Diana's Nightmare - The Family (8 page)

After the Warrington fiasco, Charles reassessed the situation with those closest to him. One of his strategists explained that Charles no longer saw himself as competing with the Princess of Wales. Rather, their roles were considered to be complementary. 'Richard Aylard shares an office with Patrick Jephson and they work closely together trying to make sure that they aren't both making major speeches on the same day or going to the same part of the country,' he said. 'They are trying to get the best value from their separate programmes.

'Charles is an extremely robust individual and, of course, he's used to being under pressure, but he's certainly putting a great deal into his work now as he always has. His approach to his work and his very real understanding of his role has developed over a number of years. The Prince is not someone who believes in short-term, quick-fix solutions to achieve popularity. What is important is the long-term worth of what he is doing. Even if he were attracted to the quick-fix solution, he's got all this very worthwhile work going on with the Prince's Trust and the Youth Business Trust, which has created 25,000 jobs so far. He's very committed to that kind of work. He's not going to give up those things. In the same way, he's established a very good
modus operandi
for his foreign tours. He undertakes tours such as the ones to Mexico, Poland and Bosnia on the advice of the Foreign Office - he goes wherever they feel he can do most good. He wants to do everything he can to help what he calls Great Britain plc. Clearly the concentration on his private life had been unhelpful and a distraction from his work. But he wouldn't say he was at a crossroads at all.'

When things bother him, Charles turns to dangerous sports, particularly polo. 'Polo helps keep me sane,' he said, it's the only team sport I play.' His exertions in the saddle show that he is a highly competitive player. He plays to win even if it hurts. An old back problem struck him after only twelve minutes into a game at Windsor on 13 June, 1993, after he tried to turn his pony one way and it insisted on going the other. Charles stormed off the field, crashed his polo helmet to the ground and told worried aides who advised medical attention: i don't want a bloody doctor.' The Prince, his face twisted in agony, lay down at full stretch behind the wheels of an ambulance until the pain eased. At Highgrove, he called in Sarah Key, his Australian physiotherapist, to massage and manipulate his spine. Friends revealed that Charles suffered from a crumbling disc which put pressure on the spinal nerve. The man who had made his wife's life 'real, real torture' was exposed as tormented, crippled and disturbed himself. Despite every conceivable warning, he was back in the saddle again within a couple of weeks.

The vagaries of Charles royal birthright troubled him so much that he was once compelled to explain himself to complete strangers. 'I've had to fight to have any sort of role as the Prince of Wales,' he told a group of editors at Kensington Palace. 'I am determined not to be confined to cutting ribbons.' One editor who dined with Charles mused: 'I sometimes wonder what he does in the morning. Does he wake up and say, "I think I'll be an admiral today" and the valet fetches the right uniform out of the wardrobe?' According to Stephen Barry, the wardrobe contained no fewer than forty-four uniforms. After the break-up, Diana sent them all over to St James's Palace on a mobile clothes rail.

Charles had, in fact, been given at least one excellent opportunity to play an active role. When James Callaghan was Prime Minister, he put Charles on the Commonwealth Development Corporation, but he quickly lost interest. 'He should stop pretending that he has never been given a chance to test himself to the ultimate,' one of his critics remarked at the time.

At the core of Charles's problem is what he sees as his rejection by his parents as a child. Wanting for nothing in material terms, he had yearned for parental approval. While his father was a technocrat and pragmatist at heart, he had turned into a dilettante. Even at Highgrove he couldn't settle. 'He loves his garden, but as soon as he's finished sorting out every inch of it he will get bored and take up something else,' said Diana. 'Like most men he does what he wants to do.'

Moreover, his search for a Holy Grail with such spiritual sherpas as the writer Sir Laurens van der Post has met with only limited success. He described Sir Laurens, with whom he went meditating in the Kalahari desert, as 'the most formative influence on my life'. Another guru, the violinist Sir Yehudi Menuhin, taught him the relaxation and meditation techniques of yoga. But neither has equipped him for his role as the stereotyped but wholly human component of an everyday eternal triangle. 'There are very few relationships, certainly in Western society, that can survive that sort of triangulation,' said Andrew Morton. 'Three into two doesn't work.'

Infidelity, Charles discovered after the full Camillagate transcript was published in Australia on 13 January, 1993, was a great leveller. He now ranked uncomfortably alongside the milkman, the window cleaner and the travelling salesman as the butt of dirty jokes. He had cuckolded a friend and although it might be argued that the circumstances were different, the morality was the same. Never again could the Prince of Wales take the moral high ground.

'Your greatest achievement is to love me'

Prince Charles

CAMILLA Parker Bowles's father, Major Bruce Shand, was known more for his bravery than his imagination. But he was, in his own way, quite a ladies' man. 'When I met him, he was a single man in his twenties, a dashing cavalry officer who was considered rather good looking,' said Lady Edith Foxwell, then a beautiful debutante of nineteen. 'He rode well and looked good on a horse. He was considered to be a ladies' man but, to be honest, I thought he was rather dull. I was a bit naughty myself and I always liked unusual people. We went to lots of parties together and Bruce was always a very nice escort.'

Major Shand's eldest daughter was far more direct in matters of the heart. Camilla, it was said, had been introduced to Charles at a polo match and taking the bit between her teeth, had teased him: 'My great-grandmother was your great-great-grandfather's mistress - so how about it?' Alice Keppel, Camilla's great-grandmother, had indeed been the courtesan of Albert, Prince of Wales, later the bearded lothario Edward VII known to the masses as 'Good Old Teddy'. When Diana heard about this opening gambit, she marvelled at the woman's audacity. Such a full-frontal approach to any man, let alone the heir to the throne, was beneath her dignity. This was only the first of many occasions that caused her to wonder about Camilla's barefaced cheek.

At twenty-five, Camilla had been a year older than the Prince, a lively, confident, well-endowed young debutante with an unsanitized sense of humour that matched his own. Above all, she was a blonde and the Prince adored blondes. Charles, whose self-deprecating manner masked a highly active libido, didn't think too deeply. He accepted the invitation. History was about to repeat itself.

Camilla's confidence stemmed in no small measure from the fact that her family were not only extremely well-connected but exceedingly rich. Alice Keppel had two children, Violet by her husband, and Sonia, it was believed, by Edward VII. Violet married Denys Trefusis in 1919, but it emerged from letters and diaries published after Violet's death that she had been the lesbian lover of Mrs Harold Nicolson, better known as the author Vita Sackville-West. Sonia married the third Baron Ashcombe, a member of the Cubitt dynasty, who, as well as projects for royalty, had built most of Belgravia for the Duke of Westminster's Grosvenor Estate. They had two children, Harry, the present Lord Ashcombe, and Camilla's mother, Rosalind. Bruce Shand, born on 22 January, 1917, went to Sandhurst after Rugby and won the MC twice during World War II. After the war, he built up his own business as a Mayfair wine merchant. He and Rosalind were married in 1946.

The first of their three children was Camilla Rosemary, born at King's College Hospital, London, on 17 July, 1947, a Cancerian like Diana. With her sister Annabel and brother Mark, she was raised at The Laines at Plumpton in Sussex, and whereas Diana excelled at swimming and tennis, Camilla thrived on blood sports. She was hooked, so to speak, fox, stock and barrel. After a bracing introduction to school life at Dumbrills near her Sussex home, Camilla was educated at the Queen's Gate School in South Kensington. This private academy attracted girls from well-to-do families whose main interest was procreating an upper-class lifestyle. More energetic and shapely than beautiful, Camilla was never as ravishing as Alice Keppel, who had completely captivated Charles's philandering forebear.

It hadn't mattered that Alice was already married to an Army officer, Colonel George Keppel. Marriage was more a useful cover than a hindrance in the louche society Edward frequented. 'No woman was safe in his company,' said the royal historian. To the despair of his mother Queen Victoria, Edward maintained a string of mistresses, the most famous of whom was 'The Jersey Lily', Mrs Lillie Langtry. Alice started a passionate, twelve-year affair with him, which ended only on his death in 1910. 'There was a twenty-seven-year age difference between them,' said the royal historian. 'She made no secret of their affair and they often went out as a couple. She used to say, "Curtsy first - then leap into bed". But it can't have been easy. Edward became so gross from over-eating that he had to be strapped into a hanging harness, complete with footrests, to enable him to make love.'

If Alice's daughter Sonia, Camilla's grandmother, were actually the King's illegitimate child, then Charles and Camilla were second cousins several times removed. By all accounts, they were soon doing more than kissing.

Their affair began after Charles led Camilla on to the dance floor at Annabel's, the nightclub synonymous with the latest in Mayfair chic. Other guests saw that the newly graduated naval officer was enchanted by the vivacious blonde in his arms, although they arrived down the wrought-iron staircase separately. Camilla's 'fairly steady' boyfriend, Captain Andrew Parker Bowles, had been posted to Germany with his Household Cavalry regiment, the Blues and Royals. She arrived accompanied by her sister Annabel. When Charles asked her to dance, the young debutante eagerly accepted. Even then, she and Andrew had 'an arrangement'. Charles and Camilla seemed to be made for each other. He found that not only was he immensely attracted to her, but he could speak openly to her on subjects closest to his heart. They talked the same language in more or less the same accent. House was 'hice' and nice was 'neece'.

Although physical contact was first made at Annabel's, its Champagne Charlie atmosphere was a far cry from the habitat in which love started to blossom. Camilla's passion for outdoor country pursuits more than matched the Prince's own. She was an expert rider who loved to hunt with the Belvoir or the Beaufort, and her upbringing enabled her to share Charles's pleasure in fishing and shooting, not as a spectator but as a highly competitive participant. 'She's quite happy sloshing across a windswept field with her hair in a scarf,' said a friend. 'But she dresses up beautifully when the occasion demands it. She would have made a tremendous daughter-in-law for the Queen; unlike Diana, they have a lot in common.'

Their rapport completely unnerved Charles, who was only twenty-three and young for his age. if Camilla had played the long game, it might have been a different story,' said the friend. 'But it happened so quickly - little more than six months from start to finish. I doubt if Charles could believe his good fortune. But he wasn't mature enough to handle a relationship properly so he dithered. It's said that Camilla "wasn't keen on queendom", but I'm sure she could have been persuaded if that were the only obstacle. It wasn't, of course. Other things were involved.'

For one thing, Camilla wasn't a virgin and, despite the sexual liberation of the permissive Sixties, it was expected that the next Queen of England should go into her husband's bed
virgo intacta.
To complicate matters, Andrew Parker Bowles had been a close friend of Princess Anne and only his Catholicism had prevented their relationship from going further. These two facts alone would have given royal moralists, and the Press, a field day. it would have been preferable for all concerned if this had been faced realistically at the time,' said the Palace insider, it could have been sold to the public as a modern love story. The romantic element would have overshadowed any bad publicity very quickly. Heaven knows, the mood was right for a change in social attitudes. Charles could have married Camilla and saved everyone from years of hypocrisy.'

But the prevailing mood in the House of Windsor at the time was not receptive to such a radical departure. 'Charles was frightened of his father at this stage of his life,' said a friend. 'I'm not saying there was an argument or that Prince Philip vetoed the relationship. But it would not surprise me if Charles decided it was easier to simply cut and run.'

To a large extent, the decision was taken out of his hands. He joined HMS
Minerva
and spent most of 1973 far away in the West Indies, hardly conducive to a romance in England. Soon after Charles bowed out, Camilla accepted a proposal from Andrew Parker Bowles, now a major with an assured military career in front of him. By some accounts, Charles was devastated. The couple were married at the Guards Chapel in July 1973. Princess Anne was among the congregation to see her former boyfriend walk down the aisle with her brother's loved one.

At Park House adjacent to the Sandringham estate in Norfolk, Diana had just celebrated her twelfth birthday. The biggest event in her life that year was her sister Sarah's coming-of-age party at Castle Rising, a Norman castle. Diana has her eye on Prince Andrew, not his big brother.

As Camilla settled down to married life in Bolehyde Manor in Wiltshire, Charles threw himself into his naval career. Having gained his pilot's licence, he trained to fly helicopters at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton, Somerset. When her first child, a son, was born he attended the christening and became a godfather. The child was given the names Thomas Henry Charles.