Diana's Nightmare - The Family (52 page)

While Charles discussed the latest twists in the royal saga with the Queen over lunch at Highgrove, his wife was being feted in Harare. Disabled children performed a musical welcome and the country's leader Robert Mugabe showered her with compliments. 'When you have a visit from a noble person like Princess Diana, naturally you feel elated,' gushed the former Marxist. 'She brings a little light into our lives.'

Diana's entourage said that the Princess was quite happy to go along with the experiment of separate duties and separate courts while reserving the right to divorce if things didn't work out. Speaking openly from the Prince of Wales' office, Commander Richard Aylard emphasised the couple's complementary roles. 'There will be occasional big national events and family things,' he said, 'but they are separated so I wouldn't expect them to go back to doing joint events on a regular basis. The important thing is for him to get on with his public life and for the Princess to get on with hers. Far from the competitiveness which newspapers suggest, I think they are rather complementary. The country probably benefits from having two people working in that way.'

He was cleverly outlining something that Britain had never had before - two figureheads on the throne with widely different interests and viewpoints, able to span the horizons in a broad manner as no individual could. Charles and Diana had already demonstrated on a State visit to Portugal and the ceremonial occasion in Liverpool that they could tolerate each other's company in public. They had become rather good as a working partnership, even though their personal relationship had been damaged beyond repair. Like all seasoned music hall double acts, they were learning that the best way to stay together was to go their separate ways at night.

Charles now accepted that Diana had the box office appeal the Windsors had been losing until he invited her to join the Family. Parallel roles would enable him to concentrate on the issues close to his heart. Similarly, Diana realised that there were causes which were way beyond her scope. Human suffering would always be a noble vocation but the look of towns and cities and the state of the environment were also matters that had to be addressed if the First Family were to serve society properly.

As the Queen might rule for a further twenty years at least, any really long-term solution was out of the question. Queen Victoria had lived to the age of eighty-one, Queen Mary died just short of her eighty-fifth birthday and the Queen Mother, though frail, was in her ninety-fourth year.

'The Queen has given no indication that she will step down,' said Andrew Morton. 'Any constitutional historian, anybody who is close to the Queen or anybody close to Buckingham Palace all say the same thing: she is never going to abdicate. My own caveat to that would be that if the Queen Mother or the Duke of Edinburgh predecease the Queen, there may well be some pressure from government or from inside the Royal Family for the Queen to adopt a more matriarchal role and allow Prince Charles to take on a lot more of the ceremonial duties.'

On a personal level the Palace went out of its way to persuade journalists that the separation was no more than that. Following a suggestion from Margaret Holder in the
Daily Star
that they might divide Diana's jewels 'with the divorce', she found herself being contradicted by Geoffrey Crawford of the Palace Press Office. 'You couldn't possibly have said that you know they are going to divorce,' he said. 'You know they don't hate each other. It is absolutely untrue — the couple are very fond of each other.'

Furthermore, intelligence was also being received that the Queen had made it clear to both Charles and Andrew that she saw no need for either of them to divorce. There was a strong suggestion that, if they sought permission to end their marriages, she might well refuse it. 'In the past, as in the case of Princess Anne, she has only agreed to a divorce in the Family where one of the parties wished to re-marry,' said a highly placed Palace source, 'I don't see any reason for her to change that stance.'

It was just possible that if Charles and Diana stopped looking critically at each other and began to look positively in the same direction, their parallel lives might one day converge. Though this seemed a distant mirage, it was the best the Windsors could hope for. In the meantime, Charles proved to the world that he was not averse to fighting back.

When the Queen gathered her depleted flock at Balmoral in August 1993, Charles seized the chance to play a role he had previously spurned. More from a sense of duty than a desire to challenge his wife, he agreed to appear in a TV documentary with his sons. The programme would celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his investiture as Prince of Wales, which falls on 1 July, 1994 - the same day as Diana's thirty-third birthday. While the Princess enjoyed a break on the Indonesian island of Bali, the TV cameras were rolling on the shores of Loch Muick near the Balmoral Forest. The unscripted scenes provided the most intimate pictures ever taken of Charles with William and Harry, disproving the belief that he was an uncaring father. Just as significantly, they showed that the princes not only enjoyed his company, they revelled in it.

Charles knew he would be accused of playing Diana at her own propaganda game but he didn't give a damn. He had finally nailed for all time her lie, the one that had wounded him more than any other.

In the words of Charles's loyal supporter: 'She is a sick lady - I know that and he knows that and he has tried to help her.' Whenever the friend was tempted to judge Diana too harshly, however, she thought back to a night in November 1982 and remembered the scenes at Kensington Palace. 'What happened that night was absolutely devastating,' she said, it changed my view about Diana.'

The Princess, who was only twenty-one, had given birth to William less than five months earlier. Desperately trying to regain her figure, she had tried to stick to a rigid diet. But the ravages of bulimia coupled with post-natal depression had triggered the greatest crisis thus far in her marriage. 'Sudden changes of mood are the best way to recognise post-natal depression,' Sir George Pinker, the gynaecologist who delivered William, said at the time. 'The mother becomes very depressed and tearful and miserable.' Diana had been so upset that she pulled out of the royal party attending the annual Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall. Prince Charles whispered to officials that his wife was unwell and would not be attending. But Diana arrived unexpectedly just as attendants were removing her chair from the Royal Box.

Vastly intrigued, royal watchers kept their eyes on the royal couple throughout the performance. It was unheard of for a member of the Family to turn up late once apologies had been offered on their behalf. For much of the festival, Diana's head was bowed and she clung protectively to her husband's arm. Ever since that night eleven painful years ago, Charles had known that Diana's Nightmare would be his own for as long as he lived.

'For three years I was THE man in her life'

James Hewitt

THROUGHOUT the tribulations of royal exile, Diana prayed that the truth about her dangerous liaison with James Hewitt would remain secret. The Princess's reputation with an adoring public depended largely on the belief that she was the purely innocent victim of a heartless husband. For that reason, disclosure of her love affair with an amorous Army officer threatened her as nothing else could.

However, Diana knew full well on the morning of 2 October 1994 that the myth of the Perfect Princess was about to come to a shattering end. With callous disregard, Hewitt had betrayed her trust, assailed her honour and exploited her fame. She was understandably furious - and very frightened.

Never had Catherine Soames seen her friend so upset as they drove in the Princess's new green Audi convertible to Romenda Lodge, the Duchess of York's rented home in Surrey, on that cold, bright Sunday. Fergie was later to impart that the Princess was spitting blood from the moment she crossed the threshold.

As a soldier and a gentleman, Hewitt had sworn that he would never divulge the confidences of his friendship with the Princess of Wales. Not to anyone, not at any price. He was, he maintained, the soul of discretion in matters of the heart. Her secrets were safe with him.

Hewitt had kept his word until the bidding reached six figures, at which point, like a badly drilled squaddie, he had executed an embarrassing about-turn which infuriated his friends, delighted his enemies and destroyed Diana's credibility at a stroke. Not for nothing was Hewitt known to friends as 'pompous and arrogant'; a man who 'keeps his compass in his trousers.' Now, however, he seemed to be thinking only of his wallet.

By the time Diana arrived at Romenda Lodge, half the country knew from that morning's papers that she had been unfaithful to Prince Charles while they were still living under the same roof as husband and wife. Hewitt had confided to the
News of the World
that he and Diana had enjoyed a three-year love affair, that she had considered leaving Charles to live with him, and that he had passionate letters in his possession to prove it all.

As Diana swept in, Fergie knew from her own experiences that the Princess's anger was actually a mask to cloak the fear that was gnawing inside her. Nor was Fergie oblivious to the heavy irony of the situation. So often the butt of scandal herself, the tables had been neatly turned and, for once, Diana was in the hot seat. Here, sitting down to lunch with the sister-in-law she had called the Redhead, the Princess knew that her own Miss Goody-Two-Shoes image had been demolished for ever. No longer was she the unblemished wife of an adulterous husband: she was an adulteress herself and now the world was starting to learn the shocking truth of her darkest secret. It was a bitter moment.

'I was madly in love with her and helped in so many ways,' Hewitt was quoted as saying over coffee in a suite at the Sheraton Hotel in Knightsbridge. 'For three years I was THE man in her life. It got so serious I was warned to stay away from her.' At another meeting, in the nearby Basil Street Hotel,
News of the World
executives asked the former cavalry officer point-blank if he had ever made love to Diana. 'Yes,' he had replied.

At a third meeting, Hewitt had even let a reporter glance at the bundle of Diana's letters. They were 'intimate, affectionate' letters, the paper was able to record. 'Bet you'd love to get your hands on them,' teased Hewitt. 'I haven't shown them to anyone. I have just got to weigh up the consequences. I could be done for high treason and sent to the Tower.'

Hewitt was now telling a story about his relationship with Diana which was anything but 'entirely innocent', the words he had previously chosen to describe it. The big question the reporters had to answer was: If he was lying then, was he telling the truth now? He had already made £100,000 from the
Daily Express
earlier in the year for a turgid account of his friendship with Diana in which he told journalist Anna Pasternak nothing more scintillating than that the Princess had shared washing-up duties at his mother's cottage in Devon. He had claimed that he met Diana at a party in 1987 and, when she told him she had lost her nerve about riding, he had volunteered to give her lessons to restore her confidence. They had struck up an easy rapport, he said, and become close friends until he heard in his gut 'the warning bell of the fear of getting too close.'

Hewitt said that Diana had stayed at his mother Shirley's house at Ebford near Exeter before he left for service in the Gulf War on Boxing Day 1990. She had been the perfect house guest, he said, 'a great mucker inner, who would do the washing-up and help out.' Using her pet name Dibbs, Diana had written to him frequently while he was a tank commander on active service in the Gulf and had sent him food hampers.

Undeterred by such trivia, Ms Pasternak had stuck to her task of debriefing the now jobless ex-Army officer and the results of her research had been accepted for publication in a book entitled
Princess in Love,
which was being rushed into print amid great security. Even as Diana drove Catherine Soames (the former wife of Charles's friend Nicholas Soames) back to London, she knew that the book would be going on sale throughout Britain the following morning. Ever since they had split up, Diana had suspected that the dashing though duplicitous Hewitt would betray her, and her withdrawal into princessly purdah the previous December had been motivated by that fear. At the time, most people had believed that she was leaving public life over publication of photographs which had been taken secretly of her working out in a London gym. Now the real reason for her sudden exit had emerged. For Diana, it had already been one hell of a year and it was getting worse with each passing day.

The only heartening development from the Princess of Wales's point of view was that Charles had finally admitted his affair with Camilla in a TV interview to accompany the documentary which marked the twenty- fifth anniversary of his investiture as Prince of Wales. He had conceded that he did indeed have a close relationship with Camilla, but insisted that he had been unfaithful only after his marriage to Diana had irretrievably broken down. The confession was an attempt to re-establish his position in the eyes of his future subjects, but it merely had the effect of making Diana seem the wronged party once again.

In the aftermath of the Camillagate scandal, Charles had realised he was a marked man. Literally hundreds of journalists were monitoring his movements twenty-four hours a day in the hope of uncovering some fresh indiscretion. The point at issue was whether or not Charles had forfeited his place in the succession by having an affair with a married woman. Not a few people in the media, politics and the clergy were arguing noisily that the heir apparent was unfit to rule.

The vanguard was led by the Venerable George Austin, Archdeacon of York, who said bluntly: 'When Charles took his solemn marriage vows years ago he promised to be faithful to his wife. He very quickly began to break those vows. It puts a big question mark against the vows to God he would take at his Coronation. The question arises about his trustfulness to make those vows as King.'