Diana's Nightmare - The Family (14 page)

'Diana was brilliant because she's got an obsessional personality which is just right for the job,' said the titled Chelsea lady, it's a pity she had to marry anybody, but that was the thing that got her into the limelight.'

At first, Charles seemed bemused. 'Over here, Darling,' he called out to guide her to yet another cluster of well- wishers. When this wasn't enough, he said awkwardly: ‘I haven't get enough wives; I've only got one.' Very quickly Charles found that he had been marginalised and it hurt his vanity. 'We want Di!' the expectant crowds chanted wherever they went. He had never expected to have to compete with his wife for the affection of his future subjects. It took him some time to work up a joke good enough to save face. When people groaned if he left the royal car on their side to start a walkabout, he quipped: it's not fair, is it? You'd better ask for your money back.' Initially, he sent her love gifts as tokens of his appreciation, but he was hurt and the gulf between them widened.

Diana kept reassuring herself that things would be different once they moved into 'the KP condo'. Her bulimia was now a serious problem. At official dinners, she chased food around her plate with her knife and fork, i cut it up, move it around, and bring my fork to my lips without taking a mouthful,' she told a friend. This is a strategy commonly used by people with eating disorders. 'They do it so that others cannot tell precisely how little or how much they are eating,' said a counsellor in food addiction.

Secretly, Diana binged on Frosties, sliced apple and caster sugar covered in cream. Chocolate cakes and tubs of ice-cream were other favourites. Her drugs of choice, in the addict's vernacular, were sugar and white flour, which gave her an artificial 'high', if they are abused, they are as lethal and mood-altering as other drugs,' said the counsellor. 'Compulsive vomiting to avoid obesity is also very dangerous - it can cause internal haemorrhaging.'

Just five weeks before her baby was due, Apartments 8, 8c and 9 had been finally converted to a single home, but by this time the damage had been done. 'Diana should have had her own place from the beginning,' said a friend, if the Queen hadn't pushed for an early wedding, everything could have been made ready. A home of your own wasn't much to ask in a family like that. As it was, Diana was worn out by the royal routine and very unsettled in herself.'

'Do I really look that thin?' she asked another friend after seeing one set of pictures in the papers. 'I'm not starving myself — I eat what I want.' The adulation, however, was feeding only her ego; the illness was gnawing away at her self-worth. She was deeply aware of what she later called 'the quest for perfection' which left her 'gasping for breath at every turn'. She admitted to friends that some stories in the Press upset her so much that she wanted to lock herself away for days, 'I get an awful feeling deep down inside,' she said miserably. Later, she described this 'disease' as 'feelings of guilt, self-revulsion and low personal esteem'. Even something as relatively harmless as criticism of her clothes could have a depressing effect on her morale. One barb among a thousand bouquets caused pain.

Isolation, however, wasn't an option. She had to show up and show willing. 'There were times when she was close to tears,' said the friend. 'She was unhappy with the constant, relentless demand of public duties.' She 'ate' these uncomfortable feelings of self-doubt and uncertainty by heavy bingeing, then purged herself by induced vomiting. Bulimia had become her 'shameful friend' once again.

SO it was that the Prince took the unhappy mother of the unborn heir he wanted to call Arthur to his Kensington Camelot. Through the white Georgian front door, they entered the hall and walked across the green and grey carpet patterned with his three-feathered crest. The beautifully restored, hand-carved staircase led to a huge drawing room, its walls a shade of soothing yellow, and to a dining room, complete with a circular mahogany table big enough to seat sixteen. This was where Charles planned to run the social side of Wales Inc. in the egalitarian manner of King Arthur himself. The highest and the lowest would sit side by side at the round table and discuss the projects closest to his heart.

'My trouble is that I feel very strongly about things,' he said, 'I can't help it. I don't know where it comes from.' His determination to change society certainly did not stem from the previous holder of his title. When Edward VIII said 'something must be done' about poverty among the Welsh miners, he had already decided to abdicate and promptly did so, abandoning the miners and everyone else.

Edward had called Kensington Palace 'the Aunt Heap' because so many of his elderly relatives lived inside its seventeenth-century brick walls. The modern-day residents were Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester and Princess Margaret. As a newcomer, Diana soon found out that the neighbours could be just as difficult as those in any other tight-knit community. She discovered that she was not in Camelot at all but a daily soap opera which might be called Coronet Street or, better still, Kensington Pallas. Each episode centred around some facet of life among the royals.

When a wrought-iron gateway at the end of Princess Michael's garden was bricked up for security reasons caused by the Waleses' arrival, she was duly annoyed. After that, relations between the two households were more than a little strained. Charles had cause to tell his glamorous neighbour not to remonstrate with his staff, one of whom had sworn within her hearing. The Princess had told the servant to mind his language. Charles told her to mind her own business.

On top of the palace, Diana and Charles had a roof garden big enough to hold a sizable party. Charles became the chef, cooking salmon steaks, corn on the cob and potatoes baked in foil on a barbeque. The smells wafting into Princess Michael's home were so tempting that she built a roof garden for herself. Unfortunately, it only had room for two people and it overlooked the Waleses' bedroom.

'Diana and Princess Michael don't get on, one gathers,' said the titled Chelsea lady. 'Princess Michael was born an Austrian baroness and, although she was raised in Sydney, she's just too forthright for the British - much too pushy, bossy and obvious. But if you look at her, she's a stunning woman and Prince Michael is obviously crackers about her.'

Eventually, a truce of sorts was declared, at least between Charles and the former Marie-Christine von Reibnitz. They found that they shared a mutual love of opera, it has become a custom for them to go together to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden,' revealed Father Charles Roux, a spiritual confidant of Princess Michael. 'As Princess Diana is not so interested in opera, she is happy to stay at home. They are keen for their evenings out to stay secret so they never use the Royal Box. Instead, they wait until the lights go down and quietly enter another box nearby. Just before the lights go up, they leave as discreetly as they arrived.'

If things were rocky for the Waleses, they were even more turbulent at times for Princess Michael and the Queen's bearded cousin. She had been arranging discreet meetings with a divorced property tycoon, J. Ward Hunt of Dallas, Texas. Word of the assignations was passed to the
News of the World
by a friend who was dismayed at her husband's distress. When the liaison became headline news, Princess Michael returned to the family fold, crestfallen and repentant.

A mutual dislike of Princess Michael gave Diana and Princess Margaret a stimulating talking point. Marie-Christine had never been invited to dine with Princess Margaret, who lived in Apartment 1A at the end of a long passage which ran to the opposite side of the palace. A full-scale feud erupted after Lord Linley, Margaret's furniture-making son, insulted his unpopular relative. Asked what he would give his worst enemy for Christmas, Linley replied: 'Dinner with Princess Michael of Kent.' Prince Michael confronted Linley and demanded that he 'explain himself. Princess Michael told him: 'Don't ever speak to me again, you disgusting boy.' She turned the tables neatly by saying that she would give her worst enemy some of Linley's handmade furniture.

The truth was that Margaret had refused point-blank to accept Princess Michael, a divorcee, into the Family. The explosive issue of divorce had been used to prevent Margaret from marrying Peter Townsend, although he had been the innocent party in his marital breakdown. Margaret, a devout Anglican, had bowed to the Church's wishes. She resented the fact that Marie-Christine, after divorcing her first husband, stockbroker Tom Troubridge, by mutual consent, had had the marriage annulled. In the eyes of the Catholic Church, she was then free to marry Prince Michael. 'Margaret has not had a happy life herself and has become rather bitter,' said Father Roux. 'She feels she is losing some of her ground to Princess Michael and sees her as a rival, a challenge. As well as the age difference, Margaret does not like Catholics.'

After her marriage broke up, Margaret entertained a wide circle of friends from the Arts, the theatre and the New World. One of her American guests was Lynn Wyatt, socialite wife of the Texas oil tycoon, Oscar Wyatt Jnr. She was the mother of Steve Wyatt, who was mixing with a fast crowd in New York in the company of his Houston buddy, Johnny Bryan. Lynn hoped he would move to London, where he might acquire a little gentility. 'Lynn was very anxious to see Steve get married and settle down,' said a friend in her home town of Houston. 'Princess Margaret knew Steve from her visits to Allington (the Wyatt home) and they talked about finding the right girl for him.'

The glamorous Lynn, who held themed birthdays parties every year at La Mauresque, the Wyatt villa at Cap Ferrat, collected royalty wherever she went. She moved with ease from the Palm Beach polo pitch via the Ascot turf to the green baize of Monte Carlo. A particular friend had been Diana's saviour, Princess Grace. Through polo, and later her royal connections, Lynn got to know Sarah Ferguson. One day she would invite the next Duchess of York to Houston for a meeting with her son that would change their lives.

For the time being, however, Fergie was enjoying life to the full. She called at KP to visit Diana in between trips to Verbier, the Swiss resort known to regulars as Chelsea-on-Skis. Excitedly, she told Diana she had moved in with the Grand Prix millionaire Paddy McNally at his chalet, Les Gais Lutins, the Gay Gnomes. This was the hub of the Verbier social scene, her first taste of Jet-set life, and she dazzled Diana with gossip about the Verbier
bon vivants
. Her plan was to marry McNally, a widower with two young sons, and share his life in Formula One motor racing.

Of the senior royals, Diana felt most comfortable with Princess Margaret, whom she referred to as Auntie Margo. She also got along well with her daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones. Margo was a heavy drinker and an even heavier smoker, neither of which was condoned inside the wholesome Wales household. When Margo came to dinner, she made her own rules. She knew about Diana's behaviour at Balmoral during the honeymoon and, Scotch and Malvern water in hand, offered some worldly wise advice. To her credit, Margaret tried to help, but she could see problems ahead.

Only the Gloucesters seemed to lead a life approaching domestic bliss. Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, had married Birgitte Eva van Deurs and raised three children with a minimum of fuss. 'She was a secretary at the Danish Embassy and they met when she was attending the Bell School in Cambridge,' said the titled Chelsea lady. 'He was at Magdalene doing architecture and he fell hook, line and sinker for her. They got married in a very quiet wedding at Barnwell Manor, the family house at Peterborough. The Queen relies on Birgitte to do some of her spadework, and she has done it so successfully that she's been given the Royal Victorian Order. She takes precedence over Princess Alexandra, the Duchess of Kent and Princess Michael, but you wouldn't realise it. She keeps a very low profile and just gets on with her work.'

Birgitte was the secret royal. At times, Diana envied her role outside the limelight. She also envied Fergie's freedom in the Swiss Alps.

BEHIND the white Georgian door of numbers 8 & 9, the arguments took on a more serious tone. Diana's addictive illness played havoc with her emotions. No matter how Charles responded, Diana always returned to the central theme: 'Prove that you love me.' Nothing he did was ever enough. Baffled and hurt, he retreated into his soundproofed study to play opera at full volume while Diana brooded in front of the TV in her private sitting room. But he didn't always back down. When Diana issued instructions to staff one morning without telling him, he was livid, and he let her know in no uncertain terms. Shouting, he marched into her pastel green dressing room while she was having her hair done. Sitting at her white, kidney-shaped dressing table in front of a gilt mirror, Diana remained unruffled as Charles complained vigorously.

‘It was rather awkward for me, to say the least,' said the hairdresser, Kevin Shanley, who was caught in the middle of the furore. 'So I turned my hairdryer on to full blast to try to drown them out. When Charles had made his point, he stormed out of the room. Diana wasn't at all bothered - in fact she joked, "A good job it wasn't something serious." ' In fact, Diana had enjoyed the outburst in front of a witness because it proved that Charles wasn't the mild-mannered paragon of popular myth. Most of these semi-public tiffs were described by an insider as 'heated words, not blazing rows'. They were still calling each other Darling, if only for the sake of appearances. Soon after Prince William's birth in the Lindo Wing at St Mary's, Paddington on 21 June 1982, Charles left his home to play polo, saying fondly: 'I'll try to score for you and Wills, Darling.' Once again, a witness was present so it was possible that Charles was only playing to the gallery.

To visitors, Diana seemed to have it made according to every maxim in the Sloane Ranger manual. After William's birth, she had regained her figure by strenuous exercise with the Jane Fonda workout and her diet seemed healthy. Nearly every day, she drove herself to Buckingham Palace to swim in her mother-in-law's pool. She was spotted dancing along the corridors, a Sony Walkman blaring music into each ear. At home, she was very informal, cherishing her moments of freedom off the royal rota. She didn't mind if staff saw her walking around in a calf-length dressing gown of pink or white towelling, matched by open-toed slippers. In summer, she wore a brightly-coloured silky kimono.