Diana's Nightmare - The Family (36 page)

It was ironic that the scandal which would destroy Mike Parker's royal career caught up with him on the voyage home.
Britannia,
the yacht he had helped the King to design, was steaming up the coast of Africa in February 1957, when his Scots-born wife Eileen suddenly announced that they had parted. Her lawyers said that she would be suing her husband for a legal separation under which she would retain custody of their two children. This should not normally have created more than passing interest. But it closely followed the end of Princess Margaret's love affair with the divorced Group Captain Peter Townsend, whom Philip and Parker both happened to dislike intensely. Marital problems at the Palace, even among the lower orders, was big news. The events that followed removed Parker from public life and cast a long shadow over the marriage of the Queen and Prince Philip.

Using the ship's radio-telephone, Parker was able to ascertain that his wife had arranged a meeting with Commander Richard Colville, the Queen's Press Secretary, at the Palace. She told him that they were estranged and that she intended to take legal action. Colville, alert to the dangers not so much to Parker, whom he disliked, but to his royal employer, persuaded her to wait until he returned to England before making any announcement. But the story that a court case was imminent leaked to the newspapers.

Eileen insisted that her decision had nothing to do with her husband's Palace job or the royal tour. Ah-ha, exclaimed the scandal-mongers, there must be something else. Parker, according to gossip, had developed 'an extravagant liking for parties and high living'. 'Seafood, Continental cooking and champagne are all very much to his taste,' one writer noted disapprovingly. Worse, he had been seen in London 'in company with an attractive brunette with dark, wavy hair, grey-green eyes and an aquiline nose'. The obvious conclusion was that Parker was a reckless
bon vivant
who was flaunting his infidelity in front of the public.

Instead of toughing it out, Parker consulted his solicitor by phone and then went into a huddle with Prince Philip. The outcome was that he quit his job and Philip accepted his resignation. His motive was to save the Duke from any further embarrassment; the effect was the exact opposite. His sudden departure was interpreted as confirmation of his guilt. Some sections of the Press, particularly in the United States and on the Continent, reasoned that Philip must be guilty as well, even if only by association. The two men were inseparable. They played cricket together, swam together in the Palace pool, and parried together outside its walls. They were even playing squash when the Queen had given birth to Prince Charles, and Philip had to be summoned from the court. Surely at least some of the rumours about Her Majesty's husband had to be true.

When
Britannia
docked in Gibraltar, Philip drove Parker to the airfield and boarded the London-bound plane for a farewell chat before take-off. On landing in London, Parker was besieged by newsmen. Colville turned up to tell him: 'You're on your own.' But Parker, fiercely loyal to Philip and the Queen, refused point-blank to give his side of the story. His silence only caused further damaging speculation. It was claimed he had been meeting his mystery woman at Baron's flat, scene of Philip's own supposed assignations.

The truth was far less sensational. 'The marriage was collapsing before Mike ever set foot in the Palace,' said a friend. 'He had wanted to go back to Australia and his wife wanted to stay in Britain. They had two young children to educate. The main reason Mike took the job as equerry was to resolve this dilemma. It gave him a perfectly valid reason to stay in England, but it meant that he saw less and less of his wife. In the end, he moved out of the marital home in Kensington long before the journey with Philip.' Parker's mother confirmed this version: 'Michael's was a wartime marriage and it was breaking up long before he joined the Royal Household.'

The Queen, who had been kept largely in the dark, flew to a reunion with her husband at the start of a State visit to Portugal. She was in high spirits, donning a false beard to surprise Philip as he entered her aircraft. Unfortunately, Philip had shaved off the growth he had been sporting during his travels. Still, they laughed about it and tried to rise above the scenes of near frenzy that the 'royal rift' had precipitated in the crowds waiting to greet them.

Parker cleared out his desk and, in the Queen's absence, became
persona non grata
at the Palace. Immediately she returned to London, however, Her Majesty summoned him into her presence and made him a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order, a personal award for services to the Royal Family. On 22 February, 1957, she had an even bigger surprise for her husband:

'The Queen has been pleased to give and grant unto HRH the Duke of Edinburgh the style and titular dignity of a Prince of the United Kingdom. The Queen has been pleased to declare her will and pleasure that the Duke of Edinburgh shall henceforth be known as His Royal Highness The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.'

This put a stop to some of the gossip, although others pointed out that she had still not officially named her husband Prince Consort.

Prince Philip continued to see his old friend, portlier and balding slightly, outside the Palace. He invited him to meetings of the Thursday Club, which now convened on Mondays in Kensington. At the Cowes regatta, Philip greeted him warmly, even allowing him to take Prince Charles for a picnic. When courtiers questioned the wisdom of this, he turned on them in a blistering rage and told them he would choose his own friends no matter what they thought. Mike Parker might have lost his royal job but not his links with royalty. He would turn up again in highly intriguing circumstances.

IT was in the summer of Parker's official departure that the film star Merle Oberon came to pay her respects. She arrived in London to show off her new fiance, a Mexican-Italian steel magnate called Bruno Pagliai. Philip and the actress had been close friends. Merle wanted to reassure Bruno on that score and to introduce him to her royal circle, which included the then Duchess of Kent and Lord Mountbatten.

At forty-six, Ms Oberon had lost none of the exotic beauty which had made her a box office star ever since she played Anne Boleyn in
The Private Life of Henry VIII
with Charles Laughton, and Cathy in
Wuthering Heights
with Laurence Olivier. Her first husband, the film-maker Sir Alexander Korda, had cast the unknown extra in her first major role after spotting her in a studio canteen.

She had been born, she claimed, Estelle O'Brien Merle Thompson in Tasmania, the Australian island state that numbered Errol Flynn among its native sons. Korda, a Hungarian, knew that she had been working as a dance hostess at the Cafe de Paris. He changed her name to Merle Oberon, selecting the surname from the King of the Fairies in
A Midsummer Night's Dream,
and married her. In truth, Merle was an Anglo-Indian who had been born Queenie Thompson into crippling poverty. She escaped to England, disguising her Indian mother as a maid. The elaborate fantasy she concocted to hide her real identity lasted long after her six-year marriage to Alexander Korda. 'I knew she was really Queenie Thompson from Calcutta and I always thought how stupid it was to pretend,' said Lady Edith Foxwell. 'She was no more from Tasmania than I was.'

With Korda's help, Merle had become a friend of Noel Coward, Churchill and Lord Beaverbrook. She had partied with Edward and Mrs Simpson in the Thirties and was appalled when, at dinner one night, the next King of England extolled the virtues of Nazi Germany.

But it was Mountbatten who sang her praises to Philip once the war was over. 'Mountbatten urged Philip to get involved with charity work and he did a lot as President of the National Playing Fields Association,' said John Parker. 'There was a link with show business to raise funds and Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner came over to Britain to help. It was about that time that Merle Oberon was involved as well. She was introduced to Philip by her old friend Mountbatten.'

The Duke was captivated by Merle's smooth, oval face dominated by almond-shaped eyes of luminous green. Green was his favourite colour. 'Her beauty was exotic - like an ivory mask which was tacked on to her face,' said the actress Claire Bloom. 'What was so sad is that anyone should have to cover up her past and her background as Merle did.'

After traipsing around the high spots of the season, Merle married Bruno at a small chapel near the Colosseum in Rome and flew to Nice for a honeymoon in the South of France. The woman who touched Philip's heart then returned to Mexico to set up house. She gave Philip an open invitation to stay with her any time he liked, but the ubiquitous Mike Parker got there first.

While his divorce was still pending, Parker started to enjoy his freedom. He turned up at a royal film premiere in the company of Baroness Nancy von Hoyningen-Heune, whose German husband Ernst was 'working in New York'.

The Baroness, a stunning redhead, was the former Miss Nancy Oakes, a thirty-two-year-old heiress. Her father, the millionaire gold prospector Sir Harry Oakes, had become rich overnight after discovering the second wealthiest gold mine in the world at Lake Shore in the Canadian wilderness. He went to Australia and married Eunice Mclntyre, the woman who had grub-staked him twenty years earlier. They were living in Nassau when the Duke of Windsor arrived to take over at Government House, safely removed, Churchill hoped, from his dangerous Nazi cronies in Europe. Sir Harry had been murdered at his mansion in what had been labelled the Unsolved Crime of the Century. He was found in his bedroom, his head battered and his scorched body covered in feathers. With the assistance of two American detectives he called in from Florida to investigate the crime, Windsor tried to frame Nancy's first husband, Count Freddie de Marigny, for the murder. 'Freddie was a big, attractive man who towered over the Duke and they hated each other,' said the royal historian. 'Windsor knew Freddie was innocent but he was determined to hang him. Fortunately, the defence were able to prove in court that Freddie's fingerprint had been planted at the murder scene and he was acquitted. The Duke promptly deported him. Anyone who believed the Duke was unfairly treated by the Royal Family or the British Government is entirely misguided. He should have been charged with treason for collaborating with the Nazis, and he should have been exposed for trying to execute an innocent man.'

Nancy joined Freddie in exile in Cuba, but the marriage was annulled and she married Baron Ernst von Hoyningen-Heune. Ironically, one of his family, Baron Oswald Hoyningen-Heune, had been German Minister in Lisbon at the outbreak of World War II. He had specific instructions from Hitler to kidnap the Windsors if they would not stay in Europe of their own free will. This was part of a plan to set up a pro-Nazi regime in Britain with the former King as its quisling. 'The Duke believes with certainty that continued heavy bombing will make England ready for peace,' the baron told Berlin in a secret despatch, which was uncovered after the war. Churchill spirited the Windsors away from Portugal to Nassau before the Duke could cause any more damage.

Now at Christmas, 8,000 foot above sea level in Mexico City, Nancy invited the newlyweds Merle and Bruno to a lavish party. Guests danced to the Latin rhythms of an orchestra playing on a flower-decked launch in the middle of the swimming pool. Among the guests was her frequent escort, Commander Mike Parker.

After they were spotted at the royal film show, she said: 'There is absolutely nothing between us. It's all so hideously embarrassing. He is just a nice guy in a tough spot. This has put him in such an awkward situation, poor dear.'

In the rarefied atmosphere of Mexico City, Nancy, Mike, Merle and Bruno posed happily for photographs of the festive occasion.

Not long after, Parker accompanied Nancy when she went to visit her mother in the Bahamas. He had just been divorced after admitting adultery. In Nassau, he was booked into the Olympia Hotel when the Governor, Sir Raynor Arthur, invited him to move into Government House. Parker extended his stay.

'Nancy Oakes and various other people were trying to get the Oakes murder case re-opened and they would use anyone and everyone who was around - Mike Parker, Mountbatten, anyone. I am sure that was the case,' said John Parker, author of
King of Fools,
the definitive unauthorised biography of the Duke of Windsor. 'Philip hated the Windsors more than anyone else but the Palace were trying to suppress anything of a scandalous nature.

'I am sure the murder involved money and Harry Oakes attempting to get around the laws of currency that applied in the Bahamas at that time. He used the Duke of Windsor to help him and Windsor put a lot of money through the same channels himself.' According to John Parker, one of Sir Harry's business associates, a shyster called Harold Christie, 'was certainly involved in the hiring of a hit man to murder Harry Oakes'.

After much heated wrangling, Nancy pointedly declared: it (the case) should be cleared up once and for all, regardless of who might be affected by the truth.' She was referring to the Duke of Windsor. Scotland Yard detectives were sent to Nassau, but they were hastily recalled on orders from Whitehall before they could question any witnesses. The stalwart Sir Raynor declared the case closed. 'There will be no new inquiry,' he said.

'I met Nancy when she was going around with Mike Parker in London and I stayed with her in Mexico City,' said Lady Edith. 'She talked about the death of her father constantly. It was made to look like a ritual killing to blame it on the blacks. They put out a rumour that he was having lots of affairs with black women which I think was a load of old cobblers. But the whole thing has almost destroyed Nancy.'

Subsequently Mike Parker succeeded in carving a very particular niche in the world of high finance, using contacts from his Palace days. He was on the board of at least seven major British companies and worked as 'sales and general policy consultant' to the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation. He was on the payroll when the giant US planemaker was accused of bribery and corruption on a massive scale. Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, Prince Philip's friend and president of the then World Wildlife Fund, was alleged to have pocketed $1.1 million for helping Lockheed to clinch big aviation deals. No charges were laid against the protesting Prince, but he was forced to resign from the fund. Throughout the controversy, Parker remained charming but tight-lipped.