Diana's Nightmare - The Family (53 page)

There were also fears among some Anglican bishops that Charles might actually marry Camilla after his divorce, if he married a divorcee he would have to renounce the Crown,' one stated emphatically.

Deeply wounded, Charles authorised Nicholas Soames to rebut the insinuations. 'To be King is not an ambition - it is a duty,' thundered the portly Soames. 'That duty will pass at the appropriate moment to the Prince of Wales. It is not like waking up in the morning and saying, "I want to be an engine driver". It simply doesn't work like that.'

This riposte stated Charles's constitutional position unequivocally, but it failed to take into account something that Soames and others close to Charles knew only too well: the infuriating duality of his character. The Prince of Wales was on the one hand an obedient heir who was born to rule and who was motivated mainly by duty. But on the other hand Charles Windsor was a private man who had broken one of the taboos of his royal birthright and, like Edward VIII before him, was now driven by a forbidden love. In the first role, he was very much his sovereign mother's son while in the second he resembled his great-uncle, who had thrown it all away for Wallis Simpson. The question was: Would Charles make the same sacrifice?

'Charles is very loyal to his friends and doubly so to Camilla,' said one who knows him well. 'She means too much to him to be dismissed from his life.'

As the controversy raged over 'the Crown or Camilla', Charles knew he had to protect his dignity and his sanity. One of the measures he took was to assume a new identity which would enable him to conduct what remained of his private life without constant surveillance and the threat of exposure. Long experienced in the art of deceiving the Press, he had adopted Stephen Langton, an unexceptional English name, as a cover. Without arousing suspicion, Stephen Langton could book tables for dinner at discreet restaurants or tickets for unpublicised evenings at the theatre and buy goods from stores which accepted credit cards as payment for telephoned orders. The harmless ploy proceeded undetected for months, giving Charles the degree of freedom he needs as a man caught between the wife he has rejected and the lover he still desires.

Charles was known to have kept secretly in touch with Camilla despite the furore over their relationship, and he was reported to be meeting her at friends' homes in Gloucestershire. After all she had endured, Camilla needed some attention long before Charles acknowledged their love on television. She looked haggard and thin, and she had started chain-smoking cigarettes, 'It would be absolutely unnatural if [the scandal] had not had some effect,' said Lord Patrick Beresford, a friend of the Parker Bowles family. 'But she does not let it show. She manages to be her cheerful self whenever I see her.' Confirming that he and his wife would stay together, Andrew Parker Bowles said: 'She's perfectly all right. Everything is all right between us.'

However, Camilla's sister-in-law, Carolyn Parker Bowles, heightened the speculation when she said: 'Everyone knows Camilla and Andrew have an arranged marriage. Ever since they married, they have had a fairly free life together, which suits them both.'

In truth, Camilla was no longer prepared to remain a lonely figure hiding in the shadows. To reclaim her own place in society, she had accepted an invitation to attend a memorial service for the Earl of Westmorland at the Guards' Chapel, Wellington Barracks, fully aware that Diana would also be there. The risks were obvious. Camilla knew she would be sharing centre stage with the Princess no matter how far apart they might be seated and that the Press would, once again, make unflattering comparisons between herself- and the royal superstar. 'The Princess has never accepted that her husband's relationship with Camilla is over,' said a friend. 'She can, however, live with it.'

In the event, the two women studiously avoided even eye contact, but the encounter seemed to signal a decline not only in Diana's social standing but in herself. Camilla's presence was stark proof that it was the mistress who had the backing of the Royal Family while she had become an embarrassing pariah. She was also worried about James Hewitt. At thirty-six, his job prospects in civilian life were uninspiring and he needed money to maintain his gallivanting lifestyle.

Even the stimulating company of other handsome young men hadn't been enough to prevent Diana's private world from falling to pieces. The day before the Camilla experience, she had dashed away from another engagement in tears, her distress being passed off as a migraine headache. On other occasions, blue eyeliner covered up the telltale signs of sobbing. The symptoms of her bulimia had resurfaced in the form of a mounting hysteria over the reality of her exposed position. Self-pity set in.

Her private life often consisted of nothing more exciting than watching television at Kensington Palace or chatting to friends on the phone. If she went out, it was to the cinema or to dinner with trusted girlfriends. Her male companions included reliable old friends such as Simon Slater, William van Straubenzee and Dr James Colthurst. The paparazzi stalked her every move, hoping to catch her with a new beau. But remarrying wasn't high on Diana's list of priorities.

The Princess had been only seven years old when her parents' unhappy marriage was dissolved in 1969. Her mother Frances had married her lover Peter Shand Kydd that same year, but that marriage also failed and the couple were divorced in 1990, just as Diana's own marriage was breaking down. For that reason alone, Diana had her suspicions about second marriages. Frances now spent most of her time living quietly on the remote Isle of Seil by Oban in Scotland. In her soulful moments, Diana wondered whether she might end up in some similarly isolated location, her beauty and her fame eroded by time. It is a bleak prospect.

Embattled and embittered, Diana had neither the reserves nor the willpower to withstand the Arctic chill of the Windsor freeze-out and all it entailed, especially with regard to her children. The hardest lesson that she has learned about life without Charles is that their sons are, first and foremost, princes of the royal blood.

Diana has already instilled in them the belief that their father's difficulty in expressing his emotions owes as much to his education at Gordonstoun and Timbertop as it does to the Royal Family's traditional reserve. While the Palace old guard would have the boys develop in their father's image, Diana is concerned that this would make them as flawed as she believes Charles to be. She wants William to go to Eton, one of the more enlightened public schools.

Throughout their lives, William and Harry have been torn between the vastly different styles of their parents. Charles, whose progress through life has been dominated by royal protocol, public schools and the strict discipline of the Navy, is the ultimate old-fashioned father. He dresses his sons in fogeyish suits and ties and takes them fishing and shooting.

But Diana, the former kindergarten teacher who loves music, dancing and sunshine holidays, prefers things to be more relaxed. When the boys are out with her - more usually in an amusement park than a Scottish castle — they dress in jeans and baseball hats and are encouraged to enjoy themselves. Since the break-up, the battle for William's heart in particular has become more serious. He has been used like an artillery piece on Charles and Diana's battleground.

The Palace decided that it was time for this to stop. The key tactic in the strategy mapped out for Charles's resurrection during 1994 was for him to be seen with William not as a weekend father but as the central figure in his life. No matter how much Diana might push herself into the public eye as his mother, she could never compete against the power of the Palace. One of the Queen's commands was that William should be presented to the public as Charles's son and heir, crushing the theory that the crown might pass directly to her grandson. The more William was pictured on outings with his father, the more Diana's resolve started to crumble. She was never far from a nervous breakdown during the painful weeks that followed that distant encounter with Camilla.

Only the uninitiated were fooled when she tried to make a joke of it in a hastily revised speech at a charity function, declaring, 'Ladies and gentlemen, I think you are very fortunate to have your patron here today - I was supposed to have my head down the loo for most of the day.' Her enemies at the Palace saved their smiles for the line that was supposed to be more serious: if it's all right with you, I thought I might postpone my nervous breakdown.'

When the Palace had tightened its squeeze on her headline-making activities, Diana had called in the Prime Minister. John Major assured the Princess that he regarded her as the best thing to happen to the Royal Family in generations. To Diana, it seemed as though she might have regained some ground, but even while she smiled and waved, they took away her detective, her chauffeur and a planned trip to Russia. The day Ken Wharfe, her official protector and personal friend, was reassigned to other duties, Diana knew she was fighting a losing battle. Despite working out with Carolan Brown to maintain her figure and listening to pep talks from her friends, she was, in the words of one of them, 'shattered and overstressed'. Without her sons at her side she felt naked, and no amount of walkers could make up for the loss.

With the Hewitt threat of disclosure hanging over her head, her decision to step aside and leave the stage to Prince Charles was accelerated by the loss of her closest friend, Lucia Flecha de Lima. After three years in London as Brazilian ambassador, Lucia's husband Paulo-Tarso was posted to Washington in a similar role. Diana drove to Heathrow for an emotional farewell with Lucia in the VIP lounge. 'She was obviously upset but there was no sign of tears,' said an airport official. Even more isolated without her 'second mother', Diana planned her escape with renewed purpose. She consulted her diary and ringed a date in early December 1993.

In contrast, a newly confident Charles actually seemed to be enjoying his freedom. He had come to believe that his infidelity had been thrust upon him by his wife's unreasonable behaviour, and his guilt over bringing her into the Royal Family in the first place became bearable when he realised that they were both victims of what had amounted to an arranged marriage. Once he accepted that married life was only a trigger to a disturbance buried deep down in Diana's psyche and not the cause of it, he was able to stop blaming himself. After a couple of false starts, Charles found that the best way to deal with Diana was to avoid her unless it was absolutely essential for them to be in the same place at the same time. As he had a busy schedule, this wasn't difficult. For instance, he contrived to be in Turkey on the day of Viscount Linley's wedding to Serena Stanhope at which Diana was one of the royal guests.

The Prince looked younger and smiled happily as he went about his duties with an added spring in his step. He delivered a hard-hitting speech at Oxford in which he attacked the 'unmentionable horrors' perpetrated by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East. Aided by the Palace public relations machine, his image-building efforts started to bring unexpected results.

A poll of one thousand people commissioned by
Tatler
showed that the public's perception of Diana was markedly changing, at least in the upper levels of society. In answer to the question, 'Do you think the Princess of Wales is a victim or a manipulator?' only thirty-eight per cent declared her a martyr while forty-four per cent decided she was a monster. Eighteen per cent couldn't make up their minds. Asked for her opinion, Madonna had replied unhelpfully: if I'd been in a situation like hers I would have slit my wrists.' Bruce Oldfield, one of Diana's favoured designers, said: 'She is a modern young woman seeking a modern way out of a tricky situation. She is stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. She holds the trump card in the form of the two boys, but it's a no-win situation.'

Diana knew in her heart that she had already played her trump card for the last time. Her dilemma was how to slip out of the limelight without leaving the impression that her massive popularity had finally slipped away. Like a shop-soiled black knight on a broken-down charger, a New Zealander called Bryce Taylor unwittingly came galloping to the rescue.

The troubled owner of the L.A. Fitness Centre in the west London suburb of Isleworth, Taylor devised a reckless scheme to save his financial skin. He reasoned that unposed photographs of the best-known member exercising at his health club would be worth a not inconsiderable fortune. Although such a venture would cost the club Diana's patronage, the wave of publicity would more than compensate for the loss. Diana could not have dreamed up a more perfect scenario if she had written the script herself.

The melodrama had started as far back as the morning of 26 April, 1992. Looking her athletic best, Diana had donned a fetching turquoise Lycra camisole and matching cycling shorts before setting off for her regular workout. Peering through the Venetian blinds of his office window, Taylor witnessed the arrival of member No. 753 shortly after 9 a.m. He watched nervously as the Princess ran across the courtyard from the car park to enter his club.

Taylor had spent the two preceding weeks in his garden shed working on a wooden box which now contained the second-hand camera in which he had invested £1,824 for his dangerous enterprise. He had placed the camera into a black plastic binliner stuffed with builders' insulation wool to deaden the sound of its shutter before positioning the entire assembly into panelling which housed the electrical wires and plumbing running across the ceiling directly above a leg exercise machine. Eighty feet of pneumatic cable ran from the camera's shutter mechanism through the roof space and into the office where the anxious New Zealander hid the trigger to activate it.

He wiped his sweaty palms on his trousers as he watched Diana work out first on a rowing machine and then an exercise bicycle before moving on to the leg press. 'I slid the ceiling tile back and reached up and got hold of the air bulb,' he recalled later. 'My legs were trembling. I never felt so scared in my life. I took a deep breath and squeezed the bulb as hard as I could - I actually closed my eyes. My worst fear was that Diana would leap off the machine screaming and yelling to her detective about the hidden camera she'd spotted in the ceiling and all hell would break loose.'