Diana--A Closely Guarded Secret (6 page)

In those heady days the press did not really know the extent of the Princess’s friendship with Hewitt; between us, we did a pretty good job of keeping it quiet. As a result, Diana gradually came to realise that it was easier to work with me than against me. Without any formal discussion of the subject she became more relaxed about the extent of my knowledge of her relationship. In short, she came to trust me.

The dishes were clattering away in the kitchen as the garlicky aroma of the Tuscan feast I was preparing oozed through the snug cottage. That evening I was chef as well as protection officer, in what the press would undoubtedly have called the ‘love nest’ of the Princess of Wales and her riding instructor – Sheiling Cottage, the Devon home of Shirley Hewitt, James’s mother. The Princess and her lover sat together on the sofa, sipping home-made orange vodka purloined from Prince Charles’s cellar at Highgrove. This was the safest of their safe houses. The evening was a riot of singing and risqué joke-telling, fuelled by the meal I had prepared. Even the Princess devoured every morsel. She was blissfully happy, and this contentment seemed to eradicate, if only temporarily, the bulimia that had plagued her throughout her adult life, especially since her marriage.

At around midnight I dealt the final hand in my poker game with James as the Princess went into the kitchen, rolled up her sleeves, and set to work on the mountain of washing up I had created. When she finished, she emerged from the kitchen and declared that it was time to retire. Within seconds she and
James had disappeared up the creaky staircase to the master bedroom, leaving me to share a nightcap with Shirley. My berth was far less comfortable than the beds occupied by the rest of the house party, usually a camp bed or the couch. As I curled up with a blanket to cover me I could not help thinking how surreal my existence had become.

Diana was always the last to rise in the morning. By 8.30 Shirley would be in the kitchen preparing breakfast, helped by James, who would tactfully leave the Princess asleep in his bed. Eventually, Diana would emerge, her hair ruffled, and usually wearing a baggy jumper and tight fitting jeans. A couple of mouthfuls of toast and a sip of piping hot tea would suffice for her breakfast, but she was always keen to be alone with James, and would hastily arrange for him to take her riding or for a walk. Their favourite haunts were the pebbled beach at Budleigh Salterton and an area of moorland known as Woodbury Common, where there was no real danger of her being recognised.

I am sure that James would have been quite happy to have stayed at home, but the Princess would insist on their going out. It was part of her way of feeling ‘normal’. She knew that when she was in London she could not just go for a stroll whenever the mood took her, but this was rural Devon, and just doing ordinary things like going for a walk with her lover without me following behind made her feel good about herself. Of course, when they went off together either I, Allan Peters or Peter Brown, the other protection officers, would be in close contact. Even so, I could sympathise with Diana’s craving for privacy, and I did my best to accommodate her without
compromising her security. I insisted, however, that if we were not following them (rather bizarrely, like the chaperones to beautiful Italian maidens of old) they would keep in touch by taking with them a police radio tuned in to my frequency. This was pretty much the limit of our intrusion. For the rest of the time, Diana would disguise herself by wearing a headscarf, and since nobody expected to see her strolling along a windswept beach or across a piece of moorland she was never recognised.

As the affair progressed, the Princess and Hewitt inevitably became more brazen about their relationship. After a time I warned Diana that if she wanted to avoid detection they would both have to be careful. Unable to conceal my concern for her, I assured her that I would do my best to cover her tracks, but added that she had to be consistent. If she was forced to lie, she should make the lie as close to the truth as she could. She took my advice, using a form of code when telephoning ahead to James’s mother to talk to him, or to let her know that she was coming, and sometimes even adopting a spurious cockney accent. On the whole, however, the more complex a deception plan, the less its chances of succeeding. The first time Diana used her false name it completely baffled Shirley Hewitt, who picked up the telephone to be greeted by a whispering, rather odd voice on the end of the line, obviously a woman’s, asking to speak to James. When Shirley asked who it was, the woman said, ‘Julia.’ The name stuck. From that moment Diana became ‘Julia’, while among other codenames Highgrove became ‘Low Wood’.

In terms of secrecy and security, the subterfuge was a total success. Although the media were aware of the rumours, no
photographic or other concrete evidence of the affair ever materialised (until Hewitt himself decided to tell all), thanks largely to a concerted effort to be careful by all concerned. Diana, however, was always terrified about being found out, especially by the media, even warning me that if it came to it I would have to cover up for her. Once again, I gave her my word that I would do all I could. I could not help reflecting, however, that she was displaying a rather curious double standard, inveighing against her husband in private for conducting an adulterous affair, while desperately concealing the fact that she was herself guilty of the same behaviour. Perhaps this was simply because she did not want to award the moral high ground to Charles.

Moreover, her impetuosity and passion could cause her to lose her common sense and walk a dangerous path.

It may never have been possible for the Princess of Wales and James Hewitt to enjoy an equal relationship, but both her chances of personal happiness and of maintaining the discretion of their liaison were compromised, in my view, by Diana’s decision to fund at least in part, her lover’s lifestyle. I was appalled when she told me that Hewitt, who always seemed short of money – not altogether surprising in a ‘smart’ regiment where officers are still expected to maintain a high standard of living – told her that he needed to buy a new car and that his army pay would not stretch to the TVR he wanted.

Diana had a hugely generous heart and decided to give him the cash. I bluntly told her that giving her lover the money would be a terrible mistake. I did not risk pointing out that it would perhaps border on conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman first to hint that he needed, and then to accept,
such a sum from the Princess. However, I felt I had to remind her that the transaction could have dreadful consequences. If she was found out, the press would go into a feeding frenzy, and the Palace would have all the ammunition it needed in its support of Prince Charles. Some might even have misconstrued it as a payment to buy her lover’s silence. With a wilfulness when thwarted that I came to know well, Diana’s response was to tell me that I was being paranoid. According to her, without a care in the world she withdrew $24,000 (£16,000) in cash, which was duly delivered by a bank official, and she said she put it in a briefcase to hand over to James Hewitt.

The affair brought other problems, not all of them of Diana’s making. The constant malicious rumours, which still persist even now, long after her death, about the paternity of Prince Harry used to anger Diana greatly. After her separation from Prince Charles she freely, and even publicly, admitted to having had an affair with Hewitt; but those apparent ‘friends’ of the Prince of Wales who continue to whisper that Harry may be Hewitt’s son should be ashamed of themselves, both for their allegations against a woman and her son, who cannot defend themselves, and for their mathematics. Only once did I ever discuss it with her, and Diana was in tears about it. On the whole she did not care what such people said about her, but if anybody turned on her sons it wounded her deeply. The nonsense should be scotched here and now. For one thing, the dates do not add up. Harry was born on 15 September 1984 – that is a matter of record. Diana did not meet James until the summer of 1986. And the red hair that gossips so love to cite as ‘proof’ is, of course, a Spencer trait, as anyone who has ever
seen a photograph of, say, Diana’s sister Jane as a young woman knows perfectly well.

At some point in our conversation, Diana admitted that, ‘I don’t know how my husband and I did have Harry because by then he had already gone back to his lady, but one thing that is absolutely certain is that we did.’

And I believe her absolutely.

For a time, at least, the affair not only exhilarated Diana, but lifted the spirits of everyone close to her. Her friends and supporters and most loyal assistants saw again something of the old Princess, still dutiful, but now with an air of purpose and gaiety about her. At last Diana was beginning to face her demons.

The unspoken ‘understanding’ between Charles and Diana meant that during the week the Prince rarely came to Kensington Palace, and they effectively used Highgrove at weekends on a rota basis, neither being there when the other was. James became a frequent visitor to both residences, and of course would stay the night, although all of us took care that his arrivals and departures were screened from prying eyes and, even more important, prying cameras. He would even join in the play fights I would have with William and Harry around the garden pool at Highgrove. Such was her state of domestic happiness that Diana simply roared with laughter when we once threw her into the pool fully clothed, making an almighty splash. There were, of course, times when her work commitments meant that she and James could not see each other. Her workload was heavy. She would have engagements at least three days a week, sometimes four. This kept me and
her back-up office team busy, because for every visit there had to be a security reconnaissance, after which I had to write a report and briefing notes for the Princess. If I have given the impression that most of my work consisted of shepherding Diana to and from secret assignations, then I must add that it is a false one; the bread-and-butter of my job was the assessing of security and the protection of the Princess twenty-four hours a day.

In its elegant surroundings, the Royal Ballet School exudes an air of history and excellence. Children who join the prestigious $30,000-a-year (£20,000) boarding school dream of becoming stars on the international stage, just as Diana had as a girl. She had grown too tall to achieve her dream, but now that she was a princess she wanted to see exactly what went on there. As a result, she dispatched me and her then equerry, Patrick Jephson, to carry out a reconnaissance ahead of the visit, planned for two weeks later. The recce (as we called it) – the chance to survey a venue and assess the security implications ahead of a royal visit – was an essential part of the job. The fact that you were not accompanied by your royal principal made it much simpler, too.

As we were admitted to the school’s inner hall we were greeted by a tiny, yet extremely elegant, woman who said, rather theatrically, ‘Gentlemen, I have been expecting you. Do come in.’

This was the legendary prima ballerina Dame Merle Park, director of the school at White Lodge in the beautiful surroundings of Richmond Park, West London, but in her day
one of the Royal Ballet’s brightest stars. Her Autumn Fairy in Frederick Ashton’s
Cinderella
, which she danced until the mid-1970s, has, according to the experts, never been surpassed. Other dancers envied her natural facility and innate musical sense, although she apparently saw nothing remarkable about her talents: ‘I know it sounds trite, but I would have been just as happy dancing through a field of poppies,’ she once famously remarked. Looking at this indomitable woman, whose slight frame belied an equally famous inner steeliness, I had no difficulty in believing that she had said that.

‘I am so delighted that Her Royal Highness is paying us the honour of visiting the school. Everyone here is so thrilled – absolutely thrilled,’ she enthused. Then, with the niceties out of the way, we got on with the job in hand, walking the route the Princess would take, to ensure that she would encounter no surprises, or be placed in any sort of risky situation.

‘I propose to introduce the Princess first to Dame Ninette de Valois, our founder and Governor,’ she began. This was another of the great names in ballet: Ninette de Valois made her stage debut in 1914, and toured with Diaghilev in the 1920s, becoming one of the pioneers of British ballet, and a choreographer and teacher of enormous distinction. At once, Patrick started taking meticulous notes so that he could draft a full factsheet to brief the Princess.

‘Then we will proceed through the Salon, where our Director of Music, Mr Blackford, will be holding a practical music class with the First Form,’ she said, flinging the door open to make a dramatic entrance.

‘Then, gentlemen, we will go through the Library, where the
Princess will see children working with Mr John. Next into the Pavlova Studio and then on to Forms Four and Five, where the fifth-year students being taught by Monsieur Anatole Grigoriev are engaged in some French oral.’

At this point, I’m ashamed to say, Patrick and I were overtaken by an attack of the giggles. Dame Merle, realising that her words might have been misconstrued by her two inane male guests, icily remarked,

‘I see, gentlemen. Perhaps I ought to rephrase that?’

Two weeks later when we returned with the Princess, Dame Merle made no such slip of the tongue, although, knowing the Princess’s sense of humour, I am sure that she too would have been unable to resist laughing. None the less, the visit was a triumphant success, and I could glimpse in Diana’s excitement and enthusiasm something of the girl who had once longed to dance.

For some reason, at about this time Diana seemed to have to perform an unusual number of engagements out of town in Devon and Cornwall (the Prince of Wales is, of course, also Duke of Cornwall, with considerable land holding in the West Country). She was, however, far too professional to mix royal business with personal pleasure, despite the fact that James Hewitt’s country home, in the shape of his mother’s cottage, was also in the West Country. There was, though, one pleasure in which she freely indulged. Perhaps oddly for a woman who, it would later be claimed, was a martyr to bulimia she usually had a healthy appetite. As a consequence, whenever we went to official engagements in the West Country the Princess was
always keen to get hold of some clotted cream and Cornish pasties – proper ones, not the pale imitations sold in London. Pasties were among her favourite snacks, and she also liked to bring some back for her sons. So invariably my first job on arrival for our visit was to instruct my counterpart from the local Special Branch, Detective Inspector Peter Rudd, who justifiably believed that he was there to counter a possible terrorist threat or worse, with his first mission of the day – to ensure that the Princess had a box of Cornish pasties and some clotted cream to take back with her.