Diana's Nightmare - The Family (46 page)

Beneath the vaulted ceiling of St Mary's, Lord St John of Fawsley, the former Minister of Arts Norman St John Stevas, stepped up to the lectern to deliver his address. The family had ensured the presence of key reporters and Lord Fawsley, the nation's leading Roman Catholic layman, knew a headline-making opportunity when he saw one. 'Of course there is bickering in every family,' he told his mainly Anglican congregation. 'Birds twitter and peck in their nests, be they large or small. And if the nest is gilded it is sometimes bathed in the glare of media light. . .'

The light which Diana had brought to bear on her troubled family was brilliant indeed and would, she knew, grow even brighter in the weeks ahead. The one man whose counsel she might have sought was now dead before her. She could not turn to her husband: to dance with the man who had brought her to the dance was no longer an option.

As the Nineties dawned, talk in the smarter drawing rooms of England had been divided between the problems in the Spencer family and wicked speculation concerning the Princess's amorous adventures.

Never far from their lips was the eccentricity of Diana's late great-aunt who, according to Rheinhold Bartz, was prone to appearing nude in front of eminent visitors to Broadfield Hall including, on one notable occasion, the Queen's friend Prince Georg of Denmark.

Such behaviour particularly embarrassed Ruth, Lady Fermoy. It was Ruth who had given shattering evidence during Johnnie Spencer's divorce that her daughter, who had gone off with a man who made wallpaper, was not a suitable mother. The testimony ensured that Frances lost custody of Diana, Sarah, Jane and Charles. Frances never forgave her mother and the two women did not speak to each other for the next ten years. They were seen to exchange a few brief words at the memorial service for Lord Fermoy, but had no more than kept up appearances at Diana's wedding to Charles. No wonder Ruth expressed neither surprise nor sympathy when Frances's second marriage to Peter Shand Kydd also ended unhappily.

Memories of such old wounds hung heavily in the air as Charles, the new Earl Spencer, paid respects to his predecessor beneath the roof of St Mary on that early spring day. Not once did those in immediate view see him exchange a glance with his royal namesake and brother-in-law. Spencer was painfully aware that he had become a figure of ridicule within the Royal Family since owning up to an extra-marital affair while his wife was expecting their first child.

Just six months after he had taken Victoria only unto him at a splendid service in this very church on 16 September, 1989, he had whisked an old flame, the gangly journalist Sally Ann Lasson, to Paris for an adulterous weekend. He had first met her four years earlier when Ms Lasson - then married to the songwriter Dominic King - interviewed him at her home for the
Sunday Times.
Ms Lasson, daughter of the noted art dealer Hans Kryvovias-Lasson, said they became lovers two years later and, by her own admission, was somewhat put out when the most eligible bachelor in the land chose to marry Victoria Lockwood whose father worked for the

Civil Aviation Authority as personnel director. One month after Victoria gave birth to their first daughter Kitty in January 1991, Sally Ann sold to the
News of the World
her story of a romantic reunion with Charles the previous year. The revelation sent shock waves through the Spencer family, particularly, said a female member of their set, in view of Victoria's pregnancy at the time of his infidelity.

'Having a man's child,' said the friend, 'is the biggest compliment a woman can pay him. It's got to be the biggest ego boost going for a woman to love a man so much that she wants to take an essence of him and reproduce it.'

According to the published account, the thirty-two- year-old divorcee was at her flat in Egerton Gardens, Knightsbridge, when she received a telephone call from Althorp. He told her he was miserable and asked her if she would run away with him. They flew to Paris that same evening, 28 March, 1990. Detailing even the journey, Lasson recalled: 'Charles knew how frightened I was to fly so he kissed me constantly from Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle airport. Except, that is, when I was drinking champagne which was terribly romantic.' That night they dined by candlelight in a suitably romantic restaurant and Lasson said she was 'so crazy with excitement to have my boy back, I could hardly eat'. Having managed some nourishment, however, the pair went back to the Hotel Balzac and made love.

According to more than one of Diana's friends, it was only after consulting her 'in a state of some distress', that Althorp decided to make a clean breast of the matter. In a statement he maintained that he had a 'one-night stand' with Sally Ann in September 1986, and during the following eighteen months she telephoned him with 'obsessive messages'. His barbed statement continued: 'Ms Lasson was extremely jealous when I got engaged and married to Victoria in a whirlwind romance and she made it clear that she had always wanted to be my wife — a thought that had never occurred to me. In February and March 1990, my wife and I went through an extremely messy patch in our marriage and a separation seemed possible. I talked to Ms Lasson about my marital problems - a foolish move in retrospect but, with a failed marriage behind her, I thought she might be in a positive position to give advice.'

The heir to one of Britain's most distinguished titles went on to admit to the Paris episode, 'after a particularly unpleasant series of quarrels with my wife,' and to describe it ungallantly as an experience that 'so sickened me, I did not stay a second night in Paris but returned to London, eager to patch up my marriage'.

If the ninth Earl Spencer was turning the matter over in his mind as he faced the first major family gathering since his ordeal by newsprint, then he may well have recalled his last words on the subject to his unwanted lover after she informed him that she had sold her story: 'You'll be the loser - you're stuffed!'

EDWARD John Spencer was the son of parents who had long served as courtiers. Educated at Eton and Sandhurst, he managed a mention in dispatches during World War II despite the brevity of his military career. He had been
aide-de-camp
to the Governor of South Australia from 1947 to 1950 when he became equerry to King George VI. He continued in that post under the Queen for another two years, also acting as Master of the Household on a Commonwealth tour.

On the surface he was a man born into greatness who shouldered his own responsibilities so well that monarchs could depend on him to help run their show. Underneath it was a very different story. Johnnie's father Jack, the seventh Earl, was a difficult man who found it hard to relate to others. In the case of his son and heir, this shortcoming transformed itself into bullying. The man who was to father the girl who would marry England's next king became so confused about his role in life that his fellow officers in the Royal Scots Greys regarded him as the stupidest soldier in their midst. He was a powerfully placed man who did not know how to assert himself in the simplest of tasks. Nevertheless, his credentials were exemplary even if many of the seeds of wisdom sewn into him during his schooldays had come from his multi-faulted godfather, the Prince of Wales, briefly King Edward VIII. Although shortage of money forced him to give up his unpaid court duties in 1954, Johnnie's distinguished career of service to the Crown had by then placed him in a position of power and influence over many who served the Sovereign in more humble capacities.

As Charles Spencer stepped forward to deliver a reading from Corinthians over his father's remains, he surveyed those members of the congregation who were now
his
employees, a number of the Althorp estate workers. He was aware that many of them regarded him as an impetuous young man and were worried about how drastically he would reverse changes which his father and stepmother had instituted. It was common knowledge that Charles objected to many of the money-making schemes Raine had talked Johnnie into setting up at Althorp, and in view of the way he had voiced his objections, particularly over disposal of some of the family treasures, it was expected that he would assert all his rights under the English law of primogeniture.

The gilded nest had certainly been rich in treasures. Many of the fine contents of Althorp House had been inherited, bought and set in order by Jack, a notable collector and connoisseur. Even after the erosions of the previous seventeen years, many still remained. Although paintings by Van Dyck and Gainsborough, silver ornaments and even solid gold ice pails had gone, immense prizes of wealth and privilege remained, not least among them Reynolds' portraits of three generations of Spencers and Van Dyck's masterpiece,
War and Peace.

Although his father had left him an estate worth £89 million, young Spencer still faced the prospect of selling off more family treasures to raise death duties of around £4 million. The paradox of being rich in treasures but badly off in cash terms was one the English aristocracy had had to come to terms with, particularly in lines such as the Spencers where the forebears had bought land in preference to property. Never one to enjoy cavorting with the common herd, however, the new lord was already considering plans to restore his family's privacy by closing Althorp to the public, putting an end to the £2.95 tours which allowed any Tom, Dick or Hank to peer inside the Spencers' cosseted world.

Nicknamed Champagne Charlie by his friends, he had become a career journalist, working as a British-based TV reporter for the American network, NBC. Colleagues could not remember him being noted for his compassionate views and expressed no surprise when he later marvelled at Diana's generosity of spirit. In an observation that said more about himself than it did about his sister, he noted: 'I think it must be very difficult each day to give so much of yourself, of your soul to so many people and not feel in a way that as you've given a great deal, therefore you deserve love and warmth when you go home.' Such remarks sounded alarm bells in the head of Prince Charles. Diana's campaign manager was warming up.

Spencer went on to say: 'I certainly try, when I speak to her on the telephone, to reassure her about how much she is loved, too.' He did not mention that the telephone consolation was a two-way technique but a friend of her husband's later imparted that Diana was forever making bedtime calls to her brother to talk him through some new emotional crisis. Notwithstanding the Sally Ann Lasson escapade, events in his marriage had not been all smoothness and light and Victoria enjoyed town life as much as he loved the country.

Since
Tatler
had chosen her as its Girl of the Year when she was just seventeen, Victoria had been thrown into a jet-set lifestyle she greatly enjoyed. They toasted her arrival in New York, and in Paris she was welcomed with a contract from the premier modelling agency FAN. Dawn Rothstein, a partner in the agency, sang her praises thus: 'She quite simply had the most beautiful face in the world. She was a little short for the catwalk but she worked with most of the top photographers and appeared on countless magazine covers.'

So adapting to life at the Falconry, the Althorps' cottage set amid the peaceful 13,000 acres of his father's estate, proved a testing experience for the high-spirited young bride, and she frequently engineered ways for the pair of them to escape back to London. On one notable occasion, Charles took her to Annabel's where new money rubs shoulders with old tradition. According to a report at the time, the Marlboro-smoking model tugged her somewhat reluctant marquess on to the dance floor, but after a few blasts of nondescript toe-dancing he returned to their table. Left to her own devices, Victoria marched up to a party of estate agents and their friends and asked them: 'Do you know who I am?' The answer from one of the younger members of the group was affirmative and she and he then danced enthusiastically, enjoying a late evening of companionship during which she acquired the appellation 'My Little Ballerina'.

Commenting on how much closer she had seemed to her brother than to her husband, one Spencer friend added that Diana understood him far better than his own wife did. It would take an understanding woman indeed to tolerate his affection for Darius Guppy, the fraudster who had been best man at Charles and Victoria's wedding when Prince Charles and Diana were among the guests and Prince Harry was a pageboy. Even tolerant Diana saw the warning signs when she heard that, following the
News of the World's
publication of Sally Ann Lasson's story, Guppy had vowed to have the paper's owner, Rupert Murdoch, assassinated. The media tycoon was not on record as saying that he slept easier in his bed after Guppy was sentenced to five years in prison for conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to steal and false accounting, but it was a safe assumption. Murdoch was promised a further three years freedom from concern about Guppy unless the convicted man located £533,000 from his ill-gotten gains and paid it over in fines within six months of his sentencing in March 1993.

With the Spencers promising to look after his pregnant wife Patricia, Guppy was led from the dock to begin a jail term that would allow him ample time to reflect on his life as the closest friend of the man whose sister had married the heir to the throne. His own father, whose grandfather gave the family name to the fish and whose great-grandfather was a confidant of Dickens, had lost large amounts through a Lloyd's syndicate. Determined not to go through life in impoverished circumstances, Darius always had a money-making scheme or two up his sleeve.

It might have been a financial struggle for his parents, Nicholas and Shusha Guppy, to send Darius to Eton but a less sensitive couple might have considered their investment worthwhile when he befriended Charles Althorp. The two went on to Oxford together and buoyed by his friendship with the future earl, Guppy set about becoming a student celebrity with an almost unheard of sense of vengeance. By promising the incumbent editor introductions to pretty girls (a promise like others he failed to deliver), Guppy manoeuvred a takeover of the university's satirical magazine
Tributary
and shared its editorship with Althorp. The move was the foundation of Althorp's journalistic career and he grew to be as impressed with Guppy as the latter was obsessed with English aristocracy. To please his titled friend, Guppy learned to shoot and Althorp would take him round his father's estate at night in a Land Rover killing rabbits. Darius, by one account, would 'fire away like Rambo'.