Diana's Nightmare - The Family (23 page)

Like Diana, the Queen had known about Charles and Camilla for years, but Her Majesty had given her tacit approval to the liaison. 'She was reluctant to intervene so long as they kept it completely secret,' said the Palace insider. 'Charles knew he was flirting with danger, but he needed Camilla. In the Royal Family, having a mistress was far from unusual; in fact, it was normal.'

'There's the most peculiar attitude among the British upper classes towards royal infidelity,' said the titled Chelsea lady. 'An honourable position is definitely to be a royal mistress. It really is strange. If you go back in history, the Dukes of Grafton, Richmond and Gordon, and St Albans were all the offspring of mistresses. It hasn't actually changed. There were an awful lot of people greasing up to Camilla in Gloucestershire.'

Moreover the Queen's relationship with her heir left a lot to be desired. He found her distant, she found him difficult. 'Her Majesty, like her forebear Victoria, is capable of forming deep prejudices,' revealed royal author Douglas Keay. 'She can take a strong dislike to a person, sometimes for what might be considered a trifle by others. One courtier advised me, "Once she get her knife into someone it doesn't matter what that person does, her opinion won't alter." Elizabeth II has never forgotten the advice of her father George VI. He told her, "Whatever you show or say will be remembered by that person for the rest of his or her life. So you must never show displeasure unless you actually want it to be remembered." ' Charles was more familiar than anyone else with his mother's increasing ability to be displeased.

The Queen also knew from Andrew that his marriage was in difficulty. She was aware that her son's long absences from home dismayed the Duchess but she was not aware that his bullying had driven her into the arms of Steve Wyatt. However, when Fergie called on Wyatt at his apartment at 34 Cadogan Square, Chelsea, the meetings were logged in security reports filed to Scotland Yard. 'Do you think he is the sort of person you should be encouraging, dear?' the Queen asked Fergie after she had invited Wyatt to a Buckingham Palace ball.

Diana posed a much more serious problem. 'Fergie was getting away with blue murder but it didn't really matter,' said a tennis-playing friend of the Princess. As the next Queen, Diana had constitutional responsibilities that didn't concern the Duchess of York. The House of Windsor had invested a great deal in her future and there were disturbing signs that the investment was at risk. Her presence at Charles's side was his biggest single asset in 'selling' him as one deserving of the Crown after his mother's death.

By law, Charles had been forbidden from marrying a Catholic and, after the age of twenty-five, he could marry only with the consent of both Houses of Parliament and the parliaments of the Dominions. A Protestant virgin like Diana had been the only choice from a constitutional standpoint. Once she had married Charles and produced an heir, she had not only ancient royal duties to perform but, in the liberated, modern world, great power as well.

The Windsors' legal right to rule depends on the 1701 Act of Settlement, which complements the Bill of Rights of 1689 'for the further limitation of the Crown and better securing the rights and liberties of the subjects'. Its aims were twofold: to ensure a Protestant succession to the throne and a parliamentary system of government. The British monarchy had been Protestant, or more specifically Church of England, ever since James II, a Catholic, had been expelled in 1688 and the throne handed to William and Mary. In taking the Coronation Oath, the Sovereign became Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England.

The Royal Encyclopaedia, approved by Buckingham Palace, states: 'The Act of Settlement thus reinforced the fundamental principle established in 1688-89, that Parliament had
the right to determine both the succession to the throne, and the conditions under which the Crown could be held
.' In other words, the Windsors rule not by divine right but by the will of Parliament. It was incumbent on Charles and Diana, therefore, to safeguard the Windsor lineage; to put the future of the monarchy, as opposed to the wellbeing of individual members of the Royal Family, above all else.

It had been taken for granted at the time of her wedding that Diana was willing to make this sacrifice. Provided she was discreet, though, it was perfectly all right for her to meet male friends in private. The trouble was that Diana had given her bodyguard the slip in the past, once driving off on her own to the West End and precipitating 'a frightful kerfuffle' at the Palace. When these matters were raised with Charles, he could only shrug and repeat that he was powerless over his wife. Of all people, he was the last one she would take seriously. The Queen decided it was time to take action herself.

Before the Squidgy tapes had been securely locked away in the Midland Bank, Gilbey had blithely romanced Diana using the perfect cover that they had been 'just good friends during her days at Coleherne Court'. If people accepted they weren't lovers then, there was no reason to suspect them now. So that was all right. Yet after the slip at Lennox Gardens, they went to extraordinary lengths to avoid being photographed together. When Diana took Gilbey to San Lorenzo one night, a detective persuaded a paparazzo who was loitering with intent outside not to take their picture as they departed. As payback, he was promised an exclusive photo opportunity with the Princess on another occasion. The cameraman watched Diana and Gilbey leaving the restaurant after a meal — and didn't take their picture.

The meetings became more contentious when Diana began to borrow a flat in Walton Street close to San Lorenzo so that she could talk to Gilbey in complete privacy. 'When they went to the flat, Diana used to leave her bodyguard sitting outside in the car,' said a source close to Gilbey. 'She would switch off some kind of gadget she has with her in case of a terrorist attack. I believe it's an electronic device and she would disable it in some way. This meant the detective completely lost contact with her. He had to report this back to his bosses in the Royal Protection Branch. He needed to cover himself because he was unable to guarantee her safety under such circumstances. The report was passed to the Queen's people and she was informed. I understand that Diana was told off by the Queen in person.' Diana left that meeting with a profound sense of relief. The Queen obviously hadn't heard the ticking of the Squidgy timebomb.

Her Majesty, in fact, had been distracted by other signals which told her that the time had come to protect her birthright. The age of thrusting, intrusive European unity threatened all things of a uniquely British stamp. Among endangered species in the new order was the House of Windsor itself. If Maastricht ever achieved its ultimate goal, Europe would become one super-nation with a brand new constitution ruling the lives of
citizens
rather than
subjects.
Fanciful though this sounded, it could not be ignored.

Privately, the Queen mapped out a secret agenda with the express purpose of defending her sovereign role for future generations no matter what other institutions might be swept away in a new, federalised Europe. The pint and the mile might disappear but the Crown would remain intact. New words like 'the ERM', 'the Single Market', 'the ECU' and 'the Maastricht Treaty' had more significance for Elizabeth II than the curiously banal 'Squidgy'.

'The Prime Minister was informed of the Queen's desire for a moderate, entirely voluntary process of change to modernise the monarchy,' said a reliable Westminster source. 'She had on-going discussions with several key advisers, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and four Privy Counsellors. She knew she would have to bow to calls for her to pay income tax, but she wanted the initiative to come from above, not below. She was also very concerned that, although she had no intention of abdicating, Prince Charles should be seen as a worthy successor.'

Exactly a year after his Christmas call to Camilla, Charles warned against the dangers of trivialising royal life. 'What worries me is this trend to reduce everything to a kind of radio play or a soap opera,' he complained. 'Are we going to reduce everything to an idiot simplicity?' The soap opera in which he was a star performer started auditions soon afterwards in the unlikely venue of a greasy spoon cafe on the outskirts of London. Before the final credits started running, his fitness for kingship had been seriously challenged.

THE success of
Diana's Diary
was gratifying for Andrew Morton in more ways than hard cash. He had built up some high-quality contacts. More important, Diana liked it. His first meeting with Diana had been in Australia during her tour with Charles and William, or Wills as everyone called the infant prince, in 1983. It had provided him with a valuable perspective which he was able to draw upon later.

it was a really successful tour and when people were telling me all these things about suicides and bulimia and, you know, the bitterness and hostility between Charles and Diana, I kept thinking back to what seemed to me a very friendly tour,' he said. 'They seemed to be very loving and together, and I could not believe it. And yet apparently on that tour she would go back to her room and burst into tears. It was the first major tour she had ever done and she just couldn't cope with it at all. I along with everyone else was beguiled by the image - I didn't know what the reality was at that time.

'I also met her in New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Canada a couple of times - seven, eight, possibly ten times, I suppose. Even if it's light, bright and trite, you get an impression of somebody and I thought she was dry and quite sharp. She did not seem to take it too seriously and she was very realistic about things. The image at the time was of a demure, pouting, rather willowy Princess whereas she had a far more vigorous and down-to-earth sense of humour.'

Morton's nickname among some of his royal rivals was the Sorcerer's Apprentice. He was given the title after he replaced James Whitaker, deemed to be the Sorcerer, as royal correspondent on the
Daily Star.
It was a deft piece of sleight of hand in this job that caused Morton to be declared
persona non grata
at Buckingham Palace after he published the contents of the Queen's address to the Commonwealth one Christmas. He had picked up the main points of the speech from Michael Cole, whose job as accredited royal correspondent for the BBC made him privy to the annual pre-recorded secret. Cole inadvisedly let down his guard during a pre-Christmas lunch of royal writers which, he assumed, was off the record. He was promptly sacked when his words turned up in print. 'I admit it was a mistake,' Morton told Megan Tresidder. 'I should have cleared it with him first. I regret that mistake. It was a shabby episode from which no one emerged very well.'

Early in 1991, Morton started work on a new royal book on the apparently safe, though infinitely fascinating subject of
Diana's Health & Beauty Secrets.
'He'd done another book in the meantime called
Inside Buckingham Palace
and it hadn't sold as well,' said the Fleet Street insider. 'He told a friend, "The next one's on Diana - it's the only thing that sells." ' 'I could happily live off the ashes of the House of Windsor for the next twenty years,' Morton was reputed to have once said, a statement he could not recall making.

He did say, however, that writing about the monarchy was, to quote Conrad, like moving into 'the heart of darkness' of the establishment. 'I have always been a great fan of Joseph Conrad and that is my favourite book,' said Morton. 'The monarchy is the heart of darkness of the establishment because all roads ultimately lead to Buckingham Palace. The people who work there are under legal constraints, the people who are associated with members of the Royal Family are under social constraints and people who supply their goods and services are under commercial constraints. So it is a web of secrecy and if you defined Britain as a fairly secretive society, this is the ultimate in the secretive nature of it.'

However Morton knew as well as anyone covering royalty that the royals did, in fact, talk to reporters to put across particular points. When Prince Charles told James Whitaker that he had met Princess Marie Astrid of Luxembourg only twice in his life, he was knocking down a
Daily Express
story saying that the couple were about to announce their engagement. He did not, however, want to be quoted by name. 'Could you just say a close friend told you?' the Prince asked the reporter.

Diana was skilled in similar tactics. 'She is very adept at getting her view across, sometimes subtly and sometimes brutally,' said Harry Arnold. 'One simple but blatant example was when Prince Harry was born and Princess Michael of Kent was saying he had red hair — and, goodness, she was not far out really. But Diana was in Wales and during a walkabout she kept saying, "My baby is fine but, by the way, he has not got ginger hair," knowing that we were all hanging around. It was meant for us. So she does plant information in a fairly unsophisticated way. But I also think she is capable of doing it in a sophisticated way by giving friends certain facts to pass on.'

Penny Thornton, who had become Diana's astrologer on the recommendation of the Duchess of York, found to her cost that her former client possessed a very sharp cutting edge indeed. Ms Thornton was contracted to the
Today
newspaper to write a daily column. When she was quoted in connection with Diana's personal problems, the Princess decided to act. On the flight from Nepal back to London, she sought out the paper's royal correspondent, Charlie Rae, in the business class section of the aircraft. After some small talk, she said: 'By the way, will you tell whoever needs to know that I have only met Penny Thornton once and that was back in the mid-Eighties.'

When executives at the paper sought reassurance, Ms Thornton immediately sat down and wrote to Diana, asking her why would she have written 'so often - letters which I treasure - to someone you have hardly ever met?'

She never received a reply so she mentioned the dilemma to a contact in a county police force, who raised it with Ken Wharfe. The astrologer said that she received a verbal message from Diana, saying: 'I said no such thing. Don't worry about it. I have always valued you as a true friend and confidante.'