Diana's Nightmare - The Family (7 page)

On Coronation Day, tumultuous cheers greeted the Queen and the Queen Mother as they arrived for the Derby at Epsom racecourse in Surrey. It was the Queen Mother's first public appearance after an operation to remove a piece of fish from her throat. 'She looked frail but she hardly sat down all day,' observed one racegoer. 'Those Scottish legs of hers just keep on going.' The Queen waited anxiously with her trainer Lord Huntingdon for the result of the two forty-five in which her horse Enharmonic shared in a photo finish. She gave a whoop of joy when Enharmonic was declared the winner by a head. At the rewarding odds of twelve to one, Her Majesty was starting to enjoy herself again.

Prince Charles, in topper and morning suit, looked around distractedly. Everywhere there were newspapers headlining a speech his wife had made the previous day at a Turning Point conference on women and mental health.
WOMEN WHO SUFFER ALONE,
said the
Daily Mail,
reporting that, 'The Princess of Wales drew on the darkest days of her own life to bring hope to millions of women yesterday. In what seemed like a reference to the end of her own marriage, she said women should not have to sacrifice everything for their loved ones and live in the shadow of others "at the cost of their health, their inner strength and their own self-worth". She spoke of the "haze of loneliness and desperation" that drove women to tranquillizers, sleeping pills and anti-depressants and used the phrase "anxious zombies" - a description she has privately applied, half-jokingly, to herself,' said the
Mail.
'Health and happiness taken at the cost of others' pain and suffering cannot be acceptable,' said Diana, possibly referring to Prince Charles. 'Women have a right to their own peace of mind. Each person is born with very individual qualities and potential. We as a society owe it to women to create a truly supportive environment in which they too can grow and move forward.'

This was Diana's most powerful speech yet and, through no fault of her own, its coverage completely upstaged the Queen on the anniversary of her coronation. Only the
Daily Mirror
devoted its front page to the monarchy. It presented an unflattering caricature of Elizabeth by Charles Griffin, which showed her as an aged, bespectacled figure hunched beneath an enormous crown. The headline in the previously loyal newspaper read unapologetically:
HOW LONG TO REIGN OVER US?

'Forty years ago today Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was crowned Queen of the United Kingdom, head of the Commonwealth and Defender of the Faith,' the paper editorialised. 'The
Daily Mirror
congratulates Her Majesty on this latest milestone in her reign. But it is not a happy anniversary. It is no coincidence that she has insisted there shall be no official celebrations. There will be gun salutes at Hyde Park and the Tower of London. And that is all. The Queen will visit the Derby, as usual, and will spend the evening alone at Windsor Castle. Not even her family will be with her. Some anniversary.'

Enharmonic had brought home the royal racing colours of purple, scarlet, black and gold, but it seemed that Her Majesty just couldn't win. When she guarded her money, she was miserly but if she had thrown a lavish party for herself, she would have been accused of extravagance. It was no fun being a monarch anymore.

NOR was it much fun being the Prince of Wales. One of the cushions at Kensington Palace when Charles had been in residence was embroidered with the legend: it's tough being a prince'. It was even tougher being 'a trainee king', as the Goon Show comedian Spike Milligan called his friend. After Camillagate, Charles found out just how tough it could be. He had to wake up every morning to the unpalatable fact that, already a two-time loser, he faced the prospect of losing the Crown as well. He had lost his wife and, for the forseeable future, his mistress. He simply couldn't afford to lose his birthright.

Spurred on by his Palace advisers, he set out to repair some of the damage. This meant fighting his wife in the highly volatile arena of popular acclaim where Diana, not only taller than him in stature but more visible in every other way, was a winner. Charles furrowed his brow, tugged his earlobe and, sucking air between clenched teeth, sallied forth. His first sortie was an embarrassing flop.

The Prince visited Warrington to comfort victims of an IRA bomb blast which had killed one small boy, mortally wounded a twelve-year-old and injured many other people. He smiled throughout a tour of the hospital where victims were recovering from their injuries. 'Your courage has made my day,' he told a woman who had lost a leg. This made it seem as though he was more concerned about himself than the wounded bomb victims. It was an off-key performance and one he deeply regretted.

When a memorial service was held for the two murdered boys, Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry, the Palace vetoed a request from Diana that she should be allowed to attend. Prince Philip, as the senior royal, would represent Her Majesty, who only attended memorial services for close friends, said a spokesman, confirming that protocol was still the deciding factor. Stung by the rebuff, Diana telephoned the families of the two victims to express her condolences. 'She said she was terribly sorry about what had happened to the family,' said Tim's father Colin Parry. 'She was just very, very sympathetic. She was talking to us as another mother rather than as the Princess of Wales.' it is a great comfort that someone in her position should take the time to think of us,' said Maria Ball.

Charles, wearing the full-dress uniform of a Royal Navy captain although he ceased being a serving officer in 1976, spent the day in Spain. He attended the funeral of King Juan Carlos's father, Don Juan, Count of Barcelona, his first cousin twice removed. This took place in a gloomy granite monastery at San Lorenzo (no relation). Diana did not lunch at her favourite restaurant that day. She stayed alone at Kensington Palace while her sons remained at Highgrove. The result was more critical headlines.

Embittered and middle-aged, Charles could not escape the conclusion that he wanted for nothing, yet lacked something. If he had suffered a mid-life crisis after breaking his arm at polo three years earlier, the collapse of his marriage had induced an outbreak of anger and resentment. Above all, he suffered from wounded pride, a deadly emotion in one surrounded mainly by sycophants.

Filled with self-pity, Charles apparently demanded that Diana apologise to him over her suspected collaboration with Andrew Morton. She refused and, considering the indiscretions of Camillagate, she was quite within her rights. Perhaps Charles should have remembered something he noted early in his marriage: it's amazing what ladies do when your back is turned.'

He had been used to every woman in his life, except the most important, his mother, doing exactly what he wanted. Nannies, governesses and a variety of surrogate mothers, including one of his grandmothers, had led him to believe that women would always be at his beck and call. But Diana, chosen for her youth and compliance, had rebelled against the controls he had sought to impose.

'When Charles gave in to the pressure to marry Diana, Prince Philip probably said to him, "Conduct the marriage carefully and properly and see Camilla on the side,"' said Harry Arnold, the reporter who brought Camillagate to the world, it follows his line. He married the Queen, fathered some heirs and spares and then flitted around the world enjoying the company of other women. I tend to think that this might have been an arrangement with father and son, not father, mother and son. The Queen was probably distraught when she heard about Camilla and probably angry that he got caught. But the Queen has so many regrets at the moment that that may not be on the agenda. You cannot dismiss her role in all this. She failed to recognise the change in the twentieth century.'

Ostensibly searching for a bride, the Prince had turned his own back on quite a few women in his time. 'Girlfriends with whom Charles had affairs had to remember to call him Sir even when passing his underpants,' claimed royal author Sally Moore. Better known ones were invited to call him Arthur, his favourite given name. They might be sharing a bed with Arthur the alter ego, but the heir to the throne remained unsullied. 'He was spoon-fed an Arthurian legend in the nursery that Arthur would return when things were going wrong for Britain,' said the royal historian. 'He'd always identified with that and it explains a lot, but he was actually named after Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who was Queen Victoria's favourite son.'

Elizabeth's first-born had been christened Charles Philip Arthur George in the Music Room at Buckingham Palace on 15 December, 1948. After a family lunch, the royals leafed through Victoria's photo albums to decide who the month-old Prince most resembled. Queen Mary was adamant: he looked just like Prince Albert, she declared. Much as he grew to admire Victoria's husband, Charles became more intrigued by his Welsh connections. When he was nine, his mother announced she intended to create him Prince of Wales. He studied Welsh history for years and discovered that he had more Welsh ancestors than many previous holders of the title. One was Cunedda, a fifth-century King of Gwynedd, kinsman of the warrior Owain Ddantgwyn - the legendary King Arthur. Charles was related to his boyhood hero.

As Charles/Arthur grew accustomed to getting his own way, his amorous flings confirmed the view that he didn't really understand the opposite sex very well. This failing came across in his infamous phone call to Camilla. Time and again, she had to reassure him that he was truly loved and madly desired. For a man who had just turned forty-one when the conversation took place, he displayed a disconcerting lack of confidence in his masculinity. Camilla had to play the double role of lover and nanny. His 'dirty talk' clearly gratified his lust while her equally suggestive responses stroked his ego.

When Charles said, 'My luck to be chucked down a lavatory and go on forever swirling around the top, never going down,' psychiatrists had a field day. 'Prince Charles has one particularly significant hobby: collecting lavatory seats,' opined Dennis Friedman in his book
INHERITANCE: A Psychological History of the Royal Family.
'To use a lavatory seat it is necessary to turn one's back to it. The lavatory seat becomes a metaphor for his wish to retaliate against all those who, at one time or another, have turned their backs on him - his parents, and now, finally his wife.' This was an interesting theory but what was manifestly true was that his self-worth, one of Diana's buzz words, appeared to be dangerously low. Now forty-four, Charles had come to realise that titles and uniforms were merely disguises which hid his true identity. While people respected his rank in society, he began to doubt that they had much respect for him.

'Once you get out of bed, or before you get into bed, you have to talk about something,' summed up Harry Arnold. 'Charles is interested in culture and nature, he speaks fluent French and he's a man of cultivated tastes who could have taken up many professions. Yet he was married to a woman who rings up Capital Radio and requests songs. I think Camilla gave him what he wanted. Here is a woman saying, "I can never marry you and, in fact, we can never acknowledge our relationship. But I still think you are Mr Wonderful." That is what she did for him.' But Camilla is no longer available and he is wracked with guilt about the humiliation she silently endures. For a time, Charles lapsed into melancholia.

His relations with men are equally fraught. As a noticeably shy boy, he had been terrified of bullies whenever he ventured outside the protective walls of Buckingham Palace. At prep school, he had been called 'Fatty' and 'Big Ears' and ragged about his family. But he had learned to fight back at Gordonstoun and carried a more assertive attitude into the Royal Navy.

His mentor on the manhood issue had been Tricky Dickie Mountbatten, so named because of his duplicity. At Cambridge, Mountbatten had befriended Prince Albert but quickly transferred his affection to his brother Edward, the Prince of Wales. He was a much more glamorous companion than the shy, stammering Bertie. When Edward abdicated, Mountbatten had swung back unashamedly to Bertie, the new King George VI. He had influenced Prince Philip during his formative years and, when the young Charles became a better prospect, traded the father for the son. Dickie's scandalous 'open marriage' to Edwina Ashley, granddaughter of Edward VII's financier friend Sir Ernest Cassel, had wrecked any confidence he had in himself as a husband. He turned into a ladies' man of a different kind and gravitated towards men with whom he felt comfortable. Many of them were either bisexual or homosexual, like Stephen Barry, the man chosen as Charles's valet.

Mountbatten knew it was vital for Charles to marry well but before his marriage he encouraged him to experiment sexually with girls from the upper classes. Stephen Barry confirmed privately that his master led an active sex life, but said publicly: in all those twelve years that I worked for him, if he was meant to be in his bed in the morning when I went in to wake him up, he was in bed - alone.'

Charles's key adviser is Commander Richard Aylard, who replaced Sir Christopher Airey, becoming his fifth Private Secretary since 1978. Airey's departure was announced after an embarrassing mix-up showed the lack of co-operation between Charles and his wife. The Prince made a speech on education on the same day that Diana spoke about the AIDS issue, one cancelling out the other in terms of publicity. Charles was furious and Sir Christopher tendered his resignation after barely a year in the post. He declined to elaborate on the real reasons.

One departing aide told friends: 'The man (Charles) is totally disorganised. I used to sit in the corridor for three hours just waiting for him.' 'Charles is very difficult to advise because he takes advice from every other crank who pins him up against the wall,' said another disgruntled insider. 'However, he never sacks anyone. He simply freezes them out.' The truth was that it had taken Charles some time to assemble a team of like-minded advisers around him at St James's Palace. He encouraged them to stop looking over their shoulder at Head Office, as Buckingham Palace is known.