Diana's Nightmare - The Family (35 page)

Their affinity was so strong that, having shared the dangers of war, they eagerly fell upon the spoils. Blond-haired Philip, his figure tall and slim, his eyes a piercing shade of blue, was an instant hit at parties in Sydney and Parker's home town, Melbourne. 'There were always armfuls of girls,' the Australian admitted. When Parker was romancing his first wife, an auburn-haired Wren called Eileen Allan, he teased the still-unattached Philip: 'Don't worry, old boy, some nice girl will come along for you one of these days.' Philip, in fact, was at the time deeply involved in private correspondence with Princess Elizabeth.

After the war, Parker drifted into civvy street and worked as a rope salesman for his father-in-law at an office in Bond Street. While Philip's engagement to his princess was still a secret, he wrote to Parker: 'What are you doing these days? Do you like it? If not, I need an equerry.' Parker entered royal service as an aide to Princess Elizabeth and the Duke.

From the start, he upset the Old Guard of courtiers, who were opposed to outsiders joining their ranks. He didn't have the necessary background; he wasn't 'Old Boy Net'; he didn't know the form. Their suspicions were confirmed during the Duke's stag party at the Dorchester Hotel. Traditionalists among the guests were appalled to see Parker wrestling on the floor, trying to take the trousers off a resisting young naval officer. The Duke, laughing helplessly, enjoyed the prank along with his best man, David, Marquess of Milford Haven, and his uncle Lord Louis.

When Parker reported to Buckingham Palace, it was no coincidence that he found he had been assigned the pokiest office in the whole place. It overlooked a gloomy courtyard and, through a threadbare screen, he could plainly see an old hand basin in one corner. A practical man used to thinking on his feet, Parker accepted the challenge. Within days, he had transformed the room into snug, cabin-like quarters, decked out with comfortable furniture and pictures of his favourite ships and other momentos from his travels around the world. On his desk, next to a photograph of his wife and children, was one of Philip's innovations, a newfangled intercom system. Passing courtiers were startled to hear a loud disembodied voice booming: 'Go and boil your head, Mike Parker. Go and boil your head.' It was Philip, speaking from his own office, to test the squawk-box.

To jog Philip's memory, Parker introduced a card index system which recorded personal details about the people his boss met on official engagements. Their cars had mobile phones. They used helicopters, much to Churchill's dismay until Parker persuaded the Prime Minister to try one himself. The new technology raised eyebrows, but it worked. In the spirt of the space age, Philip was more Prince Cosmonaut than Prince Consort.

Their jokes, however, were more suited to the wardroom than the sovereign's seat of power. The occasional thunderflash, a firework used in military operations, was let off, much to the consternation of Palace staff. King George VI sent for the culprits and ordered them to stop. They aimed a model electric cannon which Parker kept in his office at a particularly stuffy member of the Royal Household who was located across the corridor. When they opened his door and pressed the button, the cannon fired, spraying the target with white soot, leaving him looking 'like a snowman'. He stormed into Parker's office to find that Princess Elizabeth, laughing merrily, had been one of the conspirators. There were now two loose cannons inside the Palace.

The high jinks stopped after the Duke and his equerry, given to jumping on rugs and skidding down the highly polished corridors, crashed into the door of the King's study. They were said to have been sternly rebuked. But the King was fond of Parker who, like himself, had suffered terribly from stomach ulcers in the Navy. When the King was struggling over the blueprints of a new Royal Yacht, it was Parker, a supremely efficient organiser, who helped simplify the designs to His Majesty's satisfaction. The King never saw the results of their endeavours; he died before even the keel of
Britannia
was laid down. Parker, who was accompanying Princess Elizabeth and the Duke on their tour of Kenya, broke the news of his death to his friend.

'He looked as if the whole world had dropped on him,' Parker said. 'I never felt so sorry for anyone in all my life.' Philip admitted that the King's death changed his life with the Queen. 'Within the house, and whatever we did, it was together,' he said. 'I suppose I naturally filled the principal position. People used to come to me and ask me what to do. In 1952 the whole thing changed, very, very considerably.'

When the Queen came to the throne, Parker volunteered to leave the Royal Household to avoid conflict with hardcore courtiers who wanted the monarchy to maintain a discreet distance from the masses. He was keenly aware of the forces ranged against him. But the Queen refused to accept his resignation. 'Nonsense! You're one of the family,' she replied. 'We could not do without you.'

He stayed on as private secretary to the Duke, who wanted to modernise the Palace, which he called a rumbling old juggernaut. One of the first things they did was to count the number of rooms. The tally reached 600 and included nineteen state rooms, fifty-two royal and guest bedrooms, 188 staff bedrooms, ninety-two offices and seventy-eight bathrooms. Philip wanted to know why, when he ordered a sandwich, it took four flunkeys to deliver it from the kitchen, but he was told bluntly to mind his own business. The hierarchical structure of the Palace had been in place for generations, a son often inheriting the job of his father. They regarded Philip in much the same way as Prince Albert had been viewed: 'A German princeling,
not
whom she should have married.' With barely concealed irritation, he tried to suppress his anger.

In the final stage of the coronation ceremony, the homage, Philip kneeled at the Queen's feet before kissing her left cheek and this symbolised his new position. He had to stand beside her as she sat on the throne during the State Opening of Parliament, and he learned to walk a respectful three paces behind her on official visits. He had no keys to the royal boxes, so he was unable to guide her in the way Albert helped Victoria. 'I'm just an amoeba, here to procreate members of the Royal Family,' he stormed. But he refused to give up.

Philip had introduced Mike Parker to the circle of friends he maintained well away from the Palace. He made him a member of the Thursday Club, an exclusive luncheon party which met, among other venues in later years, at Wheeler's Oyster Bar in Charlotte Street. The language was ripe, the jokes navy blue and the pranks sometimes more than a little foolhardy. Philip loved the boyish bawdiness; it was his escape from the straitjacket of Palace protocol. One lunchtime, three thunderflashes were let off, one of them exploding in a fireplace and covering Philip in soot. Police who rushed in to the private room on the fourth floor fearing a bomb attack were not amused.

Although most of the guests such as the actors David Niven, Peter Ustinov and James Robertson Justice, the royal photographer Baron, the harmonica player Larry Adler and Arthur Christiansen, editor of the
Daily Express,
were above reproach, others proved that royalty had to be constantly vigilant. Among them was Stephen Ward, the society osteopath, 'a silly little drug-ridden queer', in the words of one who met him. Ward, a gifted artist who had sketched members of the Royal Family including Prince Philip, achieved notoriety as the procurer of Christine Keeler and Mandy Rice Davies in the Profumo Scandal of 1963. The sketch linked Philip's name to persistent, though false, rumours that he was the unidentified 'Man in the Mask' at one of Ward's orgies. Another guest was Kim Philby, the Soviet master spy who fled to Moscow. One of his agents, Sir Anthony Blunt, was strategically installed at the Palace as Keeper of the Royal Pictures. The KGB were thus perfectly placed to know exactly what was happening inside British royalty.

When his own Palace Revolution achieved only limited success, Philip shared the frustration with Mike Parker. Sometimes at night, they would slip out of the Palace for less than formal meetings with other acquaintances. Mayfair was across Green Park one way and St James's the other. The royal staff soon got used to these unscheduled expeditions. 'Murgatroyd and Winterbottom have popped out for a stroll' became a catch-phrase.

According to Parker's wife Eileen, Philip sometimes returned so late that he was locked out. Rather than alert the guard, Parker would give the Queen's husband a leg-up to climb over the Palace walls. 'Philip had a chauffeur who wasn't on the normal rota,' said a resident of the Royal Mews. 'The other drivers said he would tell one of them to park an unmarked car at a designated location somewhere in London. The driver would return to the Palace by bus. Then Philip would sweep out of the gates in an official limousine with his standard flying, attend a function, switch cars and disappear into the night.'

Philip had acquired a taste for nightlife as a bachelor after the war when one of his companions was Helene Foufounis, a playmate from childhood. She had two children, Max and Louise, by her second husband, French flying hero Marcel Boisot. Philip was their godfather. Philip and Helene, a toothsome blonde, met up in London during the war and, when it ended and her marriage broke up, they spent some hilarious times together in Paris. She was the 'mystery blonde' who barged into the men-only club, the Traveller's, scandalising its old-fashioned and chauvinist members. When they met for tea at the Ritz on one memorable occasion, Philip arrived less than stylishly on a borrowed woman's bicycle. 'After tea, we raced each other from the Place de la Concorde to the other end of the Champs-Elysees, me on the Metro, he on his two-wheeler,' said Helene. 'I was excited to get there first and see him pedalling furiously, his knees almost under his chin. He didn't care a bit about looking so funny.'

Helene returned to London to appear as a cabaret singer at the Pigalle, where she adopted the stage name Helene Cordet. She took her children to see their newly-married godfather at Clarence House and, after the Coronation, at Buckingham Palace. Their names were linked romantically many times and it was falsely rumoured that Philip was Max's father.

Even after his marriage, Philip loved the lively banter of the cocktail circuit. Inevitably, beautiful women found themselves in his company. Just as inevitably, there was trouble. Patricia Kirkwood, a blonde musical comedy actress, recalled meeting the Duke when she was appearing at the Hippodrome only a year after the royal wedding. He arrived in her dressing room from a late, late Thursday Club lunch with their mutual friend, the lordly Baron, and another naval officer. Pat slipped into a dazzling gown from Saks Fifth Avenue, split skirt rolled on to one hip to show the legs Kenneth Tynan had described as 'the Eighth Wonder of the World'. Well after midnight, the quartet headed for Les Ambassadeurs next door to 145 Piccadilly but found their entrance barred. 'We've already played God Save the King,' said the maitre d'. 'We're closing.' Philip stepped forward. 'Tell them to play it again,' he suggested. He was recognised and a table was quickly found.

After dinner, Philip wanted the party to adjourn to the Milroy Club, a fashionable nightspot upstairs. 'We'd all been drinking champagne and Philip - he told me not to call him Sir or Your Highness - asked me to dance,' said Ms Kirkwood. 'I must have created a bit of an impression because he said, "Hubba, hubba". He wouldn't let me sit down and we were on the floor for nearly two hours, dancing everything from waltzes to sambas. It was very embarrassing because his wife was very close to the birth of Prince Charles.'

Among the patrons at 'Les A' and the Milroy that night were a number with Palace connections. The story of The Duke and the Showgirl reached King George at Buckingham Palace even quicker than it hit Fleet Street. He was appalled at his son-in-law's unbecoming conduct and a royal storm cloud settled over Philip, Baron and the Thursday Club. 'The King told Philip that this really is not on,' said the Duke's unofficial biographer John Parker. 'He gave him a right old dressing down.'

Miss Kirkwood went on to marry four times and, at seventy-two, remains slim and astonishingly youthful. When she decided to make her stage comeback in April, 1993, her Press agent contacted the newspapers. 'Pat Kirkwood, one of the living legends from the golden age of stage and screen musicals, and the star whose name has been persistently linked by royal biographers with that of Prince Philip, is returning to the British stage after a long absence,' the Press bulletin gushed. 'We did not have an affair,' Ms Kirkwood said emphatically. 'I never saw Prince Philip socially again. I only ever saw him again at a Royal Variety Performance or in the stalls with his family.'

The Queen cannot have been happy. She adored her husband and the gossip must have hurt her deeply. The rumours of a royal rift gained momentum when Philip embarked on a four-month solo cruise in
Britannia
which meant he would miss Christmas and New Year with the Queen and their two young children. It was, in fact, a far-sighted venture encompassing not only the 1956 Olympic Games in Australia but New Zealand and other far-flung British possessions such as the Falkland Islands and Antarctica. But scandal trailed in
Britannia's
wake.

When Philip sailed away from Australian shores, he left behind the impression that he was a man who lived life to the full. There was also the unmistakable feeling that he was up to something. As he and Mike Parker had made many friends in Sydney during the war, it was only natural that they should include private outings on the itinerary. This led to the unfounded belief that Philip, aided and abetted by Parker, was secretly meeting a string of women. Sudden departures from the official schedule, two of them on the same day, fuelled the potentially damaging speculation.

At five fifteen one evening, Philip left Government House after a busy day on the red carpet circuit. He boarded a naval crashboat at Man o'War Steps near Circular Quay and travelled swiftly across Sydney Harbour towards the mansions of Vaucluse. Several small craft tried to follow the crashboat but were quickly outdistanced. Philip returned to Man o'War Steps at seven p.m. and, after jumping jauntily ashore in front of a small crowd, he was surrounded by no fewer than ten plain-clothed and uniformed policemen. Something was in the wind. When a photographer tried to take his picture, a detective blocked his view. He seized the photographer by the shoulders and disconnected the flashgun. 'The Duke has been for a swim,' he said. 'No pictures can be taken.' At eleven ten the same night, Philip swept out of Government House for another private visit. This time, his limousine was escorted by two squad cars and a third unmarked vehicle. The secrecy, and heavy-handed security, created a mystery which some Australians found highly suspicious.