Diana's Nightmare - The Family (15 page)

While Charles was away, she filled the apartment with the loud pop sounds of Neil Diamond, Supertramp and Spandau Ballet. Another favourite was the ballad singer Barry Manilow. 'He's gorgeous but he needs a wife to look after him,' she decided after meeting him backstage following a concert, i would have said she was enjoying life,' said one visitor to KP. 'It's still hard to believe that it was a parody.'

Word began to creep out that all was far from harmonious in the Wales household. Below stairs, Diana, not Charles, was referred to by some servants as 'The Boss', and it was claimed that she was 'an arrogant tyrant'. When staff began to resign in embarrassing numbers, she was accused of driving them away. This hurt her so much that she declared: 'I want you to understand that I am not responsible for any sackings. I just don't sack people.'

The impression, however, gained credence when her brother said: 'She is an exceptionally kind and thoughtful person, but nobody is saying she is a fool. She has weeded out quite a few hangers-on that she has found round her husband and his family in a subtle way.' Althorp was, in fact, referring to some of Charles's friends, not to members of the staff, a point which was hastily clarified. The distinction only served to alienate those in the Prince's camp who found Diana far from subtle. She made it plain that she had little time for many of the men Charles had collected in what one observer termed 'the Class Menagerie — both the people in his service and the ones in his set.' 'Noddies,' Diana called them. Yes-men.

At polo, Charles had only to hold out his hand between chukkas and a glass of water would instantly materialise. He had been waited on, literally hand and foot, since birth. He never needed to change a razor blade or put the cap on the toothpaste, 'I was astonished by some of the men I met at Highgrove,' said a visitor from London. 'He surrounds himself with buffoons.'

Despite her earlier denial, Diana admitted that she had resented Charles's original staff, it was as if he was married to them, not me, and they were so patronising it drove me mad.' The first to depart after the wedding was Stephen Barry, who had served at Buckingham Palace for sixteen years, rising from a humble footman to the elevated rank of Charles's personal valet. Surrounded by a world rich in privilege and possessions, Barry began to develop expensive tastes far beyond his Palace income or station. 'Stephen worshipped the Prince - he did everything for him and gradually started to imitate him,' said Philip Benjamin, a former steward on the
Britannia.
'He became a Prince Charles clone. He was an ordinary working class lad but developed a taste for classical music, expensive clothes, foreign travel and the finest things in life. Whenever he went shopping for the Prince, he bought himself exactly the same. He wore the same shirts, the same suits and he even had his shoes hand-made like Charles.'

Diana realised she had to make a stand after Barry barred her from the Prince's study just before the engagement. He told her Charles was too busy to see her, but she swept past him and confronted Charles about the valet's proprietorial manner. After the wedding, she insisted that Barry would have to go. He had been punched in the eye at a gay club and photographed wrestling with a male model during a function to promote the American pop group Village People at the Royal College of Art. 'He used to say he resigned but he was pushed and she did the pushing,' said a friend. 'He called her a spoiled brat.' As her later work with AIDS sufferers showed, Diana was far from homophobic. She just didn't want Barry, a snobbish poseur, anywhere near her while she tried to settle into royal life.

Charles Althorp, for one, did not envy his sister's lifestyle. 'I've never been the slightest bit jealous because I can see exactly what she has to put up with,' he said, it's very easy for somebody who's nowhere near Diana to think, "God, I'd like a life like hers". But all of us who are close to her are not so envious.'

The couple's outward display of happiness impressed guests staying at Balmoral during the final stages of Diana's pregnancy with her second child. They walked through the grounds hand in hand and spent hours playing with Prince William.

There was a slight tremor one Sunday as the royals were gathering to go to church. Diana, beautifully turned out, was waiting patiently for the others in the hall when the Queen said to her: 'Oh Diana, you needn't come.' The Princess brightened visibly at the prospect of spending the time with William, but Charles was taken aback. 'Oh my goodness, she's spent all morning getting ready,' he said in aggrieved tones, it was a very husbandly remark,' said one privy to the secrets of Balmoral. 'But apart from that, they seemed absolutely happy.'

Charles had been delighted to learn that Diana was pregnant again, and he prayed for a daughter. 'He was very good-humoured about it,' said a friend. 'He knew she had had a terrible time with William and he teased her and made silly jokes.' It was his rather clumsy way of trying to share the burden. In fact, it only emphasised the distance between them. As at William's birth, he stayed by her side in the Lindo Wing, giving her lumps of ice to suck and cream for her dry lips.

Prince Henry, or Harry as he instantly became, was born at four-twenty p.m. on Saturday, 15 September, 1984. Straight away, Charles phoned the Queen and Prince Philip at Balmoral, Earl Spencer at Althorp and Mrs Shand Kydd in Scotland. The next day, he brought an excited William to see his brother and, when Diana and the baby left hospital, Charles drove them home in a blue Daimler. He had, he felt, done everything possible to make them comfortable.

Piling his polo gear into the back of his Aston Martin, he dashed off to Windsor Great Park, where his team mates feted him with champagne and cigars. He was away for only three hours, but his enemies seized on this as an example of his selfish attitude towards Diana. The sad truth was that Charles had done everything in his power, but it wasn't enough and never would be. Diana's needs were insatiable; as long as she was in the grip of the illness, she would always want more. Sick and depressed, she said she 'felt something die inside me'.

Filled with self-pity, Diana stalked off during a recuperative skiing holiday in Lichtenstein and her bewildered husband was heard to mutter: 'I suppose I'll get it in the neck now.' Charles knew the time had come for him to stand up for himself, and not only to his wife. The Press were starting to annoy him intensely.

THE Fergie Follies opened before a glittering audience, including a full house of royalty, at Windsor Castle in the summer of 1985. The visiting star, Miss Sarah Ferguson, of Lavender Gardens SW11, had already played the Farm Club at Verbier, the Palm Beach circuit and the Hippodrome in the West End to mixed reviews. She was still trying to forget one performance as a cocktail waitress at a party after which one guest was able to confirm: 'She's a natural redhead.'

This, however, was by far the biggest role of her life and she came on stage smartly dressed in a cream silk suit. Her friend the Princess of Wales had written the script in which Prince Andrew, the best the Royal Family could offer in the way of a playboy, had been cast as the leading man. But Fergie couldn't resist the temptation of ad-libbing. The moment she and Andrew indulged in a friendly scuffle over a plate of profiteroles, this grand lunch in the State Dining Room at Windsor Castle before Royal Ascot reverted to pure slapstick.

'We were made to sit next to each other at lunch,' said Andrew later, when Sarah was wearing his £25,000 ruby-and-diamond engagement ring. 'Yes, and he made me eat chocolate profiteroles which I didn't want to eat at all,' complained Sarah. 'I was on a diet.' Andrew had tempted Fergie to eat some of the rich pudding by saying that he would have some only if she did so first. After she had eaten her portion, he told her he was joking. Sarah did the only reasonable thing: she gave him an unscripted whack on the shoulder. 'I didn't have it so I got hit,' he said.

Fergie's debut at Windsor Castle, which she admitted 'scared me witless', might have lacked decorum, but as a portent it was uncannily accurate. Andrew found that he enjoyed romping around with this roly-poly girl whose idea of a good time matched his own. Their repertoire ranged from cream-bun fights and mustard squirting to a particular after-dinner game played trouserless with ice-creams. But though they shared an interest in filthy jokes and high jinks they had little else in common. She loved riding and skiing, he was interested in flying and the Navy. 'Let's face it, they were totally unsuited,' said a friend. 'She should never have been there and she knows it.'

Fergie came into Andrew's life just as he was resting between romantic engagements. A performance of a more professional kind in
The Adventures of Emily,
an erotic film, had placed the actress-turned-photographer Koo Stark, off limits. Missing Koo, he pursued a bevy of blonde beauties until his double act with baronet's daughter Vicki Hodge in a Caribbean one-nighter, widely reviewed in the Sunday papers, convinced Her Majesty that it was time he stopped playing away from home and settled down.

As Sarah's romance with Paddy McNally was going nowhere, Diana seized the chance to introduce an ally into the royal ranks. 'Be delightful, but be discreet,' Diana cautioned her friend. This was like asking Pavarotti to break dance. Fergie's whole
raison d'etre
was 'to be myself', even if it meant treading on sensitive toes. The problem was that she wasn't quite sure who she was.

Andrew decided that, if he had to marry, Fergie would be far preferable to the grasping Sloane Rangers and outdoorsy blue bloods of his acquaintance. To everyone's immense relief, they became engaged on Wednesday, 19 March, 1986.

The Fergie Follies returned on the night of Andrew's stag party. Pamela Stephenson and Elton John's wife Renate turned up at a friend's flat in Belgravia dressed as policewomen. Fergie and Diana slipped into wigs and hired two WPC uniforms. The intention was to gatecrash the all-male preserve and arrest the bridegroom, but they found security at the venue, Aubrey House, a walled mansion in Holland Park, too tight to penetrate. Undaunted, they proceeded to Annabel's in Berkeley Square where patrons were treated to the sight of four giggling policewomen drinking Buck's Fizz at the bar. 'The wig was hot and uncomfortable and my feet were killing me - the shoes were two sizes too small,' said Diana. 'But you have to have a laugh sometimes.' Charles did not share the sentiment.

After the Yorks' wedding at Westminster Abbey, Fergie tried to adapt to married life at Buckingham Palace while Andrew went back to the Navy. Diana, fighting her own battles, initially welcomed her friend's presence. They swam together in the Palace pool, went shopping in Knightsbridge and arranged skiing trips to Klosters. But it became obvious to Diana that Fergie, a deeply insecure woman beneath the bravado, was 'doing all the wrong things'. She saw that the courtiers, not her favourite people, 'were giving the Duchess enough rope to hang herself'. Charles told Diana just how seriously wrong it was going after the royal superstars Diana and Fergie were photographed at Royal Ascot, not chatting to friends in the Royal Enclosure but jabbing men's bottoms with their rolled-up umbrellas. Always conscious of how other people's behaviour reflected on her, Diana stepped back and let Fergie get on with it.

Charles had taken to Fergie in the first phase of her married life, hoping that she would provide Diana not only with company but inspiration as well. 'Diana always said that Sarah was intent on ingratiating herself all over the place, and certainly in the early stages she made a deliberate attempt to get Charles on her side,' said a friend of the royals. 'Charles did take to her and, on her first birthday as the Duchess of York, he gave her a very expensive piece of jewellery.' Moreover, the Prince began to compare Diana unfavourably with the outgoing Duchess and, more than once, suggested to Diana that she should be 'more like Fergie — fun to be with'. This drove an even deeper wedge between the two royal superstars. Diana was friendly to Fergie's face, but she harboured a deep mistrust.

Yet another folly was enacted when Prince Edward organised a royal version of the popular TV show
It's a Knockout
as a fundraising venture with the BBC. He persuaded his mother to agree to the Duke and Duchess of York, the Princess Royal and himself acting as team leaders in a medieval contest entitled The Grand Knockout Tournament. In her sitting room at Kensington Palace, Diana watched with a mixture of horror and fascination as Fergie, dressed as a Tudor wench, swaggered on to the battlefield. When the 'games' were over, Fergie and the others were widely criticised for rubbing the Royal Family's good name in the mud.

Diana quietly sought other remedies for her troubles. Through an intermediary, she booked an appointment to see Betty Palko, an Irish clairvoyant based in a semidetached mock Tudor house at Surbiton, Surrey, 'I was recommended to her - I never advertise,' explained Mrs Palko. 'My clients, you see, are higher as well as lower class people. They include people suffering bereavement and emotional and business problems. I counsel and advise, but I don't tell people what to do. I just give them what I see. I don't want to do this work but I've been chosen by a spirit to do it.'

As Diana wanted to keep the meeting secret, she met Mrs Palko in a discreet hotel. Betty read tarot cards for the Princess and held a seance during which she passed on the advice of Lin Foo, a long-dead Chinese philosopher. Diana was so impressed with the medium's insight into her life that she started to see her once a month. Initially, she wanted to get in touch with her paternal grandmother, Cynthia, Countess Spencer, who died of a brain tumour in 1972 when Diana was eleven.

Diana's belief in spiritualism and reincarnation was strengthened in the most uncanny way when she holidayed in Majorca in 1990. For holiday reading, she chose
Afterlife
, an investigation into evidence concerning life after death by Colin Wilson, the English writer on the occult and paranormal. Sunbathing in a red bikini on
Fortuna,
the yacht of King Juan Carlos, she soaked up Wilson's true case histories of people involved in psychic experiences.