Diana's Nightmare - The Family (51 page)

Nor is Diana without other critics who mistrust the lead she is giving. Marcelle d'Argy Smith of
Cosmo
said: 'I think she is very dangerous for women because the signals are very clear - grow up tall, look good and you can marry a prince. It is the non-working, tall blonde syndrome and there are millions of them in different guises. Some are Susan Sangster, some are Diana - but they are all the same woman. She might personally be nice but that's not the point. Take this thing about charity work. Millions of people do charity work but they actually do it, they mop up the spit and the sick. Millions of women in this country do all the schlepping and carrying for the elderly and the sick. I just find it odd that we need this goddess figure.'

DIANA was among only friends when she sat down to enjoy her birthday dinner. The low key event was staged in a private room at the Ivy, one of theatreland's most popular restaurants on the border of Soho and Covent Garden. She ended a hearty meal by slicing into a pink-iced birthday cake. At her side was a man who knew all about food - Simon Slater, owner of two West London restaurants she favoured from time to time, Launceston Place and Kensington Place.

Initial reports almost inevitably linked Diana with Slater, a bespectacled figure in the Philip Dunne mould.

But the restaurateur was more interested in one of the seven other guests, Kate Menzies, heiress to the £37 million newsagents fortune. A former girlfriend of David Linley, Kate had been introduced to Diana by Fergie who told her that Diana needed some social life while Charles was away. Subsequently Kate had taken over Fergie's job as the Fixer finding suitable dinner parties for the Princess to attend and discreet escorts to accompany her.

Across London, the Yorks were staging another episode in the bizarre chapter of their own failed union. Just three days after Buckingham Palace had announced that their separation was permanent and intimated that an early divorce was on the cards, Andrew and Fergie turned up at Carlyle Square in Chelsea appearing for all the world like a pair of blissfully happy newly-weds.

The Duchess always enjoyed a party and Sir David Frost's annual shindig for some of the nation's most high profile citizens was an occasion which pleased her. Politicians including Lord Owen, Lord Tebbit, Norman Lamont and William Waldegrave rubbed shoulders with showbusiness stars Sean Connery, Michael Palin, Terry Wogan and Sir John Mills.

No one ventured to ask Fergie about the overall financial settlement Johnny Bryan had helped work out for her with the Queen's lawyers. Reports of it varied between £l million and £4 million, but if Princess Ferguson (as Sarah Kennedy liked to refer to her) was as disappointed with the pay-off as the commentators claimed, she was not allowing it to spoil her evening.

Another contentious issue was whether she would still be addressed as Her Royal Highness after a divorce. Constitutional experts argued that although the Queen could technically strip her of the HRH title, she was likely to keep it unless she remarried. 'Notably unstuffy,' wrote one observer, 'she prefers to introduce herself as Sarah anyway.' Nothing could have been further from reality: the woman whose father insisted on being addressed as Major Ronald Ferguson long after he had left the Army, wallowed in the grandeur that marriage had bestowed on her. Her behaviour may have been closer to that of the much maligned Essex Girl of popular disdain, but Fergie even insisted that Johnny Bryan refer to 'Her Royal Highness' when discussing her with others.

No one was standing on such ceremony, however, as beaming Fergie, wearing a pink jacket over her short white party dress, chatted amiably with Frost and his wife Lady Carina before crossing the specially sealed-off square to greet David Linley and his bride-to-be. By now, Serena Stanhope was getting into the swing of the travelling royal circus.

Of all the complex family problems facing the Queen, the relationship of Andrew and Fergie was the most baffling. She knew through her intelligence sources that Fergie was still entertaining Johnny Bryan, but her son continued to make every effort to remain a loyal husband and doting father although his wife had humiliated him once again with her demand that the separation should be made formal. Even while she was applying pressure on Buckingham Palace to discount a reconciliation, Fergie insisted that she and Andrew should appear in public as if all was well. Princess Beatrice's school sports day was an ideal opportunity for her to demonstrate that, while she had her freedom, she also had her husband on hand whenever required.

It had been fifteen months since they went their separate ways and yet Andrew and Fergie still put on a convincing display of Happy Families. Andrew picked up Princess Eugenie to watch Fergie run barefoot in the mothers' race and then removed his jacket to compete against the fathers. They achieved a mixed bag of results: the Duchess won her heat in the mothers' event but an unfit Duke struggled to come third in his race after picking up a pole he was meant to dodge. Beatrice came in last in her hula-hoop race despite cries of encouragement from Eugenie. The Queen cannot have been the only one to wonder what awful secret condemned them to live apart when, on that afternoon in June, they looked happier to be with each other than many of the parents still united by their marital vows.

'I just take every day as it comes,' the Duchess told viewers of ITN in yet another attempt to explain her actions, 'I love being with my children as much as I can be now, which is much more than I used to be which is great for the children because they see me more and that works very well, so that's good. Andrew and I speak every day and it's very important that we do to keep that friendship.'

What had happened, she said, had made her 'very much more thoughtful, very much more aware of trying to control my spontaneity a little bit so I won't fall into the awful great big Pooh traps in which the ramifications are too much for me to cope with.'

Returning to a familiar theme, she added: 'I have made huge faults
(sic).
Don't we all make mistakes? Everyone's got to live and learn, get on with life. My life is very much just seeing each day how it is, helping people as much as possible, looking after my girls. Hopefully in the months to come the laughter and the joy will come springing back into it.'

ON the night of Tuesday, 9 June, Diana had knelt in prayer with Mother Teresa at Kensington Palace. Afterwards, Mother Teresa would say only: 'She was as I know her,' but the canny missionary was well aware that her royal protégée was in need of guidance about what lay ahead.

Neatly side-stepping Royal Ascot, the Princess drove herself from the splendour of Kensington Palace to Refuge, a hostel in West London for battered wives. Installed as its patron, she had been visiting the hostel for eighteen months, giving money to help fund operations ever since she discovered that depleted finances threatened the sanctuary with closure. Sandra Horley, the director of Refuge, was as proud of the royal association as she was grateful for it: 'She is one of the country's most influential people. Her support shows that stopping domestic violence is a worthwhile cause. It boosts the morale of women who are trapped in their homes and feel isolated and rejected, and reduces the stigma attached to their problems.'

In a more private capacity, she might have added that Diana needed her meetings with the women every bit as much as they needed her support. They had, in a sense, restored her to normality. That Saturday morning, Diana joined in a group therapy session, sharing her own problems with the other female victims of failed relationships as she had on a number of previous occasions.

This time, however, things were different. She and the other women had agreed to the discussion being filmed for Channel 4's
First Sex
programme. While the cameras whirred, Diana confessed that her own life was flooded with negative thoughts. If at times she sounded more counsellor than counselled, then the TV presence was almost certainly to blame. To Sandra Horley, who was leading the group, she said: 'When I came here last time, we did a group session and you asked all the ladies to name something positive they'd done in the week and it was quite a stumbling block for some of us. People had to really think. If you asked what negative aspects there had been you would have been flooded. Because it was positive we all had to think hard. Don't you remember?' She asked one woman: 'Don't you think it's positive coming here and sharing something which has been hurting for so long?' and turning to another, added: 'We do, don't we?'

When one girl stumbled over a word to describe how different she felt from her friends, Diana came up with one that was close to her own feelings: isolated. Then, turning to another woman, she demonstrated how she remembered their stories by saying: 'Last time, you were saying one minute he'd be hitting you and the next he'd be crying. Then you'd have to be the mother, having been the abused wife beforehand. You remember saying that?' Before she left the shelter, everyone involved was sworn to secrecy about the programme which was to be shown a few nights later.

The Buckingham Palace Press Office went out of its way to let it be known that Diana's venture had the full support of Her Majesty's courtiers. A spokesman stressed that it would be 'unwise' to read anything sinister into her support for a battered wives' group, adding: 'The Princess helps leprosy victims and AIDS victims without suffering from either disease.' The Work did much to boost the caring image which Mother Teresa had helped her to foster, if you want self-esteem, do something estimable' had proved to be a solid piece of advice.

Not everyone who came in contact with Diana considered her views as valid as Sandra Horley. The film producer Michael Winner said: 'I think she is as nutty as a fruit cake but I admire her because she carries eccentricity to its extreme and I don't mind that. She has got this marvellous front she puts on and she has a wonderful volatile girl behind it. She really is two people, a female Jekyll and Hyde. That's what she is, I know she is. I know people and I am categorical about this. The other side (of her) which has been hinted at is this very, very emotional erratic behaviour, this very wild behaviour - almost maniacal. I think she plays a part every time she is out in the public arena. She is playing a role and I think she plays it brilliantly.'

Winner concluded: 'Of course there is heartache underneath it. She married a man who was cold and indifferent to her and she was quite a warm-hearted person. I feel it was unfortunate because I think he thought he was doing his duty and she thought she was getting a husband. It is understandable that she became what she became.'

There were indications that the new Diana might be due in part to a secret return to the healing hands and therapeutic thoughts of Stephen Twigg, who had been sacked by Buckingham Palace in spectacular fashion the previous summer. Already worried about his influence over the Princess, the courtiers had been horrified to read his highly paid account of how she was faring just a year earlier.

'The solution to the royal marriage problem is likely to be a lot quicker than we think,' he told writer Shirley Flack just an hour after leaving the Princess's side at Kensington Palace. 'Diana is ready to take charge of her life for the first time. The problem must not be allowed to disappear through indifference. She is in perfect shape - the best she has been. She has, in fact, never been healthier, never been stronger emotionally, nor more able to deal with the turbulent events of her life. Diana is a balanced, healthy and mature young woman.'

To the alarm of the Palace secretariat, Twigg had given credence to the stories about his client's attempted suicides by referring to them as cries for help, it could happen to anyone. In getting to that point, in realising and acknowledging that there was a problem, she had the courage to seek help. When she came to me, it was very clear that there was a problem and I was aware from the moment I began working on her that these deep problems were based on attitudes and beliefs in her psyche.' Describing the framework he established for her recovery, Twigg commented: 'She entered into that with me specifically to work her way out of the hole she had dug herself. A hole dug unknowingly because it came from her background, her experience before she was married and during her marriage.'

It seemed inconceivable that she could ever return to his care after such a high profile dismissal by the Palace itself and yet a year later Matthew Freud, his former public relations adviser, admitted that the sacking was 'partially a diplomatic move of Diana's'. A source had told Freud that two or three months after ending the association, Diana might have quietly re-engaged the therapist. 'My guess is that she has ... I think that's quite likely,' he said. When Twigg was asked if it were true his royal client had indeed returned to him, he became suddenly modest. 'I've got no comment to make about that,' he told the authors.

Three days before Diana was to leave for what had been billed as The Suffering Tour of Africa, Lady Fermoy had died at her home in Eaton Square, aged eighty-four. The loss of her kind though not uncritical granny meant that Diana had to let go of another link with the past. They had mended a rift which followed the separation. 'Ruth has been appalled by what she sees as Diana's refusal to put duty before her own wishes,' a close friend said at the time. 'She feels that Diana ought to have accepted the Queen's suggestion that she and Charles should appear in public and lead separate private lives, rather than officially separate.'

Along with her brother and sisters, Diana showed no inclination to attend a belated party at the Paris Ritz to celebrate Raine Spencer's engagement, and the most royal guest at Raine's bash turned out to be the heir to the defunct French throne, Prince Henri of Orleans. The event, costing £25,000, was staged in the shadow of Dame Barbara Cartland's ominous warning that her daughter's marriage to the Count Jean-Francois de Chambrun might not have a happy ending.

Diana had no such reservations. None of the Spencer children attended the civil ceremony at Westminster Register Office or the blessing which followed in a church two days later. Even Dame Barbara, emerging from the tiny sixteenth-century Holy Trinity Church in the village of Cold Ashton near Bath, said that she was only there 'because I got into trouble for missing Johnnie Spencer's funeral.' Reporters covering Diana's arrival in Zimbabwe were told that she cared less about Raine's nuptials than Dame Barbara. 'The Princess was very amused by a reference to Raine which read, "To call her a dog's dinner would be to provoke widespread outrage among canine nutritionists," ' an aide said, possibly with Diana's agreement. 'As far as she is concerned, Raine is no longer the Countess Spencer and she is very glad to see the back of her.'