ she continued, heading rapidly for the front door, ‘but on this team we all started as outsiders, so we know how strange it feels to begin with.’
The lady-in-waiting and I followed her outside. After the darkness of the house the sun seemed dazzling. A car took us the short distance to Perk’s Field – a green offshoot of Hyde Park – where a shiny red helicopter was waiting. ‘Yuck!’ said the Princess through smiling teeth. ‘The flying tumble dryer. I just hope it won’t be bumpy. I hate bumps.’ Later I came to hate bumps too; not because they made me airsick, but because bumps, like rain or hail or the temperature of her tea, could quickly become the excuse for a mood. Moods were what we all dreaded.
As we clattered eastwards over London’s rooftops, the Princess ignored the view and concentrated on her copy of Vogue. The Queen’s Flight always kept a well-stocked magazine rack. After Vogue she might reach for a tabloid newspaper – usually the Daily Mail – and furrow her brow over Dempster. Often there was a royal story. That was a good way of starting a mood too.
Luckily it was noisy on our 30-minute flight, so there was no need to try to talk. On the occasions when I really had to communicate, shouting into her ear at close range made me paranoid about my breath. She had the same fear and regularly squirted Gold Spot into her famously perfect mouth.
Five minutes before landing the crewman signalled that we were nearly there. The Princess began rapid, expert work with the compact and lip gloss. With something of a shock, I realized the perfect complexion was not completely perfect close up. When I discovered her fluctuating intake of chocolate and sweets I could understand why – and sympathize too, as I contemplated the visible effects of a courtier’s diet on my own appearance.
A generous blast of hair spray always followed. Months later, when she was sharing the helicopter with her husband, she made (almost) all of us laugh by theatrically overdoing this emission of ozone-hostile gases.
As our destination – an Essex seaside town – hove into sight, she pulled out her briefing notes and gave them a cursory final glance. She was very good at her homework and usually swotted up the main points of the programme before she left the Palace. If her staff had done their planning properly, the day would run pretty much automatically. If she did not feel inspired to do more, all she really had to do was smile, shake hands and drop the occasional well-worn royal platitude. Except, of course, she usually was inspired to do more. Once on duty she hardly ever coasted. She took a professional pride in giving her public full value, which was one reason why they were ready to wait in vast numbers in any weather for even a fleeting glimpse of her.
As the helicopter’s rotor blades wound slowly to a stop, she undid her seatbelt and stooped by the door, waiting for it to be slid open, poised like an athlete before the starting gun. She gave a final tug to her jacket, smoothed her skirt and caught my eye. ‘Another episode in the everyday story of royal folk!’ she laughed, putting the newcomer at ease. Look, she was saying, I’m human, friendly, approachable. You’re really lucky to be working for me…
As I watched her step nimbly out of the helicopter into the excited noise and good-natured bustle of a busy day of good works, I had no trouble agreeing. Disenchantment – hers and mine – came only slowly. That day, the picture was brand new, glossy and colourful. As she visited a factory, a hospital and an old folks’ home I saw the royal celebrity at work: professional to her fingertips but still a flirt; ready to laugh with those who laughed – and ready to make them laugh when nerves got the better of them; ready to comfort those who were weeping.
Halfway through the day we stopped for lunch. Lunches on an engagement were usually planned as buffets so that she could circulate among as many guests as possible. But circulating and eating do not mix – you risk spraying sausage roll over people when you speak – so the Princess would ‘retire’ to a private room for a loo stop and a quick bite before joining the throng.
These short breaks were a great relaxation for her in the middle of a tiring day. ‘Have a drink, boys!’ she would say to me and the policeman if a bottle of wine had been left for us. She would usually restrict herself to fizzy water and nibble a sandwich, but if she was tense she might do real justice to the caterer’s pride and joy and eat forkfuls of salad and cold meat followed by pudding – or sometimes the other way round.
Without warning, she could be ravenous for sweet things. The wise lady-in-waiting carried fruit gums in her handbag and the chauffeur kept a stock of emergency chocolate in the car. I frequently watched her eat a whole bar of fruit-and-nut between engagements. Suddenly aware of her behaviour, she would insist on everyone else eating sweets too. No wonder I spent much of the time feeling queasy.
It was not until later that I recognized these mini-binges as comfort eating, vain attempts to console herself for her emotional hunger. The roots undoubtedly lay in childhood unhappiness. The broken home of her early years has been well documented and she spoke to me often of tensions with her father. ‘Once when he took me to school,’ she said, ‘I stood on the steps and screamed, “If you leave me here you don’t love me!”’
I did not probe into the Princess’s childhood, but in a way I had no need to. Photographs of the teenage Diana Spencer show her at a glance to be knowing, dull-eyed and self-conscious. Throughout my time with the Princess there were occasional signs of the scars of earlier traumas: insecurity in her attractiveness, a passionate need for unconditional love, an obsession with establishing emotional control, and a sabotaging approach to relationships. The distrust of men and the chronically poor image she had of herself told their own story.
The Princess was bulimic for most of the time I knew her. Despite a continuous battle with the condition, which she was popularly supposed to have won, she often suffered recurrent attacks. These were most frequent when the strains in her marriage were simultaneously driving her to comfort eating while fuelling her innate self-doubt.
Once – on a hungry day – she took a big bite at a prawn sandwich. A solitary prawn escaped and fell with deadly accuracy down her front, disappearing into her cleavage. She squeaked with surprise and looked inside her jacket. I waited for the prawn to reappear, but it failed to do so.
‘Bloody thing’s stuck!’ she said through a mouthful of sandwich.
‘Poor prawn,’ I said lamely.
‘Bloody lucky prawn!’ she corrected me, turning away to deal with the intruder. I took the hint. Modesty was for her to indulge in when she wanted to. It was not for me to question her absolute desirability, even in fun, even by a syllable.
Perhaps surprisingly, there was never a ban on food jokes. Maybe it was her way of dealing with the potential embarrassment of the whole subject. I was later struck by the courage – or foolhardiness – of her self-mocking reference to constantly ‘sticking my head down the loo’.
Later that day we flew back to London. As the helicopter lifted from the town park, so the tensions of the day lifted from her shoulders. It was instant party time. Now came the jokes and the gossip. Nobody cared about shouting. My newcomer’s ears struggled to believe what they heard. Was this the same Princess who an hour ago had been the saintly hospital visitor?
‘What d’you get if you cross a nun with an apple?’ she yelled above the engine noise.
‘I don’t know, Ma’am. What do you get if you cross a nun with an apple?’ I replied, looking dumbly at the lady-in-waiting to see if this was normal behaviour. Her determined smile indicated that it was.
‘A computer that won’t go down on you!’ shrieked the Princess, doubling up with mirth.
Even as I obediently joined in the laughter, I noted the sadness behind my new boss’s taste in humour. She would not know how to switch a computer on, let alone use it for long enough to see it crash; and as for the oral sex … as a joke, it was reassuringly remote. The daring and crudity gave her the necessary thrill. Even if she did not fully understand what she was saying, she knew it would shock and that was what she wanted. It was the safest of safe sex.
